Jonathan Rogers Interview about POE1 playerbase

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rob_korn#1745 wrote:

My gut feeling is to agree with you, having been in PoE1 from beta to this day.

And yet, you could argue that we are a different time, market changes as well, so we cannot possibly know how it really is (and forums are just noise, good feedback is just flooded and full of anger, to the point you can't take anything good out of it)

Hopefully, they do have the data, and I'm quite confident they progress through that. Most of the time "voiced feedback" was kinda irrelevant in the past, no reason for it to change, teams are mostly the same.

Time will tell !

Well we have modern examples of similar things in games today. D4 started out wanting to be tougher and with less loot drops, nerfing fun builds at first, yet reversed course as player numbers plummeted.

Helldivers 2 got obsessed with keeping the difficulty by nerfing the fun weapons and player base began to rebel (with full on rebellion when the Sony shit hit about a month later). They only started to gain back trust when they undid pretty much all the nerfs to return fun to the game.

Even Elden Ring, is considered one of if not the easiest Souls games, yet it is also the most popular and had the most growth in player base. This lends to more people wanting something easier rather than harder when it comes to fun.

Now granted it can't be too easy, but things like getting unlucky with gear in an ARPG can make it overly frustrating for people. Also the more in control of their experience the more difficult things can typically be. For example, in Souls games you know it is you that is the reason the mob or boss killed you, not because the game decided not to give you any upgrades for hours of time leaving you either drastically undergeared or forced to farm even in the beginning of the game.

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1453R#7804 wrote:

Rogers is a master of his craft, for sure. Say what you will about the direction he chose to take PoE2, some of the things he talks about in this interview from a game design perspective are deeply insightful.

The idea that a 'Good Game' is one that gets a thousand tiny details right rather than just one that gets one big thing right is honestly huge. That line, "it's more important to not get anything wrong than it is to get one big thing right", is frankly words to live by. Weirdly inspirational, in a way - simply not messing up is oft times the most skillful, masterful thing someone can do.

lol all that smug talk about the little details and they released the game full of broken shit, so much that they had to change the loot, the dodge roll, gonna have to put teleporting checkpoints because they made the maps insanely large without a purpose, mapping is full of 1 shots by stuf you cant see or react because its so fast (and they said they only had one shots on PoE because it was too fast), trials being completely broken past the second one, be it in dificulty or broken stuff melting your 4-5k honor in 1 second, side content barely giving shards to fight the bosses (over 30 breaches with a build that clears the really good and only have half of the shards), and i could keep going, most of this could have been seen miles away by anyone playing the game.

So ye, i love GGG, but stop sucking their titties because the F up really hard here.

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Erebus1800#6364 wrote:

It kind of feels like the developers actively hate their core player base, based off this and other past decisions.

This. It indeed feels as if they had attracted a player base they didn't want and are now trying to fix it by estranging us and attracting new people. Well... the crowd they attracted paid the bills and I doubt the new people will do the same. At least there is no money going from me to GGG anymore.

GGG is like one of those 'friends' who plays with you until he has taken everything he could from you. Friendly face, says what he needs to say to manipulate you, but in the end, leaves you after sucking you dry.

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Turddog#8292 wrote:

A large majority of the player base is likely not at endgame yet. The rest of us need to experience end game before we can leave an opinion on what we think needs to be changed.

Then stop creating posts on how evrything is fne and it´s the best game ever if you dont know jack shit about the game when you didnt even leave the tutorial.

Seriously these guys....

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Jesus christ, you again? You joined a week ago, you know nothing about PoE in general, the game isnt even hard, at all, you probably didnt even reach cruel yet with how much youre around here, im doing tier 15 maps, it´s the same shit, just smells different, stop thinking youre special because youre playing a hard game because you´re wrong in both ways.

FFS i knew this new wave of players would attract this crowd...

Bwaaahaha, dude you my see a lot up there from your high horse.

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Erebus1800#6364 wrote:

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Nagisawa#4090 wrote:

This Jonathon Interview is confusing, if NEW players are OK with PoE's difficulty, then why bother making a NEW game then?

They didn't need to spin this off into its own game, just make it a expansion and continue just adding to the game.

Again, why did they? Was it because they needed new customers who weren't intimidated by all the content and bloat?

They sold it as poe 1 was too confusing and unapproachable for new players because its systems were confusing. So in POE2 they dumbed down all the systems and gutted the fun and unique parts of POE such as build creation and crafting. But than they go and make POE 2 harder than POE 1 for new players. So its kind of hard to tell what their actual goal was. I suspect it was a way for them to sell the idea of a new game so they could make the game they wanted which was an updated ruthless with nicer graphics. It kind of feels like the developers actively hate their core player base, based off this and other past decisions.

Did you even read your posts? So they wanted to make a game with an easier point entry and they 'gutted the fun and unique parts' of PoE1 because you just posted EARLIER that PoE1 was too confusing, which implies not fun. Unless you think being confused is fun?

You're making zero sense.

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Nagisawa#4090 wrote:

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Erebus1800#6364 wrote:

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Nagisawa#4090 wrote:

This Jonathon Interview is confusing, if NEW players are OK with PoE's difficulty, then why bother making a NEW game then?

They didn't need to spin this off into its own game, just make it a expansion and continue just adding to the game.

Again, why did they? Was it because they needed new customers who weren't intimidated by all the content and bloat?

They sold it as poe 1 was too confusing and unapproachable for new players because its systems were confusing. So in POE2 they dumbed down all the systems and gutted the fun and unique parts of POE such as build creation and crafting. But than they go and make POE 2 harder than POE 1 for new players. So its kind of hard to tell what their actual goal was. I suspect it was a way for them to sell the idea of a new game so they could make the game they wanted which was an updated ruthless with nicer graphics. It kind of feels like the developers actively hate their core player base, based off this and other past decisions.

Did you even read your posts? So they wanted to make a game with an easier point entry and they 'gutted the fun and unique parts' of PoE1 because you just posted EARLIER that PoE1 was too confusing, which implies not fun. Unless you think being confused is fun?

You're making zero sense.

PoE 1 i not confusing, it has massive depth, they are two different things, if you actually put effort into learning the game it´s the most rewarding experience you can have, people keep learning new small details even after thousands of hours, you feel like you are a better player, thats called progression. In PoE 2 they are dumbing down the game for the dumb crowd, for example in PoE 1 you could craft insanely deep and varied body armour with interesting effects that could be build defining, now in PoE 2 its HP and resists, thats it, you could start in one side of the tree and go to the other side by the highways and make crazy new builds that noone tought of, now in PoE 2 you can barely leave your starting zone as the "not" highways will eat all your passive points, so every build gonna be mostly the same crap, the atlas passive tree would let you customize late game content with fun new mechanics, now it´s +1 shrine, you see the point?

Did you even read your posts? So they wanted to make a game with an easier point entry and they 'gutted the fun and unique parts' of PoE1 because you just posted EARLIER that PoE1 was too confusing, which implies not fun. Unless you think being confused is fun?

You're making zero sense.

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Sorry if i was being confusing. A common point that has been brought up in the past was that POE was difficult for new or potential players to get into. In some interviews they have talked about wanting to make it easier for new players to get into POE/POE 2 (this is not me saying I found it too difficult). This is why for example the changing of how damage works in POE 1 to POE 2 (for example conversion no long cares about the starting element, so doesnt scale like in POE 1), to make it less confusing. I personally enjoyed the depth of POE 1 systems, and see the making it shallower as a negative, maybe some people is it differently. sorry for the confusion.

thank god. poe1 gamers dont get me wrong some of them were great but many who remained.... got jaded and got sick of repeating the same content and they wanted to breeze through all of it and reach the end game again and again... so they wanted an easy ride from start to finish.


this is a brand new game. and if they dynamic should be standard here then poe2 would be a miserable experience.


i died 7-8 times on the act 1 boss and had the time of my life. 10/10 boss experience.

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Turddog#8292 wrote:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HtTxuE5aP88&t=203s&pp=ygUUam9uYXRoYW4gcm9nZXJzIHBvZTI%3D

The above link is an interview with J.R. I recommend watching the whole interview.

11:05 second minute mark J.R. goes into detail about the POE1 playerbase not being receptive of the difficulty. The interesting thing is he is exactly right . Most new players to POE are enjoying the game and the challenge.

Difficulty is here to stay boys!

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IcyMistV#5121 wrote:

thank god. poe1 gamers dont get me wrong some of them were great but many who remained.... got jaded and got sick of repeating the same content and they wanted to breeze through all of it and reach the end game again and again... so they wanted an easy ride from start to finish.


this is a brand new game. and if they dynamic should be standard here then poe2 would be a miserable experience.


i died 7-8 times on the act 1 boss and had the time of my life. 10/10 boss experience.

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Turddog#8292 wrote:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HtTxuE5aP88&t=203s&pp=ygUUam9uYXRoYW4gcm9nZXJzIHBvZTI%3D

The above link is an interview with J.R. I recommend watching the whole interview.

11:05 second minute mark J.R. goes into detail about the POE1 playerbase not being receptive of the difficulty. The interesting thing is he is exactly right . Most new players to POE are enjoying the game and the challenge.

Difficulty is here to stay boys!

Since PoE2 will be running leagues and the focus in on endgame just like PoE1, the exact same thing will happen here, except it will be even more off putting since the campaign will be more tedious. There is a reason most who praised ruthless abandoned the mode.