Do we expect too much from GGG?

"

Charanjaydemyr wrote:

A bump and a link.

http://www.edge-online.com/features/the-making-ofdiablo/

Stumbled onto this trying to research the matter. This is quite fascinating, and pertains to my earlier post. I know most of you won't click it, so here's an excerpt to chew on:

Simple, as it happens, would be the operative word for Diablo. “Back then, RPGs were so overwrought with statistics that the genre had shrunk to a tiny audience,” says Erich’s brother and Condor’s co-founder, Max Schaefer. “We wanted to do an RPG how we’d played Dungeons & Dragons as kids: hit monsters and gain loot. Our mission was that we wanted the minimum amount of time between when you started the game up to when you were clubbing a skeleton.”

PoE essentially tries to retain that 'action' orientation but has absolutely returned to the overwrought statistics that many people find off-putting. I'd ask if the two are even all that compatible. Diablo III would declare 'absolutely not', but as much as people want to compare the two games, they're really just opposites on the same continuum...but both try to do the same thing, at heart.

Another nibblet:

“Making a game simple for the player is actually harder for the developer,” suggests Max. “One of our philosophies was to make it a reward-based rather than penalty-based game. A lot of RPGs fell into the trap of penalties: you don’t eat and you die, everything you find is a penalty.

This is where you can draw a big fat line between D1/D2 and Path of Exile, and between Blizzard North and GGG. It's not that GGG haven't put in the hard work -- but it may be that they've applied it incorrectly, forgetting to keep the game both 'simple for the player' and 'reward based'.

Plenty of people have said it, but being able to quote a D1 dev directly and then say it...that's something else.

As I suspected, the stars did align for Condor, and I don't think GGG could reasonably expect the same. Still, something's got to change because this current state of making money mainly to sustain a released product (sustain, not complete) rather than working on future ones is worrying. I support GGG, not just PoE.

This distinction *must* mean something.

It was a while ago now,maybe end closed beta,maybe early open beta (can't find it to quote now) I wrote something about how my interest had changed from GGG developing POE and that I had swung into the direction of wondering what GGG could do with a different engine,different genre and the creative energy they have,all fueled by their love of gaming and the will to succeed.

They're a relatively young lot and so is POE,in many years time however who knows what may come of them and their labors.

=)

this games future is not so straight forward, I can install D2 right now from a CD and play it without even being online. When the PoE servers go down, thats it, done. Even if they make an offline patch so we have something to keep, too much of what it is would be lost without the community. This is here, and one day it will be gone.


Sure taste is taste, some people prefer D3 to PoE, and those people are in the D3 forums right now. Theres people who have been in the PoE forums for over a year complaining on almost a daily basis that the game is bad and broken, and they will be here a year from now saying exactly the same thing because in reality, complaining about broken PoE is still better than actually playing any other game they own. Maybe they will go and play Grim Dawn for a week before coming back to spend another 6 months talking about how bad PoE is. Theres something in that too.

"

Charanjaydemyr wrote:

Simple, as it happens, would be the operative word for Diablo. “Back then, RPGs were so overwrought with statistics that the genre had shrunk to a tiny audience,” says Erich’s brother and Condor’s co-founder, Max Schaefer.

They were right at that time but few years later, Baldur's Gate proved that the audience that wanted a complex RPG was still huge.

"

Charanjaydemyr wrote:

PoE essentially tries to retain that 'action' orientation but has absolutely returned to the overwrought statistics that many people find off-putting. I'd ask if the two are even all that compatible. Diablo III would declare 'absolutely not', but as much as people want to compare the two games, they're really just opposites on the same continuum...but both try to do the same thing, at heart.

The trend to make H'n'S more "complex" began with diablo 2. It became more and more complex over time. In the end, LoD on hell difficulty was basically a big "gtfo" to casuals. PoE continued the trend. Players who wanted a "simple" ARPG got the Torchlight games and Diablo 3. Making another game for that audience would have been pointless for such a small indie company. GGG found a niche, players who like "overwrought statistics" were still playing D2 or other genres. So they focused on them.

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

this games future is not so straight forward, I can install D2 right now from a CD and play it without even being online. When the PoE servers go down, thats it, done. Even if they make an offline patch so we have something to keep, too much of what it is would be lost without the community. This is here, and one day it will be gone.


Sure taste is taste, some people prefer D3 to PoE, and those people are in the D3 forums right now. Theres people who have been in the PoE forums for over a year complaining on almost a daily basis that the game is bad and broken, and they will be here a year from now saying exactly the same thing because in reality, complaining about broken PoE is still better than actually playing any other game they own. Maybe they will go and play Grim Dawn for a week before coming back to spend another 6 months talking about how bad PoE is. Theres something in that too.

Being a frequent visitor and poster on both forums I can assure you that they both share that *feature*.

=P

"

Pyrokar wrote:

The recent uproar for the server crash issue got me thinking that i might stop playing this game.

I feel disgusted by the fact that i had to enslave myself to the economy to be able to successfully reach my goals ingame, while others just got everything they wanted with minimum investment. I have done it too many times now and while, when i started playing, i had a lot of motivation to farm and slowly progress in this game, this patience is now gone. Taking recent developments into account was the last straw for me.

Or so i thought. I took a step back and realised that, this game isn't perfect and because it is changing so much with each patch, it is also really hard to keep up with. GGG delivers so much content, it is outrageous. Only they know how hard and timeconsuming it is to think and develop new ideas and build upon their previous ones, keeping everything into focus; balance, economy, rmt, desync, bots etc.

So, should we judge them that hard, expecting everything to be perfect? Our perfect? It is the game "they" want to play anyway, so why bother?

You really thought about quiting the game just because a few people were exploiting a server crash reroll for ONE day before they got banned?
That's simply mindbogling to me...
Who even fucking cares what a few losers do to spent their time on a game. Just play and enjoy. Anything else is irrelevant

i dont really compare myself to others. i was happy beating atziri with a 4l last season. if thats all i got this season whatever. i play games for entertainment and escape rat race irl not get more of it. dont take it so srs.

"

Iluvatar_gr wrote:

"

Pyrokar wrote:

The recent uproar for the server crash issue got me thinking that i might stop playing this game.

I feel disgusted by the fact that i had to enslave myself to the economy to be able to successfully reach my goals ingame, while others just got everything they wanted with minimum investment. I have done it too many times now and while, when i started playing, i had a lot of motivation to farm and slowly progress in this game, this patience is now gone. Taking recent developments into account was the last straw for me.

Or so i thought. I took a step back and realised that, this game isn't perfect and because it is changing so much with each patch, it is also really hard to keep up with. GGG delivers so much content, it is outrageous. Only they know how hard and timeconsuming it is to think and develop new ideas and build upon their previous ones, keeping everything into focus; balance, economy, rmt, desync, bots etc.

So, should we judge them that hard, expecting everything to be perfect? Our perfect? It is the game "they" want to play anyway, so why bother?

You really thought about quiting the game just because a few people were exploiting a server crash reroll for ONE day before they got banned?
That's simply mindbogling to me...
Who even fucking cares what a few losers do to spent their time on a game. Just play and enjoy. Anything else is irrelevant

There is no indication that this was happening for just a day. For all we know it started since vaal gems were introduced, but whatever mate.

Not everyone thinks like you.

"

Pyrokar wrote:

There is no indication that this was happening for just a day. For all we know it started since vaal gems were introduced, but whatever mate.

Not everyone thinks like you.

Chris already mentioned that the particular exploit was going on for a day.. You have 2 choices here:
1) You either call bull*** on GGG
2) You trust they are telling the truth
You are right. Not everyone thinks like me. Some people prefer to waste their time thinking that MAYBE some other players acquired fancier pixels with less effort.. Your line of thinking is your own choice but it clearly dictates your enjoyment..

"

Charanjaydemyr wrote:

A bump and a link.

http://www.edge-online.com/features/the-making-ofdiablo/

Stumbled onto this trying to research the matter. This is quite fascinating, and pertains to my earlier post. I know most of you won't click it, so here's an excerpt to chew on:

Simple, as it happens, would be the operative word for Diablo. “Back then, RPGs were so overwrought with statistics that the genre had shrunk to a tiny audience,” says Erich’s brother and Condor’s co-founder, Max Schaefer. “We wanted to do an RPG how we’d played Dungeons & Dragons as kids: hit monsters and gain loot. Our mission was that we wanted the minimum amount of time between when you started the game up to when you were clubbing a skeleton.”

PoE essentially tries to retain that 'action' orientation but has absolutely returned to the overwrought statistics that many people find off-putting. I'd ask if the two are even all that compatible. Diablo III would declare 'absolutely not', but as much as people want to compare the two games, they're really just opposites on the same continuum...but both try to do the same thing, at heart.

Another nibblet:

“Making a game simple for the player is actually harder for the developer,” suggests Max. “One of our philosophies was to make it a reward-based rather than penalty-based game. A lot of RPGs fell into the trap of penalties: you don’t eat and you die, everything you find is a penalty.

This is where you can draw a big fat line between D1/D2 and Path of Exile, and between Blizzard North and GGG. It's not that GGG haven't put in the hard work -- but it may be that they've applied it incorrectly, forgetting to keep the game both 'simple for the player' and 'reward based'.

Plenty of people have said it, but being able to quote a D1 dev directly and then say it...that's something else.

As I suspected, the stars did align for Condor, and I don't think GGG could reasonably expect the same. Still, something's got to change because this current state of making money mainly to sustain a released product (sustain, not complete) rather than working on future ones is worrying. I support GGG, not just PoE.

This distinction *must* mean something.

That was a very good read indeed. I 've made a similar claim few weeks ago on a thread, stating that this game relies too much on statistics and internal calculations, something that is a more traditional RPG aspect rather than action. On the contrary, different style of action RPGs, like Dark Souls or The Witcher rely far less on statistics, and more on the action combat gameplay.

However, on a Diablo Style game there is not much room for deep action gameplay, but it does have room for deeper RPG gameplay. That being said, i wouldn't mind the complexity of statistics, if it did not interfere with the overall integrity of the game. This now just my opinion, but i think in PoE's case, it does.

For starters, there is desync, which according to Chris, mechanics like stuns and chance to hit affect it. I really think the game could do very well without accuracy, and the stun mechanic to be something that is specified to certain players or monsters as a special feature. Sure these mechanics add complexity, but is it worth it? Debatable, but in my opinion no.

Secondly, too many statistics result into too many synergies, which results into unpredictable situations that Devs cannot really balance propably. The lack of softcaps and diminishing return mechanics, allow players with proper gear to overstack stats, and then even more stats above to make broken characters. And this goes 2 ways. The synergy of certain map mods, with the auras of certain rare monsters can also make several situation impossible to handle, unless of course you have otherwordly gear, and most likely, you play ranged AoE.

PoE is an incredible game, but i think it was overly ambitious.

"

Iluvatar_gr wrote:

"

Pyrokar wrote:

There is no indication that this was happening for just a day. For all we know it started since vaal gems were introduced, but whatever mate.

Not everyone thinks like you.

Chris already mentioned that the particular exploit was going on for a day.. You have 2 choices here:
1) You either call bull*** on GGG
2) You trust they are telling the truth
You are right. Not everyone thinks like me. Some people prefer to waste their time thinking that MAYBE some other players acquired fancier pixels with less effort.. Your line of thinking is your own choice but it clearly dictates your enjoyment..

Link Chris's post or it didn't happen.