For those who keep harping on about how expert in PoE GGG devs should be

Don't Just Hire Your Fans - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VtTMluhSmk

GGG's recent efforts to make the game a little clearer to new players is an example of something all you player 'experts' would probably not even care about much, let alone appreciate how to do well (not saying GGG does it perfectly either, but insisting they only hire experienced players isn't helpful).

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Exile009 wrote:

Don't Just Hire Your Fans - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VtTMluhSmk

GGG's recent efforts to make the game a little clearer to new players is an example of something all you player 'experts' would probably not even care about much, let alone appreciate how to do well (not saying GGG does it perfectly either, but insisting they only hire experienced players isn't helpful).

lol, I'm a newbie, started playing PoE around last christmas. I've come across old time players here who actively think that driving people away from 'their' product is for the best. It's a glaring attitude very distinctive to PoE community. People see themselves as entitled ones for all that grinding they have done, whether it serves the game itself or makes playing experience fun for anyone.

Funny thing is, it's the same players who have twinked character builds to the level they are complaining about, thus creating the concept of 'efficient speed runs' in PoE. If you go blindly with a new build idea, odds are it won't break the speed meta, yet experienced players would rather make the grind even worse for everyone else, telling them to git gud.

The dangers of designing for the hardest players or the newbies is the trap GGG has fallen into. The top hardened veterans want even harder top end content like an uber Uber Elder since they can beat regular Uber Elder. The younger newbies seem to want fast playing (I refer to them as the "twitch shooter" generation of gamers... just look at how popular Fortnite is). This is why PoE is uber fast in the endgame and is a speed racing mess. For GGG to get PoE back to being "an old school" type of arpg the game will need to be slowed down and not have top endgame content that is completely inaccessible to most of the player base.

Unfortunately, for middle of the road PoE players GGG will be going whichever route generates the most mtx sales and that appears to be the speed meta direction. They will be (probably are already) in the proverbial "stuck between a rock and a hard place" and have to follow the money trail, whichever is the most profitable since Tencent has bought an 80% stake in GGG and will expect a fairly quick return on their investment. That leaves a sizable chunk of their player base in a position of having to play the racing game (for which Incursion league was created to pacify that segment of their player base) and not being able to do much of the endgame content (Guardians, Shaper, Elder, etc.) because the time requirement to get to that level of knowledge, currency amounts to gear for this content, etc. is well beyond the average player who want's a good arpg to play but not be required to have to devote 12+ hours a day 24/7 to get there. The reality of this all means that GGG can't code their way out of this mess. The threads saying "time for a PoE 2.0" and "has PoE peaked in your view" may be closer to hitting their target bulls eye than we want to believe.

But all this can be and is being dismissed by top players routinely and very crudely as "git gud or git out" or worse "get the fuck out now". The speed racing crowd sucks up incursions as if it was pure adrenaline energy (like a Jolt cola sugar and high caffeine rush) and comes back to GGG with "more speed please."

Either way PoE is getting further and further away from the devs. original game design goals and GGG is stuck and can't go back. Now I can truly understand why Kripparrian (and other top players of older PoE) quit long ago.

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vmt80 wrote:

lol, I'm a newbie, started playing PoE around last christmas. I've come across old time players here who actively think that driving people away from 'their' product is for the best. It's a glaring attitude very distinctive to PoE community. People see themselves as entitled ones for all that grinding they have done, whether it serves the game itself or makes playing experience fun for anyone.

Funny thing is, it's the same players who have twinked character builds to the level they are complaining about, thus creating the concept of 'efficient speed runs' in PoE. If you go blindly with a new build idea, odds are it won't break the speed meta, yet experienced players would rather make the grind even worse for everyone else, telling them to git gud.

I can see why you might think that and some of your points are true about some of the players, but I really think you are misunderstanding a large portion of what PoE and GGG is all about.

It's one thing to tailor your game to mass market and it's another thing to target a specific community of players that is being largely ignored by the industry as a whole. Tailoring PoE to a very specific target audience who was tired of games being dumbed-down to better appeal to the mass market is where GGG got their start and it's what has brought GGG the success they are enjoying now. The monetization strategy is also tailored to having a small number of very passionate players and turning them into a recurring source of income where more main stream games get played once and then abandoned.

If GGG suddenly changed their strategy then they would loose what sets them apart from every other game developer out there. They would get lost in the sea of thousands of other developers trying to occupy that exact same "game for everyone" space. By specializing their game for a certain target audience they have carved out a niche in the industry where they can dominate and have a strong stable income stream.

You say making the game the way it has always been made is "driving people away" where as I see changing it to appeal to the mass market as driving away the people who are willing to invest heavily in your product in favor of people who aren't going to spend much money on the game at all. 1000 people who never buy a supporter pack are not worth one who is very passionate and buys a supporter pack every league.

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鬼殺し wrote:

Or maybe this is TencentGGG's obstinacy regarding their own self-proclaimed 'hardcore ARPG' -- a title the game may continue to wear but few people take very seriously anymore. A hardcore game is life-or-death, a roll of the dice, all or nothing. You can play PoE that way but it's not really encouraged. What is encouraged is trading like crazy to get the gear that turns the game into Clicker Heroes, give or take. There's nothing hardcore about that.

You are right, if the phrase "hardcore" is meant to describe the difficulty level of the game.
Which I doubt big time.

In the gaming industry the term "hardcore player" has a different meaning. Its not referring to difficulty but dedication and more importantly time investment.
And if you apply this definition of "hardcore gaming" to PoE - then PoE really is hardcore.
It would also mean that this game is NOT meant to cater towards more casual gamers in terms of time investment by definition.

Which makes 100% sense, if you think about their business model.
They want you to spend as much time as possible grinding your ass off. At some point you´ll feel the need to buy some stash tabs or cant stand the shitty look of your chars anymore and you end up buying some cosmetics.
Means they are making money and its the only way for them to make money.


Ofc GGG did realize they need more casuals and their money to grow.
So they made the game easier in early stages but restricted access to endgame by time investment.
In conclusion everyone can do whatever, its not really difficult to achieve as long as you are willing to sink enough time into the game or bypass time restrictions via trading.
Not so great for for those who just cant sink this much time into the game and cant make enough ingame currency within a leagues lifetime, but as long as standard exists they cant really complain.
There is a game mode supporting super slow progression.


But again, at the end of the day:
PoE is designed and meant to be a massive timesink.
Their business model and their league cycles are reflecting this perfectly.
It makes sense, if you are willing to accept, that "hardcore" doesnt mean difficulty but "time investment".

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beaniac wrote:

I can see why you might think that and some of your points are true about some of the players, but I really think you are misunderstanding a large portion of what PoE and GGG is all about.

It's one thing to tailor your game to mass market and it's another thing to target a specific community of players that is being largely ignored by the industry as a whole. Tailoring PoE to a very specific target audience who was tired of games being dumbed-down to better appeal to the mass market is where GGG got their start and it's what has brought GGG the success they are enjoying now. The monetization strategy is also tailored to having a small number of very passionate players and turning them into a recurring source of income where more main stream games get played once and then abandoned.

If GGG suddenly changed their strategy then they would loose what sets them apart from every other game developer out there. They would get lost in the sea of thousands of other developers trying to occupy that exact same "game for everyone" space. By specializing their game for a certain target audience they have carved out a niche in the industry where they can dominate and have a strong stable income stream.

You say making the game the way it has always been made is "driving people away" where as I see changing it to appeal to the mass market as driving away the people who are willing to invest heavily in your product in favor of people who aren't going to spend much money on the game at all. 1000 people who never buy a supporter pack are not worth one who is very passionate and buys a supporter pack every league.

Yeah, I may be too harsh on my assessment. Besides I'm not a big shooter game fan myself, so I can definitely see why people want a slower game.

However, I'm not sure you can do that only league player in mind, who admittedly bring the most money. If financing is to be maximized, company also needs those players who won't be coming back every league. What I consider to be heart and soul of many rpgs is the emphasis on their non-competitive fun aspect. For a real rpger 'fun' just doesn't equal 'fast', and it certainly doesn't mean being 'better player' than others. With PoE the problem is, with temporal leagues it can't really monetize its potential rpg side so much as its competitive side. Of course my vision of what rpgs are about may be completely lost on people, but arpg as I understand it is a compromise between action and rpg. Old school rpgs in their original meaning didn't even have any competition between players, it was about getting together and having fun.

Since I'm new I do not know whether I grasp what PoE was originally meant to be at all. Personally I think the question on catering players is about gamer psychology: my best moments in multiplayer games were experienced playing a text-based MUD and truly immersing myself with character dialog. I'm sure PoE isn't about that. But I don't think an rpger is really a competitive racer, either. From a competitive players viewpoint it may seem strange, if someone 'that casual' wants to experience character progress all the same. What I mean by entitlement is, in a trading game it surely is away from others. In a non-trading game, however, the notion of competition makes much less sense, if you are about achieving your own character development. That is why I don't trade. It feels like cheating, cause you aren't finding those items yourself. In such a game mode excessive obstacles made for 'balance reasons' are felt the most, as one can't trade his/her way out of them. For example, I don't really give a f*ck how many exalted orbs some pro players will be able to loot/trade. I care about whether I'll ever loot many enough to use in crafting in any relevant way, and in its current game state answer seems to be no. That, to me, seems just another dead feature in otherwise fun game.

they dont have a clue obviously.

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Exile009 wrote:

Don't Just Hire Your Fans - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VtTMluhSmk

GGG's recent efforts to make the game a little clearer to new players is an example of something all you player 'experts' would probably not even care about much, let alone appreciate how to do well (not saying GGG does it perfectly either, but insisting they only hire experienced players isn't helpful).

There are plenty of experts that respond to everything and anything here on the forums when people are asking for help (admist the trolls i'll grant you)

The idea that an expert can't streamline the user experience for beginner is just as bad as saying that the GGG devs need to be level 100 in 6 hours or they can't design nice looking water.

Great topic and great discussion.

I do believe that GGG has a clue and knows what direction they have to take PoE in to generate the required mtx sales necessary, first to be in the black for GGG and original shareholders, and now to please Tencent. I also believe this "following of the money trail" is taking PoE farther and farther away from their original arpg designed around "the arpg we would most like to play". This is the unfortunate result of the type of PoE players that are buying the bulk of the mtx in any given challenge league. It's definitely bad from a non-hardcore (either definition, time-wise or ability to defeat the top content difficulty) casual player perspective as we just want a deep arpg to play a few hours a day and not have to be in any racing mode while playing. The original deep pockets supporters are being or have already been marginalized in favor of either the top no-lifer players/streamers or the short attention span players, "give me a PoE that I can race to level 90 in < 1 day easy" and I'll buy mtx. Then GGG has to ratchet the xp bar way, way up from 90 to 100 to make the time grind enormous for the no-lifers. I see the level 90 to 100 players as the ones who can race a build to 90 in a few hours so the only thing GGG can do because of power creep and multi-million dps player's builds is ramp the red map boss' xp way up and double, triple, quadruple, etc. (how many times has GGG done this in the last couple of years?) xp to level up so that there isn't a flood of level 100 builds hitting the ladder in the first weekend of the new league.

If the majority of feedback GGG receives is from the no-lifers and speed racers then what the OP stated is true, that GGG is allowing the top fans to dictate the development of PoE. I don't know if there is any way to know what % of total players actually come here and put their 2 cents of feedback in but I have to believe it is quite low. Either way, as the video explained, it's just bad long term for any game to be a product of only the top of the fan base.

Unfortunately, GGG has only themselves to blame for ramping up our power and speed this much, and in doing so has tossed their original arpg design goals into the bit-bucket. I can't believe that Chris, Jonathan, and Erik originally back in 2006 had ever thought PoE would be a racing arpg in the end. But Incursion is the result of this "need for speed" that GGG thinks the majority of players want and that thinking has pushed out the original heavy financial supporters. It also wrecks most CB players on "the arpg we would most want to play". But if the financial numbers are there to support PoE: racing arpg edition then the majority of the original supporters will be moving on and thinking "damn, PoE had such great potential but the developers lost sight of their original game goals when $$$ filled their eyes" (they gave in to corporate greed). I know I can't fault them much for if I was in their shoes I'd probably want to follow the money trail too. But all I can do as a casual super fan of the way closed and open beta PoE played is be sad that what we have to play today doesn't resemble anything close to the original PoE.  :(

They don't need to be experts, they need to play the game for a few days to reach level 80 and tackle mid tier maps so they can see how 99% of the equipment and possible builds are simply not viable and hit a brick wall.

The game's biggest fortes are obfuscation of mechanics and noob traps at every step, all while telling newcomers about all those endless options which are ultimately worthless.

Creating more content that's simply not doable outside of meta while listening exclusively to the droning of streamers isn't exactly a good design direction. Neither is feeding the power creep without restraint while widening the abyss between meta and the rest of builds further.
Basing the whole game around scheduled resets every few months while the core modes are being left in the dumpster? Doesn't look too good to me, chasing a carrot might be fun a couple of times but ultimately gets tiresome.