Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
Path of Exile
Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
Played through the diablo 4 campaign this weekend, but afterwards i just have no desire to play the game again, at least not until season 1 adds more things. I was hyped for this game for years and was so excited. But after playing it, it's just......too simple. Very few skills are actually good, only 1 or 2 builds for each class are actually viable in endgame. Too few enemies in dungeons and the open world make it feel like a walking simulator. Before I played POE i probably would have loved this game, but now? POE spoiled me too much with the insane skill tree, build diversity, sheer number of skills, and mob density.
Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
The goal of /r/Games is to provide a place for informative and interesting gaming content and discussions. Submissions should be for the purpose of informing or initiating a discussion, not just with the goal of entertaining viewers. Memes, comics, funny screenshots, arts-and-crafts, etc. will be removed.
Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
Hi Reddit, I am a qualified person with qualifications. I've taken the time to form strong opinions on Path of Exile's retention numbers so that you don't have to. I'm posting this in a manner that hides my opinion but makes it very clear where I stand, so you can share my opinion and not need to form an opinion yourself. Unless you want to, that is.
As you can see, it's very clear that this graph shows player numbers as a percentage. You can quite clearly see the difference in percentages between the Ultimatum league, where the game was different, and the Sanctum league, where the game was also different. This is in stark contrast to the Harvest and Ritual leagues, where the game had changes that made it different.
This graph here shows the raw numbers rather than percentage. New opinions can be formed from this graph, because it shows different information and also uses colorful lines. It's quite clear to me from this graph, as opposed to the other graph, that there were players playing in each of these leagues.
It's my strong opinion that GGG has opinions about the game they develop, and those opinions impact the game. What they decide to add and update each league has always led to a difference in player count - but unfortunately I can't be sure how much these opinions impact the game from these graphs alone. It seems to me that changing the game could actually impact the player count, but that simply can't be concluded. Obviously, though, GGG's opinions are opinionated, and they may or may not align with our opinions, which we all share.
Every league we post these pictures and talk about how GGG is making the game different and it seems that every league GGG doesn't comment on our posts. It's clear that the game is changing every league with the addition of new content, and these numbers will continue to be different going forward. Understanding this should help everyone make more informed opinions as new leagues are introduced, but it shouldn't need to be this way.
Make sure to talk about your opinions below.
Edit: It was requested that I add a video for people that can't read. I am happy to oblige.
Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
Hello everyone, in this post I'm going to try and point out something that I've noticed seen I've been ruminating on why I haven't enjoyed the last 3 leagues. We're going to start by going back in time 2ish years with and I'm going to try to explain my post's title by examining each league.
For those of you who have been playing this long, you may remember that Expedition is also the "league of nerfs" or "the great balancing." While this doesn't intrinsically impact the conversation, it's worth noting that this league is where Grinding Gear Games decided to continuously "tone down" player power as a whole.
In Expedition league, we see the first league where players don't just pick up items off the ground as their reward. During the league, all the currency items were not auto-pickup, meaning you spent a lot of time picking up currency on the floor, then a lot of time sitting at a vendor screen purchasing items. While the system is rewarding, it's what I consider to be the first step of what I'm calling "high engagement design".
Basically, to get the rewards from the league mechanic, it requires more real life time to achieve the same results. This is high engagement design. More real life hours spent = more time playing the game = more potential profit for the business. It also means less fun, and more tediousness.
Next up is Scourge league, the second most popular league of the last two years. Scourge was highly rewarding for normal gameplay and high a strong risk-reward combat design. It also had The Dream Furnace, Scourge league's version of "high engagement".
The Dream Furnace is almost exactly like the Crucible is in Crucible League. You place an item in the device (a separate inventory on your character, does not take up bag or stash space), it gains experience over time, and you unlock implicits on your items. It was mildly tedious to maintain, took a very long time to see any results, and often times your efforts would be wasted, yielding zero results for your time spend.
The Dream Furnace is has the first element of high engagement design: "Make mechanics that backpedal a players progress, causing them to repeat the same steps repeatedly".
Next up is Archnemesis league. The core mechanic for Archnemesis was simple: each zone has a hard monster to kill, you can upgrade this monster, upgrading this monster makes it harder and makes it drop more loot. I will decline to discuss the rare monster redesign.
While simple, the "upgrade the monster" league mechanic was tedious, time consuming, and seemingly purposefully confusing. Many of the combinations of upgrades yielded very few beneficial results for dramatically increased difficulty. No sort function was ever implemented for the upgrade items, and throughout the league the mechanic was largely ignored by many players due to the friction required to interact with it.
Archnemesis has the second element of high engagement design: Obfuscate basic gameplay elements and create friction between small gameplay elements, such as moving items around.
Sentinel league followed Archnemesis, and is wildly regarded as the most successful and fun league of the last two years by many players. Grinding Gear Games admittedly declared that they had created an incredible simple mechanic purposefully to make time for other things.
The Sentinel was incredibly simple: press button, make normal game monsters harder, get more loot. There was some customization on how and what kind of monsters you wanted to make harder and how hard you made them, but that's it.
Sentinel League had small elements of high engagement design, such as act of combining sentinels to achieve better results, but they weren't mandatory to receive rewards from the league mechanic and all players received similar rewards for their time.
Kalandra League is what I would consider "the beginning of the end" in league design. In Kalandra League, players were tasked with filling out a "game board" in each zone to create a somewhat-custom map to fight monsters and get loot in.
Kalandra League had a number of issues with this design.
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All rewards from the league mechanic were deferred until you completed a custom map. This could be hours of real life time in the future, depending on your gameplay speed and luck with the game board.
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The reward structure on the game board was very poor for the first month of the league.
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What kinds of rewards the player would receive were obscured.
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The custom maps were often several orders of magnitude more difficult than was to be expected, with difficulty scaling beyond even 100% delirious, fully juiced maps or the hardest endgame bosses at the time.
Kalandra has the last element of high engagement design: delayed rewards. Move the finish line farther away and dangle the carrot closer to them, giving them the illusion of progress.
Sanctum is the culmination of these elements combined. In Sanctum, you complete "sets of small encounters" (a total of 32 or 33) to receive rewards at the end of the floor or end of the Sanctum.
In Sanctum: 1) the monsters dropped almost nothing, 2) you could lose all your rewards and be forced to restart, 3) were expected to delay your rewards for a long period of time, 4) the difficulty of the encounters was deeply obscured, 5) only rewarded players who explicitly designed characters to play around the league mechanic, and 6) punished players with characters who did not build with the very specific monster types and mechanics of the sanctum in mind.
Sanctum is the current worse example of high engagement design in Path of Exile. You are expected to play longer than ever before to get your rewards and your rewards may be lost for reasons outside your control.
Now we come to Crucible. Crucible is the worst elements of Scourge's Dream Furnace and Archnemesis' custom rare monsters bundled into one, with all the elements that force a player to play for as long as possible.
In Crucible, 1) the league mechanic doesn't drop items, 2) participating in the league mechanic itself is tedious and time consuming, 3) it's rewards are deeply obscured, 4) you're expected to delay your rewards for long periods of time, 5) you may sometime receive no rewards at all, and 6) the reward you get can move your progression backwards (bricking your build).
Again we see the same design elements all tied together in a way that compels you to continue to play more.
tl;dr Grinding Gear Games appears to be purposefully designing the game in a manner that compels to play more. Not because you want to play more because the game is fun and engaging, but because you have to play more because you can't get what you used to be able to get if you don't. I believe this is a purposeful decision in order to increase revenue for the company, driven by their marketing team and marketing companies that have approached them with sales pitches.
Do not promote this kind of game design. Stop playing Path of Exile if you do not like it. Stop spending money on Path of Exile if you do not like it. Tell everyone you know that you do not like it.
It's bad for the game and it's bad for the industry.
Also, this is basically just a rant, not a real tedious breakdown. There's so much more going on behind the scenes in this kind of game design, I'm just trying to get it out there.
Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
On the launch day of 3.19, PoE had a daily peak CCU of 152k. As of today, this number has dropped to 72.7k, representing a drop of 52% since 3.19 launch, meaning the game has lost >50% of its daily peak CCU in just 7 days (source: - 24hr peak).
When I say this is a new record, I don't mean that in the sense that this league broke below 50% in 7 days and the 2nd place league in terms of worst retention broke below it in 8 days. If you look at , you will see that the 2nd worst league, which was Archnemesis broke below this mark on day 11. Betrayal, the best league in terms of retention, did not cross this mark until day 35.
Of course, an argument could be made at this point that "steam doesn't represent the majority of PoE players" or something along those likes. Luckily for us, in the "What we are working on" post that GGG had so kindly put out, they mentioned that their overall peak was 250k, meaning the 152k on steam was the majority at launch.
Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
Background: I have played PoE since Betrayal, with over 1800 hours logged on steam. I have played D3 for about 600 hours. Every league I hit at least red maps and I have killed Sirus at least a couple times each league. I am not a 1% player but I do consider myself 'decent' at PoE. I was compelled to purchase Last Epoch as a direct result of Chris' comments about Chaos and Exalt crafting. That decision was a massive eye opener for me and the comparisons that I draw here will be based on those two games, but they can of course be more broadly applied.
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THIS POST WILL NOT DISCUSS HARVEST OR CRAFTING
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GGG, I love you guys and I love your game but hear me now. One day, probably sooner rather than later, a different ARPG is going to come along and eat your lunch. I mean every word of what I said in the title. Your game, wondrously complex and engaging as it is, is abusive to players' time, computers, health, and sanity. After spending about a day (in game) playing LE I opened up PoE again. I closed the game after half of a juicy harbinger map, thought about why the hell I did it that, and then sat down to write this post.
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Quality of Life:
I had no idea how much I missed the ability to walk over gold and pick it up automatically, or one click grab all of the crafting materials on screen, until I went back, opened up a breach, and had to pick up about 25 individuals splinters of Tul. This functionality does nothing to 'simplify' or 'baby' the game, but it sure as hell keeps me in the gameplay loop longer and is easier on my wrist and fingers.
Last Epoch has the ability to sort your inventory, aka the computer plays inventory tetris for you, leaving you more time to actually play the game. These are just a couple examples of mechanics that don't 'hold your hand', but still make you feel like the game respects your time and your desire not to get carpal tunnel. There are plenty more someone could point to and everyone will have things that they don't mind or frustrate them to no end. But I think we can all agree that PoE needs to be brought into at least the 2000's, if not the 2010's with regards to QoL.
2) Itemization:
I missed picking up loot, comparing it to my current gear, and finding something better more often than once every 5 years of playtime. PoE is an economy based ARPG. It is not a loot based ARPG. I'm truly disheartened that GGG doesn't realize this. Animate weapon has been so bad for so long they can't even use that excuse anymore.
3) Performance:
There is a reason I am not calling this 'optimization'. I am tired of tagging a delirium mirror and having my PC, which can run Horizon: Zero Dawn at 60FPS on high settings, crash. I am tired of dying due to flame dash desync. I am tired of 5 FPS (and maybe a death or two because I can't even see my character) when I find a Valdo Harbinger with reinforcements and my screen becomes a blue blur. I am tired of random crashes on my way out of a Heist. The state of performance in PoE is unacceptable, full stop.
4) Gameplay:
I consider the $40 I spent on LE worth it because of the minimap and zoom alone. PoE conditioned me to have the minimap overlaid on top of my screen at all times so hard that I was almost shocked to play a game where I could actually see where I was going or, on rare occasions, need to reference the minimap for a quick second before putting it away and looking at my character again. I will never understand why we cannot zoom further out in PoE.
Being able to understand what killed me and how I could have avoided it is a breath of fresh air. Knowing that each boss fight is not just a brainless DPS or eHP check, and can actually vary its outcome depending on how well I manage my positioning, skills, and cooldowns is fantastic. This fact makes me want to see just how ridiculous of a build I can put together in LE, knowing that I will be able to compensate for lack of 'meta' by knowledge or player skill. Without 'the system that shall not be named', this isn't possible in PoE.
5) Bloat versus Complexity:
PoE is still the most complex and deep ARPG out there, no question, but I found myself happy to accept a reduction in complexity for a massive decrease in bloat. I don't miss passive tree points that give +10 to str/dex/int (in LE, just as an example, every skill node that increases your base stats also increases or changes some other stat). I don't miss 99% of strongboxes. I don't miss tormented spirits. I don't miss talismans. I don't miss my screen being literally covered in items, all of which are dumpster tier. I don't miss 80% of all skill and support gems being useless (made doubly prominent by the massive increase from Heist and subsequent nerfs to alternate quality auras). There is a middle ground between D3, aka baby's first ARPG, and PoE. I think PoE has gone off the deep end and needs to cull content.
Conclusion:
I could go on longer but I think I've made my point. I'm sure many of you will point to one or more of the things I've said and argue that these mechanics either add to PoE or are something that isn't a big deal. I respect that, but the sheer number of mechanics you can point to and say 'this is a real problem' when looking at PoE is just too great to ignore. I, and many other seasoned players (Diablo 2 was my first ARPG), have been conditioned to accept the current state of affairs because there is no alternative. That state of existence will not persist forever. I am hopeful that much of this will be alleviated in PoE2, but I fear that the 'free to play' nature of the game will just lead us down the same path of poor performance, bloated content, and an emphasis on creating a game that people play for longer as opposed to a game people enjoy playing. Logging in, opening a map, and willingly quitting back to desktop in the span of 5 minutes was one of the most depressing experiences I've ever had playing this game. If you've read this far, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk and consider that supporting alternatives to Path of Exile might be the best way to generate real change in this game we all love.
Edit: Inbox is RIP so probably won't reply much past this point. For those of you who replied with something compelling, thanks for the debate. I know this is a contentious topic.
Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
For the past two days every time I walk by my bedroom and see him in there playing reaper summoner I get absolutely livid. I cannot believe he would betray this household like this.
Sometimes I'd step in and say something like "H-hey Kieth, um, you know this league will have the worst player retention right?"
And hed always say something fucking stupid like "That's okay champ, go back to your room me and your wife need to have an important talk"
One time I tried to redditpill him again and said "H-hey Kieth the patch notes were uhh really disappointing, um don't you wanna stop because um the games so slow now, how will you do delirium encounters?"
Now get this Reddit. He had the AUDACITY to say "I didn't read the patch notes, if I can't do delirium that's fine, maybe I'll focus on delve this league"
I immediately ran out of the room sobbing, I sat at my desk and threw my chicken tenders all over the floor in disgust.
I just don't get it reddit. I'm at my wits end at this point. I cannot fathom how someone could enjoy the current state of the game. I've already tagged the developers at least 13 times in my Reddit comment manifestos do you think I should start tagging him as well? I don't even know if he checks Reddit.
Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
Discussion about Path of Exile, a free ARPG made by Grinding Gear Games
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Path of Exile 2 is a next generation Action RPG created by Grinding Gear Games. Set years after the original Path of Exile, you will return to the dark world of Wraeclast and seek to end the corruption that is spreading. Path of Exile 2 is a free-to-play online multiplayer game with co-op for up to six players.
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Sous-reddit francophone dédié au jeu Path Of Exile développé par Grinding Gear Games (GGG)
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Everything related to the construction of Hideout in Path of Exile as well as new ideas, concepts, decoration combinations and come hang out. Community for creators and users 🔨
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RPG_Gamers is a subreddit for fans of all video game RPGs from JRPGs (Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest), Western RPGs (Fallout, Baldur's Gate), action games with RPG elements (Diablo, League of Legends), and discussions related to them. Subreddit in general revolves around discussion of RPG videogames, recommendations for new games to try, news of upcoming RPGs, and reviews of recently released RPGs. Memes and other related filler content is not presently allowed.
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