Can GGG manage TWO games at once??

While I didn't have a lot of confidence earlier about GGG's ability to manage BOTH PoE1 AND PoE2 successfully recent events are lowering my faith in GGG to actually get things together.

Things like the reasons for 0.2.0.g delays / rollback problems / etc. are all problems with how the game is being managed and does NOT reflect on the skill of the actual DEVs per-se.

I work with computer systems professionally and there will ALWAYS be mistakes and some of those mistakes will be critical (bad) mistakes. The key is though to have processes & understanding in place that prevents (or hugely mitigates) these mistakes from ever going live.

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Currently PoE1 has been without a new league for 9+ months while most of the focus was on PoE2.

Now that PoE1 is theoretically getting a new league and focus needs to be split now we're seeing fundamental problems with keeping updates of PoE2 running smoothly.

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Constructive feedback: If you're going to try to run two games successfully then staff more people as it seems that there aren't enough people to keep things running smoothly at this point.

Definitely bit more than they can chew and so not without more staff they can't. The way things are currently, one or the other will continue to suffer. I'm paraphrasing but they said they are focusing on 0.2 and after that it's back to POE 1 but seeing as 0.2 didn't pan out very well and there's still plenty of fires to put out, without more staff one or the other will continue to be put on the backshelf.

Time/Quality/Money

I cannot see them continuing POE1.

They need to rip the bandage off and sunset it.

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Can GGG manage TWO games at once??

No. They clearly have problems with working on more than one project simultaneously.

They already reported (long time ago, don't ask me when or where) that they couldn't split their team to work on different leagues (the next one and the one after that), so they could have double of the time for each development cycle (i.e. 6 months instead of 3 months) and assure more quality on release. I remember that they said everything would bottle neck, going to the leaders anyway, so it wouldn't work for them. Now, imagine spliting their team between two games.

Things can change with time, but I doubt it.

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johnnieTrek#4759 написал:

Time/Quality/Money

I cannot see them continuing POE1.

They need to rip the bandage off and sunset it.

Honestly that's been my worry for a LONG time. I was hoping that I would be forced to eat crow but the longer BOTH games are suffering the more it seems that at some level I was right.

My biggest concern is that GGG will continue stumbling along and run the risk of getting PoE1 killed (due to neglect) while potentially damaging PoE2 to the point that its viability is lower than PoE1 had over the last five years or so.

While I don't know how GGG is structured I get the impression that we may have people double-dipping (triple, more??) into roles that are outside of their strengths. If true GGG needs to hire people to handle the "management", "process", and "vision" pieces of the puzzle and let everyone else focus on their inherent strengths.

So far.... no.

Eventually... remains to be seen.

It was evident that in the run up to the 0.2 release that too many parameters of what GGG were trying to achieve were up in the air right until the release itself. Note
(a) The very late release of the patch notes
(b) A statement from Jonathan that key aspects of the recombinator were still being discussed in an interview almost on the eve of the release, and that the decision to unclude the recombinator at all had only be taken at a late stage
(c) Suggestions from Mark in the same interview that "many things will be broken" in the 0.2 patch and it is only via iteration they will be fixed. Though there is some truth to that statement, it did not speak to a high level of quality control being applied in advance of the EA patches, but rather a "fix it in the field" attitude.
These specific indications around the 0.2 release come after a lengthy delay to both this POE2 patch and a new POE1 league.

The good news is that the success of the POE2 launch should mean there is no shortage of resources available to GGG if they wish to recruit staff to aid their development. However, many of the mistakes being made seem odd given the experience GGG have accumulated in over a decade of game development until now. So many systems where POE1 already has iterated to solutions over time seem to be being completely reinvented from scratch without it being clear why. I am personally not at all convinced that the new map style Atlas for endgame is a step forward, and that design seems to have been stumbled on relatively late in the process. Many here have criticised "the vision" but I am not convinced GGG has always had a firm notion as to what POE2 wanted to achieve to guide it when it has come to crunch of putting the product out. That makes more basic failures of project management more likely.

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malcolmbarr#6856 написал:

The good news is that the success of the POE2 launch should mean there is no shortage of resources available to GGG if they wish to recruit staff to aid their development. However, many of the mistakes being made seem odd given the experience GGG have accumulated in over a decade of game development until now. So many systems where POE1 already has iterated to solutions over time seem to be being completely reinvented from scratch without it being clear why. I am personally not at all convinced that the new map style Atlas for endgame is a step forward, and that design seems to have been stumbled on relatively late in the process. Many here have criticised "the vision" but I am not convinced GGG has always had a firm notion as to what POE2 wanted to achieve to guide it when it has come to crunch of putting the product out. That makes more basic failures of project management more likely.

I believe a lot of what you're pointing out can be summarized as:

1. Failures in quality management
2. Failures in process management
3. Failures in "continuity of vision"

I work in IT and all during Covid we were given more responsibilities but NOT given the extra manpower / tools in order to handle those responsibilities. I wouldn't be surprised if something similar is going on at GGG.

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johnnieTrek#4759 написал:

Time/Quality/Money

I cannot see them continuing POE1.

They need to rip the bandage off and sunset it.

My God please no. Compared to poe1, poe2 is hot garbage. It just so happens that d4 and last epoch are even worse than hot garbage so its still number 2 in line.

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KingAlamar#4071 написал:

While I didn't have a lot of confidence earlier about GGG's ability to manage BOTH PoE1 AND PoE2 successfully recent events are lowering my faith in GGG to actually get things together.

Things like the reasons for 0.2.0.g delays / rollback problems / etc. are all problems with how the game is being managed and does NOT reflect on the skill of the actual DEVs per-se.

I work with computer systems professionally and there will ALWAYS be mistakes and some of those mistakes will be critical (bad) mistakes. The key is though to have processes & understanding in place that prevents (or hugely mitigates) these mistakes from ever going live.

****************************************************************

Currently PoE1 has been without a new league for 9+ months while most of the focus was on PoE2.

Now that PoE1 is theoretically getting a new league and focus needs to be split now we're seeing fundamental problems with keeping updates of PoE2 running smoothly.

****************************************************************

Constructive feedback: If you're going to try to run two games successfully then staff more people as it seems that there aren't enough people to keep things running smoothly at this point.

Tencent can absolutely do it, when GGG fails they will pick up the piece's.