Player retention reflects the state of the game.

"

IonSugeRau1#1069 schrieb:

So... why does the game have such poor retention?

It's simple, really. The game isn't worth playing for more then a few weeks.

Why? Because everything devolves really fast into 1 click screen clear everything and generally unengaging boring combat. How long can that really last? Not much obviously... it gets boring really quick.... even the people that advocate for this kind of thing get bored of it very quick as the numbers show without fail.

There are a lot of games out there that have way better retention yet have next to no content updates... there is no better proof then that. That shouldn't be possible.

I honestly don't think I'll even try the next update if there's no serious change in this direction. I am highly skeptical that will happen.

Druid is one of the things I wanted to play the most... but what need is there for me to play it if it ends up devolving into 1 shot everything again? What's the difference between this and any other then in terms of "gameplay"?

You mean the player number drop off that is similar to it's direct contestants?
With about -64 to -69% after the first month and -78 to -92% after 2 months?
While most likely having the highest player number among all 4 titles?
While being in EA and still a lot to come?



PoE2
Peak on league release (Sun, Aug 31): 352,104
1 month later (Sun, Sep 28): 107,860 (-69,37% to league release)
2 months later (Sun, Oct 26): 35,649 (-89,86% to league release)

PoE
Peak on league release (Fri, Oct 31): 184,633
~1 month later (Sun, Nov 23): 66,371 (-64,44% to league release)

D4
Peak on league release (Sun, Sep 28): 49,001
1 month later (Sun, Oct 26): 16,749 (-65,82% to league release)
~2 months later (Sun, Nov 23): 10,462 (-78,65% to league release)

LE
Peak on league release (Fri, Aug 01): 80,180
1 month later (Sun, Aug 31): 24,539 (-69,40% to league release)
2 months later (Sun, Sep 28): 5,988 (-92,53% to league release)


Looks like PoE2 is doing quite good already despite being in EA.

"

intersept#1235 schrieb:

Oh, i can.
Erm.....lets see.
No man sky. Dota 2. League of Legends. Counter Strike (a game that was around 25 years ago).
Erm.....Arc Raiders. Elden Ring. The Witcher (the game obviously)
Heck Megabonk did better :D lol

There you. games that did better then the abomination that is POE2.

Edit:Minecraft has 40k curent players on twitch so id say minecraft did better aswel :D kekw
Grant Theft Auto 5.
Hecking Farming simulator has 20k viewers right now :D
Ok ill stop cuz its geting mean. So everything thats not a complete failure basicly.
Waitn, no. Even a failure is doing better. COD 7 a game that every one is currently shitting on has 25k viewers.
How many viewers POE2 has u ask ? 500.........

I am not sure if you're trolling or you are serious by comparing apples (all the listed games above that are non-seasonal games of other genres) with a banana (PoE2 = seasonal ARPG). For comparison of it's direct rivals (PoE, D4, LE) see above.
And then brining up twitch viewers? I can't even...again, I hope you're trolling.

"It's a league based game" Doesn't explain away everything.

More people are playing Skyrim on steam right now than PoE2. BG3 often has more.

Now that they've slowed their leagues to every 4 months they aren't any different than other online game which do mainline updates. Comparing PoE to other ARPGs only shows that it's been a long term failing formula. Funny how games like BG3, Expedition 33, Divinity OS2 all get glowing reviews and win awards when the only technically difference is ARPGs don't use turns.

Devs need to wake up.

.

"

IonSugeRau1#1069 schrieb:

The game isn't worth playing for more then a few weeks.

Why? Because everything devolves really fast into 1 click screen clear everything and generally unengaging boring combat. How long can that really last? Not much obviously... it gets boring really quick.... even the people that advocate for this kind of thing get bored of it very quick as the numbers show without fail.

There are a lot of games out there that have way better retention yet have next to no content updates... there is no better proof then that. That shouldn't be possible.

I honestly don't think I'll even try the next update if there's no serious change in this direction. I am highly skeptical that will happen.

Druid is one of the things I wanted to play the most... but what need is there for me to play it if it ends up devolving into 1 shot everything again? What's the difference between this and any other then in terms of "gameplay"?

Very accurate. You're right, people play because of the 'buzz' around a new league, claim the clear-speed meta is fun, then quit. PoE1 has followed this pattern for years.

"

Very accurate. You're right, people play because of the 'buzz' around a new league, claim the clear-speed meta is fun, then quit. PoE1 has followed this pattern for years.

Yep. The 'zoom boom' is not fun for long and people get burnt out fast. The real reason people prefer zoom zoom is because the rest of the game is too poorly balanced to be engaging and enjoyable so 'zoom zoom 1-shot the screen' becomes the only entertaining way to play the game, even if it gets stale super fast. This is where GGG is getting the confusing feedback and reception from.

The solution is somewhat obvious though. Put in actual effort to tune the game balance so zoom zoom isn't the only way to enjoy the messy combat system and then tone down the zoom boom.

I have thousands of hours playing 'zoom boom' in video games in my life. I sure as hell have no interest in PoE2 if it turns into PoE1 game-play which I'm completely burnt out from. Even if I wasn't burnt out of zoom boom I would still prefer engaging combat that's properly tuned anyways.

"

LVSviral#3689 schrieb:

"

Very accurate. You're right, people play because of the 'buzz' around a new league, claim the clear-speed meta is fun, then quit. PoE1 has followed this pattern for years.

Yep. The 'zoom boom' is not fun for long and people get burnt out fast. The real reason people prefer zoom zoom is because the rest of the game is too poorly balanced to be engaging and enjoyable so 'zoom zoom 1-shot the screen' becomes the only entertaining way to play the game, even if it gets stale super fast. This is where GGG is getting the confusing feedback and reception from.

The solution is somewhat obvious though. Put in actual effort to tune the game balance so zoom zoom isn't the only way to enjoy the messy combat system and then tone down the zoom boom.

I have thousands of hours playing 'zoom boom' in video games in my life. I sure as hell have no interest in PoE2 if it turns into PoE1 game-play which I'm completely burnt out from. Even if I wasn't burnt out of zoom boom I would still prefer engaging combat that's properly tuned anyways.

Couldn't agree more. I started a thread recently titled
- "Zoom is not fun. It's loot FOMO"
which you can find here: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3879773
So feel free to weigh in there if you like. The more threads about this the better. I'm considering making a Youtube video on it.

There are many contributing factors causing this issue, but they are not unsolvable. And I think they boil down to a few core underlying ideas.

Two considerations for housekeeping purposes first:

1. We have to acknowledge, that there will always be a loot-acquisition incentive. So build direction will always be biased toward clearing as fast as possible if the player cares at all about loot. It's fundamental to the game, and there's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to get loot efficiently, but just something we have to be aware of when thinking about this.

2. "zoom" as I use it, is not so much about movement speed, or attack speed, but the speed at which players can wipe enemies off the screen. So it has nothing to do with the actual player character's mobility or fluidity. It refers only to the combat interaction aspect where players instantly delete monsters from a screen away.

---

So with that, there are a few 'key' causes for this gameplay direction that I've been able to identify. These are the 'broad' underlying causes, but I'm sure there are many more smaller examples, or others I have not considered which you can add to the list, and we can discuss.

1. Exponential scaling
The first issue is somewhat subtle in its relation to 'zoom' (Not movement, but monster clear) but I think it is very important, because zoom is inseparable from how monsters are balanced relative to the player. I think it has other drawbacks too, but we're just talking about 'zoom' right now.

Exponential scaling implicitly means: larger power curves, and therefore large ranges in power between players, due to "multiplicative scaling". That is, how it is often beneficial to "stack" multipliers rather than diversify investment on a character, because we only want to make our clear skill as effective as it can be. This creates an issue for monster balance, because if player power is so vastly different across the spectrum of builds, then interpreting the expected player power for the sake of balancing monsters becomes an impossible task; they will either be far too weak for the top end, or far too strong for the lower end (which become non-viable builds). This multiplicative element, is also why we get crazy map mod scenarios of stacking modifiers which multiply together to make them extremely rippy, which further incentivizes screen clear over ineffective defenses.

2. Player sustain / Defences
Simply put, if the player is capable of instanly replenishing their life pool (whether through regen, leech, life on hit, ES recharge, etc) then this type of player defense must be taken into account for monster balance. What we get, is a situation where the only way to kill the player, is to one-shot their entire life pool, or some other variation of high burst damage. This not only causes monsters to be balanced to one-shot many players as a matter of necessity, but by extension creates a balance pressure for players to adopt a high level of sustain into their builds to keep up with the outlier cases. This further pushes the game in the direction of 'zoom', where the best defense against such balance, is an overwhelming offense that ends the fight before it begins.

3. The reward for clear Versus the punishment for defense
Elaboration probably isn't needed. But the short summary, is that the consequences for players dying is completely overshadowed by the reward incentives for clear speed. And so even without any of the combat mechanics taken into account, the incentive structure here compounds to make "clear speed" the 'correct choice' if the player cares about progression in almost any sense.

4. Mob Density / Visual Clarity
The visual clarity aspect is a sort of feedback-loop situation. You don't really need to see everything, if your skill is deleting the screen. And you need to delete the screen, because so much is going on which can kill you, that you can't see anything.

I think that (in addition to the reasons above) richer 'meaningful' combat interactions will much harder to achieve, if not outright impossible, if the entire screen is full of enemies that 'zerg rush' the player, die easily, and have an unpredictable potential for killing the player very quickly. It makes the only option to engage with these fights to rely on an AoE skill that can instantly remove the threat before it has a chance to kill you. There are no incentives to try and work out particular tactics for how you engage. You show up to the fight with the predetermined outcome: delete them before you see their mechanics.

I'm sure you can think of more. Feel free to add more, or constructively disagree about the finer points. Cheers.

I honestly kind of like PoE being league-based. Have fun for a few weeks, maybe a month, then do something else, and come back for the next league.

I have to say, by now, I am pretty tired of "endless" grind games like Warframe or Destiny and don't want to play them.

It's def true that PoE2 and PoE1 experience a pretty rapid falloff after league launch. But I am pretty sure that it's really by design. They purposefully focus on creating new content in a way that supports a 3/4 month release cadence. And looking at the fact that PoE1 & 2 are very successful games in a genre that just isn't one of the top genres being played, that strategy seems to work stellarly well. Not sure what the exact argument for changing a winning strategy is.

"

xinomahc#1682 schrieb:

the real issue here is the amount of bots that play the game, if you remove 90% of the bots there would be 1k people playing poe1 or poe2, the inflated prices of every item and/or divs by week 2 is absurd and just not worth the time investment it takes to even start the game up, either it being in poe1 or poe2, bots are a grand majority of the player base.

You can't honestly be claiming that 90% of the players would be bots?

Like.. That for every 1 player buying the game, someone is buying 9 copies to run bots on? Even though bots get routinely caught and banned, so they'd need to keep buying more bot accounts.

The prices just really are how the economy works. Essentially, committed players will keep increasing their div/hour. When they upgrade their gear or fit up new characters, they can invest tens, even hundreds, of divs. Which pushes the price of the top gear further and further.

But you don't have to be chasing the top 0.1% gear.

Btw, on a quick look - when the last char I played died on HC and I stopped playing for this league, I was running a bow worth about 2 div on HC. That bow was quite enough to do juiced T16s comfortably. You get a better bow for a couple of chaos orbs on SC at the moment.

You absolutely don't need tens of divs to gear up any reasonable build, unless you are hellbent on the fastest clear speeds. If you are - well, then you better play the game like the fastest clearers play it.

Retention would improve if GGG actually gave a shit about Standard.

:(

"

intersept#1235 schrieb:

Oh, i can.
Erm.....lets see.
No man sky. Dota 2. League of Legends. Counter Strike (a game that was around 25 years ago).
Erm.....Arc Raiders. Elden Ring. The Witcher (the game obviously)
Heck Megabonk did better :D lol

There you. games that did better then the abomination that is POE2.

Edit:Minecraft has 40k curent players on twitch so id say minecraft did better aswel :D kekw
Grant Theft Auto 5.
Hecking Farming simulator has 20k viewers right now :D
Ok ill stop cuz its geting mean. So everything thats not a complete failure basicly.
Waitn, no. Even a failure is doing better. COD 7 a game that every one is currently shitting on has 25k viewers.
How many viewers POE2 has u ask ? 500.........

Since when is No man sky a seasonal game?

Since when is Dota 2 a seasonal game? Not even PvE.

Since when is League of Legends a seasonal game? Not even PvE.

Since when is Counter Strike a seasonal game? Not even PvE.

Arc raiders released when? More than 3 Months ago? Not even in the right timeframe.

Since when is The Witcher a seasonal game?

Since when is Elden Ring a seasonal game?

Who cares about viewers? Viewers don't play the game.


Let me repeat, since you, even after telling us you did, don't understand the question: "Show us a seasonal game with higher player retention over a longer period of time with the same content as poe2"

I even underlined and bolded the relevant info for you, since you clearly fail to understand that simple question. And to be even more clear: PvP games are 1. not seasonal games 2. are PvP games. And to be even more more clear: PvP are aren't played for leveling and progressing (there's literally no character progression in CS if you've failed to notice, which you clearly did).

And yet again I ask: Name a game, with the above criteria that does better than PoE2.

But yeah, thanks yet again for clarifying that poe2 is doing pretty well, and you're just not accepting it, because you don't like it.

P.S. Please learn how to quote in a forum. It's not that hard.