Feedback and Suggestions - GGG, Kripp, Beta, Botters, Oh, my! - Forum

" Erionn wrote: " Fri3dchick3m wrote: " Erionn wrote: couldn't care less* Technically, I could care less than I currently do - but thanks for the edit advice :D That aside, I think they have mentioned running events during the 2 months gap while Beta is going on. Haven't gone much into specifics, though I think Chris mentioned some stuff on Kripp's stream like Cutthroat and Exiles Everywhere, possibly a longer term Exiles Everywhere event. By the language and word choice Chris was using in the stream, it leaves no doubt that they don't have any confirmed staging of events set up or scheduled. Saying "We will consider..", or "We would like to.." is not the same as "We have planned the events to fill the 2 month gap.." To anyone: If the stream is recorded anywhere, listen to it and tell me if you hear anything solid regarding planned events (not just the idea of them) IGN: Grave_Intentions $$$ Grave Intentions Flame Totem MFarmer: I'm Cheap 'n' Easy $$$ http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/979802	Posted by Fri3dchick3m on Apr 22, 2015, 1:22:57 AM Quote this Post
Great post. Ruby light of Songbird dreaming, Daring King of Swords deceiving, Queen of Sirens left in grieving, Star of Wraeclast evermore.	Posted by Xedralya on Apr 22, 2015, 1:24:19 AM Quote this Post
" 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. You know, you are right. It's their product and their right to deploy any way they wish. But what all the evidence points to, is that the Beta program was not intended or planned this way, and that it was used to delay the timelines for a proper release schedule. If it was planned: - We would not find out about the beta only 2 weeks ago. - A 2 month events details would be revealed - The beta program would have been better communicated - The company statements would have been prepared to address some of the concerns that always come up with limited access alpha/beta programs It is my firm belief, that all the pressers and marketing was pointing to a proper release of the expansion the week of April 27th. And that as they ran up against that deadline, with all the unfinished content and features, granted themselves a two month extension to finish the product - while satisfying their media relations/business obligations. If my speculation is correct, then it could be conceivable that the 1M race should have been the Beta test and was replaced with MTX carrots. The other thing that does not make sense, is that you don't want to have a public reveal of an unfinished product (via stream or otherwise). It doesn't look good if you're thinking about playing POE for the first time, and you see crashing clients. IGN: Grave_Intentions $$$ Grave Intentions Flame Totem MFarmer: I'm Cheap 'n' Easy $$$ http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/979802	Posted by Fri3dchick3m on Apr 22, 2015, 1:41:26 AM Quote this Post
" cgexile wrote: 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! My Sr. is a SCRUM Master who rarely needs to get involved in the process - however I think it's because everyone is afraid of him. haha. Plus I am the Product Owner/SME in most cases, and take care of planning and scope of requirements. But you are dead-on with your assessment of the management capability. I don't really (have time) to watch streamers, although I watched the Kripp/Chris one in it's entirety. It was really bothersome when they had to address the twitch feed for answers to things we feel they should know. I am taking your advice and checking out MKX IGN: Grave_Intentions $$$ Grave Intentions Flame Totem MFarmer: I'm Cheap 'n' Easy $$$ http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/979802	Posted by Fri3dchick3m on Apr 22, 2015, 1:53:42 AM Quote this Post
" LostArtz wrote: 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. Thanks for taking the time to read my post. I think we are agreeing in each our own way to the same points. You make great points regarding the Kripp/Chris relationship. I don't discount a single point you make and they all make sense. I have known about Kripps channel since long before POE, and I do know how he no-lifed it till he min-maxed vision, and burned out. To clarify regarding the technical issues. On three occasions, Kripp said; "Would you like to call back in tomorrow, once you have fixed the audio issues?" It was clear to me that Kripp owned that channel and by the tone of his delivery, was inviting CW to Game Over, Please Play Again. But I know that Chris has his business hat on, and this stream was really important for him to be on - more than any other streamer. 5 threads alone on Reddit dedicated to Kripp at the news he would be getting a key and trying the game out for a couple days. ZiggyD was mentioned in a general Beta/streaming thread only once or twice. IGN: Grave_Intentions $$$ Grave Intentions Flame Totem MFarmer: I'm Cheap 'n' Easy $$$ http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/979802	Posted by Fri3dchick3m on Apr 22, 2015, 2:11:26 AM Quote this Post
I'll do my best to follow your formatting :) " DalaiLama wrote: You do want to minimize costs on the P&L sheet, but after a certain point, the extra effort, headaches and potential liabilities from cutting corners can make that counter productive. You might save $137.52 on expenses, only to have it haunt you and end up costing $11,000 in preventable losses later on. This is one of the hardest lessons for middle and upper management to learn, but when you show them how those thousands of dollars in losses become millions of dollars. Yesterday at work, we discussed how $5 million dollars in a category loss could have been avoided by not cutting costs of $500,000. ROI and GMROI are nice numbers to work with, but if you are killing your gross margin to get better stats, than you are poisoning your business model. A steady, predictable revenue stream, with increasing revenue and controlled minimized costs is the long term goal for most companies. The Pizza model is an easy trap to fall into, and will gut your margin and your ROI very quickly/ I didn't want to get too granular for brevity sake. But your right, diminishing returns is the line that an analyst needs to define and valuate. How much of your future can you sacrifice to keep the boat afloat is a tough position and you sometimes need to be creative without resorting to the usual suspects (reduce headcount for example) " DalaiLama wrote: Yes, it is an effort to bring new customers to GGG's brand. Whether GGG would be better served by short bursts of a lot of people spending money versus a much smaller group giving steady support is tough to gauge from the outside. Looking at the time it took for the team to develop Act IV, it seems to me that GGG would need a vast amount of brief supporters to make it to Act V. With a small business team, and the steady support of a good percentage of regular players, this would seem to be a much easier goal. Closing out the end of this business cycle with the release of Act IV, I think the question is more about sustainability, rather than picking a short or long game approach to funding the next iteration of POE. And in order to meet the growing needs of the business, attracting a new player-base is objective number one for this expansion. It follows their business strategy with their investment in Taiwan and Russia - heavy gaming communities. I think they are looking to not only use a telescope (foreign markets), but also a microscope to see what revenue streams they are overlooking with their existing strategic partners. They have plenty of data and know who buys the supporter packs and MTX - demographically and geographically. " DalaiLama wrote: Whether it appears broken from our side, does not mean it is broken from GGG's side. That depends on what GGG's intent for the beta is. I would agree that the communication and publicizing of it would be more productive if it had been handled differently. You make an excellent point. I think ultimately, they want to release a stable product and have bought themselves two months to finish off major pieces of the expansion. But the beta program as a whole, is broken when you look at the toxicity of the community and how terribly it was handled to manage expectations. " DalaiLama wrote: The response is a communications piece that shows GGG does need to sit down and do some planning on communications policies. As Bex was only recently appointed as community manager, GGG is still in a fledgling state here. They do need a designated PR go to, and spend the money and time to either train someone properly for it, or hire someone with the right experience. I know I brought up the community manager angle - and I really try to tread carefully here because I think Bex has done a great job to connect with the community. But I also have to hold accountable people placed in that client/customer-facing role, and don't see the cliff the train is heading towards. The right thing would definitely be to fill the holes in the short term and hire a communications director or PR specialist to do some redacting and reworking of their policies and communication channels. But I am sure the time/money barrier is the problem here too. I don't know what background in communications Bex has, or how many roles/hats she is currently wearing, but I would assume that her cup is running over like everyone else at GGG and I feel for the staff there as they sacrifice their life essence to make a game for which we all enjoy. IGN: Grave_Intentions $$$ Grave Intentions Flame Totem MFarmer: I'm Cheap 'n' Easy $$$ http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/979802 Last edited by Fri3dchick3m on Apr 22, 2015, 2:45:58 AM	Posted by Fri3dchick3m on Apr 22, 2015, 2:40:30 AM Quote this Post
" Fri3dchick3m wrote: " LostArtz wrote: 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. Thanks for taking the time to read my post. I think we are agreeing in each our own way to the same points. You make great points regarding the Kripp/Chris relationship. I don't discount a single point you make and they all make sense. I have known about Kripps channel since long before POE, and I do know how he no-lifed it till he min-maxed vision, and burned out. To clarify regarding the technical issues. On three occasions, Kripp said; "Would you like to call back in tomorrow, once you have fixed the audio issues?" It was clear to me that Kripp owned that channel and by the tone of his delivery, was inviting CW to Game Over, Please Play Again. But I know that Chris has his business hat on, and this stream was really important for him to be on - more than any other streamer. 5 threads alone on Reddit dedicated to Kripp at the news he would be getting a key and trying the game out for a couple days. ZiggyD was mentioned in a general Beta/streaming thread only once or twice. While I do agree that business is business, I'm not quite sure if today's Kripp's audience is what might be new breed of PoE players. Kripp used to be no-life aRPG player (and a good one, that is). When he was, his audience was also group of aRPG fans which followed one of the best players around. When he started playing PoE for the first time many people from his stream got interested in the game. But now? I doubt there will be many aRPG fans around him anymore. I doubt PoE will see massive flow of players that Kripp brought for the first time. It is obvious that Chris is hoping for that to happen, but neither does Kripp feel like it (someone posting about his attitude towards the game), nor his followers seems to be material for PoE players. I mean, all it really looks like, is Kripp showing his viewers that he is all-might, and if he wants he can bring Lead Developer on his stream, because he happened to be playing his game. Followers will like it, numbers will grow, and donations will be plenty. But the question is, who is going to profit? Because atm I do really doubt that GGG will profit greatly from it. (altho, I do hope I'm wrong). Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance. Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. https://joeduncan123.imgur.com https://joeduncan1234.imgur.com	Posted by Perq on Apr 22, 2015, 2:42:00 AM Quote this Post
First off Perq, your sig made me laugh - almost woke the baby. Maybe CW was hoping for the second coming... but we both know that Kripp owns that channel and I think if I were in his shoes, it wouldn't be hard to exploit the situation and get a nice $$$ bump to feed his cat by having Chris come on and keep 16,000 viewers entertained. Disclaimer: Just speculating ;) not fact. IGN: Grave_Intentions $$$ Grave Intentions Flame Totem MFarmer: I'm Cheap 'n' Easy $$$ http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/979802	Posted by Fri3dchick3m on Apr 22, 2015, 2:52:41 AM Quote this Post
" Epiksheep wrote: interesting view point, but I think GGG do care about the game and the community, and extending the race to a league would have just made people less interested in the beta early, causing them not to get the feedback they are looking for I don't think this would happen at all. Most would not have a hard time deciding whether to grind out 1.5 months of bloodlines magic packs, or try out the extended storyline in the beta. I never want to see Necrovigil or Plink again. IGN: Grave_Intentions $$$ Grave Intentions Flame Totem MFarmer: I'm Cheap 'n' Easy $$$ http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/979802	Posted by Fri3dchick3m on Apr 22, 2015, 2:56:13 AM Quote this Post
" Boem wrote: " Fri3dchick3m wrote: This brings me to the first segment that makes up the POE community. The casuals, the Hardcore, no-lifers, game addicts, the steamers and the multi-boxers, 8-year olds tired of Minecraft, 60 year olds who’s pensions can only support them playing POE on a potato. I FOUND A TYPO SIR!!! Excellent post btw :D! Good read, thank you. Peace, -Boem- Haha, trying to catch me - good! Actually, I was trying to identify those who use the "Steam" client from Valve... Steamers.. get it? hah IGN: Grave_Intentions $$$ Grave Intentions Flame Totem MFarmer: I'm Cheap 'n' Easy $$$ http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/979802	Posted by Fri3dchick3m on Apr 22, 2015, 3:00:33 AM Quote this Post