Jonathan's recent interview makes me wonder if GGG might be at odds with itself.

What do I mean by this?

Well, under Chris Wilson, and his "VISION"™ - we have had several leagues over the past few years that felt like GGG was intentionally trying to force people to be invested in leagues longer by purely artificial means - either the power creep rebalance, changing loot to make it more rare (and thus taking the fun out of farming), or most recently, having the Necropolis league force people into fighting mobs that absolutely SHRED the defenses they took so much time to set up and balance, to the point where people quit the league early - in fact, any time they have tried to have a punitive way to extend the league, it has always resulted in one of the worst leagues with low retention.


Now, Jonathan has a recent interview, where he states POE2's philosophy is one of rather than trying to force retention, he believes it is healthy for players to play until they "get sick of it", go away, and then come back when a new league is launched, refreshed.

While this method doesn't work for say, MMOs (SWTOR tried this from the beginning and it ended up costing them millions of subs that never came back), I think Jonathan's model is actually quite appropriate for PoE.

But I wonder, because of PoE's history, what Jonathan means, because it can be taken 2 ways.


The first way, would be in line with GGG's past bad leagues, where they artificially force players to get sick of their product because of a stodgy adherence to "THE VISION"™. For as good as it looks, POE2 would end up DOA if they go this road once the newness wears off.

However, Jonathan has thus far really appeared to gone out of his way to make POE2 his own and not necessarily adhere to "THE VISION"™ which is why I think a ton of people are excited for it and the new innovations.

So, what I hope Jonathan means by what he said, is that for instance, endgame content in PoE 2 will be FAR less gated, more accessible, and while challenging, hopefully not punitively so to the point where you need 100 divines in a build just to begin to try the top tier content. That's the current design of PoE1, where no-lifers reign at the top.

But POE2 is courting console gamers now. It went controller and WASD. The game absolutely should be challenging for sure, but there is leeway now to make endgame absolutely more accessible, and along with it, that would fit in.

As a developer, if your philosophy is that it is ok to walk away and take a break from the game, you better make sure the players walking away are doing so because they had their fun, had a LOT of fun, but are now bored and want to do something else - NOT because they are trying to climb into harder content and continually getting railroaded, only to find out the gear they need to do the next content costs an astronomical sum and they are effectively priced out of content, so they too "get sick of it and leave" but this time out of utter frustration, with no intent to come back.

This isn't a post to say that GGG should make the game super easy or rig prices low or anything like that. It's a post that is asking GGG to make the whole game feel as easy to upgrade in as they did for their most recent demo, where it feels natural, all the way to the end game where you still have the Uber powerful uniques and rares, but that hopefully GGG makes the new character builds NOT require those in order to complete the game, but instead uses those super expensive option items to just make that end game easier. Then people will leave not because of frustration, but because they had fun and were ready to move to something else until the next league launches.

GGG has a rare opportunity under a new director to learn a lesson here. I hope they learn it.

The thing that baffles me is they are demo-ing slow, deliberate gameplay with meaningful encounters like elaborate bosses, but people keep qualifying this with "keep in mind this is the first few acts leveling, we will be zoom-zooming by endgame.." and, having not played any alphas myself, it's hard to know if it's poe 2.0 or an attempt at something different.

Chris Wilson's vision is what makes PoE so engaging for me. Kudos for him for steering the ship that turned a non-gamer into a gamer.

Good post.

Not much to add. I know, amazing.

Not sure I agree that 'GGG is at odds with itself' so much as it appears to be evolving. Finally.

I do not buy into the 'vision' argument and I don't see a dichotomy here between what PoE was and what PoE 2 will be. If it helps, why not just pretend PoE 2 isn't called PoE 2? If that gives you a chance to give GGG a chance to make something truly new, then I say go for it.

If that helps temper expectations.

If that is the cost of not judging whatever PoE 2 wants to be based on what PoE 1 was or is.

Because oh boy can you ever tell they're ready to do something new and brilliant. Who wouldn't be? Imagine having all these amazing ideas and knowing they'd work better with a fresh start, but having to somehow force them onto an already-crowded canvas or a page that already has words all over it. That'd drive me fucking insane.

This is the ironic, double-edged sword of a committed, rabid fanbase of your 'one' defiant, game-changing work -- they get used to what used to be defiant and game-changing. They need to be coaxed into the next work, if that next is as defiant and game-changing as the first. Not saying PoE 2 will be -- so far it strikes me as (just) 'another well-made ARPG' -- but man, let 'em at least try. If anyone can give the relatively tiny ARPG world its next shot in the arm, surely it's GGG.

The main reason PoE needs PoE2 it's to boost retention, because for years based on steamchart majority of the community migrates/hops to other products mid leagues, but why?

At the end of the day PoE + PoE2 outside of releasing steady leagues/content both will need to be appealing, rewarding, interesting, etc. for GGG to be successful alongside the current and future competition, which is why GGG success will continue to depend on its lead developers and what kind of a game they envision to play/support themselves first.

There's already a plethora of single player games that deliver consumable content as well as co-op / multiplayer games with some rankings/ladders, but there's not many, especially good ones that are solo-self-found competitive. Personally, I do not want to depend/rely on others that may not be available/online, because if that wasn't the case I would be elsewhere like in World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Counter Strike 2, Star Craft 2 and so on.

The depth of the game, the content and sense of character progression with the league cycles is only the icing on the cake.

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Kopogero wrote:

The main reason PoE needs PoE2 it's to boost retention, because for years based on steamchart majority of the community migrates/hops to other products mid leagues, but why?

At the end of the day PoE + PoE2 outside of releasing steady leagues/content both will need to be appealing, rewarding, interesting, etc. for GGG to be successful alongside the current and future competition, which is why GGG success will continue to depend on its lead developers and what kind of a game they envision to play/support themselves first.

There's already a plethora of single player games that deliver consumable content as well as co-op / multiplayer games with some rankings/ladders, but there's not many, especially good ones that are solo-self-found competitive. Personally, I do not want to depend/rely on others that may not be available/online, because if that wasn't the case I would be elsewhere like in World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Counter Strike 2, Star Craft 2 and so on.

The depth of the game, the content and sense of character progression with the league cycles is only the icing on the cake.

No, Kopogero. The main reason is money. Retention is just a metric on the way to making money.

Players hopping to other content doesn't matter, retention doesn't actually matter either unless the players that stay spend more vs initial uptake purchases.

What will hit them is if leagues start to have significantly less people on league launch, while I can believe that players who play for the entire league obviously buy more I still heavily lean towards their earnings being extremely frontloaded to league launches. I wouldn't be surprised if it was 80%+ in the first 2 weeks.

PoE2 is from a personal sense probably making the game they wanted to make if they'd had the resources when they actually started with. Plus all the lessons they've learned from using us as entertained Guinee Pigs - I cannot overstate how appealing this is to a developer.

From a business sense its just about capturing some more market share to put into their existing monetisation program and paying the bills.

Nothing said so far has suggested GGG is at odds with itself, they make some strange decisions concerning PoE1 atm but i'm sure internally they were discussed and made sense (to them).

Also, kinda hard for an organisation to be 'at odds' with itself when the old visionary is for all intents and purposes MIA and the new one is like "Full Steam Ahead!"

I don't really get this post...

Breaks are healthy. Both Chris and Jonathan have said so too. For me, it goes without saying. There's nothing wrong with playing a few weeks and then being done with the league. Lots of people have been doing this for years and no one can convince me that it's bad for the game. I think "healthy" is the right word here.

That said... It doesn't mean that GGG shouldn't provide enough content for people wanting to play longer. While four months are way too long for some players, others need those four months to reach their goal. We are all different.

Of course GGG want us to play as much as possible, every developer does, especially in a f2p scenario. But they aren't stupid, and burnouts are real. Taking a break is healthy both for you and player retention.

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Phrazz wrote:

Taking a break is healthy both for you and player retention.

Tell that to Ben or the others who had to log 30+ hours without sleep to push ranks due to game design. The moment players stop playing a game it only means two things, they're either looking or have already found another "better" game, or in my case using my free time on other activities when such game isn't available on the market.

The goal of a game developer/company is to design/develop/produce a game that will be either good enough for the lead developer to be engaged with it over any other game or be a "success" and that means its audience/market to be big enough for the company to persist, which means to continue employing its employees.

It all depends on whatever the primary objective/goal of the company or lead developer/owner is. The longer myself and others aren't engaged with a particular game/product it only means we'll care less about its future until we've completely forgotten about it.

The value of each remaining player/supporter grows significantly higher the less there's left. GGG objective is to attract the new audience, bring back the former, and retain the current, especially if/when they reach a critical point, when they'll be more limited with what they can do/deliver/produce with the financial resources, assets and employees that are left.