Grinding Gear Games (hereinafter referred to as GGG) announced on April 8th that the free-to-play Huxra ARPG “Path of Exile]the new expansion content “Crucible” has been distributed. In this work, it is customary for the number of Steam simultaneous connection players to increase significantly each time expanded content is distributed. However, this time, this work has updated the record for the maximum number of players connected simultaneously.
“Path of Exile” is a hack and slash ARPG by GGG. It has been very popular for many years, mainly for PCs. Also, at the end of last year, about nine years after its release, it officially supported Japanese display, and domestic Hakusura fans expressed their joy (related article). In this work, regular free distribution of extended content has been made in divisions called “leagues”. The population exploded at the timing of such extended distribution. It repeats the cycle of calming down after a certain period of time, and presents a characteristic graph like a saw blade (SteamDB）。
And the distribution of the expansion “Crucible” this time was different. There are more players on Steam than ever before. As a past record in this work, the maximum number of simultaneous players was approaching 160,000 at the start of the high-profile league. However, at the time of distribution of “Crucible” this time, 210,000 Steam users played this work at its peak. It has set a new record with a difference of more than 50,000 people from the previous record.
In addition, the developer of this work also touched on the response to the distribution of “Crucible”, and announced that 321,180 people played this work at its peak. It officially admits that it has updated the highest record with a difference of more than 50,000 people. In addition to Steam version players, this number seems to include the original client distributed by GGG and the players of the Epic Games store. Also, although it is unknown whether the console version will be included in the statistics, the distribution of “Crucible” for the console version will start from April 13th. Comparing the series of figures, it can be interpreted that Steam has significantly increased the number of players for this work among the many deployment platforms.
As a background to these new records, first of all, there will be high expectations for the update contents of “Crucible”. The expansion adds “crucible forge” content. Weapons can now be upgraded in the passive skill tree. In addition, the Atlas Passive Tree has been improved as part of end-content related adjustments. In addition, content from past leagues such as “Bleach” and “Abyss” has also been reworked.
The character enhancement system, which is the cornerstone of this work, has also been adjusted. Mastery in the character passive skill tree has been greatly revamped, and the class Saboteur/Pathfinder Ascendancy class has been revamped. Many adjustments have been made to bring about major changes to the build environment, such as the addition of var skills.
In addition, the recent expansion of this work has often erupted from the community with complaints about reduced item drop rates and weakened skills.Perhaps in response to such a trend, the development side related to “Crucible”advancebalancing policyinformIn , he said, “It shouldn’t be a nerf-fest.” It can be thought that existing users who have high expectations for such policies and update contents have returned to this work more than before.
Path of Exile’s new league, Crucible, is now available on PC (Steam/ Epic Games store / official website). It will be delivered on April 13th for Xbox One and PlayStation 4, which has not yet been deployed in Japan.
