Development Stories: Timelines & Retcons

The biggest problem I have with the story as it stands is that there is zero indication that any considerable amount of time passed between Kitava's Fall and the Conquerors storyline. This is heavily reinforced by the dialogue of the other NPCs around. As it stands, there's now two possibilities.

1: The entirety of the War of the Atlas happened in the span of a day or two after Kitava died, or,

2: We left for a year and then came back, yet all of the NPCs have barely moved on, with Lily saying we should take a break (despite just coming back) and Innocence still experiencing his horrible moral epiphany and not wanting to spend more time among the people he subjugated...despite, yaknow, doing so for a year.

If this part of the timeline is remedied and explained, then it all seems fine, but as it stands now, it's just confusing for new players and blatantly patchworked for the people who experienced the Atlas story.

First of just want to say to GGG thanks for a great game> You all did a great job over the years and cant wait to see future releases. I have not played every league do to life issues. So some story lines missed out on. I am sure POE2 will be great on how you decide how to work it. In my thoughts I saw POE2 or 3 as a way to build a game toon is its own story line. the toons we make is unique to there own talent point built way. Why not making them more unique with there own story line choose there own paths thru the many leagues that on the path give more details to the story path or paths you choose. Maybe unlock hidden talents in the skill tree for what story paths you take also helping making a char more your own.

I still think there’s a massive disconnect between the world presented in the campaign and the stuff that you’ve added after it like the Shaper, Zana and now the Conquerors.

They just show up out of nowhere without any sort of narrative weight or build up to them.

I really hope you guys take the time to make the end game more connected to the campaign in POE 2.

Will the exiles FINALLY have voice lines past act 4? It's getting ridiculous and lame hearing the same old stuff and then utter SILENCE for the rest of the campaign. Quality and Transparency is needed for this now

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Rossmallo wrote:

The biggest problem I have with the story as it stands is that there is zero indication that any considerable amount of time passed between Kitava's Fall and the Conquerors storyline. This is heavily reinforced by the dialogue of the other NPCs around. As it stands, there's now two possibilities.

1: The entirety of the War of the Atlas happened in the span of a day or two after Kitava died, or,

2: We left for a year and then came back, yet all of the NPCs have barely moved on, with Lily saying we should take a break (despite just coming back) and Innocence still experiencing his horrible moral epiphany and not wanting to spend more time among the people he subjugated...despite, yaknow, doing so for a year.

If this part of the timeline is remedied and explained, then it all seems fine, but as it stands now, it's just confusing for new players and blatantly patchworked for the people who experienced the Atlas story.

I feel like two sentences from Zana including "time flows differently in the Atlas" would make a big difference here.

I think that integrating league mechanics into the main story is the perfect way to remove them from the core game


I would be a bit disapointed if in a new endgame story the conquerors were effectively beaten by another exile (even if it is the case in the actual endgame story) because it would be another threat beaten by ramdom exile

The only way to fix a timeline that was created by bits and pieces added over the years is to just delete it and start over.

Only they, can guide you off the Isle, for the reason, is in its name.

Yet, Follow One, like so many, and you will learn, Death has a Master, Hell and Deception.

But follow those, falsely labeled, by time and the morning crow, and you will find the absolution you seek.

For like all things: Redemption can only be found in 3 lessons and a Test.

Since you'll keep adding new end game storylines , wouldn't it be great if somehow we could select a story to follow at a given time ? For instance i love shaper/elder/synthesys storyline more than the conquerors one, and maybe someone will like the conquerors storyline better than the next endgame storyline . u kill kitava, get to oriath and then select which part of the history you want to delve in .

In my opnion the conquerors of the atlas expansion was handled really well and is the best endgame update ever added too the game

everything still happened to someone else all our experiences weren't just a dream but an experience that happened to other exiles

Whilst I think this was awesome and made me care a lot more about the expansion and the current bosses felt like actual bosses and not just random encounters with strong enemies because the buildup and storytelling was sufficient and handled very well

I feel as though if this keeps happening and our characters/us become irrelevant to the ever expanding story it will take me out of the game for example if I play for several years defeating the Shaper story line then the elder story line then the conquerors and Sirus etc etc and it always turns out to be "some exile did this which caused this so now you have to do this" it will get boring rather fast it will feel like just repeated content over and over and over that wont engage me or encourage me to keep up with the story and that itself will make me quit uninteresting or uninspired leagues faster

one of the reasons I love this game so much is because the leagues all have interesting and unique stories and I feel there should be a higher emphasis on that I feel leagues like blight, Harvest, Metamorph were all fun leagues but weren't incredibly engaging in terms of story but the conquerors update was handled so brilliantly and is so much fun [although im starting to get a little tired of it and im craving the Christmas atlas revamp that we may or may not see :P] that even the less engaging leagues were still a ton of fun

a side note is I would love leagues to intertwine more and whilst I understand leagues cant have direct sequels because casual players looking from the outside might not want to play a harbinger 2.0 or a bestiary 2.0 because they may not have liked the first league I would love old leagues to be expanded on a bit more and kept up too date a little more to make them remain engaging so that even badly received leagues have higher player retention though this might be hard due to time constraints

If this isn't possible too do consistently then maybe just some new text and lore added maybe some easter eggs or some way to intertwine characters from separate leagues and tell us more about their history and how they got too this point and possibly interactions between NPC's from separate leagues

for example maybe their is some form of relationship or maybe Einhar and Alva are distant cousins or maybe Navali and Niko don't see eye to eye because X

love the work put into the game and the direction path has been going for the past couple larger expansions keep up the great work and ill keep supporting the great game and developers I love so much :)