What can PoE learn from Hellgate:London?

I'm afraid this relates directly to the "remove ascendancy points from the lab thread"

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1609216

but I'm posting this separately because I feel that PoE has turned in a disasterously wrong direction with the lab.

Now, just to be clear, Hellgate:London was utterly doomed from the start because

(a) It had a subscription model for any additional content.
(b) It was released in a totally unfinished, bugged state.

But HG:L, at its core, was one of the best ARPGs I've played. It was the first one I encountered where status effects (freeze, ignite, shock,..) played a crucial role; though no doubt there were plenty of others that preceded it and others, like PoE, that succeeded it. More importantly, HG:L had great combat and mostly balanced itemization -- you could easily go from feeling invincibly powerful to dead in a few seconds, while still feeling that it was your mistake when something went wrong (excluding the many times that the game froze or otherwise bugged out).

HG:L also threw in a few stupid minigames, I suppose in an attempt to extend the ARPG gameplay, but fortunately none of them were a significant distraction.

GGG wisely went with a non-play-to-win micro-transaction model, and PoE has never been the memory-leak-bug-infested mess that was HG:L. But what did Flagship Studios do to try and rectify the horrible launch of HG:L?

First, Flagship did try to fix bugs and provide QoL enhancements (you could even split stacks near the end!) and that is really the first priority (something for GGG to bear in mind).

Second, Flagship continued to add new content (for subscribers, at least) as fast as their limited resources allowed. But what kind of content? The original game story went through some pretty drap environments -- a lot of tube tunnels, with no water or doors for some reason. But they added Stonehenge with several areas to collect boss heads and work towards a final boss (plus an area and boss that required a party). These were all fun and different areas to play through (Hell's Heart was HG:L's Dried Lake) and they weren't just accessible to the 1%. A little like PoE's maps but with more consistency and purpose to them, and IIRC reached more easily with new characters if you'd gone through the game once.

Then, before Flagship ran out of money and got destroyed (along with HG:L) in a hostile takeover by HanbitSoft, they introduced Parliment Square (at least on their test servers) which had several really fun places like Brompton Cemetary, full of urns to smash, a beautifully rendered old house with multiple stories, and (the one I liked best) a modern government office building occupied demons, whose contrast I found genuinely spooky and which led to interesting tactics, plus a bottomless dungeon and another boss area to work towards. At this point, I felt HG:L was really coming into it's own, but sadly that was the end.

Anyway, my plea to GGG is: make things optional and don't funnel all of us through the lab (and, please, always remember the poor HC players). I don't have any problems with going to X to look for Y, even if it takes forever to find Y, or going to Z to gain experience, or going to W for whatever, but let each one of us play the game the way we want to play it. Don't unbalance the game with ovewhelmingly powerful uniques or ridiculous rewards, and put your main efforts toward giving us interesting environments and challenging combat (and if for some players that's the lab, then more power to them).

there needs to be a carrot for all types of players, some goal, some achievement which is desirable, some content you still have to do ...

most games go into the direction that getting that carrot you just have to invest massive time and some skill.
by implementing the labyrinth, ggg turned that principle around and implemented something that requires less time but more skill and preparation.

it's not perfect (yet) but it serves it's purpose: giving those skilled players with less playtime the chance to fast do content which most other players won't bother with for whatever reasons. and rewarding skill rather than pure time investment.

free to play games work differently from subscription based games, they can't just push out content which rewards nolifers with their level 95+ chars, they also have to cater to the time restricted players because those mostly have the more money to spend.

if you had to implement tech which provides extremely rewarding items for the average player, how would you have proteted it from of nolifers mass exploiting it? making it tedious to run and requiring skill (and a good net connection) is just one method.

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disclaimer: i'm a time restricted player myself and quite enjoy running the labyrinth from time to time. it slows down other players with more time and so compensates the "less time" disadvantage a bit.

What I remember from vanilla Hellgate: London - Range > melee. I remember playing a blademaster, doing ok, progressing slowly. Then after hearing how op marksman were, I tried it. It was night and day.

Kinda reminds me of another game...

Ho god HG:L, I was SO hyped for this game. God it had everything you would dream off and was realized by Bill Ropert.

One of the most heartbreaking letdown I've eve experienced in my gaming life.

A lot of effort to say 'make lab optional'. It obviously should be but I doubt using 1000 words to say three is going to persuade them any further.

I imagine it would take some peers at GDC letting them know it's poor game design and why to actually convince them, not the vocal minority on a forum they've already disregarded.

At least hellgate London is still playable via offline mode.

Yeah, all the HGL founders may be out $150 but they can still play the game. What are PoE supporters going to have when GGG goes under?

HGL isn't the only example. There are too many online only games that have closed down for the general population to feel confident spending money on things that are online only, unless it's from a major brand that players know will maintain support for a long time (i.e. Hearthstone/Blizzard). In many cases these companies continued collecting money from players when they knew closure was imminent.

Once the support from superfans/whales dies down, GGG will have to seriously consider an offline release (or a promise of an offline release if/before PoE's end of life).

Even though Hanbitsoft ran the game poorly to milk customers, it made me fall in love with HG again. I didn't play online when Flagship ran it so it made me discover SH/catacombs and Tokyo.
The game still had all the bugs because they Hanbit didnt bother using the TCv4 patch, which was supposed to be the savior of the game. They only knew how to handle the cash shop which is sad. The game servers closed last february in Korea after a long agony.
All hopes are not lost though ! Some shady chinese people are running Hellgate:Reborn which seems to be roughly a private (most likely illegal) server that has SH + Abyss cause they get their hand on the MP source code it seems. So we can still hope that one day, someone could do a real rebirth of the MP and use the TCv4.

However, we can still play SP and have fun with the game the way we want.

I recommend nagahaku 3.0b mod, which contains the famous TCv4 patch on top of a LOT of new things that never made it to live like double-edge items or mutant mods, and thx to this patch once again, bye bye memory loss and FPS drops <3

http://www.hellgateaus.info/forum/hellgate-london-modification-downloads/nagahaku-mod-3-0-international/

OP, you were talking about "stupid minigames" but Tokyo introduced cow level and base defense. They both had intersting mechanics, were really challenging in Hell mode and granted access to set pieces. However, unlike the lab in PoE, they were not mandatory for the character. And their access were nearly unlimited, and not RNG gated.
Sure you could say that ascendancy points are not required but it would be a lie. We play the game to constantly increase our power so we want those points. Some say that a 6L is a luxury but we want them to be better, we dont need wands to cast spells but we eauip them cause it's better.

So yeah, hellgate shut down before being able to release all the good stuff it needed, and i hope GGG will realize that gating content for the vast majority of players might not help them.

Okay.. okay.. finally someone convinced me to play Hellgate london. Many times ive been meaning to and i think even downloaded it also but for some reason got distracted before trying it.

Nope.. it's something i must see.. i must extract its lessons..

"

Crackmonster wrote:

Okay.. okay.. finally someone convinced me to play Hellgate london. Many times ive been meaning to and i think even downloaded it also but for some reason got distracted before trying it.

Nope.. it's something i must see.. i must extract its lessons..

You will only extract stuff if you really try. Unless you play with the mod i mentionned you will find something really raw but with way more depth than you think. And if you really dig, you will see why this game is truly the only one of his kind to date.

HG:L was one of the most criminally underrated games imo.

They were adding great stuff and moving in a great direction, but there was no one left by then.