First of all, of those 250k at least 125k would have never returned. Even if LE was the best game ever.
Secondly, the outlier isn’t that LE had a peak of 75k this cycle. It’s that it had 250k at launch. Those numbers were totally unexpected and solely the result of the pre-launch hype on social media promoted by streamers.
If this cycle was the first one, everyone would be raving that 75k was an awesome number for a new ARPG.
I seriously doubt PoE2 will be casual enough to attract the D3 crowd. It will remain complex, with some QoL added (mostly because they were forced into it by the competition) and with some new systems. But I don’t expect PoE2 to be even as accessible as LE is. Not from what I’ve seen so far.
No matter which way you choose, over time only the same players will come back every time. In D3, only the same players came back every time. In PoE, only the same players come back every time. That’s why PoE has a stable playerbase for years. There are variations, which is why PoE now has more players at peak than a few years ago, but the difference isn’t too significant.
So all that remains is what EHG wants LE to be. And they’ve shown repeatedly that they didn’t make LE just to make money (though of course they want to) but also to make a game that is fun for them. It’s not just about getting the most massive numbers possible, but making a game they’re proud of and that still has a good playerbase.
D3/D4 already exist and Blizzard is much more successful at making them than EHG will ever be. Why would EHG want to directly compete with them instead of offering a different product?
So, I imagine this comes from a lack of understanding about retention time, retention rate and circumstantial issues like peak numbers.
First of all… LE wasn’t played by many people and promised to release something which ‘wasn’t seen before’ in the genre with their release. A huge… a massive promotion basically about a split system between SSF style playing and community style playing. Hence CoF and MG.
Now we got a whole slew of players available in the sector. Those from PoE which complained about non-automated trading for years. Those from D3 which went in with the promise that it’s a casual game ‘just like D3’, not one with is PoE ‘sweaty’ style.
And then we have it being released. So it’s now polished to a decent degree and has the most prominent features in it, right?
So… everyone and their grandmother comes and checks the game out. Does it uphold the promises? Is it good?
And yes, it’s well received!
And then people left. Why?
Not casual enough for the majority of D3 players.
Not enough content for the majority of PoE players.
The usual.
So now we have more then 100% increase in ‘floor numbers’ beyond that point. Massive success, game doubled players. That’s a important measure there. 4,2k every day at the end of a cycle still? Fantastic compared to 1,8k or so before!
Cycle 2 begins, 1.1 A lot of people look in to see what’s new. Some leave right away. Others enjoy a single playthrough. Playthrough is not all too long, Harbinger system isn’t keeping them, they leave.
Nonetheless… 70k return at the start! Another massive win!
It’s the most prominent mistake… mis-reading the actual statistics and what they mean.
What would be needed to get in more people permanently? Content… some extra content. More content.
We got a barebones end-game with 2 special mechanics. A single mechanic to reach a single peak boss. Baseline gear which has few ways to adjust.
It’s no PoE ridiculous 150 different ways to obtain bases through dozens of mechanics and only there to then use it with other mechanics to make something baseline to improve with other mechanics and adjust with new ones to have an item. It’s… simple still. You either push and enjoy progression or you don’t.
So more content.
It’s not skipping content. It’s not accessibility functions. It’s not making it more or less casual. It’s solely… and only… content and quality control. All the game needs to flourish.
The only effort taken away is the bad merging of factions and favor as well as the bad decision for not bringing over tabs. That should be handled better.
All your stuff stayed in Legacy.
What was taken away? You’re still through the content and you still got your gear and characters.
A really miniscule amount of people care about that. Not important.
Use monoliths after Act 2 and you get tons of experience really really quick. Progress there then rush through the campaign. Reduces time investment massively.
As a PoE player? Every 3-4 months.
As a D3 player? Every so often, dunno their cycle for ladder resets.
As a Torchlight player? I think also 3-4 months.
So generally… every 3-4 months
Yes, because why would I do the stuff I have no interest in?
Is that some kind of weird masochistic notion to do things you’re not interested in?
Why do I need to do all the other stuff when I have a fully functional character able to experience at the ready already?
And if not… it’s my first time after all, so why would I skip it?
It’s fine to discuss, but games should target a specific demographic, and I don’t think EHG needs to adjust LE to be attractive to every possible demographic. Not every game is for every player.
How should we objectively measure a game’s success? Sales.
I can appreciate if people want to suggest updates to the game. I just don’t support skipping the game as a useful feature for the game… That’s why I said “Just play the game. If you don’t like the game, that’s ok.” because the OP suggestion was “skip the game so we don’t have to play it”
I don’t think removing the gameplay is a cure for the gameplay …
I think maximise the part of the game that is enjoyed.
I still don’t have heard a reason why the leveling of the campaign over and over again should help to increase attractiveness and enjoyment for players.
Spent hours is not the measurement but positive word of mouth and money spent.
That’s why the focus of development should be put towards the end-game content, since that’s what people enjoy the most. Expand it, improve it, polish it and the game will succeed.
It does for quite a few actually.
You see, a new cycle is basically a economic reset. New content on the side it brings people back to re-play as a new class/build and see how far they can get that time or how much time they take in comparison to before.
And if you don’t wanna do that you got Legacy there for you to enjoy and spend the time just as you personally want, no need to replay everything since EHG doesn’t go the route of PoE or Torchlight currently where you can only and solely enjoy the new content when you join the cycle/league/whatever and re-play the campaign. No, you can do it simply as a already pre-made character from before and see what it’s all about.
Actually it is. High time investment correlates heavily with money spent as the inhibition for spent money is lower the more you’ve invested yourself into something.
And no need to worry about positive word of mouth… more then enough of that going around and from far more influential people then us. From the streamers which’ve come over from PoE it’s gotten very very high marks overall as well as ‘return commitment’ from many of those.
So that alone definitely brings in tons of people, money and play-time all in one.
Your post looks poorly written to me, very strongly so.
You begin by saying you have some ideas about how to improve the game, and then you go on a tangent - the part that begins with “A QUESTION TO THE” (in which you do not actually ask any qyestion) - and only then you cycle back to what your ideas actually are.
You also claim multiple times to be speaking for other people:
But the reality is that you don’t know what a significant number of other players think. You don’t have the data or any way to accurately survey what a high number of Last Epoch players think.
In other words, you only speak for yourself.
If, from your point of view, it’s “obvious” what other people want, it just means you lack the self-awareness of how you are just projecting your own thoughts and feelings on others.
Also, replying to people by editing your first post is awful - not only you cut the flow of the conversation, but you are replying to points without clarifying what those points were, and you only end with a very long post that discourage people from reading the whole thing.
Fair point brought out, hence let me help along if help is wanted there, if not… ignore it @Theratok
Here’s an example of how to handle multi-person input over time from different sources and relate them back to the initial post. It’s a big topic about Factions which I set up a while ago and kept running until 1.1 released:
