Steamchart - doesnt look too healthy?! :/

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Kenzorz написал:

1. People burn themselves out with the game but they usually come back with the next big update.

2. People like me uninstalled the Steam client in favour of the standalone one because Steam feels the need to d/c every 5 mins making it especially frustrating when you pay 3 chaos for a Lvl 77-78 map run only to d/c at the start of every run. I have had very few d/cing problems since switching to the standalone version. The Steam version also loads 1000x slower, needs to download the entire game again for every patch, and the 5000 steam popups and windows take up unnecessary memory.

But most people who stopped playing on Steam didn't even get past normal difficulty. I'm assuming these people just threw their hands in the air and said "fuck this, I'm outta here." The game is simply too unforgiving on so many levels. Desync being by far the biggest issue. We can reassure ourselves that this game isn't meant for "casuals" (I don't like that term as anyone who starts a brand new game is "casual" until they start playing it more) but seeing a 50% drop in player population in less than three months from official release should concern each and every one of us. And, don't give me that BS about people returning for patches, as it's only half-true. You can see the graph and notice that the spikes after a patch are getting smaller and smaller and nowhere do the come close to the amount of people lost. People are realizing that for better or worse THIS is the finished product. They come back after a patch to see little fixes that don't change the game for them one iota. SO they stop coming back.

"Hardcore" gamers may think they don't want "casuals" here in the first place ("derp lol go back to Diablo3 scrub") but GGG is a business, and without those "casuals" PoE won't be around for very long.

You will note that some of those other games require more time investment to play. PoE you can hop in and out of a map in a matter of minutes. Also some of those games like Dota 2 and CS:GO have a built in stream viewer which artificially inflates the player count as many thousands of players watch streams.

Finally, the majority of us don't use Steam for PoE as it's one of the few top games that does not require it and the revenue model nor genre of game depend on a large concurrent population like ESPORTS and MMORPG's

Some of my best times in this game were when there were 400 concurrent players. I'd like to see the game grow and be popular but I fail to see the link between concurrency on Steam.

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terrorist написал:

You will note that some of those other games require more time investment to play. PoE you can hop in and out of a map in a matter of minutes.

You're saying PoE doesn't demand time investment?

The steamgraph is just a measuring stick. Just as a poll can be fairly accurate representation of many things. Rationalizing away the huge drop in player base certainly isn't going to help the game. It takes money for GGG to do what they do. People who quit the game aren't donating or buying mtx regardless if they're on Steam or not.

HAHAH another one that doesnt know anything about stats and graph OMG get back to school guys!

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PureLaine написал:

HAHAH another one that doesnt know anything about stats and graph OMG get back to school guys!

Stats OP.

Buff graph.

This again?

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bluefalcon74 написал:

You're saying PoE doesn't demand time investment?

No, not at all. I'm saying players aren't locked into playing for extended periods of time. I can jump in for five minutes or five hours. There's no penalties for leaving and maps generally take less than 10 minutes.

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Rationalizing away the huge drop in player base certainly isn't going to help the game.

Less concurrent players =/= drop in player base. I'm arguing the relevancy of concurrency as the game and revenue model do not require it.

I have Steam but I dont use Steam client for PoE. Steam is not representing the entire community. Dont make that mistake

Facts:

- We all know that player base population spikes up and then decreases after major content releases.
- PoE is not very newbie friendly and the majority of the best parts of the game are restricted until later.
- PoE has lots of disagreeable mechanics that cause people to quit or 'take a break' after playing for long periods of time.
- PoE has an above average amount of negative feedback for the game. This can be found in the Feedback forum (here) or through game reviews on other sites. (See the Gamespot award's comments).

PoE's saving grace thus far has, very simply put, been it's large content updates. Thus, I give a very humble proposition. Wait for the next 4-month content patch and see how things are a month after that.

These threads are nice but the information in them is essentially useless. Even if PoE lost all of it's players today, all that matters is whether or not they will have new players tomorrow. If all current players were replaced with new players this would be an advantageous situation for GGG as they would now have a stream of new players that haven't purchased anything yet.

I expect that eventually PoE will run into a problem, a 4-month expansion will hit and there won't be a massive surge in player numbers. This might be the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th ... nth post-release content patch, but I feel confident it will happen one day. My guess is the 2nd major content patch. (Disclaimer: This probably won't happen if GGG pulls out some miracle shit like fixing Desync 100% entirely and makes grinding/crafting feel more rewarding.)

Until then, PoE will live strong with a large player base.

Edit: Wow. I'm looking at the feedback forum again and it's nuts just how many negative threads are there. Every post is negative except for about 2-3 which are in the wrong forum/misc/positive. I know people with problems complain the loudest but sheesh, there used to be like 3-4 absolutely positive threads at a time. Also, related thread I just saw in Feedback: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/741277.

Edit 2: Side note to an old thread of mine that I still refer to a lot because I think the analytic links are nice How To Tell if PoE is Dying.

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DestroTheGod написал:

PoE's saving grace thus far has, very simply put, been it's large content updates. Thus, I give a very humble proposition. Wait for the next 4-month content patch and see how things are a month after that.

These threads are nice but the information in them is essentially useless. Even if PoE lost all of it's players today, all that matters is whether or not they will have new players tomorrow. If all current players were replaced with new players this would be an advantageous situation for GGG as they would now have a stream of new players that haven't purchased anything yet.

I expect that eventually PoE will run into a problem, a 4-month expansion will hit and there won't be a massive surge in player numbers. This might be the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th ... nth post-release content patch, but I feel confident it will happen one day. My guess is the 2nd major content patch. (Disclaimer: This probably won't happen if GGG pulls out some miracle shit like fixing Desync 100% entirely and makes grinding/crafting feel more rewarding.)

Yes. I would consider the bolded part (if/when it happens) to be the best sort of evidence that there is a problem.