A small thought on what is wrong with the game's development vision

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Hackusations wrote:

The sad irony is this thread is exactly why GGG is better off sticking to their vision than catering to any of the complaints and solutions you people have. Players in general are terrible game designers. We are self-serving, we don't step back and consider the nature of the problem, and we jump on bandwagons blaming things we don't like.

RNG is the prime example. It's always blamed by some players for the lack of value found in randomized drops and the inevitable player solution is to ask for more deterministic options and/or outcomes. However, the fact is PoE has had most of this RNG in the itemization since inception. What it didn't always have was a crafting bench, harvest, beast crafting, etc... You couldn't block, copy, split, and meta craft to get something that was so far outside the norm of what could drop naturally. Deterministic crafting has inflated item power past what RNG can compete with and that's why GGG wants to reign it in so it can restore value to drops.

The OP's complaint about the accessibility of end-game content is another really common one. It's the "ought" mentality of today's gaming generation who all think they deserve to be able to see and do everything in the game at any level of commitment and understanding. It's the anti-thesis of pinnacle content and is the single most important ingredient in a dead RPG.

+1

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Asra101010 wrote:

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Hackusations wrote:

The sad irony is this thread is exactly why GGG is better off sticking to their vision than catering to any of the complaints and solutions you people have. Players in general are terrible game designers. We are self-serving, we don't step back and consider the nature of the problem, and we jump on bandwagons blaming things we don't like.

RNG is the prime example. It's always blamed by some players for the lack of value found in randomized drops and the inevitable player solution is to ask for more deterministic options and/or outcomes. However, the fact is PoE has had most of this RNG in the itemization since inception. What it didn't always have was a crafting bench, harvest, beast crafting, etc... You couldn't block, copy, split, and meta craft to get something that was so far outside the norm of what could drop naturally. Deterministic crafting has inflated item power past what RNG can compete with and that's why GGG wants to reign it in so it can restore value to drops.

The OP's complaint about the accessibility of end-game content is another really common one. It's the "ought" mentality of today's gaming generation who all think they deserve to be able to see and do everything in the game at any level of commitment and understanding. It's the anti-thesis of pinnacle content and is the single most important ingredient in a dead RPG.

+1

+2

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Vennto wrote:

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Asra101010 wrote:

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Hackusations wrote:

The sad irony is this thread is exactly why GGG is better off sticking to their vision than catering to any of the complaints and solutions you people have. Players in general are terrible game designers. We are self-serving, we don't step back and consider the nature of the problem, and we jump on bandwagons blaming things we don't like.

RNG is the prime example. It's always blamed by some players for the lack of value found in randomized drops and the inevitable player solution is to ask for more deterministic options and/or outcomes. However, the fact is PoE has had most of this RNG in the itemization since inception. What it didn't always have was a crafting bench, harvest, beast crafting, etc... You couldn't block, copy, split, and meta craft to get something that was so far outside the norm of what could drop naturally. Deterministic crafting has inflated item power past what RNG can compete with and that's why GGG wants to reign it in so it can restore value to drops.

The OP's complaint about the accessibility of end-game content is another really common one. It's the "ought" mentality of today's gaming generation who all think they deserve to be able to see and do everything in the game at any level of commitment and understanding. It's the anti-thesis of pinnacle content and is the single most important ingredient in a dead RPG.

+1

+2

Lol this is the ultimate in business malpractice.

If they do what you say they will have to lay off half their employees as resulting niche playerbase will be more like 20k not 150k concurrency wise.

All you have to do is look ay 3.15, and the loss of 30+% revenue and over 50% loss of players JUST DURING THE LAUNCH WEEEKED.

So sure, go ahead and completely kneecap the company, and ruin the lives of dozens of employees because you want to design around this elite concept of arpgs. That somehow accessibility and appealing to an average gamer should be frowned upon.

This is such an awful opinion in my view. I mean you are entitled to it, but it's so completely narrow-minded in the big picture.

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Hackusations wrote:

The sad irony is this thread is exactly why GGG is better off sticking to their vision than catering to any of the complaints and solutions you people have. Players in general are terrible game designers. We are self-serving, we don't step back and consider the nature of the problem, and we jump on bandwagons blaming things we don't like.

RNG is the prime example. It's always blamed by some players for the lack of value found in randomized drops and the inevitable player solution is to ask for more deterministic options and/or outcomes. However, the fact is PoE has had most of this RNG in the itemization since inception. What it didn't always have was a crafting bench, harvest, beast crafting, etc... You couldn't block, copy, split, and meta craft to get something that was so far outside the norm of what could drop naturally. Deterministic crafting has inflated item power past what RNG can compete with and that's why GGG wants to reign it in so it can restore value to drops.

The OP's complaint about the accessibility of end-game content is another really common one. It's the "ought" mentality of today's gaming generation who all think they deserve to be able to see and do everything in the game at any level of commitment and understanding. It's the anti-thesis of pinnacle content and is the single most important ingredient in a dead RPG.

You are half right which is often more dangerous than not being right at all.

Consider early in PoE development, if you found something on the ground with hp, resists, maybe one offensive mod, it was conceivably something that you could keep through the endgame.

Fast forward to today, to find something you would use through endgame, what are the chances? Almost zero.

RNG has stayed the same but GGG has built the game around pretty high level items, due to crafting from delve, essences, influenced mods, even Harvest.

So while RNG has always been there, where you you used to have a 1/200 shot of finding a useful drop, now maybe its 1/10,000. RNG has moved against you finding good drops on the ground.

When you add in you need it drop from influenced items, now maybe its 1/20,000.

The game has fundamentally moved away from anyone using RNG-acquired loot to play endgame.



Secondly, players do have differing opinions, some are short sighted, but to actively ignore them means basically you don't care if your game survives at all.

What Chris WIlson's vision for PoE was, where you spam exalts on gear all day hoping for 2 hp/sec, or 10 life gain on kill, etc. we are clearly not playing that game.

No one suggest GGG simply take all player suggestions wholesale, that would be the second worst option. The only worse one is to silo themselves in from any feedback and criticism and build something no one but Chris wants to play. At least the first option would be interestly chaotic and goofy.

Its not a binary choice. Obey player / ignore players is a false argument.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Lol this is the ultimate in business malpractice.

This is just sad, sorry.

Every game in the world doesn't have to appeal to everyone. To the "masses". It's totally OK to find a "niche gap" in the market, without people labeling them as failures from a business point of view. I think GGG knows very well that PoE will never appeal to the masses in the same way as your precious Diablo 3, because while Diablo 3's main feature was "dumbing" down the game JUST to reach "everyone" (business success?), PoE was created for people wanting more. A deeper, more complex experience. To then make fun of that decision, seems kind of arrogant.

I'm sure you've played a subjectively good game that didn't/don't have a lot of players, or are you only following numbers?

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Anthoson wrote:

Consider this in other MMOs

You lost me

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jewdas12 wrote:

poe is not an mmo, and therefor have an entirely different approach to character progression.
poe is an arpg which at its core is about randomized items, and grinding for said items by pulling a slot machine 10 million times a day.
this is what its always gonna be

This.

But ya. Chris thinks we like slamming for thorns, or 5 life reg per sec. He's so out of touch it's mind boggling.

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Phrazz wrote:

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Lol this is the ultimate in business malpractice.

This is just sad, sorry.

Every game in the world doesn't have to appeal to everyone. To the "masses". It's totally OK to find a "niche gap" in the market, without people labeling them as failures from a business point of view. I think GGG knows very well that PoE will never appeal to the masses in the same way as your precious Diablo 3, because while Diablo 3's main feature was "dumbing" down the game JUST to reach "everyone" (business success?), PoE was created for people wanting more. A deeper, more complex experience. To then make fun of that decision, seems kind of arrogant.

I'm sure you've played a subjectively good game that didn't/don't have a lot of players, or are you only following numbers?

Dont be sad, I agree with you actually. There are plenty of small games, low played, low hyped games. I love many of these.

But that's not the direction GGG went. These are all self inflicted development wounds. They are trying to correct but dont want to lose money or players for the time the spent moving in the larger appeal direction.

GGG would have been much better off, concept wise, if they remained true to their orginal concepts & values. Unfortunately you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube without significant business consequences.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Lol this is the ultimate in business malpractice.

If they do what you say they will have to lay off half their employees as resulting niche playerbase will be more like 20k not 150k concurrency wise.

All you have to do is look ay 3.15, and the loss of 30+% revenue and over 50% loss of players JUST DURING THE LAUNCH WEEEKED.

So sure, go ahead and completely kneecap the company, and ruin the lives of dozens of employees because you want to design around this elite concept of arpgs. That somehow accessibility and appealing to an average gamer should be frowned upon.

This is such an awful opinion in my view. I mean you are entitled to it, but it's so completely narrow-minded in the big picture.

Clearly they've made a wrong turn. Candy Crush has 250 million players. Imagine how many people they could employee if they just make the game start to look more like Candy Crush. That's what we are here for right? Making sure GGG employees stay employed. Right?

It's pretty selfish of them to think about POE and develop it to how they think it should be when there are models out there of how to increase the player base dramatically, and in turn potentially employ more people.

Okay, now that the sarcasm is out of my system.

I would say stop clutching your pearls. Seriously, that is a really bad take from someone that is actively boycotting the game and trashing it at every turn. If the 3.13 or bust crowd really cared about the employees, they would not be trashing the game at every turn until they get their way. This isn't about the employees. This is weaponizing and politicizing a bad situation and somehow making it seem like....well, in your words, business malpractice. It's propaganda to support your position and nothing more. You don't care about the employees any more or less than the people that want to see the game stay on this course -- and certainly not more than Chris Wilson.

Businesses hire and fire people all the time. There are absolutely times when a business fires people to become lean so that they can get back to the roots of whatever they want or intend to be. If that's the course that is taken to keep this game from becoming Candy Crush (and by that I mean appealing to more and more people for the sake of popularity at the expense of their design goals), then I think it's the right call. Businesses are made up of people, but they're not in business just to employ people. That's just a side benefit as long it as aligns with the goals of the business.

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Nubatron wrote:

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Lol this is the ultimate in business malpractice.

If they do what you say they will have to lay off half their employees as resulting niche playerbase will be more like 20k not 150k concurrency wise.

All you have to do is look ay 3.15, and the loss of 30+% revenue and over 50% loss of players JUST DURING THE LAUNCH WEEEKED.

So sure, go ahead and completely kneecap the company, and ruin the lives of dozens of employees because you want to design around this elite concept of arpgs. That somehow accessibility and appealing to an average gamer should be frowned upon.

This is such an awful opinion in my view. I mean you are entitled to it, but it's so completely narrow-minded in the big picture.

Clearly they've made a wrong turn. Candy Crush has 250 million players. Imagine how many people they could employee if they just make the game start to look more like Candy Crush. That's what we are here for right? Making sure GGG employees stay employed. Right?

It's pretty selfish of them to think about POE and develop it to how they think it should be when there are models out there of how to increase the player base dramatically, and in turn potentially employ more people.

Okay, now that the sarcasm is out of my system.

I would say stop clutching your pearls. Seriously, that is a really bad take from someone that is actively boycotting the game and trashing it at every turn. If the 3.13 or bust crowd really cared about the employees, they would not be trashing the game at every turn until they get their way. This isn't about the employees. This is weaponizing a bad situation and somehow making it seem like....well, in your words, business malpractice.

Businesses hire and fire people all the time. There are absolutely times when a business fires people to become lean so that they can get back to the roots of whatever they want or intend to be. If that's the course that is taken to keep this game from becoming Candy Crush (and by that I mean appealing to more and more people), then I think it's the right call. Businesses are made up of people, but they're not in business just to employ people. That's just a side benefit as long it as aligns with the goals of the business.

Listen it's fine to disagree with me, but it doesnt make anything I said less true concept wise. GGG is trying to design and appeal to conflicting playerbases and revenues streams at the same time, and its polarizing everything they do and say.

It came to a head, largely I think during harvest, and its been festering ever since.

It's an untenable situation, and I don't know if Chris can go to Tencent (the actual owners) with these dramatic reductions in players and revenue in the name of some sort of developmental purity concept. That shipped sailed.

Edit: Full disclosure that GGG wasn't always like this. When they were a small indie company I tried to help wherever I could. I've promoted the game to friends and family. I've given them thousands of dollars in support. The early community interactions between Devs and Players was nearly unprecedented. The current GGG is but a shadow and thought of what it was in the early 2010's

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Listen it's fine to disagree with me, but it doesnt make anything I said less true concept wise. GGG is trying do design and appeal to conflicting playerbases and revenues streams at the same time, and its polarizing everything they do and say.

It came to a head, largely I think during harvest, and its been festering ever since.

It's an untenable situation, and I don't know if Chris can go to Tencent (the actual owners) with these dramatic reductions in players and revenue in the name of some sort of developmental purity concept. That shipped sailed.

Zero. That is how much we know about the business arrangement with Tencent. For all we know, the agreement includes autonomy of development as long as they get to distribute a modified version of it within China.. There was an interview at one point where Chris either explicitly stated or implied that he has complete control over the direction of the development. I don't recall the exact words.

Now that might be a verbal agreement, or it could be written into the sale.

I suspect that Tencent is making a killing in China with their P2W model no matter what they do with the global market.

But like I said, we know pretty much nothing about that business arrangement and have assumed a lot because of the void of knowledge.