3.14 Retention Rates

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QuiquePoE wrote:

My interpretation of the charts:






1) League start concurrent player number: This number reflects the amount of players GGG managed to attract to the new league. It's the consecuence of the work done previous to the start of the league: hype, publicity, etc. It does NOT reflect how well a league performed.

2) Actual league curve: This is the data that matters. Its shape determines if a league did well or not, retention-wise:



a) An "L" shape (1) means the game can't maintain the players interested and they start leaving immediatelly after the league starts. This is the worse-case scenario.

b) The league loses players at a constant pace. (2)

c) The league keeps a high number of players engaged and active for a long time, until they are finally done with it. This is the best-case scenario. (3)

Without analizing the causes for which each can happen, in the case of Ultimatun vs the previous leagues of the past 2 years, you can clearly see this has been one of the worse, if not the worst, performing league retention-wise.



And, finally, I think It's worth mentioning that a higher average number of players and a higher concurrent peak number in the league doesn't mean it performed better retention-wise compared to previous ones. It just means that the game is growing and that it is attracting more and more people as time goes by.

Great post, +1

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QuiquePoE wrote:

It's right there! And we can compare them.

Of course we can compare them. And indeed; it is right there. We can also compare a frog to a cow. The question isn't "if" we can compare them, the question is "why" - when we have NO proof/evidence as to why they are different.

And while you can feel very certain that X is the reason why, Johnny over there can be just as certain that reason Y is to "blame". Jimmy, on the other hand, is blaming N. A tremendously fucked up league start? Nerfs? Boring mechanics? Two zones-in-maps leagues in a row? No real endgame content? Soccer Euros? Summer vacation? Sun? Softer Corona restrictions? Game progression? Larger budget?

I just can't find these graphs interesting, as they don't tell me anything of substance - especially in the current society.

Edit: My post(s) are directed toward people using these graphs as proof of... Well... Anything, when they are hardly an indication.

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Phrazz wrote:

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QuiquePoE wrote:

It's right there! And we can compare them.

I just can't find these graphs interesting, as they don't tell me anything of substance - especially in the current society.

The unstated assumption being that GGG can tell more about numbers going down. Of course they can't, all they have are the most accurate version of these numbers. Steam is a large subset of the total population and is likely VERY representative of the population of players as a whole. I would say GGG is likely looking at ALL of the reasons that you listed: boring league, bad start, similar mechanics two leagues in a row. But all the negative (and positive) player feedback is direct from the source and they would be wise to LISTEN to it. White knights apologizing for the league don't help keep the game progressing

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KopaKabana wrote:

Do you not have players? Just shut your eyes and slam! KEKW LOLW

From reddit's mouth to our ears.

Harvest and delve being removed from the game is the reason I haven't played this league at all. Two mechanics that greatly expanded the scope of what you can do in this game, one in progression and one being an alternative thing to do in game, are now meaningless in almost all regards. This also secondarily gates out a lot of other things, like full deli farming via fractures, which then gates out using scarabs to consistently interact with league mechanics you like without paying out the ass.

GGG is just doubling down on the boring endgame clearspeed grind they've been pushing for years, while cutting back on any viable alternatives, so not much reason to keep interacting with the game that no longer provides what it used to. I would happily come back if they provided an experience that interested me but the current scope doesn't.

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Phrazz wrote:

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QuiquePoE wrote:

It's right there! And we can compare them.

Of course we can compare them. And indeed; it is right there. We can also compare a frog to a cow. The question isn't "if" we can compare them, the question is "why" - when we have NO proof/evidence as to why they are different.

And while you can feel very certain that X is the reason why, Johnny over there can be just as certain that reason Y is to "blame". Jimmy, on the other hand, is blaming N. A tremendously fucked up league start? Nerfs? Boring mechanics? Two zones-in-maps leagues in a row? No real endgame content? Soccer Euros? Summer vacation? Sun? Softer Corona restrictions? Game progression? Larger budget?

I just can't find these graphs interesting, as they don't tell me anything of substance - especially in the current society.

Edit: My post(s) are directed toward people using these graphs as proof of... Well... Anything, when they are hardly an indication.

With people like that i know why the covid crisis is so badly handled

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Haattila wrote:

With people like that i know why the covid crisis is so badly handled

He kind of makes a point. I don't think he is right on this particular case but I may be wrong and it is important to note that behaviors depends on different factors as well.

If anything, Covid certainly helped PoE retention, but as stated n time over last monthes 3.14 is a complete disgrace so there is mainly that.

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cpurdy777 wrote:

Harvest and delve being removed from the game.

Those have not been removed from the game. Harvest has been printing currency this league but it is less usefull for crafting great items(wich was arguably the most fun aspect) and Delve has been rescaled while nerfing deep delving. Almost nobody was going through the whole delve scalling anyway.

Just a PSA for the people using steamcharts as their data source.

Steamcharts does 2 things to make their charts very misleading.
1) They have daily data points for the past 3 months, and monthly data points for the rest.
2) They smooth their graph curves.

These two things make the current league look (correctly) like a triangle and past leagues look (incorrectly) like smooth hills.

To see that this is true, just look at this image taken of steamcharts during Harvest league from this thread.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2947944/page/3



Or this one during Delve league from this thread.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2237849/page/1



Same sharp spike followed by drastic fall compared to previous league. In 3 months time, Ultimatum league's curve will look like a smooth hill exactly like all the other leagues. Just make sure before using a data source, you fully understand what the data is showing.

If you're looking for more accurate data, steamdb has complete daily data points and does not smooth their graphs.
https://steamdb.info/app/238960/graphs/

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Revnaut wrote:

Just a PSA for the people using steamcharts as their data source.

Steamcharts does 2 things to make their charts very misleading.
1) They have daily data points for the past 3 months, and monthly data points for the rest.
2) They smooth their graph curves.

These two things make the current league look (correctly) like a triangle and past leagues look (incorrectly) like smooth hills.

To see that this is true, just look at this image taken of steamcharts during Harvest league from this thread.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2947944/page/3



Or this one during Delve league from this thread.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2237849/page/1



Same sharp spike followed by drastic fall compared to previous league. In 3 months time, Ultimatum league's curve will look like a smooth hill exactly like all the other leagues. Just make sure before using a data source, you fully understand what the data is showing.

If you're looking for more accurate data, steamdb has complete daily data points and does not smooth their graphs.
https://steamdb.info/app/238960/graphs/

Well, even your steamdb shows current ultimatum numbers already lower than worst numbers in previous league, with 3 weeks still to go. That's just looking at the numbers. Not graphs. So good attempt, but you just can't manipulate the numbers like you did the graph there.

For me the problems of PoE came down to the fact that GGG only has a "one trick pony" game. I quit in the spring of 2019 after I had completed my only major quest of this game, to farm 27 Oni-Goroshi swords to match the 27 cards needed for getting an OG. I completed that grind and then lost all interest in this game. Here are my reasons.

1. As a very average player I have never liked the endgame super massive map grind past level 90. GGG scaled up the mountain climb to reach level 100 many times over the years as the "super racers" would reach level 100 in < 1 week (top fanatic players did this in 3 days by non-stop playing at league start).

2. As the new league mechanics added up over the years the complexity of this game exceeded my desire to learn them and leverage the ones that made it into the core game. That and GGG always made a league mechanic be at about 10% viability when it was added to the core game. Thus (for me) a fun league mechanic was only available (encountered) at about 10% of what it was during that league. This meant that in the hours played I could expect to only engage a specific mechanic from a previous league 1/10th as often. Thus, whatever the reward that I would receive took 10 times longer to achieve, another time grind extension to the already tiresome endgame grind.

3. A total failure of the ability to trade for all players! The only way to sell anything is by being logged in to receive and respond to a WTB message? Come on GGG, that's like using a homing pigeon to send messages to communicate in the 21st century! GGG's total failure to implement a real time buy/sell messaging system that didn't require being logged into PoE 24/7 to access is a total failure of trading. Trading was and is only for the no-lifer PoE junkies for the most part. Years back I posted suggesting that GGG code a smart phone app that would alert you of a WTB so you could have a real life and still be able to sell items without the need to be chained to your gaming rig logged into PoE to receive a WTB. That never happened so I never sold a single item and only bought very few items (spamming trade chat is super boring/frustrating).

4. "One trick pony" - GGG has coded PoE such that the level of difficulty is fixed and is not adjustable like other RPG games of this type like Diablo. This means that over time as more and more players raced to level 100 in the first week of league start the difficulty bar was raised, and raised, and raised some more until Chris and company got the quantity of level 100 builds to a low enough number in the first week of a new league. That is all fine and well for the top elite players who ask for "more harder please" all the time. But what of the +98% rest of the players. We were all killed off on the "trail of tears" (the ever increasing map grind to level up). GGG has no solution to this problem and never will.

5. 3 months from league to league = super buggy code. On the surface getting a new league every 3 months sounds fantastic as a player. But the cost of this is the reality that the new league is in a beta code state of development all the time, or worse (a few leagues I'd label the code as alpha). With so many flaws to deal with all the time this put a huge damper on the fun.

6. Similar to the bug problems of PoE were the constant performance problems. With such a short development cycle and the fact that GGG was a garage startup, PoE never had a proper game engine from the start. This "learn as you code" method of programming for PoE has created a fuggly mess of code that will never ever have any good performance on average computer hardware. I finally achieved acceptable frame rates when I upgraded to an 8 core HT Intel processor at 3.4 GHz and a Nvidia 1060 graphics card on Windows 10 Pro. Anything less and my frame rates plummeted at every turn. I had to skip Breach League entirely as getting near any breach caused my ATI video card to die (2 to 3 fps). Only shelling out for faster hardware would solve performance problems like this. Yet Diablo III and my other games played smoothly and well on that same hardware. Starting a game company on a shoe string budget has severe drawbacks, and it definitely showed with PoE's poor to bad performance.