No, I don’t think so. No matter how engaging you make it, players will still only play in bursts. Whether it’s a few days or a few weeks depends on the player, but players that play a diablo-like constantly are a minority.
You can see this in Grim Dawn, for example. There are always a few players around in a relatively stable line over time. But when they release new content they get a surge of new players (or old players that stopped playing) for a short while.
So, the better the endgame is, the higher that stable line is. But the peaks happen with new content. Which is what seasonal content offers. Constant peaks of returning players.
This only just happened because only recently do we have a bigger wave of console players coming to ARPGs. Before that ARPGs were played almost exclusively by PC players which grew up with the current system and saw no reason to change it. It’s the newer generation that is used to playing everything with a gamepad (even FPS games) that bring this about.
As a sidenote, D4 has already implemented WASD as well. And Undecember. It’s not that big a change, other than requiring different metrics for the game balance.
That depends a lot on what type of player you are, what type of mechanic was introduced and also whether or not that mechanic then goes to legacy.
It should be noted that in PoE the seasonal model, despite being core to the game since launch, is mostly a tool for adding mechanics to the core game. It’s a testing ground for new stuff so they have a 3-4 month window to assess the mechanic and balance it properly before introducing it to the much more stable standard realm.
It’s also an incentive for the development team to constantly come up with new stuff to keep the game fresh and engaging. It’s a model for an ever-evolving game. PoE now is a lot different in almost all regards to what it was 10 years ago.
In contrast, GD is a complete game that gets new stuff added every few years only. The base game doesn’t change much, thus neither does the playerbase.
I agree (seasons are great and can help focus you and give you purpose) but the point that I was trying to convey (and likely failed, was the opposing side to it) is that jumping from game to game (the ones you enjoy) almost feels like a job because of the nature of ticking off the seasonal content. It almost feels like you’re playing to rush the content to tick it off instead of playing to relax and enjoy the journey, if that makes sense? Then you can jump to the next games season and try and do that. If seasons clash, it’s even harder work and the more games that have seasons compounds the issue imho. Keeping seasons active (on the players account) after the season ends allows for a more relaxed enjoyment of said season, as you can pick up and play when you’re free and people vary if free time of course.
I completely missed the last season of Blood Bowl 3, which I was a little gutted tbh. Now I can’t ever do that league again and unlock the content, which is again a ticking off exercise to get the cosmetics I guess.
I understand your point. But I have to say that it depends on the type of player, really. Some players will set a goal for themselves during a season that has nothing to do with the goals the game sets for them. Others will try to tick off the list the game provides.
The first ones will play as long as the game is fun. The second ones are the one you’re in. And yes, for those it feels like a job. I used to do that in PoE and it leads to burnout.
I have since changed my stance on this and just play while I’m having fun.
I don’t think this is a problem with the model itself, but rather the player’s “fault”. I used quotes, because I don’t think there’s any fault to be assigned. It’s like achievements. Some players will just play the game and be happy with whichever they get, other players “need” to complete them all.
A friend of mine suffers from fomo. He pre-orders games and plays them as soon and fast as possible. i once asked him why he rushes through all the games. “I have to finish the game today so i can start the next game tomorrow!”
Its not about the game itself. Its about the fact that he “knows” the game and that if you ask him, he can say something about it. It really stresses him out if he doesn’t pre-order games.
Yes, I agree. I only play whilst it’s fun and burnout is a very real thing. I love Blood Bowl and play the board game too and have almost collect all ten teams for the table top version. It’s trying to cram in all that content in a short time frame that kills it. It’s a bit like eating chocolate cake. It’s gorgeous, but eating it for every meal for days/weeks on end makes you a little sick. It also gives you diabetes, so it’s a lot like gaming really!
I have to play fun builds nowadays. I’ve played games seriously for many years and you learn to “work” the game instead of enjoying it but, you don’t realise at the time and you force yourself until you break. For the lucky ones, they learn before they break.
oh, for me is definetally a mix of a few of those:
– (1) not impactful enough changes being made- for endgame which leads to - (11) not enough endgame content- which make the game so repetitive, and because of the - (3) difficulty of getting high LP- and also exalted items for those and also legendaries with the right affixes we (at least I) feel that theres no progression at all in the game, you do the same monoliths over and over again and your char never changes, never evolves, because there is no fucking drops for it. So, because of this not progressing feeling, it seems that I - (7) achieved goals for now and waiting for new content- Also boring dungeons and stupid arena.
There is also - (6) too many bugs- (game breaking bugs) and exploits, which at least destroyed this season. Pushing corruption fucking sucks. Farming bosses for items fucking sucks. It all takes too much time, and guess what, you wanna change timelines? well you gotta that all over again- bonus corruption helps a bit but it doesnt solve the issue. Wanna play another char, because all your drops are for other classes? You gotta do all that shit all over again, story, get fucking empowered timelines, get the right blessings, push corruptions, ahh, i get bored just thinking on doing it.
I would also add,
– chat filter being one of the worst filters- , i cant even chat with anyone because it keeps blocking all my messages so i disabled it and dont talk to anyone, which also makes the game boring;
– factions sucking-, in theory is good but in practice its not good, it takes tooo much favor, too much… and this “if you bought something from merchant guild, you char is sort of bound to that because you cant use the item unless you are in merchant guild” sucks and items being too expensive because of the exploit doesnt help either. Once bought you cant resell items which makes you end up loosing a lot of gold also is not cool. I understand it being there to avoid rmt but guess what? rmt is dominating this game, so mission failed there.
– lack of QOL-, having to transfer shards all the time, having to click exactly on top of affixes to pick em up, poor gold pickup radius, and many, many others.
And because of all that i am - (10) no longer interested- for now. I still keep up with news to see if it gets better and try to help with suggestions and feebacks but getting a break right now
Absolutely.
It is quite trendy in recent years to pay a bunch of money just to be allowed to play a game 3-4 days earlier than the plebe.
Completely irrational considering the game will be there for years, but companies make tons of money out of this kind of fomo.
Indeed!
I’m extremely excited for Manor Lords and No Rest for the Wicked, but I’m not going to get them until the mine sweepers have bought their copies and played it for a week first.
I didn’t step on the Starfield mine by doing this and it’s definitely a technique I’m going to repeat as it saved me a decent amount of money and time.
Saying that, I bought Sstar Citizen and love that game (well I haven’t played since Christmas but it’s gotten even better since).
I feel like my time was well spent, got around 250h~ min-maxed my character for 1k corruption got almost all the items I needed, sadly couldn’t get my targeted 4lp but it is what it is, was fun. But that doesn’t mean it was perfect, the game have a lot of stuff to iron out, mostly bugs, if I come back for cycle 2 and it remains almost the same it will certainly detract from my enjoyment.
It’s not the patches driving increased player base, it’s the weekend. More folks are able to play on the weekend, simple as that. Most games see similar weekend spikes.
This kind of decline is totally normal. Look at POE: https://steamdb.info/app/238960/charts/#1m
They had a stable base of 10kish players, jumped to nearly 200k, 2 weeks later they’re at 82k, 3 weeks later they’re at 62k. They also have weekend spikes though not as pronounced.
Last Epoch 2 weeks in had lost 40% of its player base, while POE had lost nearly 60%. When a new cycle starts, it’ll presumptively jump higher. The thing you judge is not the population loss or loss rate post release or new event, it’s the stable pop. Which we haven’t yet reached I suspect, we’re still above the stable pop for POE currently and given this is Cycle 1 I don’t expect that to hold. Question will be what Season 3 or 4’s stable pop looks like, given POE has an 11 year head start or whatever.
Nah, I think the worst part is about the offline mode where you can use a “creative mode” and create anything you want without any effort: one weekend its enough to try every build of the game in any difficult.
So, why play online a game without multiplayer content if you cant just have all fun offline? Maybe for leaderboards?
It’s funny. I see these threads in literally_every_game that has cycles/leagues/seasons/etc. Why do people stop playing, blah blah blah. The answer is that gamers migrate in games like these. Population at the start of a cycle = high. 2 weeks later = 50% gone. 1 month later, 25%.
I play offline mode 100% of the time. I haven’t found drops to be easy at all! I’ve got 0x 4LP and I had 3LP Kestral chest 3x. That’s it. That’s all my LP gear 3LP+! After 445hrs of play time I’ve enjoyed the game, despite being unlucky in drops. Getting the best gear doesn’t improve the gameplay for me. It just makes it easier. There’s a HUGE difference between easy and fun though, almost inversely proportional!
i stopped playing because of a couple of things. controller support is meh. certain skills do not work right with a controller. also it just wasnt enjoyable. i had more fun in beta than when release came. heck im having more fun in d4 right now. for me i like a game to have enjoyable gameplay and graphics. if it is lacking in one, it really needs to pull its weight in the other to make up for it. the gameplay just isnt enjoyable enough to make up for the dated graphics.
end-game have issues. to be clear, end-game in LE currently is Arena pushing for leaderboards, pls don’t tell me that farming monos or dungeons is end-game because is not, that is farming.
Arena key of memory need to start player from max wave reached -50, not from half last wave reached. Leaderboards ingame need to be expanded to 10000 or even more entries so lo have a chance to get in and push, now is 50 entries…
there are also technical issues when pushing high density in Arena/nonos - FPS drop to under 30 causing player to just die due to lag.
this need to be fixed asap otherwise the game will be dead when Diablo 4 S4 starts.
I moved offline, and I am having fun again. Once I finish testing LP will start using save editor and just theory craft stuff. Gonna be lit. Make my own fun.
Some of these threads are really PoE reddit material, where people have divined the death of the game from player count declining 10% faster than the previous league (numbers are arbitrary, but there actually was a thread like that).
Spoiler alert, multiple leagues later PoE is still more than alive, despite dogshit balance (pretty much what we have here, but on a permanent basis), trash latest league mechanic, less QoL (they made some small improvements), and developers mostly ignoring opinions of the playerbase.
Zero difficulty.
Terrible zero fun campaign that legit puts me to sleep
Unfun skills/classes(not enough utility/cc/buff/debuff skills and uninteresting attacks)
Boring and unimpactful gear
Zero end game
Terrible balance
Endless game ruining bugs
