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

"

exsea#1724 wrote:

lol you want a hot take?

POE1 in its current state was not chris's original vision.

he wanted the game to be slow and deliberate.

the game is this way because he "listened to his customers".

his customers liked to break his game, finding powerful interactions that multiplied damage. he saw that his customers loved power.

he kept giving them more power. more speed. and added tougher and deadlier content to challenge the crazy amounts of power he gave them.

he sacrificed his game to make sure his company had money and could grow.

he will never say it but the poe1 that most people have grown to love is not exactly what he wanted.

poe2/poe1 ruthless is more of his vision.

You know hot take doesn't mean "information that everybody already knows, and that Chris functionally said himself", right?

The fact that he didn't let his ego overshadow his ability to make the game into what the players enjoyed out of it is why he was the right person for the job. The current trajectory of PoE2 shows that that is not a trait that Jonathon seems to have; his ego becomes bruised when people dislike what he likes and what he makes, and he makes it anyway.

The game was originally sold on the premise of being a side-loadof PoE1, where the games would coexist and share the same endgame, and where PoE1 would benefit from the existence of PoE2. They got a massive amount of investment on that basis. The fact that some people like what PoE2 is doesn't reduce that fact. If they wanted to make PoE2 what it is today, they should have sold it on that premise from the outset. Taking money and then drastically changing the goalposts mid-development is not ok.

It's ok to make a game totally different than the original.
It's ok to make a game following the paradigm of the original.
It's ok to ask for money for either.
It's not ok to ask for money for both, switching from one to the other midway through development, and abandoning those who gave money under the information available at that time.

"

Raycheetah#7060 wrote:

And the exact same thing (as I predicted) is happening to PoE Deuce. Why? Because that's what players want. Zoom-zoom is the natural trend, and GGG isn't exactly discouraging it with race events and other timed mechanics. ='[.]'=

GGG- you guys need to slow down and actually play the game in a deliberate manner

Also GGG- oh btw follow this wisp, if you take too long it disappears WINKS WINKS

"

exsea#1724 wrote:

poe2/poe1 ruthless is more of his vision.

That appears to be dead now in 2 as well.

"

Pathological#1188 wrote:

You know hot take doesn't mean "information that everybody already knows, and that Chris functionally said himself", right?

The fact that he didn't let his ego overshadow his ability to make the game into what the players enjoyed out of it is why he was the right person for the job. The current trajectory of PoE2 shows that that is not a trait that Jonathon seems to have; his ego becomes bruised when people dislike what he likes and what he makes, and he makes it anyway.

not everyone knows this. in fact i have been defending GGG for a very long time on the matter of "ggg promised that poe2 would not affect poe1".

many people kept saying this and i kept saying GGG never promised this. i kept challenging everyone to show me proof that GGG said this. everyone that tried to disprove me sent me a clip of someone from GGG saying something that avoids saying that statement. always with enough room to disclaim themselves from actually making that statement.

this went on for the longest time. no one ever could challenge me UNTIL someone found that one clip where chris said it. chris definitely said it. but if you put everything into context, GGG has been avoiding saying anything this concrete for the longest time. in fact i would say chris fucked up in that one particular instance because now everyone can rightfully say GGG didnt keep their promise.

you can actually see this with a lot of issues. like GGG wanting the game to be deliberate. they mention it multiple times. poe 2 separate from poe1 partially because melee suck ass. multiple times. but that one very "promise" was mentioned once and never again. any other statements are very careful to not make that promise.

as for him not letting his ego overshadow anything. MONEY.

he and his buddies spent a lot of money funding this game. he has a fiduciary responsibility (god i cant believe i can finally use that word) towards his business partners to make money. if he was stubborn and the game failed. he would not only have failed himself, but many other people too. thus he was forced to bend to the will of the players.

also if we're being real about ego. his tongue in cheek response to standard players losing a huge amount of value because of a change he willingly approved is almost spiteful. that such a bitch ass thing to do as many standard players had farmed exalts for literal years. and hes remark of "oh you guys should have diversified your investments" while smirking is really an asshole thing to do.

"

Taking money and then drastically changing the goalposts mid-development is not ok.

100% agree to this. i dumped a lot of money on the game based on a false promise. to be real changing goal posts DO happen and i really do understand that. but the fact they chose to remain silent and reveal it as a grand feature in the last exilecon is such a bitch ass conman move.

"

Acaste7#4977 wrote:

The philosophy of the game has never been about zoom-zooming through content and having incredibly accessible power levels for your character.

It still didn't prevent Chris from trading vision for growth back in 2015.

"

Acaste7#4977 wrote:

In the last dozen leagues in PoE 1, we were watching builds kill things off-screen without even seeing them, or without even getting to interface with most of the mods and interesting mechanics that even rare enemies had to offer.

What pays the bills.

Listening to the community too much is what made PoE 1 the best ARPG ever for 99.9% of POE 1 players.

"

ocping#1733 wrote:

Listening to the community too much is what made PoE 1 the best ARPG ever for 99.9% of POE 1 players.

its equally the best and worst thing to happen to chris.

on one hand he solidified his company and its well known.

on another his company is now trapped by the expectations of poe1 players who understandably do not want poe2 to be too different from poe1.

it also meant that people hated his "vision"

"

mnieradko#6070 wrote:

"

Ner0suM#7473 wrote:

- no currency to craft with

Same issues as modern POE1 buddy. The devs in POE1 decided that useful endgame rares cannot drop OFF THE GROUND, so you must craft stuff through an unintuitive convoluted mountains of steps with horrible RNG at each step.

So where is said crafting currency for POE1 endgame players who don't treat it like a job? Nowhere to be found.

In POE2, powerful rare items are now allowed to drop OFF THE GROUND. Where's the crafting currency? Here are some alchemy and regal orbs peasant. Go watch your favorite streamer while you load up on MTX like a good boy.

Neither modern POE1 nor POE2 are ARPGs, they are abomination currency simulators in which THE ENDGAME CURRENCY YOU NEED does not drop in appreciable quantities.

As for who Jonathan and friends are making POE2 for? They are making it for themselves. I love all these clickbait "the POE2 streamer community is raging" compilation videos. Every person in said videos is a hopelessly addicted degen goblin who will keep plugging away at the same frustrating things a week or month or year from now. All of these dev talk videos are theater. They know their playerbase. It's the same playerbase as modern POE1. That playerbase isn't going anywhere. That playerbase wouldn't know introspection and self control if it dropped on their head like an anvil.

Lol.

I love this. There's a poetic elegance to it.

"

ocping#1733 wrote:

Listening to the community too much is what made PoE 1 the best ARPG ever for 99.9% of POE 1 players.

Initially, yes.

Last few leagues - it completely ruined it.

Sometimes some strategies only work until a certain point and it's OK to depart from those strategies as a developer and visionary.

"

exsea#1724 wrote:

"

ocping#1733 wrote:

Listening to the community too much is what made PoE 1 the best ARPG ever for 99.9% of POE 1 players.

its equally the best and worst thing to happen to chris.

on one hand he solidified his company and its well known.

on another his company is now trapped by the expectations of poe1 players who understandably do not want poe2 to be too different from poe1.

it also meant that people hated his "vision"

I think there are many creative solutions that could fix these pains more casual and zoom-zoomy players are experiencing, genuinely.

It's up to GGG's creative team to make it happen though. While I'd LOVE to have input as I see myself competent in the field, they're just not going to pick off some random dude from the forums to conceptualise their game design solutions for them, right?

A simpler fix without breaking the grander vision of the game is to introduce a "power inheritance" feature for characters.

Meaning that your first and primary character will have to slog through the full campaign, but your next character will gain not only your inherited gear but also increased stats, let's say - from having killed the passive bonus bosses.

Let's say that your new character would start out with all of these bonuses already active - and they wouldn't need to kill the "extra" bosses to progress through the campaign. Resistances, more health, more spirit, more mana regeneration, etc.

This reduces campaign play time, makes it less repetitive and boring and allows you to spec far more points into pure damage to speed up clear speed until maps.

There are many creative solutions that can address pain points for both wings of the community, but it requires meticulousness and expertise.