Is this the end of POE?

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

From what I can tell, the costs involved in starting a sequel are quite prohibitive compared to 'milking' PoE1 to its core. This game has at least a year left in it. At least.

And yeah, long term plans are good for investors; transparency is very relevant. I know GGG have one of those. But that doesn't really contradict what I said.

Do we know what prohibitive means in real $$ terms? I would have thought given the success of this game it would not be hard for GGG to find serious investment for a sequel, on top of whatever assets and resources they already have for start up.

I only say this because in my mind I fantasize that GGG already have these perfect master plans laid out for a sequel that far exceeds the current game, that is going to be so popular and massive it turns them into a player in the industry. Total delusion?

We all should remember, World of Warcraft has been dying since 2006 and Runescape died in 2006. WoW is on its last legs and will lose all their subscribers in a month and Runescape isn't even a website anymore, Path of Exile will follow the same fate...

..if we can't get Malfurion to kill Zaros before Piety gets us all

this game mechanics are too old and clunky. New games with new engines will perform a lot better and support have failed me too many times. i regret for supporting this game.

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Myrmi wrote:

this game mechanics are too old and clunky. New games with new engines will perform a lot better and support have failed me too many times. i regret for supporting this game.

While I look forward to new games and some already made me stop playing PoE at least for now (thanks Grim Dawn), I don't think those shiny korean p2w ARPGs will be it... Umbra is going early access soon so we'll see how that turns out.

PoE is doing fine. Better than i expected. It will die eventually of course, certainly quite awhile before the 10 Act plan is fulfilled. GGG will have to invest in either a sequel or a brand new game at some point, or just quit the developer job altogether. That's how capitalism works in general, but especially in the software buiseness. Things are moving way too fast. I cannot imagine year 2023 anyone playing PoE, with it's already WAY outdated engine. You take risks trying to move forward and expand, and you either succeed or fail, but you cannot be static, because that's a certain failure. Long term of course

Of course there is WoW, but this is the exception. Blizzard was already a colossal company that could actively develop many different projects together. And of course it's fucking WoW. One of highest -if not THE HIGHEST- grossing entertainment product IN HISTORY. It had grossed a total of -i think- over 12 Billion back in 2012.

Smaller companies have to progress. That's how it is. I remeber reading how CDProjektRed, after the unexpected sales of the first Witcher, invested all their money in developing The Witcher 2, creating their own engine and everything, and were almost bankrupt. Luckily TW2 sold well, and then again they invested everything to start developing The Witcher 3. If TW3 was not successful they were done, but it was. And now finaly since 2007 and earlier they can say that they are financialy stable.

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

Not total. It's nice to dream. And to hope.

All I can say is you can expect GGG to stick with PoE (1) for at least a year yet. I've been told, roughly, how much it'd cost to really devote time to a sequel, and I strongly doubt PoE is making that much quite yet.

Oh, as for investment: PoE had some external investment during its startup (on top of and before support pack sales) but I am under the impression that's mostly been paid off and GGG devs control most of the company. I get the feeling they're not entirely eager to go down that road again while PoE is still laying golden eggs, or at least very tasty chocolate ones.

I just hope GGG has the gall and goes for it, rather than resting on their laurels, because really they know how to make an excellent ARPG already, their passion for what they do almost guarantees a quality product; they just need a shiny new engine. They have the goose that will lay the golden eggs, sitting right in front of them, just depends if they want to go all in or not.

If their books read as good as they should from the success of this game as well, it should not be hard to find investment from people who would not interfere with the process. Who cares if you need to take in investments or loans, when you have the potential to go down in history for making one of the best ARPG's if all time; I imagine this is what they dreamt of in the beginning.

Of course it is nice in theory, different in practise, it obviously takes some serious management, logistic skills and personal time to expand and keep everything in check.

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

Amusing observation I made a few days ago:

For a guy behind one of the most involving gambling/trading simulators in the gaming world, Chris Wilson is very, very risk averse.

Do you mean that to say that Chris would never dream of going 'The Witcher route', or that he's not interested in 'diversifying his portfolio' so to speak with a new game(s)?

I know their (his) stance has been, up to and including now, no new games in the pipeline, PoE is the sole focus, etc etc.

Even he has to know that this goose can only lay golden eggs for so long (nevermind the people who would claim that said goose has stopped laying said golden eggs long ago).

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

Zero: I don't think we can call it resting on their laurels when they're flat-out developing content for the next year or more. Did you notice there was a patch mid-afternoon on New Year's Eve? WHO DOES THAT?

With all due respect.. who needs to? With patch notes like these, id rather get one significant patch every few weeks/months than this

That's not too impressive.

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

Can't speak for Chris, only saying what I've observed.

A big reason why he's risk averse is because he knows dozens of people are relying on him to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head. It seems to me that, for the time being and given it's shown somewhat surprising signs of growth in the past year, sticking with PoE1 is the wise choice. If we presume that parallel development isn't an option, then it's just level-headed to keep the existing model up to speed and running well instead of letting it slide into disrepair as you work on a brand new one.

Imagine the unhappiness and anger if GGG were to neglect PoE1 to work on PoE2 for X months or even years. Haven't we seen enough developers do just that? They get a playerbase going with their first game/title, get them addicted to that title, and then pretty much ignore the game once it's 'working' to work on something else.

There's a large swath of middle ground between 'neglect PoE1 to work on PoE2' and 'only service PoE1, fuck all else'. A wise course of action would be to start side projects now, lay foundations with about 15% of their resources. When the time comes, they can do what many other established indie (lol I know) developers have done.

Be honest about the situation. Announce new project. Much like they did at the start of this game, start accepting funds immediately like many other crowd sourced projects. Managing revenue now and planning for the future are critical when you're in the heyday of your current project.