POLL: Did Exilecon increase or decrease your overall hype for POE and POE 2?

Increased…in CW I trust

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la_blue_girl wrote:

They just need to get this game out the door already. The gameplay reveal was almost friggin 4 years ago.

This shows a vast misunderstanding about how long games, particularly modern games, take to create. Decades. With an S. Given the scale of PoE2, a decade is roughly what I'd expect something like that to take. There's a reason game companies do not ever like to talk about projects until they are VERY close to done, favoring fake names, because players seem to think you can pound out a Call of Duty in a year. Even a near clone can take years of work for a team of dozens.

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Northern_Ronin wrote:

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la_blue_girl wrote:

They just need to get this game out the door already. The gameplay reveal was almost friggin 4 years ago.

This shows a vast misunderstanding about how long games, particularly modern games, take to create. Decades. With an S. Given the scale of PoE2, a decade is roughly what I'd expect something like that to take. There's a reason game companies do not ever like to talk about projects until they are VERY close to done, favoring fake names, because players seem to think you can pound out a Call of Duty in a year. Even a near clone can take years of work for a team of dozens.

I'm sorry but that's just not true. 7-8-9 years for a game like this is just crazy long. This isn't Dead Read Redemption 2 or some AAA MMO that's made from scratch. They've got tons of stuff already in place here.

Something went very wrong with this project as the original beta data was something like late 2020. That's 3,5 years off now(IF things goes to plan). They even got caught off guard themselves probably.

And that's why I'm saying they need to push it out even if it's not exactly like they wanted it, because otherwise it could just get worse. Call the first month an "open beta" or something, but just get something out there for people to play. Like, if they're already thinking 2025 right now they need to start scaling things back, fast.

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la_blue_girl wrote:

I'm sorry but that's just not true. 7-8-9 years for a game like this is just crazy long. This isn't Dead Read Redemption 2 or some AAA MMO that's made from scratch. They've got tons of stuff already in place here.

Something went very wrong with this project as the original beta data was something like late 2020. That's 3,5 years off now(IF things goes to plan). They even got caught off guard themselves probably.

And that's why I'm saying they need to push it out even if it's not exactly like they wanted it, because otherwise it could just get worse. Call the first month an "open beta" or something, but just get something out there for people to play. Like, if they're already thinking 2025 right now they need to start scaling things back, fast.

Not only that, but they're also using the same engine, (probably) many of the same assets and have the same PoE development team at their disposal. You'd imagine they've probably been working on this since 2017, and so we're talking 7 years from start to closed beta. Let's hope all this doesn't fall as flat as the "what colour explosion do you want" at the end of Mass Effect.

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la_blue_girl wrote:

I'm sorry but that's just not true. 7-8-9 years for a game like this is just crazy long. This isn't Dead Read Redemption 2 or some AAA MMO that's made from scratch. They've got tons of stuff already in place here.

Something went very wrong with this project as the original beta data was something like late 2020. That's 3,5 years off now(IF things goes to plan). They even got caught off guard themselves probably.

And that's why I'm saying they need to push it out even if it's not exactly like they wanted it, because otherwise it could just get worse. Call the first month an "open beta" or something, but just get something out there for people to play. Like, if they're already thinking 2025 right now they need to start scaling things back, fast.

So lets use the example you used; Red Dead Redemption 2 wasn't made from scratch, it's made using the RAGE engine, which Rockstar built in house, taking roughly 4 years (offically it's 2.5, but given they had a Division named the RAGE Development team before it became it's own free standing part of the company suggests they had been working on it well before hand), starting with a simple Tennis game (likely to test physics and to allow it to be live tested on many systems, before developing a high cost IP, having made several GTA's at this point, so they know how these things work and the money to do so). Note that RAGE had been in use for several games for nearly a decade before RDR2, it's had a ton of time for them to learn how it works, what it's good at, and what it's not.

In addition RDR2 had the edge that it had an entire game of predeveloped concepts, and none of its concepts are that out there. You don't need a ton of interesting enviromental design and monster design for a western. Nor are its gameplay systems all THAT complicated or interlocking, generally favoring a bespoked design. Third, Rockstar games is a huge developer, games are made via Man Hours, more hands, less devtime. Those cinematic black bars in RDR2's cutscenes purpordely took -weeks- to add, as they where a last minute revision from the top.

This brings us to offical statements list RDR2 taking 8 -years- for development. For an honestly pretty simple western game. Fully voice acted with good cutscenes, and an odd facination for horse anatomy in the cold. This puts its likely Man Hours at around 22,000,000 Hours given its staff. This puts GGG's current staff size to make -just the game- not the engine, at about 19 years. And this is discounting Rockstar's NOTIROUS cruch culture that assurldy underbilled hours and cut a year or so off their time (NOTE: I'm not saying GGG has a healthy crunch culture, I have no idea, I at least haven't heard of any scandals, but would love to hear from workers, all about devs actually getting to have a dang life). And GGG is working with their own engine, I'd say PoE2, at least if the demo footage is real and not some elaborate Colonial Marines stuff, has MASSIVELY improved the engine and asset quality, likely well beyond their original scope that we're pushing at properly calling it a new iteration of their engine, even if the core framework is the same.

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la_blue_girl wrote:

Something went very wrong with this project as the original beta data was something like late 2020. That's 3,5 years off now(IF things goes to plan). They even got caught off guard themselves probably.

Well, it's original beta date was NOT something like late 2020. PoE 4.0 (since it was still a bespoked part) was announced in Exilecon 2019. I just trawled through the entire announcements and Q&A, the phrase 'Beta Test' is never uttered, the same is true of the still in the archives 2019 announcement post (most of the time was spent talking about Conqurers major patch). So this gives us a locked in confirmed roughly 4 year Devtime for PoE2, generaiously I'd tack on roughly a year of pre-dev time since obviously a project like this often doesn't have a clean start time, often being more of a 'hey lets upgrade this big part' and growing from there. And we know there was not a ton of the game built in that 2019 presentation, (Wilson even mentions it was possible to get to an unfinished act boss, but it's not clear how much of a joke that was, and I didn't look to see if anyone did). But presumably most of the first act was done-ish. Seeing the additions in the following years, you can see some of the graphical additions, and music added (since I follow Kamil elsewhere and it comes up in interviews), and this year seems to have more or less thrown out every existing skill gem in favor of new stuff (which given how few skills we see every 6 months, imply to me each one consumes a considerable about of hours to conceive, design, rough balance and make assets for.

Now lastly, I wonder what happened in in 2020 that might have impacted GGG's ability to work . . . Hmmm . . . I feel like it's something right in front of me, something really obvious. Something that might still be on going.... HmMMMMMMMM it sure is a stumper. I donno, I'm sure I'll think of it. Maybe someone in the forum more known for pointlessly exhaustive research for forum arugments could chime in with some massively, world warping event I just can't remember. Dang it, it's on the tip of my tongue...

Imagine taking 8 years to make a game with the most god-awful, clunky gameplay ever. KEKW

Decrease. More questions left up in the air compared to the answers given.

There's this funny quirk I have with GGG. I watch exilecon (even the tech talks!), I watch their interviews, I even watch Chris speak at GDC... and I absolutely love them. The vision, the talent, the stance on F2P, etc. It's all amazing and great. It makes me want to move to NZ and work for them.

But then they consistently go and implement horrible changes to the game. Not decisions they discussed. Not decisions they reasoned about. Just these random horrible and sometimes secretive changes.

[Removed by Support]

A major disappointment. Basically killed the hype for me. I stopped watching after the first day.

Everybody, including the big streamers, expected the beta in December, or even the release itself. Why even have an ExileCon if you were going to give us NOTHING?

Closed beta in 1 year? And then open beta. And then another year before the actual release? Somewhere in 2025.

In the meantime, we will continue to receive 3.x leagues with increasingly OP crafting mechanics that will not be added to the core game. Just to keep the player base from abandoning the officially doomed PoE 1.

When PoE 2 was first announced back in 2019, together with league 3.9 - did ANYBODY expect that we'll get to league 3.30 before it's released?

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