POE2 needing way more time to reach endgame than POE1 will alienate 99% of their playerbase to play seasons

Hello fellow exiles!

Tldr: If the playtime to reach and do endgame content is too long, players wont play seasons and buy supporter packs. Its not about the difficulty during playtime at all.

As was already pointed out in several threads here, POE2 has many systems that are already found in POE1's ruthless mode:

These include:

  • Way scarcer items/currency and (endgame) map drops, especially jewelry (rings, belts, amulets)
  • Removal of crafting bench
  • Removal of (most) movement abilities
  • Nerfing (POE1) or removal (POE2) of utility flasks
  • Removal of most vendor recipes for items

Some systems are tweaked from ruthless but still nerfed compared to POE1

  • Essences do not guarantee a high tier mod and can not reroll an rare item
  • The crafting system is a glorified 3-4 step exalt-slamming (Transmute, Aug, Regal, Exalt), rerolling magic/rare items is (at least early on) not possible, which means you have to pick up way more normal (white) items to craft. Metacrafting is only really accessible in endgame and limited compared to POE1.
  • Removal or nerf of most ways to increase movement speed (onslaught, passive skills etc.)

Although some adjustments were made (item sockets with runes to at least somewhat deterministically get mods on gear, a chance of "well rolled" rares on vendors) the intention of the systems in POE2 are the same as ruthless POE1: Drastically slow down player speed and progress in comparison to (normal) POE1.

Since players can choose between ruthless and "normal" mode in POE1 i checked the player numbers in Settlers of Kalguur on poe.ninja and the POE ladder on the official website:

Ruthless:

489 lvl 90 ruthless (2500 Above lvl 80)

246 lvl 90 ssf ruthless

59 lvl 90 hc ruthless

135 lvl 90 hc ssf ruthless

Normal:

29197+ lvl 100 characters in normal settlers

100000+ lvl 90 characters in normal settlers

25000+ lvl 90 in ssf settlers

15000+ lvl 90 in hc settlers

9450 lvl 90 in hcssf settlers

The absolute numbers in normal game mode are likely higher. But the numbers clearly show: Over 99% of the playerbase chooses not to play ruthless in POE1.

The mechanics of the bosses in ruthless in POE1 is similar to the normal game mode, but since the item progression and movement speed of the players is heavily nerfed players need way more time to achieve the same player power or reach endgame. Bosses in ruthless are not harder, but the players need longer to do the same type of content and the overwhelming majority of players does not play in this game mode because it takes too long.

In addition, several changes in the past that increased the playtime to reach endgame by reducing player power or increasing monster difficulty (Expedition, LOK) resulted in a heavy drop in player numbers overall.

The amount of playtime that experienced (played several leagues already) players need to reach certain steps in POE1 are as follows:

Campaign (Act 1-10, including 6/8 Ascendancy Points): 4-10 hours

T16 maps, watchstones: 7-15 hours

T17s, Ubers: Additional 10-48 hours (varies heavily and many players never reach that stage)

Bringing an additional character to endgame (~lvl 90-95): 8-20 hours

If POE2 takes much longer to reach the pinnacle encounters than POE1 or to bring new characters into endgame, the amount of people that will play seasons and buy seasonal supporter packs (which funds GGG) will drastically decrease compared to POE1. If it needs way more than 24-36 hours playtime every league for an experienced player to reach endgame (high tier maps) and to experience the seasonal content in endgame or new endgame bosses most people will not play seasons because they just do not have enough time for that.

And this is not because player's want an "easy" game or anything like that, but simply because most people have to work/study, have family or other hobbies and will not play a game for 6-8 hours a day each day for several weeks each 3-4 months.

Edit: Since many people mentioned it: Game is early access, of course not everything is fleshed out. And i personally like my experience so far. The feedback i wanted to give to the community/GGG is that increasing mandatory playtime to level up a character over a certain threshold will reduce the amount of concurrent players significantly.