Why is this game only for hardcore players?

Casual players don't worry about reaching the end game.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

Casual players don't worry about reaching the end game.

I am thinking your posting lacks connection to any sorts of reasoning and context.

Like you just wanna throw it out there with a new account.

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Impiousbe wrote:

If you followed some of the interviews a while back when the "hard mode" idea was floated out you could tell that CW's enthousiasm was peaked at that point. Their personal ideology is based on what they enjoy the most themselves which is hard and punishing gameplay.

Obviously GGG has data to go off of so I am sure this "making acts more difficult" is based in a scenario where the shift in difficulty between the campaign and maps was often too large and they see a very large drop off in player retention at that point. The idea being that if the game is scaled early on that players might hang around longer if the shift to maps is more gradual in difficulty.

That being said I remember a few leagues ago trying to introduce a friend that has 1000's of D2 hours under his belt to poe and he quit as his marauder was getting destroyed despite the fact that thematically it should be a somewhat tanky character early doors.

The learning curve is too steep for new players, even those that have a lot of arpg experience. For me personally I have played the campaign often enough that the thing has turned in to a necessary evil that you have to grind through before you start the end game and the way this patch has slowed that down even more had me taking breaks because it was so tedious. I have 1500 hours in this game and this is the first time I had time to play early in the league and just wanted to not play after wailing away at an einhar beast that couldn't touch me but took a couple of minutes to actually kill.

It has become clear that this game desperately needs a beta testing system for leagues. Unfortunately I get the feeling that GGG don't hold player feedback in high regard because GGG knows best.

It is very clear that they don't play their game. And the buff of the story mode or act one was their (pretty bad) answer to the problem, that the people are bored of the tedious leveling.

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Sometimes I wonder if the push for annoyingly hard content has something to do with real money ingame item/currency trading.

I can promise that I have thought this so many times, i'm not a conspiracy theory's friend but, if you use the simple logic...

I do think that currently they can really include real beta testing in their development cycle. It would mean that likely the next league would have to be done 3 months earlier.

And they don't have resources to make. If they would, then comes the problem that the things on which the league is reacting are now at least 6 months old if not more. That's inflexible.

I am not hardcore im casual af i still steamroll this game. Very ez game should be harder imho.

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Acolina87 wrote:

I am not hardcore im casual af i still steamroll this game. Very ez game should be harder imho.

1/10 needs more potato

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m00ne wrote:

Im casual player playing for fun and I m wondering why is this game so hard.

That's one of its design goals.
But, as someone else also mentioned, GGG are bad at balancing and players are bad at agreeing on what is hard - and then there's content entitlement. People assume they are entitled to play even the hardest endgame content and beat it with any build. This just does not work in PoE and the designers want it to be that way.

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Mikrotherion wrote:

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m00ne wrote:

Im casual player playing for fun and I m wondering why is this game so hard.

the hardest endgame content and beat it with any build. This just does not work in PoE and the designers want it to be that way.

WFC?

They don't know what they are doing, that's the issue.

They have a (well, Chris and Woodful do, and the rest are forced to comply, if they wanna keep on working for Chris and Woodful) design philosophy.

Great.

But the game/genre has fundamental issues or schema that have to be accounted for in order for progression to be other than schotastic, or to be simpler, if you remove player agency and make the inner workings of the game too arcane/outright unfathomable, and then on top of that add in untested "features" that NO amount of agency can overcome, you don't have a game, you have a Gordion knot that only hacking can overcome.

Archnemesis mods can only exist in a bubble where the original concept is also present, that is, a player has weeks to learn what the modnames do, can opt in out, and then has agency (that's not really the right word, more like "is given the key to the realm" or has the master tut-tutting them when they attempt to write down an incorrect answer on the exam), which for the absolute majority of players of ARPGs, is what they are looking for.

This league is an abject failure, as I predicted. Chris can make any sort of game he wants, there's no way we can make do what we want, and people are going to vote w/ player engagement metrics.

Simple as that.

The short answer is they want it to be that way.

The hypotheticals are imo:

One way to look at it is "Well if everything is easy, you'll get bored and quit".
With that fear in mind (which is imo a polarizing way of splitting the playerbase, all-easy cinematic walkthrough vs die-hards) and elitism ("I overcame that and it felt amazing, you don't belong near us if you're not good enough" / "I overcame that and it was a pain, I want you to feel that pain too" / "I overcame that and so should you, because I matter and you follow" etc.) you might get a core that adores you, but not much else. And maybe they're ok with that...at some point a cry becomes just a statistic, right? ;) Oh, history' never-learned lessons...

Another way to look at it is: "Hey, if you're paying, you already voted", which is a bad way.

Another aspect could be conflicting managers, good cop bad cop at play with players getting the shaft in middle.

Another aspect could be shareholders (not sure how much they dictate). If they have a say in your next month's wallet, you'll bend or break or leave.

Another way to look at it is "Hmm, well it seems this or that game is popular AND it's hard, let's give them s'more!".
In trying to attract that kind of playerbase, you lose from your own. They have the numbers, to decide if that's good or bad.

Another way is "hardships make good character/people". Sure it does, but do those hardships have as much permanence as in PoE? No...Once you overcome them, you don't always want to go back to them.

Another way is about looking at money spent on games
"I support because I enjoyed the game." mentality
With this one, you're safe to have gotten your money' worth.
"I support because I want to invest in my future fun"
You're clearly shafted imo. First because you can't put expectations on future and second because they already have your money, what will you do?
"I support because I had to" (because let's face it, 4 stash tabs at how much loot the game throws is VERY hard to be enough even for one character for the whole league).
Your reward is spending more time on the game. You'll keep on paying more, time or money. You're VERY unlikely to have beaten the whole game before buying any supporter pack.

We'll pay either in time or money or pain. And pain/being notorious is always better than indiference, because it keeps you in the game.

Alas, what grinds my gears is death of true melee from an efficiency standpoint, pushing for mtx while the game is FAR from clear and false marketing (how mtx looks in embelished videos and on others vs how it looks on you, how mtx is subtly altered at times, be it with changed effects, engine effects etc...that really don't make you feel you get your bang for your buck). I went back to another game with alot of MTX and the MTX looked exactly the same over the years...not in here.

There is a certain disconnect between devs and players and it will show. Population and eventually wallet will dictate.