From 580k to 390k drop after two weeks.

My character is DeadEye, level 87.
I stopped playing,because：
1.I hate Trial of the Sekhemas。
2.The end game content is extremely restrictive，For example, I like to challenge boss and don't like Delirium, but for the loot, I have to clear the Delirium on the path.

Retention always drops dramatically post release, thats true of every game that has ever been released and why day one sale are always the metric used, not active players after a month. If a game stabilizes 10% of its day 1 players thats considered a success. Compare it to other steam top sellers that have released over the same time intervals to find actually useful data. Looking at one game alone tells you literally nothing because you can interpret the data in whatever way fits your narrative because you’re not comparing it to the rest of the industry.

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Maes#8802 wrote:

Retention always drops dramatically post release, thats true of every game that has ever been released and why day one sale are always the metric used, not active players after a month. If a game stabilizes 10% of its day 1 players thats considered a success. Compare it to other steam top sellers that have released over the same time intervals to find actually useful data. Looking at one game alone tells you literally nothing because you can interpret the data in whatever way fits your narrative because you’re not comparing it to the rest of the industry.

again that is only true for single player $60+games NOT for live service ones that require steady playerbase to keep engagement up to survive ...

PoE2 cannot afford to taper off this soon in the most lucrative season of the year this fast - if it was already out and with regular seasonal schedule like PoE1 THEN it would be fine as is

when you compare the numbers to actually comparable game like lets say Helldivers2 - a succesfull overhyped live service game - you can see they had 2 whole weeks of growth then plateaued for a MONTH and only THEN they started SLOWLY losing players by a trickle and it took another month to have noticeable loss in concurrents

PoE2 hit max in just three days and in two weeks since then slumped to 3/4s despite this being the greatest time for games which should mean a massive growth ...


also a similarity to the Helldivers 2 is that the game was literally destroyed by "devs following theyr vision" and constant barrage of nerfs to the point that in less than half a year it turned from extremely successful "wow look at the numbers" into a less than 10 k concurrent playerbase ...


so ill say it again, game that is currently 2nd in Steams top sellers and despite that having massive downturn in concurrents is signifying only one thing - a lot of earlier players are already leaving and not even massive influx of fresh buyers is able to stem that bleeding ... guess what that will look like when the new buyers baited by influencers stop coming in ...

Probably the main reason for the drop off is that quest instances are too big. People like myself don't have 2-3 hours to spare to do a quest which if you don't finish you lose all progress, especially in a linear game like this where you have to complete a quest to move on. If they don't change things, this will become a niche game for the unemployed.

Also difficulty is an issue for a lot of people. Saying "Git gud" won't cut it. The game needs difficulty settings or it will die. Live service games need to keep as many people engaged as possible for as long as possible.