An Update from Chris

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Aim_Deep wrote:

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Releasing a "Hype" league, that ends up being what Synthesis is, is going to have a significant, negative, lasting, effect on the health of the player base.

Really? I still get hyped every league and hated most Gen 3 except Delve and Abysss

Game ebbs and flows between good and bad leagues (anyone remember talisman it was like original synthesis 5tabs of useless ammy to make more useless ammys). Core is still solid tho . Except all the bloat from bad leagues lol.

Who knows they may drop another Breach next. I'm Hyped.

Yes. Really. As a professional in marketing analytics, yes. The negative effects of Synthesis will ripple for quite a while, far longer than the effects of a less than hype, but stable "flashback" type of legacy league's downside would have lasted.

You can see it in the publicly available data, and when you start compounding the data from search engine based algorithms surrounding negative public opinion about the game. At no point in the past 12 months has the negative public opinion on the game been as high as it is right now, and in the past 3 leagues, no league had player loss at the levels that Synthesis did, at the rate that Synthesis did.

Ebbs and flows are one thing, but negative public opinion is not a normal part of ebb and flow. This is going to sting.

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Invictus26 wrote:

The shitposters have a bad habit of forgetting that the entire point of Leagues is to toss out some zany idea and see how well it works. Some of them do, some of them don't, and the GGG team grows more skilled either way.

Zany Idea =/= poorly executed content.

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Invictus26 wrote:

It's also pretty obvious that the people who dislike being the League beta testers are newer players who don't understand their role when they decide to start a new League. Ignore them, I say.

LOL NO. Im Open Beta era, and being a beta tester for league content is NOT how leagues were ever marketed to the playerbase.

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Invictus26 wrote:

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shoju wrote:

DO NOT DO THAT. THAT'S A TERRIBLE BUSINESS MODEL. STOP TREATING PEOPLE WHO PLAY STANDARD LIKE WE ARE JUST SOME SORT OF BOTTOM FEEDING FODDER THAT CAN BE IGNORED, AND WILL JUST LIVE WITH WHATEVER IT IS THAT YOU GIVE US

That's because you are. PoE has always been centered around its Leagues, and likewise those who still play Standard consistantly are a fairly minor portion of the player base.

No. We're not.
No, it hasn't
And no, we're not a fairly minor portion of the playerbase. If you played standard, you'd be well aware of that. instead, you're what plenty of poeple in standard refer to as tourists. When you show up in standard, we shut off chat channels, and wait out the next few days, content to play the game without having to deal with you, and your BS, not based in fact, views of our league.

Honestly? I hope they go through with the idea that Synthesis will last until the new league, that way we don't have to deal with you in Standard.

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kolyaboo wrote:

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You cannot maintain the hectic pace while not working too much OT. Something has got to give here. The state of the game now tells you all you need to know.


Slow down or hire more people to share the workload. Clearly the way it is now is not working.

Pretty much it.
I've been saying similar things for years now, slow down and enjoy the process instead of hammering out new content that not only burns out the devs but the players too.
The 3 month league system is a conveyor belt of frustration.

Of course many streamers and day 1 lvl 100 groupers that just do speed meta and farm 100 ex in a day or two are the loud minority and have been since Closed Beta. They will disagree because they just want to trudge through to the end game and ignore and skip as much of the game as possible. Which really says everything that needs to be said about why GGG needs to stop listening to them and their demands.

@chris. Slow down, enjoy the process. Extend the leagues to like 4-5 months by continuing with interesting races and adding special events that guarantee rewards for those that participate. Back away from this 40 challenge grind or allow more pathing options. Maybe consider adding a weekly/bi-weekly challenge system with set mtx/character slot rewards as a player retention system in the future. A lot of games do that now.
Most important for me, take the time to create a well thought out and cohesive story instead of just duct-taping the new league onto the previous ones.

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SilentStorm625 wrote:

chris and team, you have my respect

+1

I am grateful that 4.0 is one of the biggest projects currently in the works since 2020 seems to be around the time in which the next generation of ARPGs is coming, as Chris said. PoE has to adapt to what the competing games are doing and I cannot wait to see what the company has in store for us!

very nice

i love your product no complaints here

LoL. You insist that the players respect your time and work/life balance of the development team. Do YOU respect the time of the players? Game balance says no.

Thanks, Chris and all GGG. You've got a great, unique and enjoyable game! Keep up the good work.

Thanks

I appreciate that you came out and actually said something so here's a bit of feedback.

Technical issues, unfair one-shotting, leagues being too short (3 months is not enough time to enjoy game unless having loads of time) or trade system (completely broken because people are reluctant to come out of Delve, Temple or whatever they do when not mapping to anything but most juicy trades) are constantly raised.

Rightly so and I think that other made excellent points about that before so let me skip that and focus on something else - core gameplay loop.

Synthesis strained it to the point of breaking due to artificial restrictions like gating. It borders on punishment and sucks out enjoyment out of the game.

Normally, F2P tend to have several loops that are mutually strengthening to add more depth and replay-ability but all of them rotate around core activity that stays unrestricted (that is player can always jump into the game and fully access its core loop without any strings attached).

For PoE it was mapping but that's hardly unrestricted nowadays. Map drops are horrible and too rng and player is constantly nagged to get out of the flow of mapping to do smaller loops. Or worse, forced to participate in very frustrating trading to buy maps and actually progress on critical path.

It creates frustration because end-user is not at liberty to choose when to run content and also feels that he cannot progress at all.

Skipping is not an option, that's self-inflicted punishment in game based on grind and drops.

The biggest problem of all is Delve. This is because Delve, rather than being side activity, offers competitive core gameplay loop to mapping. Every other activity is essentially a reward run that player can work towards.

But not Delve. It never ends and it's like mapping but better because player has more control over rewards rng. For all purposes, it's mapping 2.0.

I feel that you miss that point and treat Delve as additional content that needs to be limited to preserve economy while players simply engage with delving the same way they engage with mapping.

Best wishes to fix the game and get it back on track. It was great once, it can be great again. Just remember that any metrics you track obey time delaying laws. Full effect of Synthesis will be felt for some time after it's consigned to history.