General Discussion - Trendspotting: POE Playerbase almost halved on Steam alone since the release of Awakening - Forum

Eh i played all leagues here ( since domination ) and never saw one who feel so empty after not even a month. That's not only about steam's chart ^^ But yeah there are some reasons outside of the game depending in wich hemisphere most userbase is a lot may be simply in holidays or driving a car on the moon. Hf :)	Posté par Heli0nix#0378 le 11 août 2015 à 13:46:27 Citer ce post
Most of the people I know who play PoE don't even have it tied to their Steam accounts. The item is yours when it is in your bag.	Posté par Ushela#2383 le 11 août 2015 à 13:58:05 Citer ce post
" Ushela a écrit : Most of the people I know who play PoE don't even have it tied to their Steam accounts. I sure as hell don't, and I wouldn't be on Steam at all if I hadn't had to have it to update Skyrim. =>[.]<= =^[.]^= basic (happy/amused) cheetahmoticon: Whiskers/eye/tear-streak/nose/tear-streak/eye/ whiskers =@[.]@= boggled / =>[.]<= annoyed or angry / ='[.]'= concerned / =0[.]o= confuzzled / =-[.]-= sad or sleepy / =[.]= dazzled / =^[.]~= wink / =~[.]^= naughty wink / =9[.]9= rolleyes #FourYearLie	Posté par Raycheetah#7060 le 11 août 2015 à 17:03:55 Membre Alpha Citer ce post
" laycast a écrit : This is one of the most unsatisfying content updates ever. The only fantastic things they introduced was to the engine of the game, such as the lockstep changes, and the loot filter. Questing system is extremely unrewarding. Balance of skill tree and unique item drop rate is bad. Map changes are trash. General monster balance is bad. It really feels like the game is being pulled into 2 directions. One direction is a "hardcore" grind fest (lowered unique drop rate, lowered map drop rate, so many things you have to sink currency into). The other one is somewhat casual with a lot of short cuts (gem vendor, condensed acts) I quit playing two weeks into the league. Overall this release feels like a beta, but i'll check back next leagues +1, played for 2 weeks, then it became like a day here and there, now i dont bother anymore. This is the first time i feel like PoE is not interesting anymore, usually i was just bored for playing too much or other reasons. Act 4 feels like a marathon, where you run FOREVER in a straight line basically, only visiting the best zone quickly(dried lake). And it is all for 2 quests, skill book, and Malachai. Regarding the Malachai fight, i think there is still too much stuff going on in cruel. Like when you have to kill piety, he still throws a barrage of shit at you, and piety attacks you, and these bloody things allover. It is not even hard imo, it is just that, when i have to use 50% of the time just to dodge 2-3 attacks that are always happening, makes the fight take a long time. I think the dmg dealt from everything in that fight is totally fine though! I still dont understand how act 4 was meant as an alternative to maps, when monsters in a4m has twice the health and dmg compared to 68-70 maps, why would ANYONE go in there, except for maybe boss farming later.(ignoring aqueduct and dried lake farming). Even though i "quit" PoE for now, i would probably like to check out the next league, as long as i dont get too hooked on Fallout 4 :) You just wasted 3 seconds reading this. Dernière édition par Tian_Yihao#4319, le 11 août 2015 à 17:51:20	Posté par Tian_Yihao#4319 le 11 août 2015 à 17:47:00 Citer ce post
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.	Posté par Prizy#1622 le 11 août 2015 à 17:58:45 Citer ce post
" laycast a écrit : I've been playing for over 3 years. This is one of the most unsatisfying content updates ever. The only fantastic things they introduced was to the engine of the game, such as the lockstep changes, and the loot filter. New skills are terribly boring. Questing system is extremely unrewarding. Balance of skill tree and unique item drop rate is bad. With the addition of jewels, and divination cards, there are now more things we have to trade for. The trade system is just as bad as ever. Map changes are trash. General monster balance is bad. It really feels like the game is being pulled into 2 directions. One direction is a "hardcore" grind fest (lowered unique drop rate, lowered map drop rate, so many things you have to sink currency into). The other one is somewhat casual with a lot of short cuts (gem vendor, condensed acts) I quit playing two weeks into the league. Overall this release feels like a beta, but i'll check back next leagues • New skills Just 2 examples: 1. WildStrike @70+ clears maps faster than any other meele skill. [Dyadus/dreamfeather/ThreeDragons GG] And its 10x more fun to play than Cyclone or Sweep. 2. Fortify made almost every Meele build viable + insane DPS/DEF increase if you pick up the tree nodes. etc etc • What kind of quest rewards do you expect? Who plays games like PoE/D2 for quest rewards? • Procurement takes 5 min to update every single day and trading takes 10-15 sec. Compared to a annoying AH where you need to spend ages to set everying up it is a lot less time consuming atm. • I had 4 stash tabs full of uniques after 4 days, the drop rate is just fine. Even T1 Uniques drop more often than before. • Map changes are fine, playing with 2 friends and we have 6 stash tabs full of maps (all self found). People bitch about 74+ Drop rate but dont even know how to build a decent base before actually farming 74+'s. I just delete most maps since you usually get 2-4 counter drops every single time even in higher Maps. - I do understand that some people prefer to play solo all day but once you get 20+ 74's there is no way you wont be able to get a decent 75 base and keep going for higher maps unless you roll useless mods/quant. Domination @74+ maps gives a shit ton of map drops and lets be honest 10C is nothing even when you play self-found. 7777777777777777777777777777777777777777	Posté par Tr3Angel#1339 le 11 août 2015 à 18:36:52 Citer ce post
" Tr3Angel a écrit : • Map changes are fine, playing with 2 friends and we have 6 stash tabs full of maps (all self found). People bitch about 74+ Drop rate but dont even know how to build a decent base before actually farming 74+'s. I just delete most maps since you usually get 2-4 counter drops every single time even in higher Maps. - I do understand that some people prefer to play solo all day but once you get 20+ 74's there is no way you wont be able to get a decent 75 base and keep going for higher maps unless you roll useless mods/quant. Domination @74+ maps gives a shit ton of map drops and lets be honest 10C is nothing even when you play self-found. I think you underestimate the variance involved in a heavily rng based system. When you're splitting odds over 6 players, getting a viable/sustainable map pool is easier than solo. I am kinda new to PoE - but i've run into a brick wall getting enough 74 maps, which is mainly due to variance, on the other hand ive had 3 drillnecks drop and 5 exalts in my one month playtime, so i'm doing well in other areas. The bottomline is, that if you have enough manpower to farm 6 times as much 72/73 maps as I can alone, odds are in favour of six people getting a healthier 74+ map pool than me on my own. RNG gives fuck all what it drops and when it drops, and can only be evened out by huge volume. Gating map drops in a similar fashion as uniques behind obscure RNG mechanics is detrimental to the game in the longterm, imo. I also frown upon the logic having drops capped at +2 max, but apparently its fine to get a 68 map drop from a 75 map boss. It's not really that big of a deal to me, because i can buy stuff, but im sure a lot of people will have had way worse variance than i have across the board and probably have no 'money' to buy a bunch of maps. tl;dr Variance can be pretty hardcore, when you farm with six guys you are balancing out a lot of badrun compared to people trying to setup a map pool alone (when variance can be pretty brutal), RNG gating maps is detrimental to the game longterm. Dernière édition par _PapaLegba_#5516, le 12 août 2015 à 03:01:38	Posté par _PapaLegba_#5516 le 12 août 2015 à 03:00:37 Citer ce post
" 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. GGG banning all political discussion shortly after getting acquired by China is a weird coincidence.	Posté par Xavderion#3432 le 12 août 2015 à 05:39:58 Citer ce post
Drop rates are pretty awesome in this game. You guys dont know bad drops like original inferno where you just couldnt progress period beyond act 2 inferno. Only way to do it was a) group with a good group with synergy. b) abuse something quickly patched like energy armor bug c) buy loot from A's. PoE you can beat game self found. You can even make low tier maps. With masters its better than ever. Git R Dun!	Posté par Aim_Deep#3474 le 12 août 2015 à 06:14:27 Citer ce post
" CharanJaydemyr a écrit : The new skills are amazing, are you kidding? Compared to any other patch or update, The Awakening added a ridiculous number of new build possibilities. Questing isn't really meant to be rewarding. It's more just a scaffold for progression through unraveling the secrets of Wraeclast (and, if you're a typical 'hardcore' gamer, to get to Maps). The fact that quests now unlock a bunch of vendor gems just lends strength to that belief -- there's no real reason for it, other than 'it makes the players happy'. The condensing of the act progression is MOSTLY good, but there are a few zones missing that I can't quite accept, notably something between Riverways and the Western Forest (since Western Forest is now way too cramped with quest events) and the old Aqueducts under Sarn, which represented the journey from one side of the river to the other -- if you look at the map, it seems like quite the distance. I've found more uniques just goofing around Normal and Cruel in the past week of fairly casual play than I have in weeks of any other league's first third. Sure, they're not all amazing tier 1, but they're good for what they are. Two Crests of Perandus, a Wurm's Molt, Reverberation Rod, Springleaf, Rustbeak...simple leveling uniques good for passing down to make that first handful of levels easier. And I see my guildies, much higher level, finding cool stuff all the time. I suspect that chasing t1s is as futile as ever, but eh, not the point here. Uniques overall are in a good place drop-wise. The Skilldrasil is also in a VERY good place right now. I'm playing characters from all areas and have no problems seeing where I want to go and how to get there. The number of new, potent notables is too numerous to list, but with stuff like Snowforged, Blast Cascade, Rampart and Explosive Impact, all the classes got some fun new toys to try out. The addition of jewels and Divination cards are not intrinsically linked to the idea of trade alone. They are perfectly adequate if not amazingly necessary for a self-found player. They added more things you CAN trade for, but not more things you HAVE to trade for. Please understand the difference and know that any feeling of necessity is on you and your standards, not the game's. Chasing the challenges? You would have had to trade aggressively anyway. Want to Map towards 90+? Same deal. The Trade System is just as bad as ever. Map changes are not good. I've read enough and talked to enough people to get that. This seems to be your only truly legitimate complaint in this list, and I feel it might be colouring your perception of the rest of the expansion. General monster balance is actually a lot better than it was in 1.3. The difficulty spike from Act 4 normal to Act 1 cruel is to me much less jarring than it was when it was Sceptre of God/Dominus to Act 1 cruel. It's far from smooth, but it's been improved. I feel most mobs in act 4 are a lot fairer than the croaking chimerals of the Sceptre, which had/have both fast attacks and slowing abilities. What I DO find tragic is the implementation of Warbands. They're just roadblocks on legs for normal self-found play, and damage soak brick shithouse encounters if you're twinked or partied. I can't adequately describe what a letdown they are compared to Tempest, which is a very cool idea 'wasted' by being a gimmick a lot of players won't touch by virtue of the league it punctuates. But hey, ymmv and all that. Enjoy the break. Are we playing the same game? With cyclone topping everything just above incinerators and flametotemers? (you got a few PA and SRS aswell but thats about it) The balance between builds are worse then ever before. (unless you count all the shit builds that ppl do for fun). I personally think this is mainly because of the defences are beeing so scrwed up. The new rarity tiers on uniques makes it so you find even more of the junk unqiues and dont even bother picking them up. Add to that a broken map system and the tradesystem that is only even useable through 3rd party applications. I would say that lootfilter and lockstep are the only 2 good changes here, everything else was better in 1.3. And I guess thats why the drop in players was even steeper this time around. Oh, and ofc, warbands sucking donkey balls. But we seem to agree that at least. Dernière édition par Zhatan#4250, le 12 août 2015 à 12:00:17	Posté par Zhatan#4250 le 12 août 2015 à 11:59:39 Citer ce post