We called it at the Tencent buyout: PoE China is the true client, we are unpaid testers

There is no "vision" and no "mystery reason" GGG "suddenly" hates their audience. We are not the audience, and we are not the ones playing the primary client anymore. The China client is the primary client now, we just play the testing version with removed features.

Every change made since 3.13 coincides with excessive player agency nerfs with behind the doors datamine only documentation. This "vision" talk is irrelevant, an assessment of how much revenue China makes them vs the whole of western PoE will tell the fanbase all it needs to know. We called this years ago, we knew we were being lied to.

Why do you think they get a death recap after GGG's years old talk of how it would be "impossible" to implement a combat log? Do you know how much more infrastructure and paid qoL features they have that we dont? Literal boosts and leveling uniques? How about other non financial updates, like their guild UI? Ascendancy demonstration videos? Build guide functionality like loot filters you can import?

The reason western audiences are ignored is because this has not been a western game, we are the secondary audience now, and GGG has been beholden to their primary shareholder for years.

The dishonesty on communication and alignment with tencent's game design and monetization policies is exact - the game is being turned into a gamble bot and we get to deal with the nerfs while it becomes a steeper p2w scheme with their new primary audience. Look into how many p2w options there are for that client, introduce new free leveling uniques, simultaneously make low level content harder for no other reason.

Ive said this would happen for years. It did. I whaled hard early on, I spent thousands of hours here, but I dont play games to do unpaid testing for tencent.

ProjectPT hinted towards some of this back when it happened.


And regards to your last few paragraphs: Oh Geewillikers, it's not that bad.

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girng wrote:

ProjectPT hinted towards some of this back when it happened.


And regards to your last few paragraphs: Oh Geewillikers, it's not that bad.

man you're straight up working overtime
on like half of the threads on the front page you're the last to comment. i wonder if its per attempt or daily rate or what

Kinda makes sense. Honestly it is really hard to make sense of what they are doing. Also its kinda sus they left the biggest changes out of the patch notes, maybe it was to make their test more accurate, else some people would have straight up quit before even playing.

Also another conspiracy - maybe they are trying to slowly make the grind insufferable so they can force different types of mtx on us that affect loot. Because of pressure from a certain party.

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Draagoburrtio wrote:

Kinda makes sense. Honestly it is really hard to make sense of what they are doing. Also its kinda sus they left the biggest changes out of the patch notes, maybe it was to make their test more accurate, else some people would have straight up quit before even playing.

Also another conspiracy - maybe they are trying to slowly make the grind insufferable so they can force different types of mtx on us that affect loot. Because of pressure from a certain party.

The only other option I can conceive is the unfounded conjecture Chris and company are trying to tank the game to make it an undesirable asset and force a release or buyout away from Tencent at this point. it's that bad, but this has been on the horizon for a while. the moment I saw how badly they made nonsensical anti-player agency remarks post harvest, it started to click how bad it was.

This actually makes sense, which is something. It's not good, but it's something.

How is the Chinese version getting all these fancy new features if the western version is supposed to be the test version? I don't remember testing an auction house, or auto looting pets, or a death recap, or any of these obviously very complex systems that would have required extensive testing. It's almost as if the Chinese team working on the game has the ability to develop and test their own changes.

Thanks for the reminder. I’ve often forgotten how things are or have been since the sellout. I’ve got to speak better with my wallet.

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Astasia wrote:

How is the Chinese version getting all these fancy new features if the western version is supposed to be the test version? I don't remember testing an auction house, or auto looting pets, or a death recap, or any of these obviously very complex systems that would have required extensive testing. It's almost as if the Chinese team working on the game has the ability to develop and test their own changes.

Sorry no logical thinking allowed here

The Chinese version is maintained by a separate development team. Western Path of Exile has no impact on the Chinese version, and vice versa.