Five Weeks into 0.2.0, POE2 is Down 93.2% Players All Time & 83.9% from Patch Launch

All time Peak: 578,562
0.2.0 Peak: 245,870
20 min ago: 39,791

These numbers are a staggering indictment of "The Vision" of Path of Exile 2. They started this ride 5 years ago to make an expansion and sequel to Path of Exile 1 and what they have created is a significant retrograde. The number of lessons from POE1 Un-learned is just staggering. Economy, balance, atlas, its crazy how bad they got it. If this had been the first ARPG by the company you could understand it but it wasn't. They have been making ARPGs for 12 years. No one can claim, "Oh it's Early Access so its fine." That's just "copium". The reality is that there are key decisions that have been behind the decline. Its not bugs or crashes, everyone expects that in EA. Its just plain unfathomable decisions being made.

Decisions like:

1. Let's create a new kind of game that mixes Souls Like combat with 90,000,251 enemies coming at the player at once.
2. Let's just throw the ENTIRE end game atlas which is recognized as brilliant in the trash bin and start over.
3. Let's not combine delve, maps and the atlas to create a truly rewarding endless powerful end game but instead toss it all.
4. Let's just abandon the ENTIRE crafting system that keeps the POE1 economy going because some players found it complex.
5. Let's take the ruthless playstyle, supported by 1% of the POE1 community and make it mandatory; no movement skills, anemic drops.
6. Let's completely screw up the gem system where players constantly were looking for that next socketed item because some players couldn't get 6 links and dump it for a new system that NO ONE tested.
7. Let's prevent melee chars from using brutality on more than one skill because the new gem system has some bad holes we cant fix.
8. Let's make all loot entirely random and even maps random. We want all random so that no one can have the gear tuned the way they want.
9. Let's redesign the passive tree to make it not 4 nodes to move around the parts of the tree but 30 to keep people imprisoned in their class.
10. Let's over-tag every skill binding it to weapons and heavy stat requirements because a warrior playing righteous fire must be stopped AT ALL COST in POE2, we will dictate the proper builds thank you.
11. Let's make skills so over tagged that you are imprisoned in your class, we CANNOT ALLOW BUILD DIVERSITY. For example, you MUST use nothing or a quarterstaff to use an unarmed skill like killing palm.
12. Let's make the campaign that was considered a tutorial in POE1 that people blasted through very extremely tedious and long.

These are just the bad decisions I can think of off the top of my head. I am sure others will add more in replies. Who on earth was calling these shots?

Frankly the only people happy with the game are a very small subset of customers (seems less than 5%) and Activision / Blizzard. In the run up to EA Blizzard got pooped on by making some snarky comments because they were concerned POE2 would cut into D4 revenue. They have since fallen out of their chairs laughing.

GGG could have taken POE1, put in a new graphics engine, an entire texture overhaul, a new story campaign with lots of cut scenes, trimmed off a few bad systems, combined delve and maps into a single endgame, added tutorial characters and spent the rest of the budget on marketing. That would have guaranteed success. But instead we are where we are. A broken game that the POE1 vets mostly don't want to play, that the drivebys have mostly abandoned for other titles and all that is left to do is MTX monetize the hell out of it and release it on iPhone and Android to make it like the other TenCent products.

I spent $480 (plus tax) of my money on the Liberator of Wraeclast pack, before I even saw the game because I had so much belief in GGG. But you forgot the most important part of the vision. YOUR vision isn't nearly as important as the customer's vision. Unless this is some pet project that is disposable, customers matter. And in the process you have killed POE1 with inattention.

It's time to reset. Re-eval. Call an all-hands meeting and say "guys this isn't working" and begin doing what you planned in the first place, make a SEQUEL to Path of Exile.

I got into the game after seeing my friend playing version 0.1. And I bought the support package right away. However, in version 0.2, almost all classes were severely nerfed, except for the Warrior. Now, regardless of which class you play or what Ascension you choose, the Longsword is the only weapon of choice for all playable Builds (BDs). There's no longer that feeling of a wide variety of playstyles coexisting. That's why I basically stopped playing after going through the storyline and configuring my Build (BD).

33,964 players on a Saturday night. Ouch! ='[.]'=

not even including botters and RMTers

"

Raycheetah#7060 が発言:

33,964 players on a Saturday night. Ouch! ='[.]'=

Yeah.

Was excited to play this season after running multiple builds to pinnacle bosses on release. Saw patch notes before dawn of the hunt release and said "nah."

Thought it would be a train wreck. Each week proven more right.

Less than 40k on a,Saturday night is bad

"

noodle04#6673 が発言:

Was excited to play this season after running multiple builds to pinnacle bosses on release. Saw patch notes before dawn of the hunt release and said "nah."

Thought it would be a train wreck. Each week proven more right.

Less than 40k on a,Saturday night is bad

Didnt miss much.

By contrast I just tripped over this video about POE1 and really really really wish GGG hadn't abandoned it. I will believe there is a new league when I see it. Its been over a year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8NSLIP76gI

"

Kraythax#2592 が発言:

By contrast I just tripped over this video about POE1 and really really really wish GGG hadn't abandoned it. I will believe there is a new league when I see it. Its been over a year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8NSLIP76gI

Talking about how complex PoE is for new players, I have to laugh to see all the Deuce players telling folks attempting that game to "Git gud." =^[.]^=

You can count one account out for 0.3.

And by the way. Opening poedb and look at a list of affixes doesnt make a hard/complex system. The game is rather not playable without third party services.

Thats valid for poe1 and 2. Take 10min to look into this. The only hard part in both games is to set up and understand your itemfilter.

Count me out, too. I have fun blasting. Not sorting inventory.