HALF of playerbase has quit in 1 WEEK

"

awesome999 wrote:

"

imperiusdamian wrote:

Thanks for clarifying that! So going by that, if the Steam player peaks on weekends average around 80k, then the total numbers re probably somewhere around 110-120k? IMO still not bad for an almost ten year old game.

Compare to what? CANDY CRUSH? Or Top 10 most popular video games?

Comparing any PC or console game to Candy Crush is silly. All of them would lose to CC but that hardly makes them failures. If we take the most the popular games on Steam, then 80k already puts PoE just outside the top 10. 120k would put it right amongst them. Dunno if any of those games have significant playerbases off of Steam, but if not then PoE at 120k holds its own.

Also I notice that you seem to bring Candy Crush up a lot, for some reason...

"

Exile009 wrote:

Comparing any PC or console game to Candy Crush is silly. All of them would lose to CC but that hardly makes them failures. If we take the most the popular games on Steam, then 80k already puts PoE just outside the top 10. 120k would put it right amongst them. Dunno if any of those games have significant playerbases off of Steam, but if not then PoE at 120k holds its own.

POE is not great, not terrible. You are free to declare it the greatest Video Games of All Time. People just might. Opinions are just that.

"

Exile009 wrote:

Also I notice that you seem to bring Candy Crush up a lot, for some reason...

If you prefer, we can talk about pokemon.

was a bit hype tis new atlas skill tree but its dont chance fact that end game is still boring. game really could use some sort unlimit char building or allow gear level up too.

99% game uniques are trash. seen unique gear dropping has zero joy gain and crafting is too complex for most players to understand. just run maps million times and maeby one day u get HH or magrelood, thouse 2 only decent unique.

"

Junkkis wrote:

was a bit hype tis new atlas skill tree but its dont chance fact that end game is still boring. game really could use some sort unlimit char building or allow gear level up too.

99% game uniques are trash. seen unique gear dropping has zero joy gain and crafting is too complex for most players to understand. just run maps million times and maeby one day u get HH or mageblood, thouse 2 only decent unique.

"

Junkkis wrote:

was a bit hype tis new atlas skill tree but its dont chance fact that end game is still boring. game really could use some sort unlimit char building or allow gear level up too.

99% game uniques are trash. seen unique gear dropping has zero joy gain and crafting is too complex for most players to understand. just run maps million times and maeby one day u get HH or magrelood, thouse 2 only decent unique.

You have 4 uniques on your league character.

"

Exile009 wrote:

...is silly.

There's a lot of "silly" happening in this thread.

"

Junkkis wrote:

99% game uniques are trash. seen unique gear dropping has zero joy gain and crafting is too complex for most players to understand. just run maps million times and maeby one day u get HH or magrelood, thouse 2 only decent unique.

So basically you're dismissing some of the most involved parts of the game and then saying the rest is boring. Right... And btw, what would you do with that HH or Mageblood? Stare at it? You'd just use them to run maps millions of times more. Or maybe sell it for other power items to ... again just maps millions of times. Err...

Also one of the most popular uniques this league, which has already led to all sorts of unconventional builds, isn't HH or Mageblood, but Ashes of the Stars. Which even you are using...

"

Xyel wrote:

"

imperiusdamian wrote:

It's been mentioned in this thread before but I thought I'd elaborate on it: Steam player numbers are NOT indicative. A GREAT many players abandoned the Steam client around 3.0 when it became obvious that even the smallest patches would take hours because of how the game patched on Steam. Couple that with the fact the game itself will barely run at all through the Steam client without an SSD and I suspect probably 75% of players use the standalone client.

Your suspicion is off - by GGG's own announcement, the launch peak was 270k concurrent players (https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3233159) and by steam charts, the steam peak was 158k players (https://steamcharts.com/app/238960#6m), so about 58.5% of players use steam, and 41.5% of players use standalone client. The numbers are perfectly consistent with Scourge launch numbers, so they are rather solid.

Well some have to play consoles as well and it will come out of the 41.5% standalone number

As usual I'm still tracking the performance stats so it's time to weigh in with some data. Firstly, in response to the OP title, the player numbers didn't dip below 50% till day 11.

I've found that Day 14 is a good data point at which to compare some numbers as I'm keen to compare the launch day volumes with the retention achievement. It's clear that PoE tends to lose players after launch day fairly quickly so comparing too soon (i.e. one week) doesn't really allow a good extrapolation of the data and comparting too late (i.e. one month) is a little pointless as a large proportion of players are often done by then.

As GGG relies upon players voluntarily purchasing supporter packs it would seem logical that the game wants to encourage participation and retention. Standard retail theory is that the longer a customer shops in your store, the more likely they are to purchase. So for GGG to succeed it's logical to assume they want to hit a particular launch day number and then retain players for as long as possible which is presumably achieved by providing them a positive player experience.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, and in numerous discussion previously, Steam numbers are statistically significant enough to draw conclusions from. So launch day numbers were top notch, congrats to GGG. The abandonment rate however is the worst of the last 13 leagues with 59.16% of players having left by day 14. The last three leagues have had an abandonment rate by day 14 of between 57% and 59% so that's a solid trend now.

Now it might be that this is GGGs new strategy, get in with hype, get players to play for a week and have a blast, get paid and then limit your company costs for the next three months for the next big pay day. If so and they're hitting their budget numbers then all is good and we can expect things to continue pretty much as they are.

Personally I think that this indicative of a longer term issue for the game which is how to challenge the expert players but still offer a fun experience for the more casual player. On reflection from the very early days of PoE I note that originally a lot of player power was derived by player level skill points, raising gem levels to max and then eventually farming for gear with some random chaos spamming and exalt slamming for the truly rich. The current state of the game looks nothing like that.

So much player power now lies with complex crafting requiring massive amounts of knowledge and currency. The 'More' multiplier has become the albatross around GGGs neck as crafted gear can push power to stratospheric heights meaning the gap between expert and casual is now enormous. I know some of you will decry this and state that it's never been easier to acquire powerful gear but that's not the reality for a lot of casual players.

The origins of ARPGs are games that are easy to pick up and that you just go a kill masses of monsters. Sure, it's necessary to have challenges and goals for the more experienced players but it's my feeling that the balance has shifted so far to one side of the equation that many new or casual players are just disengaged.

Ultimately it's GGGs sandbox and they can provide whatever game experience they want for us. Only time will tell if it is financially viable for them to continue on their current path or not and while we have all the data for players participation available to us, we don't have any data on player payment behaviour so we can only guess where the money flows to GGG from. Is it genuinely the whales who buy a $1k pack every quarter, or is it the casuals who drop $30 here and there throughout the year?

"

angelobiancofaithpride wrote:

"

BrightestDay wrote:

i've been creeping around these forum's for years, i would be much more concerned that the game is dying if i didn't see these posts every 3 months.

thank you for your valuable addition the discussion

I mean.. he provides the valuable context for your thread, which is that it is utterly meaningless given that it appears every. single. league.

Your complaints aren't without merit, but you discredit them by claiming sole ownership of player falloff that you have no authority to claim. Get off the melodrama high horse and make actual arguments.