PoE 2 has lost over 80% of its players in 3 months.

how is it supposed to retain people when it has no content, no build variety and millions of bugs? I honestly don't even know why people are still playing poe 2, there's literally nothing to do and there are like 5 builds total

I have dozens of irl friends who are, or who were playing the game, almost every single one of them stopped playing after the campaign. they were shocked to hear that they'll have to do the campaign after every league cycle

it takes about 60-80 hours for casuals to finish the campaign. did ggg really think that those people will come back to the game every 3-4 months and go through the same thing? the people the game is losing at the moment are not diehard poe fans, they are casuals

poe 2 is supposed to be casual friendly, at least compared to poe 1, but it has failed terribly. it might be able to reach the EA release numbers when 1.0 is out, but the trend that was obvious in poe 1, which is the fact that it kept gaining players with every league, won't be the case for poe 2. most of the casuals won't return after they finish the campaign once

poe 1 is not casual friendly at all, and that is its strength. poe 2 tried to be casual friendly, but it failed and ironically this turned out to be its weakness

the bigger question is how many of the 500k players lost over 2 months, will come back when changes are made or new things are added

as the pattern is currently, more will leave. but how many will return? my guess not that many, as alot of people consider it as they have completed the game and moved on

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auspexa#1404 a écrit :

poe 2 tried to be casual friendly, but it failed and ironically this turned out to be its weakness

More like they claimed it would be (and to one degree the semi useful gem suggestions are, but better builds don’t use those suggestions) but ended up being as casual friendly (or rather not) as PoE.
I think we will get the campaign down to under 15 hours with practice but that depends on the last 3 acts we have yet so see, this is still almost double the expert (and far more than the hardcore) player and might discourage even the PoE regulars from playing PoE2 as much or as often.

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gX_kiD#0166 a écrit :

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JEE_ZUZ#0982 a écrit :

Then they neglecting it's popularity letting it to lose numbers.

No company would deliberately neglect a product that has reached even more people than previous products.

All of this reeks of GGG having bitten off way more than they could chew, and from support to the dev team, I'd assume they're simply completely overwhelmed at this point, slowly realizing that their vision doesn't align at all with the resources available to them.

What they DO neglect however, is a basic level of transparency and communication.

They seem to think that simply ignoring customers will help making the problems go away, when in reality that's how you exacerbate them.


People have shown a tremendous amount of faith and patience in GGG, and they're currently flushing all that good will down the drain.

I didnt say they neglect the product. I was saying they neglect numbers, the game popularity. And they may "chew" more than that, and after they chew there will be 10.000 players remaining give or take, because again their business model is such, when the players buy [snipped and erased into oblivion] after it they are free to go till the next league. It works well with any amount of players since POE1 was launched.

I only was trying to say that I did expect the game will be more casual-friendly as the person above mentioned and just fun to play at any day.
(But also it assumes they would have to change their business model)

Speaking of communication it is not as bad as you say:
A few people were complaining about Ritual bug and it's gone in a days. Then people were saying Breach sometimes cause disconnect, this bug gone too soon. There is many more examples I believe.

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Battle_Baboon#3734 a écrit :

the bigger question is how many of the 500k players lost over 2 months, will come back when changes are made or new things are added

as the pattern is currently, more will leave. but how many will return? my guess not that many, as a lot of people consider it as they have completed the game and moved on

Yeah, kind of. I didn't play POE1; just join for POE2. I completed the campaign... but just because I got a key from a friend and felt bad not to finish it.

My impression of POE2 is pretty bad and I don't think that anything "minor" will bring me back. It would require a foundational reform to even bother.

I guess POE2 had a window this December when not many bigger tittles were released and had no competition. Fast forwarding, my expectation is that game will have a broader player base than POE1. But that's was the objective all along, to be a prime business success, not necessarily a worthy game experience.

Anyway, aside POE2 game state and GGG arguable customer policies, my biggest grievance so far is how many white knights this game has.

Feel free to disagree as much as you like. That's fair play. But please just judge what your eyes see, not what your brain tells you to believe.

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Lord_Arami#5382 a écrit :

that's was the objective all along, to be a prime business success, not necessarily a worthy game experience.

This is the part people completely ignore in the discussion...

GGG is a company and PoE is a product. GGG uses PoE to make money. It doesn't have to be good. It doesn't have to be better than the competition. It has to make enough money so that GGG evaluates that its performance is good.

Gambling mechanics embedded everywhere, huge time sink of braindead grinding watching things explode with your cool cosmetics, severe pushback every now and then (because the game is too easy and they need to make it feel difficult somehow).
Everything stacks up for this game to be just your regular low-effort money grabber.

The only people I actively praise within GGG are the designers. They make this game, its effects and cosmetics look very good. I don't think GGG would make so much money if it were not for them.

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Battle_Baboon#3734 a écrit :

the bigger question is how many of the 500k players lost over 2 months, will come back when changes are made or new things are added

as the pattern is currently, more will leave. but how many will return? my guess not that many, as alot of people consider it as they have completed the game and moved on

Yup. This is what me and a lot of other POE1 vets that aren't afraid to criticize the devs have been saying since day 1.

A lot of the players POE2 had during its initial peak are "tourists" that will play the game once, get to end game, realize it sucks, get bored, and never come back. I expect another little bump in player base once the game is officially released with 1.0, but that will again be mostly tourists.

I think we will end up with ~350k seasonal peaks tops, and that's if all the POE1 players come back and play POE2. As it is, the devs are listening to the tourists, not their POE1 vets that made them successful. If they don't change a lot of things in POE2, then I think they will end up with lower seasonal peaks than Settlers of Kalgur.

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92ranger#4205 a écrit :

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Battle_Baboon#3734 a écrit :

the bigger question is how many of the 500k players lost over 2 months, will come back when changes are made or new things are added

as the pattern is currently, more will leave. but how many will return? my guess not that many, as alot of people consider it as they have completed the game and moved on

Yup. This is what me and a lot of other POE1 vets that aren't afraid to criticize the devs have been saying since day 1.

A lot of the players POE2 had during its initial peak are "tourists" that will play the game once, get to end game, realize it sucks, get bored, and never come back. I expect another little bump in player base once the game is officially released with 1.0, but that will again be mostly tourists.

I think we will end up with ~350k seasonal peaks tops, and that's if all the POE1 players come back and play POE2. As it is, the devs are listening to the tourists, not their POE1 vets that made them successful. If they don't change a lot of things in POE2, then I think they will end up with lower seasonal peaks than Settlers of Kalgur.

That point is also emphasized by this particular genre not having many quality releases per year.

Virtually ANY arpg'ish game (isometric view + different classes progressing their characters through a fantasy story) has seen record numbers on Steam when released.

Wolcen: 130k
Last Epoch: 260k
Lost Ark: 1.3 million

There is simply a hunger for something new & good in the arpg crowd, and they will initially jump on almost anything.

I'm sure even Diablo 4 had great sales numbers for the vanilla version, and I would be very surprised if they even managed to retain half of that player base for the expansion.

And if the aforementioned games are anything to go by, getting player numbers back to that initial launch peak is next to impossible for any game. Feel free to check out their current Steam numbers if you need a laugh.

Complainers talks like this game was released long ago, GGG didn't even released their first big patch yet (0.2), they are CURRENTLY learning from their mistakes.

Nerfs, buffs and new content is coming, just be patient, they took some dev time to make a quick league for PoE1 as they are trying to please both communities, PoE2's turn is next, please be patient.

As for the retention you can blame the marketing for that, it brought a lot of tourists that probably won't come back, PoE2 by itself is doing pretty well.

Pretty sure a big reason for us on hongkong server is that we do not have microtransactions, at least not on PS5. So we can't trade, and stash is limited. It's simply unplayable and ggg instead is focusing on irrelevant bug fixes.