As Betrayal ends, has GGG shifted its design philosophy?

It was interesting to see PoE make the choice to invest so much into getting so many uniques and memorable lines fully voiced out for Betrayal league, as it's unlike what the games' philosophy has been to date. GGG has always prized efficiency, not flamboyance - achieving more with less. That's why the game lacks cutscenes to this day ('cept for the small Kitava Rising clip they borrowed from Tencent). That's why they don't do custom animated trailers. That's why even when they more than doubled the game's size from 4 to 10 acts, it involved heavy reuse of assets. Betrayal stands out from that pattern for the fact that they spent on doing so much voicework just for a league mechanic. That's the kind of prioritizing of polish one usually expects of a Blizzard game, which was perhaps perfectly timed given how many ex-Diablo players came in for this league. It'll be interesting to see if that was just a one-off decision of if they intend to continue to focus more on the game's presentation elements in the future.

Of course they have more money to play with now, but that doesn't mean trying to make the most of that money matters any less. But perhaps they think the game's fundamentals are deep enough as is, and so focusing on the polish and presentation counts for more now. Or Betrayal could be a fluke.

What do you guys think? Could PoE do with a bit of Blizzard-style spiffing up going forward? Or should it continue being highly choosy (even miserly) about where it allocates its expanded resources? Is it time for a prettier (note: NOT lighter - I'm not saying they've abandoned the grim aesthetic) PoE 4.0?

For reference, Betrayal features A LOT of lines - https://woofle.net/poe-betrayal-audio.html

I still think GGG still values efficiency to an extent, but right now they're building a lot of new foundations in which new content can be based on. For example they mentioned that they've been working on new model rigs for easier animation and character quality, and I believe that the Syndicate members are examples of early implementation of that.

But if there's anything GGG has always aspired to achieve volume over sheer efficiency is voice acting. They try to get every NPC voice acted, characters commenting on key areas and events in the game, random bits of lore you can find voiced. It's just that they often have trouble getting scheduling to record lines and they are content with admitting that not everything is voiced. Betrayal marks a time where they managed to get many returning characters to deliver a ton of performance and as hugely flawed as the actual league mechanic was, the dialogue and acting added a ton of personality to the game.

As for "Blizzard-style spiffing up".. I assume this means in terms of cutscenes. While Blizzard's trailers and cutscenes are cool to watch, they usually don't tell me much about the game while GGG's typical approach of just doing camera work while featuring new content gets me more excited to try out skills and league mechanics.

I'd say the design philosophy hasn't changed. GGG has been raking in some serious cash over the past couple of years, which is allowing them to catch up on some polish in other areas. That, of course, helps them bring in new players and keep PoE up-to-date, but I don't think the original vision of the game has been lost.

There are still minor things I'd like to see that would greatly enhance the flavor of the game, like a customizable UI, a 3D character selection screen, optimizations, etc. But as long as they keep striving for content depth and game-changing items, I'm happy with just that.

Personally I prefer "efficiency" over some cutscenes and dialogues.
New character models? Nice.

New voice lines? Meh, im playing poe with only loof filter and attack sounds. Voices and music are muted.
Cutscenes? Till this day i have no idea what happens in the only cutsene in poe as i always skip it :D


I would rather see GGG invest whole money into visual effects, optimizations (especially better servers) and actual game content.

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CaptainWARLORD wrote:

Can we please stop addressing GGG as a singular entity? They are a company. The correct way to address a company is to use plural. "It" and "has" sounds weird. "They" and "have" is how you say it.

If you really think that sounds "weird" then let's look at their name, Grinding Gear Games, and reflect upon the fact that they only have ONE game to their name. Just one.

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Arrowneous wrote:

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CaptainWARLORD wrote:

Can we please stop addressing GGG as a singular entity? They are a company. The correct way to address a company is to use plural. "It" and "has" sounds weird. "They" and "have" is how you say it.

If you really think that sounds "weird" then let's look at their name, Grinding Gear Games, and reflect upon the fact that they only have ONE game to their name. Just one.

Actually there's always been a second game hidden inside this one. You just have to find a Song of the [Removed by Support]

I'll post same answer here.

I don't think Betrayal was a fluke, it was more they built it intentionally to last. Listening to the last Baeclast, Bestiary, Incursion, Delve, and Betrayal were always intended to be rolled into Master missions. They all got varying degrees of voice work, with betrayal getting the most, as it involved the most people.


If it was designed as one of those, "will we keep it, will we not" kinda leagues, i doubt they woulda put as much voicework in.

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CaptainWARLORD wrote:

Can we please stop addressing GGG as a singular entity? They are a company. The correct way to address a company is to use plural. "It" and "has" sounds weird. "They" and "have" is how you say it.

And to answer your question: to me it seems they have long since abandoned their original philosophy for the sake of cash. Money rules this world.

There is a self-contradiction in this post.
You want us to address GGG as "they", but then you point out how POE shifted from being passion project made by fans for fans into corporate product, designed to to produce money on constant basis meaning that GGG in question is not a bunch of enthusiasts anymore, but a company, a corporate machine that maintains product, therefor being precisely "it" as opposed to "them".

GGG is a company owned by tencent, it exists to make money, it's not longer "them".

Today? Or over the last few days? Certainly shifted from a week ago.