An Open Letter to GGG RE: One Portal

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

Nah, its a game design issue. And if it doesn't change GGG will keep losing more players because of it. So it will change. That's inevitable.

If you knew them, and have listened to some older interviews, particularly with Chris, you'd know that they don't care. They cater to a particular segment of players and don't ever want to be an ARPG "for everybody".

Things like the supermassive skill tree are a filter. "Git gud or suffer" mechanics are another. The faster you realize this game is not for you, the better. They don't want to waste your time.

If they capture a bigger audience, it's fine. If it's an audience different than PoE 1, even better (less overlap, more players overall). But they will not compromise their vision to cater to the masses (like a certain other multibillion $ studio does).

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Ankh_13#4218 wrote:

It's a skill issue or a gear issue. Git gud or git better gear.

The mechanic is fine but needs balancing and DarthMicro talked about it.

They're already improving things like resistance penalties and chaos damage making maps too rippy. Eventually, they'll hit the balance where map sustain will not be a problem if you play the game properly.

Nah, you're wrong. It makes me not want to play the game. It's that simple. Waystones do not drop even if you buff your Atlas passives only for that, so you cannot progress on the Atlass passives, cannot progress on maps and cannot progress your character, because you cannot farm maps because you have no waystones because buying tier 1s and using the bench to forge higher tiers takes 100s of thousands of gold to make a couple of 7s or 8s which half of them won't drop more waystones and you'll die on the rest because some invisible on death effect instagibbed you - and so on.

I decided to just stop playing and only return when GGG reverts this, because as it is now it's a waste of my time and i can play any other game instead of this one.

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Ankh_13#4218 wrote:

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

Nah, its a game design issue. And if it doesn't change GGG will keep losing more players because of it. So it will change. That's inevitable.

If you knew them, and have listened to some older interviews, particularly with Chris, you'd know that they don't care. They cater to a particular segment of players and don't ever want to be an ARPG "for everybody".

Things like the supermassive skill tree are a filter. "Git gud or suffer" mechanics are another. The faster you realize this game is not for you, the better. They don't want to waste your time.

If they capture a bigger audience, it's fine. If it's an audience different than PoE 1, even better (less overlap, more players overall). But they will not compromise their vision to cater to the masses (like a certain other multibillion $ studio does).

Nope, it's just gonna be bad for the game's player retention if they keep this pointless death penalty(and other bad designs) in this game. Making a game for 0.1% of people and random people that jump on a hype train to try the game out then drop it in act 1 isn't a very profitable idea. And like it or not, PoE 2 is going to be a f2p live-service game. It needs to actually have a returning playerbase that buys mtx to sustain itself. Ain't nobody gonna come back every 3 months to the game in its current state.

And all of this will become very apparent in the next few months, otherwise the game is just going to slowly lose all its players.

Not to mention all the design that screams "we hate the player" like on-death effects, needlessly harsh death penalties and just things that are designed to waste your time. People won't stick around for a game that disrespects your time so blatantly.

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puriruri#6658 wrote:

It makes me not want to play the game. It's that simple.

There's plenty of people playing and enjoying the game. So perhaps it's just not the game for you? It's okay to admit that. Just go play something else. Your favourite game is not a religion.

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Ankh_13#4218 wrote:

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puriruri#6658 wrote:

It makes me not want to play the game. It's that simple.

There's plenty of people playing and enjoying the game. So perhaps it's just not the game for you? It's okay to admit that. Just go play something else. Your favourite game is not a religion.

This kind of gatekeeping and chasing players away is exactly what will leave you with a dead game.

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

Nope, it's just gonna be bad for the game's player retention if they keep this pointless death penalty(and other bad designs) in this game. Making a game for 0.1% of people and random people that jump on a hype train to try the game out then drop it in act 1 isn't a very profitable idea. And like it or not, PoE 2 is going to be a f2p live-service game. It needs to actually have a returning playerbase that buys mtx to sustain itself. Ain't nobody gonna come back every 3 months to the game in its current state.

And all of this will become very apparent in the next few months, otherwise the game is just going to slowly lose all its players.

Not to mention all the design that screams "we hate the player" like on-death effects, needlessly harsh death penalties and just things that are designed to waste your time. People won't stick around for a game that disrespects your time so blatantly.

What keeps players in PoE 1, and returning, is the league system. PoE 2 doesn't have that yet, and we'll probably see the first real league in 2026.

"In the next few months", need I remind you, we'll probably not be out with a full release. It's ludicrous to be making judgments about long term health of a game based off a two-week-long beta preview.

There are things where the game genuinely wastes your time (like Prowling Shades that I posted about, they should basically be deleted from the game). Being bad and persisting without improving is you wasting the time yourself.

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Ankh_13#4218 wrote:

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

Nope, it's just gonna be bad for the game's player retention if they keep this pointless death penalty(and other bad designs) in this game. Making a game for 0.1% of people and random people that jump on a hype train to try the game out then drop it in act 1 isn't a very profitable idea. And like it or not, PoE 2 is going to be a f2p live-service game. It needs to actually have a returning playerbase that buys mtx to sustain itself. Ain't nobody gonna come back every 3 months to the game in its current state.

And all of this will become very apparent in the next few months, otherwise the game is just going to slowly lose all its players.

Not to mention all the design that screams "we hate the player" like on-death effects, needlessly harsh death penalties and just things that are designed to waste your time. People won't stick around for a game that disrespects your time so blatantly.

What keeps players in PoE 1, and returning, is the league system. PoE 2 doesn't have that yet, and we'll probably see the first real league in 2026.

"In the next few months", need I remind you, we'll probably not be out with a full release. It's ludicrous to be making judgments about long term health of a game based off a two-week-long beta preview.

There are things where the game genuinely wastes your time (like Prowling Shades that I posted about, they should basically be deleted from the game). Being bad and persisting without improving is you wasting the time yourself.

They literally said the game is planned to release in 6 months. That means first league next year in the summer. 2026 would be a disaster lmao literally everyone would forget this game by then. At most there will be a delay of a few months if there's complications. And no, no league can fix how boring,monotonous and anti-fun the game's design is atm. People will just quit because the game isn't fun. It's that simple. And changes need to be made now, not when player numbers are low and it's too late.

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

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Ankh_13#4218 wrote:

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puriruri#6658 wrote:

It makes me not want to play the game. It's that simple.

There's plenty of people playing and enjoying the game. So perhaps it's just not the game for you? It's okay to admit that. Just go play something else. Your favourite game is not a religion.

This kind of gatekeeping and chasing players away is exactly what will leave you with a dead game.

"Gatekeeping" would be if I said "no, you shouldn't play the game, it's too hard for you, only elites such as myself can play it". I never said that. I'm just pointing out that, if you're not enjoying it, don't play it. Just don't make the studio change the game to cater to you specifically.

Oh I see, you're financially "invested" ($30, if not more) for no reason. (Could've waited for the final product.) And it doesn't shape up to be what you wanted (despite GGG telling everyone for MONTHS that this will be a significantly different game), it's an automatically a bad game.

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

They literally said the game is planned to release in 6 months. That means first league next year in the summer.

False. They said 6 to 12 months, so 1.0 could be next December. And it might not have a "proper" league, as in a completely new mechanic at launch. Just the campaign and endgame and a proper "Standard", like PoE 1 was basically until 3.0.

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Ankh_13#4218 wrote:

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puriruri#6658 wrote:

It makes me not want to play the game. It's that simple.

There's plenty of people playing and enjoying the game. So perhaps it's just not the game for you? It's okay to admit that. Just go play something else. Your favourite game is not a religion.

This kind of gatekeeping and chasing players away is exactly what will leave you with a dead game.[/quote]

"Gatekeeping" would be if I said "no, you shouldn't play the game, it's too hard for you, only elites such as myself can play it". I never said that. I'm just pointing out that, if you're not enjoying it, don't play it. Just don't make the studio change the game to cater to you specifically.

Oh I see, you're financially "invested" ($30, if not more) for no reason. (Could've waited for the final product.) And it doesn't shape up to be what you wanted (despite GGG telling everyone for MONTHS that this will be a significantly different game), it's an automatically a bad game.[/quote]

Yeah but no. PoE1 had a 6 portal mechanic for the maps and it worked. Why change it to something more punishing while making the maps as a whole even more punishing? It just feels not finished and full of balancing problems. I stand by what i said and will just wait till GGG resolves this problem or till the finished game releases.