The fog is closing in

We’ve seen this exact scenario happen with Diablo as well. When developers stop listening to their community, the result is inevitable—and Diablo’s current state speaks for itself. Hardly anyone touches it anymore. I’m sure a lot of people on that team ended up losing their jobs, because failure simply isn’t tolerated for long, especially in today’s fast-paced consumption era.

I don’t know if there’s research on this, but from what I’ve observed, games like Diablo and Path of Exile are mostly played by older players—people who tend to tolerate things for a bit longer. And when you already have such an advantage, it’s honestly impressive to mess things up this badly. If the very first season were still running today, I genuinely believe far more people would still be playing. Moving backward instead of forward is basically sabotaging your own work.

The most important thing in this genre is pack size. Who came up with the idea of reducing pack size and turning the game into some sort of Street Fighter experience? I’d really love to know. Then they release a showcase video—honestly, I didn’t think a reveal could look that bad. I’m sure Druid will be stronger, but this is not how you present anything.

Everyone is complaining about FPS issues. So the solution is… what?
“Let’s reduce monster count. Let’s slow the game down. Let’s nerf everything. Wow, brilliant idea. Let’s absolutely do that.” And I can almost imagine the team going, “Yay! Fantastic job everyone, we did it! Let’s go celebrate this masterpiece!”

Yes, I’ll still play the new season, and yes, I’ll still push for level 100—because I love this game. But I’m also certain many players will quit. And one day, running maps alone will eventually bother even me, and this game might get uninstalled just like Diablo—never to return.

All jokes aside, the ending might be closer than anyone expects.

You're connecting wrong dots.
Also, when you say community - you mean poe1 enjoyers who try to invade and made another game a copy of poe1, no-skill casuals, excel dwellers, no-life grinders, who?
Asking, because the desired outcome will be highly dependent on the perspective.

[Removed by Support]
any call to authority, for example, as to what an arpg should entail, is fundamentally flawed. including the "but poe1 isn't like this. where's poe1 part 2? where's the expansion?"
well, it's not expanded poe1 anymore, ggg already made that clear. it's its own game. there may be similarities, there may be differences. but they're not the same game and shouldn't be.


i built combo w/ some generator/spender this league and it was glorious. people complaining about such maybe don't know how to take more than one approach to every situation.
sure, one-shots suck if the map mods scale higher than you can adjust for (in your build) but no one is forcing me to not drop the map and move on (like how some people skip certain bosses or bosses entirely).
sometimes cutting your losses is the risk/reward calculation you need to make. i still haven't check out of trials of chaos early to save my loot instead of going for the completion and have even lost some good loot due to bad luck right at the end, but it's nice they designed it around that risk/reward decision-making.

i really hope ggg sticks to their vision and pulls it off. i think the leadership is good in terms of design just maybe the lower levels of the team might have their own agenda, or even simply just too much on their plate. (modern SAAS dev cycle is the fecking bane of me i swear) "go fast and break stuff" i think is becoming more and more the modern work ethic, not just when it comes to coding. i mean... look at op...

The change to mobs to make them more rewarding instead of relying on big pack size is positive one. I always ended up making builds that explode screens of mobs before they can react, instead of methodically approaching fight, and I hated it.

Mark said that you will be able eventually to convert this to pack size instead. Your analysis is rather emotional equivalent of your feelings on the topic.

Game is doing fantastic, and what killed diablo was actually risk aversion, GGG is not afraid to break things and that's why they're winning.