3.14 Retention Rates
" Isn't the only quick conclusion I've seen, I can tell you that. I've been waiting for a step-by-step reasonable argument the whole time. "Too OP" "obviously OP"... but you know, let's just leave out explanations, and you know, I'd realize it's very unlikely they play any of the mechanics in discussion or aren't interested in progress, and that's fine. It's even easier to miss the point, because yet more quick conclusions get made - and we're accused of wanting the game to be easier. Yet, if you realize streamer/pros progress is still faster, only that we have to progress in a very boring manner. Too hard to understand, but I figured out why -- they haven't been there. So, fine, I'll play along. How about I play like them since I'm told the way to play the game isn't how it's intended. Ya know see how they have their fun but for some reason, it's all being kept a secret. "but you wouldn't like how I play.." "just youtube" "so many things to do" (but unable to name one). So I took yet another approach, asked why does it bothers them so much even when they don't play them, and well... even that went cold. It's bizarre to me. "too OP" = constructive post. and long posts with reasons well elaborated gets told to just say "harvest nerf bad". Totally bizarre. I've plenty more to say, but I'll leave the fun for another time. `Spent 2 mirrors on my build, but I'm only Level 98.` LOL
`From just quick sweep of your characters, toxic rain, golems .. sure, non meta... sure.` LOL `What are divs?` |
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" Apostles of Chris want the game completely lottery-based. Their idea of balanced and equality for everyone. `Spent 2 mirrors on my build, but I'm only Level 98.` LOL
`From just quick sweep of your characters, toxic rain, golems .. sure, non meta... sure.` LOL `What are divs?` |
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" Yup, that’s why I made two builds that never failed (although clearly had very bad luck with rewards). PoE’s poor balance was definitely exacerbated by the difficulty, though. In fact, that’s all more monster damage and less player defense does: force people toward a very small number of builds, skills, influenced mods, etc. in order to have a smooth experience. Gonna try another build next week; we’ll see if I have any better luck. We're all in this leaky boat together, people. Last edited by demon9675#2961 on Jun 19, 2021, 3:56:08 PM
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Picking up items. It causes damage to people's hands. Maybe fix core issues like that and the rest will follow.
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I was digging through some of my old reddit and forum comments hoping to see if I could find a link. A link to an interview or podcast with Chris Wilson sort of shedding light on the Steam vs Standalone player numbers. I know they've spoken about this... I just can't find it right now. I want to quote him and add that to whatever this thread is supposed to be about.
17k concurrent players just on Steam when it's a 50/50 split between Steam and Standalone isn't terrible. There was a time in PoE where they said they're economically viable with just 10,000 concurrent players. It's obviously different now that they're no longer some garage band of developers. The whole international realm could be at 30k right now (my guess) and Steam only shows half the picture. Then there's PoE China which is never talked about it seems.... I'm sure they're aiming for way more than 10k concurrent players obviously. I wonder what it is. These little charts that people post only show that Ultimatum is less popular, sure, but that's it. The real telling numbers would be what concurrent player number GGG wants and if they're failing to hit that because of patch 3.14. And then there's this: Here's a fun one to watch. Also from that same speech. https://youtu.be/pM_5S55jUzk?t=2767. Basically, they can be where they are with only a fraction of the players playing Ultimatum but they're still going to have relatively high engagement with the website. So if that website engagement is falling off a cliff then that would be a better indicator of a bad league/bad direction/bad patch/bad game/bad company etc. |
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" When people go to spam some website with illegal/troll images(known as raiding) does it mean the website/company is doing well? The engagement is highest it ever seen after all. Sure, it would show interest but not all interest is good interest, just like people coming there to hate on the patch and say stuff like "i quit, game ded" is not positive image. i'm here just to see if there was some patch to make things better and wait for hopefully better league. Sure, me coming there once per few months does show i did not lose my interest completely but that is about it. I'm sure blizzard had huuuuuge engagement with the hong kong controversy, yet i doubt that did the company any good. When it comes to the "player numbers ggg wants" or in your context i assume you mean NEED to sustain the business. That is completely irrelevant to this topic. Sure, maybe they can sustain the game with 0 players, is 0 players good indicator of game doing well? 0 is the target number they "want" so reaching it does tell us that the league and patch did well, do you still think that this number is that important??? No, that is non sequitur. Even accepting your premises without question the conclusion just does not follow. Company is always hoping for maximum possible profit, so number they want is infinite but yes the number they need may be 0. Maybe they need 0 this league and 20k next, that makes 10k average and if they need 10k per month to sustain business this tactic would be still win at sustaining business. But needing 0 players is completely offtopic to player retention. What this thread OP does is to take REAL numbers we REALLY have avaible to us and draws conclusions from them. Which is like infinitely better than talking about numbers we do not have. Or numbers that are not even relevant to the discussion. That it is steam only is non issue for it would still show the same thing, retention being worse, for it would be still fair steam to steam comparison with big sample size. We would need a lot of data to really point out the main cause of the failure, but the failure is there. >Covid >Bad marketing with streamer privilege >Unplayable league start >Harvest nerfs >Copy pasted league mechanics(well at least they feel like that) >Build nerfs >Summer ... But it does not matter what exactly did most "damage" we can still draw the conclusion of retention rates being pretty bad compared to some other leagues. I feel pretty, Oh, so pretty,
I feel pretty, and witty and gay, And I pity Any girl who isn’t me today! | |
" Short term trends don't necessarily point to long term problems. I have no doubt there are some people that are jaded from Harvest that left, at least temporarily. This league (Ultimatum) was overtuned and never tuned back, which seriously discriminates against a large portion of the player base. The list goes on, as you mentioned in your post. In order to really judge if they have a problem, your post and jack_aubrey's post provide some context for what's important to look at. The post about minimum players to be able to keep servers online is important. I doubt it is 10k now, but the current numbers in the league are probably more than enough since Steam doesn't represent all the player base, and player concurrency is a misleading stat. You can draw some information from it, but what you can't take from it is how many people are playing the game. Player concurrency only speaks to online currently. Not the number of unique players during the course of a day. If we had access to average playing time per player, we could use that to potentially make a more informed guess, but that doesn't provide all the information needed to know what is reality. But I believe the most important numbers to measure success/failure in terms of a business is not the retention numbers over the course of a league, but the numbers at the start of a league. And then measured over the course of many leagues. That's when I think the major influx of revenue occurs. New supporter packs, new character slots, etc. Stash tabs likely drive some revenue after league start when people run out of space, but I don't know if that occurs in a linear way or at specific points. They tend to run stash tab sales that run in line with the start/end of league for a reason. More importantly, some leagues just don't land and people leave. Then come back next league and some times that league lands more. And good versus bad is a subjective point that is not universal. I enjoyed Bestiary League. I thought it gave an alternate way to play the game for people who did not just want to zoom zoom and blow up screens. It was exceptionally unpopular though. I also disliked Breach league, arguably one of the turning point leagues for this game. Certainly one of the most popular during that time period. That's why it's important to measure over a longer period of time to really know if things are good/bad. Thanks for all the fish! Last edited by Nubatron#4333 on Jun 20, 2021, 10:28:23 AM
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" I agree that those things matter but not for this topic. This topic is concerned with retention rates and speculations on things that affect it. I do not see how talking about something like share price, sustainability of current profit model, ggg's cryptocurrency, shareholder's well being, pinkest pink color, russell's teapot or global warming is relevant to that. Sure, you might somehow draw correlation between cryptocurrency price, gpu availability and it is effect on player retention. But that is ridiculously long shot and that is why i call it not relevant:(closely connected) to the topic at hand. I do agree that all of those things are of importance in some context, but ehm they just are not focus of this topic that is literally called retention rates 3.14 Now why I even meantion anything about keeping on topic? Because the poster i reply to said. "I want to quote him and add that to whatever this thread is supposed to be about." Which clearly indicates that it is of importance to him too. Which is common ground from which i can make such claims. I feel pretty, Oh, so pretty,
I feel pretty, and witty and gay, And I pity Any girl who isn’t me today! | |
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bruh, is it very hot today where you live? Cool down... :)
"Glattes Eis, ein Paradeis, für den, der gut zu tanzen weiß" - F. Nietzsche
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" I disagree. It's very relevant when a single leagues retention is being mapped to specific conclusions. Furthermore, parts of the thread have tried to tie it to the long term health of the game. I would argue that retention over the longer term can show some meaningful information; ironically that information does not include specific causes of the ups and downs though (which the OP tries to draw conclusions from just one league, which is worse). There are just too many variables to even try. Those that have tried failed to manage their confirmation bias from my optic. As an aside, I would bet there are enough players in this game that don't care at all about retention to keep the servers online. Those are the retention numbers that I care about. Enough players to keep servers online and stable enough to play -- that's good enough. Thanks for all the fish!
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