The moment you stop communicating, you failed as a gaming company

In fairness GGG has done a poor job of managing expectations, especially lately. When you do that, your players either misunderstand your intentions, or worse, get frustrated / angry / upset, and call out decisions that are clearly misleading.

Hell, there is no way you can actually say 3.21 didn't have many nerfs (as they said it didn't), or the masteries rework involved keeping the "six best" in each area. It now appears not having a manifesto is because they didn't want to explain all these nerfs. It's a real shit look on their end tbh.

The messaging around Ruthless is equally... I don't know the right word here without actually calling them liars, but at the very least confusing? It's clearly not just a "side project".

This main problem with the community and GGG's pullback from communication is that it is self-inflicted. It's also increasingly problematic that they market for a more average / casual player because they want the money, but then design and develop with a more hardcore player in mind. Inevitably this creates division and tension. You can't make everyone happy, but that doesn't mean you spend development resources actively alienating a large portion of the base you created.

Honestly these problems are going to come to roost very soon when D4 arrives, regardless of how people here feel about that game or Blizzard. The proof will be in the pudding. You spend years essentially telling players to fuck off via design, you cannot be surprised when they actually do.

After i reallised GGG are doing exactly the opposite of what the community wants and Chris is acting like tantrum child with his dark souls vision i stopped donating and prolly quiting the game itself..

Mazochistic gameplay isnt fun. Period.

They are literaly making us want to move to D4..

I honestly prefer that they communicate less frequently, but keep whatever they post relevant to the game. It got boring real fast to see the community manager use the official Twitter account as a blog outlet, but that's just my two cents.

hoho.

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Thesuffering wrote:

So what is the solution? Get rid of the forums altogether?

Maybe no solution is needed, if their plans for the game are different from what the community wants then no amount of goodwill or skillful PR will help, there's only so many ways you can call a duck something else. The only thing they can do is slowly move towards the end goal, and then use the PoE2 release to get a lot of people to try what they cooked up, hoping that enough people stay to make a living on.

Maybe I mentioned it before, but if different people stick around, that's even better in a way, they haven't spent much, or anything on the game yet. Yeah, I know, crop rotation is old as pyramids but it still works.

Most regulars have a vision of their own on what PoE should be, so I can hardly fault GGG for also having one, or as the old Chinese saying goes "visions are like asses". Maybe I won't stick around for the end product either, but that isn't really a tragedy, someone else will, and what the game needs is a certain amount of people to play it, it doesn't have to be me. The only way the game will die is if they make something that nobody likes.

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Ivanovv83 wrote:

Mazochistic gameplay isnt fun. Period..

And dark soul-ish, roguelike or fighting games are a total failure of that nobody likes or buys. All of those have 'masochistic' gameplay of their own.

Not saying either side hasn't had its share of fuck ups, but if you keep biting the hand that feeds you don't be surprised when you stop getting fed.

Been around for many years now. And I do not see the difference. Whats the problem exactly, can you be specific?

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Ivanovv83 wrote:

After i reallised GGG are doing exactly the opposite of what the community wants and Chris is acting like tantrum child with his dark souls vision i stopped donating and prolly quiting the game itself..

Mazochistic gameplay isnt fun. Period.

They are literaly making us want to move to D4..

Feel free to move on to D4

3.21 seems to have a lot of buffs even ignoring the player power added from crucible, the obsession on screaming about Wilson and "the vision" just seems like sour grapes from literal children

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Anubis2108 wrote:

Been around for many years now. And I do not see the difference. Whats the problem exactly, can you be specific?

Same for me. Going on 11 years and have not noticed much of any actual difference. When they did do certain things, people whined. When they stopped, they whine.

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Techgamer wrote:

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Ivanovv83 wrote:

After i reallised GGG are doing exactly the opposite of what the community wants and Chris is acting like tantrum child with his dark souls vision i stopped donating and prolly quiting the game itself..

Mazochistic gameplay isnt fun. Period.

They are literaly making us want to move to D4..

Feel free to move on to D4

3.21 seems to have a lot of buffs even ignoring the player power added from crucible, the obsession on screaming about Wilson and "the vision" just seems like sour grapes from literal children

I personally like D4 and will play it myself, when taking a break from POE. Some people want a less complex and easier game. So I agree, maybe POE has become to complex and grindy for them.