Game has dropped in popularity to closed beta level

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Destradoz wrote:

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Windays wrote:

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Destradoz wrote:

Some people here have absolutely no clue as to what makes up a dead game. I've played games with an average population of 1k players, and even that had enough of a population to not be considered dead.

Were they F2P games that funded themselves solely on microtransactions without a publisher or any financial backing?

Yes. I am not sure if people are worried by GGG not getting enough money or the game not having enough players. If it's the former, I think GGG wanting to move to a bigger office is indicative that money is not a problem currently. Maybe it can become a problem later on, but certainly people can worry about it when it actually happens.

If it's the latter, as I said, people don't understand what a dead game really is! I've witnessed the death of an MMO that I played for years and it was decades away from what this game is (I am aware that this is an ARPG and therefore a bit different).

Speculation is speculation no matter if it comes from you or from me. Obviously for the game to be dead, it would no longer have to be supported and GGG would no longer be developing for it.

The game is declining, whether we agree on the reasons or not for it to be declining is irrelevant. Hence why people say it's dying. The main reason however is that you generally expect your game to incline it's user base, not start declining within 1 month of soft release.

If you build your game to decline it's user base over time, well expect it to be dead shortly thereafter.

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scorpitron wrote:

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Windays wrote:

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scorpitron wrote:

honest question...

i have been here a very long time. what i don't get is what has changed so much from cbt to obt besides # of forum trolls?

i started playing in sept 2011 when all classes started on same place on the passive tree so i have seen pretty much every change.

what is so different besides the added content and features? my game stability is virtually teh same. i have a ton more gems to play with. more gear. more vendor recipes. i can actually trade without dropping crap on the ground.

do you all just miss MoC that much? seriously i am curious cuz this game just seems to get better and better to me, so much that its basically all i have played since that day in sept 2011 when i got in cbt.

It's the things that didn't change from CB and the things that did change as well. Pretty much all of the stuff the poster above you listed. Some if it is issue's that have existed well before OB. A good portion of it though is from the changes in OB.

but what if i disagree with that claim? I mean we are still in beta and the dev manifesto seems to have at least a crude roadmap to many of the things listed in the post you reference.

i think the biggest issue i see are people who insist that getting to 100 is the point of the game. imo its not. level capping is just so MMOish. I and everyone i know play builds to prove/disprove they are fun/viable. reroll reroll reroll. the game just seems tailor made for HC players like me and my friends.

so in those terms i'd say the game has held true to vision and is only getting better.

Then I guess you disagree, it happens.

How about an auction house or a functional consolidated trade channel. Seems like nowadays no one in trade and nothing worth a damn to buy.

We have very different idea's about what is considered game breaking. To me it means the game is unplayable. None of what you mentioned makes the game unplayable. Desync is the closest to game breaking this game has atm and there are ways to minimize that to a degree. The rest of what you listed is mostly just balance issues.

Arpg's have always been about grinding and farming. If you want the absolute best your going to grind your ass off and still probably never get it. That's the point of these types of games.

Melee definitely needs work. The dev's know this and have said they were working on it. Regardless if you feel this isn't really a beta, it is still beta until it has a 1.0 release.

As far as people not playing as much, I pretty much figured that was to be expected for a open beta, huge interest at first then settles down. Very few games constantly increase player base but they are still considered a success if they don't. I played D2 off and on for years and imagine this game will be the same for me and many others. No game is perfect and this game is no different. I still see plenty of people online though. It's not like say age of conan. When I played that there was a crapton of people at first but in less than 3 months there was literally zones where I wouldn't ever see another person for hours.

Expected, really. One has to remember this is a linear, three act , three difficulty level game where a single character can experience and try all skill gems, not a MMORPG with a huge gameworld to explore, or even a game forcing you to make 6 characters to try all skills. Not that I love such types of games... But it's true I ended up making 5+ characters in Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 to test out each class's unique skills, whereas in Path of Exile, I did one caster/summoner hybrid, used a little bow on the side every now and then, then made a couple melee centered character... Whom I didn't enjoy that much.It's both the blessing and the curse of soft classes that can do anything and go anywhere on a grid...

Then, you have to examine the people that play. You have a lot of Freebie new game testers that may or might not keep playing, you have people that enjoy the experience POE provides, but don't really care about repeat playtroughs, either because they experienced enough or the content to be satisfied, or because they don't enjoy the increased challenge. They beat the content on normal, they don't care about repeating it three times or more.

The biggest part of the core fanbase are people that like Diablo 2 and similar games. These guys will take the game for a spin, take a character to lvl 70+, do some mapping, probably try a couple different build, push said new builds to varying levels and will probably quit at some point , waiting for new content to rekindle their interest. I'm part of said group of gamers... Each week or so I look at the patch notes to see if anything big has been added, and I usually don't play because as much as I like a couple new uniques I won't find and a couple new skill gems that don't drastically change my gaming experience , it's not exactly enough to get me back into the game...

Then you have the more hardcore, Kripparian-esque no lifers and race fanatics. These guys love making new builds and repeating the same content a million times, even when they know it by heart... And even those end up quitting at some point , mostly due to the race seasons being great at burning you out of the game. Since you're forcing yourself to play so much of the same game , it's bound to burn you out in the long run.

As you can see, it's pretty hard to sustain growth, especially since the open beta wave of newcomers have come and gone and since even the most intense POE gamers are kinda getting burned out of racing for full months. The only solution is releasing more content, sadly... Or finding crappy artifical ways of tempting people to repeat the same content over and over again...

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scorpitron wrote:

honest question...

i have been here a very long time. what i don't get is what has changed so much from cbt to obt besides # of forum trolls?

i started playing in sept 2011 when all classes started on same place on the passive tree so i have seen pretty much every change.

what is so different besides the added content and features? my game stability is virtually teh same. i have a ton more gems to play with. more gear. more vendor recipes. i can actually trade without dropping crap on the ground.

do you all just miss MoC that much? seriously i am curious cuz this game just seems to get better and better to me, so much that its basically all i have played since that day in sept 2011 when i got in cbt.

See I think this is kind of what people dont understand. A lot of us have seen this game come very far, though I havnt seen as much change as you. So many things are better than what they were. There have been so many improvements in systems: the skill tree, skills, gear, graphics, randomness of zones, trading, notice board, lore, dialog, sound effects, playability, stability, pretty much everything about this game has gotten so much better. So people that have seen some of this evolution have a real appreciation for what the devs have done, and have developed trust in what the devs can do.

Unfortunately, most of the open beta people have not experienced such revolutionary (to wraeclast) improvements. And generally the game looks like a polished product graphics wise, feels like a complete game, and they really have no experience with how well the devs have done to make this a better game.

Instead some are caught up on things they would expect from a polished game, they dont have experience in wraeclast and dont understand why the game is not exactly like a diablo 3 (even while they say they hate diablo 3), they are conflicted within themselves a lot of times, both hating games like diablo 3 and hating that this game is not a game like diablo 3, and trying to find ways that the game is like a game such as diablo 3 so they can dismiss it as diablo 3 (they are very confused imo). They want the difficulty to come down, time to max level to come down, ease in obtaining gear to come down, and they want to believe that there is a problem with the game and the developers when told that isnt the vision for this game. That is how i see so many of these open beta forum trolls. Not all open beta players or even most, but a lot of the ones that post regular complaint threads.

I think Charan very well covered the disgruntled veterans from CB, and I do believe they are on the verge of coming back, just need to see a few of their core complaints about playability and stability fixed and they will be back and glad for it I think.

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LostForm wrote:

They want the difficulty to come down, time to max level to come down, ease in obtaining gear to come down, and they want to believe that there is a problem with the game and the developers when told that isnt the vision for this game.

This is the kind of comment that gives me a headache and mostly destroys your credibility.

For instance, who is "they"?

It certainly isn't me, I never stated any of those things. Maybe some people do, but I think it's rather rare.

It appears to me that you are inventing an imaginary person with imaginary opinions, and then lambasting them.

I think this is known as a "straw man argument." Invent the straw man of your choosing, and then slay it.

The core game is mostly too easy - not too hard. People aren't dying from monsters and difficult bosses mostly. They are dying from desyncs, crashes, and other such things.

Also the main criticisms with gear that I see have nothing to do with how easy/hard they are to get, but rather how inconsistent they are to get. Most people are used to this from all such games such as D2. RNG is RNG so to speak -- but there comes a point when enough is enough.

For instance, if it currently takes 1000 fuses on average for a 6L (just pulling a number out of my ass) I would see it as a huge improvement if you could use a recipe to spend 2000 fusings (or even more) for a guaranteed 6L.

Would that make a 6L "easier" to get? On average, no. On average it would be twice as expensive. However, I still would see that as a massive improvement.

There's nothing "hardcore" about giving yourself carpal tunnel and burning out your mouse clicking through thousands of fusings hoping to get lucky.

I think GGG is most likely spending far too much time looking at analytics and graphs of their playerbase (eg total amount of currency found across the server per unit time, total amount spent, total amount of 6L achieved...)

and far too little time thinking about the core aspects of this. such as, is this enjoyable? do people like to gamble away currency that they spent weeks finding hoping for an upgrade? or is this a source of contention and anger?

etc

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tikitaki wrote:

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LostForm wrote:

They want the difficulty to come down, time to max level to come down, ease in obtaining gear to come down, and they want to believe that there is a problem with the game and the developers when told that isnt the vision for this game.

This is the kind of comment that gives me a headache and mostly destroys your credibility.

For instance, who is "they"?

It certainly isn't me, I never stated any of those things. Maybe some people do, but I think it's rather rare.

It appears to me that you are inventing an imaginary person with imaginary opinions, and then lambasting them.

I think this is known as a "straw man argument." Invent the straw man of your choosing, and then slay it.

The core game is mostly too easy - not too hard. People aren't dying from monsters and difficult bosses mostly. They are dying from desyncs, crashes, and other such things.

Also the main criticisms with gear that I see have nothing to do with how easy/hard they are to get, but rather how inconsistent they are to get. Most people are used to this from all such games such as D2. RNG is RNG so to speak -- but there comes a point when enough is enough.

For instance, if it currently takes 1000 fuses on average for a 6L (just pulling a number out of my ass) I would see it as a huge improvement if you could use a recipe to spend 2000 fusings (or even more) for a guaranteed 6L.

Would that make a 6L "easier" to get? On average, no. On average it would be twice as expensive. However, I still would see that as a massive improvement.

There's nothing "hardcore" about giving yourself carpal tunnel and burning out your mouse clicking through thousands of fusings hoping to get lucky.

I think GGG is most likely spending far too much time looking at analytics and graphs of their playerbase (eg total amount of currency found across the server per unit time, total amount spent, total amount of 6L achieved...)

and far too little time thinking about the core aspects of this. such as, is this enjoyable? do people like to gamble away currency that they spent weeks finding hoping for an upgrade? or is this a source of contention and anger?

etc

if you arnt part of they then you arnt part of they, yet you want gear easier to obtain, and effort to obtain that gear to come down. And yes it takes effort to farm up those orbs or equivalent tradeables for the orbs. You want the time to obtain gear to come way down, and you want the overall strength of your gear to go up with less effort. You say the game is too easy now, yet you Have to gamble away everything you own on gear.

I think your argument has huge holes personally. Having a guaranteed path to a piece of gear does make obtaining the gear "easier" as it is a fixed path, and there is no disappointment.

Learn some moderation and patience, good things come to those that wait the saying goes. If you cant deal with not having all the perfect game in gear right now, then you are exactly who i am talking about, and your wants do not align with the game by and large.

There are ways to make applying 1000 orbs of fusing one at a time to a piece of gear easier than like 3000 clicks of the mouse, without removing the element of disappointment. So is your argument that you shouldnt have to click 3000 times (valid) or you should never be disappointed in your search for gear (a difference of opinion from the devs).

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LostForm wrote:

, yet you want gear easier to obtain,

I never said this or claimed this.

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LostForm wrote:

and effort to obtain that gear to come down.

I never said this or claimed this.

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LostForm wrote:

You want the time to obtain gear to come way down,

I never said this or claimed this.

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LostForm wrote:

and you want the overall strength of your gear to go up with less effort.

I never said this or claimed this.

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LostForm wrote:

You say the game is too easy now, yet you Have to gamble away everything you own on gear.

I said the first half of this, but not the second half. I'm not a gambler and did not play the game in that fashion. I limited my build choices to ones in which I could buy the gear needed with currency as opposed to getting into a situation where I'd be forced to gamble for an upgrade.

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LostForm wrote:

I think your argument has huge holes personally.

Which holes? Where? Point them out.

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LostForm wrote:

If you cant deal with not having all the perfect game in gear right now, then you are exactly who i am talking about

Of course I can deal with "not having all the perfect gear."

I don't think I have ever managed to get "perfect gear" in any game I have ever played, and I would never expect to.

Why do you keep inventing imaginary people?