EHG also paid content creators to promote their game. Its a free market.
As far as streamer/content creators. Sadly I found out (I ws dumb) many were just flow whichever generate them more views (equal $), buring bridges or curry favor whereever is favor of month or the other way. LE was regard the underdog/samll indie studio so they are kind toward the game, but they will not commit as it will not attact big audiences.
Many are betting PoE 2 will raise again, after bleeding players coiunts, after the blunder in their first season (league) . So they will push hard for it to be a success. You can be sure many of the grifters (or whatever you call them) like Darthmicrotransation will aboandon the game faster then the Titanic, if the next league failed to gain traction.
LE doesnât have a lot of big streamer support other than when Raxx or Wudji stream the first couple weeks of a season. The POE guys try but usually donât actually DO anything like race or do any pinnacle content. Some do, but it feels like lip service? There are exceptions of course but the old Diablo guys seem to do better with the game.
Wasnât PoE 2âs 0.2 update bad according to most? Iirc it only emphasized the fact that GGG wants PoE 2 to be a Soulslike ARPG which is slow and hard, i.e. what a lot of the playerbase doesnât want.
And I doubt that thereâs much overlap between the people that want a slow & hard ARPG and the people that play LE.
I wouldnât say most, only the typical loud portion of the community.
In typical PoE community fashion a lot of people were very loud about what they donât like about the update. Many things were small minor things, but quite a few of them.
GGG fixed A LOT of these things very very fast and already a few days/weeks after the update the overall state of the game was in a much better state already. But by that point a lot of people already left in outrage and didnât even tried to give it a chance again.
Overall I think Patch 0.2 was a huuuge step in the right direction, especially for me as a SSF player. The new accessibility of essences and recombinators finally made SSF more than just a burden, but actual really fun to progress in terms of items.
As always I think PoE will have very good numbers when the next update releases and then tiem will show how the retention will be.
But as always the PoE community is probably the absolute worst in terms of how they react to things. There is a lot of hyperbole, unnecessary outrage and stupid allegations.
Itâs the lie. Was 150k in season 2 and the falling was slower than in the 1st season, which indicateth that the game became better overall. Moreover, even more people played at some time in LE than in Poe 2.
Yes, more people played at âsome timeâ in LE then PoE 2⌠which is a given. Off-season for PoE 2 while itâs a fresh cycle for LE⌠otherwise that doesnât happen. Also it does vica verse.
But if you compare peak numbers as well as retention rates then despite the - very severe - shortcomings of PoE 2 it still fares better.
Why is that the case?
The campaign takes substantially longer⌠while being - in 0.1 - a great experience. In 0.2 the balancing changes screwed that up entirely.
0.1 had a lackluster end-game - still many issues there actually - but nonetheless itâs mechanically more varied, leads to less burning out of the game. Repetitiveness without the option to allow any variance is the death of retention. Always was, always will be the case. Only a low number of people enjoy permanent sameness, those cannot uphold a significant engagement number though.
In 0.2 the end-game got vastly better which allowed - despite the issues with the campaign - a better retention overall.
Last Epoch severely struggles both with variety and with qualitative gameplay. Itâs not like Path of Exile 2 which has a significant promise of cohesive design happening along the way, something which Last Epoch to date never managed to provide sadly. Albeit it always showed significant promise for it as well, just that promise was never realized.
And all of that is even more laughable when we need to think what exactly Last Epoch is competing with here⌠itâs not the monolith of PoE 1 which has gotten so complex without the UI design catching up for years by now that it overwhelms a substantial amount of players⌠itâs a new game which is not even finished yet! Itâs a shell of what is to become of it and long-term players know itâll actually do. Itâs a game which causes QoL changes to spill over to the first instance of the franchise and vica verse, actually seeming to uphold a decent development pace now despite the initial - very major - issues in that regard.
Youâre comparing it to a franchise which has upheld a 3-4 month league cycle since over a decade, with barely any major issues along the way for those timeframes outside of PoE 2 coming out. Something EHG never remotely managed to provide.
A franchise which did that with sub 100 workers in it at sizes which rivaled a work which needed a year from EHG to happen.
The content pipeline clearly is more established and refined from GGG. Yes⌠they got years upon years of a headstart⌠but even with that, before that was the case they already provided a more cohesive experience without anyone else paving the way to showcase how itâs done back then. A situation which EHG never properly leaned into to profit from, despite that being a mandatory aspect.
What EHG doesnât realize - like a vast portion of developers still sadly - is that cohesive gameplay solely designed around fun and quality despite offering nothing actually new is vastly better received then one trying to re-invent the wheel in a myriad of ways and doing it in nigh every single way they actually do that in a sub-par manner thatâs never polished before moving on.
Itâs been the downfall of many games and EHG struggles the exact same with it as all the others.
Premature release with an unfinished campaign and no balance pass.
Lacklaster content variety.
Their dungeons are âbarebonesâ and uninspired.
The arena is as repetitive as can be, even Grim Dawn has a better Arena experience.
The boss designs are outdated to a large degree since theyâre ages old and never properly overhauled.
Their itemization system breaks apart as they didnât adhere to updating it according to the changing state of their game.
Their faction system is utterly inadequate.
Even their prime faction CoF is struggling with UI issues and wonky design choices.
Overengineered UI instead of designing with function first in mind (the myriad of trader NPCs is a prime example, as well as the MG UI)
No player agency but instead forcing you to go through the new content instead of providing it as a side-thing you can interact with to do it and not have it thrown at you.
Itâs like they looked at the genre and went âYeah, letâs take all the prime issues live-service ARPGs had over the years and put them all together into our game at once!â.
Wolcen with the unfinished campaign went so well after all, right?
GGGâs enforced content with Betrayal also was so well received, that aspect was hated for a long time before it became simply a non-issue through powercreep.
The itemization system limiting you like Van Helsingâs or Victor Franâs did, which was one of the major downsides for those game.
GGGâs lack of updating their design years ago for⌠well⌠years at a time and not bringing them up to modern stages hurting them majorly.
Not adhering to any economics rules with their trading design.
Itâs utterly inept of those things to happen all at once.
A few problems in core systems which ruin the experience? Understandable, cannot get everything right. But⌠itâs as if EHG utterly ignores the things which ARPG games learned from mistakes over the last darn decade⌠and that is not acceptable.
THIS AGED LIKE A FINE WINE from my part that is the so called âterrible poe 2 league losing 90% of its playerâ still had 50k concurent players after 1 month into the league while the so âsuccesfullâ LE new cycle now got less than 50k concurent just 5 days into the cycle LMAO so how are you gonna glaze now me with the âfactsâ how LE is better than PoE 2? 50% of decline in players comparing to last cycle the cerry on top of the cake
Neither of these games is a threat to each other. Only to themselves. Hopefully they understand that going forward and instead of worrying about what the other is doing when they worry about how to make their own game great.
The gaming market is basically completely saturated, so yes⌠they absolutely are a threat to each other. Heck⌠nowadays even other genres are a threat.
Itâs not solely about making âa decentâ product anymore, itâs now only about making one which goes above and beyond.
I realized a new point (for me) in favour of launching 2 weeks prior PoE 2 instead of 1. To be clear i donât play PoE. When they want 1 week of new LE season to play before PoE, then they have to release 2 weeks prior to allow them to patch some of the bugs in that extra week, because their internal QA is constantly unable to catch very serious problems at launch.
That was why i was against delaying previous season. There are some many other things people may have scheduling conflict that trying to resolve that for them is foolâs errand. There are other games and genres, but also movies, tv series, sports and so on and onâŚ
This is far below the expected 50% drop in 2 weeks for typical ARPG season.
Even Diablo 3, with no recurring revenue and funding (after first 4 years) & supposely support by 5 interns managed the 50% in 2 weeks cycle.
Turned out the extra week do not matter much. Almost every non dedicated LE Streamers have moved from last epoch.
80K at leaugue start is still impressive, and I reminded that I believed Chris WIlson have said, profit are front loaded. People often spend money at start of season. Getting people back is more important than sustain players.
I have said, and continued to be critical of LE position and ambition (or lack of it) from dev and community at large as the bridemaid of ARPGs.
You actually have no idea about this because Blizzard rarely releases numbers and D3 wasnât on steam, so those were just made up numbers.
Personally, I highly doubt that D3 had a 50% retention rate after the first week considering that after the first week you already had your full build decked out with a primordial and were doing GR150s with nothing left to do, but I donât know either way either.
People who do 150 in a week is NOT the norm.
D3 has season journey and it will take a while to finish for a regular casual player. They have a carrat at the end, usually a pet and a wing of sort. the good thing abiu this , theer is like a soft end point that you feel you have finish a season, a feel good factor.
In anycase, the retention arte of last epcoh this season is a concern. Do people leave earky becuase they got bore. There are better game/activity to do. They left becuase they feel they have completed a season or what, and feel satified with teh one week gametime. Maybe we can get some feeback, data.
I mean, if people play a week, but that one week of gametime feels great and they are hype to come back the next season, all is good.
Most left because this season feels very similar to the last one, unless you just love to experiment creating new builds (which isnât the majority of players).
Or, maybe they would rather release a good product instead of a bad one. A bad new product loses far more fans than a good slightly later product.
Gotta think it through.
I donât participate in the forum and Iâm not a âbigâ fan of Last Epoch, but Iâm always happy when a new league starts and in every league I participate in I buy a supporter pack, although I donât even buy MTX because I donât like any of them. Mainly because I understand that strong competition in the industry means better quality games, and I care about the development of the genre. This time, I skipped the Last Epoch league because, in my opinion, a week isnât enough time.
Iâm writing this so that EHG understands they could have lost a lot with this decision, and it has nothing to do with whether the new league is good or not. If I had the time, I would play it even if there was no new content.
