Thoughts from a game dev in the industry ...

"

GeorgAnatoly wrote:

Are you assuming GGG doesn't already now this? Do you think they chose to make this particular game for the specific niche market they choose due to a lack of ability to make a game with broader appeal?

Imho you're starting to sound a lot less like a knowledgeable person with an insider's understanding of how the business works and more like some naive kid trying to 'help out' GGG by insulting their intelligence and making thinly veiled requests to make the game more casual friendly.

Agreed. And I'm not sure GGG really could increase their profits by casualizing PoE. They will never be able to do Diablo 3 better than Blizzard, simply for lack of resources. Dumbing down the game might attract more players in the short term, but in the long term it I believe it would harm their business, which is essentially funded by the goodwill of their hardcore fans (in the form of optional mtx purchases)-- this is the business model GGG have chosen and it certainly seems impossible to change now.

Man, believe me if you cannot understand how profitable is in every kind of business to fulfill the desires of a niche and how much this is solid long term wise you are losing the chance to build a startup yourself as a dev.

A game dev?

Sure in the same world where I am jolly Santa riding his elves.

"

jcannonb wrote:

Gender barriers are horrible lines that went out with D2 back when D2 was popular. While I understand you wanted to make a much better D2 this was an arbitrary line that should never have existed in 2010+

We also don't need sexism telling us that female characters in a game are somehow inferior. D2 had set sexes and so did D3. This is more of a role-playing game than you might prefer, but in Wraeclast, the characters aren't supposed to just be projections of the player. They're their own characters. Get out of yourself and be a girl. It might be good for you.

"

No SCT still. SCT is satisfying feedback that makes the player feel good about how they are doing. You are literally robbing players of joy.

This is, and I feel I have to be blunt here, idiotic. Maybe some players need flashy numbers cluttering up their screen, but most of us here do not. We think it would rob us of joy to have to deal with such a thing. The classic ARPGs didn't do it, and we don't necessarily need it here. Grim Dawn does it and it's not really so bad there, but that still doesn't make it necessary here.

"

There is no satisfying feedback or fanfare when a map systems map is finished. There is no guaranteed legendary drop, there is nothing that makes me want to get to the end of the map.

The idea that you only get fix attempts to finish a maps system map is laughable at best.

Do you understand this game? Of course there is incentive to finish! Do we need the game to flash fireworks and squeak a rubber duck on the screen just because we completed a map?

"

Boss battles are a mess.

Aside from Izaro, I think they're pretty good.

"

Path Of Exile is a perfect game battle wise if you remove the bosses, because Elites are great bosses. With bosses in, it is quite over-the-top silly really.

LOL

Okay, so apparently you don't understand this game. What game do you develop?

You like to say you're a developer in the industry, but I didn't see you say just who you are. Either way, GGG are also developers, and they've made a pretty successful product.

In fact, their product is so successful because they've gone against many of the trends that players don't prefer.

"

Further, blizzard's loot drop is 85% smart. Meaning you get an 85% chance of getting an item that is geared toward your class/build. Your loot vomit would not need to be so prolific and noisy if you made it even a 50% smart drop rate.

Any more than, say, 25% smart wouldn't be good for this game, as others have already pointed out.

"

Your story tries so hard to be smarter and deeper than Diablo's story that it is long, rambling, winding, boring mess. I end up having to skip your story.

*shrug* Then skip it. I think it is smarter and deeper than D3's. ... And why do you keep bringing up D3 like it's the shining example of how you think things ought to be done. Many, many of us like this game so much because we think it does things right that D3 did WRONG.

"

You make no attempt to hide the Master Piece Theatre voice acting because you can mentally see them next to the fire place in their French chair, with their smoking coat, cigar and a glass of scotch implementing a fake aristocratic import accent to record all the lines.

The voice acting is pretty good, I think. You're just being EXTREMELY picky, and for no good reason. The real issues with this game are very different from these. The only problem I have with the voice acting is that Oak's is not complete.

"

Because I skip your story I don't I care one bit for the characters you placed in the world. Not caring for the story means there nothing emotionally to tie me to your world.

But ... you chose to do this.

"

Ascendency is not an expansion. It is an add-on. An expansion is more than a single random dungeon and 6 new puzzles. An expansion is a new act, almost like act 4, but it was too short. act 4 was 50% shorter than it should have been.

No, it is an expansion. It adds new content to the whole game. Not an add-on. Your head seems to be stuck somewhere dark and moist, sir.

"

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. You could even implement a casual mode people could turn on if they wanted to.

See, if this is your concern, why not point out how intimidating it is, and how many hours of research it takes, to get any real knowledge on the game's mechanics? Flashing numbers aren't necessarily going to make the game inherently more accessible to the group GGG is targeting.

Besides, so-called "accessibility" isn't always the best approach. I think the game could be made a little easier to understand, but I don't see your suggestions as aiming that way.

"

Your client performance right now is in the toilet.

Well, here's where we can all agree. Congratulations. :)

"

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.

I am a victim of Stockholm syndrome. As many flaws as there are for this game, I cannot stop playing you. I even gave you money.
I just wish I wanted to play your game. I don't want to, there are too many egregious flaws listed above. I play it because right now I am compelled to. What compels me now is strong, but when it fades I will forget the world, Exile.

And here's where you completely lose credibility.

"Nobody wants to play your game. I don't want to either ... and yet ... I just KEEP ON DOING IT!!!"

Uhh ... okay. :)

"

You have a lot of potential. Your game is a great foundation to build what i would call the first ARPG MMO. I would like to see you do that and be very successful.

This isn't an MMO, despite people liking to tall any online game that. I think you'd be taken more seriously here if it seemed like you were trying to bring up points to improve the game as opposed to changing it into something it is not and was never meant to be.


-VG-

Wait hold on.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

Wait hold on.

Spoiler

Let me see if I got this straight...

Spoiler

Santa rides his elves?

Haha, I didn't notice that before. I guess Mrs. Claus isn't doing it for him anymore...

The centuries sure do have a way of wearing on a person.


-VG-

Would agree only on lag issues, all other stuff is casualizing, subjective, ermmm...

"

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

I have to agree with the quoted post. As i read your suggestions op you would have made this game far to easy and boring. The game would be fun to play for about 1-3 weeks and thats it.

"

MisterER wrote:

"

Did you even read my entire post?

U didn't read the OP post too or other ones in the forum. Ur first assumption is <<Wooden PC. If you are playing PoE on a ti-83, you'll lag>> while lots of people with high end pcs got issues and lag too, but u didn't read any of their post it seems, u only kick people back to their problems assuming they are poor and playing with potatoes for 100%, ridiculous fast and wrong assumptions.

"

"Hurr durr, GGG fix ur game." Is unreasonable.

And now u even laugh at them while they weren't trolling nor insulting anyone, thats huge. Did u once search about Eu servers like Frankfurt who are dead for like 6 months without anything done ? Player's fault too here i guess right ? there was a thread 3 days ago on reddit too, where players with high end pcs were posting their config to show how ridiculous the memory leaks problems and the optimisation were when ascendancy came out. And performances are debatted for long time without any effort since finally few days from support at reddit after almost 6 months of silence.

Don't expect people to do something u never did once please, and stop laugh at them when they got problems, thats arrogant and childish, thanks you.
U ask people to read when u just see players with issues as trolls. So u don't have problems with the game then no one should ? Come on, how old are you with that attitude ? I feel sorry for you man.

I think you are looking at other people's posts and attributing them to me.

All I posted was this:



And then took issue with someone who looked at point 2) and ignored everything else.

The point I was trying to make was that lag is a complicated issue. GGG can't flip a switch and magically fix the problem. What causes lag for some people is different to what causes lag for others. One of those causes is people with shitty PCs. Yes of course, a lot of people with high end PCs have problems too, I never said they didn't (if you read my actual posts you'd see that).

My "first assumption" was wooden PCs? It was literally the second thing on my list. You are objectively wrong, sir. And you may bite thine own arse. Good day.

Such bad feedback from the OP is unbelievable (some is ok like legit performance issues, levelling through running acts over and over, maybe -argably- thelevel cap etc, but other is awful).

You can play self-found perfectly fine in this game and faceroll 95% of the content. Comparing the current state of PoE to D3 release is CLUELESS, this guy hasn't played neither D3 or PoE to a decent level.

Can the game get more easier than its current version? It's already too easy! The only remaining difficult content is the content that doesn't drop lol (T12+ maps with very difficult mods).

And boss fights (well, some of them lol) are the only remaining difficulty and have to be nerfed more? "Elite" fights are what bosses should be? WTF!?

P.S: In any case, they only need to improve the new player experience giving more in-game information about the different mechanics. Normal should be a learning experience and GGG can improve that much.