The complacency with GGG, POE, and POE2

To note: This is a broader opinion of observation made by several individuals of the game especially prominent players.


Complacency:
GGG seems to have become complacent as in the past they were shown to be darlings of the gaming world. One of the last bastions of "made by players, for players" mentality. However, it seems that they have failed the player base in terms of the evolution of the game over the last few years.

1. Lack of QOL improvements and design philosophy:
QOL:
- Item Auction house: An obvious option that wouldn't take much in terms of computing power to introduce. This feature would fix a lack of response in traders, scammers, and price baiting. While also improving the speed at which players are no longer just sitting in their hideout for 2 hours trying to get enough Fusings to 6L their new bow or that 1 chaos item that enables their build but no one is willing to sacrifice a portal for 1c.

-Unique Bloat/Useless Uniques: Many builds can function without uniques, however it seems that in the new design choice of "Uber uber" bosses or even God forbid launch day of sentinel. Damage seems to be ever increasing as a premium. This is shown in the large (VERY LARGE) bloat in unique items that seems to grow where majority (90%) of builds require a single unique to make their build technically viable. There is no progression system of uniques or items, there is no "ashes" lite. There is no "mageblood"/HH lite. Which is fine until you apply a uber rarity, damage check points, and over all bad tastes in everyone's mouth. Removing unique bloat and actually make uniques feel good to have drop is going to be better overall for the player base.

- Identify all items:
SOW/Unidentified items are just an annoyance of a bygone era of game design from Diablo. Honestly hiding the modifiers behind a common item is just annoying. I like to imagine a QOL of a filter builder in game, where you input items from a build that match the criteria given for the rares that drop.

- Campaign/leveling progression:
This has been a point of complaint for many years at this point. A league starts a new, or you want to play a new crazy build. Gotta level a character! A multi hour process that really shouldn't need to be there. Players should have a choice of leveling, maybe they want to JUST do maps to level, apply level requirements for lab instead of trials in the campaign. Maybe you want to just delve. These should be choices that the player can make to make their time feel worth spending.

-stash tab/premium stash tabs:
Not many people remember. But currency, Cards, fragment, etc. tabs ARE NOT base game still. Meaning the tabs that literally save players hundreds, if not thousands of hours of time over the course of the game's life cycle is still behind a paywall. God, forbid you try to truly play this game F2P, playing Softcore and being locked behind premium stash tabs that generate your currency to enable your builds. It's about time that GGG makes a set of stash tabs that enables the base player to take part in the game as a culture.


-Third party tool REQUIREMENTS:
This comes as no surprise. POE would be nothing without Path of Building, POELAB, POENinja, Craft of exile/POEDB, awakened POE Trade. Tools that require players to download github commits to enjoy playing the game as players build their own solutions to GGG's problems. These tools should be integrated into the game. Remember when they fought tooth and nail against filters? Pepperidge Farm remembers. A filter designer, POEDB/Craft of Exile, and POB should be integrated into the game as a feature. Imagine, you import a build and gold lines appear on your Atlas/passives trees. Your item goals show in the quest log. you open harvest/Jun/Fossil/Essence crafting and have an option "view the available rolls for this item level". Or even build an item in a designer, have it auto select and use fossils/harvests that would apply to those crafts. These are things that would make POE extremely easy to take in for a new player or even veterans to start to enjoy the game.

- Design Philosophy:
POE seems to be at a crossroads. Either go full casual/semi non-casual, reducing the loot explosions, making items feel useful when they drop. OR go full hardcore, alienate possible millions of people that want to play but cannot drop work to play during league start, or doesn't have enough time to farm out a mageblood. These are all concerns that a game company should consider. Make the game fun or make the game brutally hard and hope for a Dark Souls effect. It seems as content creators start to burn out, the game getting harder and harder to even start to play let alone other points of contention. To this day, i have not been able to do a Sirus 8 since he was launched, back when I was lucky enough to get The Saviour from a void card. I just dont have enough time to get through the campaign and maps and make a build and farm enough maps to get the conquers. Hell I cant remember the last time I faced Uber Elder, its just easier to farm Maven/Exarch and buy the watchers eye.

It seems as GGG expands POE's end game, they further drop the ball on how to get to that end game. Opting for meta builds that take hundreds of Ex to even be able to hit level 100. Please see the max RF builds on POE Ninja... Melding of flesh, impossible Escape, Ageis Aurora, Ashes of the starts, etc. Just to make the build play at the top level. Theres no clear path for a new player or even players that dont spend 8+ hours a day playing to get these items... like ever. Even in Standard these items can sell for several Ex.


2. Power creep and player power:
- Power Creep: RF, EA Balista, Necromancer, Winter Orb, and the most egregious Int Stack Kinetic blast. These are some of the builds that fall under S tier in their prime. I believe GGG look into ways to bring other niche builds to the forefront of the damage meters.

- Player Power:
- Headhunters and Magebloods aside. Player power felt the weakest during the first week of Sentinel. It seems as though GGG underestimated their QA testing or thought that since they made no changes to player builds that would make up for the lack of QA on this league mechanic. Im sure I'm not alone in the situations where many were afraid to even use their sentinel for fear of the archnem rares/magic packs.

Sadly, even though my current RF build is able to easily clear juiced T16 maps, with 1 mill+ tooltip dps single target... I ran a T1 del influenced map, no other modifiers and I was shocked when I pressed F2 that the mobs were buffs to what felt like juiced T16 mobs in a T1... I'm sure I'm not alone in this feeling as even the flavor of the month EA was having issues with these mobs.


3. POE2 and how it has affected POE1:
- POE2 has completed overshadowed GGG's development priorities. With good reason as it's a engine upgrade. However, I feel as though GGG has neglected their current audience. My guild of 10-20 close friends used to play for several hours ever weekend. There was always at least one-two people online at any given time. However, we are only approaching the third week of the league. a solid 20% through the life cycle of the league. Not a single person in my guild has been on since the first weekend of the league. We used to farm HHs, help each other with their builds, power level through the campaign, run 5 man aura bot + Curse bot MF Pathfinder in T16 Bazaars and yet. These people quit after a couple days of the league.

This is fairly sad, when I asked my friends about it, I just get the response "It's just not fun to run the treadmill anymore, there's too much to the game while also not being enough. The best content is locked behind major time investments."

This is very common considering it can take a average player ~10 hours of dedicated playing to just get through the acts. Another 30 hours to get through maps, spending 50 hours in their hideout trying to get the oils to anoint their amulet because they cant be bothered to farm Cassia.

This comes at the price of development. GGG should have noticed this trend. Moreover, why do I have to rerun Lab to reassign points. Why do I have to even do the trials of a piece of content that was released 6 bloody years ago to be directly correlated with my player power. Why is it that it took them 6 years to get rid of Prophecy? Their neglect of POE1 is starting to show as POE2 was announced over 3 years ago at ExileCon. Since then, it seems as though this game has furthermore descended into stagnation. Not to discount the new changes that they bring, the stagnation comes from the existing content of patches nearly a decade ago influence. I sure hope in 3.19 they REMOVE the campaign as a required leveling path. Opting for a Kirac/Delve push for leveling, assign lab to level requirements of 30, 50, 70, then the Uber Lab trials in maps (also make them more bloody frequent. I got to T15 maps before I even had my 5th trial done like Bruh).

Make boss fights more frequent or ramp up their difficulty. I really loved how they introduced Sirus, but I also should need to watch a 10-minute YouTube video on how to do the bloody fight. These mechanics should be integrated with their influenced maps.


Conclusion:
There is a plethora of items discussed of a player that has not the same amount of time in this game as others, however 3+ years in a game does carry some weight. As my friend group of dedicated players spent the better part of a few dozen thousand hours to play this game combined. For me, I have spent 1000-2000 hours. Not a lot to most people, but significant enough to warrant 3 months of my life uninterrupted playing this game.

I feel if the next league isnt perfect; many players will abandon and wait for POE2.

TLDR:

GGG has become complacent in their quest for POE2 to launch. Introducing half tested leagues, while taking forever to introduce QOL features the player base has been wanting for a long time. Including but not limited to the lack of attention to the current player base with regards of how we still have to go through the trials through the campaign to complete Lab, how we have to complete the campaign every single new character, the major requirements of third-party tools and Premium stash tabs to even play the game at a even-ish level as everyone else.

Pro-Tip: hide your support badges next time. Adds a little spice to the criticism.

That aside, welcome to the Club of Repeating Everything Everyone Here Knows And/Or Strongly Suspects Relatively Eloquently. I'll be your host for this evening. It's open bar until 8; last orders are at 11. Remember to bump your fellow members' contributions, preferably under the guise of backhanded compliments, nuanced commentary or a well-timed meme.

Our first speaker tonight has a hybrid beat-groove poem titled 'Yeah sure but the Man still wins, dig it?'. This speaker's other notable works include the spoken word album, 'Please Buy These MTXes' and a collection of essays in haiku form released as 'A whale meditates beside the GGGolden pond'.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

Pro-Tip: hide your support badges next time. Adds a little spice to the criticism.

That aside, welcome to the Club of Repeating Everything Everyone Here Knows Relatively Eloquently. I'll be your host for this evening. It's open bar until 8; last orders are at 11. Remember to bump your fellow members' contributions, preferably under the guise of backhanded compliments, nuanced commentary or a well-timed meme.

My support of a game shouldn't be a point of contention or critic. Remember people still spend 60-80 dollars a year on the newest Call of Duty.

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Nevermorelul wrote:

"

Foreverhappychan wrote:

Pro-Tip: hide your support badges next time. Adds a little spice to the criticism.

That aside, welcome to the Club of Repeating Everything Everyone Here Knows Relatively Eloquently. I'll be your host for this evening. It's open bar until 8; last orders are at 11. Remember to bump your fellow members' contributions, preferably under the guise of backhanded compliments, nuanced commentary or a well-timed meme.

My support of a game shouldn't be a point of contention or critic. Remember people still spend 60-80 dollars a year on the newest Call of Duty.

critique, not critic.

And yeah, it shouldn't. That's why it was a pro-tip and not a commandment. People WILL look to see if you're a current supporter or not when you bang on about how this has been coming for years. Well, I did anyway. Not to see if you're a hypocrite or anything -- just curious as to whether or not you've committed to your cause and to what degree. But since I can't tell one support badge from another these days (if it's not a bird it's 'new' to me) I honestly have no idea.

Anyway, good job. I like your moxie, cat. Keep on rockin' in the free to play world.

GGG literally just:

1) Completely redesigned end-game.
2) Added an Atlas Passive Tree
3) Simplified the Atlas (no more watchstones/areas)
4) Added 2 new Pinnacle Bosses in 3.17 and 2 other bosses
5) Added 7 new Uber Pinnacle Bosses in 3.18
6) Enabled you to BLOCK content you don't want players have been asking for
7) Added many amazing chase uniques players have been asking for
8) Added simplified crafting such as Eldritch Currency and Recombinators players have been asking for
9) Enabled players to much more easily sustain maps via Atlas Tree as players have been asking for
10) Introduced Kirac who dramatically helps in sustaining maps as players have been asking for
11) Made an absolute TONNE of balance changes in 3.17

What are you talking about mate?

GGG have been doing a shitload to this game and it has never been in a better state.

Consider that they have been able to do this WHILST prioritising POE 2 is absolutely amazing. No other game developer does this.

Open your eyes. It's just #mindset.

huge problem is with outdated ui , that badly needs improvements, the placement of our buffs-debuffs and overall info on the screen is very lackluster

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brunowa wrote:

GGG literally just:

1) Completely redesigned end-game.
2) Added an Atlas Passive Tree
3) Simplified the Atlas (no more watchstones/areas)
4) Added 2 new Pinnacle Bosses in 3.17 and 2 other bosses
5) Added 7 new Uber Pinnacle Bosses in 3.18
6) Enabled you to BLOCK content you don't want players have been asking for
7) Added many amazing chase uniques players have been asking for
8) Added simplified crafting such as Eldritch Currency and Recombinators players have been asking for
9) Enabled players to much more easily sustain maps via Atlas Tree as players have been asking for
10) Introduced Kirac who dramatically helps in sustaining maps as players have been asking for
11) Made an absolute TONNE of balance changes in 3.17

What are you talking about mate?

GGG have been doing a shitload to this game and it has never been in a better state.

Consider that they have been able to do this WHILST prioritising POE 2 is absolutely amazing. No other game developer does this.

Open your eyes. It's just #mindset.

12/ And F'ed up 95% of player base by adding Archnemesis mods in 3.18 that disrupt almost every build and kills players with no reason to do so...

The game was in a better state in 3.17 just to say, and should stay at 3.17 difficulty wise...