remove alot of complicated stuff in poe2

That NPCs comment made me chuckle, as someone who plays both Sims and PoE. I take it as a meta joke where TS4 would implode with the total amount of hideout NPCs, AI autonomy unable to control all of them at one time. Then they'd all be standing around too.

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kentpachi wrote:

Majority on here might not agree but...

This is the key sentence.

Should GGG tone down the complexity of PoE - at the risk of losing a lot of the loyal players that keep coming back to the game, league after league, because PoE offers more complexity than the competition? Would they maybe attract more players? Maybe. Arguably. But at what cost?

If GGG wanted money to be the driving force of development, they would've made the game A LOT more casual friendly and newbie friendly. It wouldn't be that hard. But they want a information heavy, knowledge based, complex hardcore experience. I don't get why people can't be OK with that; there are plenty of casual, easy-to-digest ARPGs out there. Just let PoE be PoE.

And no, I'm not saying that GGG can't make the game more newbie friendly without losing come complexity, because I think they can. And that should be the aim; don't make the game less complex/simpler, but add optional systems that directly or indirectly teach/introduces certain system in a better way than they are doing now. And "bloat" isn't necessarily complexity. There's TONS of stuff they could tidy/clean up.

This mindset has always been very strange to me. Path of Exile is only as complicated as you want it to be because most of the content is optional.

During my very first league all I did was spam maps and was having an absolute blast at the game. Then league by league I started slowly learning new mechanics and aspects that were exciting to me. I still don't give two damns about crafting, Harvest and Syndicate, and that doesn't take even a bit away from my fun.

New players' biggest enemy is their own mentality that they somehow need to know ALL at ONCE about the game to have fun which is simply false. So this false premise shouldn't be a reason to dumb-down the game and disappoint players who actually seek depth.

I just returned to the game after a longer break, and am keeping it absolutely casual - just spamming maps completely shutting my brain off 1h a day after work. I know I probably won't make tons of currency and 100 div build this league, but that doesn't mean I can't have fun and enjoy the game.

they'll never do that, because they don't really care about attracting newbies who enjoy dumbed down games like diablo. they don't care how many people play the game, they only want to make a good game and I agree with their view

remove cluster jewels? congratz, you killed half the builds in the game

remove old league mechanics? hell no, the league mechanics allow you to play a specialized game and invest your time in whatever you like. there's so much to do in the game, but most of them are optional so you can just do whatever you want. I have like 3500 hours and still don't understand how exactly syndicate trust/rivalry system works, but who cares

crafting is generally fine, except we need some of the old harvest mods and recombinators back in the game

and necro is already very powerful, while also being one of the most versatile ascendancies in terms of build diversity

While the responses in this thread are amusingly predictable, I would say if the GGG business model is to cater to existing veterans only, and not bring in fresh players (or even a small amount of them), to replace and sustain as they go, then this entire exercise is one of futility moving forward.

I've already cited the numbers for players just making it through the campaign...and it's bad. GGG is working with razor thin margins if only a fifth of the playerbase contributes to the majority of their revenue. They better pray those 20% love PoE2, becaue their new player outreach, onboarding, and sustainability is awful.

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kentpachi wrote:

Trust me when I say this GGG

Almost all my co-workers and friends find the game not newbie friendly

cluster jewels
So many NPCS in Hideout (even my sister in law thought im playing a sims-like game)
complicated mechanics for newbies ( syndicate, and etc u name it )
Complicated crafting ( yes definitely you can compare it to d4 and you will know)
I remember league before that it was so complicated that even streamers find it confusing, I forgot the league name.
....

Quite subjectively, "I would only want what I like".
I think cluster and syndicates not complicated for newbies.
If someone does, he can skip them and not use them.

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While the responses in this thread are amusingly predictable

hoho that goes double for you.

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xPiranha wrote:

"

While the responses in this thread are amusingly predictable

hoho that goes double for you.

So hoho hoho?

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DarthSki44 wrote:

I would say if the GGG business model is to cater to existing veterans only, and not bring in fresh players (or even a small amount of them), to replace and sustain as they go, then this entire exercise is one of futility moving forward.

Funny enough the amount of players has increased over the past years and even the current league had the highest amount of players for a long time.
So I'm not sure what you are talking about cause the game clearly has no need to replace any players to sustain their stable numbers over the time. PoE is going to be more than fine without any removal of "complicated" stuff cause a lot of players play it or start it because it's not a pseudo diablo game, or tries to be one.

It's more likely that D4 has to replace players in time if they keep up with their slow pace of a unfinished and unpolished game. Or even decide to make more stupid changes to upset their community. hoho

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Pashid wrote:

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

I would say if the GGG business model is to cater to existing veterans only, and not bring in fresh players (or even a small amount of them), to replace and sustain as they go, then this entire exercise is one of futility moving forward.

Funny enough the amount of players has increased over the past years and even the current league had the highest amount of players for a long time.
So I'm not sure what you are talking about cause the game clearly has no need to replace any players to sustain their stable numbers over the time. PoE is going to be more than fine without any removal of "complicated" stuff cause a lot of players play it or start it because it's not a pseudo diablo game, or tries to be one.

It's more likely that D4 has to replace players in time if they keep up with their slow pace of a unfinished and unpolished game. Or even decide to make more stupid changes to upset their community. hoho

But this doesn't make sense for PoE, because sheer volume doesn't really matter (at least not financially).

If they have record numbers playing, which they do, but those new players leave quickly and perhaps don't return, what good was the influx? (And many of these were from the D4 beta overflow and interest)

I mean are we really saying that Crucible was GGG's greatest ever league by far? Shattering their records? It doesn't feel that way to me.

Statistically, the retention numbers have been dropping since 3.15, and while yes its factually correct the number of people trying the game has been increasing, it's also true to say that players stop faster, and how far those players get, have been dropping percentage wise.

In terms of business success, In D4 if someone pays $100 for the game, plays, and then doesn't come back, that's not even a problem for Blizzard. This is the advantage of. Pay to Play AAA with hybrid live service. All of their players are at least minimally monetized, and D4 Devs have a financial incentive to make good content moving forward. I would tend to be optimistic on this front, even if the only reason was that Blizzard wants more money.