Game has dropped in popularity to closed beta level

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griD wrote:

Totally agree, some no-lifers around here (no need to name, you know who you are!) declare the demise of the game with fresh topics on a daily basis. The reality ingame is quite different: I for one usually have global chat open and there are always new players asking their newbie questions.

I say, to hell with these nay-sayers, their topics are repetitive, boring and have ZERO feedback value.

Ouch and you adding in the whole 'no-lifers' part must've been so necessary. You're pretty much arguing against statistics with what you "feel". Wake up please.

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Windays wrote:

Well from where I'm sitting, it looks like the developers don't want feedback as much as they want praise of how their idea's are amazing and faultless. It seems to me that the developers of Diablo 3 kind of took that stance, trying to dictate what was fun for their player base. How did that work out for them?

All the luck to them. Honestly though, this game shined in closed beta and so far has failed pretty hard in open beta. I don't foresee it changing or getting better until the developers take a hard look at their design principle's and make some needed changes.

You are certainly entitled to your stance (sitting or standing or even lying down), but I naturally disagree. I do think they've entered a tail-chasing scenario, however -- there's so much feedback, even to stuff they haven't implemented yet (which really shouldn't have any feedback), and are now constantly trying to play catch-up to implement not only the changes they want to test out, but the fixes to changes they haven't really had a chance to test.

The game should have stayed in Closed Beta much longer, or at least retained that model.

It should be pay to play, one time fee of say $10 PER ACCOUNT, *with* optional supporter packs on top.

The microtransactions should be significantly cheaper to reflect the fact that the devs would be getting a steady inflow via account creation.

...but should be is merely that.

Right now, CBers don't have many options.

They can still like what this game represents/represented and continue to support its devs.

They can leave.

Or they can become the worst sort of troll, the jilted ex who just can't let go. This is nothing I've not said before.

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The game losing players is a myth.

Well that must explain why the rare times i do login, i see all my old buds from CB, offline. Believe what you will, but many people walked away from this game since OB. We can all sit here and trash talk all day with stats from our assholes, but the facts is, only GGG has access to the real numbers.

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Charan wrote:

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Jakabov wrote:

Being free doesn't improve the gameplay. I really hate this "it's free, therefore there cannot be anything wrong" mentality.

Anyone who has that mentality shouldn't be beta-TESTING. There's a lot wrong. GGG knows this, else the game would be released. Obviously.

The correct mentality should be something like 'it's free, therefore anything wrong should be pointed out and discussed critically so as to make the game more attractive to potential supporters.'

I actually really agree with this.

<3

The game doesn't improve because a bunch of fanboys talk about how perfect the game is.

I like the principles of this game and several of the features that they implemented.

However on the larger scheme, there are large problems that need to be addressed to get the sufficient retention rates that will be needed to support this game on the long term.

I mean shit, I'd much rather see PoE succeeding than 99% of other shit out there.

However, I can't say the developers have been receptive to criticism. Or at least, their actions for the most part have not indicated as such.

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jebroni wrote:

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griD wrote:

Totally agree, some no-lifers around here (no need to name, you know who you are!) declare the demise of the game with fresh topics on a daily basis. The reality ingame is quite different: I for one usually have global chat open and there are always new players asking their newbie questions.

I say, to hell with these nay-sayers, their topics are repetitive, boring and have ZERO feedback value.

Ouch and you adding in the whole 'no-lifers' part must've been so necessary. You're pretty much arguing against statistics with what you "feel". Wake up please.

The alexa.com argument has already been debunked. GG go next.

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JoannaDark wrote:

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The game losing players is a myth.

Well that must explain why the rare times i do login, i see all my old buds from CB, offline. Believe what you will, but many people walked away from this game since OB. We can all sit here and trash talk all day with stats from our assholes, but the facts is, only GGG has access to the real numbers.

Promised Land syndrome. Happened to my main account as well. Went from lots of familiar faces online to virtually none of them, and a bunch of strangers constantly messaging me -- thanks, GGG, for allowing them to friend-add me without my permission or even notification, given a full friends list.

But what I'm not sure about is why people left precisely. The game didn't change *that* much from CB to OB. It gained an act, the balance was a bit off, the desync is pretty much what it was in CB in my extensive experience.

I am still of the belief it wasn't the game that changed, but the community. The loss of a consistent in-game chat was a huge impact on the camaraderie found upon logging in. It was necessary, of course, but GGG really fucked up when they made the social side of PoE a 'secondary' factor and relegated improving it to Open Beta rather than Closed.

Thus my statements above.

The game itself is better than ever in my opinion. The new skills are fun, the new supports are amazing, the graphics continue to improve, the additional uniques are interesting. The Skilldrasil still needs tweaking but there's room to move there.

The only thing OB really promised to CBers was no more wipes. Chris knew that this would bring a LOT of people back.

And it did.

Briefly.

But after that absence, I expect many of them felt the game should be much better than it was. Like I said, Promised Land syndrome. And it's now at that point that most people with common sense have come out of the desert and told the Prophet to go fuck himself. Anyone still following him is deemed a fool. And perhaps it is so.

But no more foolish than those who left the flock to seek a real oasis but then heckle at the prophet and his followers, as though THAT is going to do any good at all.

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tikitaki wrote:

However, I can't say the developers have been receptive to criticism. Or at least, their actions for the most part have not indicated as such.

I am not so sure this is true. I have been around sense closed beta, and have seen a lot of criticism taken to hart and acted upon. I think ppl need to release that Rome was not built in a day. Ppl have to work hard to create was is available today, and are still working hard to create what will be here tomorrow. It seems clear to me that GGG not only listens to the player base's feedback, but also has their own product in mind. As they implement what they want, tons of feedback is generated on each and every little thing, and changes are made to those as they see fit.

I think it also needs to be noted that when developers take too much player feedback to heart the game chances from what they originally envisioned into a casual gamer mess.

Give GGG the time they need, their workers are only human. If you are not happy with what is available now in Open Beta, then come back and check every month or two. You might be pleasantly surprised with updates in the future.

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Charan wrote:

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Windays wrote:

Well from where I'm sitting, it looks like the developers don't want feedback as much as they want praise of how their idea's are amazing and faultless. It seems to me that the developers of Diablo 3 kind of took that stance, trying to dictate what was fun for their player base. How did that work out for them?

All the luck to them. Honestly though, this game shined in closed beta and so far has failed pretty hard in open beta. I don't foresee it changing or getting better until the developers take a hard look at their design principle's and make some needed changes.

You are certainly entitled to your stance (sitting or standing or even lying down), but I naturally disagree. I do think they've entered a tail-chasing scenario, however -- there's so much feedback, even to stuff they haven't implemented yet (which really shouldn't have any feedback), and are now constantly trying to play catch-up to implement not only the changes they want to test out, but the fixes to changes they haven't really had a chance to test.

The game should have stayed in Closed Beta much longer, or at least retained that model.

It should be pay to play, one time fee of say $10 PER ACCOUNT, *with* optional supporter packs on top.

The microtransactions should be significantly cheaper to reflect the fact that the devs would be getting a steady inflow via account creation.

...but should be is merely that.

Right now, CBers don't have many options.

They can still like what this game represents/represented and continue to support its devs.

They can leave.

Or they can become the worst sort of troll, the jilted ex who just can't let go. This is nothing I've not said before.

The fact of the matter is that the addition of act 3, the new scaling of monsters coupled with little to no change in gear or skill offensive/defensive capabilities has led to an overall stale and boring game that took all of the experimentation and character diversity out of the game by alienating the 1350 node massive passive tree and making it nothing but a + button next to a life stat.

This is all stuff that happened right at Open Beta launch, that has impacted the game dramatically and has yet to truly be addressed or fixed. It has nothing to do with their business model and everything to do with the game they are designing and developing.

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But after that absence, I expect many of them felt the game should be much better than it was. Like I said, Promised Land syndrome. And it's now at that point that most people with common sense have come out of the desert and told the Prophet to go fuck himself. Anyone still following him is deemed a fool. And perhaps it is so.

But no more foolish than those who left the flock to seek a real oasis but then heckle at the prophet and his followers, as though THAT is going to do any good at all.

What the fuck? This game isn't the second coming of Christ.

Its a fun game with a decent player base for a new developer still in beta. 2.46 million accounts is an incredible feat for GGG.

I think gamers live in a fantasy world where games are supposed to make their dream world a reality. As soon as that veil has been lifted, a good game becomes rank shit in their eyes.

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ElephantRider wrote:

Game will be fine. Of course the player base would drop off. Some decide they don't like it and leave. Some play through everything, get bored farming for maps and leave, but these I can see coming back as more content is added. Some leave because XP penalties or whatever.

Who cares? The game is made for a niche market. That niche market will stabilize and support the game. I doubt the developers thought it would be any other way.

You may be correct that GGG has deliberately created a niche game and is happy with the crumbs of success and not want a bigger portion of the arpg pie.

The big question in my mind and others is why does GGG want to make peanuts when they could easily make some serious dough? I mean, the base PoE play is sound (not counting desync), the gems as currency and crafting is imho a good design, the passive skills tree/forest works ok for build diversity, and the intense play is over the top good. So why does GGG deliberately choose to have only 2 permanent leagues and thus only cater to a very small group of hardcore arpg players? Are they afraid to expand the player base or what? Keeping the play style to only HC and SC (default) is why when players jumped in on Jan 23rd to try OB that they have now quit. Same reason I quit D3 last year is same reason my enthusiasm and amount of time playing PoE is dwindling. There aren't enough permanent play style choices! Just as many games let you set the difficulty level for playing their game, POE should have many more leagues to let the players choose how they want to play PoE. From solo to party hearty, from casual to Ironman, PoE needs a lot more variety if it is to have any long lasting playing appeal to more that a few hardcore.

I keep talking about (harping on) the time sink verses rewards ratio for a very good reason. This is what drives most players desire to keep playing an arpg. A game company, whether it by a huge one like Acti-Blizzard, or a small indie one like GGG, has to fine tune their arpg to dole out just enough rewards per hours of time played to keep the player base happy but hungry for more. Go too far in either direction, too little rewards, or too much, and most players will get frustrated or bored and quit. GGG can't get that with only the current HC/SC leagues. It's either the too hard HC or the too easy SC (what's the challenge, if I die I just come back with less XP on that level). There must be more to choose from if PoE is to have any real long lasting appeal and acquire the critical player base mass needed to sustain itself for the long haul.

Seeing the statistics of daily players and how it has dropped steadily from the start of OB does not surprise me at all and actually proves that my thinking on this is spot on.