SET FREE THE ASCENDANCY POINTS (or rework the lab) [New ascension methods/lab rework ideas]
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Zalhan2 wrote:
The numbers show people dropped off after lab because it kills replay.
You know after looking at the steam numbers discussed in some previous posts, what really struck me is that when Ascendancy launched PoE had the highest weekly steam player count in history (37,266) and in less than 3 months it dropped to 6,928, close to the lowest player count in history (which was 6,689), and the player count was still dropping just before Prophecy launched. Moreover, this drop off occurred over the Perandus league, which had the most generous opportunities to acquire good items of any challenge league ever offered.
Since Ascendancy had two new things -- ascendancy classes and the labyrinth -- this seems to me like reasonable evidence* that a lot of people came for the ascendancy classes but left because of the labyrinth.
* Legal disclaimer: but by no means conclusive evidence, and as far as using the steam players as lab rats goes. Moreover, the evidence is also consistent with lots of people coming for the labyrinth and leaving because of the ascendancy classes. ;)
The numbers show people dropped off after lab because it kills replay.
You know after looking at the steam numbers discussed in some previous posts, what really struck me is that when Ascendancy launched PoE had the highest weekly steam player count in history (37,266) and in less than 3 months it dropped to 6,928, close to the lowest player count in history (which was 6,689), and the player count was still dropping just before Prophecy launched. Moreover, this drop off occurred over the Perandus league, which had the most generous opportunities to acquire good items of any challenge league ever offered.
Since Ascendancy had two new things -- ascendancy classes and the labyrinth -- this seems to me like reasonable evidence* that a lot of people came for the ascendancy classes but left because of the labyrinth.
* Legal disclaimer: but by no means conclusive evidence, and as far as using the steam players as lab rats goes. Moreover, the evidence is also consistent with lots of people coming for the labyrinth and leaving because of the ascendancy classes. ;)
All absolutely true, I also note that it is clear that the drop off slope of the curve is steeper than any other curves previously.
FACTS:
1. The GGG R&D engineer population has grown quickly over the past couple of years.
2. Chris Wilson said that the four labyrinth engineers were all new hires.
3. Chris Wilson said that Labyrinth development turned out that it would take longer to complete than they planned and had to delay Labyrinth by a release. Even so the Uber Labyrinth was delayed an additional release.
SPECULATION:
1. GGG is Chris Wilson's first role as the manager of a large group.
2. Over the past couple of years Chris Wilson has been consumed more and more by activities required to run a larger company and had significantly less time to monitor/guide/review the development process.
3. The Labyrinth engineering team was not sufficiently supervised by experienced PoE developers.
4. Chris Wilson knows that labyrinth is a problem that needs to be fixed but has had some problems trying to figure out how best to get it resolved without hurting the organization that he is trying to build. The "hurt" I'm talking about here is two fold. First, a good manager has to be careful when giving criticism to software engineers. Second, a good manager has to be careful when telling engineers what to do especially if he is trying to encourage his engineers to make such decisions/actions without requiring his own direction.
Over 430 threads discussing labyrinth problems with over 1040 posters in support (thread # 1702621) Thank you all! GGG will implement a different method for ascension in PoE2. Retired!
1. The GGG R&D engineer population has grown quickly over the past couple of years.
Yes, and that's also evident from the amount of new content they've pushed out over the last year--I'm sure they couldn't have done it this fast earlier on.
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1. GGG is Chris Wilson's first role as the manager of a large group.
2. Over the past couple of years Chris Wilson has been consumed more and more by activities required to run a larger company and had significantly less time to monitor/guide/review the development process.
I don't know what Chris Wilson's resume looks like and maybe he has managed large groups before. (I think he had significant capital to invest when GGG started up.) But it does seem like there's been a phase change in PoE's development from a small indie to a larger group.
Leaving the labyrinth aside (for just one second!) there also seem to be a lot of complaints in the air that PoE has changed from the "PoE of old". Justified or not, it does seem like this is a critical period in PoE's development, and not one that's helped (returning inevitably to the labyrinth!) by driving out a significant number of players with forced content that they don't like. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see what happens to the steam numbers after Atlas of Worlds is released.
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4. Chris Wilson knows that labyrinth is a problem that needs to be fixed.
I wish I was as optimistic as you about that, but I think it's pretty likely that Chris is still 100% committed to the labyrinth and traps as a core part of the game and dismisses all the negative feedback (of which there isn't too much on reddit).
4. Chris Wilson knows that labyrinth is a problem that needs to be fixed.
I wish I was as optimistic as you about that, but I think it's pretty likely that Chris is still 100% committed to the labyrinth and traps as a core part of the game and dismisses all the negative feedback (of which there isn't too much on reddit).
Speculation should not be interpreted to mean I'm convinced. I believe it is more likely than not. I'm still hoping that something will be mentioned in the patch notes for 2.4. Like Regulator said, "two weeks".
Over 430 threads discussing labyrinth problems with over 1040 posters in support (thread # 1702621) Thank you all! GGG will implement a different method for ascension in PoE2. Retired!
The numbers show people dropped off after lab because it kills replay.
You know after looking at the steam numbers discussed in some previous posts, what really struck me is that when Ascendancy launched PoE had the highest weekly steam player count in history (37,266) and in less than 3 months it dropped to 6,928, close to the lowest player count in history (which was 6,689), and the player count was still dropping just before Prophecy launched. Moreover, this drop off occurred over the Perandus league, which had the most generous opportunities to acquire good items of any challenge league ever offered.
Where do you get that 6.928 from ??? It's not even in your link.
No, I literally copy pasted that table in another thread, the steam population is completely fine, its the same effect than in other leagues basically.
For example, figures than are lower than now or about the same :
Avg. Players Month
5,675.7 Last 30 Days
5,700.8 May 2016
5,953.7 February 2016
4,745.9 November 2015
5,819.9 October 2015
5,676.6 September 2015
4,032.4 June 2015
5,417.4 May 2015
5,249.5 April 2015
4,873.1 March 2015
5,473.6 February 2015
4,336.3 November 2014
5,839.7 October 2014
4,137.7 July 2014
3,900.8 June 2014
Here you go.
SSF is not and will never be a standard for balance, it is not for people entitled to getting more without trading.
Last edited by Fruz#6137 on Aug 17, 2016, 2:31:08 AM
Where do you get that 6.928 from ??? It's not even in your link.
No, I literally copy pasted that table in another thread, the steam population is completely fine, its the same effect than in other leagues basically.
For example, figures than are lower than now or about the same :
Avg. Players Month
5,675.7 Last 30 Days
5,700.8 May 2016
...
Your figures are monthly averages, which is too crude to really see what's going on. I quoted weekly averages (also quoted by steam in the all-time peak) which you can see by setting the zoom on the top graph to 1 year and mousing over the graph.
You mean to tell by quoting this that the lead designer would have absolutely no reason to just say "all things good" to just make his company seem more attractive/viable/active to the playerbase?
Ask yourself this then my friend. The ascendancy expansion is the only one that did not include a development process post, a successsful deployment post, statistics about the lab retention, an official answer to all the question and complaints , and even in 2 q&a ALL questions lab related were ignored. Tell me now, why a developer would do such a thing? (or not do in that case).
I get it you like the game and you dont approve of it being draged to shit because a single aspect of it is rather anoying to some, but a better judgement and less fanboism never hurt anyone. Now tell me again what truth are you talking about? Cause the only one i see is a development designer talking sweet words about his game, is there something between the lines i missed?
To save you the trouble, no there isnt. If numbers were good GGG would have kept their promise and showed more about lab statistics besides those shared for the two weeks of perandus that is on the opening thread.
Im sure you didnt take the time to read it all or even if you did you easily forget, so here it is to remind you :
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Qarl wrote:
Firstly, we are interested in what types of play our players are enjoying Normal 40.3575%, Cruel 20.4968%, Merciless20.4086%, Maps12.6867%, Labyrinth 6.0503%
We'd expect the time spent in Maps to go up as the league goes on, and we imagine the time spent in the Labyrinth will also. We'll keep an eye on that!
If we look at high-end farming areas, we can get a picture of what players at the end game are doing. Again, these refer to the last seven days. The Perandus League has allowed The Solaris Temple Level 1 to make the grade as a farming zone:
Maps 3,935,376, Merciless Dried Lake 1,188,825, Merciless Docks 732,380, Merciless Solaris 1667,079, Merciless Labyrinth 235,415
I hope you've enjoyed looking at this information. We will share more statistics later, such as a breakdown of popular items and skills
Now if you are not completely brainwashed you can easily answer a simple question, why they still have not gave out any stats on the issue? Why not keep their promises?
Have you even bothered to look at labyrinth ladders at all? Have you even checked the HC lab ladders at all? Im sure you havent and probably havent payed any attentioned to the numbers even in the past.
And now the important stuff GGG wants to hide and ignores.
On 7/6/2016 only 4 days into the prophecy league, the total number of eligible players for the lab ladders were 6930 (ACROSS ALL LEAGUES hc/sc/prohc/prosc). Hear this now, the steam numbers for that period (meaning the actual total player number is WAY bigger) was 21k players.
3/7/2016 1 month into the prophecy league. Lab ladders 8.8k players. Steam charts 14.4k players.
Let see what yesterday's numbers where shall we (10/8/2016), 2months and 1 week into the league. 3026 total runners on the ladders. Peak number on steam charts for that day? 6.5k players.
If you dont suck at math and reason here are the next variables you have to take into account. From the ladders there are duplicates from the same account to different difficulties as well as different leagues. From those numbers around 20-25% based on their timing are not even in the slightest there for anything else than taking a subclass. And ofcourse cause im fair ill say that the numbers could be a bit higher cause some people are not eligible for them. So taking that into account we got around 1/3 up to 2/5 of the total population on the steam charts that was interested in running the labyrinth IF the steam numbers were real. But they are not arent they? Cause there are a lot of people also having the standalone client. Lets take the best possible scenario for lab retention and only say that the standalone client has exactly the same numbers with steam players for the days chosen.
So respectively thats : 7/6/16 - 42k active players, 7k of which like running the labyrinth. 16%.
3/7/16 - 28.8 active players, 8.8 lab runners. 30.5%
10/8/16 - 13k active players, 3k on lab ladders. 23%
Again have in mind that those are the best possible estimations for lab retention, without accounting those who do it just for the ascendancies (meaning actual numbers for players who ENJOY the lab are even lower). If that "estimation" bothers and somehow makes all this not believable enough, you instantly accept that the steam numbers depict the whole playerbase or that the steam players are more than the standalone client. (remember this before posting anything that may come out as ....)
Pretty underwhelming if you ask me. Another interesting part is that while the total numbers decline the lab lovers are somewhat more steady, meaning GGG actually lost people due to the lab. But again why do they not talk about it? Hmmm, ah yes, because everything is fine there is no issue whatsever and blah blah.
I still dont know why they act so stubborn, making alternatives or even decoupling ascendancies from the lab would literally hurt noone. Here we are now, 5months into the ascendancy expansion and still no word on anythiing remotely related to lab, the reasoning behind : lab has to much heat and might cause GGG to catch fire, GGG doenst give a fuck, GGG staff are ostriches, all of them in different degrees. No matter what it is, the issue would have been dead by long time if they had the balls to give a clear answer and not the dishonest bullshit they spread around from time to time.
So ill ask again, whats the truth you are talking about? Cause GGG's dishonesty is all over the place.
Because i see a lot of steam charts referance like it proves that the lab numbers are good or whatnot, while willingly closing your eyes to the real numbers that matter (WK at its finest cant argue with that)
After the bold part in the spoiler there all the answers you can get.
In the best possible scenario for the labyrinth, it caters to 30% of the player base (if every single one on the fullest of days does it just for the thrill/fun/rewards without taking into account those who do it for the ascendancies only) so that number is closer to 20%
In the worst case scenario for the labyrinth, only 8% of people seem to like it on average in order to run it multiple times.
So unless you are bound to make an utter fool of yourself stop using steam numbers in lab's favour, its rather humiliating.
So what is it finally? Are those who dont like the lab minority? Cause from what stats show the actual percentange of players that like running lab for the thrill and the rewards is a pitiful 8-20% of the total population (dont get it wrong im sure 99% of all the players run the lab to get the ascendancy points since they are forced "optional" must-do content). Should the rest suffer for the joy of the few dung beetles who like eating manure?
Remove them from the labyrinth or add alternative ways to ascend for the rest. Keep the labyrinth the same for those few who like it, every fucking one is happy. Its like they didnt learn from the PvP fiasco - pro-labyrinth numbers are directly comparable to pvp - and deciced not only to add experimental content but gate character progression behind it, fuck that. Would you like a differnt form of build defining/character progression tools be locked behind pvp? No? I guessed so, so why you are ok with this stinking pile of dung gating the current ones?
p.s. I support and like PvP but i can understand people not wanting to participate, after all its completely optional so they dont lose anything from neglecting it, contrary to the labyrinth.
