Will anything ever change Chris Wilson's philosophy on PoE?

I've seen enough interviews with Chris Wilson to get a general feel of what he believes in.

All of it seems to be focused around their vision of retention.

The general gist from what I have seen is that Poe really sells out to cater to the hardcore players who likely blow through the game in a month and then are done.

They understand the dynamic of this and have accounted for it, but it really seems like this is what they base their business model off of and all the casual players really don't matter in the grand scheme of things.

If you think about it, this is why they thought having streamer queue access would be such a fantastic idea and were ignorant of the potential blowback over it, it's why they killed harvest, because those hardcore players were crafting God like weapons and finishing the game in a couple weeks instead of a month, and why they nerfed the drop rate because those same players were finishing quicker than they had wanted them to.

So setting aside any particular arguments regarding their view of casual players, which personally I find indisputable based on their actions instead of their words, let's actually focus on what their focused on.

They took a league that likely would have been pretty fun and otherwise mucked up the economy in order to artificially slow down the hardcore players which trickled down and affected everyone. This typically has been their history.

What I also know is early on in the league people got so burnt out so quickly that we even lost some major Poe streamers who decided to give up on the game.

Generally, when things like this happen, one of two things can happen.

The more likely is the developer doubles down. They make it even harder and try to slow it down even more because they are so myopically locked onto their vision that they don't realize they are harming their game and that the game ultimately is about the fun for the players. The fun is what keeps people coming back. There's always a grind in Poe but it's a delicate balance because if you lean into making it too grindy, it becomes less fun and people quit, even the hardcore. Of course I see the other way, if you make it too easy and have deterministic crafting, it becomes too easy and those same people burn through the game just as quick anyway and while they are likely to come back next week it still affects the bottom line because they are still exiting at the same time. So less revenue still but at least you hold on to your repeat customers.


The point I'm trying to make is, doesn't this whole system if you take a step back and look at all of it, seem like something that is very hard to balance and that can go out of whack at any time? Isn't that a very tenuous business model?

It just seems a very volatile thing to base your business on and the slightest mistakes can end up magnifying and blowing up on you similar to what happened at the start of this league.

I think he's too stubborn to ever do it, but isn't there potentially better business models out there that would be less affected by deterministic crafting or economic volatility, or even less affected by progression of players through the content?

One of the things I've always found fascinating with path of Exile is the number of builds you can make on any given character.

Why not change gears and make it so that for those hardcore guys, the Chase isn't getting a character through endgame and to level 100 and then allowing them to pack up, but instead set a bar that rewards the hardcore players who perhaps level as many characters as possible to a certain predetermined threshold, and the top five or 10 are rewarded with say, free course supporter packs?

the person who does the best gets the one that's $480 the second best the one that's half that and so on and so on.

The idea is yes, you are giving away free supporter packs to your top winners, but the upshot is that hopefully you get enough hardcore staying beyond there one month limit in order to try to win those things and therefore because they are staying over the life of the league, the entire leak benefits.

It makes it so that end game isn't the dropout point anymore. Of course I don't know if that's something the hardcore would be interested in but I think whatever it is you need a significant enough carrot for them to chase to make it worth their while.

And it just seems like a lot of the problems Poe has run into is from Chris Wilson trying to enforce his current business model, which from my eyes seems very delicate and easily broken, and once enough small mistakes have been made or a large enough big mistake, it threatens to have everybody burn out and give up.

It might be worth it for them to at least look into other possibilities that will allow them to retain players but still allow players to have fun in their game, which is the key to retention.

I just think the way to do it is to give the hardcore a new carrot to Chase instead of trying to artificially slow down them getting to their current carrot

didn't read all that but i sure freaking hope not

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The general gist from what I have seen is that Poe really sells out to cater to the hardcore players who likely blow through the game in a month and then are done.

They don´t. They simply balance the game around those players which is a fairly common practise, as you balance games from the top down.

"

They understand the dynamic of this and have accounted for it, but it really seems like this is what they base their business model off of and all the casual players really don't matter in the grand scheme of things.

They do matter, a lot in fact as the majority of the income comes from small investments from a larger group rather than a very tiny community of big spenders.

"

it's why they killed harvest

I can´t hear that anymore. Aren´t you people tired at some point always spinning the same fairytale? Harvest was too strong. Period. Good players will always craft top-tier items, but Harvest completely killed any randomness out of the crafting-process. And while the "closed eyes ex-slamming" became a meme the design philosophy of a bit randomness in the crafting-process still stands. Get over it, and learn the damn game, you don´t need 6x T1 items to clear it. It starts to be really embarassing to not only repeatedly mention that but also saying it was a decisive nerf to some group or the other. It was a nerf of a broken mechanic, what is so damn difficult to understand about that?

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So setting aside any particular arguments regarding their view of casual players, which personally I find indisputable based on their actions instead of their words, let's actually focus on what their focused on.

This is very much disputable, but you, as many others, disguise your invalid and shortsighted arguments in a wall of text in the hopes everyone else just oversees how insufficient they are. Cherrypicking at it´s best. Did you notice that in the last 2 leagues they gave TONS of options for more casual gamers to make money/farm specific content? Introduced more player agency to tune down the bloat of content, etc? Na, why talk about that, this would go against the point you´re trying to make.

"

The point I'm trying to make is, doesn't this whole system if you take a step back and look at all of it, seem like something that is very hard to balance and that can go out of whack at any time? Isn't that a very tenuous business model?

Not at all. There is no game out there right now with that much replayability as path of exile. On top of the detailled and complex content that´s existing already anyway we also get a fresh new league mechanic, possible new ways to produce items, balance-changes etc that all contribute to ever-changing metas. I don´t see any problems with player retention if you deliver this. Compare it to D3. No new content for 5 years, congrats. I´d rather push 200$ into GGG than spending another daim on any blizzard products.

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I just think the way to do it is to give the hardcore a new carrot to Chase instead of trying to artificially slow down them getting to their current carrot

Hell of a random and useless statement. What is that carrot supposed to be? Any great ideas? No? Thought so. Just hot smoke, as from any other wall of text.

TLDR: Not worth reading and answering your post.

It obviously works, numbers increase and they are raking in the cash...

So why would they change? Daft question.

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Vennto wrote:

"

The general gist from what I have seen is that Poe really sells out to cater to the hardcore players who likely blow through the game in a month and then are done.

They don´t. They simply balance the game around those players which is a fairly common practise, as you balance games from the top down.

"

They understand the dynamic of this and have accounted for it, but it really seems like this is what they base their business model off of and all the casual players really don't matter in the grand scheme of things.

They do matter, a lot in fact as the majority of the income comes from small investments from a larger group rather than a very tiny community of big spenders.

"

it's why they killed harvest

I can´t hear that anymore. Aren´t you people tired at some point always spinning the same fairytale? Harvest was too strong. Period. Good players will always craft top-tier items, but Harvest completely killed any randomness out of the crafting-process. And while the "closed eyes ex-slamming" became a meme the design philosophy of a bit randomness in the crafting-process still stands. Get over it, and learn the damn game, you don´t need 6x T1 items to clear it. It starts to be really embarassing to not only repeatedly mention that but also saying it was a decisive nerf to some group or the other. It was a nerf of a broken mechanic, what is so damn difficult to understand about that?

"

So setting aside any particular arguments regarding their view of casual players, which personally I find indisputable based on their actions instead of their words, let's actually focus on what their focused on.

This is very much disputable, but you, as many others, disguise your invalid and shortsighted arguments in a wall of text in the hopes everyone else just oversees how insufficient they are. Cherrypicking at it´s best. Did you notice that in the last 2 leagues they gave TONS of options for more casual gamers to make money/farm specific content? Introduced more player agency to tune down the bloat of content, etc? Na, why talk about that, this would go against the point you´re trying to make.

"

The point I'm trying to make is, doesn't this whole system if you take a step back and look at all of it, seem like something that is very hard to balance and that can go out of whack at any time? Isn't that a very tenuous business model?

Not at all. There is no game out there right now with that much replayability as path of exile. On top of the detailled and complex content that´s existing already anyway we also get a fresh new league mechanic, possible new ways to produce items, balance-changes etc that all contribute to ever-changing metas. I don´t see any problems with player retention if you deliver this. Compare it to D3. No new content for 5 years, congrats. I´d rather push 200$ into GGG than spending another daim on any blizzard products.

"

I just think the way to do it is to give the hardcore a new carrot to Chase instead of trying to artificially slow down them getting to their current carrot

Hell of a random and useless statement. What is that carrot supposed to be? Any great ideas? No? Thought so. Just hot smoke, as from any other wall of text.

TLDR: Not worth reading and answering your post.

TLDR: your response is not worth reading

The people he's "not catering to" are casuals that think they should have the same results as the non-casuals.

Normal players, causual or not, are just enjoying the game and not posting their manifestos on the forum.

This game was made by hardcore player and for hardcore players.
It's rare enought that i don't see why you want to destroy the few island hardcore players have.

Let us breath ffs casual oriented game have killed gaming enought already

Chris did't pass yellow maps so his vision is based on streams and analytics. As long as streamers are happy and the numbers are fine nothing will change. Or maybe he take the time to play his own game.

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SpacePilot3000 wrote:

Chris did't pass yellow maps so his vision is based on streams and analytics. As long as streamers are happy and the numbers are fine nothing will change. Or maybe he take the time to play his own game.

Not everyone plays it the way you do... and not everyone who plays it differently is doing something wrong. Chris doesn't need to play at the level you do just like a brain surgeon doesn't need to have his brain operated on so that he can experience it at the same level as the patient.

"

Vennto wrote:

I can´t hear that anymore. Aren´t you people tired at some point always spinning the same fairytale? Harvest was too strong. Period. Good players will always craft top-tier items, but Harvest completely killed any randomness out of the crafting-process. And while the "closed eyes ex-slamming" became a meme the design philosophy of a bit randomness in the crafting-process still stands. Get over it, and learn the damn game, you don´t need 6x T1 items to clear it. It starts to be really embarassing to not only repeatedly mention that but also saying it was a decisive nerf to some group or the other. It was a nerf of a broken mechanic, what is so damn difficult to understand about that?

Sry to jump in like this, but you've started with PoE in 2020. in first league with new Atlas.
Mayor changes to PoE started in 2018. by bringing leagues into the core are big part of it, like Delve.

Since 2018. PoE has been inflated to the extent, that you need prob 3x more time for finish the Atlas (which is garbage btw).
Monster hp 3x.
Content 5x or more.

Crafting was good before. You had "multimod" suffix and choose rest from the bench.
Something that I feel was sufficient enough for vast majority of players to make decent items. NERFED

Hybrid mods NERFED

Fossil Crafting NERFED

Betrayal mods, unveil every single fking league.

Ultimately we got Harvest which was the best thing that happened to this game since the introduction of Uber Elder fight. KILLED

There is a reason Harvest manifesto has 500 pages of protesting posts.

PoE atm is in the worse state at least since I've started to play. It's a bloated mess badly designed with the goal to waste your time.
There is so little fun in between that for the first time i can't force myself to play it.

Crafting became so convoluted that I have no desire to watch a single tutorial for a god knows which time again in my PoE history. It is one big piece of sh*t.

Take your time but you will realize this as time passes. I still had your enthusiasm year ago.
Now, i'd rather watch the paint dry then go thru the process of grinding my time for scraps of fun.