POE just had it's 3rd biggest launch EVER! This forum be like "game is ded".

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Prizy wrote:

"

trixxar wrote:

Chris is wrong, and the numbers prove it. Harvest should have been tweaked (like you find better crafts in T16, not T11) and made things account bound, and his explanation against that makes zero sense.

The problem I always have with Chris' logic is that he only attributes value to Trade/Market value. He has said numerous times, that making harvest acct bound items etc, would just kill an item and make it useless for someone.

It doesn't make sense. The intrinsic value in an item doesn't ONLY come from what you can sell it for in trade. It comes with value in YOU, YOURSELF, as a player using the item. That IS the value...and Chris just never sees it.

He flies so close to the idea then always flutters away from understanding what makes items valuable to a player.

The model for a while in leagues has been to shower players in OTHER currency as a reward. Div cards, incubators, various orbs... Some players consider this rewarding.

For me the game never feels rewarding from that perspective as I like finding ITEMS. Items I can manipulate and wear myself on my character or build a character around. THAT has either been getting nerfed (over and over again) or doesn't even exist for many vectors of the game at all anymore.

You simply CAN'T find good items BY DESIGN.

Combine this with the idea that ALL good items only CAN drop in red maps (once you have access to conqs, shaper, and elder) and you have a recipe for disaster.

You can't put ALL of your rewards in red maps. MOST is okay, but there has to be VALUE in running yellow/white maps that make it so people WANT to do that grind... right now people don't see the value in it and I don't blame them.

"League starter anxiety" is fundamentally a design failure on the part of GGG. An ARPG like this should be a power fantasy where you can pick ANY skill that is cool to you and do decent with it. That just doesn't happen anymore. GGG has always nerfed outliers without buffing underperformers. The current state of the game is the expected result from that style of balancing.

GGG has nobody but themselves to blame for the current state of the game... then again in order to feel "blame" they must first feel as if something is wrong... which I don't even know if they do.

It's a perfect storm where the player OR GGG is either arrogant or ignorant, the key is trying to figure out which one is which lol.

"

Aldora_the_Summoner wrote:

I think it's helpful to separate the hyperbole from the genuine well articulated concerns. If you only look at the extreme opinions (e.g. Game is Dead versus The best Game Ever) you will always find something to suit a particular narrative.

No, the game is not dead but I would contend that it has a worrying trend right now.

Let's establish some basic points to help paint the picture. PoE is free to play and generates revenue from players voluntarily purchasing MTX or some useful character attributes. It's reasonable to assume that most people will have played the game for a period of time before purchasing anything. Players who have a rewarding time are more likely to stay engaged, and therefore more likely to spend money.

So if you are GGG, your financial goals are aligned to player attraction and player engagement. Ultimately you want to attract more players of the demographic that are likely to convert to paying customers and you want to retain them in the game for as long as reasonable.

We have good historical information that clearly shows player numbers spike on the first weekend of a new league and then gradually decrease over the length of the league with minor upticks each weekend.

As the OP pointed out, 3.16 is the third highest player numbers on league launch behind Ritual and Ultimatum respectively. That's good news for GGG, particularly after the terrible (and arguably justified) press the game received for 3.15.

Now we get to the second part of the equation though, player retention. I've found that the 9 day period from launch to be a good review point as it provides two full weekends to compare and see how many players seem to be enjoying the game and are keen to come back for a successive weekend.

I think it likely that a lot of players will only buy MTX if they're going to play the game for at least more than a week. I suspect that payment behaviour might have changed recently too as a lot of regular players would stump up for a league pack before the league actually started, but there's been a lot of topics recently where players appear to be more wary about the quality before they engage with GGG.

So back to retention and this part is the trend that I find concerning. Comparing to the previous six leagues (Delirium, Harvest, Heist, Ritual, Ultimatum and Expedition), the abandonment percentage rate for Scourge is the second highest at 42.4%, right behind Expedition at 46.2% with Harvest running a close third at 37.2%.

The other listed leagues tended to lose players at around 20% - 25%. This would seem to indicate that players of the other leagues found the game to be generally engaging and encouraged them to come back and play. As we've already established, players that enjoy the game and are engaged are more likely to pay GGG.

Even though Scourge started with the third highest launch volumes, the abandonment rate is so high that as of the following weekend they had the third lowest player count (for the last seven leagues) at that comparative time point with a little under 87,000 players. Harvest had just under 80,000 and Expedition had under 63,000.

Comparatively Delirium, Heist, Ritual and Ultimatum had just under 100,000, 93,000, 125,000 and just over 116,000 respectively.

We know that GGG's revenues were not great last league. I doubt that we'll get any real insight into them this league but I suspect that while they might be better, they won't be at the levels of more recent leagues prior to the massive changes from 3.15.

There is more than enough information including data and anecdotal commentary to clearly demonstrate that the recent changes to the game by GGG are unpopular with a significant portion of the player base. This is not just launching a league that doesn't resonate with everyone, or the tweaking of a mechanic or build, there's been plenty of those over the years. I would contend there is sufficient information to establish that the change in direction that GGG are making has some significant risk in it.

I think it's worth pointing out too that people are voicing their disappointment not because they think PoE is awful, they're upset because something they previously enjoyed is now objectively in a less enjoyable state and they would like to see things improve.

"

Zeronemo wrote:

"

Aynix wrote:

Bounding items is the worst mechanic ever and if they will ever add it to the PoE, it will be day that I leave PoE for good.

They dont have to add bound items. During harvest and ritual the economy didnt collapse and i dont see why it should do so. The reason we dont have deterministic crafting is simply that ggg doesnt want it in their game. The problem is just that people experienced how good it was and what kind of longterm goals it offered.

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Aynix wrote:

"

Zeronemo wrote:

"

Aynix wrote:

Bounding items is the worst mechanic ever and if they will ever add it to the PoE, it will be day that I leave PoE for good.

They dont have to add bound items. During harvest and ritual the economy didnt collapse and i dont see why it should do so. The reason we dont have deterministic crafting is simply that ggg doesnt want it in their game. The problem is just that people experienced how good it was and what kind of longterm goals it offered.

Longterm goals? In Harvest? You could make "mirroer tier items" in few days (more if you dont play 10h/day). You could "max out" your character in like 1-2 weeks. What longterm goals we talk about?

"

Prizy wrote:

"

trixxar wrote:

Chris is wrong, and the numbers prove it. Harvest should have been tweaked (like you find better crafts in T16, not T11) and made things account bound, and his explanation against that makes zero sense.

The problem I always have with Chris' logic is that he only attributes value to Trade/Market value. He has said numerous times, that making harvest acct bound items etc, would just kill an item and make it useless for someone.

It doesn't make sense. The intrinsic value in an item doesn't ONLY come from what you can sell it for in trade. It comes with value in YOU, YOURSELF, as a player using the item. That IS the value...and Chris just never sees it.

He flies so close to the idea then always flutters away from understanding what makes items valuable to a player.

The model for a while in leagues has been to shower players in OTHER currency as a reward. Div cards, incubators, various orbs... Some players consider this rewarding.

For me the game never feels rewarding from that perspective as I like finding ITEMS. Items I can manipulate and wear myself on my character or build a character around. THAT has either been getting nerfed (over and over again) or doesn't even exist for many vectors of the game at all anymore.

You simply CAN'T find good items BY DESIGN.

Combine this with the idea that ALL good items only CAN drop in red maps (once you have access to conqs, shaper, and elder) and you have a recipe for disaster.

You can't put ALL of your rewards in red maps. MOST is okay, but there has to be VALUE in running yellow/white maps that make it so people WANT to do that grind... right now people don't see the value in it and I don't blame them.

"League starter anxiety" is fundamentally a design failure on the part of GGG. An ARPG like this should be a power fantasy where you can pick ANY skill that is cool to you and do decent with it. That just doesn't happen anymore. GGG has always nerfed outliers without buffing underperformers. The current state of the game is the expected result from that style of balancing.

GGG has nobody but themselves to blame for the current state of the game... then again in order to feel "blame" they must first feel as if something is wrong... which I don't even know if they do.

It's a perfect storm where the player OR GGG is either arrogant or ignorant, the key is trying to figure out which one is which lol.

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

"

Aynix wrote:

Longterm goals? In Harvest? You could make "mirroer tier items" in few days (more if you dont play 10h/day). You could "max out" your character in like 1-2 weeks. What longterm goals we talk about?

Total BS Hyperbole.

Most average gamers used Harvest to fix their gear by adding some life or resists to help them progress further, or have some gear goals to work on. Most folks didn't have mirror tier gear or use TFT to make reddit showcase abominations.

Also please take a look at the retention metrics. People seem to be "maxing out" and leaving two weeks anyways. So this Harvest logic makes no sense. Elites gonna elite.