GG also likes to nerf currency methods mid-league. Rather than adding more content to the end game (Post-T16 maps, for example), their approach seems to be nerfing all the top builds every league (with little to not buffs for weaker builds), so that an average player needs more time to reach the end game.

GGG always has a nerf first approach to balancing. Now repeat that as fast as you possibly can. For the first few weeks the most efficient farming start with this mechanic was to go into low-level zones, speed kill all the mobs while running in a circle and then reset the zone. To make things worse, the rewards did not scale particularly well as you go into higher tier maps. On any evasion based character with good aoe, it literally is that braindead. This season's league mechanic involved running around in a circle, randomly killing mob packs to receive escalating rewards. While this did artificially improve view count, it definitely did not help GGG's PR with its long-term fans. While ordinary players had to wait hours in the queue before being able to play on launch day, the GGG approved streamers were able to instantly skip the queue.

Streamer priority queue, this really pissed off a lot of long-term fans of the game. In my opinion, there a several reasons for the particularly bad retention this season:

However, the drop has never been quite this steep and it could be argued that this expansion has seen one of the worst player retention rates, ever. Before I talk about the drop in playercount for PoE, its important to note that there is always a drop in players after a major expansion.

Path of exile steam charts