An Update from Chris

Thanks for the words, Chris.
I have also read about the crunch in game development lately (concerning two big names in the industry, Epic Games and Netherrealm Studios).
A totally unacceptable state, which can only lead to dissatisfied employees and ultimately diminish the quality of the game.
You should be able to take all the time needed in development and slow down if the workload gets too heavy with all the project running in parallel, even if it results in release delays. I personally don't care if it takes longer in order to ensure the quality.

I'm excited to see the details about the 4.0.0 expansion and what you come up with for 3.7.0. Keep it simple (simpler), fun and rewarding and keep up the good work!

"

crayz69 wrote:

"its name is on the list" ???

My bet is "Path of Exile: Emphasis"

Even though Synthesis was not the best or most popular league, I still support GGG because you keep driving for a new and better experience for us, instead of letting something stagnate into oblivion as it slowly dwindles away.

As a programmer, I am glad you limit your dev hours. There are horror stories of how bad the video game industry treats its programmers.

As far as your community involvement, you have still worked to stabilize Synthesis for the players that enjoyed it.

Thanks for the honesty, Chris, but for the record, not a single time in the hundreds of critical posts I have read have I seen a request for you to run your development team into the ground in order to meet QA demands.

Nor have I seen any accusations that your team is not working hard enough.

Again, not one. single. time.

So why bring that up?

On the other hand, I have seen many many requests for you to increase your quality standards by decreasing your quantity standards. The most-oft mentioned example is the very clear correlation between your 3-month leagues and the ongoing drop in QA/testing over the past year and a half.

So why not bring that up?

Just sayin'. I appreciate your genuine attempt to be transparent, but I think you are neglecting to answer the real question people are asking. GGG has made the conscious choice to juggle many, many things, and the game's quality has obviously suffered as a result. Your own players have continually expressed concern over this pattern, sometimes even warning you in advance.

Given GGG's recent track record, how do you plan to reconcile the two conflicting demands of quality vs. quantity in the future?

Perhaps you can answer this question in your planned upcoming Q&A.

And don't run yourself into the ground in the process. You require R&R as much as the rest of the team.

The fact that there is no, and I mean absolutely no transparency with how things get done at GGG with regards to the game (since MTX assets never seem to be affected), and the utter utter lack of communication with regards to gameplay issues is very disheartening.

It's sad, really.

I'm used to Biwoare, EA, Activision, Blizz, et alia being money-grubbing assholes who never canvas their consumer base for opinions or desires, but instead devoting 98% of company resources to the enterprise section of the company (now, I'm _not_ saying i begrudge them making money, not at all), but those guys are now indistinguishable from Christopher and GGG- grub money, then maybe, but prolly not, release playable content.

This is disheartening.

I'm very very frustrated with Christopher ruining Path of Exile. On top of which, we have to sort through his version of reality to parse out what is actually going on. If you're an MTX company, which makes a game on the side, I could fathom how releasing 3+ years of shitty content would make sense - "Hi, I'm Chris from the MTX Factory in New Zealand".

But, ostensibly, this is a game/design studio that has a free-to-play game which keeps itself afloat by offering microtransactions, of some sort.

So, I would expect that the game gameplay and QA and retention and unique impressions would be the driving force, and if PoE is designed to be a HC game that squeezes in a filthy casual mode, that everything would revolve around that concept. So, I looks around and... that's _not_ what I see, so I says to myself, "Self, GGG offers more MTX lines of code each league, than they do game-play lines of code, so if youse wanna play PoE any longer, youse need to recognize that the game-play, and QA will never ever be priority number one. Ever."

So, like I said, I'm tired tired tired tired of new leagues being in the shitter for weeks on end, and even more tired of having to buy a new Chris-to-English dictionary everytime he runs his game.

IMNO, he needs to be extricated from the position, and moved somewhere that he can no longer sabotage the game.

Even sadder, I can't figure out if this level of chicanery from Chris is practiced (which is bad enough), or if he's bought into his own BS.

You claim to want a filthy casual-free game and have it be only a "hardcore game", yet refuse to supply the consumers with severs that provide 99.999%+ worry-free gaming. The cop-outs and double-speak need to end.

This is a slightly harsh critique and as much as I appreciate the years of great play I got out of POE, someone has to say it.

Your content cycle has kept me coming back. Thanks to your content cycle, I'm personally ok with just calling this league a "miss".

This is my first time seeing your stance on crunch. You just guaranteed your place on my gaming budget for a long time.





p.s.
can we get a stash tab for fossils and resonators sometime?

looking forward to 3.7 and 4.0, good riddance to synthesis. they can't all be zingers.

Just remove the xp penalty while increasing the xp necessary to get to 100 by a lot, starting at lvl 75, like i said multiple times.
And boom, the game, and each league, will last way longer than 3 weeks each time.

Otherwise fuck off i will play something else, anything else, that is funnier.
Atm i'm having a blast in MHW. no EXP penalties there and still plenty of challenge. =D
so much fun, even the grind there pales in comparison, it could be 10x harder in that game and it would stil be way more smart and balanced than the stupid ass xp penalty on death this game has.

People stop playing this game the momment they stop progressing.
THe progression is just too retarded.
5 hours to get to level 70, 20-30 to get to level 90, 30-40 to get to 95 and infinite to get to lvl 100 because of the xp penalty.
And thats because i'm a decent player, there is a lot of players who stop at lvl 85 or so because thats when they hit the wall where the xp penalty is larger than their xp/hour. what do they do? A very small part goes currency grinding like stupid bots while the rest go play funnier games, gg.

I dont understand why you need console version? Sure additional money are good. but it takes so much resources, manpower. How about those 20-30 ppl that are working on console version to be focused on PC instead? Like fixing and optimizing game engine performance. Ive seen so many times how consoles killing great PC games. It leads to low quality on PC which lead to players quitting.