Thoughts from a game dev in the industry ...

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Char1983 wrote:

Gender barriers? Who cares. I don't play the game to be myself.

I think there has even been talk of offering a male/female variant for each class. It just isn't very high on the priority list.

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I realize you want to make a hardcore, deep game, and you have. There is plenty of room to make it more accessible and more popular for other levels of players, and still keep PoE challenging.

In the end, your game is very brutal and punishing, and there is never really any reward. There is no reason for people to *want* to come back. All we get out of playing your game is self satisfaction a sense of accomplishment, which long term is not enough to keep enough people playing for you to keep the lights on.

If you bring in more players to your game, you will be able to reduce prices in your MTX store and make far more money than the way you currently do.

wow, a 'game dev in the industry' explicitly telling to dumb the game down to double the dollars

tells you everything you need to know about today's game industry. catering to lowest common denominators.

with all technological progress and machine learning going through the years, the best AI in FPS belongs to a game from 11 years ago (F.E.A.R.). no one gives a shit about making a complicated AI. because, hey it would cost a lot of money and it wouldnt make any profit because majority dont like layers of difficulty.

with all technological progress and standardization of an engine like unity, youd think games would be focused on creativity, but its exactly the other way around

something is rotten in the state of the industry. its the corpse of pc gaming from the late 80s/early 90s/2000s

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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goetzjam wrote:

Actually it is ok to say just use loot filters and wave off the problem, simply reducing the items that drop isn't an acceptable proposition because people that DO use loot filters will find less bases, chrome recipes, just everything.

Should GGG maybe focus on working with the community wiki and creating a starter guide with information needed to play effectively, like loot filter and stuff, yes they should.

So GGG shouldn't just hand-wave off the problem, they should do something about it by making loot filters more accessible to new players. Got it.

Should they do something yes, do they have to address it at all, not really they enabled loot filters and the community makes them.

The reason why they could wave it off and do nothing is because they've enabled the community to share the loot filters around and accessibility from a new player standpoint is up to the player to get the information not up to GGG to cram it down their throats.

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Char1983 wrote:

What is true though are certainly a few things:

1) The performance is bad
2) There could sometimes be a little more rewards
3) Going through the difficulties three times is... long. I hope Cruel will be removed eventually
4) The skill system and passive tree are awesome.

No one can deny Number 1. Huge problem. Fix it now. (But is currently in progress.)

As they continue to develop the game, and add more acts, we'll see item 3 drop away, with removed difficulties. (They almost removed cruel with Act 4... but felt it wasn't time yet... and I'm now willing to argue that the Lab gives us just that extra bit of content that could indeed make it finally time.)

2 is seemingly always being considered. Cadiro, Strong boxes, Ghosts (Embezzler, Smuggler) as examples. Sometimes I wish masters would give a small currency reward for the quest (random, between 1 alt to 1 gcp), or that rare maps gave an extra reward to the Map Boss - however, generally they do through quantity and quality.

4? Yes. 100% yes.

TC sounds like a D3 dev. Which ARPG is more appealing to you: streamlined and accessible D3, or deep and complex POE? Following TC's playbook ends up with a game like D3- guaranteed reward, smart loot, difficulty which never makes you change tactics to solve a battle, etc. This is not to say POE can't learn any lessons from D3, but TC seems to be advocating for more.

To me, the main allure of POE is that it is a deep game with lots of complexity. And I call out complexity separate from depth because complexity on its own gives the game a puzzle-like feel where you always have something more to consider. It's a PC game, and the PC audience is unique among gaming platforms for seeking & tolerating complexity by itself (ie. complexity which achieves nothing). TC may be a great game designer on iOS or PS4, but those audiences are different and do not look for the same things PC players do. POE is a PC exclusive, and the game doesn't water anything down to reach those broader audiences on platforms which it doesn't compete.

If you make everything more streamlined and accessible the end result is not a deep game with complexity. Streamlining is basically removing the player's ability to make bad choices, which sounds good on paper. But no game PvE can have perfect balance, and as long as there are 2 or more options, there will exist a worst option. If you keep removing the worst option, eventually players are on-rails following the best (and only) path which has 0 depth and 0 complexity. Or it gets close enough where even new players can easily determine the path, which has essentially the same effect.

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There was one suggestion I wanted to specifically mention and that's mapping as an alternative to leveling. Torchlight works this way. In practice, the system has drastic negative side-effects. It diminishes the identity of both the storyline and the mapping system. The way it is in POE there is a clear cut: storyline is for progression, and mapping is for grinding end-game. This allows each one to fill its job with a clear role: Storyline has some quests with unique rewards and also provides context to how the world of Wraeclast fits together. Maps have an associated wealth management problem associated with them that doesn't make sense during progression phase of game.

Maps are a re-use of content, but when you offer maps coincident with progression, the re-use can occur before the first use (in storyline). This is one of the most destructive things the developers could do for the immersion of their game. The storyline gives you a context for how all these places fit together in the world of Wraeclast, but maps are inherently contextless. When maps come subsequent to the storyline, the player has already learned a context for the region thus giving some modicum of identity to the map. In a procedural world where everything is created randomly, creating an identity for places in the world is VERY difficult to do. It's a problem that's invisible in POE because GGG already solved it before we got to play the game, but a suggestion like yours demands they un-fix the problem. Wraeclast only exists in our minds a place because we learn about it in the storyline. For someone who advocates in favor of accessibility and streamlining, this suggestion is remarkably destructive to your own goals because immersion is one of the most significant means of achieving accessibility.

I should mention D3 fails on this subject. However, they did such a poor job of storytelling with excessive cutscenes, corny dialogue and lack of interesting rewards, that the context they provided to players was a negative one which detracted from the experience. Rifts, which were just killing zones without context, improved the experience. But what does that do for immersion? D3 doesn't feel like a world where your character lives, it just feels like an endless dungeon having no "place" in Sanctuary. Immersion is definitely a factor for RPGs, so for D3 to abandon it so completely is still a big mistake. Putting maps as alternate progression has this effect.

None of this is to say the progression is perfect in POE. I would certainly agree it takes too long to go from Normal to Merciless. Going through the storyline 3 times doesn't provide any new context, and even as a progression curve it just takes too long. I have long advocated dropping 1 of the loops, leaving just 2.

I've seen that mapping suggestion before, and wanted to take a moment to explain my thoughts on it. Thanks for reading!

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ELEKTROLL wrote:

As someone who is an actual player and not a game dev: You are the reason why modern arpgs are shit and PoE isn't. Every single point you made was to trivialize the gameplay and make it more accessible to casual players who need "satisfying feedback".
Gender roles, seriously? They're characters, you are playing a character with a story. I don't want to play some no-name customized "me", I want to ROLE PLAY a fleshed out character. You know, as you do in a ROLE PLAYING GAME.
The only thing I can agree on is the map, it's horrible and it has been since day one lol

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goetzjam wrote:

Your post is basically "lets make PoE into D3" which I don't understand why you just don't play d3 then.

Thank you. Couldn't have said it better myself.

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goetzjam wrote:

Your post is basically "lets make PoE into D3" which I don't understand why you just don't play d3 then.

Lot of things I don't understand in the world. Like why people can't let other people have their opinion and feedback without a pack of forum posters writing a small white paper even when the OP wasn't really looking to have an in-depth discussion on it and will most likely not respond. It's like any form of unpopular criticism must be snubbed out via long responses even when it's not even clear whose mind they are trying to change.

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MadRabbitPoE wrote:

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goetzjam wrote:

Your post is basically "lets make PoE into D3" which I don't understand why you just don't play d3 then.

Lot of things I don't understand in the world. Like why people can't let other people have their opinion and feedback

indeed. can't understand it so much you're doing it yourself to other posters.

Saying that D3 is good game and that ARPG should all be like that is like saying that Nicki Minaj is the next Elvis.

In fact I bet a lot of people like D3 because it is a game that consider the Mid-Tier bastards and make them dream that they could reach the high tier pretty easily.
That is not the purpose of POE: here if you don't loot your precious shav in hundred of hours of gaming well life is harsh. Get a little slap on the back and go back farming. I think that this is what players in poe like!

And please do not argue about size of extentions while comparing this to this money rip-off Reaper of Souls that I paid 20 bucks....

In short: I play Poe because it is precisely NOT D3 and I think a lot of people do.

In fact the only thing in your post that was kind of "mheu!" was the thing about an optionnal Scrolling Combat Text.

And the fact that they should do a Unix version of the game. Heu wait you didn't propose that.


Signed: A Low-Mid-Tier bastard that like to be buttfucked by Malachai.

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grepman wrote:

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MadRabbitPoE wrote:

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goetzjam wrote:

Your post is basically "lets make PoE into D3" which I don't understand why you just don't play d3 then.

Lot of things I don't understand in the world. Like why people can't let other people have their opinion and feedback

indeed. can't understand it so much you're doing it yourself to other posters.

How so? Rereading my post, I am not debunking anyone's counter points or saying that they aren't valid. Just wondering what the incentive is to post them and ultimately, who are they trying to convince?

I'm sure you have some great explanation as to why I am being a hyprocite that makes total sense and thus, paradoxically prevents anyone ever from criticizing bad behavior, but I don't quite see it, outside of reaching really far into a shallow barrel, because my comment stung a little bit.