Hoping GGG sticks to their guns.

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Kirisute_Gomen wrote:

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pneuma wrote:

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Gurubu wrote:

Will people in FFA groups be physical hurt or wounded because at that same time there's a seperate loot group happening? I highly doubt it.

Well, given that I would prefer to not play in a timered or instanced loot group, it's very likely that I will not be playing with a large number of people. If instanced loot becomes the most popular or the default choice, then I'll probably just stick to soloing. That hurts.

(Note: The same argument works for someone who prefers instanced loot over FFA or timered.)

Oh, but you could just play with friends then who shared your ideas about FFA loot!

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Panda413 wrote:

As the size of the community increases, demands for GGG to change the game will increase. They will get less and less constructive and more and more entitled.

I see the first two big complaints will be FFA and respec. I'll be the first to admit that I didn't like FFA at first, but after reading responses from GGG it's obvious that is a major part of what they envisioned for the game. I want to play the game GGG designed with some influence from the community. I don't want GGG to develop a game designed by the community.

I know these topics will be highly debated from now until OB and long after that. I understand the need of a developer to appease their audience so they can make money and eat. I just hope we get to play PoE the way Chris imagined it.

My intent isn't to debate FFA or respec in this thread. I can just see what kind of attitude is coming up a lot and hope that GGG doesn't feel the need to compromise on their goals and ideas to satisfy the loudest critics that believe they know more about game design than the professionals.

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cheeseheads wrote:

lol dont want to debate it then dont bring it up. i hate the ffa and we need respec full. so GGG let us have it

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Panda413 wrote:

Valid points Morrigan.

Believe it or not, I don't believe a business should base every decision on profitability and number of customers. I believe the close to 1 million dollars GGG has already made in PoE purchases is an indication that they don't need to compromise on this issue to be successful. I believe Blizzard made a profit with D2 which only offered FFA (with no timers).

I am not convinced that a change in loot mechanics is necessary for PoE and GGG to be successful.

Chris's stated goal of PoE is to recapture the feeling he had playing D2 and offer that to the people that have been looking for it. I believe if he can accomplish his goals, pay all his bills, and have enough left over to celebrate over a pint, this game was a success! Hopefully he does even better than that though.

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MorriganGrey wrote:

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Panda413 wrote:

Valid points Morrigan.

Believe it or not, I don't believe a business should base every decision on profitability and number of customers. I believe the close to 1 million dollars GGG has already made in PoE purchases is an indication that they don't need to compromise on this issue to be successful. I believe Blizzard made a profit with D2 which only offered FFA (with no timers).

I am not convinced that a change in loot mechanics is necessary for PoE and GGG to be successful.

Chris's stated goal of PoE is to recapture the feeling he had playing D2 and offer that to the people that have been looking for it. I believe if he can accomplish his goals, pay all his bills, and have enough left over to celebrate over a pint, this game was a success! Hopefully he does even better than that though.

Fair point. Remember though that D2 had a purchase price. PoE is a different business model. The game has got to hook players in to where they want to spend money, and the longer they stick around the more money they are likely to spend. I know it's not all about the cash, but a game making lots of money has a lot more opportunity to add nifty content and keep improving.

D2 was also pretty revolutionary at its time. Online ARPG play was unheard-of so there were no expectations from players. At this point, with other games offering dedicated loot and players aware of the horrible ninja bots in D2, there are different expectations. FFA loot feels like a throwback, an unwelcome one for many of us. There will certainly be ninja bots in PoE, unless the loot timers are extended considerably at which point it may as well be individualized loot. I didn't group with strangers in D2 and I won't group with strangers in PoE either. Getting ninja'd ruins my night so I won't put myself in that situation. It's sad to be shut out of part of a game.

As far as respec, remember Diablo II was really pretty easy. The hard part was PvP, not PvE. It took a pretty terrible spec to hit a hard wall with a character. You were more likely to want to reroll becasue you got some cool spec-specific loot you wanted to try. Path of Exile has hard PvE, and I do believe some players will hit a wall their first time through. GGG has an important decision to make as to how they intend to handle stuck players, but still preserve a reasonable sense of character permanence. Personally I'd offer one full respec per character if I were writing this game. It would be a quest reward in Ruthless difficulty so that if a player hit a wall in Merciless, maybe from too few defensive passives, they could visit an NPC and reset skill points once. Ever. I will be really interested to see what GGG comes up with. :)