GGG, Kripp, Beta, Botters, Oh, my!

It's refreshing to hear someone broach some discussion with some in-depth insights.

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atrocityx wrote:

You do make some valid points...however I still dont personally think it matters because its their beta and they can roll it out anyway they see fit.

How is this logical? Because it's their game they can do whatever they want and it doesn't matter. Fuck that if the game company is doing a shitty job, I'll either provide feedback or quit the game. As yourself again if it "doesn't matter"

good feedback.

Well said. This beta feels so poorly organized, I would not be surprised if GGG realized they were behind schedule and this is a fallback plan.

How do you test a beta when you haven't even finished 2/3 of it?!?

When this "beta" ends, if a new game breaking build is discovered that requires any form of hotfixing/wipe. Then alot of people, including me will point directly at GGG and their decision to select random (including new players with 0 char, 0 posts) players for the beta.

I can't comment on every point so I'll just make a few that cought my attention - as briefly as possible.

I work in IT and without getting in to the details, after about a year of - agile - development we launched a client portal knowing we would have all sorts of data problems. But we went live anyway - media hype and all. The boss said it's a date that couldn't be missed. To delay the release just means we all pack our bags. Things are now running great, patched and fixed - 8 months later. When I think of the current state of act 4, I think of how our project rolled out in similar fashion.

My thoughts on your angle comment is that I think GGG is too small of a shop to effectively develop under that methodology. I personally join scrum every morning. I won't get in to what agile has developed in to where i work: an excuse to change requirements very 2 weeks because things weren't flushed out from the get go. It's actually fairly difficult to run and properly enforce.

I've got a wife and two kids myself. A friend I play with is in the same boat. The amount of time we log playing this game simply pales in comparison to some of the streamers, and yet I was scratching my head watching a ZD stream where he didn't know that VP kills life regen or ES regen if you have ZO. I thought these guys know the game inside and out in order to get first dibs on beta and have their feedback heard? Another popular streamer only knows the marauder side of the tree and couldn't answrer questions on any other parts of the tree. This does not bother me personally but I can't help but comment on this point. We certainly aren't learning anything from watching them stream. Simple things are overlooked like commenting on the fact that a fixed waypoint spawn position has changed. But I can't really fault them as they just want to play the game - like the rest of us. But if they are like the rest of us then why get special preference? Yeah I know it's because hey have a huge audience glued to the streams so it's a marketing strategy.

So I think from reading some of the feedback people are just frustrated over the rollout, the timeline, and the preferential treatment. They are all frustrated out of love for the game :) My solution to get through the next few months is to watch some POE streams while actually playing Mortal Kombat X!

Yeah it would of been a good idea to have a separate league going on at the same time as the closed beta...the way it is handled is obviously not great, so many people are salty and as inclined as I am to tell them to chill out, this could of been handled better.

Or have the closed beta remain secret and hire outsourcing quality assurance testers...but then again I'm sure they wouldn't be as good at finding op shit and giving feedback then us.

Transparency is not happening.

They said they are inviting new accounts to compensate each one they ban but since they don't give us the names of the newer ones, we don't know anything and they might be inviting other bots.

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cgexile wrote:

I thought these guys know the game inside and out in order to get first dibs on beta and have their feedback heard? Another popular streamer only knows the marauder side of the tree and couldn't answrer questions on any other parts of the tree. This does not bother me personally but I can't help but comment on this point. We certainly aren't learning anything from watching them stream.

Think what it would be like if things were as they were but streamers didn't have early access. It would be way more boring. Streamers aren't employees, they're only there because they bring in views..quantity not quality.

I'm sure GGG has their own ways to extract good information to rebalance the game using streamers and the closed beta method.

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Fri3dchick3m wrote:

Kripp, Chris and [We are experiencing technical difficulties]
Next we have the streaming Twitchers, VODs, YouTubers, and personalities that really “work” to promote your product. While there is no formal relationship with GGG, successful streamers are driven by the audience, and as such can represent the voice of a large group of people. These are people that you want to choose carefully, but in the same breath, can be a great marketing tool (Channel).

I noticed that Chris is careful where to spend time in promoting POE with respect to leveraging the streaming community. During the Kripp live feed, Chris appeared and dedicated time to Kripp and his viewers. At first, there were technical issues and Kripp gave Chris several “outs” to save the channel and the feed. (There were audio issues that killed the quality of the feed).

99% of program directors would have staged things in advance and cancelled the show/re-scheduled if there were technical issues. It really brought a question to light – “Why didn’t Chris work out the technical issues and join the live stream the following day?”

One reason could be, is that he needed a 25-hour day the following day and couldn’t schedule time. He could have prior engagements or needed to be in mission control. But I still thought it was odd that it was Kripp’s channel Chris joined (echoing the sentiments in the twitch chat), and not a more prolific POE streamer like ZiggyD that he chose to spend his valuable time in. Perhaps he really values Kripps feedback and love for the genre and wanted to get live reaction.

I won’t speculate further, but the business guy inside me feels it was a strategic move to not use a dedicated POE streamer like ZiggyD because, ZDs feed would bring in people who already play or have invested in the game, but choosing Kripp’s channel, who has a large audience that follows him outside of POE (Hearthstone and whatnot), would provide a gateway to the perfect demographic and crop of new playerbase.

Here's all you really need to understand on this topic, Chris sad he was trying to call kripp from a tablet, his word, and there was a fan going causing said audio-issues. It was rather unpleasant but, Chris was quick to fix it and his audio from there on in was crystal clear.

As for why Kripp over someone such as Ziggy:
-Kripp was the Ziggy of 1-2 years ago.
-He was extremely knowledge towards POE and still is. Things have changed, but if you give him more than a day to catch up on A YEAR OF CHANGES he would be fine.
-He carries a massive viewer base. (cont. below)

Most POE streams cap at a max of 2k viewers. Granted many where getting 4-6k yesterday but that's purely because of the Beta. Kripp on the other hand had 10k-16k his entire stream yesterday and typically get's 25-30k when streaming Hearthstone. To put it simply, he could play anything and get 7-11k viewers without trying. He just has a following of dedicated viewers.

Additionally, you may have picked up on the fact that Kripp and Chris knew each other quiet well prior to this stream. It's not as if Kripp's some random streamer and Chris said "Hey, we should get him to promote our game" he was that POE guy.

So many lifetime is wasted for no reason in games. I think while whole lifes is worthless and empty, money is a good goal for GGG. Because the money makes people valuable in this era.