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

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enslavedemperor#5410 เขียน:

You demonstrated multiple times in your threads that you are not open to discussion, but open to validation. Anyone who doesn't support your claims is deemed as toxic. By the way you yourself use a lot of words that just fuel the toxic environment (in this forum/section), are you exonerated of those accusations?

I have never approached rational discussion with anything other than debate. Not agreeing with people is not toxic. Sticking to my opinions unless evidence ways me is not toxic. You cannot force others to agree with you. By the same token saying "get gud" or "skill issue" are not rational discussion. They are bomb derogatory, usually miss the point of the posts (often intentionally) and in the end completely irrelevant to me. I don't even report such comments because I literally don't care.

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enslavedemperor#5410 เขียน:

You were presented with facts, solutions, you chose to not listen and, guess what, mock those who dared to even question your statements, and demanded videos, and when told that you are deflecting by having such a request because it has, literally, no use due to how this discussion went and your standing to always come on top at all costs, again you went and accused that they have ill intent.

Now you are trying again to dismiss and paint people who came with arguments against your gameplay and build decisions as not thoughtful as the bad people, the people who actually destroy the game.

Off topic, wrong thread. take it there and I will reply eventually.

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enslavedemperor#5410 เขียน:

And regarding your prestigious second group, very few people of that group actually come with actual feedback and reasoning, rest is just pseud-observational feedback driven by hateful emotions and recycling same ideas.

Every one of the people in that group has had ideas, feedback, suggestions and so on with FEW exceptions. That you don't like their suggestions doesn't render them non-existent. That you disagree doesn't render them invalid. Many of the suggestions are coming from GGG loyalists (like me) who really care about the game. In the very OP of this thread I make a dozen suggestions.

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enslavedemperor#5410 เขียน:

If you were so well-intentioned why didn't you propose some actual solutions? Any idea to help GGG (devs) fix the "mess" they made. Why didn't you take your time to write a well structured post where you would dissect the bad things and propose, again, solutions? Ah, is easy to just bash the game and the work devs made and call it insufficient, not worthy of anything good but shame, after all they are 1 on 1 with Tencent, right? They are sell outs now!

Again, it appears you didnt read the OP completely. If you want to know the answers to that, if you REALLY want to know, then read and understand the OP.

As for flamers, they just bump my threads and I am grateful for that. They don't affect me personally in the slightest. I have been on the internet nearly 40 years and I am immune to such pressure. My audience isn't the flamers. Its actually GGG whom I hope reads, understands and makes changes based on the thread.

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KeiranPOE#4565 เขียน:

OP, the amount of threads you are making about how much POE 2 sucks is concerning. Have you considered just not playing it until full release? It doesn’t look like you’ve enjoyed POE 1 much, either, looking at your challenge history so maybe it’s not just a POE 2 problem.

I mean no offense and I don’t particularly care for POE 2, but come on, this is unnecessary.

I don't play much this week. Its off and on of me wanting the game to be better, playing a bit and then finding out its not better. As for POE1, as I have said numerous times I have 3 accounts and have done nearly all the content in the game at one time or another. Don't believe me? *shrug* OK, I don't care much, just thought I would answer the question.

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KeiranPOE#4565 เขียน:

A lot of his threads are just complaints about vision and then posting videos where he is clearly playing either without passive points or a lv1 spear or both and the last thread I interacted with he avoided posting a PoB so that we had an understanding of why he was doing basically no damage and if it was a player issue or game issue. This thread is talking about player retention as if this is nothing normal, or meaningful. Last Epoch was heralded as a great game however its seen similar drops in player count and currently has half the players POE 2 does.

Like I said, I do not believe POE 2 is in a great state but I would not consider being deliberately disingenuous to be good feedback.

Because I believe the vision has gaping holes and is bleeding out. I am not alone in this belief. Not only do many here agree but most of those 200k+ players that have quit agree with me.

As for you assessment that I was playing without passive points or with a level 1 spear, all are incorrect with video evidence as proof and you are making assumptions and missing the point of that entire post. But I wont answer that here because:

1. You are just bomb throwing and don't care about the actual response.
2. I wont convince you anyway so there is little point in trying.
3. You are just trying to denigrate me to try and diminish my point rather than address the points of the post.
4. I don't care about 3.

That about covers it.

At least it took 3 weeks for that.
People stop playing a new poe1 league in the 1st week, as soon as they get to the repetitive 2 screen clear gameplay.
Just be honest with yourself poe as a whole never had the best player retention,and the best it ever was (player retention wise) is in poe2.

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KeiranPOE#4565 เขียน:

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This thread is talking about player retention as if this is nothing normal, or meaningful. Last Epoch was heralded as a great game however its seen similar drops in player count and currently has half the players POE 2 does.

Like I said, I do not believe POE 2 is in a great state but I would not consider being deliberately disingenuous to be good feedback.

LE's retention is much more healthier than poe. Visit LE forum and you won't see a wall of threads about stalled progression in loot, exp, trade, or crashes/disconnects. People leave LE because they had already completed this season's content and tried this season's skills. Not because they were kicked away with artificial and crude progression blockers.

And LE players know that adding more content or more builds is a matter of time. And that EHG is working on what players are interested in, not on new ways to stealth nerf player power and make players feel miserable. Here, poe players know GGG won't budge from said crude progression blockers because Vision. These are different relationships. Exploiting human frustration has its limits, and poe2 is approaching them now.

Player count several weeks after a major patch is a poor indicator of ARPG health. Most people show up launch week, play for a while, then leave. Come the next major content update or league, they're back. POE 2 EA also has a lot of people that are around for the hype but will never be part of the core fanbase. That demographic will fall off over time, resulting in a lower but more stable player base. (They also need to get their arms around the bot activity, which is artificially inflating player counts as well).

0.2.0 had some major frustrations, causing a lot of people to bail out early. Some of those remain, others are solved. ARPGs live and die on their replayability, much of which is rooted in progression. POE 2 is still struggling with this. Some of it will be fixed with the GA release, when there are 6 distinct acts instead of Act 1-3 twice, before the endgame. Some will be fixed when they start releasing challenges and league goals. And some will just need to be addressed with continuous improvements.

Net, I wouldn't read too much into this. Whenever they launch 0.3, player count will jump right back up. POE 2 is doing just fine.

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Echothesis#7320 เขียน:

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KeiranPOE#4565 เขียน:

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This thread is talking about player retention as if this is nothing normal, or meaningful. Last Epoch was heralded as a great game however its seen similar drops in player count and currently has half the players POE 2 does.

Like I said, I do not believe POE 2 is in a great state but I would not consider being deliberately disingenuous to be good feedback.

LE's retention is much more healthier than poe. Visit LE forum and you won't see a wall of threads about stalled progression in loot, exp, trade, or crashes/disconnects. People leave LE because they had already completed this season's content and tried this season's skills. Not because they were kicked away with artificial and crude progression blockers.

And LE players know that adding more content or more builds is a matter of time. And that EHG is working on what players are interested in, not on new ways to stealth nerf player power and make players feel miserable. Here, poe players know GGG won't budge from said crude progression blockers because Vision. These are different relationships. Exploiting human frustration has its limits, and poe2 is approaching them now.

+1000

Exactly. PoE 2 is trying way too hard to be like an MMO and keep players in it with all these mechanics that block or revert your progression.

I feel POE2 has a negative-start design.

I started a brand new character with zero currency in 0.2.0g to test it out, and it occurred to me that POE2 is a game where you start in a negative state and gradually reclaim powers and tools that would make the game a properly enjoyable experience.

For example, early game we have extremely slow movement speed, yet we are expected to deal with packs of multiple wolves and multiple ranged mobs that force us to stay on the move.

When you get enough movement speed, then the nerfed monster speeds feel much better, because you can actually move out of the way now, among all the light stuns that keep interrupting your movement (and worse, pull you back slightly due to network latency).

And to deal with those stuns? You need defenses, either in the form of straight Max Life, or with Stun Threshold, or with a combination of passives and Energy Shield. But all of these rely on you having the "right" affixes on your gear, which relies on your currency slams rolling the right affixes, which relies on you getting enough currency drops and enough item bases to even get to slam.

So POE2 essentially forces everybody to play a negative start, and that's why it's not enjoyable for a lot of people until you reach endgame.

Sure there are people who enjoy this, and those are the people who now complain the endgame is too easy and zoom-zoom-zoom is boring.

The solution is really simple, IMO.

Build the game for the masses by having a positive-design philosophy, start everyone with the tools for combat (movement speed) and crafting (omens and essences and plenty of currency), and design league mechanics that build on top of this.

For people who are looking for a negative start, make a challenge mode with harsh drop rates and negative penalties on movement speed etc.

This way you satisfy both groups of people.

But yeah, I know, GGG doesn't seem to want to do that. And what's worse is that they think they're doing people a favor by taking that stance. It would have been better if they just realize it and say it to themselves: "we don't want to cater to people who don't like this design." And stop lying to themselves thinking that players don't know better.

The negative feedback threads were the first sign. The dropping player count would be the outcome. GGG needs to rethink their design philosophy sooner than later, because eventually more and more people will just give up and find other games, by which time we won't even care what changes happen in POE2, and those changes would just piss off people who love how it is already.

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Echothesis#7320 เขียน:

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KeiranPOE#4565 เขียน:

...
This thread is talking about player retention as if this is nothing normal, or meaningful. Last Epoch was heralded as a great game however its seen similar drops in player count and currently has half the players POE 2 does.

Like I said, I do not believe POE 2 is in a great state but I would not consider being deliberately disingenuous to be good feedback.

LE's retention is much more healthier than poe. Visit LE forum and you won't see a wall of threads about stalled progression in loot, exp, trade, or crashes/disconnects. People leave LE because they had already completed this season's content and tried this season's skills. Not because they were kicked away with artificial and crude progression blockers.

And LE players know that adding more content or more builds is a matter of time. And that EHG is working on what players are interested in, not on new ways to stealth nerf player power and make players feel miserable. Here, poe players know GGG won't budge from said crude progression blockers because Vision. These are different relationships. Exploiting human frustration has its limits, and poe2 is approaching them now.

Exacly!

The healthy league cycle, people play, does everything they like to do and take a time off waiting for the new league. No forum backlash, not a massive feeling of discontentment or lose faith on the game evolution.

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kumogakure#7381 เขียน:

The solution is really simple, IMO.

Build the game for the masses by having a positive-design philosophy, start everyone with the tools for combat (movement speed) and crafting (omens and essences and plenty of currency), and design league mechanics that build on top of this.

Surprised nobody came and said "Like Diablo IV" or "Go play Diablo IV"

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evermilioon#4881 เขียน:

Just be honest with yourself poe as a whole never had the best player retention,and the best it ever was (player retention wise) is in poe2.

It only holds for 0.1, and anything less than that would have been a dead on arrival.
Of course people will spend longer checking everything, anywhere on the spectrum between those that actually like the game, to stubborn ppl not liking it but keeping on going for the sake of the test/goodwill.

On the other hand, now that the honeymoon effect is fading off, the story is very different. 0.2 has amongst the worst retentions ever.