Five Weeks into 0.2.0, POE2 is Down 93.2% Players All Time & 83.9% from Patch Launch

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xPimousse#3057 wrote:

95% of the playerbase left and this is really bad from a financial POV. At this rate they won't able to sustain "the vision" (even though nobody wants it anyway except a few ultras).
GGG decision showed us that they are entitled to this "vision" and won't even drift away from it.
This leads to 2 consequences :

1. GGG won't change POE2 game direction unless they are forced to do it. On top of that, the studio blatantly ignore whatever isn't matching with their ideal (cf mutliples interviews from John).

2. As any company, both GGG and Tencent have for goal to make money. Usually, important decisions regarding business strats are being made after the annual return wich is being held early march for GGG.
That said, POE2 got massive income coming from the paid EA and supporter packs. This income will most likely soften the terrible results coming from the vision, and the lack of income associated.
This means we won't see any real changes until april/may 2026 unless the financial metrics show a real danger for the studio and Tencent decide to snap off POE2 direction.

So stop blaming the current state of the game as it won't have any results. Instead ask for more of this nonsense such as adding hunger metric slowing you down even more when you're hungry with a walk/run system like D2, implying a food system, reverting the portal update and go back to a single one etc. Even though the game is in a bad state it can be even worse. Your only hope is to see the game crumble and rott to a point where GGG/Tencent can't ignore the situation anymore.

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neostars#6701 wrote:

Don't need to go into much detail.

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xPimousse#3057 wrote:

That said, POE2 got massive income coming from the paid EA and supporter packs. This income will most likely soften the terrible results coming from the vision

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Kerchunk#7797 wrote:

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neostars#6701 wrote:

Don't need to go into much detail.

I mean, you absolutely and unquestionably do need to go into at least some detail if you expect anyone to be able to act on your feedback.

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JarlaxleDaerthe#2435 wrote:

Please don't actually like GGG are lacking sufficient data to act upon in order to save PoE2.. trolling helps no one.

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Kerchunk#7797 wrote:

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JarlaxleDaerthe#2435 wrote:

Please don't actually like GGG are lacking sufficient data to act upon in order to save PoE2.. trolling helps no one.

I'm not acting like anything guy. I'm just telling you that PoE2 doesn't need saving. It's absolutely fine.

I looked at playtime data for all ~170k reviews and activity between people who reviewed the game positively vs. negatively is not significantly different. If anything, negative reviewers are playing more often.

People didn't "quit playing" because they don't like the game -- they're just waiting for it to be finished because most people don't want to play unfinished games.

The project is fine. PoE2 is fine. Even if it wasn't, you certainly wouldn't rescue it by bullying Jonathan on the forums.

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Kraythax#2592 wrote:

All time Peak: 578,562
0.2.0 Peak: 245,870
20 min ago: 39,791

These numbers are a staggering indictment of "The Vision" of Path of Exile 2. They started this ride 5 years ago to make an expansion and sequel to Path of Exile 1 and what they have created is a significant retrograde. The number of lessons from POE1 Un-learned is just staggering. Economy, balance, atlas, its crazy how bad they got it. If this had been the first ARPG by the company you could understand it but it wasn't. They have been making ARPGs for 12 years. No one can claim, "Oh it's Early Access so its fine." That's just "copium". The reality is that there are key decisions that have been behind the decline. Its not bugs or crashes, everyone expects that in EA. Its just plain unfathomable decisions being made.

Decisions like:

1. Let's create a new kind of game that mixes Souls Like combat with 90,000,251 enemies coming at the player at once.
2. Let's just throw the ENTIRE end game atlas which is recognized as brilliant in the trash bin and start over.
3. Let's not combine delve, maps and the atlas to create a truly rewarding endless powerful end game but instead toss it all.
4. Let's just abandon the ENTIRE crafting system that keeps the POE1 economy going because some players found it complex.
5. Let's take the ruthless playstyle, supported by 1% of the POE1 community and make it mandatory; no movement skills, anemic drops.
6. Let's completely screw up the gem system where players constantly were looking for that next socketed item because some players couldn't get 6 links and dump it for a new system that NO ONE tested.
7. Let's prevent melee chars from using brutality on more than one skill because the new gem system has some bad holes we cant fix.
8. Let's make all loot entirely random and even maps random. We want all random so that no one can have the gear tuned the way they want.
9. Let's redesign the passive tree to make it not 4 nodes to move around the parts of the tree but 30 to keep people imprisoned in their class.
10. Let's over-tag every skill binding it to weapons and heavy stat requirements because a warrior playing righteous fire must be stopped AT ALL COST in POE2, we will dictate the proper builds thank you.
11. Let's make skills so over tagged that you are imprisoned in your class, we CANNOT ALLOW BUILD DIVERSITY. For example, you MUST use nothing or a quarterstaff to use an unarmed skill like killing palm.
12. Let's make the campaign that was considered a tutorial in POE1 that people blasted through very extremely tedious and long.

These are just the bad decisions I can think of off the top of my head. I am sure others will add more in replies. Who on earth was calling these shots?

Frankly the only people happy with the game are a very small subset of customers (seems less than 5%) and Activision / Blizzard. In the run up to EA Blizzard got pooped on by making some snarky comments because they were concerned POE2 would cut into D4 revenue. They have since fallen out of their chairs laughing.

GGG could have taken POE1, put in a new graphics engine, an entire texture overhaul, a new story campaign with lots of cut scenes, trimmed off a few bad systems, combined delve and maps into a single endgame, added tutorial characters and spent the rest of the budget on marketing. That would have guaranteed success. But instead we are where we are. A broken game that the POE1 vets mostly don't want to play, that the drivebys have mostly abandoned for other titles and all that is left to do is MTX monetize the hell out of it and release it on iPhone and Android to make it like the other TenCent products.

I spent $480 (plus tax) of my money on the Liberator of Wraeclast pack, before I even saw the game because I had so much belief in GGG. But you forgot the most important part of the vision. YOUR vision isn't nearly as important as the customer's vision. Unless this is some pet project that is disposable, customers matter. And in the process you have killed POE1 with inattention.

It's time to reset. Re-eval. Call an all-hands meeting and say "guys this isn't working" and begin doing what you planned in the first place, make a SEQUEL to Path of Exile.