Is the root problem that the Labyrinth is "Optional"?

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ewolow wrote:

So you are trying to equate POE to a luxury brand car or handbag?

Doesn't really matter if it's luxury or not, it's a product with target demographics. Maybe something like the Jackass show would describe it better, you have your target audience that likes to watch such things and you don't care if everyone else says it's an uninspired pile of elephant dung.

Now, what if, just what if, devs now want to sell PoE to the kind of player that likes the lab or at least doesn't mind it? Maybe the game becomes more about positioning or environment and less about hard counters and extensive knowledge of game mechanics?

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raics wrote:

Doesn't really matter if it's luxury or not, it's a product with target demographics. Maybe something like the Jackass show would describe it better, you have your target audience that likes to watch such things and you don't care if everyone else says it's an uninspired pile of elephant dung.

I've seen this before. Ever heard of the game Tabula Rasa? (I still have the beta box and items on my home office shelf).

Earth and Beyond?

These guys have life savings on the line. It wouldn't appear to me, to be the case that they are so stubborn as to box their product into a corner and the fact that they are moving to xbox suggests that is also not the case.

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raics wrote:

Now, what if, just what if, devs now want to sell PoE to the kind of player that likes the lab or at least doesn't mind it? Maybe the game becomes more about positioning or environment and less about hard counters and extensive knowledge of game mechanics?

I would say then that before you do that, you work on your game interface to handle alternate input methods and work with fine tuned keyboard movements and handle latency much better. The click to move mechanic does not synergize well with traps moving traps that require speed and accuracy of movement.

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ewolow wrote:

These guys have life savings on the line. It wouldn't appear to me, to be the case that they are so stubborn as to box their product into a corner and the fact that they are moving to xbox suggests that is also not the case.

I don't think anything is on the line anymore, they have a successful product now.

What Sid was implying is the age old product placement dilemma - do you aim to fulfill the basic needs of a very wide group of which some might buy your product or do you go with giving a smaller group of customers exactly what they want so they'll be almost certain to buy it. PoE did the latter right from the start, what we're seeing now is probably just a slight shift of the target group, if we try on the tinfoil hat for a bit it might be happening because the original one is milked.

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These guys have life savings on the line. It wouldn't appear to me, to be the case that they are so stubborn as to box their product into a corner and the fact that they are moving to xbox suggests that is also not the case.

The Xbox version is basically a different game. Core elements and the engine are the same, which is why they have chosen Xbox, but the things around it are different enough. Also console market is a bit bigger than people disliking the lab so it is a much more worthwhile effort.

Also the lab does have a big risk for GGG, if those people complaining about it actually succeed in bringing it down, GGG can't be sure that they will not simply target the next best thing to whine about. There is a certain demographic basically everywhere that seems to basically only exists to complain and it is a certain risk to give those people a success. So since there is no financial reason to do so, because the game is growing even with people complaining about the lab, why should they react.

You seem to think that they are in trouble, but that doesn't seem to be the case, Chris just recently said how cheap it is to keep servers running and that they basically only spend money on development. Which actually allows them to expand to Xbox, because this draws ressources which doesn't immidiatly give a return.

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I would say then that before you do that, you work on your game interface to handle alternate input methods and work with fine tuned keyboard movements and handle latency much better. The click to move mechanic does not synergize well with traps moving traps that require speed and accuracy of movement.

I feel mouse is much more precise than keyboard, because my character moves to exactly the location I click or in the direction my curser is if I hold the button down. The only thing they lack currently is a button to stop, which would basically remove all my issues I still have, although this doesn't really have something to do with traps, more with some other things in the game, but since the screen is centered on you nailing a position without the ability to immidiatly stop is hard. In this regards PoE is a bit like flying a plane, flying or in this case moving is the easy part, landing is hard.