Poe 2's Negative Reviews on Steam Are About to Exceed 30%

"

MisterFancyPants#7969 wrote:

"

bachgaman#6713 wrote:

Let's keep pushing

A LOT of people likes PoE2, and as GGG say themselves; not ONE league have had better retention than 0.1 or 0.2.

There is no chance at all this is true. One that they said it or 2 thats its actually true, there have been leagues that have held 100k players for almost the entire league.

"

ReneGuenon#3515 wrote:

First of all it was not a new league, 1 class and no new endgame mechanic added.

It is pretty reasonable stats (only steam, not counting GGG launcher and consoles) and pretty sure GGG knew the numbers will bounce down a bit faster than 0.1 (exceptional stats and retention for a game of this type - Top 50 steam all conccurent players active all time - again excluded GGG launcher and console)

Let's speak when they will release 1.0 or even Druid + blight.

Moreover let's have a look in a game that is exceptional right?
El famoso Last epoch, it has very positive recent review (79%) and we all know based on the vocal minority + streamer echo chamber than POE2 bad and LE exceptional.

Let's have a look in the stats shall we?

Aha from 150K (Last cycle) to 57K after only 10 days....

Oh well then my cognitive angry karen bias is not connecting the dot here....

Let's have a look in the worst game ever created POE2 with a catastophic 0.2 launch.
250K launch release and let's check 10 days after 170K

Oh but that's strange, the game has a better retention (on active conccurent players on STEAM ONLY) than our exceptional Last Epoch...

Mmm no comprendo mi amor.

Little edit: POE2 is 17th ranking all time peak (remaining TOP 50 all time peak for 0.2 with barely new content) better than Helldivers 2 or Space marine 2 for example.
Again that's excluding console and GGG launcher.
For sure it does not reach Diablo 4 number but GGG and its shareholders are counting dollars meanwhile the toxic vocal minority is crying online or on steam reviews.

One thing though — I don’t even think LE is a good game.
Sorry to ruin your whole wall of text with that one simple fact.

"

MisterFancyPants#7969 wrote:

"

bachgaman#6713 wrote:

Let's keep pushing

Review-bombing isn't helping anyone. A LOT of people likes PoE2, and as GGG say themselves; not ONE league have had better retention than 0.1 or 0.2. As another poster in here once said; "a million flies can't be wrong - shit tastes good". Give constructive feedback. Review-bombing is as constructive as the mole on my left ass cheek.

My goal? To make GGG realize that A LOT (enough) people want PoE1 updates and leagues. And not just content updates, but also mechanical and graphical updates. I don't care about PoE2, I care about PoE1 - and GGG should too.

I wish they kept working on PoE1 too, but they clearly don’t care what longtime supporters want anymore.
They’re more worried about what Twitch tourists and console players think.
So let them deal with the backlash — they’ve earned it.

"

stormyknight#7628 wrote:

There is no chance at all this is true. One that they said it or 2 thats its actually true, there have been leagues that have held 100k players for almost the entire league.

I have no idea if it's true. PoE2 has undoubtedly A LOT more non-Steam users than PoE1 and we just don't have those numbers. But it was said by Jonathan in the DroppedFrames interview.

"

MisterFancyPants#7969 wrote:

not ONE league have had better retention than 0.1 or 0.2.

"

stormyknight#7628 wrote:

there have been leagues that have held 100k players for almost the entire league.

My reaction

No league has held 100k players for that long.

Even if we factor in a 60/40 Steam vs standalone, all leagues have been under 60k after 45 days. Can't consider that "almost the entire league".

PoE2 retention is not so bright either. Straight up from Poedb :



NOTE :
PoEdb calculates with Day 1 numbers. PoE2 day1 numbers are not the peak. If you consider that correction we get, at day 25 :
- Dawn of the hunt : 27.5 % (67 624 / 246 345)
- Early access : 59.6 % (344 802 / 578 569)
It appears that 0.1 wasn't exactly crushing best PoE1 leagues, and 0.2 is among the worst, if not the worst (rivaling archnemesis)

NOTE 2 :

"

MisterFancyPants#7969 wrote:

PoE2 has undoubtedly A LOT more non-Steam users than PoE1 and we just don't have those numbers

On what are you basing this "undoubtedly" ? Also, what metric is this "A LOT" ? How much is that ?
Here is the magic : Steam vs standalone doesn't matter, retention is a ratio. Players login or don't because of the game, not because of the tool they use to launch the game.

Sources :
https://poedb.tw/us/League#ConcurrentPlayers
https://poe2db.tw/us/League#ConcurrentPlayers

...

@rob_korn#1745

Interesting post.

I remember there being a fair bit of negativity around Archnemisis and Kalandara, so not too surprising.

Would be interesting to know what other things factor in, like other game launches. I think lost ark and Elden ring might of launched during archnemisis.

It was good when they were running regular leagues though, hopefully they can get 3.26 on the list soon.

"

MisterFancyPants#7969 wrote:

Review-bombing isn't helping anyone.

I've not yet participated; I'd never reviewed PoE 2 and I gave PoE 1 a positive review in 2016.

Once I find the time to sit down and organise my thoughts, I fully plan on giving each of them a thumbs-down on Steam. Reviews are not fundamentally about "do you enjoy this game?" or "have you played this game a lot?" or "do you plan to play this again in future?"

Steam reviews are, fundamentally, about answering one very simple question;



So... do I recommend Path of Exile 1 or 2 to others?

Both games are games released by Grinding Gear Games, a company that periodically releases new $480 supporter packs. These packs include armour skins - and if you wish to wear these on multiple characters at once, that's no problem at all. Just buy the entire pack again. You cannot even have a single character in each game wear an armour set without purchasing the pack again.

Both games are games released by Grinding Gear Games, who have largely neglected their currently released title that has seen a number of customers of theirs individually spend thousands - hell, even tends of thousands - on the game because they've decided that they, as developers, got bored and wanted to work on something new - a sequel that nobody asked for. I think the entire community would have been thrilled if they slowly worked on a notional Path of Exile II while broadly keeping pace with their usual release cadence for the original. Instead, they rather unappreciatively decided that the game we enjoyed didn't matter any more and they would much rather focus on the new, untested game that they personally were more interested in.

Both games are games released by Grinding Gear Games, a company that - should you happen to email techsupport@grindinggear.com claiming to be unable to play Path of Exile 1 at all, will cheerfully inform you (several days later...) that they can't actually be bothered offering technical support (they haven't for years now), and that you can try posting on their community forum. You can have spent tens of thousands of euros on their game, be unable to play it at all, and they... will not care. Will not make any effort whatsoever to help you. The lack of gratitude is damning.

Both games are games released by Grinding Gear Games, a company that periodically releases new $480 supporter packs. I once purchased one of those and got a physical item included in my purchase... 11.5 months later. Wow. Such gratitude. Many customer service. Very cool.

Both games are games released by Grinding Gear Games. They're "free" in that you've an unlimited free trial, but sooner or later you will be dropping money on the game to get stash tabs, as both games are Pay for Convenience. This is like Pay to Win, except it is flatly more consumer-hostile. Pay to Win is when the guy with a bigger wallet than yours is a higher level than you and has better damage than you because he wants to have those things. But it's a PvE game, and... that doesn't actually affect you in any way? Meanwhile, in Pay for Convenience titles, the developers sit around wondering which problems they can manufacture to subsequently sell the solution for. How many unique essences were there? Like, across both types and tiers. Was that done for some compelling game design reason? Was that the best possible permutation of that system? Or was it just cynically engineered to be as hostile as possible to anyone with a baseline four regular stash tabs? And the worst part of Pay for Convenience, is that the paid-for version is never as good as it could have been for free. Sure, it was horrific for any hypothetical gamers with no extra stash tabs. But let's say you bought the Essences tab. Did that help your inventory in maps? Did that render the ridiculous 3-for-1 upgrading process any less carpal tunnel-inducing? Pay for Convenience is when you make a bad paid-for experience, and an even worse default experience. The focus is never on fun.

Your post employs circular logic, in that review-bombing is inherently a loaded term that implies the reviews are not legitimate and are instead an attempt to deliberately extract concessions from the developer and / or publisher. Grinding Gear Games are getting a large number of negative Steam reviews. Maybe that's just because it is what they deserve..?

"

rob_korn#1745 wrote:

On what are you basing this "undoubtedly" ? Also, what metric is this "A LOT" ? How much is that ?
Here is the magic : Steam vs standalone doesn't matter, retention is a ratio. Players login or don't because of the game, not because of the tool they use to launch the game.

I wasn't talking about Standalone. But as PoE2 is a "modern" game, released on several platforms at the same time and way more designed for consoles than PoE1, I just assume that poE2 has a wider audience on consoles. But as I said, this is only me assuming, as we don't have those numbers (as far as I know).

But as I also said; I really don't care. I just want them to care about PoE1 and their longtime, loyal fans/players. I always prefer the sandbox'y games where you can tailor your experience over the linear, carefully executed adventures where you have about as much freedom as people have in Mario.

"

They're "free" in that you've an unlimited free trial

POE2 is not currently free to trial. There was a fee for early access. People who have spent over a certain amount on POE1 got their early access without having to pay that fee, but it is not free to play and does not look like it is coming out of early access in the short term.

"

I just assume that poE2 has a wider audience on consoles

I don't know either, but I would think it is a pretty safe assumption given the game looks to be heavily designed with console in mind and POE1 was not.