GGG should probably address the player retention rate

This is not to complain but to simply inform GGG of a issue that has been bothering me and is a similar issue in pretty much all the free games.... massive player turnover and extremely low player retention rates. It will harm the game in the long term but to be honest I have no idea what will be done to combat it as it needs addressed from multiple angles and is a extremely complex issue that pretty much no other games have tackled....


I'll just start the thread with a personal example of this and see where the thread spirals from there and hope that it can create an interesting dialog about the issue.


My personal experience with it:


I introduced 117 people to the game that most likely never would of tried it back when open beta started. They were playing other games at the time and agreed to join me at my insistence and ended up liking the game enough to stick around for a while and inviting other people they knew, who ended up inviting other people they knew, who ended up inviting other people they knew.... and so on. Lets cut that short at 1k people (though likely far more then that since some brought their guilds from other games with them) in that chain of friends bringing friends into this game.

As time went on though with the game launching into retail and I noticed my friends mass quitting because everyone they knew had quit, because everyone they knew had quit, because everyone they knew had quit.... and that alongside the primary reasons usually spoken of in these forums of issues people have with the game (rmt, grind, nerfs, etc). Of those people brought into the game through this chain of events I would wager that nearly no one is left playing the game and find myself on the verge of walking away and likely won't be coming back because every I know has already quit....



So the question, that I hope can spark a debate, being......

What do we (as a community) think can be done to address situations like that, in which we wanted to love the game but the lack of player retention resulting from numerous other issues causes additional players to leave the game as well?

If people choose to leave because others do, there's not much the devs can do.

RMT is a problem in all online arpgs. Don't think I can say much else there.

The grind is what you make of it. That's the way I feel anyways. You can do pretty darn well solo self found. If you meant the grind to 100, well, that's personal playing preference. Meaning, if that's your goal, and you enjoy the game, than play on :)

Nerds are bound to happen. As are buffs.

I hate spell check

in the last week i noticed the very low activity in the forums.

i'd like to share some thoughts but it feels like there's hardly anyone left to chat with :(.

"

SL4Y3R wrote:

If people choose to leave because others do, there's not much the devs can do.

This is 100% false.

"

This is 100% false.

No, this is 100% false.

A 100% free game is always going to have higher turnover than a non-free game. If there's a $60 barrier to entry, most people are only going to try it if they're pretty sure it's something they will enjoy. If it's entirely free they will be much less discriminating and try it even if they don't hold out much hope of liking it. It's free so why not right?

Realistically, how long do most people spend on any one game? Everyone I know in RL (besides myself) that played diablo 2, never really played past normal difficulty. Play it, finish the game, move on to next game. Most people who played super metroid just played it, finished it, and moved on. Only a small dedicated hard core of players continued playing until this day, collecting 100% of items, doing speed runs, imposing artificial restrictions on themselves to make speedruns harder, and prolong their enjoyment of the game. Everyone has a different point at which they move on. For most people that point will be measured in hours played, not days, weeks, or months played.

"

Malice wrote:

A 100% free game is always going to have higher turnover than a non-free game. If there's a $60 barrier to entry, most people are only going to try it if they're pretty sure it's something they will enjoy. If it's entirely free they will be much less discriminating and try it even if they don't hold out much hope of liking it. It's free so why not right?

Realistically, how long do most people spend on any one game? Everyone I know in RL (besides myself) that played diablo 2, never really played past normal difficulty. Play it, finish the game, move on to next game. Most people who played super metroid just played it, finished it, and moved on. Only a small dedicated hard core of players continued playing until this day, collecting 100% of items, doing speed runs, imposing artificial restrictions on themselves to make speedruns harder, and prolong their enjoyment of the game. Everyone has a different point at which they move on. For most people that point will be measured in hours played, not days, weeks, or months played.

It seems to be a build up of other issues that takes a life of all it's own...



That is always going to be a issue in these kinds of games but it seems to build up to a worse issue pretty surprisingly fast and reach a breaking point before we tend to notice it. There have been other f2p games I've played that as a result of it have gone from servers being packed all the time to ghost towns seemingly overnight.


That is why I asked here, because it seems to gather other issues together into a multi-headed entity all of it's own and once the breaking point hits things get worse at a MUCH faster rate... with people quitting because other people are already quitting it moves faster and faster...


I have no idea what is or can be done about it honestly and why I made a thread to ask about it :/

"

Malice wrote:

A 100% free game is always going to have higher turnover than a non-free game. If there's a $60 barrier to entry, most people are only going to try it if they're pretty sure it's something they will enjoy. If it's entirely free they will be much less discriminating and try it even if they don't hold out much hope of liking it. It's free so why not right?

Realistically, how long do most people spend on any one game? Everyone I know in RL (besides myself) that played diablo 2, never really played past normal difficulty. Play it, finish the game, move on to next game. Most people who played super metroid just played it, finished it, and moved on. Only a small dedicated hard core of players continued playing until this day, collecting 100% of items, doing speed runs, imposing artificial restrictions on themselves to make speedruns harder, and prolong their enjoyment of the game. Everyone has a different point at which they move on. For most people that point will be measured in hours played, not days, weeks, or months played.

this is true. and there is a solution for that - make a game competitive so people can fulfill that need of being 'better' and treat it as sport. another solution - tried by d3 - is to make game a legit income source failed badly. people will still RMT in not so legit way but it has its risks even if negligible in case of poe (few bans of high profile players?.. not enough!)

currently poe IS NOT competetive. races etc seasons are all nice but this is not competition due to:
- RNG playing more than important role (got MS boots at the vendor and quicksilver drop from first rhoa? congrats, what color demi would you like?)
- partying/trading to the top (With all that rmt/cross-trading and 'outsmarting' ggg)
- success is directly proportional to time SPENT not SKILL. ofc newbie will not win any race. but newbie playing 50hours will win with Kripp playing 10hours.

game that is not competetive can only defend itself with fun, smooth, creative gameplay and (if people are in for that - most arent) social aspect of doing something together

first part is half fun. game IS fun. is semi-creative (after you get good you realize that game is in fact very shallow because some mechanics are simply WAY more powerful - block, spell block, blind, attack speed) but is not so smooth (desync.. is unacceptable in 2014)

social aspect - ill let others judge. i play poe solo (my two rl gaming buddies quit before i managed to add them to the list - one turned off by some install issues another desynced before killing hillock..) and hate the notion of being FORCED to play in parties if i want to be successful (reach end-game) as i do not like to rely on strangers (frequently 20y younger than me) to have fun. also i hate trading. this is not real life. i bet gaming-tycoons are not so successful in real life trading and want to compensate somehow.



i think that ggg should for some time now polish the game. remove quirks that irk people, remove frequent complaint causes simply make it 'smooth'. so when someone asks 'is X fixed already' you can finally say 'yep!'


because adding new skills/gems/uniques bi-weekly does little to poe population:
http://steamgraph.net/index.php?action=graph&jstime=1&appid=238960&from=1382392800000&to=End+Time

and if this is ever to be competetive races have to use FIXED (for all instances) seed and trading should be disabled no matter what. then you can test individual skill. just like fixed seed civ4bts challenges that up to this day attract thousands of players to check who can better manage the same scenario.

ps. another point is that this game is actively hostile to new players (convoluted, unclear mechanics; no respec; aggressive community full of scammers + trading being so forced on players). this is not a game that i'd EVER recommend to casual player. and truth be told there are WAY more casual players than hardcore gamers. economics suggest that first group should not be ignored

"

UnderOmerta wrote:

"

SL4Y3R wrote:

If people choose to leave because others do, there's not much the devs can do.

This is 100% false.

I have to agree with underOmerta on this. If people are leaving, and if that causes other people to leave, then it certainly seems like it is possible to identify why people are leaving - which leads to more people leaving - and attempt to address it. Now, maybe people are leaving for frivolous reasons, maybe people aren't really leaving at all and this is just subjective dissonance at work. However, I don't think it is outside GGG's power to prevent people from leaving if the reasons for their departure are wide spread, correctable, and able to be prevented.