Trendspotting: POE Playerbase almost halved on Steam alone since the release of Awakening

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demon9675 a écrit :

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Xavderion a écrit :

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Zhatan a écrit :

We lost about 66% of the players in a little over a month. Saving the map system cant be allowed to take over a month. Add to that the crafting scandal..

Well, you see where this is going.

You're projecting your pet peeves with the game onto the whole population. Most people don't care about 74+ maps or the "crafting scandal". Most people don't even know about the latter.

But the people most likely to be supporters do.

That's kind of the point, I reckon the amount of monetary support is not represented by some Steam charts. For example I play over Steam and I play way less than I played a month before. This means less Steam hours from me and also means less players on Steam charts. What it doesn't mean is that I'm completely gone and will never support the game again :) I liked your post though, no bad intentions by cutting it off.

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blackstar a écrit :

+33% of playerbase are flippers or trying to scam the s*** out of newbs
bad traders try to copy the flippers and completely overprice many necessary items for builds, so no one can play them
a lot of online time needed to be successful farm/selling gear to the lower foodchain

I literally just wrote a 1000 word essay on why financial intermediaries (banks, etc.) are necessary in the real world due to asymmetric information. (buyers know more than sellers, or vice versa)
In PoE, that would mean an auction house. (NOT a real money one)

The more the asymmetric information, the more profitable it will be to simply play the economy and not work or add to the economy, which ultimately harms the society.
In real life, they are called speculators

In PoE, they are called flippers

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Xavderion a écrit :

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demon9675 a écrit :

But the people most likely to be supporters do.

That's kind of the point, I reckon the amount of monetary support is not represented by some Steam charts. For example I play over Steam and I play way less than I played a month before. This means less Steam hours from me and also means less players on Steam charts. What it doesn't mean is that I'm completely gone and will never support the game again :) I liked your post though, no bad intentions by cutting it off.

:) Thanks! I hope others read it and feel the same way.

Yeah I'm not gone for good either, I've just been taking a break and playing other things/doing stuff IRL.

Still haunting the forums, though. Clearly.

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Berylstone a écrit :

A lot of prominent MMORPGs are guilty of this as well.

They do drastic game changes that alter or even ruin many character builds.

On a game like Path of Exile: where building a character requires a lot of time and effort that can be extremely punishing.

As an example: my highest level character was destroyed by this expansion. He used to perform magnificently. Now he's just fodder for the mobs and a good way for me to get pissed off when I want to die and lose hours and hours of hard work getting experience.

That's the problem with this expansion. It has obliterated the hard work of a lot of players. One free re-spec was not enough compensation. I have dumped over 50 regrets and many exalts getting new gear to try and save my character. All have been in vain.

Luckily I was able to salvage an older character of mine (again by using many regrets) and have found a build that works in the new system. Had that not been the case however: I could easily see myself walking away as well. So I can understand the mass exodus you speak of on Steam.

My point and the bottom line is that when developers make sweeping changes to their game I would prefer they accommodate their players in a more significant fashion so the transition process is less expensive and frustrating.

Play temp leagues.

So, now we are below the values of May, before 2.0.

Is it time to start to worry yet?

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Zhatan a écrit :

So, now we are below the values of May, before 2.0.

Is it time to start to worry yet?

No, not yet, maybe people that are playing the game should worry a little, as economy centric game the low population will have a impact on the trading.

But GGG should not yet worry , not until it hits very low levels, and the game is not there yet.

But really the speed of how fast people are leaving is somewhat strange I must say. This is the first time ever the drop in player base is this fast. Maybe people expected to much from the expansion (as the jump in player numbers with the expansion was really high).

I've been a recurring player in PoE since whatever my date of joining is.

I come, play a while, look at what is new, and then I'm gone.

Reasons I can't stay in PoE for long: Game doesn't look polished, and likely wont ever be. Game should run better than it does on my PC (has me thinking the coding is far from polished as well). Plus GGG idea of balance is a joke.

Reasons I inevitably come back: Lack of games with good mechanics in the market, specially in MMOs and action games, as much as I search MMOs seem bent on remaining oversimplitic.


Maybe the player exodus is due to many recent games that have become available as of late: Skyforge, Aura Kingdom, Echo of Souls, Heroes of the Storm or Dota 2 Reborn, there are also many other fresh titles as well that I can't recall by name or belong to areas that don't much cater to my tastes.

Anyway, mostly all new games are again oversimplistic, but people have to play in order to get fed up and start raising torches against oversimplistic gameplay.. had my fill a while ago ^^

GGG should start working on something new, PoE2 or maybe a MMO model called Land of Exile. Dunno. The thing is Lost Ark Online looks promising, same for Lineage Eternal and the Tree of Savior. If any of the 3 don't take the oversimplistic road, I'm sticking to these.

There are too many new games comming up and its a fish eat fish sea out there, at some point one has to start dishing out well tought, complex gameplay. This game gonna have so much people in it due to word of mouth alone, that its servers will implode =]

D3 season.

is ded mane close the gades

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TheWretch a écrit :

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Xavderion a écrit :

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Prisus a écrit :

Not really surprising.

"most" people play games to have fun and don't want a game that's too involved. (See D3's model).

People grind for money every day...most don't want to play a game where you have to do the same thing.

POE, first and foremost, has always been about preserving it's economy.

Lot of people just want shit to drop so they can use it for a while and try different builds. This is more of a niche game.

POE = Economy > Fun.

Always has been always will be.

I'd love to see a D3 player concurrency chart from the beginning of a season and then one month later. I'd bet my left kidney it looks pretty much exactly like PoE's.

So will that kidney be shipped in a cooler or a lunchbox?

Old by this point but this was pre RoS

Spoiler

E: The population isn't a peak and valley type deal like PoE's. The way they have it set-up most people go back to their non-seasonals after they've acquired all the seasonal perks/goodies.

d3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljn9jdKkeds