POE is ACTUALLY dying not the drama queen kind, but the actual kind... From Developer Hubris
" Exactly. Once the numbers get released in March the effects of the recent leagues will be visible, indications are they will show the game in a weaker position, however, I may be wrong and I hope I am. On the plus side Tencent is under pressure domestically with the Chinese government upping regulation in the e-commerce space and taking a negative stance towards gaming. Whilst GGG is not a material investment to the group and as such unlikely to be on the radar, the domestic situation may increase the perceived diversification benefit of all its overseas positions. Last edited by Onecardtoomany#6433 on Nov 25, 2021, 3:02:58 AM
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Doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that PoE is on a downwards trend. But no one knows if this trend will keep pointing downwards, and no one knows how long it will last. So PoE dying? Based on numbers from 2-3 leagues? Sceptical.
I have no idea how many players (or how much revenue) they need to maintain their current staff and their current schedule. What I do know, is that PoE has been dying since 2014. Slowly. Of course, there's some truth in that; every game will die some day. Maybe the game took a few cigarettes too many lately, and have reduced its lifespan a few years, but it's not like PoE is close to being hospitalized just yet. Bring me some coffee and I'll bring you a smile.
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Here's a big thread from early 2013 asking whether PoE is dead, using the same metrics as this current thread. Time is a flat circle.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/154157 GGG banning all political discussion shortly after getting acquired by China is a weird coincidence.
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" There's actually detailed daily data available for Steam although you have to dig a little for it. This makes appropriate comparisons possible and rather than type it all out again I'll just copy my earlier analysis from this thread: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3197615/page/3 The TLDR is that 3.16 had a good starting number and then terrible retention while 3.15 was an absolute disaster with poor starting numbers and then poor retention. It's not going to send GGG bankrupt, but it is definitely a point at which your leadership team considers whether they actually do need to cater to more than one type of player in order to maximise the opportunities for success for the game. Click the Spoiler button for the full previous analysis
Spoiler
OK, so looking at the most recently completed day, being day 14 of the league and reviewing the previous 12 leagues (inclusive of Scourge), Scourge ranks as the 8th lowest in player volume at 64,571 while Ritual comes in at number one at 96,657. Last place was Blight at 38,957 which is an absolute stand out stinker at this point in the analysis.
Graphing the player volume data you can group Synthesis, Blight and Expedition in the lower group, Legion, Harvest, Heist, and Scourge in the middle group and Betrayal, Metamorph, Delirium, Ritual and Ultimatum in the upper group. Now looking at the percentage decrease by day 14 from the launch point of the league and the performance varies somewhat. Scourge comes in at 11th worst performance with 57.09% loss of players and only just pipped at the post by Expedition with 57.12%. Metamorph was our best performer here for retention with 30.01% player loss and Betrayal not far off the mark at 32.11%. Again, graphing the data allows us to visually identify three major groups with Expedition and Scourge being in the lowest retention group in the 57% range, Synthesis, Blight and Harvest in the middle group in the 48%-52% and Betrayal, Legion, Metamorph, Delirium, Heist, Ritual and Ultimatum being the higher group in the 30%-43%. So there's two aspects at work here being: 1. how successful GGG were in attracting players to the new league to start with as obviously a higher starting point means you have a better chance of keeping player volumes high as the league progresses, and 2. how successful GGG were in retaining those players in the new league. That is, are players enjoying the game play? So Scourge was a pretty good performer in attracting players to engage with the new league, but a large proportion of players have again not enjoyed the experience and have already abandoned the game. There's probably not much point in looking any further into the stats now as the situation appears quite clear given the data and commentary. Once again a proportion of the player base are happy with the changes to the game and the League mechanism but again we have some significant polarisation with another large proportion of the player base not being engaged by the direction that GGG are taking the game. As I said last league, there are ways for GGG to broaden the appeal of their game to keep both groups more engaged, but there appears to be some problems with either the desire or the capability of GGG to refine their strategy. Edited to add the data table as I know some people will ask for it and it does make it easier to review things for yourself. Player volumes Betrayal 79730 Synthesis 53663 Legion 71957 Blight 38957 Metamorph 81156 Delirium 81643 Harvest 61863 Heist 72136 Ritual 96657 Ultimatum 88282 Expedition 49849 Scourge 64571 Player loss Betrayal -32.11% Synthesis -52.30% Legion -37.07% Blight -48.01% Metamorph -30.01% Delirium -38.78% Harvest -51.17% Heist -40.92% Ritual -38.48% Ultimatum -43.01% Expedition -57.12% Scourge -57.09% |
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Dev's must be under incredible pressure from the FREE SHIT ARMY. Game is so easy now and so much shit drops a lot of us old timers just play SSF. I remember when 10 uniques by 90 was NORMAL not 10 EVERY map - or 40 if you juice. I also remember EXALTING maps to sustain. Game is so easy now for the masses..
Git R Dun! Last edited by Aim_Deep#3474 on Nov 25, 2021, 6:36:49 AM
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" First overpaying something is by far more shameful than "freeshitarmy". Buy ur game and play it, fp2 and whales are both a cancer these days. Second yes game is too easy with an abundance of shit drops/effects/performance problems even on high end machines and shit bloat everywhere. What u described was a gamestate that I would probably be playing till today not this travesty of game we have rn that want to apeal to the masses as u said and to professional gamers that use logout fing macros (that's why we have micro secconds deaths...) Thx to stream highlighs of a screen full of loot (empy team...) and highlights of wtf death all popular we have a full game molded this way. |
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" Op has no clue what he is talking about, never killed Sirius, never killed Maven, barely get to lvl 90 in league, build/tree/stuff is horrendous. Of course his feelings are his own but they don't reflect the status of the game, because he barely known how to play it. |
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" I'm not sure if that was directed at me specifically or not, but I will bite as it is somewhat adjacent to what I posted. First off, I can't know if GGG will "recover" from this downwards trend, but the main reason I would be pessimistic is that it's directly a result of design philosophy. It's one thing to have a bad league, which they have definitely had a few previously, but right now things are different. It feels different. The community is different. The 3rd party tools, TFT, and Reddit have really changed the game. The player divide from average to elite is canyon-sized. As far as GGG resources go, nobody really knows how their operations might change. I mean Chris did say that 3.15's league performance wasn't sustainable over 3 consecutive leagues, so after 3.15 & 3.16, the next one better be "good". I have my doubts, and the next 6 weeks are a black-hole design wise due to holidays & vacations. The other thing that I'm wondering about is the massive amount of resources going into PoE2, that won't even begin to see revenue returns until 2024. Perhaps they could leverage Tencent, and tell them the money is coming, but again I don't know. PoE2 won't be a new game, so that means that their monetization is the same. It's not like a $39.99 expansion, or a $59.99 new game. We get to keep all our MTX and Stash Tabs. There won't be some massive influx of cash tied to release, so holy shit their Art Team must have some massive pressure and work on them. Anyways Happy Thanksgiving all! "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."
- Abraham Lincoln |
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" You could spend the better part of a day cataloging the POE is dead threads since 2013. It's a predictable game long tradition to have game is dead threads starting a few weeks into every league leading all the way up to the next league. It's right up there with AH and death penalty threads. I suspect it's the #1 thread topic since 2013 if someone were to put in the work to enumerate thread topics. Some day this thread will be correct. All the people from 2013 will be correct as well. In the meantime these threads just look the same. Sirus should invade GD and drop the boring and small quote. Thanks for all the fish! Last edited by Nubatron#4333 on Nov 25, 2021, 9:35:27 AM
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" im not being disingenuous. i quoted a post and specifically talked to the points it mentioned, which you are not doing here. much worse? from what data are you drawing that? the chart you just posted shows 2 leagues that blow this current one out of the water from start to finish, they are both from this year. so why does that chart say this year will be much worse? youre posting data showing this year has stronger numbers than last year, and trying to claim is shows the opposite. the financials might be worse this year, we dont know if player counts match $$$, theyve employed way more people this year to work on poe2 so their expenses are bigger which means less profit from the money they do get. but you are making a statement, "Fiscal 2021 is going to be much worse than 2020 for GGG" based on player count numbers, and those numbers show 2021 outperforming 2020. even if 2020 had more players stats, which it doesnt as youve shown with your graphs, and that did = more money. how is this year compared to 2019? its far better, and in 2019 poe was the most successful arpg out there. its way better than 2018, a year in which poe was the best arpg out there and so successful it was bought by tencent for over 100 million. more successful than 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013. if you look at those charts on steam, or steamdb, every year performs better than the last, and the peaks on 3 of the 4 leagues this year outperform last year, which outperforms the year before, and so on all the way. i know you want so badly for the game to not be doing well, because you think that will validate your personal feelings. but the data shows last league being bad, and by bad we mean it looks like an average league from 2019, or a really amazing league from the 6 years before that. thats it, and trying to make more of it than that is actually being disingenuous. for the majority of this games life it was performing worse than expedition league and the game is still here, it was a success during those years. " terrible retention compared to what? compared to 3 leagues basically that significantly outperform it, the best performing 2 of which were this year. the post i was responding to says the game is obviously worse off than it was 18 months ago. on your chart this league has beaten the league that was 18 months ago at virtually every stage along the way, as have 2 of the other 3 leagues this year. I love all you people on the forums, we can disagree but still be friends and respect each other :)
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