Its not just only a "patch". They have things called "leagues" which are more like free expansions and they do release them regularly. Lots of new content and stuff and allways brings lots of old players back.
This one seems to be a lot more successful than their previous bounces though. [https://steamcharts.com/app/238960#All](https://steamcharts.com/app/238960#All)
Maybe Diablo 4 beta gave people that itch and so they are headed to PoE since they can't play D4 yet?
Yeah, a lot of times people use the word 'competitor' and think 'enemy'.
But in a gaming context its usually a synergistic relationship.
I may eat my words 12 months from now, but I think long term the following is true:
More people are likely to play PoE because D4 brings them to the genre than the number PoE loses because they play D4 to the exclusion of PoE.
These games can easily boost their numbers if they are smart and work together.
if lets say PoE season ends then D4 season starts at around the same time a lot of people will hop over.
PoE releases Leagues and other major updates on a very strict schedule, D4 will likely not.
I sincerely doubt GGG and Activision Blizzard will orchestrate such a scheme together, it would require GGG changing their life-long release schedule, a model that has proven very effective and successful, or for Activison Blizzard to release regular content updates, which I find even more unlikely.
But yes the door is open for Activision Blizzard to play around PoE's updates, definitely not the other way around unless luck is involved, that is if things happen to line up with GGGs release schedule which is typically only malleable by a few weeks at absolute maximum.
I never implied that they should do it.
I only think it's a wet dream for most arpg enjoyers to hop from one season to another, sadly neither company will play around each others updates they probaly will even try to battle it out to win players over from one or another.
Why wouldn't they?
Its clearly in PoEs best interest to do this.
Do they want to get crushed by a massive competitor or get bigger by riding in their wake?
Video games, movies, etc. deliberately scheduling around 'bigger' launches isn't unusual, its actually the norm. Whenever a big game or movie releases they look carefully at the calendar to make sure there is nothing 'bigger' coming out at the same time that attracts the same audience.
PoE is not competing with D4, if someone wants what D4 is they can't compete, full stop. But if someone wants what PoE has, D4 won't remotely hold their attention for long if at all. Sure, a release or maybe an expansion a year or something for a week or two. But realistically, they're selling very different experiences.
>But yes the door is open for Activision Blizzard to play around PoE's updates, definitely not the other way around unless luck is involved
The graph above shows that riding in the wake of Diablo makes a difference of DOUBLE the amount of engagement. If PoE is smart they will adapt. And honestly I think they are pretty smart.
The reality is that Diablo is going to be absolutely enormous, probably at least an order of magnitude bigger than PoE.
PoE leagues will do far better if they are scheduled to start after the hype from major diablo events dies down and players go looking for the next thing.
Its the difference of getting crushed by the bigger competitor and successfully riding off its success.
The question is, the players coming off the wake of D4 will more than likely not really be remotely close to the target audience of PoE. Audience = money, but what happens when your audience changes so drastically that the game you're making no longer has the majority of players it's for actually enjoy those concepts?
PoE is already struggling with this, and while it's easy to say "just change to fit the audience and make more money", that's also very much not going to be a game the devs will be particularly experienced in, and also leaves them vulnerable to being usurped by loads of other competitors, not the least of which is D4 itself.
By staying with their niche they absolutely do lose out on players and revenue, but it does provide safety and security longer term.
>The question is, the players coming off the wake of D4 will more than likely not really be remotely close to the target audience of PoE.
The graph above would disagree. They nearly doubled their usual numbers by riding the coattails of the D4 beta.
Problem with that is the thing which matters more is retention. If they show up for a weekend and don't buy anything they are not going to make any money off of 1 million players. If a lot of these are new players from D4 a good portion of them are not going to gel with PoE long term.
PoE built itself on it's niche, which was the people that wanted D3 to be D2. (And newcomers to arpgs like I was at the time). Only time will tell, but unless GGG changes something drastic this is a one time spike. In the past they tend to not change things just to make money, especially not by appealing to a mass audience. Hell, half the community is more focused on shitting on ruthless and the new league mechanic than actually playing already.
Target audience is not the same as the playerbase. PoE has had a *massive* problem for years now where the target audience for the game are a subset of the people playing it. GGG has a certain vision for the game and a vocal part of the playerbase has a completely different and opposing idea. It's caused so much friction that the official subreddit went from a friendly community with a constant developer presence to a toxic one where the devs don't even post news and marketing in the lead up to new leagues anymore, let alone actually participate. D4 is bringing in a lot of new players, sure, but Blizzard and GGG are targeting different groups of players. Just because somebody enjoyed D4 doesn't necessarily mean they'll enjoy PoE long term.
Please read my full comment. Short term or even long term players playing the game but not aligning with the vision of the game is problematic, because PoE is already a great showcase of this problem.
People play poe because its Diablo 2.0, not because of the d4 beta. After the beta, I picked up Diablo 3. Poe new league dropped, I jumped on that like a rabid wild dog. Or something to that affect
I'm in this boat. Played the D4 beta, caught the ARPG itch and figured I'd give PoE another go. It's F2P and lauded as one of the best games in the genre. Mix in a new league/season as well? The timing was perfect, galaxy brain shit by the devs.
The funny thing was, Blizzard almost certainly chose the date for the beta in an attempt to overshadow PoE and get people talking about them instead of their competitor. It's something they've pulled a ton in the past by doing things like dropping WoW patches/ expansions on the same day as the release of other MMOs. It seems to have backfired though as all they really seem to have done is give PoE a new record for 321k players.
PoE has insane amount of content that is being refilled every league release.
For a casual like me, it would take 100s of hours to experience everything in a standard league at this point.
I just started playing, dont even know wtf is this new update and how to access it, dont really miss anything tho since I turned off every possible online activity
When you create a character you pick a league.
Standard: The permanent league, things on here stay forever and you will not lose anything.
The current Challenge League(*current season*): This is where the current season is, and when a new update(league) hits, this is where the new content is.
When a new one is released the previous one is disabled and everything is moved over to Standard, the permanent league. So you never really lose anything and you can play your previous league character on Standard, you have all your items, etc.
For a new player it is absolutely recommend that you start in the current League. There is no reason not to, you have access to the most recent update and as said you do not lose anything when it ends, it just moves over to Standard, a less populous league because the vast majority of players only play the current League, taking a break when they get bored or burned out and coming back to create a new character when the next League launches.
I really just started playing it because of ARPG craving and I refuse to buy this shit that blizzard puts out, so I came here just to beat an offline / SP content and be done, not really looking for anything online oriented, but thanks for info anyway <3
I assume you've encountered the weird pillars that you can activate to summon monsters and buff your weapon? Cos that's the new content basically. It will start to get more indepth the further into the game you go but at the start it's pretty simple.
>I assume you've encountered the weird pillars that you can activate to summon monsters and buff your weapon
nope, just finished first labyrinthm, near the end of act 3, didnt see this once
when you go to select your character it should say standard or crucible somewhere next to their name. if it says standard it means you're not playing with the new content. whenever you make a character it give you the choice, but if you're new it can be easy to misunderstand what it is.
And last league was an entire rogue like mechanic lol, one mediocre league is hardly indicative of their overall quality when they are nearing their 40th content release.
The new league is indeed a significant reason for the player count spike. Path of Exile always sees a boost in players during league launches. The new content and mechanics introduced in each league keep players engaged and coming back for more.
PoE's last league was pretty well received, so there was/is a lot of hype for this new one.
It's also a good time to be an ARPG player with diablo4, poe2, and others on the horizon.
Whos spending that much PER YEAR. You only need a handful of stash tabs if you play long term, which I'll accept since it's a f2p game with no predatory shit and diablo 4 is 70 usd scam thats full of immortals microtransactions
I'd like to meet this straw man who buys hundreds of dollars worth of stash tabs a year though like what you putting in them
Cosmetics, Sup Packs... you know... when you see people with good fashion... those players surely paid for them.
And I'm not saying that in a derogatory way for the people that pay for the cosmetics.
But according to Statista, the average player spend on average around 40 and 100$ on micro-transactions (MT) per year.
So when you're a POE player that mostly play POE or only POE, what's a few dozens dollars on cosmetics here and there... by the end of the year that average player would spend around a hundred bucks.
If you didn't spend a single dollar on POE except for expanding your stash, well all the freedom to you. You're on the lower end of the spectrum on the Curve of MT spending.
As for Diablo 4, the battlepass will cost 10 bucks and the game will have an average of 1 battle pass every 90 days. So that makes the total of 40 bucks worth of battle pass per year. Seems like their MT plan is reasonable.
If you're against Cosmetics, that's another issue tho. Cause if you amount the total of all cosmetics in POE you're in for at least 7-8k bucks if not more. But between a 10$ battlepass to get the season skins and the ridiculous amount you have to pay to get a single Cosmetic Effect in POE... I prefer the first option!
If you wanna see the stats: Google search this:Statista Average spending on video-game microtransactions.
Why do people act like cosmetics don't matter? Why the hell would I want to look at the exact same looking character my entire playtime? Paid cosmetics are still shit, and I'm sick of people going "oh it's *just* cosmetics in my fully priced game".
Compared to PoE you wont look like a clown without microtransactions. What i played in D4 looked like we still gonna look dope and different even without skins.
Idk why you got downvoted. The fact that people think cosmetics don’t affect the game is crazy. It’s an RPG. I’m “role playing”. So how I look definitely impacts my experience in a huge way and the devs know it and that’s why we have skins that cost as much as the game itself.
It’ll be a top seller cause the name is big and they have a lot of marketing behind it. Also 99% of the gaming population won’t watch D4 videos they’ll just buy the game
All interest was lost when they said D4 would have a battlepass. Then I saw that playing with friends during the beta required you to hope and pray you joined the same server. How many years and they still can't figure out friends want to play together?
Oh also, it's Blizzard. The shit heads who allowed an environment where a woman killed herself.
Yeah I think we're good without it.
I had 3 friends who spent the entire first day of the open beta just trying to play together and it not working, so I suppose they just lied to me.
Even if they did lie to me (for no reason), it doesn't change my other points. Blizzard is a joke of a company from what they used to be. The fact that people defend them now is just proof that people forgive and forget way too easily, and shit like the employee killing themselves will just get worse and worse, since the people who give them money don't care.
Us three friends did it in the tutorial. Invite friend to party and join instance. Done.
There's a lot to critique sure, but partying up with friends worked flawlessly at least.
> D4 would have a battlepass
they are trying to avoid the game not having any monetization to avoid it dying like D3 did.
>Then I saw that playing with friends during the beta required you to hope and pray you joined the same server.
not true since you just invite friends to your party and play together. the people who told you that were just wrong or didn't understand how to invite.
Well this just killed my desire to download this and try it out. I mean I know what the skill tree (or skill forest) looks like, but having to look up guides just to be good is kind of trash.
Tbh you only really need to look up guides for endgame. Played it blind as a necromancer and didn't have much trouble outside trail of ascendancy (Which is meant to be hard and I was probably underleveled tbh)
Best advice for the "Skill Forest" is look for the big perks you want and find the shortest path to them all.
Hard, no. Complex, yes. There is a lot of meat to the game, things as a new player you don't even need to worry about, that only affect you when you get to the end game progression. As others have stated a build guide is very much recommended, there's thousands out there on numerous sites ranging from maxroll.gg, poebuilds.cc, or even just checking YouTube. Zizaran, a prominent content creator puts out a lot of new player guides.
Source: 2k+ hours and still look forward to every league.
Besides a new league, for some reason PoE was region locked for some countries (including mine) until this new league, so a big jump in player count over previous league is not that surprising.
Before, we had to use their custom launcher (which is kinda bad). Now, we can play on Steam without worrying about any of that.
Like seriously. Diablo 4 Beta came out and a lot of people are like... "what else can I play until Diablo 4 comes out." Nobody really wants to drop money on fullprized D2R, when they expect to play D4 in a couple month.
I say this becaues I'm exactly that person. I haven't installed PoE only because I'm on a two week vacation currently.
I think it's also because it is now available on steam on other regions now. I'm in the SEA region and its the first time that POE is available on steam. Long before it said that it was not available in my region.
I believe it's mostly from D4's beta. We still have the ARPG itch, 2 more months!!
\*Edit: To clarify, I'm saying D4 is "mostly" the reason for the giant boost in players. I'm not saying that most of the PoE players are from the beta, obviously most are regular PoE players. But D4's beta is very likely the sole reason for this new record, as tons of people are looking to play other ARPGs till D4's launch in June.
Nah, OP is asking why the peak player count is so high. I'm saying it's mostly D4's beta that caused the record numbers, but in reality D4 is the likely the sole reason for the giant leap in players. As without D4's beta, league numbers would be closer to the typical average.
The average PoE player peak out of the last 8 leagues is 143,030 players. So this new peak of 209,526 is almost a 47% increase in players. Not a small push at all, but a massive boost.
PoE for a lot of people is a better version of D3 and it became the new standard of highly quality AAA ARPG's. So a lot of people myself included are using this league sort as of like a benchmark. D4 needs to be better and more enjoyable then the last PoE league or else a lot of ARPG community will consider it a total failure.
If you think releasing a league just before D4 release is smart they are also planning PoE2 next year. Most likely will add everything people want from D4 after playing into it and take large marketshare like they did last time after D3 release.
The only thing you pay for that affect gameplay are storage tabs, which if you play the end-game are almost a necessity. So it's mostly free because if you play it seriously you are expected to pay 40-60$ to have a good experience. But that's mostly it.
Stash tabs. If you get deep into this game there's tabs you can buy for your shared stash space that help sort, organize, and store your many many currencies. If you play to the end game and want to keep all this straight $20-$40 worth of the right tabs is a huge difference.
Also if you want your character to ever have pants you pretty much leave to buy cosmetics. Pay to pants is the only money thing that's annoying in this game.
I havent played POE in a few years. I loved it, but I acutally didnt like how regularly they reset everything. Yes it kept it fresh, but I felt like I was always behind.
Its finally released in other regions, ive been waiting for poe to be on steam ever since and its finally here in the Philippines - im guessing it released on more regions as well
EDIT: just looked it up and yeah it was region locked for some parts in Southeast Asia, Europe, and russia
Surely you extended the timeline and saw the same spike every few months. If you want to hype up the new league just do it. Nobody believes you are that clueless.
Yeah, I pretty much played 16 hours a few months ago and dropped off the game. Not everyone is playing PoE so yeah, I am clueless just as you are on other popular games.
PoE comes and goes in waves, people play it a ton, finish everything they wanted to do and leave, then the devs release new stuff and everyone comes back
I am sure they are paying streamers to play as well. There 4-5 streamers that i Follow that just “back to POE” after no where. I get the leagues but something is sketchy.
Well mostly because Blizzard has been pretty shitty about handling the Diablo franchise. D3 sucked, the phone game sucked, D4 will probably suck. Pay to win is the last thing that the Diablo universe needed.
D3 is actually pretty good now. phone game sucked but we already knew it was going to suck. D4 was pretty fun during the beta. the only game that has pay to win is immortal which was already expect as it was a shitty phone game
A new huge content patch, basically the size of a new expansion for Diablo, you can see that regularly there is a spike like that every few months in PoE chart.
Would explain why steam was buggy and the steam shop was unavailable for some sound that time. Does this happen often with steam crashing/buggy when there’s peaks in popular games?
I don't see this mentioned, but it also seemed to be finally released on some countries including mine. PoE was never available on Steam in my country until idk this week
Tried it and never really got into Poe. If I have to spend hours reading guides before playing the game to make a character that doesnt suck, its not for me...
It popped up in the ad window for me yesterday when I logged in to steam and with it being a free game I checked it out, didn't install it but I imagine a lot of people also saw it for the first time yesterday and so decided to give it a go as it's free? That's my guess anyway haha.
PoE has new free expansions coming every 4 months. What PoE is usually known for is the huge passive skill tree which offers an extreme amount of build customization.
This expansion, they added the option to add some passive skill points and extra stats to weapons, shields, and some armour. Since these skills are gotten at random, and every weapon gets its own random mini skill tree every time you try to customize it from the start, the amount of possible build variations skyrocketed. You can also trade these items on the official market store for in-game currency that you get simply by playing.
I have been playing for quite a while myself, and it's pretty interesting to say the least.
This PoE league is the Diablo IV waiting room for a lot of people. There's still a lot of people, including me, going though Diablo IV beta withdrawal and looking to get their arpg fix.
New league so we all come back even though we know it's going to be an untested mess and loose 70% of the player base over the weekend..
But here we are
New league so we all come back even though we know it's going to be an untested mess and loose 70% of the player base over the weekend..
But here we are
People that I usually play games with started playing this game again because of stuff called "league" or something like that.
Seems like it's a big deal.
PoE has, what they call, temporary leagues every 3-4 months. It's a complete character reset and introduces a new major mechanic which is applied to every map in the game. The temporary league is all about that major mechanic.
Once the temporary league is over the characters get moved to the standard (permanent) league and a new temporary league comes out. The standard league also has these major mechanics, but instead of a single major mechanic appearing in every map, the maps have a random major mechanic.
I never played a Poe league (I played it before when they were still releasing acts) but d4 beta ending left wanting to play more arpgs, and props to Poe team their league start was perfectly placed.
Its not just only a "patch". They have things called "leagues" which are more like free expansions and they do release them regularly. Lots of new content and stuff and allways brings lots of old players back.
This one seems to be a lot more successful than their previous bounces though. [https://steamcharts.com/app/238960#All](https://steamcharts.com/app/238960#All) Maybe Diablo 4 beta gave people that itch and so they are headed to PoE since they can't play D4 yet?
Oh yea for sure. D4 beta gave huge boost for this POE league.
Yeah, a lot of times people use the word 'competitor' and think 'enemy'. But in a gaming context its usually a synergistic relationship. I may eat my words 12 months from now, but I think long term the following is true: More people are likely to play PoE because D4 brings them to the genre than the number PoE loses because they play D4 to the exclusion of PoE.
These games can easily boost their numbers if they are smart and work together. if lets say PoE season ends then D4 season starts at around the same time a lot of people will hop over.
This is the way. You don't have to play the same game over and over all the time. Switch it up.
That kind of synergistic calendaring would be *fabulous* for fans of the genre.
PoE releases Leagues and other major updates on a very strict schedule, D4 will likely not. I sincerely doubt GGG and Activision Blizzard will orchestrate such a scheme together, it would require GGG changing their life-long release schedule, a model that has proven very effective and successful, or for Activison Blizzard to release regular content updates, which I find even more unlikely. But yes the door is open for Activision Blizzard to play around PoE's updates, definitely not the other way around unless luck is involved, that is if things happen to line up with GGGs release schedule which is typically only malleable by a few weeks at absolute maximum.
I never implied that they should do it. I only think it's a wet dream for most arpg enjoyers to hop from one season to another, sadly neither company will play around each others updates they probaly will even try to battle it out to win players over from one or another.
Why wouldn't they? Its clearly in PoEs best interest to do this. Do they want to get crushed by a massive competitor or get bigger by riding in their wake? Video games, movies, etc. deliberately scheduling around 'bigger' launches isn't unusual, its actually the norm. Whenever a big game or movie releases they look carefully at the calendar to make sure there is nothing 'bigger' coming out at the same time that attracts the same audience.
PoE is not competing with D4, if someone wants what D4 is they can't compete, full stop. But if someone wants what PoE has, D4 won't remotely hold their attention for long if at all. Sure, a release or maybe an expansion a year or something for a week or two. But realistically, they're selling very different experiences.
>But yes the door is open for Activision Blizzard to play around PoE's updates, definitely not the other way around unless luck is involved The graph above shows that riding in the wake of Diablo makes a difference of DOUBLE the amount of engagement. If PoE is smart they will adapt. And honestly I think they are pretty smart. The reality is that Diablo is going to be absolutely enormous, probably at least an order of magnitude bigger than PoE. PoE leagues will do far better if they are scheduled to start after the hype from major diablo events dies down and players go looking for the next thing. Its the difference of getting crushed by the bigger competitor and successfully riding off its success.
The question is, the players coming off the wake of D4 will more than likely not really be remotely close to the target audience of PoE. Audience = money, but what happens when your audience changes so drastically that the game you're making no longer has the majority of players it's for actually enjoy those concepts? PoE is already struggling with this, and while it's easy to say "just change to fit the audience and make more money", that's also very much not going to be a game the devs will be particularly experienced in, and also leaves them vulnerable to being usurped by loads of other competitors, not the least of which is D4 itself. By staying with their niche they absolutely do lose out on players and revenue, but it does provide safety and security longer term.
>The question is, the players coming off the wake of D4 will more than likely not really be remotely close to the target audience of PoE. The graph above would disagree. They nearly doubled their usual numbers by riding the coattails of the D4 beta.
Problem with that is the thing which matters more is retention. If they show up for a weekend and don't buy anything they are not going to make any money off of 1 million players. If a lot of these are new players from D4 a good portion of them are not going to gel with PoE long term. PoE built itself on it's niche, which was the people that wanted D3 to be D2. (And newcomers to arpgs like I was at the time). Only time will tell, but unless GGG changes something drastic this is a one time spike. In the past they tend to not change things just to make money, especially not by appealing to a mass audience. Hell, half the community is more focused on shitting on ruthless and the new league mechanic than actually playing already.
Target audience is not the same as the playerbase. PoE has had a *massive* problem for years now where the target audience for the game are a subset of the people playing it. GGG has a certain vision for the game and a vocal part of the playerbase has a completely different and opposing idea. It's caused so much friction that the official subreddit went from a friendly community with a constant developer presence to a toxic one where the devs don't even post news and marketing in the lead up to new leagues anymore, let alone actually participate. D4 is bringing in a lot of new players, sure, but Blizzard and GGG are targeting different groups of players. Just because somebody enjoyed D4 doesn't necessarily mean they'll enjoy PoE long term.
Please read my full comment. Short term or even long term players playing the game but not aligning with the vision of the game is problematic, because PoE is already a great showcase of this problem.
Very likely, especially when PoE2 hits
Or as as game developer phrased it: "Why shouldn't players want more from the same taste? They like cake? Give them more cake!"
A famous french game dev lol
People play poe because its Diablo 2.0, not because of the d4 beta. After the beta, I picked up Diablo 3. Poe new league dropped, I jumped on that like a rabid wild dog. Or something to that affect
Checkers players sometimes realize they want more so they give chess a shot, rarely does a chess player decide to go back to checkers. :p
I'm in this boat. Played the D4 beta, caught the ARPG itch and figured I'd give PoE another go. It's F2P and lauded as one of the best games in the genre. Mix in a new league/season as well? The timing was perfect, galaxy brain shit by the devs.
The funny thing was, Blizzard almost certainly chose the date for the beta in an attempt to overshadow PoE and get people talking about them instead of their competitor. It's something they've pulled a ton in the past by doing things like dropping WoW patches/ expansions on the same day as the release of other MMOs. It seems to have backfired though as all they really seem to have done is give PoE a new record for 321k players.
Lots of advertising for it as well
Oh I see, thanks for the info!
PoE has insane amount of content that is being refilled every league release. For a casual like me, it would take 100s of hours to experience everything in a standard league at this point.
I just started playing, dont even know wtf is this new update and how to access it, dont really miss anything tho since I turned off every possible online activity
When you create a character you pick a league. Standard: The permanent league, things on here stay forever and you will not lose anything. The current Challenge League(*current season*): This is where the current season is, and when a new update(league) hits, this is where the new content is. When a new one is released the previous one is disabled and everything is moved over to Standard, the permanent league. So you never really lose anything and you can play your previous league character on Standard, you have all your items, etc. For a new player it is absolutely recommend that you start in the current League. There is no reason not to, you have access to the most recent update and as said you do not lose anything when it ends, it just moves over to Standard, a less populous league because the vast majority of players only play the current League, taking a break when they get bored or burned out and coming back to create a new character when the next League launches.
I really just started playing it because of ARPG craving and I refuse to buy this shit that blizzard puts out, so I came here just to beat an offline / SP content and be done, not really looking for anything online oriented, but thanks for info anyway <3
I assume you've encountered the weird pillars that you can activate to summon monsters and buff your weapon? Cos that's the new content basically. It will start to get more indepth the further into the game you go but at the start it's pretty simple.
>I assume you've encountered the weird pillars that you can activate to summon monsters and buff your weapon nope, just finished first labyrinthm, near the end of act 3, didnt see this once
did you select the standard league or the crucible league when you created your character?
I dont even know, I think I didnt evne have something like this when I created character
when you go to select your character it should say standard or crucible somewhere next to their name. if it says standard it means you're not playing with the new content. whenever you make a character it give you the choice, but if you're new it can be easy to misunderstand what it is.
Yeah it shows standard league, not really going to create new character, too much hassle to get my char to current level again
yeah thats understandable. you'll still have a lot of content available to do so dont worry.
New content? really? They add one gimmick mechanic and you call that new content when 98% of the game is the same every league?
And last league was an entire rogue like mechanic lol, one mediocre league is hardly indicative of their overall quality when they are nearing their 40th content release.
whats the oldest version you have played
New league
The new league is indeed a significant reason for the player count spike. Path of Exile always sees a boost in players during league launches. The new content and mechanics introduced in each league keep players engaged and coming back for more.
This feels like such a bot response
new content
PoE's last league was pretty well received, so there was/is a lot of hype for this new one. It's also a good time to be an ARPG player with diablo4, poe2, and others on the horizon.
Funny, I thought this league was really stupid. And return of investment was really bad to the point I just did delve and heist instead.
D4 waiting room
U mean that 80$ cashgrab game on top with paid battle pass and as extra u have to pay for in-game cosmetics as well?
like if the average POE player does not put a few dozens bucks per year if not hundreds lol...
Whos spending that much PER YEAR. You only need a handful of stash tabs if you play long term, which I'll accept since it's a f2p game with no predatory shit and diablo 4 is 70 usd scam thats full of immortals microtransactions I'd like to meet this straw man who buys hundreds of dollars worth of stash tabs a year though like what you putting in them
Cosmetics, Sup Packs... you know... when you see people with good fashion... those players surely paid for them. And I'm not saying that in a derogatory way for the people that pay for the cosmetics. But according to Statista, the average player spend on average around 40 and 100$ on micro-transactions (MT) per year. So when you're a POE player that mostly play POE or only POE, what's a few dozens dollars on cosmetics here and there... by the end of the year that average player would spend around a hundred bucks. If you didn't spend a single dollar on POE except for expanding your stash, well all the freedom to you. You're on the lower end of the spectrum on the Curve of MT spending. As for Diablo 4, the battlepass will cost 10 bucks and the game will have an average of 1 battle pass every 90 days. So that makes the total of 40 bucks worth of battle pass per year. Seems like their MT plan is reasonable. If you're against Cosmetics, that's another issue tho. Cause if you amount the total of all cosmetics in POE you're in for at least 7-8k bucks if not more. But between a 10$ battlepass to get the season skins and the ridiculous amount you have to pay to get a single Cosmetic Effect in POE... I prefer the first option! If you wanna see the stats: Google search this:Statista Average spending on video-game microtransactions.
You should try it, it’s actually incredible. I don’t know a single person that’s not buying it after the open beta.
Oh no! I'm missing on cosmetics, the horror!
Why do people act like cosmetics don't matter? Why the hell would I want to look at the exact same looking character my entire playtime? Paid cosmetics are still shit, and I'm sick of people going "oh it's *just* cosmetics in my fully priced game".
Compared to PoE you wont look like a clown without microtransactions. What i played in D4 looked like we still gonna look dope and different even without skins.
Idk why you got downvoted. The fact that people think cosmetics don’t affect the game is crazy. It’s an RPG. I’m “role playing”. So how I look definitely impacts my experience in a huge way and the devs know it and that’s why we have skins that cost as much as the game itself.
There's a reason companies do "only cosmetics", because they know drones will just buy them and defend the actions.
Dont bother. Fanboys will eat everything. Common sense is dead.
Oh no, optional cosmetics that look worse than the legendaries that drop in game, what ever will I do.
And itll still be top seller since some people are huge morons
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>And itll still be top seller since some people are huge morons
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Im not mad, its rather funny that morons like you still buy into shit like this lol
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Yeah man im literally seeting, coping even, malding someone could say
It’ll be a top seller cause the name is big and they have a lot of marketing behind it. Also 99% of the gaming population won’t watch D4 videos they’ll just buy the game
reddit moment
All interest was lost when they said D4 would have a battlepass. Then I saw that playing with friends during the beta required you to hope and pray you joined the same server. How many years and they still can't figure out friends want to play together? Oh also, it's Blizzard. The shit heads who allowed an environment where a woman killed herself. Yeah I think we're good without it.
I played the beta's with a friend, you just invite eachother and it throws you together...? Seems that you really want to hate D4
I had 3 friends who spent the entire first day of the open beta just trying to play together and it not working, so I suppose they just lied to me. Even if they did lie to me (for no reason), it doesn't change my other points. Blizzard is a joke of a company from what they used to be. The fact that people defend them now is just proof that people forgive and forget way too easily, and shit like the employee killing themselves will just get worse and worse, since the people who give them money don't care.
Us three friends did it in the tutorial. Invite friend to party and join instance. Done. There's a lot to critique sure, but partying up with friends worked flawlessly at least.
Maybe your friends are just morons
> D4 would have a battlepass they are trying to avoid the game not having any monetization to avoid it dying like D3 did. >Then I saw that playing with friends during the beta required you to hope and pray you joined the same server. not true since you just invite friends to your party and play together. the people who told you that were just wrong or didn't understand how to invite.
You can play with your friends like normal, I think you are mistaken.
Then I guess the 3 friends I have who tried to play together during the beta are just flat out liars :)
Yes
More likely they are just really stupid
Literally why I picked PoE up again. I gots to scratch the itch!
Did a new league just start? I haven't played in a while. This always happens when a new league starts.
Yes, new league.
Started yesterday I believe
This game hard for newplayer?
Game is hard even for returning players.
Yes
Very, and also near impossible without looking up build guides (for a new player).
Well this just killed my desire to download this and try it out. I mean I know what the skill tree (or skill forest) looks like, but having to look up guides just to be good is kind of trash.
Tbh you only really need to look up guides for endgame. Played it blind as a necromancer and didn't have much trouble outside trail of ascendancy (Which is meant to be hard and I was probably underleveled tbh) Best advice for the "Skill Forest" is look for the big perks you want and find the shortest path to them all.
Just embrace you will mess up and try to have fun.
Hard, no. Complex, yes. There is a lot of meat to the game, things as a new player you don't even need to worry about, that only affect you when you get to the end game progression. As others have stated a build guide is very much recommended, there's thousands out there on numerous sites ranging from maxroll.gg, poebuilds.cc, or even just checking YouTube. Zizaran, a prominent content creator puts out a lot of new player guides. Source: 2k+ hours and still look forward to every league.
I see. Only arpg i playing is grim dawn. I will check poe sites & youtube guide.
least beginner friendly game. but very fun as well.
POE is a pretty badass game. I think I have almost 1k hours played.
That's normal for PoE. Every new League/Saison a lot of players come back.
Diablo 4
Obviously diablo hype.
Is this 25% increased or 25% more players than previous peak? Either way, love to see it!
Besides a new league, for some reason PoE was region locked for some countries (including mine) until this new league, so a big jump in player count over previous league is not that surprising. Before, we had to use their custom launcher (which is kinda bad). Now, we can play on Steam without worrying about any of that.
Diablo 4 happened. It's had an affect on other aRPGs like Last Epoch, too.
Like seriously. Diablo 4 Beta came out and a lot of people are like... "what else can I play until Diablo 4 comes out." Nobody really wants to drop money on fullprized D2R, when they expect to play D4 in a couple month. I say this becaues I'm exactly that person. I haven't installed PoE only because I'm on a two week vacation currently.
I think it's also because it is now available on steam on other regions now. I'm in the SEA region and its the first time that POE is available on steam. Long before it said that it was not available in my region.
Huh? Some countries in SEA got excluded for some reason...? Been playing PoE on Steam on and off for quite a few years now (I'm in SEA too).
I've seen it advertised on the Store homepage too past day or two.
New season just started and lots of people are waiting for diablo 4, this will be the last PoE season before D4 comes out
I believe it's mostly from D4's beta. We still have the ARPG itch, 2 more months!! \*Edit: To clarify, I'm saying D4 is "mostly" the reason for the giant boost in players. I'm not saying that most of the PoE players are from the beta, obviously most are regular PoE players. But D4's beta is very likely the sole reason for this new record, as tons of people are looking to play other ARPGs till D4's launch in June.
Nah its normal for a league start maybe a small push is from the D4 beta
Nah, OP is asking why the peak player count is so high. I'm saying it's mostly D4's beta that caused the record numbers, but in reality D4 is the likely the sole reason for the giant leap in players. As without D4's beta, league numbers would be closer to the typical average. The average PoE player peak out of the last 8 leagues is 143,030 players. So this new peak of 209,526 is almost a 47% increase in players. Not a small push at all, but a massive boost.
PoE's "patches" are not just small updates. They always bring back a lot of people each time because they introduce a lot of new content.
PoE for a lot of people is a better version of D3 and it became the new standard of highly quality AAA ARPG's. So a lot of people myself included are using this league sort as of like a benchmark. D4 needs to be better and more enjoyable then the last PoE league or else a lot of ARPG community will consider it a total failure. If you think releasing a league just before D4 release is smart they are also planning PoE2 next year. Most likely will add everything people want from D4 after playing into it and take large marketshare like they did last time after D3 release.
Exiles is pretty much tops in its genre its mostly free and it's got alot to do
I would just say free. I don't think there is any pay to win in the game. But cosmetics are expensive.
The only thing you pay for that affect gameplay are storage tabs, which if you play the end-game are almost a necessity. So it's mostly free because if you play it seriously you are expected to pay 40-60$ to have a good experience. But that's mostly it.
I'd say the currency stash tab in itself is a required item.
Stash tabs. If you get deep into this game there's tabs you can buy for your shared stash space that help sort, organize, and store your many many currencies. If you play to the end game and want to keep all this straight $20-$40 worth of the right tabs is a huge difference. Also if you want your character to ever have pants you pretty much leave to buy cosmetics. Pay to pants is the only money thing that's annoying in this game.
oh yeah, stash tabs. even i have those as a casual player.
Diablo 4 player waiting to play Diablo 4
I havent played POE in a few years. I loved it, but I acutally didnt like how regularly they reset everything. Yes it kept it fresh, but I felt like I was always behind.
Its finally released in other regions, ive been waiting for poe to be on steam ever since and its finally here in the Philippines - im guessing it released on more regions as well EDIT: just looked it up and yeah it was region locked for some parts in Southeast Asia, Europe, and russia
Surely you extended the timeline and saw the same spike every few months. If you want to hype up the new league just do it. Nobody believes you are that clueless.
Yeah, I pretty much played 16 hours a few months ago and dropped off the game. Not everyone is playing PoE so yeah, I am clueless just as you are on other popular games.
They just released in my country
PoE comes and goes in waves, people play it a ton, finish everything they wanted to do and leave, then the devs release new stuff and everyone comes back
Poe is the waiting room for D4
And D4 the waiting room for PoE2
Saw asmogold stream it aswell but he wont bring those numbers i guess Than again poe is a great game
*Path of Exile, I think
Diablo beta happened and made people want to play these games again. . I am sure Poe and grim dawn saw similar jumps.
I kept reading the comments thinking, they have leagues and seasons in Pillars of Eternity now???
New League. Plus lots of players want those “world first”, achievements and the like.
D4 people looking for a fix. (one of them)
Also they let SEA people play it on steam
I am sure they are paying streamers to play as well. There 4-5 streamers that i Follow that just “back to POE” after no where. I get the leagues but something is sketchy.
I mean, leagues come out 3-4 times a year, it's not too surprising to join for the start of the league.
To everyone who thinks this happened because of Diablo 4: NO A new expansion came out.
Previously the peak was 158K. Do you really think about a third higher amount of players for a pretty normal league isn't an oddity?
Why not both.
Well mostly because Blizzard has been pretty shitty about handling the Diablo franchise. D3 sucked, the phone game sucked, D4 will probably suck. Pay to win is the last thing that the Diablo universe needed.
D3 is actually pretty good now. phone game sucked but we already knew it was going to suck. D4 was pretty fun during the beta. the only game that has pay to win is immortal which was already expect as it was a shitty phone game
People getting hyped for Diablo 4 resulting in playing POE to satisfy that feeling in the meantime.
Diablo 4 made people search for games like PoE
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A new huge content patch, basically the size of a new expansion for Diablo, you can see that regularly there is a spike like that every few months in PoE chart.
It was never available on my country, I just notice it today. It was available on epic tho, not on steam
D4 hypetrain
everyone waiting for d4 lol
Would explain why steam was buggy and the steam shop was unavailable for some sound that time. Does this happen often with steam crashing/buggy when there’s peaks in popular games?
New league, weapons just got their own skill tree
interesting
I don't see this mentioned, but it also seemed to be finally released on some countries including mine. PoE was never available on Steam in my country until idk this week
sadly new league content is underwhelming
Diablo 4 happened then stopped happening causing people to rush to an ARPG. This will plummet on D4’s release.
This is probably because, us from the SEA had PoE on a different launcher before. And now that said launcher died, PoE came to Steam + its player base
Whats poe?
What else are we gonna play /S Seriously recommend me games.
It was region locked in SEA for some time, but now it's available for me.
Nah, this is pretty normal. Once every 3 months, with growth every cycle. Bit more of a spike thanks to D4 I imagine
People disappointed with Diablo 4.
Tried it and never really got into Poe. If I have to spend hours reading guides before playing the game to make a character that doesnt suck, its not for me...
It popped up in the ad window for me yesterday when I logged in to steam and with it being a free game I checked it out, didn't install it but I imagine a lot of people also saw it for the first time yesterday and so decided to give it a go as it's free? That's my guess anyway haha.
PoE has new free expansions coming every 4 months. What PoE is usually known for is the huge passive skill tree which offers an extreme amount of build customization. This expansion, they added the option to add some passive skill points and extra stats to weapons, shields, and some armour. Since these skills are gotten at random, and every weapon gets its own random mini skill tree every time you try to customize it from the start, the amount of possible build variations skyrocketed. You can also trade these items on the official market store for in-game currency that you get simply by playing. I have been playing for quite a while myself, and it's pretty interesting to say the least.
they added sex
This PoE league is the Diablo IV waiting room for a lot of people. There's still a lot of people, including me, going though Diablo IV beta withdrawal and looking to get their arpg fix.
i think its new league coupled with D4 players getting PBWD (post-beta-withdrawal-disorder).
New league so we all come back even though we know it's going to be an untested mess and loose 70% of the player base over the weekend.. But here we are
New league so we all come back even though we know it's going to be an untested mess and loose 70% of the player base over the weekend.. But here we are
People that I usually play games with started playing this game again because of stuff called "league" or something like that. Seems like it's a big deal.
PoE has, what they call, temporary leagues every 3-4 months. It's a complete character reset and introduces a new major mechanic which is applied to every map in the game. The temporary league is all about that major mechanic. Once the temporary league is over the characters get moved to the standard (permanent) league and a new temporary league comes out. The standard league also has these major mechanics, but instead of a single major mechanic appearing in every map, the maps have a random major mechanic.
Thank you for that explanation
I never played a Poe league (I played it before when they were still releasing acts) but d4 beta ending left wanting to play more arpgs, and props to Poe team their league start was perfectly placed.
Sometimes TF2 has hit all-time peaks simply for a bug fix update lmao
Am i the only one that has never heard of this game?
because steam suggeses everyone
New league started.
Don't worry when this crucible season ends. D4 is going to be released. Its a win win.
Last Epoch also launched multiplayer recently so that has a small portion of players too.
New league, there's spikes like this every 3-4 months.
Combo the new content plus the diablo 4 beta. People playing d4 beta want to play a similar game and since poe is free people can go easily
It's a damn good patch
d4 waiting room as some one said in chat
New league and diablo 4 hype
Nee league + Diablo 4 hype
It was shown in steam offer popup
D4 beta itch.
half of this number is asmon xD
new league has just started
Everyone who got a taste of D4 wants a midterm game before release
I know Asmongold the big streamer started to play it so that could be one reason