Market actually ruins the game

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KaosuRyoko#1633 wrote:

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Akedomo#3573 wrote:

Hey, fair enough. They might get rid of it in PoE 2, or at least water it down, but PoE 1 will likely never change.

I'm glad they split the games because then players can enjoy both, regardless of the differences.

You ever play EVE? That's my game for economy. You can make a living on it too. I used to make a couple hundred a month on it around 5 years ago.

I hope that's true about 1. But development on it has been on an obvious steady decline for a couple years now. We got literally 50% less content in 1 and they directly said it was because of 2 for a few different reasons. So I'm not honestly optimistic that 1 will be around me then a year after 2 fully launches. I work in software development, I know how untenable it is to maintain two large products simultaneously when it's clear they didn't double their team size to accommodate it.

I tried Eve but didn't get over the initial learning curve. Looks like my jam for sure. I just had different gaming priorities at different times.

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grepman#2451 wrote:

As usual, the complaints about the market mainly devolve into asking better (or even comparable !) drops for SSF


It's not enough for people to play SSF where they are completely unreliant on other players. They also want to have drops that compare to what they can get on open market with hundreds thousands of people literally playing the game at the same time.


Crafting right now is a$$, yes. And I'm sure the very first league on launch will have some form of crafting, think forsaken masters or something. Remember poe1 did not have crafting bench, multimod stuff or whatever until then. Yes it had scours and alts but nonetheless



And it's not like its solvable by simply giving ssf more drops, most people who believe in the concept ask for BETTER drops.

How do you make drops better when all tiers drop randomly on random bases with random affixes ? Well GGG did venture into this direction and has their rare tiers. And that's still not enough it seems.




So what do people want exactly ? I'll say - they want smart loot that gives them good drops. Theres no real good way to do it in poe universe aside from the diablo 4 method- basically in high levels all items would roll affixes at high tiers.

What does it do - it completely ruins the journey into itemization. Everyone has the same gear with same stats in several days of play.


There's absolutely no way GGG does this where someone inputting less resources and time into a game gets same return as top no-life degens do. If they do that they will lose their core audience.

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Akedomo#3573 wrote:

Yes, that's true. I've seen the decline too. And I think you're right. It's overall just a small company.

I think they probably haven't hired more staff because of money issues. PoE 1 is a very niche game, and I don't think it has players interested in spending huge amounts of money on it like in the past.

PoE 2 hopefully can be a success, and then both games can continue getting the support and content that people love. That's what I'm hoping for at least.

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KaosuRyoko#1633 wrote:

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Akedomo#3573 wrote:

Yes, that's true. I've seen the decline too. And I think you're right. It's overall just a small company.

I think they probably haven't hired more staff because of money issues. PoE 1 is a very niche game, and I don't think it has players interested in spending huge amounts of money on it like in the past.

PoE 2 hopefully can be a success, and then both games can continue getting the support and content that people love. That's what I'm hoping for at least.

If the issue is money I'm not sure why splitting focus was the best business decision. But to be fair they sold a ton of early access keys so maybe they were right. Just not sure how tenable it is going forward. Endgame in 2 already feels a lot like 1, and changing that would be such a massive overhaul already that I don't see it happening. Especially since they have said throughout development that one button builds and fast builds would exist. If that's going to stay true slow builds will just get ignored. Then if you have two versions of basically the same game, one of them is going to tank.

I'm super curious to see how retention in 2 plays out long term, especially after the first league reset. Anecdotally it feels like a lot of the new players are just playing the campaign and I don't see them coming back each league for that personally.

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Akedomo#3573 wrote:

Niche game doesn't generate a lot of money. A new game does. They just got 30 million or so from the EA sales. I think it was probably the right move. Especially since they can leave the old game the way it is, for all the people that enjoy it.

We're still very early in early-access. I expect over the next half year that some pretty major patches will come out that will shift the game in a better direction.

I think they're going to realize that making a copy of PoE 1 isn't going to pan out. When they originally were making PoE 2. It was supposed to just be an update to PoE 1, but they've gone and changed a ton of things, so much so that it just doesn't make sense to make another copy of PoE 1.

Yeah, That's how it was in PoE 1 as well. By the time players hit Act 3-4, like 70% of the players had quit by that point. The game just doesn't have the oomph to keep players interested in it.

If you play, and you know nothing about the trade site, or orbs. And it's your first time playing. The first time you'll see more than a 3 link item is right about what, level 45-50 or so? Knowing nothing about the game, it makes it quite difficult. You really do need prior knowledge, because the game just doesn't teach anyone anything. PoE 2 isn't really that much different. The game just isn't accessible to new players. Prior knowledge really helps a ton.

That's what most people on the forums don't seem to remember. They've had years of experience with PoE 1.

I think a new game was inevitable. Just to simplify things.

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KaosuRyoko#1633 wrote:

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Akedomo#3573 wrote:

Niche game doesn't generate a lot of money. A new game does. They just got 30 million or so from the EA sales. I think it was probably the right move. Especially since they can leave the old game the way it is, for all the people that enjoy it.

We're still very early in early-access. I expect over the next half year that some pretty major patches will come out that will shift the game in a better direction.

I think they're going to realize that making a copy of PoE 1 isn't going to pan out. When they originally were making PoE 2. It was supposed to just be an update to PoE 1, but they've gone and changed a ton of things, so much so that it just doesn't make sense to make another copy of PoE 1.

Yeah, That's how it was in PoE 1 as well. By the time players hit Act 3-4, like 70% of the players had quit by that point. The game just doesn't have the oomph to keep players interested in it.

If you play, and you know nothing about the trade site, or orbs. And it's your first time playing. The first time you'll see more than a 3 link item is right about what, level 45-50 or so? Knowing nothing about the game, it makes it quite difficult. You really do need prior knowledge, because the game just doesn't teach anyone anything. PoE 2 isn't really that much different. The game just isn't accessible to new players. Prior knowledge really helps a ton.

That's what most people on the forums don't seem to remember. They've had years of experience with PoE 1.

I think a new game was inevitable. Just to simplify things.

For the record, GGG was pretty profitable. Their financial statements are here:
https://app.companiesoffice.govt.nz/companies/app/ui/pages/companies/1887410/documents

In 2022 the made a net 49.5 million NZD (about ~$28 million USD).


To the rest of your comments, I do generally agree - though we may disagree on what a "better direction" means. :P

Though it's a bit disappointing that 2 has gone backwards on so many QoL features and really not added anything I can see to help new players learn all these things. Even simple things like a mildly better default filter where Mirrors don't look exactly the same as Regal Shards. They want us to care about loot on the ground, but all the loot looks boring and nothing indicates I just got a rare drop I should be excited about. I think this is even why new players get so confused by uniques, it's one of the few things that actually look exciting when they drop, even though 99% aren't exciting at all - they're just oversized unstackable chance shards.

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Akedomo#3573 wrote:

I never looked into the amount of money. That's a good chunk. You might be right, maybe it is already decently profitable.

By better direction i just mean a game that brings in lots of players, and they have fun.

If they can find a way to make the game appealing to lots of different people then I'm all for it. I just know certain mechanics in PoE were not implemented in the best way and it didn't help with this.

And yeah, It feels very raw. It's missing tons of things, and some of the ways they've changed mechanics don't seem to be working very well.

My biggest complaint is actually the skill gems in PoE 2. In PoE 1 I could go to a vendor and grab any gem I wanted, and socket it. And now in PoE 2, there's like, 1 or 2 supports to choose from. And they don't really make the skills more interesting, or more useful, or more fun to use. Feels like it went backwards to me.

And yes, largely nothing is explained, and without prior knowledge. I'm not seeing the long term draw it has for players. Loot has always been horrible for me. The only reason I largely kept playing PoE 1 was the build diversity, the extremes you could do. That's fun at least.

We will see. They have a lot to iron out.