Kalguur has stopped me from playing new leagues and private leagues

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Glorfndel01#6465 wrote:

Interesting argument you guys have going here, but on the side of simplicity, Kingsmarch is an MMO-style mechanic which keeps you playing longer and "engaged" in PoE rather than an alternative.

It's less of an argument, more me trying in vain to explain my perspective. My mind associated it more to how fallout 4 and its settlement system gave it another dimension so that players had reason to care about loot beyond weapons and armor upgrades.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

Fully objectively based on player data and numbers.....it has done the exact opposite lol. From the rollout of Kingsmarch to a single month later, over 60% of the playerbase left. If what you said was true, we'd see far greater retention than other leagues. And repeated Kingsmarch restarts has NOT brought the playerbase back in any significant way. Only two real conclusions can be drawn from this: 1) players are tired of the base game or 2) 3.25 wasn't engaging. We know that 1 isn't true based on data from previous leagues over the last few years (players returning in greater numbers, and other leagues with far better retention), so the logical and objective conclusion is that Kalguur, as a league, was GENERALLY crap.

I think you're not willing to recognize your bias - which is funny because if you played this league as much as you claim you did you would have thought you would have quit sooner.

But as far as "retention" goes, what exactly qualifies as good? Most players don't even make it to maps and there's always a significant drop after a league start. Synthesis was the "worst" league I participated in, at yet I still hit 19 challenges (like now in settlers\phrecia) and there still people who loved that league in its original form despite plenty of the community voicing otherwise. I myself didn't mind beastiary as it was my first full league, but it was pretty clear most weren't fond of the mechanic. If I had better working knowledge at the time I would have hated it too as I avoided a lot of issues because my damage was fairly low.

Harvest was also hit or miss for people and has since had a lot of the micro removed. I only completed one challenge and knew it wasn't for me. Blight had performance issues that made it effectively unplayable on older rigs so I ended up quitting after 11 challenges. I have 7 challenges in sentinel and apparently got a character to maps. I have 8 in Lake of Kalandra and couldn't tell you which mule in standard came from that one either. I didn't have a lot of interest to begin with by that point and the iteration of the archnem mods implemented at that time didn't help. And as archnem itself was still relatively fresh in memory, neither of those 2 felt particularly rewarding, kalandra so much so I totally forgot I had done anything during that league at all.

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SeCKSEgai#6175 wrote:

I think you're not willing to recognize your bias - which is funny because if you played this league as much as you claim you did you would have thought you would have quit sooner.

retention numbers are, by definition, NOT effected by my bias dude. That's why they exist as a metric of objective success. If I hated a league and left after a week, but the retention numbers showed good retention, then MY feelings about that league are OBJECTIVELY wrong. Subjectively, I can't ever be wrong about my own feelings, likes or dislikes. And for the record, I DID quit Kalguur far earlier than most other leagues. And I've played every single league since the beta. Kalguur took less than a week to "finish", and another week to get completely bored. I spent more time in Phrecia, never even touching Kingsmarch.

"Good" vs. "Bad" is simple: which leagues had higher players by percentage, for longer? That is the LITERAL objective decision of a "good" league. You brought up Harvest so lets compare:

Kalguur dropped 62% of players by Month 2
Harvest NEVER dropped more than 45% of players across the entire league. It is one of the few leagues that actually gained players from Month 1 to Month 2. And just so we are clear: these numbers are Total month averages, which means it automatically factors in the highs of the beginning of the month and the lows of the end of the month (for month 2).

OG Harvest was one of the MOST successful and "good" leagues that PoE has ever had.

These are OBJECTIVE measures. Pure numerical averages across the entire playerbase devoid of any personal or subjective opinions.

I'm not the one with the bias issue, you are trying to argue semantics and subjectivity against numbers. That is the DEFINITION of bias lol. Trying to insert subjectivity where it doesn't exist and refusing to remain objective. Comments like "what is good" or "harvest was hit or miss" or "worst league i participated in", is Bias.



Regarding my Bias in the OTHER part of our argument: of COURSE I'M BIASED lol. That was never in question. We aren't having an objective argument! You think Kingsmarch is complex and good, I do not. There is nothing "objective" about that. That's precisely WHY we are arguing.


Damn dude....this is the same problem with your "Kalguur is Complex" argument! Straight up incorrect usage of words and assessment.

This is what I mean by bias

At least 3 different posts explaining that saying complexity is not the same as depth and complexity or in more simple terms, complex doesn't automatically equal good.

*Edit - maybe bias isn't the clearest option. But at this point I don't think defining complex or complexity at its root would change your mind. So, here are numbers instead.


Harvest was a divisive league, mainly because of the seed micro. It was also one of the best crafting leagues which rewarded those who did bother to stay. Pretty sure Betrayal, Delirium and Legion outperformed Harvest by quite a bit. It's literally had its system modified twice since it was a league. It took me a while to get over losing the crafts I had saved up in std and having to earn an entirely new currency -- but both post league variations were preferred to the original.

Ritual, Ultimatum, Scourge, Crucible and Necropolis had notably higher player peaks when compared to most of the leagues according to Steam.db. And despite your distaste for it, Settlers had the highest peak in the last 9 years.

Harvest
126,680 June 2020
64,798 July 2020
38,248 Auguest 2020

Settlers
229,337 July 2024
163,320 August 2024
65,829 Septber 2024

https://steamdb.info/app/238960/charts/#9y

Are you sure you want to stick to that Harvest never dropping below 45% and Settlers dropping by 62% the first month? Steam.db may only cover the steam based accounts but their numbers tell quite a different story.

*Edit 2 Almost forgot here's a graph by someone that extrapolated data on the first 7 day peaks of Harvest, Legion and Expedition. Now I'm not gonna bother verifying every datapoint by hand, but having been around for the starts of both Harvest and Legion it does track with my personal experience more or less.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2F3jckcv7ip8e71.png%3Fwidth%3D1697%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dcf028ceb761ed6189a58fa3fadddcdebf3c8c1a9

Legion was the resurgence (or birth its been so long) of Cyclone and spreading chaos damage to pop most if not all of the armies in the window was popular. Harvest had a lot of folks who couldn't stand the seed micro but still had its defenders as it did offer one of the best crafting experiences up to that point.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

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Glorfndel01#6465 wrote:

Interesting argument you guys have going here, but on the side of simplicity, Kingsmarch is an MMO-style mechanic which keeps you playing longer and "engaged" in PoE rather than an alternative.

Fully objectively based on player data and numbers.....it has done the exact opposite lol. From the rollout of Kingsmarch to a single month later, over 60% of the playerbase left. If what you said was true, we'd see far greater retention than other leagues. And repeated Kingsmarch restarts has NOT brought the playerbase back in any significant way. Only two real conclusions can be drawn from this: 1) players are tired of the base game or 2) 3.25 wasn't engaging. We know that 1 isn't true based on data from previous leagues over the last few years (players returning in greater numbers, and other leagues with far better retention), so the logical and objective conclusion is that Kalguur, as a league, was GENERALLY crap.

The point is it DOESN'T keep you engaged. It's secondary and passive, leading to much faster and MUCH stronger burnout. Simply put, its boring and uninteresting. PoE players in general are far smarter than what GGG gives them credit for: they know and FEEL when a mechanic is designed from the ground up for the sole purpose of wasting their time and nothing else.

And that's pretty standard for IDLE gameplay: it keeps people engaged for a short time, but then there's a STEEP rolloff when people just get bored of sitting around and waiting all the time. Many idle games combat this by "restarting" the game via new servers every few weeks. WEEKS. Because that's how short of a draw this kind of "gameplay" is.

I didn't say it was successful.

It was a hail mary likely knowing full well it would be an extended league due to 2's launch. It's not an MMO so players weren't retained. 2 was a successful launch so it didn't matter...

then the shit hit the fan

^very true

GGG if you go back and review this thread the interesting thing is that the people FOR KM tend to have a lot of Supporter Icons and the ones that don't largely have none. I love KM and would be seriously bummed if it does not go core. In fact, I would expand KM each expansion while making it easier/autolevelling to get back to the state it is now. If you levelled all the KM features on killing Act bosses say starting in Act 3 you would go into maps with everything at Level 8. And don't allow early levelling so that the mechanic feels purely optional. Really hope KM goes core.

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johnnysd#1172 wrote:

GGG if you go back and review this thread the interesting thing is that the people FOR KM tend to have a lot of Supporter Icons and the ones that don't largely have none.

Go ahead and piss away your money on your own time, don't try to make it seem like that makes you "better" than anyone else. I personally see absolutely no reason to buy COSMETICS in any game. The base cosmetics are great.

You also realize that.....they can be hidden right? Because some people have so many (not me) that it can take up almost an entire screen everytime they post.

Smh. It's people like YOU that make me glad I never post on the same account I play with. Real conversations can only be had by people who aren't stupidly trying to measure dsize in $$$ before or instead of making any real point.

You can't add the town mechanics to the core game.

I loved Settlers league. Played it, enjoyed it and had fun - for quite a long time. But to add a "passive income" mechanic to the game? I don't think it would work. It would become mandatory for min/maxing and I think it would burn people out fast in the long run. You just can't ignore passive income if you have some serious goals in this game, and I think it would become tiresome.

We've had close to one year of Settlers, I think it's time to let it go.

That said; gold, gold respec and the currency exchange should of course go core and I just can't see GGG not doing that.

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SeCKSEgai#6175 wrote:

https://steamdb.info/app/238960/charts/#9y

since you decided to bring me back here......

How did I KNOW that you were going to pull "peaks" as a defense. I knew this was going to be the next step in misrepresentation....because it always is.

Lmao man.....the "data" you show here is altogether meaningless. Comparing a single blip in time to another single blip in time gives you NO usable information. This entire table you link is moot. That's like going outside during a 30m thunderstorm on May 13th and claiming that it was thundering the entire month of May.

TRUE trend data comes from averages, as per what I wrote earlier. In case you aren't aware, an "average" across a month is what is required to see ACTIVE players across a length of time. So if we are talking retention and how successful a league is, naturally the ACTIVE playercount is what we want. Not the spike. The spike tells us how successful the marketing campaign was, no more or less than that.

Here's the real data:
https://steamcharts.com/app/238960

Looking at the Avg. Players column, NOT the peak colum. It doesn't give us ALL the answers, but its a billion times more reliable than your crappy peak data lol.


Real data converts outliers to usable data (or rightfully ignores them). Your data ONLY uses the outliers and no legitimate usable numbers.