Visual Representation of the feedback after a major PoE patch

heh, nice try, lets see if what you said holds water

delirium - 133k players at launch, 1 month later - 54k

40% retention

harvest - 126k players at launch, 1 month later - 44k

34% retention

heist - 122k players at launch, 1 month later - 49k

40% retention

So no, harvest is not special. The players didn't come back after quitting initially, it follows the trend of the other PoE leagues (apart from the big drop in the first week).

Lets go a month further

delirium - 26k players after 2 months

20%

harvest - 19k players after 2 months

15%

heist - 22k players after 2 months

19%

"

Johny_Snow wrote:

And yet the player number afterwards has been fairly stable. In fact, it went up a bit during the weekend.

Harvest is 100% broken, im genuinely surprised no one is crying about it not being on the map device. Probably because the same people whining about the patch and not playing the league, are the same vocal minority who complained about harvest, even though harvest in its current state is fine.

By this same time last league my trapper was fully decked out and i was crafting with harvest constantly just for fun. I especially made sure to craft after season flask belts with Veiled before those changes too.



Id say harvest power creep is somewhere in the realm of a 60-80% progression speed boost. By comparison to last league my current gear is a joke and i havent made anywhere near the same amount of currency i had a week in last time. Also due to no harvest on the device, and also late starting due to rerolling, i havent been able to do a ton of atlas but im working on that later today to unlock harvest nodes. Build has kinda hit a standstill due to the fact that steel rings are annoying as hell to craft and all the weighting changes makes it bullshit to get what would normally have been year to get years ago (tri res and life).



BTW i wouldnt be surprised if people end up coming back after seeing how good the league actually is but im pretty sure people are soo hell bent on not letting themselves have fun and letting crappy threads by people who didnt play the league spreading false negativity that they might not. Ive already seen people who said they werent playing come back this weekend so itll be interesting to see.

Current gear on my reroll. Ignore the gem mess, power creep still so high i havent really needed to slot in things like a CWDT setup and what not. Though i probably will once i get vuln on hit gloves. We ballin on a budget with ye old trusty skills. Tried to league start dual strike and it was absolute trash can. Had a 6L RWOE and it felt like i was playing with a 150-200PDPS weapon after the multiplier nerfs.

"

Johny_Snow wrote:

heh, nice try, lets see if what you said holds water

delirium - 133k players at launch, 1 month later - 54k

40% retention

harvest - 126k players at launch, 1 month later - 44k

34% retention

heist - 122k players at launch, 1 month later - 49k

40% retention

So no, harvest is not special. The players didn't come back after quitting initially, it follows the trend of the other PoE leagues (apart from the big drop in the first week).

Lets go a month further

delirium - 26k players after 2 months

20%

harvest - 19k players after 2 months

15%

heist - 22k players after 2 months

19%

[Removed by Support], stop strawmanning me and start tackle my actual arguments please.

I never said the players came BACK after the initial drop off during harvest. I said that THOSE WHO STAYED AFTER THE INITIAL DROP OFF, STAYED FOR A LONGER PERIOD THAN PREDICTED.

It was the exact same thing during Synthesis. Massive player drop off initially during the league. But those who remained kept playing, they didn't quit at the rates that would've been predicted by the initial drop offs.
Usually when you observe trendlines and see a 40% drop off, the prediction is that it will snowball out of control and the drop off will continue progressively. This didn't happen during either Harvest or Synthesis, the drop off stagnated and players kept playing like they normally would.

Now compare this to a league like Ultimatum where the drop off and retention snowballed out of control. This league had one of the most succesfull launches(In player numbers, actual launch was broken) and past the 1 month mark experienced the worst rates of retention in PoE history. As it's looking like now, Expedition might be worse than even Ultimatum.

Expedition is starting with less players than previous leagues. Numerous factors probably contributed to this. Covid restrictions being reduced is most likely one of them. People being dissatisfied with Ultimatum and the Balance manifesto is most probably another reason.
However, 116k people still tried the league out through the steam client.
And almost 50% of them already decided that the league wasn't for them after the first week. And this was with the probably BEST and SMOOTHEST launches GGG has ever had. In past leagues, alot of people complained about the game launches being unplayable, constant craches, massive FPS problems, texture problems et.c. and alot of people quit because of that.

This league? Very minor technical problems. This league, people PURELY quit because they didn't like the direction of the game and valued their time somewhere else. In short, the league wasn't fun enough to warrant alot of peoples attention. So they quit to play other games or simply do other things.

And for the love of god, can you stop strawmanning and moving the goal post everytime you write something? Since you're not adressing anything else I'm writing, I assume you concede your previous statement that everyone who quit harvest during week 1 did so because it was an item editor.

But then your entire post becomes a giant contradiction. You said, and I quote

"

During week 1, people didn't bother with the mechanic too much.

so how did they come to hate it so much they left? After all your entire argument is that the people who left during week one hated the mechanic. Yet, apparently, most of them weren't even engaged with the mechanic. Doesn't make sense. It'd make more sense if they were frustrated, left, but then came back after it was proven that the mechanic is not that bad, as I assumed you were saying.

This part also doesn't make sense

"

If we were to skip the first 2 weeks of the league and only count the numbers from week 2 and forward, harvest actually had very strong retention rates compared to past leagues.

Its retention was weaker than both previous leagues and it was kept this way at around ~5%.

Besides, what I did proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that people don't need harvest to play the game. Both delirium and heist didn't have harvest yet the game didn't die as many harvest supporters tend to say.

Now lets check ultimatum, shall we?

155k people on launch day, 110k a week later

30% drop off

Better than harvest.

1 month later - 60k people left

38% retention, slightly worse than delirium/heist but much better than harvest

2 months later - 17 k people left

11% retention - this is where you are correct. But if we look at the bigger picture - this is just 2k less than harvest. Also, GGG has stated numerous times that their biggest sales come from the first weeks of the new expansion so I doubt this was a big deal for them.

But wait, you said

"

compare this to a league like Ultimatum where the drop off and retention snowballed out of control

What, in the second month? Gee, I guess I'll give you this one. Assuming you meant that but no, you compared it to expedition which...is wrong again.

"

But then your entire post becomes a giant contradiction. You said, and I quote

"

During week 1, people didn't bother with the mechanic too much.

so how did they come to hate it so much they left? After all your entire argument is that the people who left during week one hated the mechanic. Yet, apparently, most of them weren't even engaged with the mechanic. Doesn't make sense. It'd make more sense if they were frustrated, left, but then came back after it was proven that the mechanic is not that bad, as I assumed you were saying.

I'm not sure whether you're actually trolling me or not, but I'm taking the bait.

Don't you think it's entirely possible that people initially tried the league mechanic out while leveling and during early maps. And after that, decided that they didn't like it and quit? I never claimed that no one touched it throughout their entire playthrough. That's another strawman from your side.

If you read the quote again I said: PEOPLE DIDN'T BOTHER WITH THE MECHANIC TOO MUCH. Meaning, they tried it out and didn't like it. As I said before, one of the biggest critisicism harvest league got initially was when the minmax blueprint of the garden came out and people jumped ship. I mentioned it earlier: What people hated the most with harvest was how the harvest experience TOOK THEM OUT OF THE MAPPING GAMEPLAY LOOP. People hated it.
This spawned all the memes about how people went inside harvest and when they were finished, they had totally forgotten what map they actually were inside.

I'll reitterate it again so maybe you can comprehend my argument finally:

During harvest, people did not like the league mechanic. During the first weeks the mechanic and various crafting guides et.c. wasn't fully fleshed out so people didn't use it to it's full potential yet.

People quit the game BEFORE the whole 100% delirius no sextant consuming farming and mirror tier item guides started appearing. Most people tried interacting with harvest early on, but they hated it and quit. During this infantile state of the harvest league, no one was using harvest to its full strengths so majority of people didn't know that harvest was an item editor yet.

Are we clear on this? Or are you gonna try strawman me again?

"

This part also doesn't make sense

Its retention was weaker than both previous leagues and it was kept this way at around ~5%.

Besides, what I did proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that people don't need harvest to play the game. Both delirium and heist didn't have harvest yet the game didn't die as many harvest supporters tend to say.

Okay, this was poorly phrased on my part.
My argument, although incoherrent previously has always been that the success of harvest happened after the initial drop off. The expectation when 40% leave a league initially is that it will keep bleeding and players will continue to quit. Usually league dropoffs occur consistently with concave tops and vallyes. Harvest had a massive drop off initially, upon which the expectation was that the league was going to die very rapidly. However, it didn't.
Once the initial drop off had occured, the league tapered of as usual. Past the 2 week mark the league was performing like most other leagues and better than expected considering how it had started.

Now this is the key question: Why did people keep playing harvest after it had failed so misrebly in the start?
We all know that the actual harvest league mechanic was garbage. I don't know anyone who enjoyed tending to their garden and bulktrading seeds/crafts on TFT. Those were pretty universally hated aspects behind harvest.

I would argue, that the reason people kept playing Harvest was because those who stayed enjoyed deterministic crafting with clear progression in their gearing. Amongst the elite, those who stayed enjoyed farming ridiculous amounts of currency from minmaxed fractured maps with perfectly rolled sextants to fuel the crafting mania.

Heist was also a very interesting league. Heist was a very 50/50 league mechanic. It felt like 50% hated Heist calling it doorleague and whatnot, while the other 50% liked it because you were literally massproducing Exalted Orbs. Heist lacked Harvest crafting for sure, but Heist had one of the most succesfull endgame builds in PoE history: The overpowered Aurastacker fueled by broken alternate quality gems. Even if Heist didn't have Harvest crafting, it had the most broken build in PoE history. This build wasn't predicated on broken Harvest rares. It ran on Explodey Nebulas, Ilvl 84 6 point medium aura clusters, 1 point voices and 1% RMR jewels et.c. Both Delirium and Heist shared the same type of endgame attraction.

Those leagues were EXTREMELY profitable and due to this profitability, alot of people kept playing to acquire two of the most broken builds in PoE history.
Delirium had the herald stacker and heist had the aura stacker.
Since both Delirium and Heist league inflated the economy beyond comprehension people had more currency than they ever could dream of.

For casuals, this meant that casual players got a taste of having easier access to higher tier items which gave them incentives to keep playing.

All leagues have different intentions and give players different reasons to keep playing the end game. Some people quit early because it's too easy and they finish all their goals faster than before. Other players get their first taste of endgame PoE and stay for longer than they ever had.

During both Heist and Delirium, the major reason why people kept playing was because those leagues were extremely profitable and people had clear endgame goals trying to build their own Aura/Herald stackers et.c.

During Harvest, players had other reasons to keep playing. Harvest wasn't nearly as profitable as Delirium or Heist to the regular player (Fractured Map farmers/Flippers/Crafters were still making more money than ever though). But the intrudction of deterministic crafting gave alot of people incentives to keep playing the league.

I'm comparing this to Ultimatum and it's poor retention because to me it's clear that Ultimatum failed to keep players engaged in the endgame because players had less achievable longterm goals. With endgame options like delve and Fractured maps gone and crafting going back to primarily being casinorolling fossils in your hideout I already knew that the league was going to perform worse than Ritual. The only long term goal I remember people had in Ultimatum was to maybe make a Hateforge build. Headhunter also was 150 ex that league compared to it's previous price of 70 ex which was more out of reach to alot of the more casual playerbase.

"

Now lets check ultimatum, shall we?

155k people on launch day, 110k a week later

30% drop off

Better than harvest.

1 month later - 60k people left

38% retention, slightly worse than delirium/heist but much better than harvest

2 months later - 17 k people left

11% retention - this is where you are correct. But if we look at the bigger picture - this is just 2k less than harvest. Also, GGG has stated numerous times that their biggest sales come from the first weeks of the new expansion so I doubt this was a big deal for them.

Why Ultimatum is used as a metric for failure regarding retention rates is because of the past 1 month Drop off.
Ultimatum was a fairly sucesfull league during the first month. No one is denying that. I had great fun during the first month of Ultimatum. But alot of people critizised Ultimatum BEFORE the league started saying that Ultimatum removed all endgame. Now obviously this was hyperbole, but the argument was that Ultimatum would die faster than previous leagues because the league had less end-game farming options and less chase items due to harvest crafting being gone. Now, Aisling crafting did end up saving the endgame crafting somewhat. But we can still clearly see the trend of the league.

After the first month, usually being the time were alot of players have finished their Atlas and started moving onto more advanced atlas farming strategies: People started dropping the game. And people were quitting faster than during previous leagues.

As you said earlier.
Ultimatum managed to go from 60k to 17k players during the second month. After 1 month, the consequent month lost 72% of the playerbase. This is where the argument of retention numbers against Ultimatum really lies.

You are correct in that GGG makes most of their money from whales during its first weeks. But this argument is extremely short sighted.

Lets put it this way:
If a league is extremely succesfull throughout an entire league, meaning, it's initial numbers are good and it also manages to keep the interest of more players towards the end..
Don't you think more people are likely to be interested in playing the next league and spend money on MTX then?

If a league performs extremely badly, meaning 150k were hyped to play it initially but only 10% are left after 2 months. Don't you think those players are going to be less likely to enjoy the next coming league and spend less on MTX?

What you do in previous leagues will most likely have an effect on your coming future margins. If a league performs worse than previously, it's probably safe to assume that this will have some negative effects on the coming league.
As I mentioned before, I believe that the dissatisfaction coming from alot of Ultimatum players was a very big reason why Expedition is where it is right now.

And you're talking about the "Bigger picture". The bigger picture when comparing Harvest to Ultimatum is that between Harvest and Ultimatum, PoE had 9 months to grow its playercount. And it did.
Ultimatum started with 30k more players than Harvest, and ended with 2k less players than Harvest. That's an interesting figure. You might try to trivialize this number as only 2k, but it's not statistically insignificant.
Harvest did a better job at keeping players engaged to the lategame of PoE than Ultimatum did in both relative and absolute numbers.

"

But wait, you said

"

compare this to a league like Ultimatum where the drop off and retention snowballed out of control

What, in the second month? Gee, I guess I'll give you this one. Assuming you meant that but no, you compared it to expedition which...is wrong again.

When I'm talking retention rates comparisons between expedition and Ultimatum I'm talking of it as a whole. I'm not cherry picking certain dates, I'm comparing the entirety of the leagues.

My argument has always been that Ultimatum was one of the worst performing leagues retentionwise (It was the second most succesfull league in absolute numbers for a league start). Ultimatum failed to keep its players engaged and after 1 month, alot of people started quitting.

I'm comparing Expedition to Ultimatum because I believe this league actually is going to perform WORSE than ultimatum. So understand this, the reason why I'm comparing expedition to Ultimatum is because it already looks like Expedition is going to perform worse than one of the worst performing leagues in PoE history. I'm not comparing month 2 Ultimatum numbers to Week 2 Expedition numbers.

What I'm talking about is the actual trendline. Ultimatum lost players at a rapid rate, which was expected by alot of the more experienced players.

And the prediction now is that Expedition is going to perform even worse than Ultimatum.

What amuses me the most is how OP compares player drop off over 1-2months with the player drop off in a league started 10 days ago.

That is like saying, you only earn 8k$ per month, I got way more money than you, I earn 30k$ per year.

and even that statement is not entirely true, as player dropoff doesn't have to be a linear factor.


As the players lost usually are higher early in the league, lets just say harvest lost 25-30% players in the first 10days

Expedition lost 45%?
one could argue thats just 20% increased player drop out rate.
You could also say 75% more players quit the league during the first 10 days, compared to the not overly successfull chart of harvests first 10 days. How the fk does that even come close?

I would love to see the numbers 2 months in, if this trend keeps going it might have 60-80% players lost over the first month (trade/chaos bots won't quit most likely)

So yeah, please compare player decline/retention on the same time-chart. Do not go saying omg we nearly didn't lose any players in 24hours compared to playerloss in league x over 60 days.

"

Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index wrote:

What amuses me the most is how OP compares player drop off over 1-2months with the player drop off in a league started 10 days ago.

That is like saying, you only earn 8k$ per month, I got way more money than you, I earn 30k$ per year.

and even that statement is not entirely true, as player dropoff doesn't have to be a linear factor.

He is a big fanboy. Check his recent postings. Popping everywhere and using any/all arguments to support the POE 3.15 changes and vice versa.

Just for your info. Good for him; atleast somebody is enjoying the current patch.

"

AksCabal wrote:

"

Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index wrote:

What amuses me the most is how OP compares player drop off over 1-2months with the player drop off in a league started 10 days ago.

That is like saying, you only earn 8k$ per month, I got way more money than you, I earn 30k$ per year.

and even that statement is not entirely true, as player dropoff doesn't have to be a linear factor.

He is a big fanboy. Check his recent postings. Popping everywhere and using any/all arguments to support the POE 3.15 changes and vice versa.

Just for your info. Good for him; atleast somebody is enjoying the current patch.

Considering the sheer amount of posts I'd argue he is enjoying fan-boying on the forums more than playing the "fun and worth defending" content.

That logic is an entirely different matter though, lols

"

Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index wrote:

What amuses me the most is how OP compares player drop off over 1-2months with the player drop off in a league started 10 days ago.

That is like saying, you only earn 8k$ per month, I got way more money than you, I earn 30k$ per year.

and even that statement is not entirely true, as player dropoff doesn't have to be a linear factor.


As the players lost usually are higher early in the league, lets just say harvest lost 25-30% players in the first 10days

Expedition lost 45%?
one could argue thats just 20% increased player drop out rate.
You could also say 75% more players quit the league during the first 10 days, compared to the not overly successfull chart of harvests first 10 days. How the fk does that even come close?

I would love to see the numbers 2 months in, if this trend keeps going it might have 60-80% players lost over the first month (trade/chaos bots won't quit most likely)

So yeah, please compare player decline/retention on the same time-chart. Do not go saying omg we nearly didn't lose any players in 24hours compared to playerloss in league x over 60 days.

Anyone who's honest with themselves knows this league is performing extremely poorly. Blaming it on Summer and Covid is just copium in the end. Those things too have an effect, but the sentiment of these forums, reddit and twitch are probably a greater indicator of why more than 40% have chosen to quit this league.

Alot of those who support GGGs vision right now seem to be living in denial in a house of cards. Will the house come crashing down this league? Depends on how many will be playing in the future.
Expedition seems to be peaking at around ~52k players right now(Monday).
That's a 56% drop in players since league start on day 11.

Ultimatum lost 41% of it's playerbase after 1 MONTH.
Ritual lost 38% of it's playerbase after 1 MONTH.
Heist lost 39% of it's playerbase after 1 MONTH.
Harvest lost 48% of it's playerbase after 1 MONTH (Bad performing league)

Expedition already being at a ~56% loss after 11 days is very concerning. Now, this is monday figures and the peak player count will most likely rise during the weekends. But the playercount is still dropping and there's a huge risk that it will start getting worse as more people get introduced to the slow economy, isanely expensive items and lack of aspirational endgame content.

Right now I wish for the addition of playing old releases on the private leagues, I know it is not going to happen purely on a logistical scale, nor would it solve any of the issues with the core gameplay right now.

Talking of which, the biggest problem of 3.15 are THE CORE GAMEPLAY PROBLEMS, were not talking about players not liking the current league mechanic, and sitting out a league because of that. We are talking about unfun changes to the core gameplay in the eyes of what seems to be the majority.

I would love to play some PoE 3.6 Synthesis in a private league now, I don't mind paying for having fun in any way. But if those changes they did reflect where poe is going and they intend to force their vision of the game on the players, I have little hope.

Isn't good game design, regardless of balance, the product being fun/enjoyable to the consumer?
(edit, that ofcourse is in a non competitive enviroment, which PoE IS!)

How come they had "good game design" for about a decade now just to throw it away in the name of someones vision?