How We're Developing Our Next Expansion Differently

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ampdecay wrote:

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TehBoneKing wrote:

To poke at all the nerds who would complain about bugs in your content. i would just like to remind everyone that in the beginning game releases were 100% completely flawless. games like loz ocarina of time have ZERO bugs that could be exploited and every playthrough takes EXATLY as long as the developers intended. now that being said the crashes this league have been brutal, though they have gotten better, first impressions hurt.

And if anything your scope of development has concerned me from a workload pov and im glad this year seems to have focused that lens. the 3 month cycle still feels very short but i guess thats a player retention sort of thing since people on the internet have the attention span of a goldfish. Its a shame next league will focus on maps rather than enjoyable content like delve, delerium, essence....really anything else literally.

your clear love for your game and openess with your players is what earns my support and hope yall stay safe, peace.

this has to be sarcasm, ocarina of time has known exploits (bugs) for any% speedruns

And are very different concepts, ocarina is a standalone, one time release, while PoE is multiplayer and iterative, more stuff to test with lesser time. Ofc will be problems.

A nice feature to add would be a way to test better the balance of the game, like alphastar plays against itself, let it speed run the content trying to converge to the most profitable approach, than mass replicate that to see what happens (well, in some manner aren't we just like a bunch of robots replicating what seems better? ).

Finally Chris, you finally realised that sometimes less is more.

Heist had a lot of content and development work hours, but it was just bad (a bad idea). It had robots with weird voices, lasers, and shiny explosions like a creepy asian game. That is not how PoE was back in the days, we had a more imersive action RPG that felt a bit medieval and gore, not shiny like a japanese outdoor.

Leaving that aside, I am really glad that you guys will be focusing more in the optimization of the game, and the polishment of the league instead of making a bunch of boring content like in Heist. People like simple leagues, with simple mechanics that makes us fight monsters, and that's it. You don't need to hire 14 voice actors to make 14 new npcs, make a bunch of layouts, bunch of mechanics and animations, etc... to make a boring league like Heist. What I am trying to say is: Even if Heist didn't have any bugs, it would still be bad.


Just save yourself and GGG a bunch of money, making simplistic leagues with fun combat experiences, while mapin, with a special map to make rotations, like what we had in breach, legion, harbinger, delirium, etc... I am sure you guys will be way less stressed in this quarentine, because it won't require too much work, and the league will be sucessful so a lot of people will just play it, a lot of new players will just come, and PoE will be more sucessful. The game doesn't need a huge amount of content (specially boring if it is like Heist) to be sucessful. It needs fun combat experience, as aRPG, and Rota maps, like what we used to do on D2 classic with Cow Levels & Chaos Sanctuarys, and in D2 LoD with Baal Runs. We had that in Breach League with Breachstones, we had that in Harbingers with Beachheads, we had that in Legion with 5ways and we had that in delirium with Simulacrums. We need more Rotas!

Keep it in mind. Less is more sometimes.
Simple is good.

Think about it,

Best Regards,
Bax

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Shade_RU_N53 wrote:

The beginning is promising, then it ends abruptly. Like, Delve underground compounds are tiny and uninteresting with no real difference along the paths. ... Vaal corruption? Don't even get me started on this one. Abyss? Even more so.

Great idea actually - make new league to be a continuation of one of the previous leagues, like expanded Delve league with new cool sites and monsters and bosses, or expanded Abyss with another underground level with new sites and new lore.

It will take less work than usual and make the game more perfect at the same time.

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a bunch of boring content like in Heist.

lol Heist is "boring". The best league after Delve.

Thanks Chris and GGG team! Keep up the good work and stay strong!

So, re-reading the opening story, you guys decided to make a smaller league and you will put some pressure on it, acting as Executive/Lead Producer, to make sure it gets developed on time and to quality standard.

At least, this is the public part of the story.

I sincerely hope you took some time off to get outside of PoE bubble to re-examine the product from the outside and that you have a real plan how to improve development practices and how to align business and production in the long run.

This new way of working could help player retention by increasing quality, but it can also help keeping your best developers in.
As a pro dev for 9 years followed by 12 years of project management (in finance), something never changed : devs have no problem with occasionnal period of time (weeks) where they must do more hours than normal (even sometimes work during week-end) due to tight planning, but if there are continuously under such high pressure month after month, years after years, sooner or later they finally leave.

"If you're interested"

lol i'm pretty sure we're interested!

"Pandemic is not the cause but the reason", same stuff everyone says right now.

i highly doubt this will get any better.

I regret ever giving you money.

GJ GGG! UR STRONG!