Reminder despite the league is flawed.

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SaiyanZ написал:

D4 will make Blizzard a huge amount of cash and it will sell well even if not as good as POE.

What do you mean? Don't you know? Are you new here? Sale numbers are most important when it comes to a product's quality. More sales = autommatically better.

At least, it seems that way in here sometimes.

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Shagsbeard написал:

People are now talking about D4 as if it will be the spiritual successor of PoE.

Who the fuck is actually saying that, Shaksbard? If anything, I'm seeing 'D4 might be the successor to D2, D3, what's D3, no idea what you're talking about' by Diablo veterans, and 'meh, blizzard' by ardently entrenched Exiles such as yourself.

'People are now talking about' is like 'Many people say' or 'I know lots of people who think': those cheap attempts at fake popularity commonly deployed by loud-mouthed self-aggrandising blowhards and dodgy car salesmen. Fine for so-called low intelligence citizens, but it will not and should not fly here in Galaxy Brain universe.

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SaiyanZ написал:

These games took at least 50 hours of my time each. Some 100+. In terms of time spent playing a single game though, nothing will ever compare to POE. Think I'm around 20k hours in.

This is what happens when a game is made into an ongoing, renewable service designed to be played 'forever'. People give it their absolute best shot. And if you feel every one of those 20,000 hours was as entertaining and rewarding as any you've spent on another game, that's awesome. Big win to Chris, and big win to you finding 'your game'.

But I think PoE crossed the quantity vs quality threshold a while ago, to the point where when I see someone say they've played PoE for Xk hours, I don't see 'wow, that game must be really amazing'; I see 'wow that game must be terribly addictive.'

And while 'addictive' can be a positive aspect for a game, it can also definitely be a negative one too, especially when you factor in how that game makes its money. I find plenty of buy-to-play games addictive, and consider them better value for money than an addictive free to play game that does its best to pivot its addictive gameplay into addictive financial support.

__

At this point, it's very clear that f2p is where the money is (happy to cite a bunch of f2p game revenue figures if anyone wants to disagree), and I think it'd be ridiculous to assume that Diablo 4 will be buy to play. That we know Last Epoch will be but to play is something of a blessing right now; it's possibly one of the last semi-decent up-and-coming ARPGs that will be -- I had some vague hopes that the loot box debacle had cured the industry of its f2p inclinations, but...no. I do think that's the way the wind is blowing, the same as how subscription streaming is killing physical media purchases. Entertainment overall is moving away from one-off purchasing and towards the reliable drip of subscription -- and in terms of f2p games, certain products are basically a soft subscription: support packs, storage, battle passes, and anything that augments the play in an ongoing fashion rather than with a single purchase.

The main reason I can see for D4 not going f2p/soft sub is because it puts it even more in direct competition with PoE, which...at least right now, is a really stupid move. BUT D4 is apparently so far off, who the fuck knows what things will be like? 2024 could be us huddling in bomb shelters longing for the halcyon days of Covid-19. Heh.

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Foreverhappychan написал:

It was true until fairly recently. Does anyone get excited for a Blizzard announcement now?

Take a look at the Star Craft II update that came out today and you will see that having hope in Blizzard is believing that the Earth is flat
D4 is going to be another crap and probably the mobile is even worse.

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reinero написал:

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Foreverhappychan написал:

It was true until fairly recently. Does anyone get excited for a Blizzard announcement now?

Take a look at the Star Craft II update that came out today and you will see that having hope in Blizzard is believing that the Earth is flat
D4 is going to be another crap and probably the mobile is even worse.

Wait, they're still updating SCII but dumped HOTS? Those fucks. :(

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DreadLordAvatar написал:

In this match between Blizz and GGG, Blizz is the underdog.

For us longtime poe players, sure. But if we think outside of this forum's bubble the bigger playerbase and money still go to actiblizz.

Let's be clear, GGG never attempted to go for high quality standards when it come to league's releases, don't get me wrong and wait before shooting, I'm talking about the way leagues are released and not the content itself. The sure thing is they did their best to achieve half of those standards.
There is a very popular sentence that explain why you can't get quality, delay, and cost at the same time, it's usualy adressed to customers.

I'm not blaming them here just speaking about facts, I started in mid 2013 and don't remind a single league start that wasn't clunky. This has nothing abnormal, there is a date to match, wich isn't only about delivering product, that would be too simple.
Most of time I assume GGG folks are not any differents than in any other studios and are already aware of a lot of issues that won't be solved in time. Then there are the daily routine of such teams wich is discovering giant surprizes (and clearly not enjoyable ones).

Past leagues were mostly showing a model that wouldn't let them getting any comfort at all, and not maintanable on the long run, heist is just the culminating point of this, pandemic + running onto multiple projects possibly showed its limits (I will admit that I'm still impressed it lasted in an okayish state that long).
Remember also that Chris stated clearly that he wasn't up for crunchtime period, and so on in a very long reddit post (two years ago?). Wich I can understand and respect a lot, it has its importance because companies that reach very high quality standards rarely work the same way as far as I know.

GGG always decided to protect this model, and to fix as many issues as possible once league were released. And to be honest it was most of time successful, if you were starting the league two or three weeks later you wern't noticing much issues (except maybe hmm rampage league, this one still hurt).


My concern is this is not the only game that decided to follow that route, lot of others did and seeing the result, wisely decided to stepback, knowing quality was decreasing too much and risk was becoming very high. Some others also drawned due to similar cycles and doesn't have any games to offer anymore. That's a reality and it need to be brought on the table.

Let's be clear, video game industry history speak by itself, when competitors comes up with higher standards, others games got a very hard time wich can be fatal very fast.
This is not something I wish to GGG and for now they are in a very safe position, but I sincerely think if it has to happen, I will just end to say that a significant amount of players warned them for years now.

As a player, I find the heist league design very cool, my playtime can speak by itself it has been one of my pref league in a while and as I_NO said there is nothing better around when it comes to Hack & slash; but it is very clear that I do not plan to join a league start again aslong as things stay like that. Why? That's kinda simple, it end like that with every single online games these days, and that would be encouraging this to continue.
How many ruined league ideas and design will it take before things change? List start to be a bit too long.

Keep up the great work, that's how I would conclude this long post, stay safe too, and please take some stepback to find how to address this.

We can probably all accept a limited amount of issues at league start, but we surely all enjoy it much more when frustation comes from our mistakes, and not from a giant list of issues and design flaws, missing content and/or half finished one. I'm 100% sure every peoples that work on PoE agree that, no one that ever worked enjoy to see a so wrong result like this one, and I doubt anyone is really happy at this moment of community reaction including mine.

I also sincerely think this is one of the main reason Path of Exile struggle to catch a significantly much larger audience, wich would be clearly deserved, this game is still gold.

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pr13st написал:

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DreadLordAvatar написал:

In this match between Blizz and GGG, Blizz is the underdog.

For us longtime poe players, sure. But if we think outside of this forum's bubble the bigger playerbase and money still go to actiblizz.

In terms of ARPGs? I don't think so. It's interesting to note how often a phrase like 'this is an ARPG in the vein of Diablo or Path of Exile' pops up in game journalism now. It's low-key a measure of GGG's success that their game, initially a wannabe, is casually put next to Diablo (not just Diablo 3 either) in terms of what sets the standard for ARPGs. At this point, I would venture to say that any upcoming ARPG will be compared to PoE and condemned if it is found wanting...including Diablo 4.

I think their point is that Diablo and Blizzard are such strong brands that they will make large sums of money based on that alone. Not to mention Diablo 3 probably built up its own fanbase over the years that's going to be interested in more of something like Diablo 3.

Maybe. I'm not convinced that Blizzard is still that strong a brand at the moment. And I don't mean in just hardcore gamer niches either. The gaming mainstream heard all about the phones and the Reforged disaster. 'Is this an out of season April fool's joke' is very likely the first thing that pops into a gamer's head when they hear 'Blizzard' assuming they're not living under a rock.