The reason GGG doesn't really pay attention to these forums

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

in F&B: GGG need to stop worshipping Diablo II. It's not the early 2000s anymore. Accessibility and ergonomic considerations are not some easy mode gimmick; they're an integral part of respectable, praiseworthy game design.

We ARPG veterans aren't getting any younger, and those gamers with the reflexes at their peak have entirely other genres with which to burn out their brightest years of physical sharpness. :)

Even if were old I can't express how true this statement still is, you can't have the same failings as games of the past. Players have new expectations to meet. I expect better now and some PoE problems are deliberately archaic, I like a little archaic but not about accessibility or ergonomics as mentioned.

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Networm13 wrote:

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

Yes.

Please try to say yes in Haiku. xD

Anyway, are you still playing? Or just hanging around, hoping that one day PoE2 will save us all?

The answer is yes
there is no other answer
not in this poem.

I haven't played since Expedition and even that was a brief 'huh' on Ps5. I'd been enjoying D2R with an old school friend who skipped that whole era (he was still cool though: he had a MEGADRIVE with STREET FIGHTER 2 while we were playing, like, King's Quest 58 or whatever) but played D3 with me once a week or so. I really liked the controller set up for D2R and wanted to see how PoE's stacked up to it. It lasted on my PS hard drive a whole hour so not very well.

I couldn't care less about PoE '2' as a gamer. I knew a few things about it well before its announcement -- things I held out hope we'd see as cornerstone design features of a true PoE sequel, not rammed into an already bloated game by way of a glorified expansion. That said, I re-watched the PoE2 trailers yesterday. Interesting fact: it looked a lot more impressive and 'advanced' compared to PoE '1' back in 2019 than it does now. Which means they have indeed been gradually improving PoE '1' in terms of appearance ever since, which was part of the plan. And with each of these gradual updates, the 'wow' factor of Path of Exile '2' diminishes a little. I am curious to see just how big a jump 'PoE 2' will be from whatever version of 'PoE 1' it will be added to. I know there are some niche game series out there where each 'sequel' looks a lot like what came before but the gameplay is different enough to justify it being a new game (grand strategy games typically), but PoE is an ARPG, and gamers (ie non-Exiles) typically expect ARPG sequels to be significantly different even at a glance. You'd never confuse D1 for D2 or D2 for D3. So really, what I want to see is how much of PoE '2' is aimed at new players rather than existing ones. Why go to all the effort to position an expansion as a full sequel if your existing players already support your expansions regularly?

No, per my current sig, I'm playing a lot of Sacred 2 right now. Definitely much more my speed as far as ARPGs go. It's a lot closer to an MMO than a twitchy shooting game. Fewer enemies, rich open world, fairly shallow skill mechanics, quirky side quests and dialogue, and basically less emphasis on the A and more on the RPG. Probably about as close to those party-based monstrosities like Baldur's Gate or Planescape: Torment as I'd willingly get. Buggy as fuck too, which for an old PC gamer can actually be a little nostalgic.

I thought PoE cured me of ARPGs but what it really did was force me to go back and look at what I always loved about them. And it turns out PoE is missing pretty much all of it beyond build diversity -- and even that it self-sabotages by rendering the vast majority of build possibilities useless. And I know GGG have zero interest in changing PoE in any of the ways that would satisfy me, so that's that. We started in the same place, but I think what I thought PoE would be and what GGG wanted it to be were always two very different things. And then there's the third thing, which I think is neither of those: what it actually became. But since the third thing is still an undeniable success, GGG are right to lean into that wholeheartedly, at least from a business perspective. They're doing what's right for them as a company if not necessarily as a game designer, and I'm doing what's right for me as a gamer if not necessarily as a former supporter.

I dunno. I can't tell if I'm being mature in my nobody's-in-the-wrong approach to these irreconcilable differences or immature in not taking the next logical step and maybe, I dunno, not stalking an ex who has clearly moved on. Then again, while I do care about PoE and GGG's present and future, it's their social circle with whom I actively and happily engage. Now I think about it, it's not that unusual a situation after all.