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

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Grohuf#4121 が発言:

PoE1 was never good in keeping attracted audience. Unlike games like Counter-Strike or Dota 2 it never had constant online. It always dropped after start of the league. Strange to see different behavior here.

Wrong comparison even if PoE 1 is quite a competitive game, but its not in the same way. CS and Dota 2 is not a player vs scripted content, its a player vs player game where every "match" or gaming session will always have something different than the previous session, its a dynamic game.

PoE 1 have the same problem with other online live-service RPG game, be it action RPG or MMORPG, where players will see what new content in each updates, play it for few days, few weeks, maybe a month, and thats it. It is an inevitable condition. The genius thing is, Chris Wilson, solve this problem with PoE 1 league model where he identified the problem which is : It is not about whether players play longer, but whether players will come back to play it again when updates come. And he with all the founders of PoE / GGG successfully did that with a decade of PoE 1 development.

0.1 and 0.2 is just the same, there is no different behavior. Players play 0.1 longer because its a new game (supposedly, but it turned out just the same game design like PoE 1), they explore the game, they had fun, and when they had their fun, they stopped playing. Then 0.2 updates come, those players come back (not all from 0.1), some like it, some don't, and just the same with 0.1, after they have enough with the contents, they stopped and wait for 0.3.

That is the cycle of PoE, there is no different behavior here.

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bewilder2#0356 が発言:

That is the cycle of PoE, there is no different behavior here.

There is one thing important for retention which GGG is notoriously bad at, unlike other seasonal arpgs: fixing QoL. It takes GGG literal years to add UI features obvious for any player since day 1.

- Town portal hotkey is ***ing innovation for them lol.

- Condensing breach splinters drops - finally noticed in 0.2.0h announcement, only took them 10 years.

- lazily fixing stash affinities like they are doing players a big favor

- Auto/bulk currency pickup - still waiting, hope I can see it before I die:)

- Pretending trade site is fine and letting 3rd party tools run rampant (with occasional random ban for 3rd party software) - normal.

- Keeping Standard players in the trash bin whenever it comes to map conversion, scarab conversion, alt quality gem conversion, div/ex swap - normal.

+1 OP

Don't let this post die like the game is doing.

Retention andies are the worst. play the game if you want dont play it if you dont want.

This is definitely my all time favorite most hated game. So much was promised, so much hype, so little of it delivered, yet I've found over 600 hours of "fun"... I think it's really that I'm a creature of habit and Nightreign hasn't dropped yet. I'm literally put this piece in a couple of weeks.
FromSoftware has never let me down. Everything they have ever promised was OVER delivered.

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Echothesis#7320 が発言:

There is one thing important for retention which GGG is notoriously bad at, unlike other seasonal arpgs: fixing QoL. It takes GGG literal years to add UI features obvious for any player since day 1.

The fact that this comment is sitting next to a thread full of people actively complaining about GGG adding a simple QoL update to the UI I think very succinctly represents the challenge they are facing right now. Their goal for EA was to put out an unfinished and unpolished build in order to gather feedback throughout the remainder of the development process, but it's becoming increasingly clear that they misjudged the player community's appetite for playing an incomplete version of their game.

Player retention and peak daily numbers are so far from issues that GGG need to be concerned about right now but it seems to be all people here want to discuss most days. If PoE2 had not released in EA, it would have exactly zero players today and nobody would be talking about it as if it's a sign of failure. The game in its current state is unfinished, unpolished, and messy -- nobody with the capacity for rational thought should expect it to attract and retain a consistently active player population and there's no reason to regard its failure to do so as anything but the very obvious and predictable consequence of the fact that most people simply aren't interested in playing an unfinished game.

The massive surge of players at the outset of EA is a promise of the game's future potential. I promise you a massive chunk of those people have every intention of returning for 1.0. Look no further than Baldur's Gate 3 for a parallel. They released that game in October of 2020 and it was an absolute disaster that was subsequently played by almost nobody - yet when it finally released almost three years later it was a massive success and will go down as one of the most successful and beloved RPGs in history.

Basically, you guys legitimately need to just stop belly-aching about player numbers right now and focus on what GGG is actually asking us to do - play the game and give them feedback so they can make a better 1.0 for people to return to when it is complete. Of course the other alternative you have is to join them - uninstall the game for now and come back for 1.0. I promise it will still be here waiting for you and it will be a much different game.

Endgame needs rework. That endless atlas is just bad. Feels like yt shorts. Whatever you think poe1 have amazing way to deal with farming. Not only crafting is gambling but direction you go on atlas maps is gambling. Will I find 3 towers, will I find citadels, will I find massive lake to destroy my towers potenatial, how many uniques maps will I find, how many map layouts I like will be there, do I have tablets that suit map layout (like wy run breaches in crypt over savannah). It's all gamble. I like breaches and rituals, let me pick a map and farm it for hours. New maps with better layouts are needed. Apparently it's EA nobody will cry over vaal maps to be removed/replaced. Please GGG go back to what you promised years ago and shift a bit from your vision.

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ttuuff#4138 が発言:

Retention andies are the worst. play the game if you want dont play it if you dont want.

Except people don't want to play when every item in the economy is inflated in price so the rewards you get in maps are worthless. A trade league needs many active players to be good. If PoE's SSF mode actually had deterministic farming and was fun then yeah people could just play and have fun. But that's not the case.

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Aim_High#3562 が発言:

That endless atlas is just bad.

Speak for yourself. As a PoE1 delve enjoyer, the atlas in 2 is one of my favourite things.

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Kerchunk#7797 が発言:

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Echothesis#7320 が発言:

There is one thing important for retention which GGG is notoriously bad at, unlike other seasonal arpgs: fixing QoL. It takes GGG literal years to add UI features obvious for any player since day 1.

The fact that this comment is sitting next to a thread full of people actively complaining about GGG adding a simple QoL update to the UI I think very succinctly represents the challenge they are facing right now. Their goal for EA was to put out an unfinished and unpolished build in order to gather feedback throughout the remainder of the development process, but it's becoming increasingly clear that they misjudged the player community's appetite for playing an incomplete version of their game.
...

If this EA was to be a PTR realm, why did we have all signature "screw you" poe mechanics from day 1? Okay, they declared game is incomplete. Yet it rolled out with:

- exp penalty and map loss next to unrefined monster stats. Specific bosses and monsters like slitherspitters kept killing players.

- Ruthless-grade loot next to unrefined difficulty curve and gambling chances from poe1 brought into single-exslam poe2 gamble version.

- Trials screwed players hard, with new players unfamiliar with poe1 were hit the most. Flame trap damage bug ("oh it did several times more honor dmg, sorry") and Bahlak tornado alone were enough to warrant removal of all those crappy penalties until EA is finished. (If the goal was to gather information that is, not to lock half of testers out of the endgame).

- GGG started acting as in competitive league since day 1 at Dec 7th, first major nerfs to trigger gems arrived. Why would they care if this was PTR? They still nerf player power first, and buff player power last every time there is a patch.

- Most importantly, people complain not about lack of content or lack of character classes. We already know GGG and know they would rather die than change abovementioned mechanics. So this EA provided representative view on what the 1.0 release will look like.

If you're going to persuade people that 1.0 will have actual progression feeling instead of punishing slogfest with 1-5 meta builds and mandatory trade site, go ahead. For now I don't believe it.