Clearly you do not get that it’s EA. Trigger gems are fine after the nerfs, you just need to invest and build properly to make them work, instead of getting millions of DPS for free.
Same goes for this ‘hot topic’. POE2 is in EA, LE is post release going into a strong second season. If you enjoy the latter, you will play it. If you choose a clunky beta that’s going to have tons of problems for the first few weeks post 0.2, then you are an idiot and/or don’t really enjoy LE that much.
lol i forgot if i replied to u in poe forums.
i can understand why ggg decided to do it in april (they werent ready in march) and they really cant afford to delay anymore.
but understanding that doesnt take away from it being a dick move.
i still remember GGG delaying one of their releases FOR cyberpunk. they didnt do EHG this same honour.
They didn’t delay it for Cyberpunk to do them a honor… they delayed it because of Cyberpunk to not get screwed over since everyone and their grandma awaited that game at that time 
GGG delayed a league for Cyberpunk because they feared the game’s massive impact on player count. When WoW Classic launched, the Path of Exile league at the time (Blight?) took a significant hit in player numbers.
It’s clear that GGG doesn’t see Last Epoch as a major threat to Path of Exile 2’s player base. Additionally, many PoE players have little to no interest in Last Epoch, and after numerous delays with 0.2, GGG likely doesn’t want to make them wait even longer.
Idk how those people are imagining market, where everyone is doing favors all the time 
It’s a bloody war, not a friendly dinner.
i ll put it this way. the big 3, blizz, ggg, ehg are all in fast food business.
ones mcd, ones kfc and anw.
want nice affordable chicken? go kfc
want nice burgers/value meals? go mcd
want a nice root beer to go with your meal? go anw
all of them are fast food but all of them cater for a different audience. they are definitely rivals but they do not necessarily need to compete with each other. its not like cars where its a big purchase that people make once in 10-20 years.
theres no need to directly compete. also in many interviews ggg/chris was asked about how he views d4/le (iirc). he has a very diplomatic response where he said all the games fulfill different player needs and have different demographics.
also i would say many people tend to want a more friendly rivalry rather than shitting on each other. GGG is doing well now and despite everything i say against it, it still is humoungous compared to EHG. diablo clones are a niche. EHG is doing its own thing. GGG is well aware that EHG is picking up players who do not like POE. there is really ZERO loss.
in fact i would say GGG has more to stand when players get hyped for their rivals. look at D4. they had a massive initial sales which led players to enjoy diablo likes which eventually led them to POE.
of course its no friendly dinner. and i would always say, yes, GGG owes NOTHING to ehg. but still its a dick move.
you know theres a saying “you’re right but you’re an asshole”? this applies to GGG. everyone knows they have the right to do what they did. but its still an asshole move.
Most ARPG players overlap, just like fast food enjoyers who visit multiple chains.
So yes, Last Epoch and Path of Exile 1 & 2 are direct competitors. However, I am mad at GGG because now I am forced to choose …
I’m in the same boat. Was planning to return to LE on April 2nd and may still do so. But now I’m torn given that asinine release date of PoE2 0.2.
The thing with overlap is that neither game is perfect. If only we could (re-)combine them as we please 
LE wins at QoL and treating their playerbase (though still mad for trashing my stash). It gets a lot of praise over at the PoE 2 forum so EHG should definitely be on GGG’s radar.
It’s hard for me to point out what PoE 2 really does better than LE. It feels like the big brother that you default to despite the rocks the developers throw in your way.
These fastfood businesses are competing with each other, it couldn’t be otherwise. It’s not like they are not looking at each other market shares and thinking how they could bite off a chunk from it. They can mostly try to increase appeal of their product instead of trying to compete with similar products, it doesn’t make competition any softer.
Ofc he did, do you think he could answer “Oh, never play that shit, it’s awful”. Would such answer do any good for GGG? And ofc he might enjoy playing LE and thinking it’s a good game, and even wish them luck in their business. But he would be stupid if he wouldn’t also consider strategy how to compete with it and not let them to pull PoE players. And he isn’t stupid.
look, i m not saying you’re wrong. i m agreeing with what you’re trying to say. but whatever it is, its still a dick move on ggg’s part.
as i said, ggg is justified to do all that but its still a dick move.
But they either justified or it’s a dick move, can’t be both. I personally think it’s probably just an unlucky coincidence, and GGG don’t have sufficient incentives to move their release date further ahead, they don’t mind forcing people to choose.
In my view, dick move would be to release Poe 0.2 at April 2, one hour before Last Epoch launch
It can hardly be a coincidence when GGG has known about LE’s launch date for more than a month.
In the end, there are a bunch of players that like both games. I’ve seen plenty of players saying they’ll just stick to LE and join PoE2 later because of this decision. I’m sure there will also be plenty of players that will do the opposite.
So ultimately, both games will end up with lower player numbers than would otherwise happen. Most likely GGG just figures that they’ll still have most players for PoE2 and don’t mind losing some at launch, but it can’t really be argued that this is bad for both games. It’s just that it’s possibly worse for LE because it’s a smaller game.
How it can be related to the development progress? If they think it will take couple of weeks longer, they could know release date of LE 10 years in advance and still would need those 2 weeks to finish the job. And they overestimated their ability to develop both games many times in last few months, so there is nothing special about that.
By the way. Since we are talking about conspiracy theory, if plan of GGG would be to destroy LE release, they would release PoE 2 couple of days before LE, not after.
What conspiracy theory? I’m just saying it’s not a coincidence because GGG obviously already knew the date.
As for your other argument, it’s actually worse releasing 2 days after than 2 days earlier. Because what happens is that players will all flock to the first game (LE) and then a bunch will switch to the second game (PoE2). When players switch to another game, they will usually not switch back again (unless the content in the second game is inferior) right away.
So it would actually have been better for LE if PoE2 were to be launched on March 31st.
Funnily enough, Darth MicroTransaction did say that what EHG should do to spite GGG is leap frog them and delay their release to April 6th. Which only goes to show that more people do see it that way.
Is there some logic? Like, how knowing some date means they can’t delay their patch for the couple of weeks?
If I would start playing Poe 2 before LE, I wouldn’t check LE for some time. But if I will really like LE, I might stick with it longer and delay trying Poe. Well, it can’t be the case becasuse playing LE campaign unlikely will be very fun, but still.
Some players would have pattern you described and would swap from Poe to LE, but for me it looks more likely that those who are indifferent between two games, wouldn’t drop game they already engaged with until would become somewhat bored with it.
Sure there is. Since they already knew the date, even if they were already planning internally on releasing around this date, they could either go with “We already know LE is launching 2 days earlier, so we could just postpone this another week, which won’t make much difference in the overall scheme of things, and will allow us to refine things further, while letting players get LE out of their systems and focus solely on PoE2 instead” or they could go with “We already know LE is launching 2 days earlier, but we don’t care about gutting them or setting ourselves as the bad guys in public opinion (much like Blizzard was when they did the same to GGG), even if we also lose some players in the process”. They decided to go with the latter.
More important than most players, it’s that most content creators will 100% do that. And content creators are very important for bringing other players in.
Players that prefer PoE2 over LE will likely not even join LE for a couple of weeks, at least, if they do at all. Players that prefer LE (or that didn’t like GGG’s attitude) will likely not join PoE2 for a couple of weeks, at least, if they do at all.
But most other players will most likely play LE for 2 days, play PoE2 for 2 days and then decide which one they want to continue playing. And inertia will tend to keep them in the current game, as long as the content being offered in PoE2 is enough to keep them around.
Initially, I said that it’s probably a coincidence that date overlapped and that GGG just don’t see enough incentives to change their dates. You said it’s not a coincidence, but ow you are saying the same thing. Idk then what you are arguing about.
Most content creators will probably choose PoE 2. And if LE wouldn’t be released earlier, they wouldn’t touch it at all for some time. This way, most of them probably will.
I’m arguing that the date announcement decision wasn’t a coincidence. That internally they might have a similar date would probably be a coincidence and was bound to happen sooner or later with the amount of seasonal ARPGs we have these days.
All of this is just a public opinion/PR issue, nothing more. You already have content creators and players comparing this to a “Blizzard move”. And it’s never a good sign when your company’s practices are compared to Blizzard’s, a company that went from being one of the most beloved in the genre to one that only cares about money and doesn’t care about players at all.
And in a few months, it will have been forgotten by most already (unless GGG continues pulling Blizzard moves).
Most likely. Content creators need to keep engagement high and game launches (or season launches) are good for them, so they need to keep following the hype.
Not likely. If EHG were to release in April 6th instead, content creators would do 2 days of PoE2, 2 days of LE and then they would decide which to keep covering (most would choose PoE2, unless there isn’t enough new content) for the next week or two before switching back.
This is because, like I said, game and season launches are very good for content creators and they keep following them.
I can’t find anything in your message what would controverse to what I said earlier.
And this is why most of them probably wouldn’t want to jump off from Poe 2 0.2 season so early. I’m expecting quite a lot of hype after GGG’s revealing of the patch at March 27.