How do you like the direction POE took since the investment of Tencent?
" Starts with Chris, ends with Wilson. They are trying to stay true to his vision, except the game and the clientele has changed since 2010. If this game wants to go back to where it started, being a niche ARPG, all they have to do is stay the course. If they would like to keep charing 45.00USD for a single back item MTX, they need to start being able to compete with the more casual friendly ARPGs that are coming out. Last edited by Nulledout#3809 on Jan 25, 2023, 11:07:05 AM
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" Probably, and sort of my point. His "vision" was never to make PoE the most played game in the world. They are trying to make/give a certain experience, aimed at a certain crowd (or crowds). Bring me some coffee and I'll bring you a smile.
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" Plenty of examples, I don't believe you actually believe CW doesnt respond to wider audience performance and criticism. You are fairly plugged in. You watch the livestreams, Baeclast, see the developer posts and patches, ect... In my view I tend to agree with the overall premise that the top of GGG prefer a more niche game, but that ship sailed awhile ago. They cannot sacrifice millions of dollars, and upsets many tens of thousands of customers, because CW's dream is us playing a Ruthless version of PoE. "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln Last edited by DarthSki44#6905 on Jan 25, 2023, 11:18:41 AM
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" True true. Harvest was the most fun gear progression in any league for me. It was no longer a trade sim and I actually dared crafting and tinkering with builds myself instead of farming chaos orbs. Also learned more about how mods and influence on items actually work just by playing instead of alt tabbing. I even saw streamers that never got those "mirror tier items" people speak of when they talk harvest. Now we dont even have real crafting besides the crafting bench. That being said the garden league mechanic was a real pain and Im glad thats gone. |
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" But... They are, though - aren't they? At least according to some, if we are to believe all the "vision memes". A direct question: Do you, personally, think they could increase the peak/retention/amount of players by looking at the most popular leagues, looking at what factors made them popular, and build on those factors? Do you think, by making the game more beginner friendly, casual friendly, with better QoL, trading, crafting and so on, the amount of players would increase? If no, OK - fair enough. If yes; aren't they "sacrificing millions" by not improving on this? Bring me some coffee and I'll bring you a smile.
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" It's hard to have a "direct answer" because we dont have monetization data to go from. If the rumors are true that 80% of revenue is from less than a quarter of players, I'm sure that impacts some of their decision making. That said 20% of your revenue (or more), is not something you casually gamble with, especially if they have fiduciary responsibility to Tencent. I cannot imagine an actual conversation with them being that they are forgoing millions of dollars for some sort of developmental arrogance. So what does this translate to? GGG developing one way, and are seemingly caught oof guard by the response. How can you push your Marketing and Twitch budget, and not be surprised this attracts players you may not be interested in? What's the point? If they truly didnt care about the metrics and the money, they wouldn't respond they do, because it wouldnt matter. Point is they do, despite them probably not wanting to at their core. "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln Last edited by DarthSki44#6905 on Jan 25, 2023, 1:13:17 PM
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" Of course they care about money, metrics and revenue. I just don't think they necessarily care about peak numbers and steam charts. As you say, we don't sit on the monetization data, and I think that data tells a rather different story than peak numbers and steam charts - which again guides them towards what player to focus on. My point has always been: Steam charts and peak numbers are ONLY a popularity statistic, and if GGG was trying to make PoE a "game for everyone", we'd see a rather different focus. Bring me some coffee and I'll bring you a smile. Last edited by Phrazz#3529 on Jan 25, 2023, 6:25:27 PM
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well, they would have made the next angry birds for the mobile market if the aim was 'make the most money possible by making the most popular game we can' right?
they made an arpg that intentionally had the most deep, complex mechanics the genre had ever seen and then they put dead babies on the beach in act1. i think its fair to conclude theres a mission statement there, and its pretty far from extracting maximum shareholder profits by trying to rival candy crush. no one rly wants to tackle the idea that the harvest strikes back league was not a sustainable long term phenomenon either. if i press a button and made it rain money tomorrow, a foot deep of bank notes covering the ground youd all run outside and spend 12 hours collecting every last note. shall we conclude that if i make it rain money every night that every day for the next 20 years youre gonna run outside and pick up bank notes for 12 hours? no, cause ull get bored, the bank notes will lose all value due to the removal of their scarcity, the economic structure of our countries will fall apart and the world will go to shit. you want money to rain from the sky... but you dont actually want money to rain from the sky, not really, if you think you do its a delusion and you just cant really grasp the reality of what that would be like as a long term phenomenon. you want to go outside and pick up litter on your streets for 12 hours a day? no, because going outside and picking stuff up is not fun, you would be doing it because its a ton of money that you have been conditioned to value by the scarcity of money. the act of making it rain from the sky is instantly going to make everyone rush to it, but will also in the long term destroy the reason they are rushing to do it. so its not sustainable, its by its very nature a short term effect because eventually money would just become like litter. this is a serious point for the harvest folks, you need to digest this: people wanted rare and unqiue items to rain from the sky. they added perandus and people got all these uniques they never had before, all this access. people were saying how amazing it was for casuals, how awesome the game had become they could make all these builds now. ggg didnt make it core... people said all the same things we hear now. for ages people were bleating on about perandus, how it was so unfair to the casuals and omg the build diversity it was taken away cause ggg just makes the game for streamers who spend 173 hours a week playing omg. and you know what? ggg said ok, well maybe the game would be better if we just dropped a lot more uniques and rares. so they quadrupled the drop rate of uniques, thats how stupid it went, 4x drop rates, lets shower everyone with uniques. the memes came out, omg 4x0=0 lel we need perandus back muh perandus omg... but they massively upped the drop rate. and guess what? so many uniques and rares drop now that we all filter them out of our game, we dont even pick them up. all that happened is that we stopped caring about uniques and rares. before we cared about drops, and the casuals who lacked a healthy design perspective demanded they drop like candy because they cared about them. and now the result is no one cares about them, and apparently it didnt solve build diversity like they claimed, it didnt make the game not for the elites like they claimed. shavs was 80 exalts, now its 10 chaos, so you got ur build diversity right? youre all happy right? uniques are completely worthless and everyone can have a shavs if they play t1 maps for half an hour and pick up the orbs, so its amazing now right? game fixed? no 80 exalt paywall for low life builds everyone can make low life, its amazing for the casuals the game is so good now.... no, youre all less happy than you were before. because its not about shavs, its not about harvest or rares or any specific thing, its about the game conditions you to want what you find it really hard to get, so if it stops being hard for you to get it you wont care about it any more. part of wanting harvest and feeling harvest is great is having played a game that doesnt contain harvest for years and years. surely a conversation that doesnt acknowledge the variable nature of what we desire as players, why we desire them etc is completely meaningless when it comes to harvest? acting like its addition was not playing on a sudden warp jump in terms of wanting what we cant have and then suddenly being able to get it is just delusion imo, its complete fantasy. no one cares about a shavs any more. it was all anyone talked about, if only us mere casuals could get a shavs the game would be a utopia. I love all you people on the forums, we can disagree but still be friends and respect each other :)
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" Another way to state that is they don't care about what most of the players want. I agree with this, I just think Chris and GGG pretends otherwise. I would add its a self defeating strategy to assume most of your players will leave so you ignore them to focus on ... what percent of minority players? It seems fairly small. Snorkle, your argument that Harvest could not be the norm don't really make sense to me. You could say the same about the entire game, or literally any component of it. "People will not play PoE component X because they will get over it being new". " There is no one boundary of hard. You do realize for people not abusing TFT, would only get specific Harvest crafts like "Aug crit" every 160 maps. They would then have to do that enough to get lucky on the roll. Lets say it only takes 4 tries, so 640 maps. That in addition to whatever it took to make the item to get it to that point. And thats only 1 item. The problem was TFT and trade, and instead of fixing that, the nuked deterministic crafting from orbit. The rest of your 'psychology' discussion is just, I believe, you opinion based solely on your playstyle and experience. Someone who plays less than you or did not use TFT would have a wildly different experience and none of your observations would apply. |
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"I mean, real money isn't getting collectively deprecated every four months or so; if it was, people would absolutely go back outside and pick up some more. And it's all relative anyway. The main game is "raining money" compared to Ruthless, for instance, but Ruthless is still a valid mode that people enjoy playing. Trade leagues rain money compared to playing self-found, but that's still a valid, popular way to play. POE has been at various times throughout its history slightly more and slightly less generous than it is today. It has at times bored some people, and not other people, with those groups changing. It's not like the devs landed on the one optimal value for how common / easy to get certain things should be, because there isn't one. Sure, maybe GGG's assessment is that a POE that's slightly more generous with items isn't as popular, but as you said, they're not out for raw universal popularity, so that would be okay. It's a valid game if that's the game they want to make. |
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