PoE's ultimate issue is the Beta never stopped

I have zero issues with the current or at least recent balance changes of the game. Let me explain why that is about to change below.

Did it vastly change since the OG beta days? Yes, especially starting with ascendancy and 3.0. Is that a bad thing? No not really.

What GGG is doing, or was doing, was adapting it to what the vocal part of the playerbase wants. Yep, that site with the R. Again, no issues with that except maybe they went full zoom-zoom for a while (from my personal POV) but they've backed off a bit lately with the league mechanics, kudos to them.

However something happened two months ago. Yep, the streamer priority queue debacle which, connected to the new campaign marketing model (cut off the gaming media sites and make it twitch/ streamer-dependent) AND the complete or more like almost complete radio silence from 99% of the GGG team on reddit and the forum (of course) makes me think they're fine with tuning it only for the streamers and implicitly for their followers. And I'm not fine with that; lemme extrapolate wildly for a bit, but are we to expect streamer polls about what skill should get nerfed/ buffed in the future?

We'll have to see how this situation evolves in the future, but to me it seems that their reputation of "we listen to our playerbase" is pretty much gone.

"

pr13st wrote:

I have zero issues with the current or at least recent balance changes of the game. Let me explain why that is about to change below.

Did it vastly change since the OG beta days? Yes, especially starting with ascendancy and 3.0. Is that a bad thing? No not really.

What GGG is doing, or was doing, was adapting it to what the vocal part of the playerbase wants. Yep, that site with the R. Again, no issues with that except maybe they went full zoom-zoom for a while (from my personal POV) but they've backed off a bit lately with the league mechanics, kudos to them.

However something happened two months ago. Yep, the streamer priority queue debacle which, connected to the new campaign marketing model (cut off the gaming media sites and make it twitch/ streamer-dependent) AND the complete or more like almost complete radio silence from 99% of the GGG team on reddit and the forum (of course) makes me think they're fine with tuning it only for the streamers and implicitly for their followers. And I'm not fine with that; lemme extrapolate wildly for a bit, but are we to expect streamer polls about what skill should get nerfed/ buffed in the future?

We'll have to see how this situation evolves in the future, but to me it seems that their reputation of "we listen to our playerbase" is pretty much gone.

That reputation went out the window somewhere around open beta. Listening to the playerbase is a very subjective statement because on one hand, they'll "listen" but dont respond or reply directly. On the other hand if they choose to acknowledge the playerbase, (outside of forum censoring / monitoring) it will most likely be on a third party site, instead of their own home website for the game.

To be fair, I've noticed that GGG does listen and make some changes about player requested things (after a while) but they don't acknowledge it outright. I'll give you 1 or 2 examples of both instances, but everyone else can chime in if they've noticed instances of their own.

POSITIVE

1) Freezing Pulse wording - I had an issue with a ninja wording change they made with the gem where they added the phrase "Projectiles lose damage over time, dealing up to 50% less damage by the time they dissipate".

GGG Listened - Now the gem no longer says that and has been replaced with "Projectiles continuously lose Damage, dealing up to 50% less Damage by the time they dissipate"

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2952737

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2) Trade listing / cross league trading - I had an issue with people posting items for trade in Standard league, but refuse to switch over to trade and refuse to take down or change their item postings. I was on this for a solid year.

GGG Listened - I can't celebrate this due to it being hard to tell if this change was because of my post or if it happened to be something else, hence the "lack of acknoledgement" part.

"

Novynn wrote:

As of the latest patch you can now select "Online In League" as an option from the status dropdown.

*This issue hasn't been fixed but it's a grey area solution though that's at least a good attempt to help. *

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2797660/page/14
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3) Atlas progression - In Standard the atlas progress was erased suddenly and became an ongoing thing after each league. I addressed this issue the very start of it a few years ago when GGG came out with betrayal.

GGG Listened - Took a few years but I think they've fixed / stopped that erasing crap on the atlas. I recently took a break for a few months and came back and saw my atlas is still full now.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2258153
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NEGATIVE

1)Ungil's Harmony amulet - My issue with this is GGG changed it to have a legacy version, but what they ended up doing was giving older versions of the ammy the new changed mod have having no critical strike multiplier instead of "- 25% crit multiplier" (legacy)

GGG - Can't say they "listened" or acknowledged this error but pretty sure they've seen it. Even other players have noticed.

*The problems with this is
a) GGG has told us (in most cases) when they have changed an item to become legacy or have done retroactive changes - I've given such examples in the thread about this with different items.

b)Such a change is VERY impactful with critical chance builds. Massive difference in damage values between having -25% critical multiplier and having outright no extra damage from critical strikes at all.

"

neohongkong wrote:

You can guess it is a new mod and make the old mod as legacy or just numeric value nerf by pressing Alt button

You can also guess it by using trade site as the site list the current default value of the mod

The third method is search POE wiki which the wiki has all the datamined mod up to 3.12

There are exceptions on legacy unique item. GGG nerfed ALL versions of Ungil's Harmony even those some of them has legacy mod

more strike off note

edit: Turn out the game do have https://pathofexile.fandom.com/wiki/Modifier:NoBonusesFromCriticalStrikes mod

But it is not used in the amulet

All version of Ungil's Harmony use

https://pathofexile.fandom.com/wiki/Modifier:CriticalMultiplierUniqueAmulet18

as indicated by the required level is came from this mod (29*0.8 round down)

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2894008

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So yeah, these are a few examples of when GGG does listen, while not exactly acknowledging issues mentioned by players. (Outside of bug reports.) Though an ongoing problem that seems to remain is the lack of explanations from GGG about new mechanics and such but that's for another time.

K but the message I was trying to send is that now the lines have blurred between "actiblizz communication" and "ggg communication", as an example.

Royale is a great example of adding new content, without changing the complete rules and mechanics of the game. By having it separate with it's own, this is the perfect way to run temp leagues.


Btw, does this mean we can get the cutthroat achievement now? I missed the last event cause I didn't have any more char spaces to make a new char, so I'll delete a mule char now.

Oh so NOW everyone's in a frenzy and setting the forum on fire with the hate to nerfs. Where's everyone who loved for the game to constantly change? Patch notes aren't even out yet, but GGG's giving most of you what you wanted which is the beta treatment and changing.


Setting cap limits would prevent the need for nerf cycles but ok, people love for the beta to continue. Royale is a step forward......nerfs 4 steps back, same old cycle of PoE.

3.15 ........so people how's that "meant to be played forever" formula working out so far? Changes seem to have caused a mass exodus of quitting. What good is a game being played forever if it's only 100 instead of a few thousand or million? It's a sad shame that whenever patch notes drop, players immediately go straight to nerfs since it's obviously the most "interesting".


By the way GGG, when dropping patch notes why not simply have 2 separate categories of Buffs and Nerfs, when "balance" changes happen?

"

Delamonica wrote:

and you are still here ...

Cause forums are fun!

It's 2021, not the 90s or early 2000s. EVERY game within and around this genre that has been released in the last decade at least survives on constant updates, patches, changes. Every. Single. One. It simply isn't viable and hasn't been viable to create a "complete" game and leave it untouched and expect it to succeed.

I LOVED the games way back in the day that were released "complete" and had minor updates that required no rebalancing (D2 +uber diablo as an example). But unfortunately this just isn't how games are made anymore. Imagine releasing content like the Cluster Jewels and adjusting NOTHING that came before it...it just wouldn't work in any shape or form. Is the OP suggesting that this type of content not exist?

Gamers have evolved much shorter attention spans, if you release a grindy game that doesn't change, that game (and sometimes the entire company!) has an extremely short lifespan (see Hellgate London disaster...). The new model is leagues of content, shifting balances, juggled numbers, etc. to reinvigorate the games at set times. Again, we can look at the D2 model. Originally part of the old-age "full game relase", but its lifespan was expanded through HUNDREDS of total conversion mods. This is the equivalent of current game "balances" post-beta. Shifting skills, new items, new power creep, new balance, new mechanics. All the old games had this too in spades through modding. There are VERY few people who have consistently played rpgs from 20-30 years ago in their original form ONLY.

Now the problem I have with PoE is the incredibly short time between these massive content shifts. I don't think the content shifts in-and-of themselves would be felt nearly as hard if they weren't as frequent. But GGG forced that upon themselves when they began the 3 month rotation. This also forced the player spikes that we see, and the player outrage and boredom.

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

It's 2021, not the 90s or early 2000s. EVERY game within and around this genre that has been released in the last decade at least survives on constant updates, patches, changes. Every. Single. One. It simply isn't viable and hasn't been viable to create a "complete" game and leave it untouched and expect it to succeed.

I LOVED the games way back in the day that were released "complete" and had minor updates that required no rebalancing (D2 +uber diablo as an example). But unfortunately this just isn't how games are made anymore. Imagine releasing content like the Cluster Jewels and adjusting NOTHING that came before it...it just wouldn't work in any shape or form. Is the OP suggesting that this type of content not exist?

Gamers have evolved much shorter attention spans, if you release a grindy game that doesn't change, that game (and sometimes the entire company!) has an extremely short lifespan (see Hellgate London disaster...). The new model is leagues of content, shifting balances, juggled numbers, etc. to reinvigorate the games at set times. Again, we can look at the D2 model. Originally part of the old-age "full game relase", but its lifespan was expanded through HUNDREDS of total conversion mods. This is the equivalent of current game "balances" post-beta. Shifting skills, new items, new power creep, new balance, new mechanics. All the old games had this too in spades through modding. There are VERY few people who have consistently played rpgs from 20-30 years ago in their original form ONLY.

Now the problem I have with PoE is the incredibly short time between these massive content shifts. I don't think the content shifts in-and-of themselves would be felt nearly as hard if they weren't as frequent. But GGG forced that upon themselves when they began the 3 month rotation. This also forced the player spikes that we see, and the player outrage and boredom.

GGG chooses who they want to cater to, though at this point it's hard to tell if it's the 1% of players or just throwing ideas randomly in a hat and picking them. The lifespan of PoE is pretty much dying down (rapidly) now. So much so that even the hype for PoE 2 is stale. Pretty sure they're simply waiting for whenever D4 is to be announced or to have a release date; before giving a date of their own for PoE 2 to come out.

I'm personally rooting for GGG to do some massive changes and real player requested ideas to be implemented; to turn things around. Though I can't be too optimistic at this point, Forsaken Masters should have had some D2 Mercenary style by now but instead we have Heist members that cant be equipped with normal gears nor join players in regular maps. Such a let down.

Now with 3.15 Russian Roulette game with PoE's fanbase, we'll see in the future if it all pays off or not. Gonna be extremely difficult to win back the players that quit and even more so; get them to open their wallets again.

After being away here and there a few months at a time, I see that this post is still very relevant with all the patches and even the upcoming one. GGG I really wish you'd learn the simple concept of Add to and not Remove. Add content and MTX to the game, DONT nerf. Especially not any player aimed nerfs, if you're not gonna be equaled about it towards the monsters. For example, imposing cap limits.....