Numbers are absolutely plummeting
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also not everyone who plays POE uses steam client
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i love the game but like many other all it doe's at the moment is crash my end game maps upon loading into them so yea.
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Tbh I quit after doing most of the content after playing for few weeks and decided to check state of the game now in February, with new idea for build (Ice Nova).
My experience? Game is much much more dead than during lets say December - > I sell an item to the same person that I bought an item from a couple of minutes ago. And now I see that person searching for another item (never EVER happend that to me in PoE1, even very late in the league, that just means there's so low population of people). In general, very small amount of items on poetrade site. And most of those are sold by chineese players (players or bots, pick your poison). World chat, dead. And then crème de la crème, I spent couple div to switch builds. That's probably like 4th time I switch because of either boredom or nerf (early days CoC nerf). Guess what, day after I switched (AND THAT BUILD IS NOT EVEN META), they nerfed it to the point that it's barely viable. Like cmon, it's not start of the league and they keep bricking stuff instead of waiting with it for the so called next BIG patch. So I go and read patch notes, all I see is random nerf, bunch of bug fixes and crash fixes (and afaik those still happen as much as before patch). And no new content mentioned. So yeah, rapid population decline is no wonder from my perspective. My example is simple - even if I wanted to go back I get slapped from inflation, build bricking, declined item market and lack of clear communication from devs. No thank you. Last edited by Dusha333#2263 on Feb 6, 2025, 5:29:41 AM
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" Wait for an actual content patch and then come back. I had the same issue and I noticrr 1/5th of the players, volumes in trading, etc. |
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Not many, if any, games hold player retention this long into a "season". In between "seasons", there are always doomsayers that spout about player numbers as if it justifies their negative view of the game. Some players have an issue understanding what a base game is, and worse yet confuse Early Access with a full launch of a game. Often comparing a game that just released in essentially beta form, to games that have been out, at times for over a decade.
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" Not useless, but if they want to have a unique that literally breaks the game by design, they should make it either accessible to everyone, or fix the interaction so that it doesn't not break the game by such a mile. The plummeting fact of the players is because the hype was there, the game is ok, but there are so many design problems in this EA that is literally hard to bare on a third or fourth replay. Act 2 / 3 literally too big. Maps that need to be backtracked with the speed of a snail. Build diversity is scarce right now, everyone playing the same archetypes around the same things but on different classes. Ascendancy trials, let's not talk about them. You better just not start another class if you have to go around doing them again. Inflation due to dupes and stuff.. Not much pushed in the EA except bugfixes for what they already have presented, tweaks and stuff that shouldn't even be fixed now. In an EA you should have almost the whole content, and collect feedback about what needs to be done, and fix them almost close to the ending of the EA and take another round of feedback and fix whatever it is left. Right now they are doing it exactly like Blizzard, here are 1 act, the boring end game mapping with some of the mechanics and let's here your opinion...And after that they will release a pile of steaming Diablo 4 exactly like the steaming pile of Blizzard. Items are bland and not interesting at all. Outside uniques which make things work, items are literally bland, and beside the diluted affixes that are there mostly so that you don't get life/rez they literally don't appeal at all..0 sockets, add sockets...No life or ES throw it to garbage bin. No resistances , throw it to the garbage bin. Crafting system is just a gamble...Item with life/es--- slam it for res. Item with res --- slam it for life es...You play some sort of stat stacker, slam it for stats or throw it away. Economy is just a mess from the EA due to bugs and dupes ( which are expected to be honest). I do not get it, why they are saying that you have x amount of content, gloating about it, then making you snail around it so that they count how many hours people have gotten lost on x map. That's not played time, that's literally a waste statics that only makes the investors happy... I get it it's EA sure, they have more content coming, the game will be free, EA was just a payment to try it out and it was an option, but instead of fixing core things like crashes, design issues mentioned above, or something like that thing, they patch the music not working in act 1 from the lute, and adjust things so that some things are in pair with others ( which is not even the purpose of the EA, this really should be your last point in the refinment process, were you bugscrub everything and adjust things then before releasing). Fix the core problem with maps being ginormous and wasting everyone's time. Fix stuff like backtracking in maps, were if you miss a mob, you get to re-watch the map all over again. Fix core issues with crafting (probably a thing that is planned for release). Fix issues with instances that at the core shown that will be potentially be exploited. EA should be prioritized to fix core element design issues. Bug fixing the lute music in A1 or the interaction of x unique with y skill should be the last damn issue to fix in an EA, as it is already a mess. Putting effort into fixing a mess right now and closing your eyes to the big issues will just bring the same problem as Blizzard...They focused so much on patching, fixing and gathering info about sorc's teleporting into the map, and skill x not doing what it should have been doing, that they released the game without any end game content, a faulty game engine that even now they cannot actually fix and they are adding 1 stash at a time because I for sure know they are slowly slowly optimizing here and there to avoid the core issue and other things like that... I do not say that x unique and y skill shouldn't be fixed, but for sure it shouldn't be fixed into an EA just because some random streamer cannot play his build due to a faulty interaction, or someone on forum, bought a firefly amulet for 15 divines and it doesn't work as expected. This things should be noted, and fixed whenever the time permits, not fix them now, and let's forget that itemization is a "blast", the campaign is a drag, ascending is tedious and bad and so on so forth. Regarding retention, I do not really care, every game goes through spikes and downs...Even that d@g sh1t d4 has spikes every few 2-3 days of the season before everyone get's bored of the same revamped/recolored content. Never invite Vorana, Last To Fall at a beer party. Last edited by Vendetta#0327 on Feb 6, 2025, 9:11:14 AM
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I just finished ACT 3 last week-end. Started a bit of Cruel Act I then shelved the game until it got Act 4-6 released.
Campaign is amazing but I have exactly 0 zero 0 interest in endless grinding of Atlas map as an endgame. So I am switching to other games, waiting for new content in PoE2 to come back and finish my character or start another build. Lots of people aren't interested in playing the same thing for litterally thousand of hours and it's rather a sane position. It's not a depreciative of the game quality or enticement, it's just that PoE2 is NOT a MMORPG, it is a looter ARPG. Majority of player will play campaign, enjoy the ride then go play something else waiting for more content in the game. |
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" because its an item hunt game designed to pull in its playerbase and keep them playing a vast endgame for the first month of a season and were 2 months into the season in an EA test version of the game a year away from launch that has a partial test sketch for endgame and doesnt even have items like endgame uniques that are essential to the most basic core gameplay loop past lvl50 added yet? yeah youre right, it would be absolutely insane to be surprised that any arpg based around a 3 month season loop at any stage of development or post release would have a large portion of its player base still active 2 months after a league launch, never mind a test realm this early in development. I love all you people on the forums, we can disagree but still be friends and respect each other :)
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There are also those of us who are waiting for the Skills/Classes to be released before we start playing.
I'm waiting for Righteous Fire and I'm sure there are plenty of others waiting for Druid release and so and so forth. Its hard to use numbers to determine how good or bad a game is before its even finished. |
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" This is spot on, +1. Agree with all the feedback except most uniques are also useless, even with the buff. Also, they need an auction house, trading is so difficult in thsi game. |
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