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

No game dies in a vacuum. For POE to die, someone better needs to rise to take its place (or, I suppose, for all ARPG fans to die out at once).

Will D4 take it down? No, I don't think it will - its not that D4 is bad, but they're fairly different games in terms of their approach to ARPG genre. Kind of like Destiny and Warframe aren't the same games even though they're both shooters.

It is sadge but it feels like kickin' a dead mule to get up. Pointless tbh.
Personally i dont mind, i have D2R as a diablo 4 waiting room and having really good time playing ladder in S3 :)

All my hopes fom PoE unfortunately are gone for good at this point. I had great time all those years and i loved the game and GGG. I have like 1500 hours on steam and mostly i was playing through the official launcer the last few years. Anyway..

I doupt PoE 2 will get me back into the game, the core isues will be tranfered there aswell as i allready can see and imo its a waste of resources and developing hours for the company. for me its better to focus on fixin the currend game and uprade the game engine, plus servers. But i dont see that happens anyway :P

RIP

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Ashnazg01 wrote:

No game dies in a vacuum. For POE to die, someone better needs to rise to take its place (or, I suppose, for all ARPG fans to die out at once).

Will D4 take it down? No, I don't think it will - its not that D4 is bad, but they're fairly different games in terms of their approach to ARPG genre. Kind of like Destiny and Warframe aren't the same games even though they're both shooters.

D4 isn't going to "kill" PoE. If PoE does "die" or lose a bunch of players, it will likely be a combination of self-inflicted design errors (subjective), and an alternative for the more casual / average players that D4 provides.

Then again perhaps PoE would be content with having extremely low numbers but able to develop a more Ruthless-Style experience. Nothing wrong with that concept wise, it would just be change from what it is now. If Tencent would even be on board with that...

I hate to boil this down to a childish saying, but GGG started it. Players had a blank slate going into 3.21, and the glib and frankly insulting answers that CW gave to the Melee and Ruthless questions was a slap in the face to the playerbase. Oh, wait, sorry, 10 percent of the playerbase in melee's case. There's better ways of handling that, like, literally, any other way. Use some PR speak, lie, don't say anything, say you can't say anything, feign a heart attack. Anything is better than insulting your playerbase.

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la_blue_girl wrote:

They now just pretend nerfs don't even happen, post-truth style lol. That "only small nerfs this patch, don't worry" comment even set that narrative up.

I really doubt this will be good PR tho. Transparency always wins in the end. As soon players realize what's actually going on here this will just come across as fucking cynical and dishonest.

It's not the first time they pull this kinda shit either tbh. Personally I don't really trust this company anymore. They just come across as a bunch of lying politicians half of the time.

This is the main problem, and is extremely reminiscent of how industry leaders in many fields get overtaken by “startups” Why this happens is because of trust.

Here is what happens many cases:

When you are the industry leader (in arpgs here) it’s really easy to get complacent and stop listening to the customers that you serve. And every time ggg makes a remark that rings false to a players ear (melee only 10% of players, or we took the best 6 of each mastery) they erode trust.

Right now ggg is basically sitting on a lack-of-trust avalanche and have no idea that the whole mountain will come down the first time someone makes a fast paced + complex arpg.

(The key for ggg here is they have no idea how close they are to being a defunct game studio because they are not tracking their customers “trust” in ggg.(which is hard to quantify ofc) Which I can personally bet is at an all time low - after they abandoned Reddit and left that to become an eco chamber - and have decided not to mention any nerfs in marketing material)

They used to be known as one of the best communicators in the gaming world. Now if ggg says they will “look at something” I assume it will either get nerfed into oblivion (stance/adrenaline change) or they will probably never bring that content back (ultimatum/recombination)

I hope ggg the best but expect the worst.

You can communicate too much and listen to players too much when it starts to make your game "we have to please all but will end up pleasing none".

That's what's so soulless with companies like Blizzard, they will sacrifice any niche or loyalty just for a broader shallow appeal.

Devs need to stick to what made them popular and desirable in the first place, mass appeal new players is fleeting, a loyal population that's modest is nearly forever if you stick to your core systems/designs without trying to branch out too far and try do everything half -heartedly rather than a few things with passion.

GGG is in a "Damned if you do, damned if you dont" which happens a lot when you start to give the players too much say and input.

Player input for a game that's established should help enhance a game minimally not be a factor to totally rip a part your design. However Blizzard would gladly wave goodbye to 100k players who played a game for 5 years if it means 110k players will join and play for 5 months.

I think POE1 is now in a pretty big mess trying to add to many systems and trying to please everyone. Maybe POE2 they can start fresh and SLOWLY implement changes rather than stacking all these new mechanics and systems every league and then it gets out of control - and think more carefully, hello harvest. Once you give so much power it's nearly impossible to take it away.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Then again perhaps PoE would be content with having extremely low numbers but able to develop a more Ruthless-Style experience. Nothing wrong with that concept wise, it would just be change from what it is now. If Tencent would even be on board with that...

Do you know how much Tencent make from the international version vs how much they make from the Chinese version that they have full control over? It's probably pocket change

i love all the forum posters saying that they're quitting

you just know they're beating their meat everytime a new patch note is dropped

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RandallPOE wrote:

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

Then again perhaps PoE would be content with having extremely low numbers but able to develop a more Ruthless-Style experience. Nothing wrong with that concept wise, it would just be change from what it is now. If Tencent would even be on board with that...

Do you know how much Tencent make from the international version vs how much they make from the Chinese version that they have full control over? It's probably pocket change

No I don't know how much the Chinese PoE realm makes. Do you?

We do know generally speaking how much the World Realm makes due to the NZ financial reporting requirements. We also know that Tencent paid well over 100 million to acquire GGG. (We don't know exactly how much only that NZ must report publicly a sale over 100 million)

I would find it highly unlikely Tencent would be on-board with losing 300-400 million dollars over the next ten years (30-50% best case scenario) simply for a development philosophy change. It would probably be even more honestly. A full Ruthless changeover would probably retain something like 3 in 10 players.

I would imagine Tencent would just buy out CW at that point and tell him to develop whatever he wanted elsewhere, and shift monetization.

That's all purely hypothetical, but I would disagree with the premise that Tencent wouldn't care about losing hundreds of millions in investment valuation.

So the reason people create gaming studios is to communicate? Couldn't they do that else where? Like Chris could go home and communicate with his family. No? So https://www.grammarly.com is the best gaming studio of our generation? I am calling BS on this!