Stringing on the Kickstarter customer, or Why this game needs to die

I left the community rather abruptly in August of last year, and I feel I should leave some final feedback. Or perhaps I really shouldn't. But I am going to anyway.

GGG knows what they need to do regarding the economy. Chris has stated that the economy is the most important part of PoE to them, as it should be: a healthy economy demonstrates itemization balance as players strive for wildly different gear sets, and indicates the currency system is resilient against botting/RMT. However, they did not do this: instead, they employed a barebones rare affix system leading to homogenized high-end gear, and allowed bots to stack currency with a criminally high Ex stack size. At this point, fixing these issues is much impossible.

GGG knows what they need to do regarding unique item design. Mark_GGG stated that a good unique should be something you eventually upgrade past, ensuring that you still can upgrade your gear and thus have something to look forward to. However, they did not do this: instead, they released a slew of build-around-me uniques, like Shavs and Mjolner and Cloak of Defiance, for which any form of replacement would utterly destroy the build in question. It is too late to do anything about this now. Because legacy items.

GGG knows how to make action choice matter and encourage dynamic gameplay. One of my first PoE experiences was encountering Invalesco's build guides and looking in awe at what an interesting set of active skills he'd utilize for maximum effectiveness. But GGG didn't stick with that: as Charan's post on AoE says more eloquently than I could, everything has become bogged down in AoE supports, auras and triggers, leading to a single-skill spam metagame. Charan has hypothesized that nerfing these autopilot options with the current playerbase would be like taking heroin away from an addict; he just might be correct.

The common thread here is that this isn't quite the game we were hoping for. I feel a great many of us from CB who are still here are in it not for the game PoE is, but for the game it was, or hopefully will be, or could have been... and never will be, because the things we would like fixed are too ingrained. My hiatus has allowed me to reflect on how it actually borders on mental illness to feel a need to give beta tester feddback for a game which has been in full release for over a year.

Yet it seems I was far from alone in my previous insanity. Which makes me curious: why? What causes us old-time forumers to continue to unrealistically hope for a fundamentally better PoE tomorrow?

And then I meandered back to this site and noticed something, something almost hidden in plain sight: CharanJaydemyr has yet another supporter pack.

Hmm.

About 2 years ago, at the beginning of Open Beta, it was commonly said that the game was, for all intents and purposes, in full release already, since the devs promised no more wipes. Although perhaps true from the perspective of the in-game economy, if you look at the real-money side of things, the actual funding of the game, what you find is the polar opposite: PoE still uses what is essentially a Kickstarter funding model. Buying point picks isn't just buying a point pack, it's becoming a Supporter. As a Supporter, you get to Support the developer as they work on developing the game you'd like to Support so you can see it in the future after you're done Supporting its development.

Except you won't see it, because this Path of Exile will never be that game. But this doesn't stop GGG from throwing out yet another batch of Supporter titles, does it? Of course not; too profitable for them.

You know what term I prefer? Customer. Customers support the businesses they purchase from, but there is an implication that a finished product is involved. Such as, oh, a game in full release.

If you were (I would no longer use the tense "are") a Supporter, then how satisfied are you as a Customer?

Personally, my answer to that question is somewhere between "okay" and "meh," but the point is more in thinking that way, as a Customer, rather than a Supporter. Because after you remove the game which was or could have been, well, what you see is what you get.

Do I want more of this title? Emphatically, no! Perhaps PoE 2, but I've had enough PoE 1, kthx. So I'd like to ask all of you a favor: if you are thinking about being a Supporter, please decide against it. If you're like me and the game you'd like to see more of is the one which could have been or could be, then further Support at this time would only work to postpone what you'd want, not expedite it. Unfortunately, it seems that until we economically force GGG into considering development of an entirely new title, they'll just try making a million expansions for this one ("seems" being the operative word). I hope you agree that's not what you're really interested in.

It was a good game with a handful of incredibly innovative, indeed revolutionary, ideas. But infinite replay value is a lie perpetrated by the Man.

Peace out.

PS: Devs, feel free to email me for beta testing.

I'll read this later, because right now there is a far more important question in my head:

are you back, Scrotie?

EDIT: read it. painful. true. frustrating. don't know what to say man.
I'm one who usually rivals your Walls Of Text, but this left me pretty much speechless.
and I guess I know the answer to the above question, now.

I've been turning over thoughts for a "what GGG needs to do in order to sustain PoE after Act 4" thread, but never been satisfied enough with them to sit down and articulate them thoroughly. By and large I agree with everything you've said here. Frankly, I don't care much about the economy (enough to say fuck Standard and stick with temp leagues, but that's about it), so I can't speak to that. But the rest certainly resonates.

What's aggravating me the most is the extent to which GGG seems to be focusing on papering over the cracks in a crumbling foundation of an engine with shiny new skills or other things Charan terms "more of more." If they genuinely can't substantially improve it (which may well be possible, given the age of the codebase and the loss of the netcode guy and all of that), that's understandable. But then they damn well need to be preparing to rebuild on a commercial engine ASAP. Lately it's felt a lot like GGG is pandering to the entitled, self-indulgent masses (especially the hysterical variety that dominates the official forums and Reddit) and losing sight of the long term.

Large-scale changes need to be made to the architecture. What exactly that should entail is obviously a matter for debate (like the increasing passivity of so many builds, the one-click-to-win mania, etc.; I'm more concerned with the technical architecture than the expectations of players that have been built up, but both are pretty critical), and it's inevitable that if they proceed with anything of the sort, no matter what it is, they'll piss off a lot of people and hell will be raised. And that's something that GGG just needs to deal with, and it doesn't feel like they're willing to. Until and unless they're willing to risk upsetting a lot of really bitchy people in order to solve things, not just distract players from them, I suspect I'll just be getting increasingly disillusioned and bitter despite my great respect for GGG's accomplishments thus far.

I don't think I need to retread everything that has been said by myself and a bunch of other long time supporters in other threads.

It all comes down to the Act 4 path for me. That will mostly determine whether or not GGG have the balls to make any attempts to steer back towards the direction of the game I originally supported for and continued to hold out hope that it would return to that style. If not, oh well, it was a good run.

I mean, does GGG even need the old guard anymore? They are catering to a whole other audience now.

One of two things happened.

Either: they don't know or can't figure out how to actually set clear design goals and execute on them, and instead find themselves slipping their goals and power creeping with equally no clear idea on how to revert bad changes...

Or: their design team has been infiltrated by people who disagree with the original game design goal and are dedicated to taking the game in their own direction, either because it's their own volition or because they've decided it pays better.

For the former, if they're devoted to an evolving game, there is nothing more poisonous than the notion that they can't change anything lest they upset people. An evolving game that can't change is a bit of an oxymoron. They should be excited to fix things upon each new league, but instead they find themselves too scared to touch "the sacred things". They can power past this fear, and they can be more rigorous in what content they allow into the game.

For the latter, it's an absolute catastrophe. In the case where they're changing the game vision, they've not had the common courtesy to tell the long-time supporters that the old promises are cancelled and they're going a new route. If they're doing it for money, that's even worse -- betrayal for cash. If it's happening on its own, then whoever is directing the designers (if such a person even exists) needs to crack the whip and remind them which game they're making and that they have promises to uphold.

The good news is that GGG will always have a "nuclear option" for financing their next venture. Whenever they realize that they're truly stuck, they can sell a standalone binary that is client+server for a small sum ($20, $30, something like that) which supports desync-less single player (and maybe even p2p) play and could even conceivably be moddable.

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CliveHowlitzer wrote:

I mean, does GGG even need the old guard anymore? They are catering to a whole other audience now.

Probably not. In all honesty, if they just went to work on satisfying Garena and the asian grinding game audience, they could probably make more money from there than they ever could make or hope to have made here and they'd be beholden to no promises made to the early supporters, as fucked up as that is.

I have two questions:


1. Are you absolutely sure, as a CB supporter, that PoE during CB was the game you remember it to be? Or is it possible that at that time you simply had tacked on your wishes and ideas onto a barebones game, with little real indication that it will turn out the way you want it to?

@ Scrotie: I remember you repeatedly proposing a more complex affix system, i.e. one where gear means more than just stacking offense and defense. I fully agreed with you then and still do.
But was there ever any indication that GGG were on the same page?
This is both a rhetorical question and a real one. Because I don't think they were. Were they?


2. Was there ever any hint from GGG that they wouldn't mind the idea of a PoE 2? As far as I know, no, there wasn't. As far as I know PoE is their thing. They live it, breathe it, and, at times, defecate it.
I'm not sure how you get the idea that if people stop spending money on PoE, GGG will realize the error of their ways, scrap PoE and start from scratch with a new game.
That seems like a lot of wishful thinking on your part.
So was there ever any admission by someone from GGG that they have coded themselves into a cul-de-sac, and that starting over might be not the worst of ideas?

@pneuma: "infiltrators" can include supporters themselves. Case in point: create-a-unique.

I had this privilege. So naturally I start off with some ideas for OP build-around-mes, because why not Zoidberg? But after dozens of emails and some weeks, my ideas are shot down. So taking some time to really think, I guess the sheer raw stupid of the whole process finally hit me. Why the fuck are legions of amateurs having such an impact on uniques, something which is so critical to the itemization of a game like this one? My disgust was palpable, yet here I was, needing to finish the process.

And then I decided. A whole item is too much responsibility for an amateur like me, but what if I didn't design a whole item? So I asked about coming up with one single rare affix, based loosely off my most recently rejected unique. They told me no, but maybe for crafting.

So pneuma... you remember the Marionette's Harness concept I shared with you? Dunno why my mod isn't available on more item types though.

"

CliveHowlitzer wrote:

I mean, does GGG even need the old guard anymore? They are catering to a whole other audience now.

Nothing I can add to this besides my presence in the thread.

The scary part of the forums for me nowadays isn't the childish vitriol spewed like baby formula after a good burp, but rather the melancholy reminiscing of those of us that carry the 'foundīng' starter tags. I find it comforting that others more eloquent than me have been putting their thoughts in text so I don't have to struggle with composing mine, yet it is disturbing that so many(?) of us feel the same way about the current state of the game.

Did we all put on our rose coloured glasses one day? Or was the game that we hoped to play simply not achievable due to the utopian mindset that enamoured us all four/five years ago?

Looking back at the beta manifesto and comparing it to the game we have today, it seems odd how the coalescing of brief objectives into tangible mechanics mutated ethereal beauty into the malevolent beast of a game that carries the name Path of Exile. I fear the beast has bucked me off one too many times for me to reach for that bridle and get back into the saddle. Far easier to let the mustang run free and admire it from afar. Far less bruising to carry into the next day...

I feel like I'm in a hipster bar waiting for some androgynous chick in horn rimmed glasses to start sprouting poetry about how the world has let her down.

Makes me want to go find a window and open it up...LOOK SUNSHINE.