Chris beleaves Ultimatum bad player retention was becouse it was too rewarding

63

I quit ultimatum early because it was “ kill monsters in a circle” and ritual was “kill monsters in a circle.”

Repetitive design is what killed ultimatum for me not the rewards.

Edit: i hope expedition doesn’t suffer from any of heists problems. Was happy to hear they are aware wasting players time is bad for business.

574

u/noraxlg123 Jul 17 '21

I quit because of the performance issues

399

u/Jhazzrun Let it go Jul 17 '21

i dont know about anyone else but i stopped playing the league early because its just gotten boring. progressing the atlas takes too long in my opinion and the league it self wasnt particularly interesting or fun.

143

u/fohpo02 Jul 17 '21

I’d love to know what data or metrics he bases these statements on.

1k

u/Shruuuken Jul 17 '21

I quit before I ever got anything rewarding from ultimatum.

308

u/[deleted] Jul 17 '21 edited 18d ago

[deleted]

31

u/Heiks Jul 17 '21

The man is a savant, knows stuff we dont. /s

135

u/DarthSciurus Jul 17 '21

Aka expeditions will be super unrewarding?

184

u/dude_who_could Jul 17 '21

This is my exact story. I try to grind the conquerors to get a sirus fight but I always give up since it is so damn tedious..

22

u/Level1TowerDive Deadeye Jul 17 '21

I quit early because of the purely rng-gated / grindy challenges. Couldn't put in the time to learn the Ultimatum boss fight, let alone find that encounter in a reasonable amount of time.

21

u/deathaxxer Raider Jul 18 '21

If Chris Wilson thinks Ultimatum was too rewarding then I guess things are actually worse than I originally thought...

594

u/MasterBaiterTheOld $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Jul 17 '21

Oh yeah. I also quit games when they are too rewarding. I enjoy constantly being cockblocked by terrible rewards in all of my games.

196

u/synthetictim2 Jul 17 '21

I kind of hope that this is missing some context, if not I think that shows a bit of a disconnect with actual playerbase. I think the issue people didn’t last long on this league was because the game was stale. Not atlas changes, no meta changes and a league mechanic that was basically identical in feel to ritual. People didn’t bounce because it was rewarding, they left because it was boring.

I am only speaking for myself and my few friends that play but we were all just bored. None of us progressed as far as previous leagues because there was nothing worth it. We were all less geared than previous league, it’s not like we achieved goals it’s that the grind wasn’t worth it since it felt so similar.

368

u/kiting_succubi Jul 17 '21 edited Jul 17 '21

I mean it’s the same logic they used with Harvest. I personally think it’s dead wrong. Loved Harvest and gearing 3-4 different builds on my own, which to me is the key to player retention in an ARPG. We’ll see tho...

592

u/rondos Jul 17 '21

Hard disagree. The mechanic wasn't really fun. Ultimatively I was having no fun during mapping and having no goals ingame since crafting items is a meme now. Mindless currency grinding and buying items is just super lame and made me quit really early. Harvest implementation was super frustrating and depressing aswell.

17

u/The_Rage_of_Nerds Jul 17 '21

This is complete bs because the more money I make the MORE inclined I am to continue playing the league. More money = more niche gear = more 100ex+ builds that you would never get to play otherwise. This league I went over two weeks without a raw exalt drop and only received two exalts from Ultimatum over the eight weeks I played, which is the longest I have played in a league since 3.0. I made more than 10 builds across 8 characters which is abnormal for me.

All of the money I made was definitely NOT from Ultimatum. Nice try GGG.

18

u/MyNameIsSalo Jul 18 '21 edited Jul 18 '21

Retention was low because the league had no new content lol

Had breach version 10.0 as the league mechanic, now with more screen clutter and in a shade of red. And the boss encounter which was the only real new content was so insanely rare most of us didn’t see it in the first few days playing and by then you’ve already lost my attention.

No new content + same boring atlas which a lot of people have said they dislike + simple one dimensional “kill enemies in circle” league mechanic we have seen 10 times now = poor retention

The worst part was that ritual and ultimatium are extremely similar so people were already burnt out of that type of league mechanic

Rewards had nothing to do with this. Delirium and legion gave substantially more rewards and had way better retention. Actually sad if GGG believes loot has anything to do with this, it’s definitely a factor that needs to be considered long-term over years but the short-term success of a league depends so much more than how many chaos the league mechanic spawns.

17

u/Phalanx976 Occultist Jul 18 '21

Chris Wilson is so far out of touch it’s almost comical. As someone who has played probably 1500+ hours of the game, I am so ready for Lost Ark or any other arpg.

354

u/sephrinx i.imgur.com/chG4Eqp Jul 17 '21

I quit because it was a boring league with a stale meta.

48

u/HardSide Jul 17 '21

I'm quite shocked at how disconnected he is with the game, I am also surprised he does not have a marketing/feedback team that would inform him of actual players opinions.

14

u/DanimaLecter Jul 17 '21

I mean, what is the endgame here? Is the goal to keep everyone on mid-tier maps until they quit? I look forward to the challenge this league but, from a retention standpoint this league is going to tank. Perhaps we are missing something, I hope we are, but if our collective fears pan out this is going to be a two week league.

Edit: letters and stuff

196

u/Auweeehhh Jul 17 '21

I quit because of texture (not) streaming and crashes.

45

u/SirVampyr Jul 17 '21

Ultimatum (for me) has been the most unrewarding league yet (since Delirium). I think he's completely delusional, beyond any kind of reason. And the truely scary thing is: He believes what he says. I mean - last league, he told us with a straight face, that talismans were "too strong".

Nobody. fcking. uses. talismans.

68

u/Yourcatsonfire Jul 17 '21

All the nerfs and destroying Harvest while adding the lame Ultimatum mechanic caused me to quit early.

370

u/scytheavatar Jul 17 '21

Ultimatum had the worst player retention because it was the least ambitious league in a long time with the least amount of new content, yet it was also the most buggy and unplayable league ever. GGG should be grateful fans stick to the game after the disaster that was day one.

15

u/OldManPoe Jul 17 '21

I quit because I was sick and tire of getting Watchstones. I'll probably quit 3.15 early for the same reason.

14

u/Tewmnus Jul 18 '21

He completely misses the plot.

WTF?

Ultimatum was way less rewarding than Ritual.

Harvest nerfed
Atlas passives nerfed
fractured fossils nerfed
splitting nerfed

Add in technical issues and you have an Ultimatum shit stew for player retention.

So, no Chris, people didn't quit because Ultimatum was too rewarding. People quit because your last league was a buggy, unrewarding mess.

105

u/seandkiller Jul 17 '21

I don't think I ever even got anything good from Ultimatum before I quit.

38

u/RBImGuy Jul 17 '21

I got lost running inside the circle

12

u/Maethor_derien Jul 18 '21

It wasn't that it was too rewarding, The issue is it only was rewarding for the top end players. You had huge swaths of the playerbase who couldn't ever complete to a level where it rewarded much at all. That made the league mechanic feel like crap to them.

On top of that the problem is the difference between the top end and the average player got really really bad. It causes your average player to quit if they feel like they are massively behind and they only get farther and farther behind as the league goes on.

For a non hardcore player the atlas progression system is also complete shit and unfun as hell. It has gotten worse and worse every league and honestly just isn't fun to do. Other systems have gotten to the point where you need spreadsheets and third party sites to know what to do with them.

The entire problem is the game has gotten worse and worse for the more casual playerbase. Of course they are going to get tired and leave pretty quickly.

137

u/blackflag89347 Jul 17 '21

I left cause my character build wasn't doing well in red maps and I didn't want to start a new character.

13

u/ezdx Jul 18 '21

I got exactly zero exalted orbs from any source during this league. Rewards from Ultimatums are absolute joke. Even on T16 maps they offer regular yellow items lol. Even rituals were much better.

Another evidence GGG devs play different game.

12

u/htrdx Jul 18 '21

since probably a year or 2 ago every time chris wilson opens is mouth he pretty much confirms he doesn't play is own game.

34

u/viduo-artifex Jul 17 '21

Chris's comment is so out of touch with the player base. If they even had one guy doing market research, they'd see a long list of reasons people quit the league early, and I guarantee "it was too rewarding" it's no where to be found on that list.

39

u/wild_man_wizard Jul 17 '21

So, the nerfs will continue until retention improves.

Bold take, let's see how it works out for him.

38

u/Yavimawa Jul 18 '21

I quit the league because of random BS insta oneshots, but apparently that is the core gameplay, so I think I may not come back this league.

Chris said something around these lines "we want players who die and think yeah, that was cool, how can I do it better?" - well, maybe I should develop superhuman speed so I can press flask before damage OVER TIME takes my 20k EHP in 0.001 sec or IDK what

55

u/aphios Jul 17 '21

Texture streaming is why I quit. On my set up, I had to choose between every other slam I did being invisible or switching to DX11 and having awful stuttering at every turn. I haven't played since the performance patch but I hope it's improved.

54

u/crookedparadigm Jul 17 '21

Chris has clung to this idea so long that I think he's actually convinced himself it's true, that if people have too much fun, they'll quit.

79

u/Stealthrider Jul 18 '21 edited Jul 18 '21

He really just doesn't understand why players are actually quitting.

1) Atlas progression takes longer and longer each league. If the goal is too far away, and feels unreachable, people will stop playing.

2) Item progression is awful. It's not incremental, it's big bursts separated by extremely long droughts. Further you get, the smaller the bursts and the longer the droughts. Too small and too long, people stop playing.

3 Unrewarding, slow progressing past-league content. This is as much a problem of content bloat as it is a problem of reward and FOMO. Atlas passives made the latter significantly worse: whereas previously if you wanted to do Betrayal content, you could just run Jun missions as frequently as you could regardless of what maps you were running. It did not matter what you were running, the content progression and reward was the same.

Now, if you want to run Betrayal content, you can just run whatever map with Jun missions, but if you're not running them in a region slotted for Betrayal, you're losing out on a) rewards, b) progression, and c) master missions so you can do more Betrayal.

Now add that to needing to do a variety of regions for watchstones as you progress the Atlas, and you're left with a shitty choice: I) do the content you want to do, and stop progressing your Atlas, or II) progress your atlas and miss out on the content you want to do, or miss out on the rewards, progression, and additional master missions if you choose to do the content in a suboptimal region.

It's a lose-lose, and it is easily disheartening enough to make players burn out on the league before they finish A8.

GGG should have a poll that actually asks players, if they played the league and left it, why they left. I would absolutely wager the majority of responses would be for the above reasons (and similar progression-related ones) rather than because the game was too rewarding or too quick to finish.

10

u/Kilahral Jul 17 '21

As a casual player that likes a slower play style, the game in general isn't rewarding enough. At higher levels I failed half of my trials because it was so easy to get one shot and I think my most rewarding one was like 10c.

My experience is generally hitting yellow to the first couple tiers of red maps then I end up getting oneshot too much but can't afford to upgrade my gear because I only ever get 1-2 ex a whole season. It's a fun game for a month or so then the grind just burns me out.

10

u/gubaguy Jul 18 '21

Leagues being rewarding has NEVER been the issue, its ALWAYS been RNG bullshit, content too difficult or too grindy to get to, or just absurdly rare.

All league I encountered 1 single league boss, and got fucked over despite being overleveled for the content I had found him at. Shortly after that my interest in the league died, and eventually after about 2 weeks I quit league, not because it was "too rewarding" but because it wasnt rewarding enough, too grindy, and too irritatingly hard. It also doesnt help the league wasnt even fully released on day 1, and not to mention the uh... special treatment issues...

88

u/Bijazz Jul 17 '21

He is definitely living in some paralel universe.

If this league gonna be a lot harder and no balance to loot it will be much less rewarding.

I like to see retention, and i hope it will be disaster.

183

u/Ishuzoku-Connoisseur Jul 17 '21

I refuse to believe he is THIS out of touch. Maybe the fact that the league had multiple issues with rendering and performance was to blame? Or the fact that the new league mechanic was running around in a circle hoping you don’t randomly die to something that hasn’t loaded in yet? Or the fact the league boss was locked behind stupid rng?

On console trade was a nightmare. The only reason I carried on playing was to farm currency for the new gloves. I saw one priced at 3 mirrors which vanished. After a month of not seeing one on the market board I quit. Killed the boss around 10 times and only got the helmet a few times. The meta didn’t really change either and while I had fun with the new blood skills it wasn’t enough to keep me interested.

I’m a fan of weird off meta builds but last league it felt like I was just shooting myself in the foot trying them out.

Hopefully next league is different but from what they’ve been saying they are just slowing the game down even more and the last thing I want is to be forced into playing meta builds to prevent bosses like shaper from being a boring slog just for a 1c drop at the end.

42

u/Gondawn Jul 17 '21

I think this new league will be even more rewarding, because it'll have the worst retention numbers ever

69

u/Smarackto Jul 17 '21

???? Chris did you fall on your head

68

u/Mishmeshmash Jul 18 '21 edited Jul 18 '21

This reminds me of religious fanatics who always explain how it is God's will when something shit happens.

GGG'S blind faith in their faulty Data Analysis and the Lead Devs' self projections to the player base is just shocking.

10

u/KIAEddZ Jul 18 '21

Running around in circles was boring.

10

u/scy046 Jul 18 '21

Personally, I've been quitting earlier and earlier just due to performance. Ritual I couldn't even play the game without crashing every other map once I got my HH up and running and Ultimatum just doesn't run smoothly at all with constant stutters. I had no issues in all the other infamously bad leagues but have finally been hit with all the issues.

63

u/EmmitSan Alt-o-holic Jul 17 '21

Every time I hear Chris say stuff like this it’s a real head shaker. Maybe they should hire a few data scientists and get familiar with the scientific method, because “we changed a dozen things, but we’re really sure player retention was caused by this one very specific thing” is…. not very scientific

25

u/Harnellas Jul 17 '21 edited Jul 17 '21

If he means chaos orbs and regret orbs then sure, I was super wealthy. I got fuck all else from it though.

Also two level 95+ characters that finished every matum and only got two trial master fights. Still real pissed about that.

26

u/TwistU2 Jul 17 '21

I quit because I was tired of dying. Just one of my builds could handle the league mechanic in red maps. So I quit due to lack of build diversity.

80

u/Fyurius_Ryage Jul 17 '21

There is a huge fracture between how Chris sees things, and how the playerbase sees things. Here's why players quit Ultimatum early:

Disappointment over Harvest nerfs. GGG actually took away the goal of many players, so they no longer had something to drive towards with their playtime. Also, nothing to replace that as an incentive to grind.
League mechanic was boring, same as Ritual but risk/reward was MUCH worse. Definitely was NOT more rewarding.
Worn out after Ritual league, which had good retention.
League boss too rare, and RNG gated. It was a terrible design.

Sadly, I see this repeating this league, I think retention will be low once again. Who builds a nerf league without some kind of major new mechanic or draw to excite players? Delirium had cluster jewels, Heist had alt quality gems, Ritual had Maven. Ultimatum had nothing, and seems Expedition has nothing. Lack of marketing leadership and acumen is glaring.

I quit playing Ultimatum because it was boring AF.

59

u/BurnerAccount209 Jul 17 '21

Since the post is "awaiting moderator approval" here is the interview itself for your consideration.

Source: https://venturebeat.com/2021/07/15/path-of-exile-interview-an-expedition-into-some-big-changes/

Here are the main quotes the OP was referencing.

~"These are two things we hadn’t determine during playtesting that became apparent over the course of the league. And so the fact that it was quite heavy with its reward systems meant that players played it for less time than they normally would, and this was quite useful to learn from."

~"If you’re really generous with stuff, and if the combat is a little uninteresting, then the players kind of feel finished earlier. They finish the characters quicker, they feel that there’s less to experience than they’re still looking for,” Wilson said. “And so with Expedition we’ve tried very hard to hide a lot of cool secret stuff and give them cool locations to go to, and to be more careful with the pacing of the rewards so they don’t get everything they want in the first couple of days.”

Both of these comments I find incredibly frightening because they suggest Chris drew the wrong conclusion from Ultimatum league and I'm inferring he plans to make end league content and even greater grind.

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u/-MrOutcast- Jul 17 '21 edited Jul 17 '21

I think GGG is simply delusional and expecting people to stick with league from start to finish, but in reality - most people play variety of games even if PoE is their main game. And no matter what retention is - GGG is never really satisfied. They're getting kinda activision mentality where COD makes 850M in opening weekend but it's not good enough, because it only topped last year by "pesky" 100M.

GGG is similarly never satisfied, they will never admit it's maybe because current atlas progress is slow, dull and repetitive, + ultimatum was just repetitive clusterfuck of you running circles or maybe that the ultimatum boss encounter was rare as fuck and many people ran out of patience?

Drawing conclusion that it was due to game being too rewarding just confirms for me personally they are absolutely delusional and seems like they're have some sort of megalomania ever since Tencent takeover.

21

u/nachocheeze246 Jul 17 '21

I have said this before, and I realize it is only my personal opinion, but leagues where I am showered in loot and currecny I end up playing LONGER and get way more engaged. If I am poor I might get to red maps, hit a wall with my build, get frustrated, and quit until next league. If I am rich I will try multiple fun builds, kill Sirius, finish atlas, do endgame, get more money, play another couple builds, buy a supporter pack, etc. MAKE ME RICH and I will play WAY more hours then being poor and trying to grind.

23

u/Science-stick Jul 18 '21

Yeah unfortunately Chris has been doing this thing where he interprets his metrics with his own bias (there's no such thing as too much random) for a very long time.

I wish Chris understood diminishing returns or the concept of demotivating players with too little agency over what happens. I almost always quit a POE league with stuff left unfinished... make a wall high enough and most people will be demotivated to climb it. He also thinks Harvest was bad because "everyone made mirror gear in the first week". lol no Chris they didn't only a few streamers and some try hards who spent 24/7 in TFT discord (literally a few thousand people)... which is why you need to stop balancing the game solely for streamers.

Chris is disconnected from the normal players almost 100% He worships random like its some sort of god of game design when in fact its just a tool.

Every problem looks like a nail to the man who only has a hammer. Every problem looks like not enough randomization to the man who only has nested RNG.

BTW I started skipping ultimatums long before I quit logging in for the league. "rewarding?" LOL... league was a spammy train wreck and "reward" was yet another slot machine with a tiny chance for payout... Ritual was WAY WAY FUCKING MORE REWARDING IMO because I could use my brain and PICK THINGS INSTEAD OF THEM BEING DOLED OUT 1 AT TIME BY A STUPID RNG ROLL...

21

u/Lankeysob Jul 17 '21

Not playing this league for the same reason i quit last league. It just takes way too long to get to end game for a casual player and I just burn out by then. Now it sounds like I'm going to be even slower at clearing maps and doing atlas progression. I wish there was a D2 like system where you could target farm bosses and the loot dropped from them was actually decent.

20

u/gfeldmansince83 Jul 17 '21

I quit because I didn’t like that my style of build was getting dominated in the ultimatums. I guess that’s all it came down to for me, that and it just felt like a repeat of the previous league

20

u/Oceanbuffal0 Jul 18 '21 edited Jul 18 '21

This thread is gold, but not as much gold as Chris’s take on why player sentiment is negative. If he thinks people come to reddit to shit post and bash his team of devs and choices they make because of the pandemic he’s more out of touch than we all believe.

Chris, the sentiment is negative and you read posts like this all the time on reddit because you keep dropping the ball and doing things that make zero sense.

Ultimatum was not fun nor was it too rewarding. Ultimatum failed retention because it was to simplistic and similar to ritual. No one wants to play the same meta/content for 6 months. You removed the carrot on a stick for your long term players (deep delve, fracture maps, harvest) and added no engaging content to supplement this change. And despite how boring, simple, and repetitive Ultimatum was you somehow had the WORST textures and league start experience (day 1 servers and streamer priority wink wink “we will not do that again” wink wink)

I wouldn’t not be surprised if expedition turns in the worst retention numbers.

8

u/kpiaum Scion Jul 18 '21

Well, he's been using this card to justify any league that doesn't go along with GGG's projections. It's no surprise that he uses it now, as he always repeats that +loot = -less retention.

7

u/Pol_Potamus Elementalist Jul 18 '21

Chris holds it as an article of faith that if retention is poor, the reason must have been that the league was too rewarding. To look for other reasons would be to look for flaws in his design philosophy, which he's never been the type of man to do. So he says something like this for any league that does poorly, whether it was actually especially rewarding or not.

The one thing that has preserved the game for this long is that Chris is not actually very good at nerfing either player power or rewards. Even in releases that are almost pure nerfs, there's almost always some mechanic that players can exploit to farm faster than Chris intended.

We'll see if this holds true for Expedition, which Chris intends to make the mother of all nerf leagues. If history is any indication, something will slip through the cracks and keep reasonably fast progression possible. If not, look forward to record low retention and commentary in three months to the effect that Expedition did poorly because it wasn't unrewarding enough.

8

u/Benphyre Jul 18 '21

No Chris, it was boring and the core game is too bloated and repetitive so I quit after 1 week. That is my reasons and opinion.

56

u/JohnTitorFFXIV Jul 17 '21

I quit ultimatum cause the ultimatums got more and more bullshit with each map tier, not cause it was super rewarding.

17

u/BilunSalaes Jul 17 '21

To say they are out of touch is an understatement.

45

u/Arcinatos Assassin Jul 17 '21

holy shit he's so unbelievably out of touch lol

37

u/30K100M Juggernaut Jul 17 '21

I quit because I feared going into the ship graveyard.

6

u/darkowozzd97 Jul 18 '21

The delusion in this... wow.... and i thought he roughly has an idea of what he is talking about... i dont mean to shit on his opinion, he has stats that i dont... but like.. if ritual had the best retention ever, and then you suddenly remove rewards from 2 end game options (fractured maps and deep delve) , and remove a way to get there (harvest) , ofcourse people will leave.

played for 10 days and left, cause what am i gonna do? go kill sirus 9 and maven 9 couple times.. then what? just make a new mediocre build? turn in to mathil?

no long term progression, and im out...

5

u/KISSMYTAIL Jul 18 '21

I think that’s bc Chris lives vicariously though streamers, he doesn’t play the game himself and only watch streamers play

6

u/realleipajuusto Cockareel Jul 18 '21

Quit the opposite lmao, played to lvl 89 best I got from the league event was some random currency, nothing interesting. I quit because it just felt I had restarted in standard. Also 0 trialmasters

6

u/Kagarrash Jul 18 '21

People : leaving league coz it is not fun and feels too grindy and randomCris : people think league is too rewarding so people just bored and leave

wow, he lives in his own reality

" they feel that there’s less to experience than they’re still looking for"

|my god, he just insane. People want to try fun and different builds but FORCED to be meta slaves coz you have so small chances to meet league boss so you want to have as much chances to kill him as possible. You need to gring so long for try Maven and only several builds can do this fight with good chances, people want epic fights, not to buy services. And ofc it is boring.

And now Chris want to make meta even more strict ? Look like fin of the fun, nothing to do here now.

6

u/g00fy_goober twitch.tv/goof1313 Jul 18 '21

Honestly I just don't understand. GGG used to be literally my favorite company of all time because they thought JUST LIKE THE PLAYERS. They really put thought into everything and communicated extremely well and it made for a great game....

Some people keep saying the playerbase now is different from what it used to be and I find that completely untrue. I feel it is GGG's perspective and thoughts now that are SOOOO far off from what they used to be that it leaves me stunned.

To think he can honestly sit there and say he thinks extremely poor retention was due to the league being to rewarding and not from completely gutting harvest, killing crafting again (all while making the hardest league yet to date), adding even more bloat to the game and completely overwhelming players, and ofc one of the biggest offenders yet, is ever widening the gap between meta and non-meta.

Idk how many people in my guild and friends list stopped playing or barely played ultimatum because of all the performance issues, how hard/annoying it was for so many builds that were not "meta", for having harvest completely gutted and ruined, etc etc.

THAT is why retention was so poor, and until they think about all this and realize that no matter how hard they want to try to push their "changed" beliefs on the playerbase they are going to eventually lose massive amounts because of it. Right now they can still get away with it even though retention is at an all time low because there are no other big games out.

If they keep pushing things in this direction they are going to continue to bleed players massively.

6

u/dethan90 Gladiator Jul 18 '21

Took me like 3 weeks to find the trial master, felt very bad

5

u/z0ttel89 Jul 18 '21

Imo ritual was even more rewarding than Ultimatum and I found Ritual to be way more fun.

6

u/zer0-_ Trickster Jul 18 '21

Right. It surely wasn't the fact that the league was unplayable and had a huge fiasco on league start while having a league mechanic that was way too similiar to lasts league.
Chris, if you see this I just want you to know that you're not some insane psychologist who has found a way to exploit Dopamine and keep player retention high. You've actually done quite the opposite. My friends group is done with the dogshit rendition of the game that you're currently trying to push.
If I want to play games for the sake of being rewarding or purely about the grind then I guarantee you, Path of Exile wont even be one of my Top 10 choices to fill either niche

15

u/tufffffff Half Skeleton Jul 18 '21

Chris is completely out of touch but he talks and acts like he's smug about it, like only he knows the REAL reason why anything happened the way it did. How about you ask the players why? I bet he's afraid to know the answer

51

u/BurnerAccount209 Jul 17 '21

Everytime I hear Chris talk these days I feel the disconnect between him and the average player is only growing.

87

u/oristar223 Jul 17 '21

I quit because I was bored AF by the lack of endgame

33

u/MrElderwood Jul 17 '21

I swear to god that PoE is a psy-op designed to see how hard a playerbase can be trolled by the devs and still retain them!

120

u/izfz Jul 17 '21

I quit because I have a job and this game doesn't respect your time

14

u/bewbalooba Jul 17 '21

Imo Ultimatum’s retention was due to the fact they killed the end game. No frac mapping, no delve, nerfed some atlas bonuses. No meaningful progression with the harvest nerfs beyond farming currency to buy a subpar item. Feelsgoodman I’m ready for the process to be even slower so it feels better

13

u/KHSoz Jul 17 '21

This man has completely lost touch with the player base at this point. Too rewarding will be a new meme for leagues to come.

15

u/onevaz Jul 18 '21

Ok, Chris definitely does not play the game anymore

21

u/TheRabbler Jul 17 '21

I quit because every build I tried felt awful.

26

u/12345Qwerty543 Jul 17 '21

Damn dude really is living on another planet

5

u/FramerTerminater Jul 18 '21

My two problems were that the trial master was not a meaningful endgame (heavy rng gating) and the league mechanic was boring af, devolving into running in circles no matter what build I played. I only stuck around for almost a month because I was having fun with the other systems they buffed.

6

u/Obbububu Jul 18 '21

Ultimatum had bad retention because it was less accessible than ritual.

When compared to the previous league it had:

Less accessible map sustain
Less accessible master sustain
Less accessible crafting

People didn't quit out because it was too rewarding, they quit because those extra rewards don't make up for increasing the annoyance factor of engaging with endgame.

That's why so many people noticed or complained about burnout: the endgame simply dragged after the bliss of ritual.

(And yes I concede the point that harvest was broken at the top end - from the standpoint of accessibility, that doesn't matter).

5

u/NvarDK Hierophant Jul 18 '21 edited Jul 18 '21

Harvest was 100 times more rewarding, and i played that like 10 times longer than Ultimatum... Chris it's time to wake up.

Also was tired of another Slam, BF/BB league. Been ages since we had a real interresting meta shift.

13

u/Passtheboof1 Shadow Jul 17 '21

chris being delusional? what a surprise

12

u/dmiric Jul 17 '21

How hard is it to compile a list of complaints on Reddit and then see what commonly people complain about. Those are the reasons people quit. Why does he always have to have some alt. theory.

I think he would get at least 20% more play time if he made auto loot on currency and fragments. People commonly complain their wrists can't take it.

Why is that not implemented already is beyond me. Oh yeah weight now I remember. This guy seems to live in some alternative universe.

14

u/philosoaper Jul 18 '21

Seriously, how can he be so disconnected?

They've spent years adding all sorts of super short buffs like rage and charges etc that requires you to keep killing and hitting things in order to maintain and you kinda have to because so many skills just suck if you don't have all sorts of temporary buffs up...so the solution is to make it harder to keep buffs like flasks up by needing to kill even more things even faster... And that's somehow supposed to slow things down? The rewards you get from harvest for example, most of the time..suck...so you want to do more of them and faster to get a chance to get a good one. Same applies to every master mission really..you want to do as many of them as fast as possible because the chance of getting anything good is so slim. You need silly amounts of currencies to buy/craft items because the actual drops are not even worth looking at...so MORE incentive to go fast..

I just don't get it. They say they want to slow things down, but absolutely everything they do pushes people to go faster.

GGG is digging PoE's grave and it's really bloody depressing to see.

13

u/shockoden Jul 18 '21

Chris obviously is now just a boss and no longer a player of POE.

The reason that retention is poor is not because it is too rewarding. Rather, it was boring. And to top it up, Harvest nerf make it such that there is no good objective to push. At least for me.

Making the game even less rewarding will likely hurt the retention further. Chris need to know who are the people who play the game for 1+ month and find out what keeps them in the game for 1+ month.

I got 38 challenges this league and frankly, if it ain't for 36 challenges being a goal for me, I probably would have quit by week 3. But the moment I hit 36 challenges, my game time drastically drop. Many days I don't even play.

60

u/Krendrian Jul 17 '21

I quit because I couldn't craft shit, so I decided it's time to get the level 90 HC achivement because at least the game was stable enough. Spoiler I died before it because the game crashed.

37

u/FUTURE10S Occultist Jul 17 '21

Ultimatum was rewarding? I dipped before the rewards got remotely any good.

37

u/sabskies Jul 17 '21

I quit Ultimatum because the game has become straight up disrespectful with players' time. I love the hardcore nature of the game and its difficulty and complexity, but I think Chris is confusing tedious with challenging. There are plenty of fantastic and challenging games out there with much better core gameplay loops to play. I was previously addicted to the slot machine nature and that beloved "schwing" sound of the exalts and it clouded my vision on how disrespectfully grindy the game has become.

37

u/Danxorr Jul 17 '21

Also I would argue that Harvest league was much more rewarding and it had higher retention as well.

17

u/BRACKS_ZA League Jul 17 '21

Completely disconnected from the actual player base...

18

u/Big_Jilm_12 Jul 17 '21

I quit the day they released their dev manifesto about gutting Harvest.

11

u/[deleted] Jul 17 '21

I'm excited to see how the next league performs.