Can Path of Exile compete with Lost Ark and Elden Ring?

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MadMossy wrote:

It's would be like comparing new world today with wow and its 9 expansions (that remain relevant the whole time) and expecting there to be similar amounts of content.

Thats actually not correct. Have you played LA before? With the introduction of T3 it became poe levels of grindy with more than enough to do. If one would be looking for a game to completely replace another, LA can do so.

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Zeronemo wrote:

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MadMossy wrote:

It's would be like comparing new world today with wow and its 9 expansions (that remain relevant the whole time) and expecting there to be similar amounts of content.

Thats actually not correct. Have you played LA before? With the introduction of T3 it became poe levels of grindy with more than enough to do. If one would be looking for a game to completely replace another, LA can do so.

Asking anyone if they played LA T3 in the west is irrelevant, the west will not be getting T3 content at launch and it could in fact be a very long time before that content is available to the west.

LA launch in the west will only have T1 and it could be months or even years before it has T3 available. From what I understand the T1 and T2 content is pretty limited.

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MadMossy wrote:

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Zeronemo wrote:

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MadMossy wrote:

It's would be like comparing new world today with wow and its 9 expansions (that remain relevant the whole time) and expecting there to be similar amounts of content.

Thats actually not correct. Have you played LA before? With the introduction of T3 it became poe levels of grindy with more than enough to do. If one would be looking for a game to completely replace another, LA can do so.

Asking anyone if they played LA T3 in the west is irrelevant, the west will not be getting T3 content at launch and it could in fact be a very long time before that content is available to the west.

LA launch in the west will only have T1 and it could be months or even years before it has T3 available. From what I understand the T1 and T2 content is pretty limited.

I dont know why my question if you played it would be irrelevant since you judged it. But nvm i guess. And yes it will very likely launch with T1/T2. However, they announced at the LOA ON event that they intend to push T3 as fast as possible for the west. For whatever that means.

More like can Lost Ark and Elden Ring compete with PoE?

Also Elden Ring is completely different game.

People play PoE for continuous character customization via highly randomized rng/crafted loot with a vast open tree/gem skill system, built on a centralized server based system.

Neither of the other two (or any other game including diablo) can compete if those points are what you want in an ARPG.

Lost Ark has set defined loot with specific class skills, server based, party-focused. Elden Ring is Dark Souls with skills assigned to pre-defined weapons, local based, solo focused. Neither is deep with customizing, and both follow more of the MMO standard with upgrades via bosses/raids/etc.


Last Epoch may become the closest to PoE eventually, however it lacks an openended skill tree like all other arpgs, and will need to show a solid server-side save to minimize cheats.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

I might be playing it a bit fast and loose here but would it be inaccurate to say that a clean difference between ARPG and MMO is that in an ARPG the vast majority of your exp comes from directly murdering things whereas in an MMO it comes from completing designated tasks?

Before WoW quests in most MMOs never really gave any significant exp. Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online, DAOC, Ragnarok Online, Lineage, Maple Story, etc. all these games had quests, in some of them they gave a little bit of exp, but mostly they were item/money/unlock rewards. You had to grind enemies to level. This usually involved going to specific regions or dungeons where mob exp was pretty good, this created leveling areas people congregated at to make leveling groups, it was a big part of the early MMORPG genre.

A lot of modern games in multiple genres have taken things from WoW, including the quest hub gameplay loop (which was partially taken from EQ I believe). Find a quest hub, get a handful of quests, do them all at the same time, turn them in for loads of exp, repeat. I'm not a fan. It's not an MMO mechanic though, it's more a WoW clone mechanic.

Even with the example WoW set it's generally pretty uncommon for a Korean MMO to have rewarding quest content though. It's basically a genre in itself, the "Korean grind MMO," where you need to do a lot of grinding to level up at higher levels. It sounds like Lost Ark eases you into the game with questing, then drops off into the expected enemy grind late game.

At any rate the distinction between a MMO and just an online multiplayer game, is the number of people that can play together. MMO basically just means more players than a typical group interacting with each other. Lost Ark is not the first MMO-ARPG, games like Marvel Heroes and Mythos came before, and Diablo 4 is going to be a MMO as well with world raid bosses and such.

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Astasia wrote:

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

I might be playing it a bit fast and loose here but would it be inaccurate to say that a clean difference between ARPG and MMO is that in an ARPG the vast majority of your exp comes from directly murdering things whereas in an MMO it comes from completing designated tasks?

Before WoW quests in most MMOs never really gave any significant exp. Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online, DAOC, Ragnarok Online, Lineage, Maple Story, etc. all these games had quests, in some of them they gave a little bit of exp, but mostly they were item/money/unlock rewards. You had to grind enemies to level. This usually involved going to specific regions or dungeons where mob exp was pretty good, this created leveling areas people congregated at to make leveling groups, it was a big part of the early MMORPG genre.

A lot of modern games in multiple genres have taken things from WoW, including the quest hub gameplay loop (which was partially taken from EQ I believe). Find a quest hub, get a handful of quests, do them all at the same time, turn them in for loads of exp, repeat. I'm not a fan. It's not an MMO mechanic though, it's more a WoW clone mechanic.

Even with the example WoW set it's generally pretty uncommon for a Korean MMO to have rewarding quest content though. It's basically a genre in itself, the "Korean grind MMO," where you need to do a lot of grinding to level up at higher levels. It sounds like Lost Ark eases you into the game with questing, then drops off into the expected enemy grind late game.

At any rate the distinction between a MMO and just an online multiplayer game, is the number of people that can play together. MMO basically just means more players than a typical group interacting with each other. Lost Ark is not the first MMO-ARPG, games like Marvel Heroes and Mythos came before, and Diablo 4 is going to be a MMO as well with world raid bosses and such.

I didn't remember Perfect World coming so far after WoW but you're right. WoW was pretty early. Perfect World also did a lot of quest XP and MTX and weapons/gear, as did Forsaken World.

But yeah. even full blown MMORPGS play mostly like a solo RPG, even if it's a global map for the grind. This is why I give Lost Ark such a short healthy shelf life before it gets sold to a publisher. The more the market saturates with still active but less in demand MMORPGS, the shorter the lifespan of new ones, even good ones, if they have excessive overhead costs.

POE Operates on about $59-60 mil a year. Most of these short lived MMORPGS operate on budgets well over $500 mil a year, yet still have close to the same sales model.

It also doesn't matter that they have 10 X the concurrent players. What matters is that they PAY. Larger MMORPG's have a much smaller slice of payers in their community, especially if characters start off looking good.

I've seen at least 200 games look an awful lot like Lost Ark to date, and played several. The more that look and behave alike, the shorter the lifespan.

I played Black Desert for about 9 months. It looked better than Lost Ark, and had better looking mounts, faster running, and similar combat controls. Why did I quit? Game after about 60 became all about teams, guilds, and I was just past that stage in my life. After running such large guilds, starting a real life, etc, I didn't want that anymore. I didn't have time for that.

I think Game Developers need to kind of learn that as well; Most players eventually get sick of guilding and it being the only method of play after a point. Not because they hate the game. Because they love the game but are too old for 6 hour raids and constant boss camping and guild vs guild campaigns.

That's why games like Diablo and POE draw these players in, even though the other games offer more. POE just has to add a minigame every league that effectively doesn't require a full code rewrite and area changes and expansions, and people come back and try it. Other games have to do all of the above and more just to keep people going.

I can't apply expertise on WoW because I took the Guild Wars route - at the time more realistic rendering than WOW, gameplay appealed more, and I didn't like the fact Blizzard was turning my favorite arena game and turning it into an MMORPG. It seemed like an abomination in every Gamestop I entered.

^ All of this.

Small addendum re DAoC: I mucked about on Phoenix and *Really* noticed the absence of quests and kill tasks. They accelerated everything to get you into RvR asap and that's just not why I played it back in the day.

Also yes, player concurrency per area is the easiest distinction but I've seen people here reject it for years so I figured we might find other angles.

Anyway this seems as good a terminus as any. Has been...nice.

I probably should have stopped with my one sentence reply. Eh. Maybe next time.

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Zeronemo wrote:

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Vennto wrote:

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Last Epoch chat is full with many PoE refugees. I don't think LE is going to be just a "small spot in the sun"

Not trolling, genuinely interested in that comment and how you come to your conclusion. If The LE-Chat is full of PoE-Refugees, doesn´t that actually confirm its just something that attracts people that are turned away from PoE and therefore a smaller audience instead of actually generating new people that are interested in the game by itself or what do you mean exactly by that?

Its still in early access and got much more attention when poe streamers started to play it. I think there are indeed alot of players that have played poe before. Other than that many people probably dont even know it exists. But its growing and showing progress.

looking like another wolcen to me
Like come on no one's saying you have to play Path of Exile but there is no other competition to this game. The only other competition that might ever exist is Diablo 4 but I'm sure GGG isn't even too worried by that anymore

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Imaginaerum wrote:

looking like another wolcen to me
Like come on no one's saying you have to play Path of Exile but there is no other competition to this game. The only other competition that might ever exist is Diablo 4 but I'm sure GGG isn't even too worried by that anymore

This thread isn't about the long term health of the PoE player population or GGG as a company. It's about the next league releasing a few days before or on the same day as a competing free to play game in a genre with relatively limited players. Wolcen was a $40 game that pulled in 125k players for the first week, even though it was an unfinished buggy mess, in a time where the next PoE league about a month later peaked at 133k (both Steam numbers). Now imagine if the PoE league started on the same day as the Wolcen release, that would have been a pretty rough league start.

People flock to new games even if they are terrible, Wolcen was a great example. It doesn't matter how good Lost Ark is long term or if it will play the way every ARPG player wants it to, it's free, it's hyped, many people are going to try it, and they are going to be trying while the PoE league has already started. The question asked by the OP is how much of an effect that will have on player numbers.