Reminder: Selectable Character Gender is a "Minimum Bar."

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ArtCrusade wrote:

Weirdly, when they asked me "how can I fix this" and I answered honestly, I didn't get a response back.
This entire thread can be summarized with "The spirits that I called"

To be fair, I hit the same nails you did, just harder, so i assume the reply wasn't necessary(?). Also the dramatization narrative wouldn't work replying to you, i guess.

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Phrazz wrote:

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1453R wrote:

On the other hand I do get it, zooming through the campaign once only to press "SKIP SKIP SKIP" every subsequent character does feel like it cheapens the experience quite a bit.

I agree with this paragraph.

One of the things PoE nails more than other ARPGs, is the feeling of progression. You're so weak in the beginning and so strong in the endgame. The contrast is huge, unlike other games where you're character feels almost the same, just with different numbers. To take away 2/3 of that progression just feels wrong on so many levels.

I understand why people are asking for a campaign skip. I also understand why the developers are reluctant. But you do have to respect it on some levels, because this would arguably make the game more... Accessible and probably more popular. I like to see that some developers aren't just thinking about those factors (jab, jab).

I still think that alternatives are a better solution than a skip. Anyhow, regarding PoE 2, it should be a problem for at least a few years. If this is something people "demand" from the get-go, I clearly do not understand the world anymore.

Yeah. Like, it's weird in that I find myself agreeing with both Jonathan and the playerbase on this one. Campaign skips suck, they disconnect the character from any sense of progression or attachment to the world. You just apparate into the Epilogue area as a Legendary Hero that didn't exist thirteen seconds ago, it's jarring and weird and kinna totally kills my buzz. A lot of Jonathan's answers on game design boil down to "people think they want this, and we've honestly tried it, but we've discovered it doesn't actually feel great in practice and tends to reduce immersion/investment/buy-in." A lot of things players find super annoying - manually opening doors, manual item pick-up, a lot of those stop-slowing-me-down bitsies - are there to facilitate a sense of being grounded in the game world.

A lot of the Boomer Zoomer Must-Go-Faster players that have long since lost all sense of that grounding in the world of Wraeclast forget that they're a vanishing minority of the playerbase - fewer than four percent of players on Steam have the achievements for defeating the Eater of Worlds, and same for the Searing Exarch. That sense of grounding is actually really important for retaining more typical players, even if it aggravates high-speed-low-drag optimancers looking to get to maps fifteen seconds faster.

And yet I cannot blame players at all for not wanting to grind the campaign for the three hundredth time and instead just getting to the part where they try their super cool idea they wanna play with, instead. Like, totes get it, especially with the PoE1 campaign. That sucker's showing its age hard, every time I get to Act II it just makes my boobs sag. Hardly Grinding Gears' fault, but it's also hardly the fault of people who've played as much of the PoE1 campaign as they ever wanted to play and a whole lotta "and then some" and would do just about anything to have something else to do. That is an absolutely valid ask, and it may have to end up being a point where Vision has to bend to demand.

I do get not wanting to offer a skip option in the new game the moment the new game drops though, heh. Like, PoE1? Absolutely, press for some sort of alternative, but PoE2 gets at least one league where ya gotta play the brand new campaign you've never seen before. Hueh.

I have read...a lot. Like, a lot. Highbrow shit. Pop shit. Everything in between.

And VERY few books are a joy to reread regularly regardless of quality. My tune simply won't change there.

And sure, playing a game isn't the same as reading a book -- it's a lot more interactive, a lot more potential for deviations playthrough to playthrough...But there is no way I can see an ARPG campaign being so compelling every time that it is a better approach to alts than a story-free mode.

This may well be Jonathan's hill to die on. Everyone has one.

And surely he's a lot more riding on it than any of us.

But it is for me a sine qua non. Period. Full stop. I can't but see his sentiment and feel a hell of a lot of hubris. And hubris not in unproven passion (as we saw with PoE 1) but hubris in the face of popular opinion and current trends based on what I believe to be a healthy evolution of the genre.

We'll see. I love being wrong about these things. But I had more confidence in BG3's claims regarding narrative ambition due to Larian's earlier works than I do GGG's claims to a 'compelling' campaign based on theirs.

Edit: and let's not call it a campaign 'skip'. That is the wrong language and I genuinely dislike that DIV and WH40KIM use it, even though that's what it is in DIV since the story-free mode is the result of events in the campaign. The word 'skip' implies something isn't worth experiencing. That is not what a story-free mode is about. It's about embracing the heart and soul of the replayability of ARPGs *after* we have experienced the story.

In a way, a good story-free mode is a bit like a sequel within the game, a 'what happens next' after you've resolved the main conflict of the campaign. No, not a sequel. A coda. A happily ever after full of slaughter and treasure hunting. Valhalla, in a way.

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1453R wrote:

A lot of the Boomer Zoomer Must-Go-Faster players that have long since lost all sense of that grounding in the world of Wraeclast forget that they're a vanishing minority of the playerbase - fewer than four percent of players on Steam have the achievements for defeating the Eater of Worlds, and same for the Searing Exarch. That sense of grounding is actually really important for retaining more typical players, even if it aggravates high-speed-low-drag optimancers looking to get to maps fifteen seconds faster.

You can't really take steam achievements as a proper measurement tho.
Those 4% could be like 80 or who knows how many percent of the existing player base. The percentage is based on accounts with the game in their library and not the percentage of players who actually played the game lately.
A large portion of those players might not even play anymore and never experienced the boss fights to begin with as they simply did not exist years ago.
Some are probably players who've picked up this game but did not liked it much, not accounts which obviously don't encounter those fights anyways, and do on.

It's the same with those people who take the steam charts as active measurement of player numbers while it's also just inaccurate.

Some proper statistics after each league would be cool, but that's something only GGG can provide, so heavily unlikely to happen at all nowadays.

I like to play men, sexy men - sexy men I want to poke or rather, or as well, sexy men I would love to be - who are also gods in terms of their power.

Several other ARPGs that I could spend my time on, that are under active development now, give me the chance to be a dude in all classes.

I don't see why games both bigger and smaller, in terms of money if not also population/sales, can do this but GGG cannot.


Also - lol at anyone who calls this desire "woke" or other equally vacuous phrases.

Many cis, white, straight men prefer playing female toons when given the chance, some just want to be a dude. Some people don't care if their choice is made when they chose the class, some people very much do care.

There is nothing to lose by adding this is. Sure, everything is an opportunity cost, but so are plenty of things most of you won't like (no one is going to like literally everything about the sequel, of course) that perhaps you dont even know about yet.


If they are looking for more players, dying on the hill of gendered classes, and going with the typical "woman are magic and dex" stereotypes seems odd. LE also does the gendered thing but hey, woman can be warriors and men can be magic whores. Imagine that.

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Pashid wrote:

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1453R wrote:

A lot of the Boomer Zoomer Must-Go-Faster players that have long since lost all sense of that grounding in the world of Wraeclast forget that they're a vanishing minority of the playerbase - fewer than four percent of players on Steam have the achievements for defeating the Eater of Worlds, and same for the Searing Exarch. That sense of grounding is actually really important for retaining more typical players, even if it aggravates high-speed-low-drag optimancers looking to get to maps fifteen seconds faster.

You can't really take steam achievements as a proper measurement tho.
Those 4% could be like 80 or who knows how many percent of the existing player base. The percentage is based on accounts with the game in their library and not the percentage of players who actually played the game lately.
A large portion of those players might not even play anymore and never experienced the boss fights to begin with as they simply did not exist years ago.
Some are probably players who've picked up this game but did not liked it much, not accounts which obviously don't encounter those fights anyways, and do on.

It's the same with those people who take the steam charts as active measurement of player numbers while it's also just inaccurate.

Some proper statistics after each league would be cool, but that's something only GGG can provide, so heavily unlikely to happen at all nowadays.

the point of POE2, as stated and indicated by the people who are making it, is not to continue to be the game where 75+% of the player base is the most sweaty members.

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BINARYGOD wrote:

There is nothing to lose by adding this is

The issue is that this is very low in the priority list, but for some reason, some people insist in treating it as high.

I can get into the game right now and reproduce at least 3 bugs and or "interactions" that should've be fixed years ago, yet...

Oh, and before anyone say anything, it's obvious one thing being fixed has no correlation to others being added, but the, let's say, "work force available" to resolve code related issues is very low atm, and i would rather it be used to fix stuff that affects everyone, not a small portion of players.

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BINARYGOD wrote:

the point of POE2, as stated and indicated by the people who are making it, is not to continue to be the game where 75+% of the player base is the most sweaty members.

That's not really set yet as the game's not even out yet.
Maybe not right at release but over time and further development the game will for sure not be any different to PoE1 regarding the point of content with some people having a harder time while some others fall asleep.
Aspirational content is always going to be a thing in any game in one or another way.
And who knows PoE2 might as well ends up just as fast as the current version of PoE once they stack up more and more player power over each league, just the same way they did with PoE with some players having a hard time to get things done while others again just fall asleep with how easy it might get.

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Pashid wrote:

.

Unless they exercise self restraint and keep exercising it for years to come, i can very much see PoE2 becoming PoE1, in relative terms, even if it takes twice as many years, of half so. No way to know (yet).

I wonder what percent of GGG resources are going into the POE2 Acts versus the end game? I suspect quite a lot. It is the basis for everything that follows. It is likely the baby that the Devs have doted on and cared for and grown over the past few years. It will be the basis for all the future league expansions to follow. To get through all six Acts and make them playable will be a huge undertaking by its release. Lots of dollars and thoughtfulness and effort.

And yet six, eight, ten months before its release here we are talking about how to skip those same Acts. The Acts are already the red-headed stepchild. As much as I don't like running the Acts now after ten years, I would think that from the GGG team's standpoint, such talk would make me sad.

I hope the Devs find a waay to vary the passage to maps such that there are a variety of options or paths, or modifiers or whatever, such that running them stays fun and interesting for a few years.

Yeah, the zoomers will be zooming. The passive tree blossomed as did the Atlas and then they morphed into the atlas passive tree. I think Jonathon should be able to find a way to do something similar with the Acts. He has a clean chalk board to work with and scores of POE1 leagues to draw from.