Do players play POE after leagues end?

Permanent Hardcore is usually the least-populated league; its true that among HC players, the temp leagues by FAR have a much higher popularity.

For softcore, it's a different story: both the temp leagues as well as the permanent Standard league have high levels of popularity; depending on the timing (and league) Standard may in fact have higher populations than the going softcore challenge league.

While GGG does DEFINITELY encourage play of Challenge leagues (which is why they are default over the permanent leagues when making new characters) they also support actual play on permanent leagues; not everyone wants to throw away their characters every 3 months, after all.

Personally, I agree with GGG when it comes to new characters: I recommend only ever making new characters in challenge leagues, races, and other "temporary" leagues. However, I don't see that much reason to quit playing them once they shift back to a "permanent" league.

Usually no, but I'm really hating act IV. Well... not REALLY hating it, but it's making me not want to even play the game. My HC stash is full of goodies. Maybe I'll have an easier time of it and can actually learn to beat the over-tuned content.

for me its more the other way around. i usually primarily play standard and sometimes i participate in leagues but they are just for fun... and then again im way more interested in racing than leagues which is another pair of shoes again.

dont see any reason why you should only concentrate on leagues and not play the "normal" game (no matter if sc or hc) at all. if you play first time in a league then you can also just continue playing your char in sc/hc after the league ends.

I play very little outside of a league.

My typical experience in standard is something like this:

log on an old character
skill tree is reset
nothing works
stash is 75% remove only tabs full of random stuff
close poe and wait for new temp league

Usually what happens is the new leagues bring a lot of players back for a couple months, near the end of the leagues the population starts to die off, and then there's a lull between leagues before it starts up anew.

Basically either play standard or pick one of the new leagues -- I'd be surprised if you're still interested in playing after 4 straight months.

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Kythers wrote:

My typical experience in standard is something like this:

log on an old character
skill tree is reset
nothing works
stash is 75% remove only tabs full of random stuff
close poe and wait for new temp league

I never realized, until PoE, how having constant character resets made me NOT want to play my old characters. Part of it is not having any permanence, no attachment to my character - they're disposable. Having to figure out a new tree almost every 4 months for a build is tiresome. And now the gear may no longer work since i might have to rework stats, resists, or even defenses because of the constantly changing meta. If I want to try a new build/skill, I have to level all the gems from scratch, I might as well roll a new character. Or I can buy pre-leveled gems, and supports, which is quite expensive on top of all the new gear I need to buy.

Playing in standard without wealth is frustrating. The market is so mature and quite expensive, so it's prohibitively expensive to try to buy upgrades, and one can't sell their own drops because there isn't a bunch of people buying progression upgrades like in a new league. But once you have a decent stash of leveling gear, standard itself is boring, the whole leveling process is face roll.

The game is tailored towards the temp leagues, and as a result, it's not fun for me to play when there isn't a temp league.

I stop



they become throwphys

I play the current league and then move to the next new league.

That has its pros and cons.
Pros include the new leagues being very active, there being a fresh economy, leagues bringing something new to the table and so on.

But there are downsides as well. You keep starting over and abandon your characters, the stuff you collected will essentially "expire" since it becomes useless to me once it's merged back with the classic HC as I don't play it. So I don't spend too much time trading and building up wealth or going all out in hideout creating in the leagues because it'll all be for nothing in a few months anyway.

This doesn't seem to help the game. I cannot really put a finger to it, but if your player base only plays your game for 4 months (example) then lay off the game for the next few months, it cannot be healthy to the game. Your sales will most likely drop off during the lull period too.

Perhaps another approach is to implement special league events onto permanent leagues? Like those tempest thingie in the current tempest league, implement them onto permanent standard and hardcore for a week. Next week, implement warbands' stuff onto standard and hardcore. Or stagger the events weekly so players will keep playing. MTX sales will likely be sustainable too.

I don't know, just feels something is out of place here.