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

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postrach_myszy wrote:

Hence, all these nonsense about the game "played forever". Forever? Look, where is Roman Empire and Nokia now :P The game has 8-10 "leagues" ahead. Later it will fall under the weight of its own complexity, bugs impossible to solve and complete lack of optimization. Shit will fry even NASA's supercomputers. Poor, poor addicts. I hope they will find some other dope in the meantime:)

This ^^^

This is the actual direction game is moving now. Thats why it already needed PR. Only pr can save it for a lil more. Because bugs and clutter already seems to become nonfixable. But why bother, when game can come to consoles, and for couple of more years need to be milk em out, then just die from snowflake of optimization problems.

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John_Ra wrote:

This is the actual direction game is moving now. Thats why it already needed PR. Only pr can save it for a lil more. Because bugs and clutter already seems to become nonfixable. But why bother, when game can come to consoles, and for couple of more years need to be milk em out, then just die from snowflake of optimization problems.

They need to move on to PoE 2.

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coatofarms wrote:

They need to move on to PoE 2.

Such a thing would be possible only in the case of total departure from the F2P model and the transition to the "season pass" model. The illusion of F2P, with all these "supporter packs" could only work in the case of "a small, garage company that will fall without support". Currently, Great Garbage Games is not small or garage. Unless they bought a multi-storey garage and now they are located there, with almost 200 employees.

Only that such a change is also impossible, for several reasons. First of all, Wilson and the main developers of the game have probably signed a disclaimer that they will not create any competition for the next 5 years. Secondly, in the case of transition to the "season pass" they would have to create something properly optimized and interesting, otherwise they would lose all customers after a year. They are not able to do this anymore. Fortunately for addicts, several PoE clones are already being created (Wolcen, Last Epoch), the rest will soon be taken over by Borderlands 3, which as an arcade shooter with arpg elements is second to none, and everybody will be happy.

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postrach_myszy wrote:

Such a thing would be possible only in the case of total departure from the F2P model and the transition to the "season pass" model. The illusion of F2P, with all these "supporter packs" could only work in the case of "a small, garage company that will fall without support". Currently, Great Garbage Games is not small or garage. Unless they bought a multi-storey garage and now they are located there, with almost 200 employees.

Only that such a change is also impossible, for several reasons. First of all, Wilson and the main developers of the game have probably signed a disclaimer that they will not create any competition for the next 5 years. Secondly, in the case of transition to the "season pass" they would have to create something properly optimized and interesting, otherwise they would lose all customers after a year. They are not able to do this anymore. Fortunately for addicts, several PoE clones are already being created (Wolcen, Last Epoch), the rest will soon be taken over by Borderlands 3, which as an arcade shooter with arpg elements is second to none, and everybody will be happy.

It makes me depressed thinking about the direction of the game then. Then the future of PoE is endless bloat? Never-ending layers of RNG? More and more mtx ads and gambling boxes?

The future of this game reminds me of Habbo Hotel in the sense I never understood how that game became so popular. Soon, I might not understand why PoE is still popular.

Why would they transition to a season pass its what they already have? Also Tencent aren't going to buy the remainder of the shares there is literally no advantage to them in owning the remaining 20%, they can already dictate company policy if they desire but leaving shares in the hands of the developers themselves provides the best leverage for them to continue to succeed.

Like i've seen some shitty strawmen in my life but some of the shit in here is tinfoil hat levels of retarded, it was a GaaS talk to interested GaaS developers from one of the only developers that isn't dreadful at it.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

Why would they transition to a season pass its what they already have?

Wait, wait, wait. They don't have "season pass" yet, unless as a "season pass" you treat this sweet joke with "atlas shuffle" and map stash tab :P

When it comes to buyout rest of this 20%, it was mentioned in reddit by somebody from GGG, but then removed at an express rate, so not everyone had the opportunity to read it. When it comes to real season pass, they can not apply it because of the terrible quality of their product. Currently it is labeled as "free to play", which allows them to avoid requests for reimbursement of paid money.


In the case of season pass it would change. Let's assume, they applied season pass and then released league like Shitthesis, with awful, bugged content and "Betrayal freeze" as cherry on top. What would players do? They would demand a refund because the product is not working. Tragedy, from a financial and PR perspective. In that case even all these fanatical whiteclowns would not save them :P

they release dlc on a short term schedule and charge for it, its a season pass with voluntary payment that probably exceeds what you can actually charge for a season pass in regular terms.

As to the quality of the product its hardly like their competitors are shining examples, those in the same segment don't compete and the ones with a similar model are almost exclusively awful. Hopefully that is changing as for everything i've heard the division 2 has launched in remarkably complete state but currently the industry standard quality for GaaS type games is vastly below any other genre. The fact they succeeded at all is just a testament to how much shit you can serve the average player before they will actually stop buying.

Right now the only way to put it is i'll take their sometimes broken league mechanics over diablo 3, but i'd certainly like some more testing and general QA. If they get a legitimate competitor on the same model they are gonna have to change things up I suspect.

the 20% thing is retarded, chris could email me and tell me it was true and I wouldn't believe him.

I see what Chris talked about in the same light as Charan stated. That he is explaining to a group of other game developers what GGG has found out works best for the F2P business model. It wasn't ever meant to be about PoE game content, only how the frequent releases of new content shows that players will come back to check out that new content. Whether the player base likes or dislikes the new content isn't as important as being able to deliver new content at regular intervals. So players that don't like the current challenge league will stop playing but "I'll come back and check out PoE next league" and knowing exactly when that is (every 13 weeks for PoE) is most important. Humans do love routine and knowing that every 13 weeks there will be a challenge league reset and the race to 100 will start anew is what a majority of PoE players want. The mechanics of the new challenge league don't appear to matter as much as the start of a new race excitement. Top players will go with the meta builds and not care what that is for the new league mechanic, only that they can race to 100.

This all looks to me like GGG is coding PoE for the game junkies of the world. Racing is most important, role playing and strategy are out. Just keep the new leagues coming every 13 weeks, I need my next gaming fix. The hunt for tier 1 gear or crafting top gear is only a means to an end, racing to 100 is all that counts. Then the W.H.O. is right and gaming is an addiction. GGG is coding PoE to tap into the millions of addicts and take their money. All non-addict players lose as a result of this. Very sad to see GGG go this way but because they are now TencentGGG it isn't a surprise.

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Arrowneous wrote:

This all looks to me like GGG s coding PoE for the game junkies of the world. Racing is most important, role playing and strategy are out. Just keep the new leagues coming every 13 weeks, I need my next gaming fix. The hunt for tier 1 gear or crafting top gear is only a means to an end, racing to 100 is all that counts. Then the W.H.O. is right and gaming is an addiction. GGG is coding PoE to tap into the millions of addicts and take their money. All non-addict players lose as a result of this. Very sad to see GGG go this way but because they are now TencentGGG it isn't a surprise.

Basing a sales strategy on addicts is nothing new. Heroin and cocaine dealers have been using it for a long time with tremendous success. But in the case of computer games, something like that will not work in the long run. First of all, the monthly cost of playing heroin or cocaine repeatedly exceeds the cost of any "supporter packs", even bought in a package with some MTX cosmetics. Second, the number of addicts from PoE (and I'm talking about addicts who would require psychiatrist) I estimate at most 10,000. It means, even if everyone of them spent like $200 monthly, it will bring like $2 millions monthly. Not impressive, if we take into consideration these 200 employees, requiring a monthly salary, plus operating costs.

And last but not least, the WHO has recently added an addiction to computer games on the official list of mental illnesses. This means that such addiction has begun to be a problem, also for the economy. Rather sooner or later local governments will start to ban such practices. And then our hero can go down in history as a man in honor of whom some act was called against the suppliers of such a commodity. Some "Chris Wilson’s act" against addictive games :P

He starts out how D2 was so played for years on end essentially without updates then forgets about all that and says he has to entice players to come back every 13 weeks with a new marketing gimmick. Maybe landscape has changed and you can't do what D2 did again and just make a good fun game with ladder resets.

Either-way dude is obviously super clever and leader in his field and I'm sure aspiring game entrepreneurs learned a lot assembled there. All I learned is I'm being manipulated into these spikes.