Harvest has the highest 1 week player dropout rate in poe history

"

TheFazzo wrote:

Uh... Ok, I'll give you 11 weeks and 6 days, can you do the same or better?

Why do people keep using this silly argument as an excuse for a piss poor job? We are not game developers. We didn't choose game developer job. We didn't put ourselves in this position.

They on the other hand chose their job willingfully so they need to do it good if they decided to put themselves in this position. If someone claims to be an expert in some field then they should do their job properly instead of saying to non-experts: 'Can you do a better job? At least I'm doing something.'

Few weeks ago I watched a random episode of Britains Got Talent where some female singer sang very terribly, and of course received negative comments from the judges. After that she said to the judges: "Do you think you can sing better than me? Then come to the stage and show me." To which someone replied: 'But it was you who decided to come to this stage, to sing, to show your 'talent' and not us. We came here to judge and not to sing'. It's the same silly argument.

Regardless of how people feel about it, the league itself failed. That some like it, of course, but overall the league is one of the weakest in recent years,there is a serious drop in player numbers.

Crafting already had a pretty steep learning curve, harvest could have been the perfect opportunity to get people into crafting. Unfortunately what it did is to deter people from doing just that.

Those that were already into crafting have a nice league,everyone else who wasn't passionate about crafting simply started abandoning the league. The garden,the planting,the harvesting and then the crafting.

Why could they have not done this in a matter that is uncomplicated and less time consuming? I bet anyone that if the entire garden would have been reworked,without needing special charts to build up a garden,and the crafting system would have been better explained (something that the most recent patch at least tries to do, with those little icons near the craft), more and more people would have been persuaded to stay and try out crafting.

"

Nephalim wrote:

I can't imagine what it would feel like for Chris or the programmers to read this. The amount of complexity it took to code harvest is immense and maybe its not something you can apreciate unless you're a programmer yourself but every league I am amazed at how talented their development team is.

Think for a second what it would take just to code the pathing of hundreds of interconnected storage tanks and dispensers and have it all work meaningfully.

It's one thing to voice your dislike of league but to critique their devotion and ability is another thing.

Now that is a completely fair point - especially given the game's humble beginnings.

"

Nephalim wrote:

"

KingDarkness wrote:

"

Arkanis_Gath wrote:

I work in finance and logistic. I spend my whole working time on excel, SAP in planning boring things for 10 hours a day.
After this, i just want to PLAY A GAME and have some fun ! i wouldn't even manage a harvest garden if GGG payed me for.


Synthesis was a major failed because too complex and GGG recognized it was a mistake. So they went in a good way with Legion, blight, metamorph and delirium. Meet the event ... do it ... get your reward ... collect for special rewarding event. Simple and efficient. Relaxing gameplay. Why Harvest ????

Of course i can copy a garden template but i really don't want.

Harvest is also a nerfed league ; a very few build are viable for casual players like me. I made a VD necro as a starter ... fine choice ... but quite the only choice ... so price are completely unaffordable so im totally stucked.

I tried sirus A5 and couldn't beat him. Still another frustration and i reinstalled Diablo III to find some fun in playing ( can you believe it ???)

I've heard they've put about 12 weeks work on Harvest to release it. It's only 1 NPC with voices, 1 map, 1 system and nothing else. 12 WEEKS?! what a joke. they are sitting back and gain money.. shame on GGG. who brought you on this idea?! do you think only because poe2 will come out, to get us little skip-leagues until release that we are happy about it?

I can't imagine what it would feel like for Chris or the programmers to read this. The amount of complexity it took to code harvest is immense and maybe its not something you can apreciate unless you're a programmer yourself but every league I am amazed at how talented their development team is.

Think for a second what it would take just to code the pathing of hundreds of interconnected storage tanks and dispensers and have it all work meaningfully.

It's one thing to voice your dislike of league but to critique their devotion and ability is another thing.

Someone's ability to program great/amazing things is irrelevant to its implementation in a game. In this case, you are right, Harvest is a great example. But it doesn't fit the aRPG flow at all, it breaks it.

the crafting needs to stay in some way since it's actually a fun way to craft but the garden mechanic needs to fuck off

"

TheFazzo wrote:

Uh... Ok, I'll give you 11 weeks and 6 days, can you do the same or better?

Well, the first problem here would be giving my team of programmers not enough time to deliver anything with reasonable quality, so that`s already a big company mistake.

For the past years it was already more than proved that 3 months is not enough time to deliver quality content. So the correct thing to do would be sacrificing a little of my company profit to deliver a product with higher quality and ensure i keep my clients.

Unfortunately gamers nowadays have a serious problem of spending money in shining things, and then complaining their shining thing is broken just to buy the new shiny thing the next day, to complain again, repeat.

This created a market enviroment where companies don`t even care anymore about quality. The way to make piles of money in the gaming industry is building as many shiny products as fast as you can. While ignoring all complains, since they don`t matter, because the people complaining will buy the next shiny thing anyway.

"

TheFazzo wrote:

"

Mortyx wrote:

Well, the first problem here would be giving my team of programmers not enough time to deliver anything with reasonable quality, so that`s already a big company mistake.

For the past years it was already more than proved that 3 months is not enough time to deliver quality content. So the correct thing to do would be sacrificing a little of my company profit to deliver a product with higher quality and ensure i keep my clients.

Unfortunately gamers nowadays have a serious problem of spending money in shining things, and then complaining their shining thing is broken just to buy the new shiny thing the next day, to complain again, repeat.

This created a market enviroment where companies don`t even care anymore about quality. The way to make piles of money in the gaming industry is building as many shiny products as fast as you can. While ignoring all complains, since they don`t matter, because the people complaining will buy the next shiny thing anyway.

It's not a mystery that GGG's model is to put out as much content as possible in a fraction of the time in order to keep the game fresh and interesting. The fact that this game is free and its business model is based more or less in the good will of players, and the fact that GGG is a small company even if it is owned by a colossus adds up.

At this point 80% of their efforts are concentrated on POE 2 and it's inevitable that in a small amount of time they can't put out the best product possible. But it's a good product, especially considered that 1) it's free and 2) every league is programmed in 3 months.

Yeah but what about all the PC supporters that invested thousand of dollars in the PC game just to see they reducing the overall game quality to produce "console PoE" and "mobile PoE" and probably a "poe cardgame" soon.

They are not F2P because they are benevolent, it`s because that`s the most profitable route an online game can take. And i like the game, but i have no doubt quality has been going down and down. Based on what i saw and was said in exile con, if i had to bet Between Poe 2 and Poe mobile i would bet that 90% of the human resources and money is going to Poe mobile right now.

And that`s what pisses me off. They could say they don`t have enough people to deliver or whatever if they were no bifurcating their work in 10 different directions aiming for the max profit/minute, but that`s Tencent for you.

"

Mortyx wrote:

Yeah but what about all the PC supporters that invested thousand of dollars in the PC game just to see they reducing the overall game quality to produce "console PoE" and "mobile PoE" and probably a "poe cardgame" soon.

Console poe was used as a test bed for several game optimizations

mobile poe if i recall is its own little thing and diversification is important.

Also the big issue most ye oldie players like myself have with poe is not game quality or a lack of features.

its powercreep, layered rng and dodad clutter.

In point of fact.. there is to much shit in poe.

"

TheFazzo wrote:

Uh... Ok, I'll give you 11 weeks and 6 days, can you do the same or better?

If I had access to their development staff, artists, and resources, I could have done a better job implementing it in 8 weeks with 3 weeks left to bug test.

Edited to add: Virtue of hindsight is I would know which flaws to avoid and what to change.

"

Mortyx wrote:

"

TheFazzo wrote:

Uh... Ok, I'll give you 11 weeks and 6 days, can you do the same or better?

Well, the first problem here would be giving my team of programmers not enough time to deliver anything with reasonable quality, so that`s already a big company mistake.

For the past years it was already more than proved that 3 months is not enough time to deliver quality content. So the correct thing to do would be sacrificing a little of my company profit to deliver a product with higher quality and ensure i keep my clients.

Unfortunately gamers nowadays have a serious problem of spending money in shining things, and then complaining their shining thing is broken just to buy the new shiny thing the next day, to complain again, repeat.

This created a market enviroment where companies don`t even care anymore about quality. The way to make piles of money in the gaming industry is building as many shiny products as fast as you can. While ignoring all complains, since they don`t matter, because the people complaining will buy the next shiny thing anyway.

The focus on microtransactions has definitely impacted quality. Before the industry relied heavily on positive press and favorable word of mouth to sell units, but now it's simply more profitable to rely on microtransactions. When selling copies by the thousands quality mattered a lot more. But if you can spend a lot less simply by selling digital cosmetics - the money will always decide in the end for better or worse.

Take LoL for example, the latest installment of their Team Fight Tactics now forces you to pay for a pass if you want access to rewards that you also have to unlock through gameplay. So, now we're beyond buying cosmetics, but having to pay for something you still have to earn. And of course, they're pushing this to mobile as well.

The problem when microtransactions take over is that they drive development (or lackthereof). If for less than a days worth of work you can re-color a skin and have hundreds of people buy it, that's going to appeal more to management than devoting hours to improving gameplay with no obvious financial gain.