Problem with COMMUNICATION: Omniscience & Ashes of the Stars

"

Greebo wrote:

So there is a lot of feedback about how rare to drop Crystallised Omniscience and Ashes of the Stars have become, but I'd like to take another direction at it:

The problem with the decreased drop rate is purely related to communication, due to multiple of factors compounding on each other:

(1) In the very long (3h, I think?) and detailed chat Chris had with 5 popular streamers (Ziggy amongst them), he said something like (again, paraphrasing) "A lot of problems we had previously with player discontent, were problems with communication. Players were not aware of the changes we were making and got angry with us."

(2) We had verbatim statement by Chris saying (I don't feel like watching the whole video again, so I'll paraphrase) "You don't have to plan new builds. The builds from 3.17 will work just as well, you can just play them."

(3) Out of ladder builds indexed by poe.ninja in 3.17, 61% of them had either Omniscience or Ashes equipped.

(4) The drop rates for Crystallised Omniscience and Ashes of the Stars were reduced (by player estimates) from 25% to 1%. That's a factor of 96%, 25 times fewer drops. Some streamers suggested that prices for these items are in part due to price fixing. But the price differential (right now those items are approximately 25 times more expensive than they were in 3.17) is explained purely by their rarity. So 50ex for either of those items is reasonable, considering drop rates.

(5) There was no information available before the league start regarding the reduction in drop rates.

Take out any one of those 5 factors and I wouldn't be angry at all:
* If drops weren't made so scarce, problem wouldn't exist
* If the drop rate reduction was done on items which were not so central to many builds, it'd wouldn't have been such a problem
* If we had been told even something imprecise, or even lackadaisical, e.g. that "drop rates for Exarch and Eater are adjusted" - I would have assumed that prices of those items (central to many builds) would be much higher
* If we weren't told we could expect to play the same builds in 3.18, I wouldn't have had that expectation
* If GGG didn't say they were trying to fix mistakes in communication, I would have had more mistrust towards expectations community had towards the upcoming league; if I can expect that I won't know what to expect, I wouldn't be so disappointed that something so unexpected happened

Here's the thing: I prepared for this league a little bit. I'm a fairly casual player, I don't expect to get the best items (Mageblood, Headhunter, etc.), I have fun working around the fact that I don't have them. It's perfectly possible to enjoy endgame without the most rare 10 items in the game.

Had I known that I shouldn't expect my build from 3.17 to work, I would have spent my time before the league start finding some new fun build to play with. It'd have been fun.

The way things were done and communicated made it impossible to make an informed decision. And I AM ANGRY about that.

And I know that I'm right about it, too. It's not a matter of me not liking GGG's vision for the game. It's a matter of repeated mistakes with communication, again, and again, and again. Then saying "yes, we didn't communicate it and it caused problems, we will do better." And then REPEATING the mistakes with lack of communication.

I work in the IT industry, we do various agile methodologies. If I had my team identify the same problem in my retrospectives, over, and over, and over again, and it wouldn't get fixed despite re-occurrence, I'd have known something is very very very wrong.

GGG acknowledged that mistakes in communication were made in the past. And yet it keeps making them. Not good.

My suggestion is: a week or two before the league start, do a pre-mortem on the upcoming release (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-mortem), with focus on communication. Whatever processes you have for it right now, aren't working.

I believe in voting with my feet, so I'm gonna skip support of this release.

"

Greebo wrote:

Take out any one of those 5 factors and I wouldn't be angry at all:
* If drops weren't made so scarce, problem wouldn't exist
* If the drop rate reduction was done on items which were not so central to many builds, it'd wouldn't have been such a problem
* If we had been told even something imprecise, or even lackadaisical, e.g. that "drop rates for Exarch and Eater are adjusted" - I would have assumed that prices of those items (central to many builds) would be much higher
* If we weren't told we could expect to play the same builds in 3.18, I wouldn't have had that expectation
* If GGG didn't say they were trying to fix mistakes in communication, I would have had more mistrust towards expectations community had towards the upcoming league; if I can expect that I won't know what to expect, I wouldn't be so disappointed that something so unexpected happened

"

Greebo wrote:

So there is a lot of feedback about how rare to drop Crystallised Omniscience and Ashes of the Stars have become, but I'd like to take another direction at it:

The problem with the decreased drop rate is purely related to communication, due to multiple of factors compounding on each other:

(1) In the very long (3h, I think?) and detailed chat Chris had with 5 popular streamers (Ziggy amongst them), he said something like (again, paraphrasing) "A lot of problems we had previously with player discontent, were problems with communication. Players were not aware of the changes we were making and got angry with us."

(2) We had verbatim statement by Chris saying (I don't feel like watching the whole video again, so I'll paraphrase) "You don't have to plan new builds. The builds from 3.17 will work just as well, you can just play them."

(3) Out of ladder builds indexed by poe.ninja in 3.17, 61% of them had either Omniscience or Ashes equipped.

(4) The drop rates for Crystallised Omniscience and Ashes of the Stars were reduced (by player estimates) from 25% to 1%. That's a factor of 96%, 25 times fewer drops. Some streamers suggested that prices for these items are in part due to price fixing. But the price differential (right now those items are approximately 25 times more expensive than they were in 3.17) is explained purely by their rarity. So 50ex for either of those items is reasonable, considering drop rates.

(5) There was no information available before the league start regarding the reduction in drop rates.

Take out any one of those 5 factors and I wouldn't be angry at all:
* If drops weren't made so scarce, problem wouldn't exist
* If the drop rate reduction was done on items which were not so central to many builds, it'd wouldn't have been such a problem
* If we had been told even something imprecise, or even lackadaisical, e.g. that "drop rates for Exarch and Eater are adjusted" - I would have assumed that prices of those items (central to many builds) would be much higher
* If we weren't told we could expect to play the same builds in 3.18, I wouldn't have had that expectation
* If GGG didn't say they were trying to fix mistakes in communication, I would have had more mistrust towards expectations community had towards the upcoming league; if I can expect that I won't know what to expect, I wouldn't be so disappointed that something so unexpected happened

Here's the thing: I prepared for this league a little bit. I'm a fairly casual player, I don't expect to get the best items (Mageblood, Headhunter, etc.), I have fun working around the fact that I don't have them. It's perfectly possible to enjoy endgame without the most rare 10 items in the game.

Had I known that I shouldn't expect my build from 3.17 to work, I would have spent my time before the league start finding some new fun build to play with. It'd have been fun.

The way things were done and communicated made it impossible to make an informed decision. And I AM ANGRY about that.

And I know that I'm right about it, too. It's not a matter of me not liking GGG's vision for the game. It's a matter of repeated mistakes with communication, again, and again, and again. Then saying "yes, we didn't communicate it and it caused problems, we will do better." And then REPEATING the mistakes with lack of communication.

I work in the IT industry, we do various agile methodologies. If I had my team identify the same problem in my retrospectives, over, and over, and over again, and it wouldn't get fixed despite re-occurrence, I'd have known something is very very very wrong.

GGG acknowledged that mistakes in communication were made in the past. And yet it keeps making them. Not good.

My suggestion is: a week or two before the league start, do a pre-mortem on the upcoming release (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-mortem), with focus on communication. Whatever processes you have for it right now, aren't working.

I believe in voting with my feet, so I'm gonna skip support of this release.