Streamer priority confirmed. PoE is free to play, so play it for free, but Boycott GGG.

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MECHanokl wrote:

I find it hilarious how GGG manages to makes these PR blunders from time to time, and how relatively easy they get away with it (dedicated playerbase ftw).

they didnt 'get away with it', the player base gave them an extremely hard time.

what actually happened? a handful of streamers skipped a queue for about an hour, most of them skipped it once, realised there was a skip and contacted ggg, told them to remove them from the queue skip. bad pr yes, what actual harm was done? none, virtually 0 harm was done in actual in game terms, 0 people 'won the game' or had any significant economic advantage as a result.

in principal it was bad, as a long term policy if this was how the game always ran it would be an outrage. it happened once to a tiny amount of people for a tiny amount of time and resulted in basically 0 harm actually done. so they didnt get away with anything, actually threads like this have completely blown the entire thing out of all proportion and they have ended up taking way more criticism and hate from this incident than it actually deserved.

ggg are actually sorry and ashamed of what they did, have sincerely apologised and even removed the mechanic from the system entirely so it is impossible to ever do again. the way some of the player base reacted to this incident was far more shameful than the incident itself and they havent apologised, feel no shame and just keep going. is that hilarious or tragic? i think the latter.

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MECHanokl wrote:

I still remember that video where Chris talked about how they balanced the game around watching netflix while playing, and that the damage spikes are there to "wake you up". Bless you Chris.

i watch netflix while playing poe. everyone i know in guilds and dischord watch netflix while playing poe. what chris was saying was a factual reality of how people play arpgs.




player counts on league launch can be a vanity metric. if ggg offered everyone who played on day 1 a £100 gift voucher for amazon they could get 10,000,000s of people playing the game for that 1 day, but that wouldnt be good for the long term health of the game. there could be an element of vanity in the boast of "oh we had 23,000,000 players on day 1" but it would just be vanity, it wouldnt be a meaningful metric. they are fixing the game for the games long term health, it may feel bad to have the lowest player numbers in the past year for this league, but for the game moving forward 2 years, 5 years, 10 years its the right thing to do.

they could have made the game pay to win and made more money, they didnt. they could have made the game simple, noob friendly and got more players from the casual base, they didnt. the game exists as a vision from people who love arpgs and wanted to make a good arpg, and they are still doing that, thats what theyve always tried to do. they are human beings, they make mistakes, and because they are genuine, good human beings they hold their hands up to those mistakes and correct them, they dont just double down on them to protect their egos and they dont intentionally make bad games for the sake of their egos when they look at player counts either.

You may see it as old news. I prefer to think of it as a historical precedent that should not be forgotten.

There's something to be said for certain events that are significant enough that they were never really news to begin with, but instead future punctuation marks when or if people choose to read what happened.

I am generally not in the business of trying to keep up with news; game journalism is notoriously fast paced and...poorly written a lot of the time. I'm more about detailed accounts that reflect and provoke -- news might expire like yesterday's fish but history never gets old.

If you want news, stick with Reddit. There's a reason GGG prefer it over their official forum...threads like this die within days regardless of their popularity. History is measured in hours and days on Reddit and other social media designed to constantly highlight the latest and hottest.

I find when people try to chase that dragon they fail to appreciate what happens when they catch one. Or, as in this case, when the dragon just bites its own tail. Like I said: historical precedent. Worth remembering.

But if you guys want to forget and move on, it's real easy: stop bumping the thread recording it. :)

increasing loot or odds of any kind, even connexion or server service qualiy/prioriy for streamers is not something that would surprise me anymore.
They can do it for queue, so, other things too.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

I am generally not in the business of trying to keep up with news; game journalism is notoriously fast paced and...poorly written a lot of the time. I'm more about detailed accounts that reflect and provoke -- news might expire like yesterday's fish but history never gets old.

More people seem to be upset about the nerfs than previous streamer privilege. Priority for streamers seem less important than what affect them directly. That will soon pass as well and all would seem to be normal. People never remember history since many people have a pretty short-term memory. The game is not fun is a judgement rather than of history. You don't need science or history to tell you that, you trust that Gut Feeling is Real.

OTOH nothing happens in a void. I do not and can not engage in discussion of recent gameplay changes but I think it pertinent to ensure Exiles are aware that a game is a body; a company is a body. They are systems wherein a symptom in one limb may well be connected to an unpleasant event elsewhere in that body.

Admittedly these connections are often made only after the fact...that's history for you.

Do I think there is such a connection here? Absolutely. That connection is what makes this event historical rather than incidental.

Whether people care about it or not is to me the incidence. The irrelevance. People also dismiss little (and not so little) symptoms because they can't immediately and clearly connect them to a real and serious issue. We are selfish and small like that.

I am afforded a rare position as an Exile who has experienced aspects of this PoE/GGG body over the years that make very clear what is happening isn't normal, isn't healthy.

And I'm just articulate enough, just concerned enough, to record it in a way that skews historic rather than histrionic. I have had my share of emotionally charged outbursts, so if people choose to see this as me crying wolf, so be it.

But there's one crucial difference this time: I don't have PoE on my computer. I managed to take that one step away that enables an Exile to go from beholden to beholder. From part of the experiment to a witness of its ongoing results.

I think that difference shows even in how I wrote and structured the OP.

I still hope to be wrong. For the sake of everyone still enjoying this game, I do. To be otherwise would be malicious, and that I am not.

But I don't think I am. There is something systemically alarming about this thread, and it's not just because recently people have tried to piggy back it with their gameplay change gripes...although that they do that tells me they too sense the connections, even if they, we, aren't fully able to see them.

Yet.

nice thoughtful post

Thank you

Expect no less from me. And should I fail to live up to that basic standard, then I will have failed you too.

I do not intend to do that.


:)

Have a lovely weekend! (he said, enjoying the Tristram theme strumming out of the TV a few metres away)

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

GGG: if you're going to behave like just another money-hungry free to play developer, at least be honest about it.

Impossible: it likely became a part of corporate culture already. 1984 style.
Sincerely, ex-WG employee, where same stuff happened.

What's WG short for?

I could google but I'd probably end up in a clickhole about pasta sauce.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

What's WG short for?

I could google but I'd probably end up in a clickhole about pasta sauce.

could be this one here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wargaming_(company)