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

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MECHanokl wrote:

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Shagsbeard wrote:

The reason? They're working. They don't sit around clicking forum posts.

If they dont have dedicated people curating the information that they get from their community and customers, then their marketing department is a complete failure. "Clicking on forums posts" IS part of work for certain professions.

https://www.mediabistro.com/climb-the-ladder/skills-expertise/what-does-a-community-manager-do-anyway/

You DO know you're responding to the forum's Boomerest of Boomers, right MECH? I firmly believe you CAN teach an old dog new tricks, almost as much as I believe most old dogs are content not to learn them. It's impressive enough that someone purportedly the age of my parents (give or take) is playing Path of Exile to begin with, but naturally it shouldn't be surprising when Gen Xers and up (so, definitely boomers) fail to realise the importance of 'clicking forum posts' but think, sure, 'firing off tweets' is probably part of the job.

I think the real issue isn't that 'clicking forum posts' is or isn't working; it's that they've worked out they can do their work without it. My guess would be one too many wastes of time here (for example, that abysmal beta for Awakening aka 2.0) and the fact that their own forum provides them almost no tools for convenient data collection, while reddit has the updoots to curate for them. I remember asking Chris once the best way to give feedback here if one wants to be seen, and his answer was not at all surprising: "Bulletpoints." He's a busy man. Give it to him in small, easily-digestible, clear parts. Naturally that's the exact opposite of what I do (although my most serious feedback posts did have subheadings and highlights, so...I tried!), and it's the exact opposite of what a lot of players do when they are incensed enough to write feedback -- emotionally-charged ranting, angry keyboarding smashing that sometimes forms legible writing, if they happen to accidentally hit the enter key from time to time.

So there's been this huge disconnect between the sort of written feedback GGG can use and the sort of written feedback players tend to provide pretty much from the start, although naturally that's only gotten larger as Chris and co. got busier. And that's part of why GGG jumped on the streamer/twitch train so damned early. As well as recognising that was THE way to grow the shit out of their player base (read: sell more support packs), video is much easier to process than Walls O Text or in-the-heat-of-the-moment ravings. And then reddit, which also encourages more concise posting since it's meant to be a 'scroll, stop, vote, scroll' experience. A meme is easy to process as well. It's not impossible for a wall of text to get significant attention on reddit, depending on the sub of course, but it's also not all that likely.

It's a whole lot of feedback to process for people whose main job isn't to process it but to provide that which the players will give feedback on.

And this is where the CM role kicks in. I'm not going to assume you read even much of that linked article but it's pretty good. The core point is that no, a CM isn't meant to respond to every post. That is a secondary role, possibly even tertiary -- and even then, maybe not at all:

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A community manager also engages with customers and fans, and uses social media and live events to help increase brand loyalty.

Stress mine.

So what's the main job?

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a community manager finds out what people are saying about a company or brand.

Does this mean 'clicking forum posts' is part of their work? Absolutely, but ONLY if it is part of that key role. A CM has to know that clicking forum posts on a set of boards that might give a skewed perspective or a limited response will be worth the time. My guess is the answer here is pretty much 'no'. Not compared to trawling a much more user-friendly, vivacious subreddit. I don't know how engaged GGG are with Discord but I do know CMs and devs of other games are very active in theirs. It's a good platform for community engagement. Plenty of tools to isolate useful feedback, quarantine off-topic rants, create a hierarchy of channels, and so on. No one complains that an official game forum is dead if the official discord is active these days.

Anyway, what it all boils down to is: a) Shagsbeard is wrong when he says 'They're working' and positions 'working' as mutually exclusive to 'clicking forum posts'; and b) Shagsbeard is right when he implies that 'clicking forum posts' means specifically wasting excessive time here, because 'they' can get stronger community engagement and more efficiently 'manage' it elsewhere.

Which brings us back to probably the most poignant take-away from all this: are Exiles who use the forum exclusively (which is entirely their right -- it's the official fucking forum and GGG DO post to it at least once a day) even part of the community as GGG see it?

Maybe as points of data, but perhaps not much beyond that.





And yet again my signature proves true.

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AcrylicHercules wrote:

And really, who cares if 95% of the player base enjoys their game play by following a build guide that is made by somebody else?

Im not knocking players who follow guides - I do that as well, or I use PoE Ninja and follow heat maps.

My point it that I think a lot of people would enjoy being creative and developing their own build.

In theory there could be millions of builds, or at least a few thousand.

Instead the game funnels people into a fairly narrow group of builds, that were made by someone else, tested by someone else, refined by days of PoB testing.

I strongly disagree that there are a 'myriad' of viable builds for normal players. I think if you are a reasonably experienced gamer and play several hours a day (so not like 1 hr on weekends) and want to experience PoE content then you probably have about a dozen choices you can make.

Once you make that choice, you cannot easily deviate in any serious way, or your build will suffer. You assign points as you are told to, look for the gear in the guide, and basically make few additional choices along the way.


PoE is not a game where you have a ton of builds you can figure out UNLESS you are willing to crap out at some point and just not have a build that can do the content.

Instead, you pick one of a handful of cookie cutter templates and you fill out that template.

That is why it matters.

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Let me contrast this with something like the atlas tree. There really are tons and tons of atlas trees both being used and that are completely viable, because it does not punish you if you are not perfectly optimizing.

They cant even copy anything that isnt "the best build ever" when there are builds for 100+ diffrent skills out there.
Its not game problem. Its players mentality problem.

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AcrylicHercules wrote:

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trixxar wrote:

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ivqancorp wrote:

Yes, this is what I am trying to say. Thank you.

There are about 147 active skills gems. (This is not including support style abilities (ensnaring arrow) or unique abilities granted by uniques (Icestorm).)

Any 5 of them, given equal diversity, should comprise about 3.5 percent of the population.

Here we have the top 5 making up over half.

The top 14, so 10% of skills, make up over three quarters of all builds.


Most of these builds seem to follow a near exact passive tree layout, and usually have the same unqiues / stats.


I am not saying this is good or bad, but I will say your standard for achieving parity or viability of skills is extraordinarily low.

And yet, in this elite group who have a tendency to choose from among the same few skills that they think will make them the most competitive, there are well over 40 skills represented in the SC league and more than 60 on the HC league.

This is a far cry from skill parity or equal diversity, but that's an unobtainable pipe-dream anyway. That'll never happen. It could be (and has been) argued that absolute skill parity *shouldn't* happen, even if it were possible in a game as complex as this.

You know. You can play D3 and almost have similar degree of diversity. lol Wonder why these elitists diss D3 so much.

Because PoE has WAY more diversity, people just ignore it. In D3 the diffrence in DMG between meta build and something else is literally in tens of thousands %. In PoE Its like 30% (sometimes not even that. I can easily reach 20M+ DPS on most melee builds with like 30 ex budget)

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Aynix wrote:

They cant even copy anything that isnt "the best build ever" when there are builds for 100+ diffrent skills out there.
Its not game problem. Its players mentality problem.

Well said. The game is more diverse than ever, but everyone wants to play what Zizaran is telling them to play then complain how everyone is playing the same build. I don't think that's a POE problem, that's a YOU-problem.

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ivqancorp wrote:

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Aynix wrote:

They cant even copy anything that isnt "the best build ever" when there are builds for 100+ diffrent skills out there.
Its not game problem. Its players mentality problem.

Well said. The game is more diverse than ever, but everyone wants to play what Zizaran is telling them to play then complain how everyone is playing the same build. I don't think that's a POE problem, that's a YOU-problem.

Uh, you are playing Seismic trap.

I gotta say Im impressed you are willing to play THE most meta skill right now and say "Oh there is no issue with everyone playing the meta, everything is viable, its all in players heads"

Go make a character who can beat Maven using cobra lash, or chain hook, or cremation, or artillery ballista, or tectonic slam?

Oh, not possible without mirror tier gear?

But year, its all in players heads.

Crema and Artillery ballista aren't too bad for Maven Trixxar just awkward but really I agree with you just being cheeky about some list items lol

Crema is actually like top 5 numerically busted skills it just plays like shit due to being inferior DD (which was inferior VD when that was actually a thing)

Before the mana siphon nerf I'd be dead in 3 seconds of entering the aura. Now I don't die. It's that simple.

RF would have collapsed in numbers if that mod wasn't changed. Plenty of complaints existed before it was nerfed too.

What this reveals is GGG CAN fix problems before they go too far. The game still has a huge number of problems though and if they want to compete with the coming AAA titles they need to have $$$ reserved to handle this.

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trixxar wrote:

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ivqancorp wrote:

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Aynix wrote:

They cant even copy anything that isnt "the best build ever" when there are builds for 100+ diffrent skills out there.
Its not game problem. Its players mentality problem.

Well said. The game is more diverse than ever, but everyone wants to play what Zizaran is telling them to play then complain how everyone is playing the same build. I don't think that's a POE problem, that's a YOU-problem.

Uh, you are playing Seismic trap.

I gotta say Im impressed you are willing to play THE most meta skill right now and say "Oh there is no issue with everyone playing the meta, everything is viable, its all in players heads"

Go make a character who can beat Maven using cobra lash, or chain hook, or cremation, or artillery ballista, or tectonic slam?

Oh, not possible without mirror tier gear?

But year, its all in players heads.

Bruh you can beat Maven with 10ex gear on Tectonic Slam, on Creamtion you need even less budget. Cobra Lash? Take any tri-ele (or dex stacking) ST build, slap Cobra Lash on it and it will be just as good (except with less single target because ST hits twice).
Chain Hook was always a meme so dont even metnion it.
You are talking like Maven is some insane challenge that is impossible to beat. Last League I literally one-shoted Maven with ~10 ex Death Wish build (and by one-shot I mean literally one hit to phase her)