Five Weeks into 0.2.0, POE2 is Down 93.2% Players All Time & 83.9% from Patch Launch

Tell you what, if i wanted to play a "souls-like" game.. i'll play Dark Souls.


I wanna play a ARPG and try builds and loot gearing optimization if I wanted to get fancy.

POE1 established so much systems (with its failures from their release years ago that was slowly improved) but I still don't understand the direction of all the abandoned core-player-game interaction by choosing not to include them in POE2
Последняя редакция: ZungleBoogie#1892. Время: 12 мая 2025 г., 06:27:27
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noodle04#6673 написал:
Was excited to play this season after running multiple builds to pinnacle bosses on release. Saw patch notes before dawn of the hunt release and said "nah."

Thought it would be a train wreck. Each week proven more right.

Less than 40k on a,Saturday night is bad


Yep, had the exact same reaction when the 0.2 patch notes dropped. Somehow they managed to nerf things that were already broken in 0.1 and overnerf things that just needed slight tuning. And it absolutely drove me nuts how they completely murdered Infernalist, Chaluya, and Pathfinder for no apparent reason.

Still, I gave it two chances. First, right at league start—I jumped into Standard just to assess the damage. Almost every skill was gutted, the passive tree looked like someone took a chainsaw to it, and anything remotely playable before was now straight-up useless.

Then I thought, "Alright, maybe a fresh league will feel better." Started as Amazon, pushed through to the third zone, and dropped it. The pacing was miserable—doing 10 damage to white mobs with HP bars longer than the patch notes. Total slog.

Then they droped few "fixes" of that mess so I gave it one last try. Got through three acts before rage-quitting mid-fight against the Act 2 boss that spent 20 minutes bunny-hopping across the arena.

I still check the forum from time to time, mostly out of boredom, secretly hoping to see a “we're terribly sorry, it won’t happen again” announcement for patch 0.3. But of course, all I find is dropping online (exactly count like it was after 4 months of 0.1) and posts such this about GGG’s sacred “vision,” defended by the top 1% of fanboys who proudly crawl through low-tier maps or convince themselves they’re “engaging with deep mechanics” while spamming Lightning Strike on their Amazon for the 100 hours.


I’ll give PoE2 one final shot when 0.3 drops. But if nothing fundamentally changes, I’m done - it’ll be officially Dead on Arrival game
[img]https://i.ibb.co/HDhPxJkY/GGG.png[/img]
Последняя редакция: ShaDarkLord#6528. Время: 12 мая 2025 г., 06:47:06
Sincerely advice anyone who got fed up with GGG "loot rations" and losing exp to random oneshots to move on to LE if they haven't tried it. It was built like "poe without masochism" down to tiny details like familiar "recently refers to 4 seconds" tooltip.

Pros:
- Flexible trading and ssf systems, choosing ssf no longer means you are losing ability to party forever. You can forget poe trade site like a bad dream and target farm any kind of items you need.

- Modern UI with great QoL, you can complete story without ever portaling to town. Crafting, salvaging, and all necessary management can be done in the field, and stashing excessive uniques can wait until you come through a town by plot, inventory size permits it. Scrolls of wisdom are history as they should be. Crafting materials are picked up in bulk and go straight to stash.

- Shortcuts for repeated story playthrough, middle ground between D4's "skip all story and go grind without purpose" and poe's "you will do whole acts every damn time"

- No exp penalty. Provided death log. Shocking but I still never saw LE players bashing into content with their corpses, GGG's justification for having exp penalty is hypocrisy.

- Skill-specific passive trees allow for same level of skill customization as support gems, and you don't have to rely on gem drops to upgrade your skills.

- No silly UW restrictions.

- No crashes and latency spikes in all my playtime there, latency is rock solid.

Cons:
- simplistic graphics and monster animations, which I personally relate to limited budget. Once you get into the rhythm, you stop noticing it, combat flow is rather fast in endgame. It also has a flipside of lower system requirements.

- issues with build diversity and skill balance, but at least those issues are not backwards like poe: in LE core class design works, weird gimmicks are mostly not, by being too weak. Also building doesn't feel as restricting as poe because no one is draining your exp for experimenting, and respeccing skill passives is free. As is retrying bosses, no GGG insane grind loops for every attempt.

- small amount of endgame content. LE is relatively young project, and they are working on it.
Последняя редакция: Echothesis#7320. Время: 12 мая 2025 г., 06:45:16
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Echothesis#7320 написал:
Sincerely advice anyone who got fed up with GGG "loot rations" and losing exp to random oneshots to move on to LE if they haven't tried it. It was built like "poe without masochism" down to tiny details like familiar "recently refers to 4 seconds" tooltip.

Pros:
- Flexible trading and ssf systems, choosing ssf no longer means you are losing ability to party forever. You can forget poe trade site like a bad dream and target farm any kind of items you need.

- Modern UI with great QoL, you can complete story without ever portaling to town. Crafting, salvaging, and all necessary management can be done in the field, and stashing excessive uniques can wait until you come through a town by plot, inventory size permits it. Scrolls of wisdom are history as they should be. Crafting materials are picked up in bulk and go straight to stash.

- Shortcuts for repeated story playthrough, middle ground between D4's "skip all story and go grind without purpose" and poe's "you will do whole acts every damn time"

- No exp penalty. Provided death log. Shocking but I still never saw LE players bashing into content with their corpses, GGG's justification for having exp penalty is hypocrisy.

- Skill-specific passive trees allow for same level of skill customization as support gems, and you don't have to rely on gem drops to upgrade your skills.

- No silly UW restrictions.

- No crashes and latency spikes in all my playtime there, latency is rock solid.

Cons:
- simplistic graphics and monster animations, which I personally relate to limited budget. Once you get into the rhythm, you stop noticing it, combat flow is rather fast in endgame. It also has a flipside of lower system requirements.

- issues with build diversity and skill balance, but at least those issues are not backwards like poe: in LE core class design works, weird gimmicks are mostly not, by being too weak. Also building doesn't feel as restricting as poe because no one is draining your exp for experimenting, and respeccing skill passives is free. As is retrying bosses, no GGG insane grind loops for every attempt.

- small amount of endgame content. LE is relatively young project, and they are working on it.


LE really shines right now, but there's still a lot of work to be done. I completed all content including Uber Aboroth within 2 weeks, made 3 builds (one of them from my head), and then uninstalled because there was simply nothing left to do.

The trade system is better than PoE’s in concept, but it's overcomplicated and suffers from poor UI/UX design. The Solo Faction is awesome, but it feels more like an offline league. It could really benefit from combine these factions to make the experience feel more smooth.

One major downside is that skills are locked to specific classes. It kills diversity, and some classes feel noticeably weaker than others. If the devs added more content and did it more than once a year, this game could easily become a PoE killer.
[img]https://i.ibb.co/HDhPxJkY/GGG.png[/img]
LE is so great that people apparently prefer posting about it on PoE2 forums instead of playing it or at least posting in LE forums.

Anyway... Yes, indeed. Player counts tend to drop during Early Access. Is this news to anyone?
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vexorian#9572 написал:
LE is so great that people apparently prefer posting about it on PoE2 forums instead of playing it or at least posting in LE forums.

Anyway... Yes, indeed. Player counts tend to drop during Early Access. Is this news to anyone?


Ah yes, the classic “if it’s so good, why aren't you playing it" argument

But hey, if you think people talking about another ARPG here, maybe ask yourself why so many of us are talking about it here instead of hyping PoE2?

the news how GGG lost of 90% online since 0.2 start, when same online was only after 4 month since 0.1 start.

But sure, keep telling yourself Early Access explains everything. Worked great for 0.1 too, right?

[img]https://i.ibb.co/HDhPxJkY/GGG.png[/img]
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vexorian#9572 написал:
LE is so great that people apparently prefer posting about it on PoE2 forums instead of playing it or at least posting in LE forums.

Anyway... Yes, indeed. Player counts tend to drop during Early Access. Is this news to anyone?


This was my first mentioning of LE in this forum for a few years, you can run search if its important to you :shrug:

And LE devs never gave a reason to post on their forums to begin with, they care about players comfort without waiting for mass outrages. And GGG player treatment, well, just visit "help and information" subforum here:)
truth is, endgame is BAD.
Its needs rework from scrap.
SSF player✔️
ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!?
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ZungleBoogie#1892 написал:
Tell you what, if i wanted to play a "souls-like" game.. i'll play Dark Souls.


I wanna play a ARPG and try builds and loot gearing optimization if I wanted to get fancy.

POE1 established so much systems (with its failures from their release years ago that was slowly improved) but I still don't understand the direction of all the abandoned core-player-game interaction by choosing not to include them in POE2

Dark Souls is ARPG. If you want to play PoE1 or Diablo clone then write this.

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ShaDarkLord#6528 написал:
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vexorian#9572 написал:
LE is so great that people apparently prefer posting about it on PoE2 forums instead of playing it or at least posting in LE forums.

Anyway... Yes, indeed. Player counts tend to drop during Early Access. Is this news to anyone?


Ah yes, the classic “if it’s so good, why aren't you playing it" argument

But hey, if you think people talking about another ARPG here, maybe ask yourself why so many of us are talking about it here instead of hyping PoE2?

the news how GGG lost of 90% online since 0.2 start, when same online was only after 4 month since 0.1 start.

But sure, keep telling yourself Early Access explains everything. Worked great for 0.1 too, right?


PoE1 was never good in keeping attracted audience. Unlike games like Counter-Strike or Dota 2 it never had constant online. It always dropped after start of the league. Strange to see different behavior here.
Последняя редакция: Grohuf#4121. Время: 12 мая 2025 г., 08:02:29
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Annastasia_Steele#3866 написал:
truth is, endgame is BAD.
Its needs rework from scrap.


Needs to be completely diffent. I'm new to arpgs and I followed the hype of poe2 being revolutionary and mixing souls like with arpg so it shouldn't fully resemble any of them, this is supposed to be something different. Why am I hearing that this is basically a port from poe1 with the same endless grind of maps with little reward, with some of the same mechanics as poe1.

Based on the hype and expectation I would expect them to come up with a new system, even if it's adding a little rpg in the mix.

The entire concept of enless mapping and resets every couple of months is trash. They need to delete endgame completely and come of with a better more interesting way to play.

And I dont know if it's even completely ggg's fault for the hype and expectations set. I have noticed that streamers over sell games all the time. Can't trust them either lol
Последняя редакция: outlander19900#0213. Время: 12 мая 2025 г., 08:05:04

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