Can Path of Exile compete with Lost Ark and Elden Ring?

Nah. There's plenty of room in this pool for more than one game.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

Nah. There's plenty of room in this pool for more than one game.

Sure, but you can't compete with a company that dedicates all its resources towards said game and genre. GGG is a one game company with 10 years of know-how and evolution of its foundations. You can have a small spot in the sun, simply because you are new, but most people will jump back or move on. All attempts but Grim Dawn has failed, including Diablo 3.

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Dracolich70 wrote:

All this reminds me of when people looked for a WoW killer, and all they found was disappointment.

Wow killer is Wow, he kill himself, same thing doing PoE.

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Dracolich70 wrote:

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Shagsbeard wrote:

Nah. There's plenty of room in this pool for more than one game.

Sure, but you can't compete with a company that dedicates all its resources towards said game and genre. GGG is a one game company with 10 years of know-how and evolution of its foundations. You can have a small spot in the sun, simply because you are new, but most people will jump back or move on. All attempts but Grim Dawn has failed, including Diablo 3.

If anything Grim Dawn was a massive success, i dont know why you would think otherwise. Its a single player arpg with a very stable audience.

D3 was a hyper success for blizzard financially. They just killed it themselves. I wouldnt even be surprised if D3 season launches gathers more players than poe ones.

Like others said before, no other game will kill poe but its pretty much capable of doing so itself.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

To bring this back to the core topic, I don't think a game that is almost entirely exp by mass slaughter is going to lose a lot of its players to a game that is mostly exp by completing scripted tasks.

Different MMOs approach leveling (and its importance) in various ways. In Lost Ark, questline leveling is a miniscule part of your overall playtime (unless you want to make an army of alts). You do get experience by doing quests, however once you hit endgame and the main questline ends, you will mainly gain experience from killings hordes of monsters in special dungeouns, doing boss hunts, 4 man dungeouns and 8 man raids. It's just that the beginning of the game (untill lvl 50) you get exp only from quests, I guess to make your early experience (basically a tutorial) more focused and railroaded, with more freedom opening up later on. The game also has account levels, but that is a different topic.

The point is, LA is a game where you spend a small portion of your time leveling with quests, and the rest of the time leveling and in general upgrading your character by doing combat content, just like in an ARPG.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Also, for the first time in their history it appears (we need to wait until March for confirmation), their overall Revenue is going to shrink, year over year, based on some of the things Chris spoke about during the 3.15 disaster.

chris said their profits were down about 30% for that league, because their opening player peak was down about 30% for that league, i think we can safely presume these things are linked, it makes sense, you lose 30% of players you lose roughly 30% of your income.


thats down 30% compared to the previous leagues this year. that peak that was 30% lower than the 2 previous peaks this year, it was roughly the same size as the player peaks of last year. it was 40k players lower than the previous league this year, it was 5k players down compared to the last league of 2020.

so i think the takeaway is that the first 2 leagues this year had about 30% more players than last years league, and probably made 30% more money, and then they had 1 league that lost that growth for 1 league, presumably bringing it back down to the sort of money they made last year.



chris didnt say this years money was down 30% on last years. youve just made that whole thing up in your head.



you talk about player retention, what evidence do you have that effects earnings compared to opening week when they sell most of their packs? lets look at concurrent players in scourge after 1 month who were logged in through steam:

77,800

ok, so that is this year, this terrible year that will have lost them so much money you think theyre about to lay off all their staff and they might not even make it to poe2s release, this is the figure for your claimed terrible player retention that will sink the company. so last year, that you think will show much higher profits, what were the player numbers 1 month into the 3 leagues launched that year though steam?

75,800

64,700

73,900

ok, so after 1 month scourge had more players than any of the leagues launched last year, so why do you think the profits from this time period will be less than last year? yes when looked at as a % the retention is worse than those leagues, thats because scourge beat them all by a lot when it came to the opening player count.

so scourge had a lot more players on the opening than any league launched last year, and it had a few more players still around after a month, and your takeaway from this is that scourge performed so badly compared to last year that gggs profits for the year must be in ruins and they might have to sack their staff?

and then you ask me why i called this idea bizarre? it IS bizarre.






the 'disaster' league from this year had 116k player peak, with >>> 64k after 1 month. this is the league that dropped 30% of the revenue from the previous league whos numbers were about 30% higher. the leagues in 2019:

111k >>> 40k

113k >>> 53k

74k >>> 33k

117k >>> 84k

so why didnt ggg shut down in 2019? how come they didnt sack their staff? the disaster league of this year outperformed 3 of the 4 leagues in 2019. look at that one with 74k opening players and a 33k count after a month. thats what a disaster league 2 years ago looked like, a disaster league this year looks like the good leagues from 2 years ago. you know why they didnt shut down in 2019? because this was their best year ever when they made record profits.

lets look at 2018...

70k >>> 51k

81k >>> 45k

95k >>> 42k

75k >>> 39k

123k >>> 77k


so the disaster league from 2019 (whos numbers were literally half of scourges numbers) was roughly the same as the average leagues from 2018. did ggg sack all their staff in 2018 and shut down? no, you know why? because 2018 was their most successful year ever at this point, a year so successful that tencent bought GGG shares for over $100,000,000 in this year.


this years leagues on steam:


157k >>> 90k

155k >>> 92k

116k >>> 64k

148k >>> 77k

these are the figures that you think are so bad from this year that ggg might not even make it as a company? might have to sack staff and run on a skeleton crew, possibly not even making it through the next years to the release of poe2? thats your predictions and your basis for this are these figures? these record breaking figures that beat every previous year in the games decade long history?





amazing.







im not dying on a hill of defending ggg, im not even posting opinions defending them. i havent even claimed they will make more money or even the same money as previous years, i have no clue, we only have these figures to go on. you are making assertions and predictions about them and claiming this is all based on facts and figures, and im simply showing you the actual facts and figures you claim support your opinion.

^

I'm sorry you wrote all that only to confirm the points I had made previously.

Chris himself indicated a 50+% player retention drop, and 30+% revenue shortfall during 3.15. That represents millions of dollars for that quarter. They then followed up with another poor performance retention percentage wise, though we dont have revenues to compare since Chris didnt say anything. That represents half of the year. Again, as I stated, we will have to wait until March 2022 to fully understand the financials that resulted from the player response in 2021 overall.

I don't know your familiarity with business, or have had experience dealing with a board of a VC, or other parent ownership groups that are publicly traded. You dont hemmorage millions of dollars in double digit percentage dips in your metrics and expect nothing to happen. As to specifics, no one really knows what will result. Maybe nothing as it seems you are indicating, or maybe something, which is what I think COULD happen based on this performance.

The point is I'm basing my opinion on what we know. 2021 was a poor year for GGG in terms of retention rates (and likely revenue as their algorithms on income are based on playtime. Although all we have to work on is 3.15, so again, like I said, we will have to wait). In a F2P that's a recipe for disaster. There are no copies to sell. They make their money mostly from the goodwill of the players on an ongoing basis.

We agree that I dont know anymore than anyone else does based on the public information we have. I think the indicators are that if this downward trend continues into 2022 there could be significant changes at GGG. I guess you don't? Ok? We agree to disagree then. Why dont we leave it at that? I mean what do you want here? Any negative predictions based on the data, isnt valid because you dont like it? I mean c'mon.

Who knows maybe Tencent is willing to absorb losses to keep the Chinese realm. Maybe they will buyout Chris to get some fresh developmental direction on the Western Relams. Maybe Chris will step aside on his own. Maybe they will have to layoff folks to balance the books. None of these are outlandish thoughts in a business sense. I think its "amazingly" naive to think GGG can just continue on with no repercussions simply because you like the game or the company. Nobody, and no company, is beyond failure or restructuring.

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Who knows maybe Tencent is willing to absorb losses to keep the Chinese realm. Maybe they will buyout Chris to get some fresh developmental direction on the Western Relams. Maybe Chris will step aside on his own.

or maybe u stop repeating for the 500th time what you always post. Honestly with a good AI you could actually be considered a spam-bot by that point.

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Vennto wrote:

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Who knows maybe Tencent is willing to absorb losses to keep the Chinese realm. Maybe they will buyout Chris to get some fresh developmental direction on the Western Relams. Maybe Chris will step aside on his own.

or maybe u stop repeating for the 500th time what you always post. Honestly with a good AI you could actually be considered a spam-bot by that point.

Meh low quality bait. My post history is available for anyone to see. I've never once suggested, until right now, anything about Tencent buying out Chris.

Also fairly certain calling a community member a spam bot is a forum violation. No need to resort to an unfounded personal attack, but I will let the forum mods decide. Happy New Year.

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Dracolich70 wrote:

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Shagsbeard wrote:

Nah. There's plenty of room in this pool for more than one game.

Sure, but you can't compete with a company that dedicates all its resources towards said game and genre. GGG is a one game company with 10 years of know-how and evolution of its foundations. You can have a small spot in the sun, simply because you are new, but most people will jump back or move on. All attempts but Grim Dawn has failed, including Diablo 3.

Last Epoch is shaping up to be amazing, imo, and the devs communicate often with the community and their plans to add in more endgame systems etc...
While it's definitely not on PoE level I really do believe Last Epoch will expand content rapidly.

Also, another factor to consider is that LE is just much more visually appealing and so much less clutter. There is contrast between the mobs/bosses and the actual ground. They don't blend into the floor and Last Epoch has much less rainbow-y explosions etc...

The pace of the game isn't as fast as PoE but it is just much more visually fulfilling than PoE.
That being said, I am not completely writing off PoE and will hold my breath to see what 3.17 and beyond has in store. However, while anecdotal, Last Epoch chat is full with many PoE refugees. I don't think LE is going to be just a "small spot in the sun".