Well done GGG the economy will heal if this goes on forever

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

"

ArtCrusade wrote:

Some leagues have easier grind challenges than others. Are those seasons somehow worse because those players quit after 1 or 2 weeks?

I mean, objectively? Yes.
Subjectively? Depends on your personal experience

Let's talk sales: a cereal company introduces a new cereal. MANY people swear by that cereal, its the best thing ever, anyone that offers a "rating" of the cereal is rating it 10/10.
BUT broadly, the cereal is not selling well. The numbers just aren't there.

What matters? The ratings, the people who love the cereal, the people buying the cereal? No......not really. Ultimately, the ONLY thing that matters is that: the cereal is not selling well.

That is player retention: an almost direct measure of "sales" of the league. If the sales are not there, the league is a dud.

*Concession*
The stat that could disprove my whole point.....is "At what point in a league do sales of mtx and stash tabs SLOW/STOP?". If the answer is "At the 2-week mark", then nothing past the first 2 weeks of a league matters, not even retention.

None of this is correct unless the defining factor of the cereal is "sell as many boxes as possible" and not "create a cereal the fulfills the desires of its target audience as best as possible, which potentially isn't 'everyone that starts the league'". The company making All-Bran isn't disappointed that less people are eating All-Bran, and thus goes out and releases ALl-Bran+ with 50g of sugar per serve, fruit, nuts and a peach in every spoon. All-Bran is a product that is for people who want All-Bran, and it fits its niche in the market. That doesn't stop the company making a different product to fill that niche, but if they tried to make All-Bran fill the popularity niche rather than it's own niche, it wouldn't be "successful" more than it is now.

PoE is not a mass appeal product, and never will be. GGG don't necessarily make decisions that appeal to the widest possible audience; in fact, they frequently make decisions that are expressly the opposite.

What people in this thread are choosing to define as objective success simply isn't. There is no objective measure of success in such a product, where the developer has "objectively" displayed through their behavior that it isn't their singular purpose.

And, even if you doggedly want to hold on to the idea that player retention is the only objective measure of success available to PoE, you are still missing important data, both which exists publically, and which doesn't, to define it as such.

1. Absolute player values vs. percent player values - a league of 200k players at 37% has twice as many players remaining as a league of 50k players at 70%. Directly following on from this:

2. Demographic of retained players - Do retained players percentage vs. absolute scale linearly or not? If the game has a base playerbase of players who are likely to play to later in the league and thus anything above that number is essentially "fluff" that will always drop off significantly harder?

3. What proportion of players don't play on steam at all and thus are not accounted for at all in player percentages? And how do their demographics skew? Logically speaking, players playing off steam are significantly more likely to be long term players and thus more likely to play longer, but that is simply a logical deduction and another variable we don't know the values of.

4. Even if you consider this number to be representative of league "success", you must surely translate that simply to business success, which means money - is there any translation of a higher proportion of retention leading to significantly higher income? Again, a logical deduction is that most of the season hype and thus MTX purchases come in the first hours or days of the league, not to mention battle pass purchases, so it's possible that low retention has no relevance at all to financial success, even if we accept the premise of numerical success.

5. All of the above exists entirely outside the context of external influence, ie: other game releases, events, lack of hype of current events, early league misbalance, burn-out leading up to PoE2, and whatever other influences have nothing to do with current league, current time-frame player retention.

Realistically speaking, everyone in the discussion (myself included) can and does put an "objective" spin on an essentially subjective framework. The only people that actually know the answers are GGG, and even they are guessing a lot of the time to a certain degree.

"

Pathological wrote:

None of this is correct unless the defining factor of the cereal is "sell as many boxes as possible" and not "create a cereal the fulfills the desires of its target audience as best as possible, which potentially isn't 'everyone that starts the league'".

PoE is not a mass appeal product, and never will be. GGG don't necessarily make decisions that appeal to the widest possible audience; in fact, they frequently make decisions that are expressly the opposite.

lol.......GGG is a BUSINESS. Businesses exist solely to make money. That's it. A product exists to sell itself. If it does not, it ceases to exist. I can guarantee you, without a shadow of a doubt, that the FIRST and FOREMOST thought that goes into every decision is "how will this make money" or "will this make money".

GGG is not some idealistic non-profit fighting for a cause.

It is the SOLE GOAL of any business to make money. That is the reason for businesses to exist.

I also literally wrote....it is NOT the only objective measure, it just happens to be the only one we have access to. Another objective measure: how much money was made and at what time. We do NOT have that information.

stop hijacking the thread.

this looks like the all too familiar let's make it "controversial" and "fake outrage" so that mods close or delete the thread.

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

"

Pathological wrote:

None of this is correct unless the defining factor of the cereal is "sell as many boxes as possible" and not "create a cereal the fulfills the desires of its target audience as best as possible, which potentially isn't 'everyone that starts the league'".

PoE is not a mass appeal product, and never will be. GGG don't necessarily make decisions that appeal to the widest possible audience; in fact, they frequently make decisions that are expressly the opposite.

lol.......GGG is a BUSINESS. Businesses exist solely to make money. That's it.

GGG is not some idealistic non-profit fighting for a cause.

It is the SOLE GOAL of any business to make money. That is the reason for businesses to exist.

I also literally wrote....it is NOT the only objective measure, it just happens to be the only one we have access to.

It isn't the sole goal of any business to make money. That's simply untrue. Many, many businesses exist to make a product, and as a result of that product, make money. The type of capitalism that exists by companies having a singular purpose of making money is the one we call late stage capitalism, and it's the one before the fall of society. There are many, many, MANY ways to make more money by making a product worse. A very small number of them exist in PoE; in many much larger companies (both game development companies and all other types), they employ a whole lot more. But there are just as many that exist as a means to monetise the best form of the product they create, rather than create and sell it in the way that makes the most money.

And my entire post proved in various ways how it is neither an objective measure, nor the only one we have access to. To put it bluntly; the "objective" data that you claim to have is missing a great deal of contextualisation that would make it thus, and consequently requires a great deal of (subjectivity-prone) assumption.

"

BlackMarshes212 wrote:

this looks like the all too familiar let's make it "controversial" and "fake outrage" so that mods close or delete the thread.

They never do that unless people call each other names for several pages in a row and there is no discussion in it. DOnt worry, ur topic is safe.

"

Pathological wrote:

It isn't the sole goal of any business to make money. That's simply untrue. Many, many businesses exist to make a product, and as a result of that product, make money. The type of capitalism that exists by companies having a singular purpose of making money is the one we call late stage capitalism, and it's the one before the fall of society.

This actually made me laugh out loud. Unless you are living in a [Removed by Support]....it is ALL about the money. Even in the sentence YOU wrote, there is no difference.

"Many businesses exist to make a product, and as a result of that product, make money". This is quite literally the same as "Businesses exist to make money".

There is not a single company in the WORLD that creates a product for the purpose of....creating that product. They create the product BECAUSE that product is a commodity that others are willing to buy. The second their intention becomes to "sell" their product to others, profit is all that matters.

There are companies that strive to "break even": those are called "non-profits" or not-for-profits. Every other company will ONLY put out a product if they think it will bring in money.

And for the record: it doesn't matter whether a company makes the product "better" or "worse" to make more money. No matter WHAT the decision is.....its about the money. Also "better" and "worse" are subjective views in the eye of the buyer that frankly the company and product creator don't give a damn about. If making a change is seen as making the product "worse" by some, yet it makes the company more money, it was a GOOD change for them.

This is not even worth arguing further...you are trying to idealize something that is very very simple:


Rita Skeeter said it best in Harry Potter 6: "The prophet exists to sell itself, you silly girl".

"

Aynix wrote:

Spoiler

"

BlackMarshes212 wrote:

this looks like the all too familiar let's make it "controversial" and "fake outrage" so that mods close or delete the thread.

They never do that unless people call each other names for several pages in a row and there is no discussion in it. DOnt worry, ur topic is safe.

I hope you are correct. I'm concerned due to past incidents, three of which come to mind if my memory serves me right.

Honestly, I wish I could block certain accounts from interacting with me on the forums. In doing so, I would have a chance to engage in meaningful discussions.

If I know for a fact that an account—be it X, Y, or Z—is associated with RMT or bots, which are my main concerns, I would block them. Not because I don't value discourse, but rather because I understand they cannot offer anything beyond defending or sabotaging to their advantage. Their livelihood or additional income is at risk, they have no choice.

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Edit: grammar.

Assuming Cheating is rampant. Cheaters "finished" the game. The cheaters will come back next league, right?

"

awesome999 wrote:

Assuming Cheating is rampant. Cheaters "finished" the game. The cheaters will come back next league, right?

Okay... sure. Yes.
Go on...

But plz stay on topic.

"

BlackMarshes212 wrote:

"

awesome999 wrote:

Assuming Cheating is rampant. Cheaters "finished" the game. The cheaters will come back next league, right?

Okay... sure. Yes.
Go on...

But plz stay on topic.

There is two side in a RMT trade; the seller and buyer.
Lower price hurt the seller but benefit the buyer.

If anything it only hurt the seller. The economic analysis is probably wrong. Probably more RMT with the lower price on the buyer side.