That’s not what steamdb says.
Season 2 had 150k players in week 1 and 136k in week 2.
Season 3 had 80k in week 1 and 60k in week 2.
So not only did they lose more players percentually, they even lost more players in absolute numbers just from week 1 to week 2.
So yeah, season 3 retention was a lot worse than season 2. That is just a fact.
lol i forgot that happened. it was both the best and worst thing to happen. on one hand it incentivized players to level up basic skills. on another, to min max you’re railroaded into the 80 points tax.
then again, thats how blizzard ended up. they make solutions that help weaker players but with the unintended effect of railroading builds. their item sets are a prime example of this. 800% increased damage bonus to X skill if you use this set? its a no brainer if you use that skill. you must get that set.
i m not implying that you did, but personally i think its unnecessarily too many different defences. interesting yes, but it is a headache to balance. if i m being honest i think blizzard does this better in a sense that people dont worry about defences too much.
i used to do that. tho i stopped because i kinda prefer GD/TQ a whole lot more if we’re talking older games.
D2 despite being ancient, is really good just that it lacks some QoL and build flexibility that GD/TQ has in great abundance.
I never got into TQ. Never enjoyed it, for some reason. I do like TQ2 so far.
But I also regularly play GD every now and then as well.
Hell, every few years I’ll even boot up D1 for a week or two and I still have fun with it.
If you don’t plan to play a game for a month in a row, the lack of QoL in the older D1/D2 isn’t too noticeable. And you can always use a mod offline (or PD2 added lots of QoL as well).
mods are a huge can of worms. i try to avoid them even tho i know they bring a huge amount of content and make the game objectively better. the main reason why i dont is the idea that i m playing the game in a way that the devs didnt intend nags at me. i used to mod d1. it starts very basic with qol. then later it goes into tweaking drop rates. then after some time i just hack items in directy. and yeah i know thats on me. but its how i m weird. i usually avoid all that by just sticking pure.
i liked tq because back in the day d2 had no successor for years. i also liked it because of the “dual class” system which was a step away from being truly classless. another thing i highly enjoyed was how monsters carried and used whatever loot they were meant to drop. which could be frustrating OR exhilarating whenever they came decked out all shiny and hit like a truck. target farming was a thing too. in fact if tq1 had been updated to have more qol, i would even prefer tq1 over gd.
it also was so damn beautiful back in the day. D2 had pseudo 3d but tq was in fact 3d. i am heavily biased for tq. i especially love the theme/setting.
Technically the game is NOT finished so really it can’t have end game because it hasn’t ended hahah just teasing.
LE has was early release 2019, POE1 beta was like 2011 - thats 8 years of extra dev time for end game content, like I said in another thread give it time. You’ll get better end game and more end game, people still waiting for the last 2 chapters I reckon that’s taking a ton of resources to do. Once that’s done and all the focus is on bugs/end game/mechs then you’ll get some juicy shit.
I’ll stick around. If you don’t that’s your choice just like being dissapointed.
Just do what I am doing in the mean time - level up your masturbation skills. I’m closing in on hand corruption 17000 (feels like a complete stranger who does brick laying as a job, so rough)
can you share your build? using my own home brew i can only manage some where around 33400 corruption. cant seem to get pass the BBW boss
The Problem with your Argument is that the Game does not live in a vacuum, for the first 1/2 of its existence, Poe was the only live service arpg on the market. This is not the case now in 2026.
People have other choices in arpg to choose, then wait for last epoch to be “good” or complete, both existing and coming like Titian quest 2, dragonkin, moon run studio new arpg etc….
You might be surprised, D3 launched in 2012 & season 1 started August 2014. PoE’s closed beta (which you could buy into) was from August 2011 through to Jan 2013 & the first leagues (Anarchy/Onslaught) started June 2013. So depending on how you want to look at it the amount of time PoE didn’t have that long without any competition, though the early D3 seasons didn’t have any season mechanics, they were purely resets (until season 14 in 2018).
D3 is not a live service model. It does not have recurring revenue sources. The game is being supported with modest update only due to goodwill. Poe has 100s of developers dedicated to Poe, while d3 had like a.very small team to keep it updated.
As @Kiadaw said, wrong business model.
The competition currently is D4, TL:I, PoE 1, PoE 2 and Undecember. And I think that’s all of em for live-service?
But that’s substantially more for a game-type which expects their customer to stay for hundreds of not thousands of hours. Where everything below 500 hours is ‘beginner’ basically because of the expected content density and replay value.
That was not what he said. He said D3 was the direct competition for PoE at the start, which it was. PoE soon emerged victor without competition, in large part due to the huge early blunders Blizzard did with D3, but at that time they were directly competing, being the only 2 season-based ARPGs in the market.
We could even include D2 there, since it was still relevant in that market segment.
Just because PoE innovated by adding seasonal mechanics doesn’t mean they weren’t directly competing.
You forgot LE.
I hope LE doesn’t stand in competition with itself! 
We were discussing PoE competition, though. So the reply would only make sense if you include all games that are competing between themselves, or you include all games that are competing with PoE1.
Fair, I’m probably thinking of D4 in that regard. Though if one is going to take that view then there was never any competition in the “live service arpg” sphere until D4 (June 23), TL:I (May 23) or Undecember (Jan 22), which feels a bit odd to say? Surely D3 was competing with PoE?
Yeah, they absolutely were, as much as Grim Dawn, Chronicon and so on. Same genre after all.
But even inside the same genre there are sub-categories of competition once more, it’s tends to get complex as ultimatily it boils down to individual mechanics, payment systems, difficulty, needed timeframe for completion and so on. All aspects where one product can be superior then another despite sharing the same competitive space, winning ‘by default’ for being different there.
But we cannot deny that PoE 1 did surprisingly well because they had no competition in a payment model which mandates regular reliable and sizable updates commonly (with few exceptions at least surviving).
I mean, not really? It doesn’t really matter if there are differences in the model. All that matters is if players stop playing one to play the other then they’re directly competing.
“I don’t play D3 because I’d rather play PoE” means they were directly competing.
When GD showed up a few years into D3/PoE competition, at a time when PoE was already emerging as a victor, GD was a clear competitor. The model used only became relevant in that GD couldn’t stay a competitor for long.
When GD launches the next expansion, they’ll become direct competitors for LE, PoE1/2 and D4. Then slowly stop being so over time.
PoE1 did extremely well because they remained the top contender through various waves of different competition showing up and they have stood the test of time so far.
In fact, the current biggest competition for PoE1 is PoE2. And it’s one that may cause PoE1 to slowly eclipse in the next few years.
It very much does, many need years upon years to learn that though.
Going into a live-service game means you’ll be repeatedly given content to keep you engaged and not leave for too long and potentially forget about the game at all.
So the game will change substantially in some ways as it goes forward.
So the question for the customer is ‘are you willing to risk that despite buying a full product and enjoying it as is? Could turn away from the enjoyment’. Live-service in the current way it’s commonly handled that you cannot go back to a former state of the game, would rip apart the community and risk stagnation of the social system which it solely builds upon.
The upside being constant development and ‘improvement’ potentially allowing replayability. As well as specifically designed long-term systems to grind and complete things in a large timeframe.
Also a reason why LE is a great SP/MP game… but one absolutely atrocious live-service one.
Missing the point. The point is Poe for a long time, did not have other arpg (grim dawn, diablo3) that competition in the same level playing field due to recurring reensue from live service model.
Bascially Poe was like the only car in the race where it keep getting fueled.
If Poe launched in 2025 (assume with 2025 graphics) with 2013 contents of 3 acts, and end game is random maps, it will do far worse than LE.
The point being, it’s not not enough for LE to be like Poe at launch. There are more than one horse in the racing circuit now that refuel their cars.
Poe 2 has larger concurrent player than Poe 1……base on stream chart, and D4 has higher or similar number to Poe 2, according to ChatGPT, but concrete data is not available.
Poe is already not top contender, and for a while.
Are D4 driving poe1 fans over, probably not the majority, I know many Poe fans are hardcore, and worship GGG, but you know what, most ain’t coming to LE ( as main game)_ as well.
The thing is, D4, or grim dawn, torchlight or titan quest 2, or wicked are not primarily chasing Poe fans, or hope they are the poe|2 off season game… LE is.
D4 and Poe launched same week in march, none of fans from both game give a damn. LE launched 2 weeks free Poe, panic……
Go to d4 or drip dawn or other arpg subreddit or forum, the people there barely talk about PoE or PoE2 like LE community. They are maybe more Poe fans here than ggg forum….
There is indirect data, though. Ghazzy recently said on a video that he knows D4 has millions of players in Europe, hinting at inside knowledge but being under NDA.
You can also look at twitch stream numbers where D4 streams have way way more viewers than PoE1 or PoE2, by far (again, also admitted by Ghazzy).
D4 has always had more players than any of the competition, by far. And the success of the new season only reinforced this.
The issue is that the vast majority of D4 players only play D4. They don’t play LE or PoE1. Maybe PoE2, but also unlikely. The most likely scenario is that the vast majority of D4 players only play D4 due to it being the “easier” or more accessible game in this genre.
But the thing I said about PoE2 being the major competition for PoE1 is simply because both come from the same company.
If both games require the same effort to maintain (after PoE2 leaves EA) but one vastly outperforms the other, there isn’t much incentive to continue investing in both equally.
So GGG will keep decreasing the size of the PoE1 team until eventually they will shut it down. Kinda like what is happening with D3. It’s still going, but with only a token team and with minimal investment into the new seasons.
They might keep the servers going (much like the original D2 servers are still going, alongside D2R servers) but that is because Blizzard is massively wealthy and can afford to keep all of them running, even as the playerbase keeps dwindling.
This likely won’t be the case with GGG and PoE1, though. If they were games from different companies, PoE1 is still quite profitable and could have kept on going strong, even not being #1 in the market anymore. But both being from the same company means they will eventually factor in the investment made vs the return.
That’s what I meant with PoE2 being PoE1’s main competition.