Should GGG swap to a 4-Month Season?

I honestly don't know how much an extra month would really help in these sort of situations. A lot of problems in heist have more to do with common sense or lack of it than anything, not to mention bugs will always be a thing on releases.

I think something that would really help out is to require devs to play the game, or tighten the hiring process by selecting devs that already play the game. If you treat this as just another job, you get these totally disconnected and out of touch implementations. I mean I consider myself to be very good at surviving in this game, and yet I'm getting absolutely dicked in lv50 heists. I can't imagine how bad it's gonna get at mapping heists. The only way this stuff can be this overtuned and given the OK to ship it out to release is if the devs don't play the game. At all.

will never happen
thats them giving up too much money

they should tho

they cannot do the 3 month schedule its clear they arent capable of releasing functional content on that kind of timeline

Development time is not the issue, the issue is the amount of content they produce for the duration of time. If they extend the development to 4 months, what makes them stop from just producing more content/complex content far beyond a 4 months cycle that can do. So in the end, we will just see larger or more content with the same polish as before.

The point is, they are getting more & more ambitious of what they want to try & push the boundaries of what they can do for their development cycle. They are biting more than what they can chew.

This is why most of the NOT well-received leagues are also the most complex, ambitious & most messy at launch, like Incursion, Syntheis, Harvest, even Delve. Delve is great now after many iterations, but Delve at launch was bad it even has worst player retention than Bestiary, 2nd poor retention to Incursion in 2018. Check PoE steam chart if you don't believe me.

So GGG has to decide, stick to 3 months schedule & just create "simple" leagues that they can easily do or continue being ambitious with the amount of content they can produce but extend the development cycle.

Yes. I think they should. It feels a little rushed and hectic at the moment.

If they are worried about losing one set of supporter packs, then why not release an extra pack mid league per league. That would bring the total packs up to 6 from 4. The mid league packs could contain pets, hideout items, etc.

With a four month league, there could also be more events and races. I would love to see GGG spend more time fostering the community instead of churning out more content.

i'll still say it wouldnt make any difference because they either cant afford to or cant be bothered to hire ppl to test the leagues so whether its 3 or 4 months we would still be getting the same untested buggy leagues.

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RitualMurder wrote:

they should tho

That's a mathematical/economy question, and not a subjective "I think"-question, which a lot of people in here seem to think.

Releasing content in the state of Heist on release, is not good enough. GGG need to do better. A lot better. But depriving them of 1/4 of their (main) income each year, is probably not the way to go in the long run.

Increase the amount of alpha testers, pay them a small fee per hour and give them clear-cut areas to test. They could also be a little bit more flexible on the length of a league, and increase the development time to 4 months when the ambition is greater, like in this league.

If not, I like Shag's idea, where the runtime of a league is 3 months, but they are adding a one-month "copy paste" event/race/mini-league in between, raising the development time to four mounths. These copy-paste events could have their own MTX and "event-packs", letting GGG keep their income.

3 months is fine. long enough to enjoy and not too long to wait if the league sucks(harvest).

Please keep in mind that beta testing (on a reasonable scale) could also mean diminished interest in the upcoming leagues because of leaked game content/mechanics.
Maybe i'm wrong, but i think league-start events are the most crucial part of customer retention in GGG's product cycle.

Speaking for myself, a 4 month cycle would be better...but that's just because i'm slow/bad af. I could also imagine that 4 months would be all-around better for GGG's production team. At the current pace it must be living hell...

They deffinetely should lose 15-20% of their income for internet Karma without any other gain at all. Very good idea.

You know, there is a way to keep a season interesting despite 4 month duration. GGG can introduce new stuff mid season like other challenges or events.