The reason for the low level of active players in Path of Exile

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Hyskoa wrote:

Well, POE's problem is that Diablo 2 exists. People have already experienced near perfection.

Comedy gold.

Could not care less if I was the only one left playing this game. GGG has already made a very decent amount of money from this game and catering to the casuals WILL destroy this game for us "no lifers". And apparently we, the "no lifers" are willing to spend our hard earned money for a game that suits us while some of the casuals are content to pay nothing and then complain that a game that is free to play is doing it wrong.

I played PoE for a Year, I think that's enough for now, there is not enough new content to keep going, I'm not having fun to raise one chara after another, I want progress, I want to reach Level 99 without endless map grinding, I want good unique drops, less desync and overall better game experience.

I really start to look jealous to the upcoming Diablo 3 Expansion, Blizzard is currently adding a TON of good stuff, basicly everything that fans missed since the beginning- And the D3 disaster was actualy the reason why I started with PoE. Ironical, D3 now it's the reason why I may stop with PoE. :D

GGG really need to rethink their strategy with PoE, the current path may leed to an dead end. Regular adding of Microtransactions and new Uniques that either are crap or if not, never drop are NOT the way to make PoE more interesting or even rewarding.

I hope GGG has more in the backhand than that.

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Fusion_Power wrote:

I want to reach Level 99 without endless map grinding.

How can anyone take you seriously after this?

Im not one to argue player count, if the game can run and develop with enough constant activity to provide an adequate gaming experience, nothing else should matter.

Be that 500 players or 500 million.

Hell I hate the MMORPG arguments about player count, doesn't matter past your own server of like 5000-10000 players, youll never see the other 100k or 1m players so what does it matter.


I think the overall point of discussions like this, and really these talks should involve Chris, is the overall vision of this game.

Does Chris want this game to remain a hardcore niche game? Does he want it to grow into a game of epic proportions? Does he want this game to be another Titan Quest, with a small but loyal following or a D2 type game, where everyone and their mother loves it, hardcore and casual alike.

Given everything ive heard from Chris, I think you can pretty much assume they'll bleed the game dry trying to appeal to the hardcore crowd. Which is fine by me. There are other options.


I see the top complaints being about

Desync (which doesn't exist, a problem on my end, and every game has it...despite no other game ive ever played acted this way, I have an overkill rig, and a constant and low ping...yet every pack of mobs I see it in varying amounts of severity)

Trading, which apparently is more important that killing monsters for loot, and entertaining. Despite so many people hate it.

Endgame, which for some reason everyone thinks should be entertaining and accessible to some degree.


Desync can be fixed. Dodging melee isn't unique to this game, no matter how much the developers want to believe this. I was dodging boss swings and certain trash mob melee attacks in D3, a game they specifically pointed out as not having this capability... Ive played many games with server side calculations and no desync (noticeable desyc), ive played games with mixed server and client and hacking wasn't an issue. Its a cop out to avoid costly recoding.

Trading can be fixed. Oh the wasted opportunity this problem is. Cant have a self found league because it will fracture the population but hardcore leagues don't. They know 95% of the player base will flee from the economy based game and they don't want that. This is an EASY fix.

Endgame can be made accessible and hardcore, even exclusive (perhaps the wrong choice of word) Making the trip to 100 unrewarding, needlessly time consuming, and incredibly boring isn't the way to make something exclusive. Endgame isn't fun, its costly, there isn't a reward for the time spent getting there. A fix that should have been present in Act3 when it was launched, perhaps with Act 5 though...


Three issues...major issues. One has the simplest fix ive ever seen shunned. One should have been worked on full time since closed beta but wasn't, and its a costly and time consuming fix that's being ignored/shrugged off because of costs and time needed (but could have been fixed by now had they addressed it properly) and the other should at least be addressed with new content.

So this game instead of snowballing into a game of epic proportions will bleed off people slowly, seeing an incredibly new player turn over rate (I think it was only 10% of steam users even get past brutus).

Personally, ive given them my $120, ive been in and out since launch, nothing I had hoped would be fixed is being addressed, im sure ill be back for act4 if ROS and MH arnt keeping me interested...but im pretty much done being a spender.

I will say its been an incredibly epic waste of the spotlight however. So few games, if any, get a chance that POE got. Id say they squandered it though elitism arrogance. But then the "yes men" within the fan base couldn't care less, and that's who Chris appeals to.


You can appeal to both hardcore and casual. Easy to pick up, difficult to master. The winning motto of all classic games. its not easy to do, but its certainly possible. Chris should invest some effort into that equation imo. Its possible to make POE appealing to both casuals and hard core tryhards.

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CoAx wrote:

There is just nothing more disheartening than finally finding a good drop on your own and then going through all your currency in seconds and you still can't get the damn thing to 5-link!!

That is enough for a lot of people to just give up right there.

Read this, I think you'll like it: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/764130

I do agree with that, due to insane linking, the feeling when you drop something great lasts for about 0,1 seconds. Then you remember that you have to surrender your life to the grind in PoE for fusings and still run a good chance of not getting anywhere with it. Obviously, this will have to change, it's only a question of how many players are GGG willing to lose til that happens.

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Spandex_Warrior wrote:

It is always the idiots who got lucky defending drop rates. They tremble at the thought of others threatening their e-supremacy in an artificial world.

There are also newbs who are in honeymoon phase and havent experienced for themselves how bad can it get. They'll defend the droprates, RNG and everything cause they believe they'll have that awesome item, 6L, while others wont. And then one day, reality sets in..

This game is outrageously stingy with the loot, and at the same time, loot is what enables PoE's main feature: build diversity. This is really the problem. Without the absurdly rare build-enabling items, there's like less than ten builds that are seriously worth playing. Aside from making self-found play a joke, this also just makes the gameplay boring for the exact same reason that everybody hated D3 in the beginning: you don't find your gear, you find "money" with which to buy gear others found. It's the game's main failing and the reason I quit.

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tinko92 wrote:

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Fusion_Power wrote:

I want to reach Level 99 without endless map grinding.

How can anyone take you seriously after this?

Open your mind. ;) Maps are basicly just an addition to the endgame imho. I expect to level more in regular areas which is realistic if you remember that GGG will add more acts later. Currently the max. regular act level is 68, which is basicly nothing if you want to level over 80. I expect mid 70's acts for act 4 where leveling should work better. We know act 4 will not be the last one so expect to reach level 90+ in the future with the regular gameplay during the acts.

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Dragon585 wrote:

Could not care less if I was the only one left playing this game. GGG has already made a very decent amount of money from this game and catering to the casuals WILL destroy this game for us "no lifers". And apparently we, the "no lifers" are willing to spend our hard earned money for a game that suits us while some of the casuals are content to pay nothing and then complain that a game that is free to play is doing it wrong.

With all due respect, this is not coming from casuals. You are thinking black and white and thus do not consider balance.

It is a problem for PoE that it is tabu to go any other direction than more punishing at all times. Punishing =/= best quality game.

I want the game to live up to and succeed the ARPG legacy that i grew up loving and playing as much as i could, i do not want it to be strangely misunderstood in ways that means only those who have all day long everyday can enjoy it.

Children that live at home and go to school won't find time to experience PoE as much as i was able to experience D1 & D2 while also exploring other games and genres as i was growing up.

My group of people is now older, and if all they have left in their life is to play PoE from the wake up till they go to sleep in order to really live out that childhood escapism, then i would dare claim it would be better for their own life to add more things to do. Even for the sake of escapism the experience is just better when more rewarding, that is the strength of escapism, you go to a mental state where it takes less investment for you to feel successful. When games copy real life harshness they are using the realm of fantasy, being able to create anything, less than optimally.

That is also why the overzealous punishment of players in order to protect the economy is bad, it attempts to be real life stability. In reality they have short leagues that reset every 4 months. They could make things drop 4-5 times as much and it would still be harder to farm the best gears than it was in Diablo (i am not advocating such big increases). While PoE is better than Diablo, Diablo was better at its time than PoE is to now. Recognize that. I do not mean to disrespect PoE in saying that, it is the best game there is at the moment, but there are some people who tend to neglect what made ARPG's what they were.