Blizzard and GGG are doing the same thing. Personally, I think it makes sense for the players. The developers have the burden at release to watch for outliers in the first couple of weeks and fix them and then LEAVE BUILDS ALONE for the rest of the season so that people can rely on the investments they make throughout the season. This led to insane results for the Spiritborn in D4 S6, but they stuck to their guns and fixed the class in S7. There are arguments both ways, but nobody likes to see the rug pulled out from their build mid-season so I favor the decision.
I can’t tell for certain what your argument here is, but just to be clear, I’ll state my position and maybe we agree, maybe we disagree. GGG has an obligation to their playerbase to get their fixes in ASAP. The fact that the time it all came together for them was 2 days after the LE release was undoubtedly debated internally but in the end, if I’m a GGG Producer, I’m deciding that my players get their fix as soon as we have it available and I’m not going to frustrate all those players by holding it back because of some external scheduling issue.
I managed many software projects over a long career in software development and there were plenty of decisions I had to make that created problems for some set of stakeholders or another, but I always made my decisions based on what was right for my customers. The thing that GGG did wrong was not choosing to release 2 days later. The thing they did wrong was how they communicated it (or didn’t) to the world. There must be 50 ways they could have avoided a PR disaster of their own creation.
True. If Jonathan made very short video with “Guys, we sorry but we can’t delay it any longer”, would work nice for them.
Yes, this is my main issue and why I said this was mostly a PR/public opinion issue. They could have done as you said and no one would be bothered much about it, they could have postponed it a week and even garnered some goodwill among players, but choosing to do it like they did is why I’ve said they have set themselves up to be the bad guy and got comparisons to Blizzard practices.
This is also an important issue: I don’t think releasing it 2 days later would have been what was right for their customers. As we’ve seen, there is a not insignificant portion of the playerbase that plays both games. And while some were going to play PoE2, there were plenty that were intending on playing LE first and only pick PoE2 later.
So this decision was actually bad for both games’ “customers”.
In the end, they forced EHG to feel like they had to delay a couple weeks (I can’t say I agree with this, but I can understand it). Which might even turn out worse for GGG. After a couple weeks many people will now join LE and probably not return to PoE2, other than the reverse.
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But they either justified or it’s a dick move, can’t be both
lol which part of the commonly used statement “you’re right but you’re an asshole” do you disagree with?
a worker burned all his emergency leaves but has an emergency. his kid got into an accident and he needs to be with his kid for the next day. his boss told him hes on duty tomorrow. the worker told the boss of his predicament. boss says you no longer have any EL left. you must come in tomorrow or get disciplinary action taken. and for the sake of this scenario finished up all his annual and medical leaves too and has no more leaves available.
boss is justified. but he could have handled things differently. justified but still an asshole.
if thats still unacceptable then we make a super dumb scenario. i m on a bus. so happens everyone ELSE on the bus who are seated have leg injury except for me. a dude gets on the bus. OMFG he has a leg injury too. he limps up to me as theres no other empty seats and i m the only able bodied guy that could give up a seat for him.
but you know what? i bought the same ticket he did too! i m not sitting in a priority seat! i dont NEED to give it to him! so i dont. i shut my eyes and go to sleep.
justified? yes! asshole? also yes!
i could give examples all day but if you’re dead set on simping hard for GGG its a waste of my time.
He made a dick move to you and you justify it? I wouldn’t justify dick moves.
I think he means “justified” not in the moral sense, but in the “entitled” sense. He was legally able to do it, but didn’t have to, and that makes him an asshole.
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if we’re being pedantic, justification can be interpret as “having a reason why a person performs an action”.
“let me tell you why i did that” can be reworded with “let me justify my actions”.
means the same thing.
justification doesnt necessarily need to be moral. i slapped him because he slapped me first. the moral thing is to turn the other cheek. its just an explanation of why people do what they did.
i think you get what i mean as we’re kinda on the same page.
as for rikki, i’m just going to ignore his comments as he’s just arguing for argument’s sake.
he was the one who originally justified GGG’s actions by saying stuff like “its a bloody war, not a friendly dinner”.
he knows GGG is being aggressive.
he just doesnt like that i m pointing out his beloved game company pulled a dick move. which is why he’s trying so hard to go against me.
he’s trying to win by semantics, saying you cant be justified and be an ass at the same time, which i gave examples of exactly that. in fact the phrase “you’re right but you’re an asshole” exists.
then he’s trying to say that i m making justifications for people making dick moves and how he wouldnt justify dick moves.
like what is he even trying to say? that dick moves have no justification or explanations attached and exist solely as a dick move?
i already gave examples and he’s just ignoring them? zero understanding, zero comprehension.
this is a good example of a person arguing in bad faith. he has no intention of changing his mind or listening to what other people tell him.
i havent been in these forums for a while. it hilarious how fast i managed to find a person to ignore in this forums so quickly.
one thing i’ve learned in a lot of my online and IRL interactions is we need to identify people who argue in bad faith. these people have zero substance and waste your time.
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Still nonsensical.
They’re uncaring, not aggressive. Major important difference.
More like simply not agreeing there. That’s why.
Infering more is also quite nonsensical.
But beyond that you’re right, doesn’t change the initial premise though.
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you’re a really interesting person. you have logic and wit. but due to you brushing me off by repeatedly using nonsensical, its rather nonsensical for me to respond to you much moving forward.
i dont see you arguing in bad faith. just you’re so up on your high horse with your clearly superior intellect dishing out judgments on whats nonsensical or not.
if it doesnt make sense to you, it doesnt necessarily mean something is nonsensical to others. that nonsensical.
you could have asked for clarification but nah. why would you. you clearly know what makes sense and what doesnt.
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But we are obviously not talking about GGG doing something illegal, just something immoral. So I’m just saying that if they are making dick move, it means they are doing something immoral and I don’t see why someone would justify doing something immoral. If by “I justify it” he means “I don’t see legal issues with it”, I have no idea where the law could come from.
Uh… you do realize all those things you’re talking about are highly subjective?
Morality, legality and justifiability have always shifted throughout the history, and even today, they all have some kind of variability depending on the very country you live in…
On top of that, all those things are not intrinsically linked… You can have all sorts of combinations, where something is “illegal, but moral”, or “legal, but immoral”, or “immoral, but justifiable”, or “illegal, but justifiable”, and so on…
Using the other guy’s example about the Boss and the kid… what the boss did is not by any means immoral, nor illegal, while being justifiable AND a dick move.
Maybe you gotta stop trying to pull the “I don’t see why” and actually read and process what other people are trying to tell you.
Anyways, he already ignored you and is not reading your messages anymore, so there’s no reason for you to continue arguing about this.
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This is why I am wording it as “I justify” instead of “justified”. Action can be justified by someone, not overall. And we are not group of lawyers here, so when we are justifying something, it usually doesn’t mean “from legal perspective”, and obviously in terms of game’s release date it doesn’t mean legal perspective.
How making a dick move can be not immoral? You are talking nonsense here, when we are calling something a dick move, it is a moral judgement.
Ok, then lets do it a different way:
How do you infere that GGG is aggressive rather then simply not caring?
One would state they act out of malice, and unless you want to go for a ‘witch-hunt’ then providing someone acting with the pleasure of doubt is the primary way to handle situations. Innocent until proven guilty, or at least so obviously done that guilt is the nigh infallible outcome.
Once more the example of Blizzard, they set it at the exact same date and exact same time to provide their information, that’s done with clear intent, it needs blindness to not see it.
GGG didn’t do that, it’s a close release, it’s detrimental obviously… but giving them the intent of malice is nothing that should be done.
Hence the ‘nonsensical’, because condemning a single innocent is worse the letting 10 guilty people go, it undermines every act following beyond.
The same with avoiding responsibility being the reason of acting. You have no clear-cut example of that happening. Yes, it could be… but it’s also not what’s to be expected as being the norm. And the actions don’t go so far as to deem it nigh impossible to be anything but.
Hence again why I said ‘nonsensical’.
It both bases back on infering either malice or deflection rather then genuine behavior to another person. This solely undermines their position without providing any argumentation basis to solve it.
While argumenting about behaviour the acting is to be done with regard to the least condemning thought process behind it in mind. Contingencies for further actions are to be thought about in terms of the worst possible actions.
When it comes to talking about future outcomes it’s the other way around. Conversation is to be held with the worst possible outcome in mind, to showcase the potential fail-states and hence allowing to take measures accordingly if it hasn’t been in the initial thought process.
Hence saying the act - which has been done - is out of malice is not a position one should take without at least very very solid reasoning behind it.
But stating that it’ll damage the position of both games in the future - Perception wise towards people - severely and reasoning along this line is to be preferred over waving it off. The situation can happen and hence precautions against that have to be taken, those need to be showcased so they can be taken accordingly.
Those directions are the most optimal ones leading to the potentially best outcomes over long times. Provided that people don’t take it personal and hence simply ignore it… which would be a failure of the people providing the product since it’s their job to take in as much information as possible, and worst-case scenarios are the feedback which provides the widest range of potential fail-states to work around and improve something.
But developers are also only people, hence that does regularly happen still.
At times, unless proven otherwise. I’m regularly reverting my stance and I’m also regularly providing incomplete argumentation lines as my mind wanders.
But overall I’m more often right then not, the critical argumentation against me though is something I won’t shy away from and if I realise a good argument has been brought up I’ll best case wholeheartedly agree to it… simply provide a like to the post if there’s something still ‘nagging at the back of my mind’ with it not fitting perfectly or worst-case I’ll stop argumenting since I can’t bring it down in words what I want to convey.
Take that as you personally want, I don’t think I’m on the ‘high horse’ but rather very clear-cut in how I expect decent behaviour to occur. Misguided at times and willing to be disproven and hence to improve myself as time passes.
Solely in that case because the premise it’s based on is already the issue for me, not the way of argumenting about it.
As stated above, infering malice or lack of taking responsibility unless quite obvious is not something one should do without a very very solid line of reasoning behind it that leaves barely any way to have it not be the case.
It simply comes dangerously close to defamation, happens far too often and causes interactions to become easily toxic without intending that to happen.
HIGHLY EXTREMELY SUPERBLY correct ( 
)
But still, a dick move.
It has nothing to do with malice, or morality as the other guy is trying to put.
Being a dick doesn’t mean anything other than “not being the good guy”. It doesn’t mean you did anything wrong, nor malicious, nor immoral.
GGG were not the good guys here. They could have been, or even pretended to be. But they choose not to. Hence, they were the ones being a dick this time around.
Everyone trying to make it so like GGG, or their player base, would be hurt in any ways if they delayed it, say, a week are just delusional… If this was the actual launch it would make sense, but no, this is a friggin EA we’re talking about… there’s nothing stable in an early access experience, and everything is subject to change at any given time… Players sign in for that knowing things like this will happen all the time.
That’s the reason I tend to mostly avoid EAs, unless I’m really thrilled and engaged with the game. Cause I don’t like unstable video gaming experiences.
(and responding to your question on the other thread, I just remembered i forgot to, if PoE2 EA didn’t have any payment involved, I would probably just check how it plays in my own hands, then would probably just shelf it until release. I just mentioned it being paid as another barrier preventing me from even trying it out… paying for an unfinished product doesn’t seem right to me, especially if said product is going to be released for free later on… It’s not like they’re crowd-funding, idk.)
There’s a hundred ways GGG could have done things differently, but they just choose to be a dick and didn’t care, according to you. (yeah, not caring is a dick move)
Anyways, I love how @ExSea was able to identify really quickly that you do not argue in bad faith. But I gotta add that you really like to argue, and sometimes you do seem to argue just for the sake of it. 
It takes some effort to try and engage with you in an argumentation, but those who do often have a nice interaction, which always make out for a good debate.
Also, you are, indeed, an interesting person, kudos german buddy 
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So you are a dick if you did nothing wrong, nothing good, nothing bad, nothing immoral — i.e., nothing to judge for, while people are judging you because you are not being a good guy? How people live with such a mess in their head…
i honestly appreciate that you are trying a different approach and for that i give you a salute. and will continue engaging with you.
you could be right, GGG could simply not care and just did what they wanted to do. on the flip side, i could be right. we both have no solid evidence that can prove our claims.
however, the reason why i inferred GGG as being aggressive is because theres room for plausibility.
for starters, people at GGG are not dumb. they are very calculative and precise with their words. a huge part of POE is the precision of their wordings. everything they write is careful and deliberate. for sure there will be things that they overlook, but i’m pretty sure that GGG did not simply overlook LE.
i would point out that GGG could have borrowed mechanics from LE. POE’s crafting currency was initially created to combat gold inflation that was prominent in D2. players had tons of gold and nothing to do with it. TLI and undecember followed POE’s footsteps using crafting currency, whereas LE stubbornly stoodby gold.
LE showed how the game could combat inflation. simply create goldsinks. which in a way was also a concept that EHG could have borrowed from POE, where POE gave players mutliple currency sinks such as using chaos orbs to juice maps. EHG’s gold sinks are a massive success as players can easily run out of gold and keep craving more gold.
It would be plausible that GGG borrowed this implementation of gold. GGG did it exceedingly well in settlers (ironic how badly it works in POE2). players wanted more gold and never had enough.
Also POE2’s end game mapping system could have borrowed LE’s monolith of fate. One can argue that they could have figured it on their own, possible, but its also very likely they just borrowed from LE.
Why i’m bringing this up is because i want to establish the fact that its very likely, the folks at GGG play other games, and are aware of other games and their updates.
I also brought up the fact that they actually delayed a release of one of their leagues because of cyberpunk. 2 things can be inferred. 1 their devs themselves do want to play cyber punk. 2, they are very well aware that other people want to play cyberpunk. which would lead to the logical conclusion that they are well aware of other games and their launches.
thus theres a very high chance that GGG chose to announce the release deliberately. there is highly unlikely that GGG was unaware. which is why i would say its more likely that its an aggressive move rather than GGG simply not caring.
but to entertain the idea of GGG simply not caring is interesting in itself. if for an example, i m driving a lorry and some bloke is riding a bike in front of me. if i chose to simply not care, and ran the bike over. to me i really didn’t care. but how would the bike rider perceive it? one way they could see it is aggression. my act of not caring caused harm to others.
i do realize that there are laws against this. but in the context of businesses, theres not much laws. what GGG did was not against any law and theres no law stating they couldnt do that to begin with. the end result is the same. GGG bulldozed its way through EHG. GGG did this knowing EHG is small. the result is EHG having to move out of the way or suffer worse consequences.
we can see now that bike rider saw me not caring and have already taken action to quickly move out of my way. EHG has already postponed their launch date.
as for diablo/blizz. They choose to launch d4 on the same month but at a much later date. Even tho it’s a few weeks after EHG there is at least a few weeks. players who play both games have time to enjoy both. which is why people dont really poke at blizz for also releasing on april. in contrast GGG’s release date is just 2 days after EHG.
i will contend that despite all that i said i will admit it is not 100% solid. i have no evidence but it all comes from logical/educated assumptions.
As for talking about perception. I refuse to believe that GGG is not blind enough to realize that their actions could lead to people seeing them as a bully. They simply are not dumb.
and now that i m talking about it, it actually opened up some old wounds. i used to be a poe1 standard player. i farmed tons of exalts in an effort to save up to buy powerful gear. one day GGG decided to flip exalts with divines. the only people affected were standard players. but they chose not to give a damn about us. they could have introduced a “standard only” NPC that allowed for a 1:1 divine:exalt converter and even made him available for a limited time.
nope. nothing. players who did not realize this change saw their abundance of wealth drop to a tenth of it’s original value. there are other instances of GGG being reckless, such as reverting all alternate value gems to regular ones. tons of players including myself farmed up tons of divines to buy 21/23 alt quality gems. all just for them to more or less go “poof”?
GGG doesnt care about standard. they did all this knowingly. deliberate. and hence i would say its logical to reason that assume GGG did in fact do all of this on purpose.
When you mention defamation etc, i see your point. Which is “one shouldn’t assume things without proof”. Which is a very good point. I have no solid proof of my claims. But on the flipside, the current situation is GGG walked out of a pottery where the pottery is all smashed up, GGG has visible clay on his apparel and he’s holding a hammer. Walks away and says nothing. you have to admit thats really suspicious. the optics really look bad regardless of whether or not GGG had anything to do with it.
You can simply be rude. In fact, the phrase “You’re right but you’re an asshole” usually refers more to being rude and/or “too” blunt than to being immoral.
I don’t pretend that I approve something when in fact I don’t, I guess this is what some people here disagree about. If someone is being dick, which usually means intentionally doing something bad while trying to look ok, it’s the same for me as if he wouldn’t try to look ok, I don’t think that being dick is more ok than just intentionally doing something bad to another person without any coverage. But looks like many people, when someone’s bad actions technically look ok, are ready to justify it because of how it looks like. I will not agree with such justifying of being dick.
Exactly, hence why I’m saying to ‘give the benefit of the doubt’ there, because while it happens often and nigh everyone tends to do it from time to time… it’s the immoral standpoint to do so.
Room for plausibility is often there, I fully agree, nigh everything can be taken positive, neutral or negative, that’s why I’m urging simply for the direction of taking ‘the least severe one’ when judging a person (Or something perceived in a similar way… like a group, or a company itself, because it’s based on individual choices coming from people there)… and ‘the most severe’ when judging things.
A very fair argument. But that’s the group which is working internally on the descriptions, they don’t do things like fixating dates or the PR.
And GGG PR is kinda wonky. On the better side of the market for sure… but still many many wonky aspects. There’s quite a small amount of game studios out there which actually do a good job in that aspect… I think that kinda comes with the territory a bit still 
There I have to speak against completely though.
LE is a prime example of a failing system, and why shifting away from Gold as the primary resource has been a positive aspect of the genre rather then a negative one.
It only works for CoF seen as a standalone. The moment you include MG the system falls apart. Not only are the top items beyond the possible listing price limit or limit of acquisition on a single account but it also causes the other Gold related mechanics to not function as intended.
But that’s another topic, I feel like I’ve written whole novels for the different economic concepts there, and still haven’t been able to even touch a fraction of the details affecting it. GGG’s system is for a economic environment superior since it creates a mandatory and nearly unlimited sink… while in LE we don’t have a single viable sink in MG.
It would be Lightless Arbour which is supposed to. But given the existence of CoF gold prices can’t be adjusted to become viable for MG and vice versa. For MG it would need to be magnitudes cheaper to allow profiting (rather then with nigh guarantee loosing) in terms of gold for investing the time there… which it doesn’t do. But doing so would cause utter flooding to happen with CoF and remove the only available reliable long-term Gold sink from it. MG already has no functioning long-term gold sink, it’s endless inflation without a countermeasure. We can see that in Legacy surprisingly well… took a while but it’s becoming less and less usable.
Nothing has value it feels like… and every 50-100 hours you drop a extremely valuable singular item. That’s not a fluid economic system, extremely stale even. Very bad for the health of the system.
Yes, because in Settlers the core usage is not providing individual items but consumables.
Consumables have a very solid and reliable value attached to them, they always have a high turnover rate. This causes them to easily get to a proper equilibrium where you can infer a direct value from them.
In PoE 2 GGG made the mistake to not understand why their system worked in PoE 1. The focus in 2 is items… the gambler. You can’t ever have enough Gold… but the majority of the time the Gold doesn’t return anything viable. You can leave with ‘0’ or you can leave with ‘50 divine’ for the same amount spent, and it’s extremely volatile. A gamble.
In Settlers instead… send a ship out and know where to send it and you get consumables in return, they have always value, you’ll always profit and since consumables are needed in large amounts that means you’ll also have access to that value very close to immediately.
Items instead can sit in your stash for months if you don’t reduce the price and find a fitting buyer. And in LE? Even worse since you need to re-invest time for every time you need to re-price it. The system simply doesn’t work this way.
EHG borrowed from the PoE 1 mapping system, it’s fairly obvious. Before PoE created it they had the exact same issues which LE currently suffers from actually. A sort of system which didn’t punish you for failing, hence people pushed beyond their means and it caused a surprisingly hefty fallout from that.
The same can be seen with the current corruption mechanic. It’s the same core premise, something I’ve stated regularly is not a good state.
Mind you, the itemized limited amount of maps are also not a good state in PoE, but they solved more issues then they created at least. It then simply was deemed ‘good enough’ with all the issues long-term it has brought already and never further changed.
Only in PoE 2 there is a change, which is the generic Tier-Waystones which can be used wherever.
Once more GGG failed to understand which aspects of both games provide the upsides and downsides though, a common issue in PoE. Lucky hits which seemingly aren’t understood by their creators.
In PoE 1 the great thing is the ability to target farm layouts and hence specific enemy types and drops (enemy types to a degree, similar to timelines in LE a bit). In PoE 2 the limitation of having ‘this exact’ rolled map has gone, which is good. No more ‘This is a T16 Strand map’ but instead ‘This is a T16 map’.
The natural evolution would be how EHG handles their affixes for items, the shard system. This would provide top-tier player Agency. Free choice of Layout… then the choice of available difficulty (which enforces not going beyond your means as otherwise you can’t sustain it) and then putting on the modifiers free of choice related to acquired ones.
That would be a overall good system combining the positive aspects of both games together… but GGG dropped the ball by removing the choice of Layout and hence reward… and EHG dropped the ball with the ability to adjust content related to your means in a reliable way.
Not only likely… we know that. Much like people from EHG also play other games of the genre. We’ve heard about it. As a developer though you won’t have the time to do that compared to someone which is either jobless or has a substantial economic buffer in reality (filthy rich and doesn’t need to work long hours or earns well with few hours). Hence they won’t be able to go into as much detail to experience the itty bitty things which make or break a system long-term.
Agreed! They do!
The just don’t care as long as the game poses no substantial issue for them. GGG knows that EHG can’t compete over players, the amount of people playing wouldn’t get a serious hit in PoE when releasing close to LE. Sure… a hit… but a very acceptable one.
Can’t be said the other way around, for EHG it’s a life and death situation to ensure pulling in a good amount of people. Hence why I said ‘they’re in the weaker position’.
But GGG isn’t doing it out of malice, they simply do it because they earned themselves such a strong position that they don’t have to look at the market and choose a ‘doomed if you do, doomed if you don’t’ situation like EHG does.
Because lets face it. For LE to stay at the release date simply wasn’t feasable after PoE was announced. Pulling it forward is neither, since EHG already struggles to provide solid content with their development speed… and pushing it backwards is also giving comments about people being unhappy for EHG to not ‘stand up to the competition’.
You can’t do it right… there is no ‘good solution’ available
For GGG it’s the same though… but unlike LE they’re in such a strong position that they don’t need to care.
That’s the whole difference I personally see there, it’s a surprisingly common occurence to see as well in other sectors. You can just roll over the competition because you worked yourself into such a strong position. The effort put into it gets finally paid out. And not making use of it if it avoids you a detrimental outcome (PoE is already heavily postponed after all) would simply be wasting the amount of time and effort put into achieving the position in the first place. Why have it when you can’t use it?
Yeah, absolutely agreed with the example! 100% even! I get where you’re coming from.
The point missing there though is that in this situation ‘It costs you nothing’ to avoid the crash.
In our case here it does though.
Imagine it like driving beside another vehicle with endless space initially. But you’re both fast… and now it changes into 2 lanes juuuust enough to fit you and the other vehicle, but on one lane there’s a person on the ground… and neither of you can stop.
What do you do? Do you drive over the person… or the other vehicle? One will drive over that poor guy there, it’s inevitable simply. So GGG would drive a heavy truck and EHG would be in a mini instead. Both solid vehicles… but as the truck driver I’ll use my extra weight to get on the lane without the guy, have the other deal with the aftermath… not me. I can’t change the guy being driven over anyway… so why me?
Sounds crap, is crap… but can’t be avoided. So I would rather have another person beside me deal with the follow-up crap.
If that is understandable with that kinda wonky explained exampled there
Ah, the bit which was meant there was November 21st to be exact.
GGG had the live teaser for PoE 2, the reveal which the sector waited on since years, actually since early 2018 when PoE 2 was revealed the first time.
Blizzard intentionally set up their so called ‘campfire talk’ at the same time and day to directly compete. The campfire talk is the new reveals for D4. They actively tried to say ‘We are more meaningful then PoE 2’ and failed utterly with it.
It was kinda hilarious with how much they overextended and misjudged their market position. That’s why it’s used as an example here
Yep, that was a shitty move and too sudden. More time given would’ve been nice, a while league for example would’ve been sufficient.
But the outcome of the change is good… the handling of it - like usual - atrocious.
Yes, and I agree with you 100% that these things are what cause their core audience in Standard (10% of their playerbase roughly btw.) to leave. Very bad moves. Same as the lack of proper Atlas conversion, Map Tab conversion being buggy and many many more things. Fully agreed.