when is next league out? surely not in early april?

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RandallPOE wrote:

I guess it's quite easy to read the forums here or Reddit and think based on the handful of people who seem to hate themselves so much that they play POE religiously every league even though they despise it that there's hundreds of thousands of people ready to jump ship as soon as they can. It's probably not the case

I do think that's a bit of an oversimplification. The scope of PoE player wise is much smaller, and even smaller still are the vocal ones. That doesn't invalidate complaints, nor does it indicate action on a larger scale. I think retention and Twitch viewership is a slightly better indicator. Not perfect, but better.

I mean who knows, but I think crossover/casual D4 numbers will be big.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

I dont know if that graph accurately depicts PoE or not tbh. That said, lets take it at face value. Even if true, I doubt very seriously GGG (or Tencent) dont care about... let's say 16-20% of their total annual revenue. That's many millions of dollars.

It doesnt. Its the median of the F2P industry.
Obviously PoE will be different.

If you got more accurate stats Id like to see those. Until then the industry average will have to do.


And yeah there will be losses almost guaranteed. Whats Tencent supposed to do about other than whining? They could try to stop Blizz from releasing D4 in China and protect their local market but thats not going to affect the rest of the world.
Demanding a change of course and going full casual mode is not the answer. That would mean entering direct competition with D4 and thats not going to end well.

If GGG and Tencent are smart, they will eat the losses and protect PoE´s hegemony over the hardcore ARPG segment of the ARPG market.

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RandallPOE wrote:

I've always wondered about the whale thing in POE given that you can't directly buy in game power so there's not so much incentive to be a whale.

Whales dont need an incentive. Thats the funny part.
What they need is stuff to spend money on. Doesnt matter how useless or expensive it is, whales will buy it no question asked.

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Orbaal wrote:

And yeah there will be losses almost guaranteed. Whats Tencent supposed to do about other than whining?

If I had a tinfoil hat nearby I would say that Tencent would prefer to move CW out of the world realm, and the monetize it like the Chinese Version.

In order to do so there would need to be financial reasons. That said, PoE2 would have to be a total failure and nothing would happen before that. The D4 release and likely a couple of lean leagues surely will up the pressure on CW though.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

If I had a tinfoil hat nearby I would say that Tencent would prefer to move CW out of the world realm, and the monetize it like the Chinese Version.

In order to do so there would need to be financial reasons. That said, PoE2 would have to be a total failure and nothing would happen before that. The D4 release and likely a couple of lean leagues surely will up the pressure on CW though.

Kicking Chris out would be the most stupid thing they could possibly do, directly followed by monetzing the shit out of this game.

Thats not a tinfoil hat conspiracy, thats a death sentence.

Besides that, look into how Tencent operates.
They arent your usual company driven by quarterly revenue reports. Dont conflate Tencent with western companies. There is a distinct difference when it comes to their preferred modus operandi.

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Orbaal wrote:

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DarthSki44 wrote:

If I had a tinfoil hat nearby I would say that Tencent would prefer to move CW out of the world realm, and the monetize it like the Chinese Version.

In order to do so there would need to be financial reasons. That said, PoE2 would have to be a total failure and nothing would happen before that. The D4 release and likely a couple of lean leagues surely will up the pressure on CW though.

Kicking Chris out would be the most stupid thing they could possibly do, directly followed by monetzing the shit out of this game.

Thats not a tinfoil hat conspiracy, thats a death sentence.

Besides that, look into how Tencent operates.
They arent your usual company driven by quarterly revenue reports. Dont conflate Tencent with western companies. There is a distinct difference when it comes to their preferred modus operandi.

Meh idk. I was mostly joking about it anyway. I would say however that plenty of eastern style monetized games have done ok in the west, including mobile and F2P.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

I would say however that plenty of eastern style monetized games have done ok in the west, including mobile and F2P.

Really? Please show me games that werent heavily monetized on release, then changed into just that and did well.

Im not aware of a single one and there is a reason for that.
They either start out like that or they dont.

Next league is 7th April

yes and it should have been 4 month cycles for years now they clearly cannot keep up with 3 months
this is better

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RitualMurder wrote:

yes and it should have been 4 month cycles for years now they clearly cannot keep up with 3 months
this is better

Oh there is no doubt it's better development wise, and quality wise, but it is absolutely detrimental financially.

Having 3 legaues launch versus 4 leagues launch, is a multi-million dollar decison.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

"

RitualMurder wrote:

yes and it should have been 4 month cycles for years now they clearly cannot keep up with 3 months
this is better

Oh there is no doubt it's better development wise, and quality wise, but it is absolutely detrimental financially.

Having 3 legaues launch versus 4 leagues launch, is a multi-million dollar decison.

Probably. But it's hard to say that it's a better choice. The three month cycle gets you more leagues/league starts and I'm personally sold that the majority of their revenue happens within a week or two of launch (Before/After).

But some/many of the game launches have been so bad that they may have permanently alienated a notable amount of players. I would personally argue that they would be better off doing 3 leagues a year with events in the latter part of the league to pull players back, which may translate to 3 launches and 3 mini-launches. I have no idea if that is more revenue, but poor releases are universally hated. Some of us are more lenient of it, but none of us like it. It feels like bad faith to release a game knowing or expecting it to be as bad as some of the launches have gone.

Most leagues are about right at the 3rd/4th week, but how many have left before they achieve that right balance?

It's just all guessing, but I've always though the three-month cycle may superficially seem better financially, but the unintended consequences may compromise those gains.