What did POE learn from Lost Ark?

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MECHanokl wrote:

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Xyel wrote:

In this regard, the P2W in LA doesn't do all that much...

I do find LA to be an overall fun game, but underselling P2W in it is just criminal. The game is MASSIVELY P2W, with a big whale being able to run laps around most players. Higher gearscore and better geared players have clear advantages in endgame, dont have to waste time looking for groups, take less damage and do more damage. Lvl 10 gems are mostly whale or complete no-life territory, and give a significant damage boost even over lvl 9 gems. Quality enhancing is a whale gamba that directly affects your HP and damage... Almost all player power systems have an additional whale-only or complete no-life only options for "small" power increases that add up.

Oh, I'm not saying the game isn't P2W. It is, massively, but it just doesn't do all that much.

Absolutely, a whale-backed character will be stronger than my semi-hardcore, not swiping one, but for as long as we play the new content on release, it really isn't a big deal.

I mean, Yamface has a stronger character than I will have 2 months from now. But we're both going to be running Kakul on day 1, and I would bet neither of us is going to spend time looking for a party since we already have one ready.

Also, there's a curve to it - if you overgear the new content by too much, it becomes a boring chore, because all the entertainment of the actual fighting gets overriden by having too high ilvl.

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MECHanokl wrote:

And there will be more stuff to come, including a whole continent with open PvP based on gear... I have seen it on RU, it plays exactly how you would expect - a couple of whales come to a world boss spawn and one-shot 30-40 other faction players for fun. Yay.

I can't comment on content I haven't seen, and to be honest, I'm rather skeptical about what I hear. I mean, almost everything that I've heard about how the game/bosses that are coming up will be has turned out to be bullshit. My favorite one was that everyone will need grudge for Valtan, because it has a sharp dps check and turned out 4 people on min ilvl with suboptimal engravings do enough dmg to pass that check.

Also, everyone was saying how GvG will be whale wars, and they aren't really, because ilvl doesn't give dodge so if you get caught, you die anyway, and a 1460 ilvl character still one-shots a 1490 ilvl character with a big skill, so
the gear doesn't do all that much as there isn't any practical difference between one-shotting and one-tenth-shotting someone.

One of my most memorable moments is our scuffed-at-best guild kabooshing Russian wizard's guild in GvG. Sure, it happened only once, but still.

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MECHanokl wrote:

And let's also not forget that due to the way trading is structured in the game (pheons), the game will die and it will become essentialy impossible to trade gear on AH if whales stop buying gold with blue crystals from free to play players. Imagine a game so not P2W that it literally becomes impossible to play in endgame if wallet players stop buying gold.

I imagine that if that ever becomes a threat, the developer will start dropping more pheons on the playerbase to keep things running. I mean, RU has what, 1 % of the playerbase NA/EU has? And it's still running and playable, afaik.

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Xyel wrote:

I imagine that if that ever becomes a threat, the developer will start dropping more pheons on the playerbase to keep things running. I mean, RU has what, 1 % of the playerbase NA/EU has? And it's still running and playable, afaik.

I mean, if it becomes a problem, developer can easily solve it, which further proves that the system is there just to promote more spending (linking pheons to a crucial, rng based progression system like stone cutting is just an icing on this cake). It is a completely anti-consumer system.

Again, I just find it utterly ridiculous how it is even an acceptable gamedesign to have something as crucial as character gearing and trade linked directly to whales' desire to buy gold. Just buying stuff from cash shop is not enough, no, whales must buy gold and sell blue crystal or the trade dies... Just goes to show where the priorities are in this game.

Also, GvG absoultely is whalewars, and it will only get worse with Abrelshud raid that introduces even more powercreep and higher gearscore items and gear, making the gap even more massive. I am at 1490 level on RU, and at this point gear progressions is just painful, chances are tiny, resources are expensive as hell, and raiding becomes even more gated and static-based due to even higher difficulty of the content. But hey, you can skip all that by swiping a lot...

On a sidenote, RU has about the playerbase of EUC, maybe a bit less (lots of chinese people play).

gvg is not whalewars lmao

literally anybody playing at the latest endgame content can instagib other players. the only way to avoid that is to put on gvg gear which is dirt cheap. the dominant gvg guild on my server doesnt have that many whales, they have 20+ grandmaster pvp players

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MECHanokl wrote:

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Xyel wrote:

I imagine that if that ever becomes a threat, the developer will start dropping more pheons on the playerbase to keep things running. I mean, RU has what, 1 % of the playerbase NA/EU has? And it's still running and playable, afaik.

I mean, if it becomes a problem, developer can easily solve it, which further proves that the system is there just to promote more spending (linking pheons to a crucial, rng based progression system like stone cutting is just an icing on this cake). It is a completely anti-consumer system.

Again, I just find it utterly ridiculous how it is even an acceptable gamedesign to have something as crucial as character gearing and trade linked directly to whales' desire to buy gold. Just buying stuff from cash shop is not enough, no, whales must buy gold and sell blue crystal or the trade dies... Just goes to show where the priorities are in this game.

A game needs to finance itself. Pheons aren't pretty, but I'm taking pheons over box + subscription any time of day.

I mean, if I was playing another MMO than LA, be it WoW or FFXIV, I would've spent more money on that game than I've spent on LA.

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MECHanokl wrote:

Also, GvG absoultely is whalewars, and it will only get worse with Abrelshud raid that introduces even more powercreep and higher gearscore items and gear, making the gap even more massive. I am at 1490 level on RU, and at this point gear progressions is just painful, chances are tiny, resources are expensive as hell, and raiding becomes even more gated and static-based due to even higher difficulty of the content. But hey, you can skip all that by swiping a lot...

On a sidenote, RU has about the playerbase of EUC, maybe a bit less (lots of chinese people play).

Aren't you like really, really far behind being 1490 at RU? I mean, that server is over 2 years old and 1490 is only slightly ahead of the curve on EUC, which is a bit short of 6 months old.

Also, this is why I don't trust what people tell me about how the game will be, because I'm at 1480, so I've got two +20 items already, and I know that +21 has the same odds and materials required as +20, so at the very least, I know that the progression up to 1505 isn't all that bad, because it's like 1 - 2 upgrades per week when playing 3 toons, which really isn't all that much effort.

And then there's the move to the next gear tier, which will make further progression easier, so I just don't see the struggle through which I would want to pay.

As long as those kind of games coming up POE will survive :p

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Xyel wrote:

Aren't you like really, really far behind being 1490 at RU? I mean, that server is over 2 years old and 1490 is only slightly ahead of the curve on EUC, which is a bit short of 6 months old.

Also, this is why I don't trust what people tell me about how the game will be, because I'm at 1480, so I've got two +20 items already, and I know that +21 has the same odds and materials required as +20, so at the very least, I know that the progression up to 1505 isn't all that bad, because it's like 1 - 2 upgrades per week when playing 3 toons, which really isn't all that much effort.

And then there's the move to the next gear tier, which will make further progression easier, so I just don't see the struggle through which I would want to pay.

Abrel was released in December last year in RU I think, it wasnt there for 2 years, you do realise that EU/NA version gets up to speed much faster than other regions, that had to suffer Season 1 of LA when T1 was endgame? Not to mention I wasnt playing it for 2 years.

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And then there's the move to the next gear tier, which will make further progression easier, so I just don't see the struggle through which I would want to pay.

Next gear tier requires different materials, which are harder to come by and are more expensive on the AH, so not sure whether it's easier. To get a full set of it you will also need to grind the last raid quite a bit, especially considering it being gear gated differently on different gates, preventing wast majority of even dedicated hardcore players from doing all gates the first weeks (but a whale with 25+ current gear will be able to access all gates no problem).

Again, its all about personal goals. For me, the grind past 1490 just became too much, too boring, too little return, too few activities (I mean, I have to grind harder than ever before to do what, one raid that wast majority of players dont even do). Out of people I see, people in my guild, mostly extremely dedicated players who also pay on top (not on whales' levels, but they do buy gold) are even on the level to do the final raid all gates on normal, even fewer can do it on hard. Even in Korea, with the largest playerbase (240-300k concurrents, more players than the rest of the world combined), as of end of 2021, only 20% of people on gear level (so already very dedicated players) did the last raid. I just dont see it being appealing to a regular semi-casual player at all. Too much time for too little content, and the mountain just keeps getting steeper.

People are already complaining on the Amazon version how the latest raid is painful to do with randoms (most people dont have the time or ability to play with a static), later raids become even more problematic. But hey, if you pay loads of cash and load your character, you can get into groups much easier (all these stories on reddit about people getting kicked out for higher gearscore players).

The game is P2W at its core, all its systems exist to push P2W, its endgame is structured around rewarding P2W, and the trade is specifically made in such a way to provide whales with rmt gold (last one would probably make Chris puke, considering what he thinks about trading and economy).

EDIT:

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A game needs to finance itself. Pheons aren't pretty, but I'm taking pheons over box + subscription any time of day.

Never liked this excuse. "But poor developers need moneyz!". I mean, GGG, despite its ups and downs, manages to stay profitable and quite large without having this kind of filthy monetization in it. So what gives? Maybe it isn't about a need, but about a massive greed that comes at the expense of the game quality and players' experience of it.

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MECHanokl wrote:

Abrel was released in December last year in RU I think, it wasnt there for 2 years, you do realise that EU/NA version gets up to speed much faster than other regions, that had to suffer Season 1 of LA when T1 was endgame? Not to mention I wasnt playing it for 2 years.

I do - Brelshaza in december is still like 9 months ahead of EU, and my point was that the reason you are having a bad time there might largely be because you started late. Permanent progression games tend to be a miserable experience when one starts far behind the curve, and it's imo one of the game's largest problems, in particular, afaik there are no real catchup mechanics for 1415 - 1490, and that's hell of a grind, which I imagine is a lot worse when one isn't on the current content curve.

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MECHanokl wrote:

Even in Korea, with the largest playerbase (240-300k concurrents, more players than the rest of the world combined), as of end of 2021, only 20% of people on gear level (so already very dedicated players) did the last raid. I just dont see it being appealing to a regular semi-casual player at all.

I would take the Korean playerbase numbers with a bucket of salt, given they have no objective source, only coming from the same company that was boasting about having 800k concurrent players in NA/EU when the servers were literally dying from bot infestation.

And otherwise, yeah, LA is a pretty hardcore game, which imo doesn't work for someone semi-casual, which imo is the type of player the game accommodates the least - the game is great for someone playing hardcore and semi-hardcore, and then for completely casual play.

It's kind of normal for MMOs though - FFXIV has about 26mil characters, only 900k of which completed the latest expansion's main quest (https://ffxivcensus.com/). That's 3.5 %.

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MECHanokl wrote:

People are already complaining on the Amazon version how the latest raid is painful to do with randoms (most people dont have the time or ability to play with a static), later raids become even more problematic. But hey, if you pay loads of cash and load your character, you can get into groups much easier (all these stories on Reddit about people getting kicked out for higher gearscore players).

I'm pugging everything on my alts, which happen to be spread around through the not-latest content and yeah, sometimes I get kicked from lobby, so I just apply to another one and clear it with that. It's really not a big deal.

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MECHanokl wrote:

Never liked this excuse. "But poor developers need moneyz!". I mean, GGG, despite its ups and downs, manages to stay profitable and quite large without having this kind of filthy monetization in it. So what gives? Maybe it isn't about a need, but about a massive greed that comes at the expense of the game quality and players' experience of it.

PoE is borderline the only large game in existence financed like that. Sure, it would be nice if other large games were like that, but the lack of existence of other games makes PoE a unique exception much more so than a viable model for others to follow.

Gotta say if I thought LA was good I would be playing it and not having arguments on another games forum about it.

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Bosscannon wrote:

Gotta say if I thought LA was good I would be playing it and not having arguments on another games forum about it.

One doesnt stop you from other. Besides, for some people, posting on forums or reddit about stuff is a form of entertainment in itself when they may not be in a mood or have time to actually play something.

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Xyel wrote:

Too much to quote at this point.

Dont really disagree with you on these particular points, all I can say is that it seems like I have a more jaded and overall negative view of the game, so I am more fixated on its flaws and less willing to work around them (and should I really, it's a game afterall, not a job or a relationship).

I'll read some replies later & write the pros or cons to Lost Ark.

Tho I wanted to state something. POE didn't gain 1 million Lost Ark Players, after they left Lost Ark.

Why not?

POE had opportunity to gain 1/4th of 1 million Lost Ark players & retain them. 1/4th is 200,000 to 300,000 retired Lost Ark Players out of 1 million who quit. & No most of that original 1.4 weren't bots. Bots happened weeks later. & dual accounts happened few weeks later.

So where is that 1 million, poe has 80k players? POE want to stay D2 ARPG soooo badly, even if D4 is going for mmo. That they are going to ignore Lost Arks potential audience for a POE audience only? While the POE audience isn't entirely satisfied usually either lol, queue " I'm leaving this game thread " for the 10th time since before Lost Ark.

ONE MILLION LOST ARK QUITTERS ONE MILLION. Sharks with freakin laser beams.

POE had potential after Lost Ark was dropping numbers around March. TO release a new party feature list & overhaul their assets to work toward better party features, that Lost Ark players would appreciate. While still giving players the regular League expansion too.

Yet they didn't, they wen't for league expansion only, no promotion for something Lazy Peon is gonna review twice. So meh. I don't know the POE funds I suppose, but seems like they don't know how to engage youtube trends the best way. " POE audience " isn't even a youtube trend for starters. lol

Also who defines what a ARPG is anyways