Chris Wilson's 2019 gdc presentation - merge if already posted.

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MFairfax wrote:

I could go on and on. Why am I still here complaining? Because I bought a brand new computer just to play this game. It blazes every application I set it to except POE.

LMAO I love those posts, and we see more and more of them. "This game is shit but I will play it because X and Y!". No, you dont play it because you bought new PC to play it. You stil play it because you are ADDICTED. You have new PC which probably can run all the game you want, there are almost infinite amount of other games that you can try and play but you still are staying here, in a game that you complain about and you start hating it. Why? Because you are ADDICTED.

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srogi_kotek wrote:

I do not know who this guy wants to cheat in this way, but I suppose that's probably his own self... In normal circumstances such occurrences of the heads of companies appear when the company is a joint-stock company and wants to issue new shares, for the needs of some new investment, which is supposed to bring even more money. In such case, shareholders have to be reassured somehow that their current shares will slightly inflate, but in reality their price will increase thanks to the new, huge money that will be earned.

In real life, something like that either goes well and everyone is happy, or they fail, and then the company's management is happy because he has already collected his increased bonuses, small shareholders are happy a little less, because the value of their shares has dropped significantly, but, well, that's life.

In this case, the problem is that Mr. Wilson does not have to convince any shareholders, because a few months ago he already sold 80% of his business, so as if he is not deciding anything. And certainly not about possible issues of new shares.

Besides, even if he wanted to convince some shareholders, he would not convince them. Maybe with the exception of some teenagers playing his game, who pretend to do so with the consent of mother and father. Wilson presented graphs, delusively reminiscent of graphs showing fluctuations in share prices on the stock exchange.

Later he drew a very crude "technical analysis" on them, from which it was supposed that the number of players would increase indefinitely, although even on the basis of his scribbles it was clearly visible that "the economic situation is overheating" and soon everything will fall to a dense head.

In addition, because he presented everything on March 22, mercifully (probably for himself and the audience intelligence), he ignored the fact that this fall has already begun and it is very spectacular. To sum up, I have no idea what this speech was meant to be used for, but the facts can be seen on steamcharts, which completely coincide with what Wilson presented in his graphs.

I really enjoyed reading your reply. I myself laughed and noticed what you saw about the exclusion of the March 22nd release. The speech may of been used as just a slight PR stunt to elude that everything is not quite okay. He made sure to let everone know about the next league already going through there "proto type" once and scrached and then done another time and now moved forward into development. He never said why this league was on such a short timeline when they had the league idea in December. Guessing the decisions weren't all by GGG and that caused a back up.

The emperor must bear two blades..

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Antigegner wrote:

I find it interesting how is talk goes from creating a great game to how to make the most money out of it at around 19 to 20 minutes in.

It was a single throw-away comment about monetizing his product.

"We monetize the game early in the league so it doesn't matter when participation drops off late, because the players come back for the next league, and we can re-monetize them then."

He was talking about that in the context of their shift to the consistent 13 week league cycle to maintain player interest and create growth. He doesn't go on and on about it, he goes right back to discussing GGG development cycle and player numbers. I'm only half way through so far but he hasn't mentioned making money again (~32 minutes in so far).

Edit: 45 minutes in, he still hasn't spoken about making money again.
Edit: 47 minutes in, he says players who aren't actively playing the league still buy supporter packs and how that motivates them to keep creating quality content. The formal talk is over the Q&A has started.
Edit: During the Q&A he jokes about selling beta access because people were threatening GGG because they didn't get beta access, and how that and Kickstarter inspired the creation of starter packs.

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ZACHWILDCAT wrote:

I really enjoyed reading your reply. I myself laughed and noticed what you saw about the exclusion of the March 22nd release. The speech may of been used as just a slight PR stunt to elude that everything is not quite okay. He made sure to let everone know about the next league already going through there "proto type" once and scrached and then done another time and now moved forward into development. He never said why this league was on such a short timeline when they had the league idea in December. Guessing the decisions weren't all by GGG and that caused a back up.

Well, I could write much more, but it does not make sense, because no one pays me for it, in addition, despite the pompous sign "we are hiring" I do not think they need market analysts. I think they think that they need graphic designers and maybe some PR specialists. But they really need psychologists who would explain to them that they are no longer as good as they thought they were and that their ideas are harmful even in the short term and some should be withdrawn at once, just as it would be necessary to immediately introduce some of the things that now they so vehemently refuse.

Of course, this will not happen, some 3D graphic designers will be employed, and there may be some PR specialist who will be able to prove himself by organizing another "contest with prizes for players". That's all, folks. But there is also good news. Mayhem is Coming September 13. It means, Borderlands 3 will be released this day and game with season pass costs about as much as any more fancy MTX armor in PoE. So choice will be rather simple.

Pretty fantastic talk to be honest, firstly to those that are complaining hes talking about selling you shit, it obviously doesn't have to work because i've spent fuck all over the years, so little I actually feel ashamed. Its to a room full of games developers its a very important requirement of anything you do.

Secondly GGG literally crush every other producer of GAAS that i'm aware of (i hear warframes good if anyone has a hot take) like their content production, marketing and numbers output make destiny look like incompetant retards and its great to get a breakdown of how they do it from the man himself.

Like i'm disappointed in the league too i'm at like 18 challenges the last time I had 18 challenges was legacy, I have no intention of doing any more (but i might, habits and all) but there is no denying that GGG do the content mill.

I found his presentation very interesting and somewhat inspiring. I did notice a couple things that struck me as off.

No mention of the strategic decision behind Tencent, speculation does not lend kindly to this event.

Graphs use PC total playtime and number of users, does GGG not understand the magnitude of the impact of those graphs by bots? I strongly believe those graphs would be drastically different without bots accounted for.

Chris did kind of mention the failure that is the current league but he didn't seem to think that the "late prototype" was going to become a common thing. I wonder if 13 week cycles are pumping out Synthesis then maybe increasing the period and improving the permanent version of the game would be a viable alternative. Most players are mainly participating in leagues only because of the push to do so and the partial abandonment of the perm leagues. More reason to play the perm leagues should increase the base level of active players at the end of every league. There is an ever-growing list of changes that the perm leagues sorely need and it's not a surprise at all that most have no interest in playing there because of how incredibly poorly the waves from temp leagues are handled these days. I personally don't like that my fairly great build from league x now likely has items that no longer function the way they used to because of retroactive changes, has a mandatory reset passive tree and I had to literally make a very complicated and detailed note to restore it IF that's even possible due to the passive tree always changing, has a billion remove only map stash tabs full of maps that don't even work, has a reset atlas all the time, and the list goes on and on and on....

It's fine for players to play new things in temp leagues, that's what they are for, but it doesn't make sense that their characters in the perm league are constantly being destroyed. What even is the point of having a perm league if nothing in it is perm? If a player only wants to play the strongest build ever and be immortal while one shotting everything off the screen then they should be allowed to keep and use their character from 5 years ago that could do that or even combine interactions from various periods to get insane monsters that can do things that could never be done in a temp league. If they get bored of the lack of challenge, then they leave and still come back next temp league.

Legacy items 100%, no retroactive changes
Legacy passive trees with an option to update them to the current one
Legacy skill gems even with the same gem i.e. legacy arc
Legacy player restrictions 100% max res if character was created when that was a thing
Legacy mechanics increased aoe without diminishing returns if using old passives+old character+old gems+old items.
Maps convert to newest versions
Atlas maps stay completed upon reshuffle
legacy unique maps can be used still (this might already be a thing)
temporary league things like leaguestones are fine as-is
Prestige levels for perm league only, see Starcraft 2 coop
Alter unique stash tab to hold 1 of every version of every unique (legacies)
Slightly increase the availability of legacy uniques in perm
Make all content easily accessible by choice and add more things like delve with infinite scaling. New delve mod at level 3000, damage applies to immune targets at 10% of its value. New delve mod at level 50000, monsters have +800% to maximum resist and 200% increased resistances. New delve mod at level 2 million, all monsters are breach lords. New delve mod at level 50 million, rogue exiles are replaced by grandmasters. Level 2 billion syndicate intervention encounters lag your computer out for a few seconds on spawn.
Don't continue scaling the currency or item rewards for these levels imo but find another carrot that is worth chasing like alternate 2-D and 3-D artwork. Also keep in mind delve can go sideways so there isn't any blocking a content mechanic behind anything.

Does anyone know if they'll upload it on their YouTube later? I'd love to watch it with auto-genereated subs, since I'm missing some parts of Chris' speech.

For those who are interested, here's a link to the slide deck for the presentation:

Designing 'Path of Exile' to Be Played Forever

I wonder how much lockstep and removing difficulties did to the game in term of retention. No mention about maps either (although we have read something already about this).

That being said, I still wonder what comes next, if the game is going to have issues similar to WoW long term or if it's going to be more like Magic.

(that being said, GGG started trying to figure out why Diablo 2 was so played but I'm not sure if they have figured out; that require a long content drought to see how durable the game is, they just sidestepped the issue with a reliable content schedule to mantain the game)