You said this is “not normal”. I think I hard disagree with you - Can you name another recent game (last 4 years?) on steam that launched with >200k players and steadily grew/didn’t shrink at all for 2+ months?
From a purely data driven perspective I think PoE’s curve can basically be empirically proven out as normal, despite that not fitting into your own mental narrative.
The data is all publicly available and there for us all to see, so I’like happily be proven wrong if anyone can find some games that meet the criteria I called out above though. I did a few quick searches and everything looked like PoE’s curve.
POE2 has been out 2 weeks.
Not 2 months.
And "shrink or grew". Well, there is a hell of a difference.
Good games get good reviews and player feedback, and it gets more people into the game.
Elden ring ROSE with 100k players over the first month across platforms.
POE2 lost 150k players in two weeks.
Everything looks like POE's curve if the time is long enough.
For single player campaign style games with no concurring endgame.
POE2 claimed 40+ hours of campaign for the average players, alongside 200+ endgame hours. This is GGG's stated metrics.
If the average player plays for two hours a day, that is 20 days -three weeks for campaign, and a couple of months in endgame at least.
Double that, and most players should still be in new game content for at least 60 days.
For the super nerds, 8 hours a day plus players, it should give them a full month still.
So if the drop off is across all players, the drop off metric is insanely premature.
I'd like to add that there are a bunch of classes and 12 ascendancies, replicability is enormous. Which it is not for the majority of the games you compared them too.
So can you provide ANY examples of games that started with high player count and have what you believe to be "healthy" steam charts in the first couple weeks/months then?
You just typed a bunch of the same stuff that's already been said here, but completely failed to address the thing I called out - NAME THE GAMES.
I believe you did this because you knew you couldn't provide the examples I asked for. Prove me wrong, I don't believe I'm wrong but will happily be proven wrong with data.
I've looked myself and didn't see any games that looked significantly different than PoE's charts, so I don't really believe there are any out there, but again, happy to be proven wrong.
I mean if you are unable to read a single graph and connect the dots regarding the games format, I literally cannot help you.
You dont WANT to understand it.
Always gave a s... about steam charts. Game was even cooler before steam accessabilty. So who cares?
The 200k players that paid 30 bucks for the game and stopped playing because several aspects of it is really bad, and not at all what was advertised cares.
EVERY SIGNLE GAME. EVEN THE GREAT ONES. Have steam charts that look like this.
I've just spent a bit searching, every major game that launched with significant interest/player count quickly falls off. Palworld, Helldivers, ELDEN RING, BG3. ALL OF THEM. Look it up yourself.
I'm happy to be proven wrong, name the game that bucks the trend. Keep in mind it does need to start with significant player count at launch to be comparable.
Can anyone name a game that looks any different? I'm genuinely curious. I asked before and no one did, I don't think anyone can, and I think this entire thread is just people with no clue circle jerking. Prove me wrong with facts please.
I do think there's a ton they can and should improve, I for sure have shared my fair share of complaints here. But pointing to the steam chart is just people with 0 clue touching themself. PROVE ME WRONG.
Hi.
All the games you mentioned fell off after 1-3 months.
Not 1-3 weeks.
Those games are also largely a campaign and no extended end game, giving players little or no incentives to keep playing post the story ending.
POE2 have a literal endgame of 200+ hours as GGG themselves stated.
If you can't figure out what average play time, fall off timing, player retention, replayability and build diversity compares to completely different games, I can't help you.
I have never seen haters enjoy the downfall of a product as much as "supporters" of the studio, who constantly brag about how much money they whaled (and who ostracise others for not "supporting" the studio as much as they do), do.
Also about trial of the sekhemas, I'm a sanctum enjoyer in PoE 1 and even I think it's horrendous in this game lmao. Like it's just a worse version of Sanctum which was already a divisive hate or love it league. Honor being 1-to-1 with your ehp makes actually 0 sense. Resolve being 300/300 and you taking flat resolve damage at least makes sense. Here ES stackers can just get like 15k honor and ignore the mechanic altogether, meanwhile non-es builds with 1500 life are struggling with 3k honor at most if they equip max honor relics. It's actually laughable how much of a downgrade this whole mechanic is.
And then Ultimatum was just overtuned garbage.
Can't wait for that 3rd ToTA trial(if you know, you know). Turtles, sIlVeR cOmEt, getting hooked, getting bear-trapped, getting stunned for 5 seconds while your character gets up at the pace of a snail, "engaging gameplay" such as channeling on a totem. It's gonna be so fun! /s
Yeah.
It's absurd how GGG has managed to take huge losses on basically every mechanic there is, considering they had 12 years of feedback to work with.
You'd think they'd take the easy wins like no magic find, not bottlenecking ascendancies, making armor useless, and resistances bricked.
Worse, the gem setup is a giant downgrade, the crafting so dumb I don't have words for it.
The best advice I got for campaign is "check each vendor on level up".
Like I want to play a browsing simulator.
The more I dig into this game, the more I dislike it.
GGG has a few more weeks to salvage this mess, but I suspect they are eating up good will and a huge portion of players that will never come back.
This reminds more more of a No mans sky launch than a Diablo 2 situation.
The fallout is gigantic.
Streamers and reviews completely fail to understand that the foundation of success for POE was longevity and leagues. A basic game mechanic with a fairly balanced and short campaign, trials all build archetypes could handle, and a certainty of progression at least till around lvl 95.
You could even do meaningful low level map runs to build your character.
POE2 has failed in every single of these regards. It's literally the one area they could not fail in.
They sold us a single player souls like ruthless experience that is fun for ONE playthrough.
Who want's another of the 25+ hours of this campaign every 3 months? Not me.
The amount of hyperbole in your posts is astonishing.
If you dislike it so much, stop playing and move on.
I can't agree.
That game really been "dropped like stone"
Spoiler
No Man's Sky
Peak ~212 000 players at 2016/08/12 and ~ 4-5 000 players month later
And BG3 is surely successful game?
Spoiler
Look at this, ~ 875 000 players at max (second weekend after release) (2023/08/13) and four weeks later - ~ 496 000 (2023/09/10)
So it's not so bad IMO. PoE2 is EA, NMS and BG3 were in "Release" status.
Are you aware that 1 month = 4 weeks?
1 week = 7 days.
They are not the same.
You seem confused.
Also, you are comparing linear story driven games with a set ending to an open ended ARPG with 200+ hours of endgame and 12 different build archetypes for replayability.
You use the wrong metrics, compares apples to oranges, and fail to read graphs.
I'd either enlighten myself, or stop arguing the topic if I were you.
Always gave a s... about steam charts. Game was even cooler before steam accessabilty. So who cares?
The 200k players that paid 30 bucks for the game and stopped playing because several aspects of it is really bad, and not at all what was advertised cares.
yeah, just completely neglect that fact that tons of players stop naturally and move on ;P
Not everybody wants to play the same game for longer than 2 weeks lol, no matter how good or bad it is...
