Do you think d4 will have any impact on the ,,vision,, ?

It will have impact on the playercount for sure :)

I hope not. If they shift on their vision, I hope it's not heavily toward a game that already exists. Variety is the spice of life.

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Nubatron wrote:

I hope not. If they shift on their vision, I hope it's not heavily toward a game that already exists. Variety is the spice of life.

This!

People scream (rightfully) about diversity in PoE, and we also need diversity/variety in the ARPG genre. PoE, D4, LE, TL and every ARPG should do their own thing. Every game shouldn't be cast in the same mould. Coming in here to advocate for PoE to be "more like Diablo" or going into the Diablo forums advocating for Diablo to be "more like PoE" are just bad ideas when it comes to diversity/variety.

Will the Diablo 4 release affect PoE numbers? Of course. Should GGG panic and totally change the game, spitting on all the players that actually like the game? Of course not. But we can all hope that the competition makes GGG focus more on PoE's weaknesses - and better polish their game. But changing their vision? Hopefully not.

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Nubatron wrote:

I hope not. If they shift on their vision, I hope it's not heavily toward a game that already exists. Variety is the spice of life.

Ok, but anyone would care to elaborate what the VisionTM is based on because it's pretty vague and none actually seem to even know what it wants to be. 1.0? 2.0? 3.0? D2? If Ruthless is the vision, Siege of the Atlas clearly isn't, yet here we are. All leagues, without exception, keep introducing power creep, even with the constant nerfs. Ruthless is the epitome of meta creep, 2471 characters above lv80, 43% are Occultist, Necro or Jugg, above lv90, 183 characters, jumps to 53%, with 40% of skills concentrated in Fire Trap, SRS, Vortex and RF.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

Fun fact: the VisionTM used to include not using floating life bars. I agreed wholeheartedly -- until GGG left them on during an alpha test. I told Chris I was wrong and they really improved the game, and while I am sure I was far from the sole sceptic to be swayed, I was glad to see the experimental feature go live with the next update.

So ironically, GGG were more flexible and open-minded back when the game was chronologically closer to Diablo 2. Which tells me that VisionTM is less visionary and more just plain old stubbornness and laziness. A plan is not a vision when it's stuck in the past.

Quote from an actual Alpha Member.

Saying ARPGs need variety/diversity when PoE is alredy different from everything else by miles is just nonsensical. And advocating that there can't be variety/diversity in difficulty is hypocritical when Ruthless exists.

So please, can someone with actual insight and not just rhetorical or subjective arguments explain to me how they are not compromising the VisionTM when everything they do is against the VisionTM?

VisionTM is subject to change over time.

When the game first started it was designed as a hardcore game for a niche audience. That obviously didn't sell well so over time GGG casualized the game more and more until nothing was left of "hardcore" except hardcore mode.

Then in 3.13 they realized: "Shit we lost complete sight of our initial vision of the game, let's make a 180 and go back to where we came from while trying to not lose 90% of our playerbase on the way."
That's basically what they've done since 3.14. Constant nerfs of everything, from player power to loot and crafting but in doses where people are still willing to swallow it. There are also occasional breadcrums thrown our way to distract us from all the nerfing. So far it seems to work except for a few leagues where they overdid it and got massive backlash.

I don't know what their goals are in terms of money gain but i am fairly certain that if the cash flow goes downhill at some point they will start making concessions again. Whether D4 is going to cause that... i honestly doubt it. At least not long term.

There's another, recent post, in general that summarizes that basically they are not really tied solely to player support anymore.

Regardless, there in lies the mixed signals. Pretty much everything they do is met with constant backlash. They explicitly had to advertise Ruthless as a "pet" project to not incur even more backlash. At this point, it would be wise to just concede to the vast majority and fully make a true VisionTM gameplay, unbound by the other. If Ruthless is supposed to be that, it's clear the people that actually want the VisionTM is exceedingly low.

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AdRonZh3Ro wrote:

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Nubatron wrote:

I hope not. If they shift on their vision, I hope it's not heavily toward a game that already exists. Variety is the spice of life.

Ok, but anyone would care to elaborate what the VisionTM is based on because it's pretty vague and none actually seem to even know what it wants to be. 1.0? 2.0? 3.0? D2? If Ruthless is the vision, Siege of the Atlas clearly isn't, yet here we are. All leagues, without exception, keep introducing power creep, even with the constant nerfs. Ruthless is the epitome of meta creep, 2471 characters above lv80, 43% are Occultist, Necro or Jugg, above lv90, 183 characters, jumps to 53%, with 40% of skills concentrated in Fire Trap, SRS, Vortex and RF.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

Fun fact: the VisionTM used to include not using floating life bars. I agreed wholeheartedly -- until GGG left them on during an alpha test. I told Chris I was wrong and they really improved the game, and while I am sure I was far from the sole sceptic to be swayed, I was glad to see the experimental feature go live with the next update.

So ironically, GGG were more flexible and open-minded back when the game was chronologically closer to Diablo 2. Which tells me that VisionTM is less visionary and more just plain old stubbornness and laziness. A plan is not a vision when it's stuck in the past.

Quote from an actual Alpha Member.

Saying ARPGs need variety/diversity when PoE is alredy different from everything else by miles is just nonsensical. And advocating that there can't be variety/diversity in difficulty is hypocritical when Ruthless exists.

So please, can someone with actual insight and not just rhetorical or subjective arguments explain to me how they are not compromising the VisionTM when everything they do is against the VisionTM?

That's hard to answer as somemone who is not part of GGG. I would say the answer for the compromised vision is easier than 3.15, but harder than 3.13 in terms of relative difficulty. Their vision on trading I think is pretty crystal clear in spite of people that practice active ignorance on that matter. Their vision on level 100 is that it should probably be harder than it is but have no clue how to do that with the current mechanics available today. Their vision on equipment is that chase items are okay, even if those few items do trivialize the game a little (Mageblood being the primary item I'm speaking of here). Their vision appears to be heavily weighted toward RNG rather than deterministic. As for Ruthless, that's not the vision in terms what they realistic deploy as the baseline for the game. It's certainly how they want the game to be, but with the realization Ruthless isn't popular enough to keep the lights on. The current game is a compromise between what they want the game to be and what is realistic for contining to develop the game.

I feel like this list could go on and on; and this is only my opinion of what the vision is. The "Vision" is more of a concept than a real thing you can point to from what I can tell.

No. Adding of the 3-lines-of-code QoL we've been asking for for years would take all of one day to implement.

Had they wanted to, they could have changed things by now.

Everyone knows that had they added all of the features they should have, the game would have millions upon millions of concurrent users.

It's not what they want

It won't have an impact on the vision itself. PoE might change (for better or worse), but not because D4 had an impact on the vision, but because maybe the vision loses importance.

Anyway, is D4 out, yet? (This is a rhetorical question.)

I'm excited to give D4 a shot, even though there's really nothing specific about it that I'm wishing PoE would adopt, save for one thing; actual usable loot that actually drops from the actual monsters I'm actually killing.

As long as it feels that players have a reasonable chance at finding usable items themselves within a season, that's a win over PoE.