How to spot a downward trend... POE will struggle in the year ahead.

The game itself has kind or ran its course... more so, every league brings its own cumbersome stacks of ever new skills, useless uniques and adding to an already pretty complex game (working tooltips anyone?).

But this game came from a very good place... and quickly loses its way. The Harvest league, meant to be an experiment on crafting could not have been a worse choice from GGG. Keep in mind most are quarantining with lots of time... and people left the game in a hasty way... myself included.

But forging ahead with POE 2... which every flop leagues incoming dwindles the hype I have for it... and the fact that Diablo 2 resurrected might actually pop up at about the exact same time... and you have lost your base altogether...

Some will remain, the sponsored streamers... but the exodus will be huge. Most older players will go back to simplicity and nostalgia. (frankly that's what brought us to this game in the beginning... and eerie familiar feel with a twist). And the hype will move on...

What appears right is that Chris Wilson thought he had found the never ending manufactured recipe for an ever playabe game... And doing so, every iteration seems more like a repackaging of the previous with more useless skills that end up revamped and highlighted in a future repetitive iteration.

Too much of a good thing does become a bad thing. for casual players (i.e. not 24/7) the amount of time and needed outsider resources required to learn the game is way too time consuming vs. the actual fun factor.

As well, the SSF choice revealed an unwillingness to make this game coop. If the lag and screen overwhelming graphics are not enough of a deterrent.

Basically, I do not see this going uphill from here. And POE 2 may well falter due to a D2 remaster... Talk about your inspiration coming back to bite you.

I really enjoyed this game, it was pretty well thought and amazing until they started litterally dumping more and more purposeless stuff that needed fixing a month through a 3 months league.

Too bad.

I don't see any hard data but the absence of graphs doesn't necessarily prove you wrong, just puts the burden of proof in your court.

Most games have that one expansion that is notoriously late to hit the market. In this case, the plague economy may well cancel PoE2 or delay it by 2+ years. This is not the same as Duke Nukem Forever or HL3 (although it could become that way if GGGcent collectively decide the genre won't recover even after dropping the exp.)

D4 and D2 Reheated probably have the same issues.

SSF got a big boost with Harvest and I'm surprised people are complaining even in trade league. 1 month in, at least someone has to have grown a prize pumpkin or tomato to take to the County Fair.

Although I doubt SSF is the future of ARPGs, and I do agree multiplayer supports and party play enhancements should be first and foremost, after optimization and streamlining the code.

Another day, another doomsayer post...

So how was your day today, OP? Folks keeping well?

It's like the "WoW is dead" meme - I don't like the game anymore so obviously the game is dying and something something WoW killer and blah blah vanilla was better, the new content is bad.

ResidentSleeper

the tldr here is i didn't like harvest so will project on everyone else with extra words

"

rzuk892 wrote:

It's like the "WoW is dead" meme - I don't like the game anymore so obviously the game is dying and something something WoW killer and blah blah vanilla was better, the new content is bad.

ResidentSleeper

well looking at the steam charts it looks like he is right though

on the other hand: dish out a good league and the numbers will rise.

Still worried about what they give us with poe2

"

rzuk892 wrote:

It's like the "WoW is dead" meme - I don't like the game anymore so obviously the game is dying and something something WoW killer and blah blah vanilla was better, the new content is bad.

ResidentSleeper

Retail wow lost over half of its playerbase :)

And that is an incredibly generous estimate from raider.io

Said some poster every league.

I think leveling needs work. Right now it's a pain in the ass to level a new character, so some people like me, just plays one character for a few weeks and destroys every content and that's it, game over.

D2 had tristruns - baalruns, it was a better leveling experience IMO.

In D2 I usually played HC, but PoE seems too buggy, crazy oneshots, and constant lag/desync is just too much for me.

All that said, PoE is very fun with lot's of different builds and mechanics.

Every. Single. League.