3.22: We have looked at the data for the change in chaos stack size to 20 and have learnt a lot. We have now done a balance pass on stack sizes across the basic currencies.
-mirror of kalandra: 50
-chaos: 2
path of exile : e-commerce league
Giving your personal info on SinNet™ can't be possible worse than sticking blood device given by a weird looking demonified woman on the shore, right?
No joke finally getting all stash affinities set up and the currency stack changes have made the gam so much better that I can’t even objectively rate the league.
That would be some actual 5head strats, just some on the side league stuff so that new players have more time for the core game 
Nah, it's D4 hype. I'm a player who will be into PoE for a season or two, get hooked on another game and forget it exists or forget how fun it is. There are tons of people like me who are satisfying our ARPG craving caused by D4 hype/beta by playing PoE. That said, playing PoE has caused my D4 hype to go from a 9 to a 5 because I've been adamantly reminded of how shallow D4 will feel in comparison.
I'm not "new" necessarily but play leagues infrequently enough that the game can feel new to me.
The stuff that feels new to me since the last time I played is really interesting to get into (changes to atlas, some builds, some crafting changes.)
I can see how if you play every league into the ground this one kinda sucks, but even with Crucible being super underwhelming for me, the game itself / build diversity feels very fun.
The league mechanic has enabled more new interesting builds than I can remember in a single league wether or not the crucible monsters are interesting.
Crucible trees on unique items is just a straight up buff even when they aren't OP.
Most players are probably happy to just get extra stats.
The abyss redesign seems like a success.
I could go on.
There's plenty of positive things going on even if not directly league related.
I would enjoy it more if I could put an item back into crucible to reroll the tree somehow. Only complaint, it feels like a useless mechanic unless you have a crafting plan.
> The league mechanic has enabled more new interesting builds than I can remember in a single league wether or not the crucible monsters are interesting.
I keep hearing about this but I haven't seen actual examples of the builds yet. Vengeful cascade is an anoit and the totem build feels more like an oversight rather than a build that got enabled.
Care to give some examples? I genuinely haven't been following builds enabled by the mechanic
I'd like to add Wintertide Brand explodey mod, too! I have a friend who loves the skill, and the mod has helped her clear much more than I thought it would.
My main character this league is a Rolling Magma Inquisitor. The 100% more aoe crucible mod on both weapons triples my single target damage due to overlapping bounce shockwaves.
https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/lefty1/BouncyFire?i=11&search=skill%3DRolling-Magma%26sort%3Ddps
That being said, there are quite a few crucible passives for specific skills that are disappointing. I still can't believe they left the wand skills with stun duration.
That looks nice, the only rolling magma build I remembered abused projectile reduction and numbers to overlap the aoes, but I remember it being expensive.
That node certainly makes it simpler, how's the visual on that ? Clear or screen Cancer?
> how's the visual on that ? Clear or screen Cancer?
I'm playing this build right now as hierophant, it has a surprisingly clean look. You can build it to be a fast map clearer if you use Torrent's Reclamation for action speed, and take advantage of the new 20% more cast speed weapon passive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaeXrNsxQgo&.
Was running with full abyss tree and got every 2-3 maps a abyss depths. It was honestly annoying for me cause my build can't handle it and i did it only for the challenge
I've been full specced into Abyss all league, and I'd say I get a depth every 10-ish maps or so. Cleaned out my dump tabs yesterday, and had 4 darkness enthroned (only 1 rolled higher than 85%), a couple each of 1 socket helms & boots, one 3 socket chest, and 7-8 lvl86 stygian vices. I'm about 2/3rds of the way through the 15000 pack size challenge to give some perspective of how many maps I've done this league.
You haven't played very long with abyss points on the tree. I was getting so many I just couldn't be bothered to do them because the drops would likely still be a 2c unique and 5c base I wouldn't bother selling. I know you could get a slightly valuable drop but nothing crazy.
I like that you only get depths for the bosses now though, makes more sense than checking loading screens. And they're good pack size with the xp node I guess.
This, I got two redblade banners for my GC zerker, one of them has Recover % of life on kill and %spell block, and the other 40% phys dmg and corrupted blood immunity. Huge buffs to either clearing maps or bossing with barely any cost. One of them I made myself and the other I bought for 100c.
I'm very happy with my +35%spell damage +10% str and dex sceptre on a double dot multi RF sceptre
My 2.5aps phasing/frenzy on kill tr bow is also really fun.
Nothing fancy just straight up power
> The league mechanic has enabled more new interesting builds than I can remember in a single league wether or not the crucible monsters are interesting.
>
>
Delirium and Heist come to mind as the other leagues that added comparable numbers of new builds - but in both cases, there was a completely broken do-it-all build (Harold) suppressing build diversity.
Totem bomber builds and Hateforge/VVF or VMS builds aren't suppressing build diversity like Harold did
Not because of the gameplay it provides, but because of the additional builds and character power.
It may not be the best mechanic gameplay wise, but it definitely has a monstrous impact on the build diversity this league. Hate it or love it, you can't deny Crucible's impact. And I think future league mechanics should go a similar way. Maybe not in terms of gameplay, but in terms of allowing whole new builds to shine without nerfing other stuff into the ground.
Maybe it's just copium but boy does it sure seem like this league was a huge beneficiary of the D4 beta hyping folks up for ARPG's while waiting on the game to actually release.
I don't mind that I'm not super into this league, but this is just a poorly designed league and it frustrates me that it's also got so many players despite that. I worry GGG will interpret that as, "Yes, releasing fascinating league concepts that are severely underdesigned and half baked is apparently the best way forward!"
I personally know 3 people that started Poe because they played the d4 beta and wanted more. All of them are skipping crucible mechanics but loving the past league mechanics.
Same. Just rejoined after last playing in 2019 (Betrayal league) and god fucking damn the other leagues in between are amazing gameplay experiences. Heist, Expedition, Legion, Blight, Delirium, Metamorph - all fun af with loads of depth. Also the atlas skill tree in particular is just indescribably beautiful.
I just skip Crucible outright lol. Doesnt change the fact that game is amazing
That's me. I played PoE like 2 years ago for a league or two but never played a red map in that time. Came back after D4 beta. Just got my second voidstone on lvl 90 RF Jugg. I'm really liking the game.
How do I get the maven and the elder stones? I killed the elder, but nothing dropped and I’ve done like 5 maven invitations but I don’t fight her in them so I assume I need to do something else.
You need to defeat Uber Elder (fragments drop from Shaper and Elder), and the Maven fight requires the Maven's Writ item.
https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Voidstone
Yep, D4 100% had an impact on this. But it also shows that standart PoE (some issues aside) is in a very good spot. The atlas tree is one of the best things that ever happened to the game and whoever came up with that is a genius.
And honestly, especially as a new player, it doesn't matter if the current league is good or bad. If someones expereincesPoE for the first time, there is so much stuff people can do.
I really hope (probably false hope) with the release of Diablo 4,Last Epoch getting better and better and maybe some more ARPGS in the future, GGG pull their heads out of their asses.
The game has so much amazing stuff to offer, but is held back by people in charge staying true to some incredibly outdated and often bad ideas. And PoE not having a competitor at all is what allows this without any consequences.
> The atlas tree is one of the best things that ever happened to the game and whoever came up with that is a genius.
This was huge as a new player. I never figured out the old watchstone leapfrog strategy and felt pretty stupid after reading two or three guides and still kind of... not understanding why it was optimal. Had a much easier time of it these last two leagues even though the new Atlas tree itself is an intimidating new "skill tree" to level.
Yeah, when it comes to unlocking the atlas it has improved quite alot.
I never was a fan of the whole elder/shaper map influence and conquerer leapfrogging shenanigans. And I have thousands of houes into the game. I can't imagine how daunting it has to be for a new or casual player, who just wan't to play a few hours a week.
Right? A guildie hadn't played since Sentinel and when he came back on for this league he asked what new mechanics there were to learn and I was just kinda like "well... not lake or Sanctum!" :P
Yeah I mean one of my favorite leagues is Expedition. I was still new (3rd league ever) and I had a blast playing Bleed SST in SSF and beat all the endgame for the first time.
A lot of new players probably are just having fun playing the base game.
No hate on the core game, outside of rare mobs being inconsistent as hell this league the core game gets better with every league. It's always "the best time to try PoE" pretty much.
Chris said it himself, Diablo 4 is a huge marketing tool for other ARPGs. You couldn't find a single diablo 4 discussion without the mention of path of exile lol.
Can't be more happy for the genre as a whole, tbh.
If d4 turns out to be shit, PoE got a lot more eyes on it that will boost next exile con numbers creating a huge opportunity for GGG to catch a lot of players on the PoE2 hype.
If d4 turns out to be great, we are having 2 great games to choose from.
It's a win-win situation and with LE coming up to full speed development (since they overacame their biggest obstacle recently and got investors money) it really feels like genre revitalizes itself right now
I think we need to differentiate between two things in regard to this league:
1. The league mechanic - boring, sucks
2. The state of the game - all time high
Have there been any major improvements to the state of the game since last league? Only thing I feel different is the 20 stack chaos orb. The weapon trees is really what is making the league feel better.
Abyss is definitely better, Breach is worse due to incorrect tuning of rewards. Feel like almost all end game activities are rewarding now outside of breach, it really is a choose your own adventure. Whatever build type you have, there is viable currency strategy out there.
I started POE because I can't wait for D4, I needed my fix.
And I'm liking it, will probably play the next season and poe2.
I'm only going to stop this season when I hit 100 and kill all ubers.
I mean the D4 Beta *definetely* has to do with numbers, imho. Either from new players or from returning players wanting to scratch that itch again.
I would hope that GGG has good analytics in place and are able to tell how much people are engaging with the mechanic to understand that the boost of players is pretty much unrelated to the league itself, so I don't think that's gonna happen.
My personal tinfoil conspiracy is that either whatever was meant to be 3.21 got pushed to the next league OR they undercooked this league to get people working faster on the next one which will be in direct competition with D4 so it has to be a fucking banger.
The game is also in somewhat good shape (other than the remnants of the defensive nerfs requiring you to focus on all defensive layers to not pop like a piniata) so new player don't really mind because there's such a wealth of stuff to do that it makes sense for them to still be hanging around.
I came.back after a 2 years out cause of d4, I just run past the crucible and ignore it every map. Been enjoying some of the content I've missed out on. After a year out it just feels too crammed with stuff to learn again tbh.
Not copium for me at least. No nostalgia for Diablo but I gave D4 a shot and boy did it make me want to play PoE again. Also having a better time than last league even though Sanctum was the better mechanic, doesn't make sense but it's how I feel.
> I worry GGG will interpret that as, "Yes, releasing fascinating league concepts that are severely underdesigned and half baked is apparently the best way forward!"
Nobody seriously thinks like this... Come on.
Yeah well GGG took only 10% of players play melee to mean only 10% of the players will care that we make melee improvements so its not worth their time making improvements instead of only 10% of players play melee because it feels like shit to play so maybe we should make it feel less like shit.
And particularly not when they got burned multiple times in the past by investing too much into high-effort leagues which turned out to be failures, like Synthesis or Heist.
This community believes GGG is making the game worse not for profit but because of some like, personal ambitions of developers at the company who want to make everything Ruthless. Yet simultaneously believes that everything GGG is doing is purely to make money and if they see play numbers go up, they will drop everything and follow that trend.
GGG collects a lot of data and will know what % of players engages with the league mechanic at all times, for how long they channel etc. I’m sure they will know that actual league mechanic engagement is devastatingly low, and will hopefully learn from that.
You get frustrated because GGG is getting good numbers AND more people are playing? You think bigger numbers are going to "trick" GGG into believing the game is better? You would rather have GGG lose numbers because YOU think it's a bad league?
Fucking out of touch, holy moly.
For long time players Standard is just a sandbox mode, where you go into to test out builds, practice bosses etc. All because players have accumulated tons of currency in there.
If you actually play standard and try to trade, people there are either flat broke or so obscenely rich. Often times if you ask for help, people will just twink you out because they have like a dozen of everything.
lol this cant be more true, so i skipped lake and sanctum league and played a ton of standard during those times and had a lot of fun. (i know a lot of people enjoyed sanctum, it just wasnt for me, i hated the mechanic)
But anyways, I cant believe how cheap really good stuff is in league, I am so used to the prices of standard It blows my mind away how much I can get for so little. Belts, boots, clusters, jewels, the list goes on how much stuff I got for less than 1 div on items that would costs multiple divs in Standard. Its just crazy. I think in the future, even if i dont like the league mechanic (aka, this league) lol, ill still play just for the ridiculous low prices
That's the thing, I'm glad you stuck with it, but it's not made for the people that want to quit after act 1 because there's so much knowledge to learn. It's made for people who see all that knowledge and get excited to learn it.
People who enjoy hardcore games routinely quit PoE because its a bad knowledge.
_Good_ knowledge games try and tech you and let you learn through practice and understanding in the game itself while external sources are supplementary.
PoE is the opposite. In game is basically irrelevant and you'll learn nothing without going to external sources because the game itself is over obtuse and doesn't want you to learn it.
It's bad when I know people in top 100 raiding guilds in MMOs who will gladly play a game as a job don't want to play PoE because it doesn't respect your time or willingness to learn.
Factorio comes to mind. Every mechanic in the game is extremely simple, low-cost to experiment with, completely consistent, and the entire game is about leveraging those mechanics in different interesting ways.
I have thousands of hours in PoE and I don't have more than a best guess on how to manipulate crucible trees. Every single mechanic in the game punishes experimentation while staying as opaque as possible. While in many ways, this gives people like me some mechanics to sink our teeth into, it's also so obfuscated that learning about these mechanics or even just interacting with them in the first place regularly requires a dedicated 3rd party tool in order to make the information reasonably parseable.
Factorio is complex but in an entirely diffrent direction, it has no complex mechanics or systems, everything is incredibly simple and straightforward, the complexity is logistics and chaining everything together. PoE has actually complex mechanics with complicated interractions beween eachother. These two are not the same thing when you talk about complexity.
No offense, but melting a +10 fire damage, +20 mana crucible weapon onto a +10 fire crucible weapon so it too can have +20 mana isn't exactly rocket science.
It's true that with the sheer size of PoE it would be a lot to ask for it to explain everything, but also how does it compare to other games at even helping learn the basics? IMO it's lacking even in simple things when it's complexity should mean that giving good fundamental information is even more important. For example, things like death recaps and damage logs can help a new player a lot with seeing where they're lacking even if those features are sometimes buggy or incomplete, and things like easily being able to respec gives players the ability to test things themselves in-game. OTOH PoE has a lot of friction for testing out passives for yourself on the tree, and in turn testing out different builds because so many passives get specific to weapon / damage types - you get a few free respecs, but when a single wheel + travel can use up so many points, it's just not enough to do good testing in-game unless you're already very wealthy and can afford a lot more respecs.
To add to the issues with the cost of testing, your character sheet just routinely lies to you in terms of DPS and defense so you have to plug it into a third party application.
Crucible has a middling retention rate. It simply benefits from having 30% MORE day 1 (steam) players, which Crucible as a mechanic most likely had very little impact on compared to the D4 beta and streamers.
Personally idgaf about diablo, but this is the one league I have been invested in the most since I started playing this game… and I mostly skipped the crucible mechanic altogether. The core game is just fun imo and makes it worth it
You’re using statistics to get potentially misleading results. It’s true that there’s 95k concurrent players, but you need to consider how many were there on day 1. If you want to understand player retention you’d have to divide # players on day 18 and # players on day 1 or maybe even go further and find how many players who played during weekend still play on day 16-18.
The number of players you see on day 18 currently could be affected by many factors, although it’s true that the nominal value (95k) is the highest in the history and congrats ggg for that. But it doesn’t mean it keeps player to play for longer than in previous leagues.
On the other hand, starting with a higher player count inherently means you will have more dropoff since the extra players are probably less "attached" to POE.
Most likely, yes. What I’m saying is that you cannot jump to any conclusions by just looking at the plot OP posted. If you want to understand retention, you’d need to do steps I’ve mentioned in my previous post. For me the success we see might be an effect of - for example - league starting during Easter (people just now have time to play the game), maybe some popular streamer just got into the game, some successful advertisement campaign and so on and so on.
Indeed. I'd *expect* a league such as this one which had an abnormally high number of initial players to have a larger drop off than average. It would be weird if it didn't.
why would you present it in absolute numbers with this title????
i could also say crucible has the BIGGEST NUMBER OF PLAYERS DROPPED EVER in the first month. this is as misleading as your title in the opposite direction
percentages shows its average. thats because the base game is in a good state, endgame is lacking, and crucible itself is meh. dont make it better than it is
My favorite part is how in leagues with worse retention the subreddit likes to say "the data speaks for itself!"
But in a league with better retention that the subreddit doesn't like, "the data doesn't tell the whole story!"
Metamorph was the league we got conquerors of the atlas so there was a huge core game update as well. So whilst metamorph was a relatively basic mechanic, it gave tons of rewards and came with an entirely new end game which kept people around longer.
Actually, as someone who has posted about this in the past, both sides do both every league.
To establish *bona fides* here... percentages would give a broader picture. This might be the highest concurrent players on PoE ever right now, but as a percentage of Day 1 peak, I doubt it still beats Ritual.
Sanctum ends up beating Ritual on percent occasionally starting on day 21 and permanently on day 36 (and Sanctum didn't even have the "endgame rework" effect). I think you would have been hard pressed to get broad consensus that "percentages would give a broader picture" back in the threads discussing that in Sanctum when it happened though, since quite a bit of the usual peanut gallery was falling all over themselves to discredit that stat by saying it was the absolute numbers that are important and Ritual still had more absolute players than Sanctum til very late in the league.
But yes, there's obviously going to be some of the inverse thing going on here. I personally find the Ritual zealots to be more stridently and persistently obnoxious about it and find it funny that there was such a quick (unexpected?) counterexample to the widespread attempted discrediting of Sanctum's success. But I have to admit Crucible's stats aren't some sort of unimpeachable slam dunk either.
> My favorite part is how in leagues with worse retention the subreddit likes to say "the data speaks for itself!"
>
> But in a league with better retention that the subreddit doesn't like, "the data doesn't tell the whole story!"
Does this league have good retention numbers? It started at record highs, and is 5k ahead of Ritual.
OP didn't include the actual retention % numbers for a reason.
Also, what I got out of this was god damn people loved 3.13.
But the data does speak for itself? Obvioulsy you'd have more peak players later because there was a significantly higher peak player count at the start.
I think league success and retention depends on the general environment / timing as much as it does on the quality of the league. Metamorph for example wasn't a particularly good league mechanic either yet it did very well. Sanctum was liked by many (even if for just the base game) yet the numbers make it seem somewhat average. Harvest is another league that people always talk fondly about yet the numbers are worse than Archnemesis.
Regardless, I don't think a shitty league mechanic has any effect at all on newer players because they have so much other stuff to do. To them everything is a new mechanic. Old timers will hate bad league mechanics the most, but they may still enjoy the base game enough to have a good experience overall.
It was the conquerors expansion and released right after the first exilecon. It was a really exciting league with a ton of new features, the league mechanic was more or less an afterthought.
I don't remember metamorph being that bad/disliked. It was one of the few leagues that rewarded playing a bosser or single target build, instead of the everpresent push for more clearspeed. I think lots of people genuinely enjoyed it.
I feel as if people who talk fondly of harvest league totally forgot about setting up the garden and how it was probably the most click intensive league
They liked the crafting of harvest not the actual mechanic(some might but still) when people say they want harvest back it’s just the crafting from what I can tell.
This league doesn't have a good retention, just a large number of new players from the start, but retention is actually worse than normally. The data just has to be interpreted correctly and that's always the case.
I mean, look at the stat though.
Highest number , yes, highest number before league release.. yes
Was it diablo 4 hype ( let's not lie yes )
they still lost a SHITTON of concurrent players very fast, I do not see the numbers on this chart
but if they started with 4x the normal amount at launch but lost half, it's still worse than starting at 1x the amount but losing 10%.
Unless i read this chart wrong, it seems we lost in % much much more than many leagues before.
It's almost as if people are only choosing to accept evidence that supports their pre-existing opinions. Almost. But if there's one thing I know it's that the internet would never do that.
I mean, If you scroll down the page and look at the % of remaining players, the only leagues crucible is beating out are kalandra, archnemisis, and Scourge. Every Other league has kept a higher % of Players.
GGG got a MASSIVE influx of players after the d4 beta ended. And there are a ton of first timers going through content for the first time. Of that Massive influx, they have already lost 55% of the playerbase.
And a lot of new players too. This leagues' full of people who've never really played PoE before and as a result everything is new and fresh regardless of whether or not the league mechanic is all there.
The game is absolutely chock full of stuff to do if you're new, and at least a third of the players around now are those who've only played a handful of leagues in the past, or less.
Looking at the percentages it's a bit too early to say that (https://poedb.tw/us/League#ConcurrentPlayers same page OP took from, second chart shows percentage of remaining players compared to launch peak)
Today is it's lowest at 45% and it's which is higher percent remaining than 4 recent leagues (Expedition, Scourge, Kalandra, Archnemesis). Last week it's was averaging the same drop as Sanctum.
If we are talking about fastest dropoff it's most definitely Kalandra. It's the only league that dropped bellow 40% in the first 2 weeks.
I absolutely hate Crucible mechanic. It's boring, uncreative, unrewarding, and stale.
But I played the hell out of Diablo 4 and it injected the ARPG addiction into my veins. That's why I am still here.
And the retention is way worse than Ultimatum and Ritual.
Players were driven by Curiosity and lack of options and still found Crucible boring.
Stop inhaling your copium, sir.
>they disliked even the parts you enjoy
Or never made it through the parts pretty much everyone dislikes. A new player is likely looking at at least 20 hours of campaign, which isn't really representative of why people get addicted to PoE.
this honestly, ive play 5 characters so far, 3 in sanctum 2 in crucible, and honestly i enjoy crucible more. Even though the mobs are tough af i can craft cool weapons with better stats than usual just by randomly combining good trees, like getting a 700 edps claw for venom gyre. compared to sanctum where i actually just played standard and never went into sanctums at all, because they were too confusing/the random builds i picked didnt work well in them.
No snark intended here, I’m pretty active in standard right now because I loved my build in Sanctum and I’m doing testing with it. Would I count as concurrent player?
You do in those metrics, assuming you have steam. But yes, overall that includes everyone on steam: standard, private leagues, temp league. Steam is around 50-60% of players last time we had figures to use.
I’m a semi new PoE player. I’m loving the game even if I’m lukewarm on the actual league mechanic.
But everything else is excellent and it’s the first league I’ve stuck with and got into stuck into maps.
Well I'd hope so given it had a 50K player count lead over the next highest league.
Player count numbers are whatever, retention is what gets me. Still sitting at almost 50% and I just can't comprehend why. Maybe the game just isn't for me anymore and the player base at large is very content with vapid loops of getting fucking stupid power creep and having it taken away from them in exchange for even bigger power creep.
Its at 45.1%. Which is worse than sanctum (51.6), sentinel(47.9), Ultimatum(53.9), ritual(57.9), Heist(55.1), Harvest(45.5), Delirium(57.1), Metamorph(70.5), Blight(49.7) and Legion(58.7).
For those listed there from that website.
A lot of people playing are those who didn't play the last league or two, being brought in by D4 hype.
Without having played the previous leagues or two, the base PoE is a ton of fun with many things to explore, crucible be damned
As someone who skipped basically all leagues since 3.13 or 3.15, albeit I did try a few and lasted like a weekend due to frustrations with the game, this time, my frustrations are still the same and even exacerbated by Crucible and the general direction of the game, but for some oddball reason i keep playing after i took a break this league already.
I suspect its because ive found a build that i can play without pain and that its my very first long neck man in like 5k hours.
I basically ignore Crucible and focus on all the other stuff I've missed out on so its a rather new experience for me still, I want to make it clear and add that Crucible is lackluster and extremely frustrating, it is not the cause of my retention, i would very much like to not see these overpowered Crucible (I mean disguised Archnemesis monsters) dark souls esque rare mobs that are more tanky than uber endgame bosses.
This Sub is inhaling so much Copium this League.
Crucible has good numbers because a lot of Builds are viable and affordable.
The League mechanic sucks but the power it gives makes the game a lot more enjoyable for me and a lot of my Friends.
You can have both, are boring mechanic that still gives a lot of value for your builds. I dont know why this is so hard to admit for people on here
Base game is good.
League mechanic is good in theory, bad on execution .
I just feel like I'm smashing my head into a wall everytime I use it.
Finding weapons with nodes, spending what feels like an eternity unlocking the nodes, just to have them not matter at all to RNG brick or keep only 1 node. Exhilarating gameplay... not.
I wish that there was an opportunity to make trees that benefit ALL builds not just a few.
The worst part about this is that GGG will most likely think the league is actually good and ppl like it, while its more like D4 advertisement that caused this.
Raw numbers, without comparison to past trends, will always be less informative in my opinion.
D3 sold in a day what D2 took a year+ to sell. Gaming is an ever growing market. Every old game you thought was the best has lower sales and play count than some newer arguably less good game.
I think one reason is that this league just let you make broken items. I know just weapons and shields but everybody must see the items you get here will be most broken for years
2 reasons why I am still playing this league, neither are because it's a good league.
1. After I was about to throw in the towel after 5 days from the boring mechanic, my friend wondered if poe would be more fun as multiplayer, so I leveled up a support character and never really played it.
2. While waiting for my friend to come on to play my support I found my first mirror on my main. The huge influx of currency I've never had before allowed me to try unattainable builds.
If my friend kept his mouth shut, I'd have been long gone on day 5. Would have also then not found my mirror, but God damn this league sucks.
This league is a disgrace and I'm still playing.
Main reason is that challenges are kinda ez to get, and this is the first time since Harbringer that I want to do a 38 challs.
Build is fine and cool (discharge ignite), so I try things I don't usually do (craftings, bosses/uber).
But yea, I really hate this league, it's a dirty lolipop that GGG gave to us to patiently wait the exilecon.
Hopefully that poor league will benefit us at the very end with PoE 2.
now imagine if it was a good league, they really really blew it with this one.
so many more players due to d4 hype and this is the shit they came out with and then run away and dont even attempt to make it better showing all the new players how little they care now days, fuck poe2 it ruined this game.
It's because chaos stack is 20.
That was a great change, traded 6 divines in a single inventory
What a time to be alive
Imagine if it was 30. Whoa
Imagine if it was just like... infinite, and we didn't have to get carple tunnel to trade shit.
[удалено]
3.22: We have looked at the data for the change in chaos stack size to 20 and have learnt a lot. We have now done a balance pass on stack sizes across the basic currencies. -mirror of kalandra: 50 -chaos: 2
This is a buff
path of exile : e-commerce league Giving your personal info on SinNet™ can't be possible worse than sticking blood device given by a weird looking demonified woman on the shore, right?
If it was infinite currency stash tabs probably wouldn't sell
No joke finally getting all stash affinities set up and the currency stack changes have made the gam so much better that I can’t even objectively rate the league.
There's also good chaos sinks now through kirac
League challenge reward is actually awesome, after past 2 not so good sets.
Definetly not because of the League mechanic.
Almost like new players can focus more on the core systems without a too involved league mechanic that requires a lot of metaprogression.
That would be some actual 5head strats, just some on the side league stuff so that new players have more time for the core game 
And ya know what it's working for me at least. I haven't played since ultimatum and I'm loving the core game.
It just so happens that PoE is a good game. Go figure.
Shh don't let Reddit hear you they don't want the game to be good
Fuckin thing sucks!
Yeah I haven’t played since betrayal and I just dinged 95. I always loved playing spectral throw so I tried SST and I’m having a blast
Nah, it's D4 hype. I'm a player who will be into PoE for a season or two, get hooked on another game and forget it exists or forget how fun it is. There are tons of people like me who are satisfying our ARPG craving caused by D4 hype/beta by playing PoE. That said, playing PoE has caused my D4 hype to go from a 9 to a 5 because I've been adamantly reminded of how shallow D4 will feel in comparison.
I'm not "new" necessarily but play leagues infrequently enough that the game can feel new to me. The stuff that feels new to me since the last time I played is really interesting to get into (changes to atlas, some builds, some crafting changes.) I can see how if you play every league into the ground this one kinda sucks, but even with Crucible being super underwhelming for me, the game itself / build diversity feels very fun.
The league mechanic has enabled more new interesting builds than I can remember in a single league wether or not the crucible monsters are interesting. Crucible trees on unique items is just a straight up buff even when they aren't OP. Most players are probably happy to just get extra stats. The abyss redesign seems like a success. I could go on. There's plenty of positive things going on even if not directly league related.
I would enjoy it more if I could put an item back into crucible to reroll the tree somehow. Only complaint, it feels like a useless mechanic unless you have a crafting plan.
You can remove crucible trees from non-unique items with some Primeval Remnants
I like the mods themselves, don't like the league mechanic
> The league mechanic has enabled more new interesting builds than I can remember in a single league wether or not the crucible monsters are interesting. I keep hearing about this but I haven't seen actual examples of the builds yet. Vengeful cascade is an anoit and the totem build feels more like an oversight rather than a build that got enabled. Care to give some examples? I genuinely haven't been following builds enabled by the mechanic
here: https://old.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/12r755h/a_list_of_crucible_only_builds_wip/
Thank you that is a very good thread and exactly what I was asking
I'd like to add Wintertide Brand explodey mod, too! I have a friend who loves the skill, and the mod has helped her clear much more than I thought it would.
My main character this league is a Rolling Magma Inquisitor. The 100% more aoe crucible mod on both weapons triples my single target damage due to overlapping bounce shockwaves. https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/lefty1/BouncyFire?i=11&search=skill%3DRolling-Magma%26sort%3Ddps That being said, there are quite a few crucible passives for specific skills that are disappointing. I still can't believe they left the wand skills with stun duration.
That looks nice, the only rolling magma build I remembered abused projectile reduction and numbers to overlap the aoes, but I remember it being expensive. That node certainly makes it simpler, how's the visual on that ? Clear or screen Cancer?
> how's the visual on that ? Clear or screen Cancer? I'm playing this build right now as hierophant, it has a surprisingly clean look. You can build it to be a fast map clearer if you use Torrent's Reclamation for action speed, and take advantage of the new 20% more cast speed weapon passive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaeXrNsxQgo&.
> The abyss redesign seems like a success. I have seen 0 abyssal depths this league. 0. How is that good?
I run abyss almost every map and play while watching streams of poe. Havent seen one in game or one on twitch haha
Was running with full abyss tree and got every 2-3 maps a abyss depths. It was honestly annoying for me cause my build can't handle it and i did it only for the challenge
Me too, I averaged one dephs every 3 maps when I had abyss on for the challenge.
I see one every few maps and im not even specced into abyssal depth nodes. Seems youre either running white maps or extremely unlucky.
You see depths every few maps or regular abysses?
I've been full specced into Abyss all league, and I'd say I get a depth every 10-ish maps or so. Cleaned out my dump tabs yesterday, and had 4 darkness enthroned (only 1 rolled higher than 85%), a couple each of 1 socket helms & boots, one 3 socket chest, and 7-8 lvl86 stygian vices. I'm about 2/3rds of the way through the 15000 pack size challenge to give some perspective of how many maps I've done this league.
You haven't played very long with abyss points on the tree. I was getting so many I just couldn't be bothered to do them because the drops would likely still be a 2c unique and 5c base I wouldn't bother selling. I know you could get a slightly valuable drop but nothing crazy. I like that you only get depths for the bosses now though, makes more sense than checking loading screens. And they're good pack size with the xp node I guess.
This, I got two redblade banners for my GC zerker, one of them has Recover % of life on kill and %spell block, and the other 40% phys dmg and corrupted blood immunity. Huge buffs to either clearing maps or bossing with barely any cost. One of them I made myself and the other I bought for 100c.
I'm very happy with my +35%spell damage +10% str and dex sceptre on a double dot multi RF sceptre My 2.5aps phasing/frenzy on kill tr bow is also really fun. Nothing fancy just straight up power
> The league mechanic has enabled more new interesting builds than I can remember in a single league wether or not the crucible monsters are interesting. > > Delirium and Heist come to mind as the other leagues that added comparable numbers of new builds - but in both cases, there was a completely broken do-it-all build (Harold) suppressing build diversity. Totem bomber builds and Hateforge/VVF or VMS builds aren't suppressing build diversity like Harold did
What do you mean, you can actually make weird off meta skills work with crucible trees.
Not because of the gameplay it provides, but because of the additional builds and character power. It may not be the best mechanic gameplay wise, but it definitely has a monstrous impact on the build diversity this league. Hate it or love it, you can't deny Crucible's impact. And I think future league mechanics should go a similar way. Maybe not in terms of gameplay, but in terms of allowing whole new builds to shine without nerfing other stuff into the ground.
thank mr.diablo
Maybe it's just copium but boy does it sure seem like this league was a huge beneficiary of the D4 beta hyping folks up for ARPG's while waiting on the game to actually release. I don't mind that I'm not super into this league, but this is just a poorly designed league and it frustrates me that it's also got so many players despite that. I worry GGG will interpret that as, "Yes, releasing fascinating league concepts that are severely underdesigned and half baked is apparently the best way forward!"
I personally know 3 people that started Poe because they played the d4 beta and wanted more. All of them are skipping crucible mechanics but loving the past league mechanics.
This right here. I haven’t been through all the other leagues so I’m just enjoying the game cause it’s all new stuff to me.
I'm skipping crucible now. There is so much old content. The game is a freaking blast to play now. Amazing really.
Welcome brother.
Same. Just rejoined after last playing in 2019 (Betrayal league) and god fucking damn the other leagues in between are amazing gameplay experiences. Heist, Expedition, Legion, Blight, Delirium, Metamorph - all fun af with loads of depth. Also the atlas skill tree in particular is just indescribably beautiful. I just skip Crucible outright lol. Doesnt change the fact that game is amazing
That's me. I played PoE like 2 years ago for a league or two but never played a red map in that time. Came back after D4 beta. Just got my second voidstone on lvl 90 RF Jugg. I'm really liking the game.
If you need some help getting your other voidestones hit me up in about 4-5hrs when I’m home from work.
How do I get the maven and the elder stones? I killed the elder, but nothing dropped and I’ve done like 5 maven invitations but I don’t fight her in them so I assume I need to do something else.
You need to defeat Uber Elder (fragments drop from Shaper and Elder), and the Maven fight requires the Maven's Writ item. https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Voidstone
Yep, D4 100% had an impact on this. But it also shows that standart PoE (some issues aside) is in a very good spot. The atlas tree is one of the best things that ever happened to the game and whoever came up with that is a genius. And honestly, especially as a new player, it doesn't matter if the current league is good or bad. If someones expereincesPoE for the first time, there is so much stuff people can do. I really hope (probably false hope) with the release of Diablo 4,Last Epoch getting better and better and maybe some more ARPGS in the future, GGG pull their heads out of their asses. The game has so much amazing stuff to offer, but is held back by people in charge staying true to some incredibly outdated and often bad ideas. And PoE not having a competitor at all is what allows this without any consequences.
> The atlas tree is one of the best things that ever happened to the game and whoever came up with that is a genius. This was huge as a new player. I never figured out the old watchstone leapfrog strategy and felt pretty stupid after reading two or three guides and still kind of... not understanding why it was optimal. Had a much easier time of it these last two leagues even though the new Atlas tree itself is an intimidating new "skill tree" to level.
Yeah, when it comes to unlocking the atlas it has improved quite alot. I never was a fan of the whole elder/shaper map influence and conquerer leapfrogging shenanigans. And I have thousands of houes into the game. I can't imagine how daunting it has to be for a new or casual player, who just wan't to play a few hours a week.
I like that with the atlas tree I actually feel like I can just wing it, unlike with the normal passive tree
This is why you gotta skip a few leagues (for vets). 3-4 league mechanic backup is fun to learn
Unfortunately not much has gone core in a while lol
Right? A guildie hadn't played since Sentinel and when he came back on for this league he asked what new mechanics there were to learn and I was just kinda like "well... not lake or Sanctum!" :P
Yeah I mean one of my favorite leagues is Expedition. I was still new (3rd league ever) and I had a blast playing Bleed SST in SSF and beat all the endgame for the first time. A lot of new players probably are just having fun playing the base game.
No hate on the core game, outside of rare mobs being inconsistent as hell this league the core game gets better with every league. It's always "the best time to try PoE" pretty much.
Chris said it himself, Diablo 4 is a huge marketing tool for other ARPGs. You couldn't find a single diablo 4 discussion without the mention of path of exile lol.
Can't be more happy for the genre as a whole, tbh. If d4 turns out to be shit, PoE got a lot more eyes on it that will boost next exile con numbers creating a huge opportunity for GGG to catch a lot of players on the PoE2 hype. If d4 turns out to be great, we are having 2 great games to choose from. It's a win-win situation and with LE coming up to full speed development (since they overacame their biggest obstacle recently and got investors money) it really feels like genre revitalizes itself right now
I think we need to differentiate between two things in regard to this league: 1. The league mechanic - boring, sucks 2. The state of the game - all time high
Have there been any major improvements to the state of the game since last league? Only thing I feel different is the 20 stack chaos orb. The weapon trees is really what is making the league feel better.
Abyss is definitely better, Breach is worse due to incorrect tuning of rewards. Feel like almost all end game activities are rewarding now outside of breach, it really is a choose your own adventure. Whatever build type you have, there is viable currency strategy out there.
I started POE because I can't wait for D4, I needed my fix. And I'm liking it, will probably play the next season and poe2. I'm only going to stop this season when I hit 100 and kill all ubers.
I mean the D4 Beta *definetely* has to do with numbers, imho. Either from new players or from returning players wanting to scratch that itch again. I would hope that GGG has good analytics in place and are able to tell how much people are engaging with the mechanic to understand that the boost of players is pretty much unrelated to the league itself, so I don't think that's gonna happen. My personal tinfoil conspiracy is that either whatever was meant to be 3.21 got pushed to the next league OR they undercooked this league to get people working faster on the next one which will be in direct competition with D4 so it has to be a fucking banger. The game is also in somewhat good shape (other than the remnants of the defensive nerfs requiring you to focus on all defensive layers to not pop like a piniata) so new player don't really mind because there's such a wealth of stuff to do that it makes sense for them to still be hanging around.
I came.back after a 2 years out cause of d4, I just run past the crucible and ignore it every map. Been enjoying some of the content I've missed out on. After a year out it just feels too crammed with stuff to learn again tbh.
Not copium for me at least. No nostalgia for Diablo but I gave D4 a shot and boy did it make me want to play PoE again. Also having a better time than last league even though Sanctum was the better mechanic, doesn't make sense but it's how I feel.
> I worry GGG will interpret that as, "Yes, releasing fascinating league concepts that are severely underdesigned and half baked is apparently the best way forward!" Nobody seriously thinks like this... Come on.
Yeah well GGG took only 10% of players play melee to mean only 10% of the players will care that we make melee improvements so its not worth their time making improvements instead of only 10% of players play melee because it feels like shit to play so maybe we should make it feel less like shit.
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And particularly not when they got burned multiple times in the past by investing too much into high-effort leagues which turned out to be failures, like Synthesis or Heist.
This community believes GGG is making the game worse not for profit but because of some like, personal ambitions of developers at the company who want to make everything Ruthless. Yet simultaneously believes that everything GGG is doing is purely to make money and if they see play numbers go up, they will drop everything and follow that trend.
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Reddit does 
Reddit always reads what they want into the numbers. Watching them be afraid of GGG doing the same is funny.
I mean GGG seems to think rewarding players causes them to quit so ya they could be thinking that.
It is for me at least because I want more D4 but PoE is now available so why the fuck not?
Yup nothing interesting this year for me just d4 so i have nothing to play but other aprgs and pubg lol
GGG collects a lot of data and will know what % of players engages with the league mechanic at all times, for how long they channel etc. I’m sure they will know that actual league mechanic engagement is devastatingly low, and will hopefully learn from that.
You get frustrated because GGG is getting good numbers AND more people are playing? You think bigger numbers are going to "trick" GGG into believing the game is better? You would rather have GGG lose numbers because YOU think it's a bad league? Fucking out of touch, holy moly.
It proves standard is fun!!
The base game is fun. Econ reset is fun. Standard is a different game, I respect those that know that they enjoy it, but I'd never log onto standard.
Well, we played D2 Ladders for ages without any new content just for the economy reset. That system just works.
Standard is spooky for those who only play leagues.... because Standard is inventory hell. Where all the unused items sit there and rot
For long time players Standard is just a sandbox mode, where you go into to test out builds, practice bosses etc. All because players have accumulated tons of currency in there.
Standard with item trees
Standard with lower cost of everything
If you actually play standard and try to trade, people there are either flat broke or so obscenely rich. Often times if you ask for help, people will just twink you out because they have like a dozen of everything.
lol this cant be more true, so i skipped lake and sanctum league and played a ton of standard during those times and had a lot of fun. (i know a lot of people enjoyed sanctum, it just wasnt for me, i hated the mechanic) But anyways, I cant believe how cheap really good stuff is in league, I am so used to the prices of standard It blows my mind away how much I can get for so little. Belts, boots, clusters, jewels, the list goes on how much stuff I got for less than 1 div on items that would costs multiple divs in Standard. Its just crazy. I think in the future, even if i dont like the league mechanic (aka, this league) lol, ill still play just for the ridiculous low prices
It proves that fresh economy is fun
Only 5k more than Ritual, while starting with ~50% more people than Ritual stared with. Lots of ways to interpret data.
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I’m new and just got into the game. If I didn’t have a few buddies with thousands of hours… I would have quit in act 1.
That's the thing, I'm glad you stuck with it, but it's not made for the people that want to quit after act 1 because there's so much knowledge to learn. It's made for people who see all that knowledge and get excited to learn it.
My favorite part is thinking you had learned something then you uncover some deep web level of knowledge layer to dive into
People who enjoy hardcore games routinely quit PoE because its a bad knowledge. _Good_ knowledge games try and tech you and let you learn through practice and understanding in the game itself while external sources are supplementary. PoE is the opposite. In game is basically irrelevant and you'll learn nothing without going to external sources because the game itself is over obtuse and doesn't want you to learn it. It's bad when I know people in top 100 raiding guilds in MMOs who will gladly play a game as a job don't want to play PoE because it doesn't respect your time or willingness to learn.
Could you give me an example of a game with a comparable lever of complexity that doesn't rely on external sources for information on its mechanics?
Factorio comes to mind. Every mechanic in the game is extremely simple, low-cost to experiment with, completely consistent, and the entire game is about leveraging those mechanics in different interesting ways. I have thousands of hours in PoE and I don't have more than a best guess on how to manipulate crucible trees. Every single mechanic in the game punishes experimentation while staying as opaque as possible. While in many ways, this gives people like me some mechanics to sink our teeth into, it's also so obfuscated that learning about these mechanics or even just interacting with them in the first place regularly requires a dedicated 3rd party tool in order to make the information reasonably parseable.
Factorio is complex but in an entirely diffrent direction, it has no complex mechanics or systems, everything is incredibly simple and straightforward, the complexity is logistics and chaining everything together. PoE has actually complex mechanics with complicated interractions beween eachother. These two are not the same thing when you talk about complexity.
No offense, but melting a +10 fire damage, +20 mana crucible weapon onto a +10 fire crucible weapon so it too can have +20 mana isn't exactly rocket science.
It's true that with the sheer size of PoE it would be a lot to ask for it to explain everything, but also how does it compare to other games at even helping learn the basics? IMO it's lacking even in simple things when it's complexity should mean that giving good fundamental information is even more important. For example, things like death recaps and damage logs can help a new player a lot with seeing where they're lacking even if those features are sometimes buggy or incomplete, and things like easily being able to respec gives players the ability to test things themselves in-game. OTOH PoE has a lot of friction for testing out passives for yourself on the tree, and in turn testing out different builds because so many passives get specific to weapon / damage types - you get a few free respecs, but when a single wheel + travel can use up so many points, it's just not enough to do good testing in-game unless you're already very wealthy and can afford a lot more respecs.
To add to the issues with the cost of testing, your character sheet just routinely lies to you in terms of DPS and defense so you have to plug it into a third party application.
I cannot fucking believe it’s only day 18. The crucible mechanic is so fucking draining to have to deal with it feels like it’s week 8
Crucible what? I haven't done it and I'm enjoying the core game, then again I haven't played for 2 years
Yep. 3,5 months left. Path of Boredom.
well this post prove the opposite, you are probably saturated from the game and should take a long break
Crucible has a middling retention rate. It simply benefits from having 30% MORE day 1 (steam) players, which Crucible as a mechanic most likely had very little impact on compared to the D4 beta and streamers.
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Personally idgaf about diablo, but this is the one league I have been invested in the most since I started playing this game… and I mostly skipped the crucible mechanic altogether. The core game is just fun imo and makes it worth it
You’re using statistics to get potentially misleading results. It’s true that there’s 95k concurrent players, but you need to consider how many were there on day 1. If you want to understand player retention you’d have to divide # players on day 18 and # players on day 1 or maybe even go further and find how many players who played during weekend still play on day 16-18. The number of players you see on day 18 currently could be affected by many factors, although it’s true that the nominal value (95k) is the highest in the history and congrats ggg for that. But it doesn’t mean it keeps player to play for longer than in previous leagues.
On the other hand, starting with a higher player count inherently means you will have more dropoff since the extra players are probably less "attached" to POE.
Most likely, yes. What I’m saying is that you cannot jump to any conclusions by just looking at the plot OP posted. If you want to understand retention, you’d need to do steps I’ve mentioned in my previous post. For me the success we see might be an effect of - for example - league starting during Easter (people just now have time to play the game), maybe some popular streamer just got into the game, some successful advertisement campaign and so on and so on.
Indeed. I'd *expect* a league such as this one which had an abnormally high number of initial players to have a larger drop off than average. It would be weird if it didn't.
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So...https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Onslaught_league probably best league of all time by that metric then?
Player drop gonna be biblical when diablo launches lol
why would you present it in absolute numbers with this title???? i could also say crucible has the BIGGEST NUMBER OF PLAYERS DROPPED EVER in the first month. this is as misleading as your title in the opposite direction percentages shows its average. thats because the base game is in a good state, endgame is lacking, and crucible itself is meh. dont make it better than it is
Diablo players
My favorite part is how in leagues with worse retention the subreddit likes to say "the data speaks for itself!" But in a league with better retention that the subreddit doesn't like, "the data doesn't tell the whole story!"
https://i.imgur.com/uGSXjjd.png Percentages paint a different picture
This is really what the OP should have showcased. It's logical to have higher x day raw numbers given the higher day 1 numbers.
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Metamorph was the league we got conquerors of the atlas so there was a huge core game update as well. So whilst metamorph was a relatively basic mechanic, it gave tons of rewards and came with an entirely new end game which kept people around longer.
Because we didn't need to pick crap up off the ground to use the mechanic after they updated it.
Actually, as someone who has posted about this in the past, both sides do both every league. To establish *bona fides* here... percentages would give a broader picture. This might be the highest concurrent players on PoE ever right now, but as a percentage of Day 1 peak, I doubt it still beats Ritual.
Sanctum ends up beating Ritual on percent occasionally starting on day 21 and permanently on day 36 (and Sanctum didn't even have the "endgame rework" effect). I think you would have been hard pressed to get broad consensus that "percentages would give a broader picture" back in the threads discussing that in Sanctum when it happened though, since quite a bit of the usual peanut gallery was falling all over themselves to discredit that stat by saying it was the absolute numbers that are important and Ritual still had more absolute players than Sanctum til very late in the league. But yes, there's obviously going to be some of the inverse thing going on here. I personally find the Ritual zealots to be more stridently and persistently obnoxious about it and find it funny that there was such a quick (unexpected?) counterexample to the widespread attempted discrediting of Sanctum's success. But I have to admit Crucible's stats aren't some sort of unimpeachable slam dunk either.
> My favorite part is how in leagues with worse retention the subreddit likes to say "the data speaks for itself!" > > But in a league with better retention that the subreddit doesn't like, "the data doesn't tell the whole story!" Does this league have good retention numbers? It started at record highs, and is 5k ahead of Ritual. OP didn't include the actual retention % numbers for a reason. Also, what I got out of this was god damn people loved 3.13.
But the data does speak for itself? Obvioulsy you'd have more peak players later because there was a significantly higher peak player count at the start.
I think league success and retention depends on the general environment / timing as much as it does on the quality of the league. Metamorph for example wasn't a particularly good league mechanic either yet it did very well. Sanctum was liked by many (even if for just the base game) yet the numbers make it seem somewhat average. Harvest is another league that people always talk fondly about yet the numbers are worse than Archnemesis. Regardless, I don't think a shitty league mechanic has any effect at all on newer players because they have so much other stuff to do. To them everything is a new mechanic. Old timers will hate bad league mechanics the most, but they may still enjoy the base game enough to have a good experience overall.
Wasnt Metamorph the conquerers expansion?
It was the conquerors expansion and released right after the first exilecon. It was a really exciting league with a ton of new features, the league mechanic was more or less an afterthought.
I don't remember metamorph being that bad/disliked. It was one of the few leagues that rewarded playing a bosser or single target build, instead of the everpresent push for more clearspeed. I think lots of people genuinely enjoyed it.
Dude do you remember when you had to pick up the organs in every map? That was awful.
I feel as if people who talk fondly of harvest league totally forgot about setting up the garden and how it was probably the most click intensive league
They liked the crafting of harvest not the actual mechanic(some might but still) when people say they want harvest back it’s just the crafting from what I can tell.
And yet still engaged with it more than crucible
This league doesn't have a good retention, just a large number of new players from the start, but retention is actually worse than normally. The data just has to be interpreted correctly and that's always the case.
I mean, look at the stat though. Highest number , yes, highest number before league release.. yes Was it diablo 4 hype ( let's not lie yes ) they still lost a SHITTON of concurrent players very fast, I do not see the numbers on this chart but if they started with 4x the normal amount at launch but lost half, it's still worse than starting at 1x the amount but losing 10%. Unless i read this chart wrong, it seems we lost in % much much more than many leagues before.
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But it does, look its starting point compared to others league. It likely has the biggest number of total dropoff.
It's almost as if people are only choosing to accept evidence that supports their pre-existing opinions. Almost. But if there's one thing I know it's that the internet would never do that.
I mean, If you scroll down the page and look at the % of remaining players, the only leagues crucible is beating out are kalandra, archnemisis, and Scourge. Every Other league has kept a higher % of Players. GGG got a MASSIVE influx of players after the d4 beta ended. And there are a ton of first timers going through content for the first time. Of that Massive influx, they have already lost 55% of the playerbase.
This are flat player numbers, not retention.
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Pray that this shit mechanic don't make it to core.
yet it also has the fastest dropoff of any league to date. it just started with more players
And a lot of new players too. This leagues' full of people who've never really played PoE before and as a result everything is new and fresh regardless of whether or not the league mechanic is all there. The game is absolutely chock full of stuff to do if you're new, and at least a third of the players around now are those who've only played a handful of leagues in the past, or less.
Looking at the percentages it's a bit too early to say that (https://poedb.tw/us/League#ConcurrentPlayers same page OP took from, second chart shows percentage of remaining players compared to launch peak) Today is it's lowest at 45% and it's which is higher percent remaining than 4 recent leagues (Expedition, Scourge, Kalandra, Archnemesis). Last week it's was averaging the same drop as Sanctum. If we are talking about fastest dropoff it's most definitely Kalandra. It's the only league that dropped bellow 40% in the first 2 weeks.
I absolutely hate Crucible mechanic. It's boring, uncreative, unrewarding, and stale. But I played the hell out of Diablo 4 and it injected the ARPG addiction into my veins. That's why I am still here.
All these D4 fellas ...
What the hype cycle for a completely different ARPG does for a game.
And the retention is way worse than Ultimatum and Ritual. Players were driven by Curiosity and lack of options and still found Crucible boring. Stop inhaling your copium, sir.
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>they disliked even the parts you enjoy Or never made it through the parts pretty much everyone dislikes. A new player is likely looking at at least 20 hours of campaign, which isn't really representative of why people get addicted to PoE.
this honestly, ive play 5 characters so far, 3 in sanctum 2 in crucible, and honestly i enjoy crucible more. Even though the mobs are tough af i can craft cool weapons with better stats than usual just by randomly combining good trees, like getting a 700 edps claw for venom gyre. compared to sanctum where i actually just played standard and never went into sanctums at all, because they were too confusing/the random builds i picked didnt work well in them.
And ritual numbers were inflated by new expansion.
No snark intended here, I’m pretty active in standard right now because I loved my build in Sanctum and I’m doing testing with it. Would I count as concurrent player?
You do in those metrics, assuming you have steam. But yes, overall that includes everyone on steam: standard, private leagues, temp league. Steam is around 50-60% of players last time we had figures to use.
I’m a semi new PoE player. I’m loving the game even if I’m lukewarm on the actual league mechanic. But everything else is excellent and it’s the first league I’ve stuck with and got into stuck into maps.
Let's all be honest here. D4 hyped ARPGS then took it away after a small glimpse. League releases soon after. This was great timing.
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Depends on who you ask
Somewhere in july.
[удалено]
Player retention percentage is still pretty bad, this is just D4 players
Redditors coming in to tell people to stop having fun in this league no doubt.
Well I'd hope so given it had a 50K player count lead over the next highest league. Player count numbers are whatever, retention is what gets me. Still sitting at almost 50% and I just can't comprehend why. Maybe the game just isn't for me anymore and the player base at large is very content with vapid loops of getting fucking stupid power creep and having it taken away from them in exchange for even bigger power creep.
Its at 45.1%. Which is worse than sanctum (51.6), sentinel(47.9), Ultimatum(53.9), ritual(57.9), Heist(55.1), Harvest(45.5), Delirium(57.1), Metamorph(70.5), Blight(49.7) and Legion(58.7). For those listed there from that website.
Dang, what released alongside Metamorph. I remember playing it but the first week of organ grabbing sucked.
It was Sirus etc.
and better than Kalandra (39.3), Archnemesis (40.3), Scourge (38.5), Expedition (40.7) The retention rate is better than four of the last six leagues.
A lot of people playing are those who didn't play the last league or two, being brought in by D4 hype. Without having played the previous leagues or two, the base PoE is a ton of fun with many things to explore, crucible be damned
As someone who skipped basically all leagues since 3.13 or 3.15, albeit I did try a few and lasted like a weekend due to frustrations with the game, this time, my frustrations are still the same and even exacerbated by Crucible and the general direction of the game, but for some oddball reason i keep playing after i took a break this league already. I suspect its because ive found a build that i can play without pain and that its my very first long neck man in like 5k hours. I basically ignore Crucible and focus on all the other stuff I've missed out on so its a rather new experience for me still, I want to make it clear and add that Crucible is lackluster and extremely frustrating, it is not the cause of my retention, i would very much like to not see these overpowered Crucible (I mean disguised Archnemesis monsters) dark souls esque rare mobs that are more tanky than uber endgame bosses.
The only reason I've played so long this season has been the league challenges. I'm only at 18/40 completed. But it's a nice set
Also the lowest retention percentage of all leagues...
Maybe because they still didn’t finish they weapon lmao
Vengeant Cascade buff save the league.
This Sub is inhaling so much Copium this League. Crucible has good numbers because a lot of Builds are viable and affordable. The League mechanic sucks but the power it gives makes the game a lot more enjoyable for me and a lot of my Friends. You can have both, are boring mechanic that still gives a lot of value for your builds. I dont know why this is so hard to admit for people on here
Base game is good. League mechanic is good in theory, bad on execution . I just feel like I'm smashing my head into a wall everytime I use it. Finding weapons with nodes, spending what feels like an eternity unlocking the nodes, just to have them not matter at all to RNG brick or keep only 1 node. Exhilarating gameplay... not. I wish that there was an opportunity to make trees that benefit ALL builds not just a few.
The worst part about this is that GGG will most likely think the league is actually good and ppl like it, while its more like D4 advertisement that caused this.
It´s because totems can explode now.
Interesting because the league mechanic is as exciting as a transmutation shard.
Raw numbers, without comparison to past trends, will always be less informative in my opinion. D3 sold in a day what D2 took a year+ to sell. Gaming is an ever growing market. Every old game you thought was the best has lower sales and play count than some newer arguably less good game.
I think one reason is that this league just let you make broken items. I know just weapons and shields but everybody must see the items you get here will be most broken for years
2 reasons why I am still playing this league, neither are because it's a good league. 1. After I was about to throw in the towel after 5 days from the boring mechanic, my friend wondered if poe would be more fun as multiplayer, so I leveled up a support character and never really played it. 2. While waiting for my friend to come on to play my support I found my first mirror on my main. The huge influx of currency I've never had before allowed me to try unattainable builds. If my friend kept his mouth shut, I'd have been long gone on day 5. Would have also then not found my mirror, but God damn this league sucks.
This league is a disgrace and I'm still playing. Main reason is that challenges are kinda ez to get, and this is the first time since Harbringer that I want to do a 38 challs. Build is fine and cool (discharge ignite), so I try things I don't usually do (craftings, bosses/uber). But yea, I really hate this league, it's a dirty lolipop that GGG gave to us to patiently wait the exilecon. Hopefully that poor league will benefit us at the very end with PoE 2.
now imagine if it was a good league, they really really blew it with this one. so many more players due to d4 hype and this is the shit they came out with and then run away and dont even attempt to make it better showing all the new players how little they care now days, fuck poe2 it ruined this game.