PoE 2 has lost over 80% of its players in 3 months.

Game has a great core and has a very addictive gameplay. But many of the features are intentionally designed to create frustrations and create in some cases a horrible experience.

Many players have left and more than half of the original launch player base never even returned for 0.2.

The biggest issue I see is that they seem to be making it worse and I imagine only a small amount of players will enjoy what they are doing with the game right now. Many will tolerate for a time because the combat is at its core very good and addictive but if they don't start adding quality of life, this terrible trade site as an example then the numbers will greatly reduce. They seem to not be listening to the majority.

Small players base right now compared to launch and it seems even half of this small player base are unhappy. I dont see this game being very successful on full release.

I didn’t even start playing when this was posted lol

It such a damn shame really. Clearly there seems to be 2 team mindsets working on PoE2. The first being the ones who crafted the Campaign which was universally praised for showcasing the core gameplay and was generous to the player even if it presented refreshing challenge.

Then there's the 2nd half that worked on the endgame and tacked on all that is bad about PoE1 (RNG, Trade, Economy, skipping boss mechanics) and has been quite adamant in keeping it the way it is regardless of what the majority of the player base says.

"

outlander19900#0213 wrote:

Game has a great core and has a very addictive gameplay. But many of the features are intentionally designed to create frustrations and create in some cases a horrible experience.

Many players have left and more than half of the original launch player base never even returned for 0.2.

The biggest issue I see is that they seem to be making it worse and I imagine only a small amount of players will enjoy what they are doing with the game right now. Many will tolerate for a time because the combat is at its core very good and addictive but if they don't start adding quality of life, this terrible trade site as an example then the numbers will greatly reduce. They seem to not be listening to the majority.

Small players base right now compared to launch and it seems even half of this small player base are unhappy. I dont see this game being very successful on full release.

I disagree. I think PoE2 will enjoy success on the full release; it's good parts are genre defining after all. I just wish the people who made these good parts also worked on everything else as it is evident there is a difference in philosophy between the campaign and the endgame.

The game can be successful even if it has rot at its core.

please just do more proximal tangebilities, untargetable targets, perma slow debuff, less movement speed, more cooldowns, more mana costs, more perma stalking orbs, less options to blow everything around in a couple of mirror cost builds and yes - more players will definitely be attracted into this enjoyable party.

I think the devs know how to code and seem great at it, the problem is they are not good at deciding what is fun for the game. Poe has always had a massive drop-off after 2ish weeks of a fresh season. This trend will continue and get worse because IMO poe2 just isn't the slightest bit of fun to play currently.

I will continue to check on it, but I have little hope for the future of this game. I hope I am wrong and it becomes an amazing game. The radio silence and doubling down on what I consider to be bad mechanics leave little optimism.

But this isn't surprising at all. Most players don't finish any game they start, and when you have a big hype release like this you get a bunch of tourists who don't really like ARPG but try it out because other people are doing it. They're not going to retain most of those people and don't expect to.

If they retained 50% from the initial launch to 0.2 that's probably actually a very positive sign.

80% decline in a league is not that amazing either, especially a relatively poorly received one like this. The same thing has happened in weak POE1 leagues for years. While players were trending up over time. Seasonal ARPG are cyclical in player counts.

Obviously POE2 needs a lot of tuning, but for a game that's only released half the classes, half the campaign, etc. it actually has a lot of content. Game's going to be fine, the actually moment-to-moment gameplay and graphics are the best on the market and the balance issues are easy to adjust and iterate on.