Early Access Feedback - Why POE2 is dying - Forum

" Nokkyu#1880 wrote: According to steam charts there was a bit of a drop around the Christmas holidays, but to say that the game is dying is blatant over-dramatization and click/ragebait. Just a reminder the crybabies opening those trolls threads ( OP did several of those already ) never bring any facts to the table so here's the graphs : They keep talking about how bad PoE 2 player retention is according to them , but never adress the fact PoE 1 has been on life support for years , never adress the last season has ( as usual ) lost 96% of the player count in 2 months and their former GOAT ARPG never reached in 10 years the numbers PoE 2 reached here . It took years for PoE 1 to become established but for PoE 2 after weeks of EA it's the end of the world , the game is gonna die , wah wah wah "Go buy a supporter pack and I might take you seriously." ~ Generic PoE whale https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-post/25976591 ICE BELL RINGER ~ Endgame Farming ~ Pinnacle Eraser ~ Gamepad Gameplay ~ Low Budget ~ 0.1.1 Version https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3705057 Last edited by Ashyev#5110 on Dec 26, 2024, 5:34:13 AM	Posted by Ashyev#5110 on Dec 26, 2024, 5:31:17 AM Quote this Post
I agree. There is basically 0 progression to be had if you are trying SSF. Crafting and getting drops feels the same, e.g like hopeless rng. Like playing the lottery. The itemization in it self is extremely boring. Get a good weapon, hit your resist-caps and ultrastack evasion or ES. Everything else gets your one-shot more often. Most uniques are just borderline useless due the ridiculous scaling of content. 1 death mechanics on basic endgame content is one of the worst ideas anyone in the gaming industry has ever had. Talk about anti-fun holyyy. It just incentivizes good ol' PoE1 zoom-screen-delete meta builds where you prevent the game from ever interacting with out as that means 50% chance of death. Or you play ridiculously safe and boring, taking no chances, pushing no limits, playing content way below your level just to prevent the inevitable lack of tokens to play the game(running out of waystones and exalts/alchs, coins and ultimatums). And if you do choose to go for the second route of playing below your level, you will be rewarded with jack-shit for items. Especially if you dont have MF. Ahhhhh why GGG? The campaign act 1, 2 and 3 was so good. Why did you change things up? Find that pacing again and implement it into the late to end-game. If this stupid game wasn't so addicting and I have basically nothing else to do in the holidays, I would have uninstalled a long time ago. I'm just getting mad playing it. Yuck.	Posted by mtv921#6792 on Dec 26, 2024, 5:46:32 AM Quote this Post
" Ashyev#5110 wrote: " Nokkyu#1880 wrote: According to steam charts there was a bit of a drop around the Christmas holidays, but to say that the game is dying is blatant over-dramatization and click/ragebait. Just a reminder the crybabies opening those trolls threads ( OP did several of those already ) never bring any facts to the table so here's the graphs : They keep talking about how bad PoE 2 player retention is according to them , but never adress the fact PoE 1 has been on life support for years , never adress the last season has ( as usual ) lost 96% of the player count in 2 months and their former GOAT ARPG never reached in 10 years the numbers PoE 2 reached here . It took years for PoE 1 to become established but for PoE 2 after weeks of EA it's the end of the world , the game is gonna die , wah wah wah You're comparing a PoE league that got delayed and abandoned for 6 months then had a bad re-launch and then put on life-support which is free to play, with a completely new game that people paid 30$ to play. If you can't see how your comparison doesn't make any sense, I don't know what else to tell you. You have the privilege to even play PoE 2 because PoE 1 was so successful and because of all the players who supported it over the years. So how about some respect for the people who have genuine concerns about the long-term health of this game? Because long-time PoE veterans know exactly where this game is headed if nothing changes, this is why feedback is being given now before it's too late.	Posted by Toforto#2372 on Dec 26, 2024, 6:03:16 AM Quote this Post
And for anyone who thinks the game "isn't dying", it slowly is. See that little "Avg. Players" number? Since launch that has been consistently and only going down. Never going up. So people are leaving the game, for one reason or another. And they're leaving this early. When they paid 30$ to play it.The game having a peak only about a few days into EA is really really bad. This tells you that the peak was mostly just hype generated from twitch and content creators.They are leaving before even reaching the endgame which is what is supposed to keep you as a long-time player in this type of game. This should be extremely concerning to GGG and to anyone who wants this game to succeed. I know people will still disagree, but that's because they aren't looking at this game as a seasonal live-service f2p one, but as a "one-time purchase" one playthrough triple A title which it isn't and never will be.	Posted by Toforto#2372 on Dec 26, 2024, 6:11:15 AM Quote this Post
I think nothing dying but definetly somethinks must reworked. For example leveling at some point i mean i'm currently 93 lvl and %52 xp and my build nearly immortal and 1 81 lvl map gives just about %1 xp if i kill all maps. it is feels like 99 to 100 instead of 93 to 94. And citadels definetly must have a pattern not random in 2 week i could find just 4 citadel ( 3 iron 1 other and still looking for bronze or cooper citadel didn't remember that one's name ) and doing full delirium it gives 3 shitty fragment and 3-4 delirium mirror piece and all other mechanics same. Crafting definetly random so we can say basily there is no crafting, there is just luckcraft. Asendancy was easy for me i can't complein about that but that bugs... in trial of chaos sudden game crushes, and in sanctum end bosses time mechanic bugs; sometime it didn't count even u collect all orbs or somethimes boss just random touch u with touch of deaths even as soon as after start time mechs and reward soo bad. I was sanctum farmer for last 3-4 season in poe 1 bcs it gives realy good currency reward but poe 2 just u can hope for it maybe u can find some decant gear for selling. My personal idea sanctum for just asendancy points and then u newer go back there. And 1 think more why we can't teleport to our hideout at some way points why we must go somewhere else firs and also when press U in game too long loading time. After saying all of this i believe the ggg team, they will find some solutions for these issues before the offical release.	Posted by Pirifani#0694 on Dec 26, 2024, 6:13:53 AM Quote this Post
Nearly 2 million current players across multiple platforms. Game dying. Lol	Posted by Grauthrim#2960 on Dec 26, 2024, 6:16:12 AM Quote this Post
" Toforto#2372 wrote: You're comparing a PoE league that got delayed and abandoned for 6 months then blah blah blah Nice copium , what happened with player retention on the last league occurred every single league for all of this game existence : "Go buy a supporter pack and I might take you seriously." ~ Generic PoE whale https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-post/25976591 ICE BELL RINGER ~ Endgame Farming ~ Pinnacle Eraser ~ Gamepad Gameplay ~ Low Budget ~ 0.1.1 Version https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3705057 Last edited by Ashyev#5110 on Dec 26, 2024, 6:32:18 AM	Posted by Ashyev#5110 on Dec 26, 2024, 6:27:07 AM Quote this Post
" eldheim#2436 wrote: Yes. It is dying. Can it come back? Sure! Does that mean GGG shouldn't deeply care why hundreds of thousands of players that paid for access are quitting? Of course not. Disclaimer: I already know a few elite GGG bootlickers will spam this comment section telling me I don't understand charts or numbers, that its "normal", or "everything is fine", or "play something else -stop whining". Let them. It's all they do, all the time, and we can't stop it. Firstly I'd like to say there are lots of positives about POE2, and it could have a decent foundation for a great game in the future. I'm not here to talk about those, however. Problems: 1. Ascendancies are bottlenecked behind bad mechanics and RNG 2. Crafting is meaningless and random 3. Magic find ruined the economy completely, you are now either rich or poor 4. Maps and areas are way too big 5. Melee is dead, it feels clonky, bad, slow, and punishing 6. T1-T10 maps feels pointless and has little or no rewards 7. Endgame is a one-shot fest unless you run a meta 15k energy shield build 8. Armor is effectively pointless when it comes to mitigate dying 9. Building life builds are punished heavily, ES builds rewarded heavily 10. Build diversity bricked due to all the problems above 11. Campaign too long to incentivize multiple runs/leagues for most people 12. Death penalties makes no sense in normal game mode 13. Bosses too scarce in endgame My conclusion? The game was dropped at least 6 months prematurely. A closed beta until mid 2025 should have been done. But that ship sailed. Fast fixes: Release ascendancy points throughout the campaign for now. Incentivize most players possible to engage with and try the content for EA purposes, and work towards a FAIR and non-RNG based trial with the full release. Make exalted orbs the most common currency. It will still make crafting pure chance, but until the whole system is reworked, at least people will have a chance of trying to craft items. It is dead as of now. Armor scaling have to flatly mitigate damage -but cap the total max mitigation. At least until you can fine-tune the balance. As of now armor builds are dead. Increase animation time and attack speed of most warrior skills by a lot. At least until armor and life builds are fixed to become ACTUALLY tanky. The passive tree have about 50 energy shield nodes and 3 life nodes. Considering life builds are the common melee characters, this is literally opposite of what would seem normal. I'm not even sure there is an easy fix here. Remove XP penalty on death. This is a no brainer. Getting to 100 is hard enough as is. At least until all content is balanced. Stop the 1 death map bricking too. It makes no sense for a normal game mode. Make teleportation map markers in maps too, until you can scale them better. All maps should have a boss -bosses are among the best features of POE2, don't remove them from players. Remove all magic find on gear, and boost MF with 50% as base. Reward players for doing T1-T10 maps much better. Increase drop rates, increase waystones. Make it much easier to get 4 and 5 linked skills, at least in EA where you would think GGG want to playtest as much as possible. You could do all this fairly easily and the overall experience for 90% of the player base would be better. YES, I know there are some elite get good gamers that don't wont anyone but them to enjoy the game, but give them ruthless mode, and we can stop having to argue with them all the time. What I would do? Announce a rollback and restart servers 1. February. Until then, remove death penalties, give out ascendancy points in campaign, and increase drops by at least 100%.Let players go bananas for a month, really trying out builds and the full extent of the game. GGG buys themselves a full month to dig deeper into fixing more problems, while making the game accessible until then. First off the game isnt dying. Please provide evidence to the contrary. Other then that I actually agree with most of your points, these are areas they need to work on. I dont play melee so cant comment on that, but I disagree with endgame being a oneshot fest, thats not my experience. I also disagree with the loss of map and exp on death, i think that should stay. The rest I agree with, endgame bosses are too scarce, armor/life is so much worde then es, crafting is almost non existant. But most people understand that the game is in early access and these points im sure will be fixed.	Posted by Nyon#6673 on Dec 26, 2024, 6:30:26 AM Quote this Post
" Toforto#2372 wrote: And for anyone who thinks the game "isn't dying", it slowly is. See that little "Avg. Players" number? Since launch that has been consistently and only going down. Never going up. So people are leaving the game, for one reason or another. And they're leaving this early. When they paid 30$ to play it.The game having a peak only about a few days into EA is really really bad. This tells you that the peak was mostly just hype generated from twitch and content creators.They are leaving before even reaching the endgame which is what is supposed to keep you as a long-time player in this type of game. This should be extremely concerning to GGG and to anyone who wants this game to succeed. I know people will still disagree, but that's because they aren't looking at this game as a seasonal live-service f2p one, but as a "one-time purchase" one playthrough triple A title which it isn't and never will be. Unfortunetly you dont understand how game releases work.When an early acces launch has such a huge success that they reach almost 600k players on the first day, and then go into winter holiday where alot of people are away from home and playing less or not at all, there is no universe where the number of players arent going to be less.Please provide one example of a game launch that looks different.	Posted by Nyon#6673 on Dec 26, 2024, 6:35:25 AM Quote this Post
" Ashyev#5110 wrote: " Toforto#2372 wrote: You're comparing a PoE league that got delayed and abandoned for 6 months then blah blah blah Nice copium , what happened with player retention on the last league occurred every single league for all of this game existence Yeah? Your point? This is literally the game's business model. People are done with a league max 1 month into it. Most are done by week 1-2 with all their goals and quit till the next one. You simply don't understand a thing about PoE's player retention at all. Last edited by Toforto#2372 on Dec 26, 2024, 6:36:53 AM	Posted by Toforto#2372 on Dec 26, 2024, 6:36:42 AM Quote this Post