Listening to the community too much is what ruined PoE 1 for many of us.

"

1453R#7804 wrote:

Then there's no damn reason to play them. if this attitude I keep seeing is The True Heart of ARPGs? The entire genre is dead and worthless, and there's no sense in continuing to make them. Mindless zoomy blasting is boring beyond comprehension, which is why PoE1 doesn't grow much at all anymore.

Wrong.

PoE has grown steadily for 10+ years, with their last league being the most successful one. If you can name ONE PvE game that has increased steadily for 10+ years, I'm all ears, but I'm not holding my breath, as I'd be dead.

As I see it, there are mainly two reasons why PoE1 isn't reaching higher numbers:

1) Graphics and animations, which seemingly is a very big deal for today's youth. PoE1's graphics and animations are dated, understandably so, as every bit of effort on that area has gone towards PoE2 for the past 6 years.

2) The entry level. PoE1 is a very unforgiving game for a lot of new players, and it's fairly saturated and bloated. While some people like that, it's a freakin' maze for new players, especially casual new players that aren't looking for a game to sink hundreds of hours into.

A LOT of players likes fast gameplay. Hell, the speed running community in D2 was fairly big, and efficiency was an important part there too. We saw it on D3 too. Just because YOU don't like it, doesn't mean no one does. The genre is ABSOLUTELY not dead just because YOU don't like where it (is/might be) heading. I hate this black/white look at things, where someone always has the need to put their viewpoint as the blueprint. Some people like slow gameplay, some people like fast gameplay. Just deal with it. The market needs both options, preferably modern options.

"

MisterFancyPants#7969 wrote:

...
The market needs both options, preferably modern options.

Absolutely correct and totally fine.

PoE1 is the market option for absolutely balls-out, tits-on-fire, literally medically insane levels of SuperMegaUltraHyper Speed Clear, where characters move so fast and output so much damage in so many hundreds of thousands of operations per second that the game servers physically cannot keep up. This is the only ARPG I know of where players routinely crash out the client by creating a character so fundamentally borked, overtuned, and egregious that the game code cannot handle it - and if you don't reach literally game-crashing levels of absolute chaotic absurdity, the rest of the playerbase assumes you're a worthless loser noob who may as well uninstall. That sort of shit is the FLOOR, not the ceiling, and that makes the game completely and utterly unplayable for everyone except its existing, entrenched user base.

Why, then, must PoE2 be THE EXACT SAME GAME for THE EXACT SAME PEOPLE, instead of being a new market option for folks who want a different style of ARPG that PoE1 doesn't serve? At this point all the PoE1 diehards have made it agonizingly clear that they will never tolerate PoE2 at all no matter what, so why must the new game be made to cater exclusively to people who hate it, will never play it, and who have stated they will cling stubbornly to PoE1 until the heat death of the universe?

"

sudhirking#4476 wrote:

+1 to the OP.

Here's a quote from Dreadful on Tri's podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eU8f3YNvx0&t=2540s (53:28)

There's a bunch of customers that are ordering an egg salad sandwich even though they know they don't like egg salad. And then they complain to the chef that this egg salad sandwich sucks.
And the chef is like 'But it's the vision of the egg salad sandwich to be like this'.
And then they're like 'Well, I wanna Big Mac!'.
'We don't want to make a Big Mac, that's McDonalds.'
'Well, but we want you to do that'
'Okay fine, we will put a little bit of Big Mac in your egg salad sandwich...'


Stick to your vision! I love the game and don't want the complaining voice of the community that wants to steer the game to something that it does not want to be.

This is quite hilarious, the quote I mean, and absolutely spot on.

It will age well too, even in just a few months - these same people will be back and playing the next big update, their skill levels will have grown, builds will be posted that are uber-strong and we'll be back to normalcy.

A year from now, they'll be complaining about slowing the game down again and wanting new content because they clear everything within the first week of a league.

Lol.

"

1453R#7804 wrote:

Absolutely correct and totally fine.

PoE1 is the market option for absolutely balls-out, tits-on-fire, literally medically insane levels of SuperMegaUltraHyper Speed Clear, where characters move so fast and output so much damage in so many hundreds of thousands of operations per second that the game servers physically cannot keep up. This is the only ARPG I know of where players routinely crash out the client by creating a character so fundamentally borked, overtuned, and egregious that the game code cannot handle it - and if you don't reach literally game-crashing levels of absolute chaotic absurdity, the rest of the playerbase assumes you're a worthless loser noob who may as well uninstall. That sort of shit is the FLOOR, not the ceiling, and that makes the game completely and utterly unplayable for everyone except its existing, entrenched user base.

Why, then, must PoE2 be THE EXACT SAME GAME for THE EXACT SAME PEOPLE, instead of being a new market option for folks who want a different style of ARPG that PoE1 doesn't serve? At this point all the PoE1 diehards have made it agonizingly clear that they will never tolerate PoE2 at all no matter what, so why must the new game be made to cater exclusively to people who hate it, will never play it, and who have stated they will cling stubbornly to PoE1 until the heat death of the universe?

Jesus Christ... Have you ever discussed anything without having the need to portray the opposite of your, subjective viewpoint as "crazy", inserting every exaggerated adjective know to human kind? It is impossible to take seriously...

PoE2 does not, in any way, shape or form have to be "the same" as PoE1. Hell, there's no point of making a new game at all if it's not supposed to be different, especially as PoE1 is (allegedly) designed to be "played forever". But why does it have to be the opposite, when it's the same IP? THAT is the question. And if PoE2 is their modern answer to slow, sluggish, unresponsive, turtle-speed, action-less, absolutely absurdly boring combat (see, I can do it too - fun way of discussing, right?), it is also time for them to make PoE1 a modern answer, but giving it the mechanical and graphical update it was supposed to get.

Good talk.

I think it's important for players to understand that PoE was always meant to be a "process-driven" game, not a "results-driven" game. It is, quite literally, what made it special and stand out from the rest.

Diablo 2, for example, as its primary inspiration from back in the day - thanks to its immersive elements, incredible music and atmosphere - was also a process-driven game. Playing it was enjoyable.

But the unfortunate power creep in PoE 1 has turned this vision on its head.

I'll explain what I mean by this.

Some games are played because the process of playing is enjoyable, think of it as therapeutic pastime. The enjoyment is something you receive passively - as you go through the game and increase your power, create emotional bonds with your character, experiment with different builds and let you creative mind loose - so on and so forth.

Other games are played because it's the achievement and result that are enjoyable, and I don't mean this in a subjective sense.

I mean it in a psychological sense - where your dopamine spikes when specific narratives and scenarios are made to unfold before you on the screen and you are emotionally driven to that point where you can say "hell yeah!"

Loot-crazed games create a dopamine dependency where the builds you theorise and create serve only one purpose, and that purpose is to get to the loot-crazed moment as quickly, efficiently and painlessly as possible.

The problem with this sort of design is that it makes 95% of your game's content trivial. And the more trivial the content becomes, the player-base actually applauds it, while the game itself is dropping in depth, quality and polish.

Why does this happen? Because the dopamine hit occurs quicker and more frequently. But as soon as this overloads itself, the dopamine kick becomes so frequent that it doesn't even provide a kick anymore, so players will instead resort to demanding more content that they can absolutely destroy for fresh dopamine.

This creates a herculean amount of what we call "trash content". Just filler stuff like encountering 5 league mechanics in the very first zone of the game.

Eventually, the content has to be designed to be so incredibly EASY that the player doesn't complain, or the player has to be given so much power that they can trivialise even "difficult" content. The new content has to be so GRINDY that in order to even get to experience it, the player has to jump through a thousand hoops to get to it. *Cough* Having the prerequisite of doing 25 niche league mechanics to get your OP-juiced super-crafted weapon. *Cough*

So it's not a matter of IF you can clear the game, it becomes a matter of WHEN you clear the game. Your victory is always guaranteed because the tools provided to you outscale the tools provided to the game through which it can challenge you. It's only a matter of time until you completely outscale anything in the game with ease.

A great example of a game who has this issue is Warframe, but they have the fortunate design solution where progress is locked behind timers, so only like 1% of their playerbase manages to reach the endgame - only to discover that there IS NO ENDGAME. That's why they call it "fashionframe". Like, if you want a new weapon - you have to craft it and wait for 36 hours for that weapon to finish building. This is why it works for that game specifically.

aRPGs don't have the luxury of such design.

This is the exact formula. I repeat, the EXACT formula behind the failure of D3 and D4 - and the reason you hate playing those games, and the reason this discussion is happening on PoE 2 forums and not Blizzard forums.

This is the expectation players have now put on PoE 2, they want to get to the loot-crazed moment and it never truly arrives. They can't reprogram their minds into just enjoying the novelty of the game for what it is, exploring its mechanics, potential, et cetera.

You might not see it now, but the way PoE1 was going - it was headed in the exact same direction as these other aRPGs that crashed and burned in front of your eyes. You just don't have the know-how and foreshadowing ability to understand that this is unequivocally true.

"

1453R#7804 wrote:

"

MisterFancyPants#7969 wrote:

...
The market needs both options, preferably modern options.

Absolutely correct and totally fine.

PoE1 is the market option for absolutely balls-out, tits-on-fire, literally medically insane levels of SuperMegaUltraHyper Speed Clear, where characters move so fast and output so much damage in so many hundreds of thousands of operations per second that the game servers physically cannot keep up. This is the only ARPG I know of where players routinely crash out the client by creating a character so fundamentally borked, overtuned, and egregious that the game code cannot handle it - and if you don't reach literally game-crashing levels of absolute chaotic absurdity, the rest of the playerbase assumes you're a worthless loser noob who may as well uninstall. That sort of shit is the FLOOR, not the ceiling, and that makes the game completely and utterly unplayable for everyone except its existing, entrenched user base.

Why, then, must PoE2 be THE EXACT SAME GAME for THE EXACT SAME PEOPLE, instead of being a new market option for folks who want a different style of ARPG that PoE1 doesn't serve? At this point all the PoE1 diehards have made it agonizingly clear that they will never tolerate PoE2 at all no matter what, so why must the new game be made to cater exclusively to people who hate it, will never play it, and who have stated they will cling stubbornly to PoE1 until the heat death of the universe?

Master of the hyperbole, impressive.
Did you enjoy 0.2 ?

"

MisterFancyPants#7969 wrote:

Jesus Christ... Have you ever discussed anything without having the need to portray the opposite of your, subjective viewpoint as "crazy", inserting every exaggerated adjective know to human kind? It is impossible to take seriously...[...]

Quick fact, his last trade listing in PoE2 was 2 months ago (and this dude hates SSF with a passion). Does it tell something ? Maybe, maybe not, we don't have the tools to dig more and conclude, but that's still an interesting fact.

"

Acaste7#4977 wrote:

You might not see it now, but the way PoE1 was going - it was headed in the exact same direction as these other aRPGs that crashed and burned in front of your eyes. You just don't have the know-how and foreshadowing ability to understand that this is unequivocally true.

Thanks for the laugh mate. Have fun.

That's honestly an excellent point, Acaste. The idea that the Speed Clear people aren't really playing the game to play the game, but only to get the Dropamine Hit. They hate the idea of engaging combat because they hate combat, end sentence. They want these cracked-out builds that flatten a pinnacle boss with a single click because their entire objective is to avoid actually playing the game as much as possible, because to them time spent playing is an unwanted nuisance between them and their next hit of Dropamine. Their Progression, their "YES! I GOT STRONGER!" moment.

It's why I'll often compare high-speed low-drag "efficiently optimized" PoE1 gameplay to simply running Cookie Clicker. They've optimized all the fun gameplay out of their game and exist solely to generate as many drops as possible in the lowest possible timeframe so their loot filter can produce the noises of sweet sweet Dropamine as often as they can get it. they do not give a spank about literally anything in the game, any aspect of it whatsoever, beyond their next hit.

That's not gameplay. It's never been gameplay. It's a destructive Skinner box that lessens lives. It's an actual addiction, the same psychological mechanism that gacha games and loot boxes use, and it honestly sucks that this form of Dropamine-based addiction is normalized and even enshrined as "The True Heart of the ARPG"

As for this:

"

MisterFancyPants#7969 wrote:

Jesus Christ... Have you ever discussed anything without having the need to portray the opposite of your, subjective viewpoint as "crazy", inserting every exaggerated adjective know to human kind? It is impossible to take seriously...

You've never seen the videos Streamer Memers put out of a PoE1 character with a dozen different Cast-On-Whatever triggers sprinting through a map at twelve hundred percent of normal movement speed spewing hundreds of different spells of every type in all directions simultaneously? All the boomer zoomer blaster master Must-Go-Faster types look at those videos and are all "fuck yeah, look at that awesome build!"

People who are not decade-long adherents of PoE look at it in bafflement, confusion, and sometimes even physical discomfort, going "what the actual hell is going on? How can you tell what you're doing through all that insanity?" Those builds can and have triggered epileptic fits. They've ruined graphics cards. They've crashed clients and stressed servers.

And the PoE1 Ultra Elite community considers that sort of build the basic, simple floor that everyone MUST be able to reach or they don't deserve to play.

If that isn't madness? What is?

"

MisterFancyPants#7969 wrote:

PoE2 does not, in any way, shape or form have to be "the same" as PoE1. Hell, there's no point of making a new game at all if it's not supposed to be different, especially as PoE1 is (allegedly) designed to be "played forever". But why does it have to be the opposite, when it's the same IP? THAT is the question. And if PoE2 is their modern answer to slow, sluggish, unresponsive, turtle-speed, action-less, absolutely absurdly boring combat (see, I can do it too - fun way of discussing, right?), it is also time for them to make PoE1 a modern answer, but giving it the mechanical and graphical update it was supposed to get.

That's the problem. The people championing PoE2's vision and the approach Jonathan is trying here do not see "slow" combat as "sluggish" or "unresponsive". I honestly found myself thoroughly enjoying the breadth of tools available to me as a low-level Huntress when I started experimenting. The Must-Go-Faster crowd considers the only possible valid "response" to clicking a skill button is for the entire screen to explode. Me? I enjoy laying Spearfield traps to blunt enemy rushes, darting in with Rake to begin the process of exsanguinating my foes, flitting around the pack with Disengage while picking off weakened priority targets with Blood Hunt or Cull the Weak. the new Parry skill is a lot of fun, even if it's a good bit fiddlier than I was thinking it would be.

Does it take me much longer to clear an area than it takes the Boomer Zoomer Crew? Absolutely. Am I going to be able to use all of those skills at higher levels? Nope. But the difference is that in PoE2 I'm enjoying fighting the mobs. Engaging in combat with the demon hordes of Wraeclast is inherently fun and engaging. Yes, sometimes a boss or an unusually stacked rare stymies my progress and it sucks. Then I grind some levels, fix my gear however I have to, and go again.

All the stuff y'all are complaining about? The "sluggish" combat, the "turtle-speed" movement? Not a problem for the people actually playing PoE2 the way the game was meant to be played. "Action-less"? I call bull on that - even the most boring and basic of PoE2 skills is far more Action-y than the best/strongest PoE1 skills.

Look at the stuff the Must-Go-Faster memers are constantly complaining about. It's not "my skills suck!" it's "not enough drops!", "my drops suck!", "I don't feel like an invincible ultragod by Act 2!", "I can't craft a 1200pDPS mace at level 45!", "why do I have to fight Jamanra for more than forty-five seconds?!", and such. It's not complaints about the game's core design, it's people kvetching that they're not getting their Dropamine. because as Acaste said, they don't want to actually play PoE2. They just want the Dropamine hit, and everything that gets between them and their Dropamine - like, y'know, the game - is an Enemy.

That's no way to design a next-generation ARPG.

As for fixing PoE1? Nah. It can't be fixed, and furthermore the Dropamine addicts don't want it to be fixed. They already know how to extract maximum Dropamine from PoE1. it's why they go thermo-fucking-nuclear every time GGG adjusts the game balance in literally ANY fucking way in PoE1 - then they have to spend a day or two figuring out how to get their Dropamine back and that's just unacceptable. They just want more power every single patch forever. More power, more bigger better drops, more currency, more Dropamine, more more more more MORE.

Utterly unsustainable. But hey - good luck to GGG in keeping it going as long as they can.

"

MisterFancyPants#7969 wrote:

Good talk.

Actually, a better talk than I usually have with Speedmonsters. Which is maybe a little sad.

EDIT: Whoops, missed one.

"

rob_korn#1745 wrote:

Master of the hyperbole, impressive.
Did you enjoy 0.2 ?

Actually? Mostly yes. I thought most of the 0.2 changes made a great deal of sense, and I was excited to play the Huntress i.e. the character I wanted to play first in the first place. I didn't mind the Nerfageddon because I didn't really use any of the ridiculous busted overpowered junk the Dropamine Chasers were using to invalidate the entire game in the first place. I had a crossbow Pathfinder, an ice Sorceress using my own homegrown scratch build, and a Falling Thunder monk that was the closest I got to a Dropamine meta build. The crossbow character got better, not worse, the sorceress also got better, and frankly I don't mind that the monk took a hit. That was fun, sure, reminded me of my enjoyment of Frost Blades back when PoE1 was playable, but it felt a little cheesedoodle-y and exploitative.

"

rob_korn#1745 wrote:

Quick fact, his last trade listing in PoE2 was 2 months ago (and this dude hates SSF with a passion). Does it tell something ? Maybe, maybe not, we don't have the tools to dig more and conclude, but that's still an interesting fact.

'Her' last trade listing, please.

I don't sell stuff often, because I do not have an unending supply of amazeballs top-quality loot to sell. Because, y'know, I'm not a Dropamine chaser. I have not gotten far in Dawn of the Hunt, no. It has been brutally difficult for me to progress, and sometimes I have to put the game away for a bit to cool down. But man, when I break past a chokepoint and get to progress anew? That feels good, and getting to play with the Huntress' kit has been delightful. I'm currently pursuing a bleed-based build because I didn't do anything with DoT stuff on launch and it seemed like a fun new thing to try.

you sure talk a lot.

"

SerialF#4835 wrote:

you sure talk a lot.

TL;DR for the Twitteramus generation that can't words:

"Slow =/= bad"
"Fast =/= good"
"Drops =/= gameplay"
"Gameplay >>>>>>>>>>> drops"

"

1453R#7804 wrote:

'Her' last trade listing, please.

I don't sell stuff often, because I do not have an unending supply of amazeballs top-quality loot to sell. Because, y'know, I'm not a Dropamine chaser. I have not gotten far in Dawn of the Hunt, no. It has been brutally difficult for me to progress, and sometimes I have to put the game away for a bit to cool down. But man, when I break past a chokepoint and get to progress anew? That feels good, and getting to play with the Huntress' kit has been delightful. I'm currently pursuing a bleed-based build because I didn't do anything with DoT stuff on launch and it seemed like a fun new thing to try.

No way for me to know regarding "her", but I take good note.

"sometimes I have to put the game away for a bit to cool down"
Thanks for the honesty. Your reasonable posts are kinda enjoyable to read, compared to your hyperbolic posts from earlier. The contrasts you show sometimes are insane.

Have fun then.

EDIT :

"

1453R#7804 wrote:

EDIT: Whoops, missed one.

How dare you !