100 000 players gone guys, keep it going :)

"

1453R#7804 wrote:

Why not? What's stopping him?

Campaign Carl likes shinies as much as anyone else. Just because he isn't spending a thousand hours in every league playing twenty-three builds doesn't mean he doesn't want to dress up his one run through a new league. he can pop a supporter pack for some of the cool new stuff as much as anyone else can. There's no minimum required hour count to be a supporter, only a minimum dollar count.

Nothing is stopping him, technically. Practically, he's just not the whale games that are F2P need to grab for significant income. Sure, there's a minimum dollar amount to be a supporter, but let's not be disingenuous about who pays the bills.

GGG has all but actively alienated their PoE player base with all the differences introduced into PoE Deuce. Instead, they appear to be relying on a large influx of new players from the much larger general games market. Yes, those players have come, based on a pretty successful hype campaign. But there is a qualitative difference between your typical PoE player, who has stuck around (perhaps on and off again) with PoE, and gamers whose interests are more multifarious and more fleeting.

GGG got their payday with all the packs sold leading up to EA. The question now becomes: How much player retention will there be? Even if PoE Deuce came out of the gate a perfect pearl, short attention spans are short, leaving only die-hards such as have kept PoE afloat for over a decade.

PoE Deuce is a LONG way from being perfect, or even good enough for a lot of players. Between the casuals playing what their favorite streamers told them to play, and the few PoE habitues rebelling against what they (and, to be honest, GGG) deem to be a flawed game, what kind of numbers do we really see for PoE Deuce down the road?

It doesn't take a crystal ball to expect that the vast majority of "tourists" will pack their bags and take the next flight out to something else to play, while even those who find something worthwhile in the game may find it increasingly difficult to sustain interest unless GGG's development schedule shows some increased acceleration. Sure, significant numbers of Deuce boosters will always return for new patches/additions, but the casuals probably won't ever return in significant numbers, once departed.

And it takes a fair number of Supporter Pack sales to develop and maintain a game like Deuce. ='[.]'=

"

khuzvhan#0406 wrote:

Also add more negative atk spd on the entire skill tree so our attack animations casts us back in time to the login screen

XD

"

RedMenace13#6513 wrote:

Nothing is stopping him, technically. Practically, he's just not the whale games that are F2P need to grab for significant income. Sure, there's a minimum dollar amount to be a supporter, but let's not be disingenuous about who pays the bills.

No.

The whale monetization model is not sustainable - and I say that as a proven whale. 'Whale bait' so-called games flame out within a year or two, and are deliberately and specifically designed to do so. they're meant to score quick cash grabs by preying on psychologically vulnerable people, then disappear before the operating costs of running an actual-ass game catch up to them - and they abhor large playerbases. They do everything they can to weed out non-paying players as quickly as possible because they're actively and intentionally designed to be unsustainable and are simply fishing for those whale dollars before vanishing into the mists. They should honestly be actively illegal.

Actual long-term successful free-to-play games with for-real audiences require buy-in from a much broader pool of players, and prefer smaller purchases from a much larger player base than relying on a small handful of psychologically addicted whales to provide the bulk of their income. A game like PoE cannot survive on whale money alone - there's not enough whales and not enough money to pay four hundred people and handle the operating costs for a large studio and its two giant live-service games.

Getting a large number of players to buy a thirty-dollar pack once or twice a year is easier, more sustainable, and more ethical than getting one guy to spend fifty thousand dollars a year. Grinding Gear knows this, as they were one of the first wave of MTX-fueled live service games. The entire concept of "leagues" was in part meant to give players a steady stream of jumping-in points to make returning to the game easier after taking a long break, which helps drive recurrent sales.

This idea that PoE is funded by a few dozen idiots who give their entire lives to the company and only the most dedicated of grinders should matter is ludicrous on the surface of it. If you're not trying to entice Casual Carl to play a league once or twice a year, come back and enjoy something new alongside a thirty-dollar pack's worth of cool stuff? You're not marketing the game right.

"

Raycheetah#7060 wrote:

GGG has all but actively alienated their PoE player base with all the differences introduced into PoE Deuce. Instead, they appear to be relying on a large influx of new players from the much larger general games market. Yes, those players have come, based on a pretty successful hype campaign. But there is a qualitative difference between your typical PoE player, who has stuck around (perhaps on and off again) with PoE, and gamers whose interests are more multifarious and more fleeting.

GGG got their payday with all the packs sold leading up to EA. The question now becomes: How much player retention will there be? Even if PoE Deuce came out of the gate a perfect pearl, short attention spans are short, leaving only die-hards such as have kept PoE afloat for over a decade.

PoE Deuce is a LONG way from being perfect, or even good enough for a lot of players. Between the casuals playing what their favorite streamers told them to play, and the few PoE habitues rebelling against what they (and, to be honest, GGG) deem to be a flawed game, what kind of numbers do we really see for PoE Deuce down the road?

It doesn't take a crystal ball to expect that the vast majority of "tourists" will pack their bags and take the next flight out to something else to play, while even those who find something worthwhile in the game may find it increasingly difficult to sustain interest unless GGG's development schedule shows some increased acceleration. Sure, significant numbers of Deuce boosters will always return for new patches/additions, but the casuals probably won't ever return in significant numbers, once departed.

And it takes a fair number of Supporter Pack sales to develop and maintain a game like Deuce. ='[.]'=

True that. And I have a question : I'm a long term kinda casual POE1 player, never really interacted that much with the community on the forums. Has it always been this, how can I put it, abrasive, or is it the influx of new (young?) blood?

the "difficult as possible" crowd is full of baloney

they always support things that are frustrating and grindy not challenging

I think what they actually want is to make the game unfun for others so they can troll them in the forums when they complain.

the "difficult as possible" crowd i would be willing to bet don't even play the games they just troll

"

Nothv13#0740 wrote:

Loss of player base is expected this early as the hype wears off. The real telling will be if they can get back to the numbers with future major updates.

this is a weird optimism.

"

kinshade#2703 wrote:

the "difficult as possible" crowd is full of baloney

they always support things that are frustrating and grindy not challenging

I think what they actually want is to make the game unfun for others so they can troll them in the forums when they complain.

the "difficult as possible" crowd i would be willing to bet don't even play the games they just troll

I do see comments and have to wonder if we're playing the same game lol. I think it's mostly they're still stuck in act 2 savoring their "skill". Meanwhile those of us that can press spacebar are able to see the actual issues ahead.

"

Maldosam#3663 wrote:

True that. And I have a question : I'm a long term kinda casual POE1 player, never really interacted that much with the community on the forums. Has it always been this, how can I put it, abrasive, or is it the influx of new (young?) blood?

Has this place always been a vicious horrid cesspool of bitterness, anger, hostility, and hatred? Yes. Hundred percent. This place assumes GGG is basically <Godwin's Law> and never fails to predict the game, the company, and the playerbase Dying Forever with every single new launch. The forums is one of the worst possible places to actually talk about Path of Exile if you want a positive conversation about something that excites you - everyone here absolutely detests the game, and no matter that they all claim to've spent ten thousand hours and countless dollars on it.

Frankly, the influx of new players is more likely to mellow the pool than worsen the issue. What you're seeing is all the old diehard PoE1 hangers-on posting all at once because they hate that the new game isn't a precise and exact clone of the old one, and all of them assuming that only someone who's stuck with POE1 for ten years is capable of spending money - and that they will ONLY do so if PoE2 provides the exact same experience down to the specific animations that POE1 has given them for a decade and a half already.

On launch there were 11 people in discord playing together.

Today there are 0.

Not a single person is still playing the game. All of us are 10,000+ hour PoE1 players who play every league.

Path of Exile 2 is not meant of people who enjoy Path of Exile 1. It's that simple.