So, LP is for min-maxing and that is not for cycles, you say?
So where is min-maxing happening in your opinion?
In legacy that might receive new content months after cycles, if ever?
What you really mean, but are not saying, is that min-maxing is primarily for the most engaged players who spend unhealthy amounts of time in the game and as an afterthought maybe for the plebs in the filthy casual prison called legacy.
And that’s another questionable defense of the seasonal system.
I’d even say it’s borderline elitist gatekeeping.
In fact, pretty much every argument that isn’t honest enough to talk about MTX and financing the game is either narrow-minded, circular logic, or simply gatekeeping.
No. What I’m saying is that if you want a 4LP red ring or wings, you need to be an hardcore player spending unhealthy amounts of time in the game IN LEGACY. Because most likely not even them will see most of the BiS gear in a cycle.
BiS gear is chase. It’s not necessary for your build. It’s only purpose is to let you push the most you can. If regular players can pick them up in a 3-4 month cycle, that means that there’s nothing left to chase.
Your build works fine with 0LP. You can get any single skill in the game to empowered monos. Almost every single skill will reach 300 corruption with 0LP. Which is what the devs said is where they want endgame to land. So you don’t need LP items. They’re just a bonus.
A 4LP red ring is the same as a double corrupt/enchanted/high quality unique in PoE. It’s something the large majority of players won’t ever see because they don’t farm enough for them.
Usually together with the new cycle… as it’s common in the whole field.
So 3 months after initial implementation.
Yes.
It’s made for them. There’s no other games for them. Hence that’s ‘their’ game simply.
No, elitist gatekeeping would be ‘don’t come here when you’re not able to xyz’.
The difference is that it just doesn’t cater fully to other people, nobody hinders them to enjoy and play the game. Absolutely fine, fantastic even, many many do!
Nobody hinders you to enjoy the game fully for as long as you want. If you don’t move inside the expectations though you also can’t simply go along and say ‘that’s not fair!’
Because what else besides time-investment and personal skill is there to differ between people in such a game?
So obviously if someone can’t beat a boss because of their reaction time then it’s ‘tough luck’, and also if someone doesn’t input the time necessary to reach something it’s also ‘tough luck’.
If you wanna see it that narrow-minded then that’s on you, not other people
Look at for example ‘Siralim Ultimate’, which is a - bit of a shoddy one - indie game based solely on endless grinding. Very veeeeery long-term grinding.
Sure they could make it quicker to achieve everything, or for the more ‘casual’ person… but that’s just not what the game caters to, and that’s good… since it’s the one game which goes out of their way for hoarding-based games with a turn-based old-school jrpg fighting style that does that stuff.
It’s simply another target audience. If you’re not the audience it’s fine, many other games out there catering to you… you don’t need to adjust a game which isn’t perfectly made for you to become it. It won’t happen in the first place.
D2 is so old and had seasons that can’t even remotely be compared, which makes this an irrelevant example.
And you need to decide: What’s the real problem here? Low amount of players in cycles or low amount of players / retention / total playtime to market MTX?
If it’s the former, then you are simply wrong. The amount of players who, like you, want a fresh start every few months, will always be way bigger than needed for competition.
If it’s the latter, all I’ve been saying is that EHG should look into different, possibly better ways.
Simply claiming “there is no alternative” or “has been proven”, when in fact, there hasn’t been tried anything, is disingenuous.
New content causes the spike, not the restriction to leagues.
Also, the market looked much different then: Barely any seasonal models around, while nowadays every damn game has one.
That makes a better solution even more important than in past years.
You provided the reason yourself: D3 seasons sucked. – Just like game in general for the longest time.
Yes, and in my opinion you are ignoring large parts of it and make wrong conclusions.
If you reduced the genre to the leveling experience, you’d be right that it wouldn’t be for me.
But the genre isn’t just the leveling experience. And it shouldn’t be.
That’s got nothing to do with the seasonal model. Endgame needs general and fundamental improvement.
Here we go again.
“it’s a go-to thing to do” is just another expression for “everyone is doing it”.
Wanting to force players to play in a system that they don’t like.
Yet all I have been saying is that we need a better system, one, that allows everyone to play how they want, with reset and leaderboards or without.
Yes, you can’t convert the current seasons without change, but that’s an issue of how seasons are designed, how monetization is coupled to it.
All you state is the obvious, narrow-minded reasons that are always delivered in the defense of companies.
It’s fine to agree if a company says they need to do X, Y or Z because they need it to keep afloat and the game running, deliver new content, but it’s not your job to defend a company before they even say anything, based on unproven assumptions.
If anything it’s to provide feedback what you want and try to IMPROVE the game.
And one thing is for sure: “We always did it this way” and “Everyone is doing it” are not ways for improvement.
But maybe, and I don’t mean this as an insult, you are just younger and grew up in a world in which greed had already ruined all sense of quality and strife for improvement.
Any seasonal reset ruins that feeling for me at least.
I think you misunderstood that whole part.
Hey, you called me out for it, not I.
Where do you believe I said something against monetization per se?
I bought all Grim Dawn support packs, I bought the additional DLCs for V Rising because the developer deserved that money, and I am even for subscription fees.
And again you are defending the financial model and not the seasonal model, pretending that this is the only way to go about it.
What are these ludicrous assumptions based on?
Please provide a couple of examples of failed games that didn’t fundamentally suck and only failed because they didn’t offer a seasonal model with resets that prolonged retention to sell more MTX?
Do you understand what feedback is?
I say what I think, you can disagree, and I can disagree with you disagreeing with me.
It’s great that you like it, and nobody should ever take that from you.
However, you expect others to like the same things that you like or find another game.
And your reasoning is, that a change to how seasons normally work, would ruin the game financially.
I disagree, because I believe that there are alternatives.
And here we come to the true root behind all the monetization talk: elitist gatekeeping.
For the record: I do have the time, I play way too much, to be honest, about 50-70 hours per week, but I choose not to have it wasted.
So now you speak for EHG? Aside from being their financial adviser already?
Not to mention that none of what I said would change the game for you in any shape or form in regards to how you would experience it…
I happen to believe in paying for content instead of having a few whales subsidize a bunch of freeloaders.
For all I care I would even be fine to pay it, play it, and then it’s going to be free with the following cycle.
And you don’t even know if all, or any, seasonal content will become available in legacy.
You paid for cosmetics, not for content.
It’s not likely that we will ever get to see such a model, but considering how egoistic you seem to be, I can’t say you wouldn’t deserve it. If you played legacy at all.
Damn, paying for content / goods / services. What a horrible system indeed.
Of course it’s an experiment. They wanted to try to find a solution to the dilemma of balancing drop rates solo vs. group farming and the impact on the market.
Has it actually failed? CoF has problems, yeah, but I don’t mind it.
Haven’t tried MG, though some boss loot tables really tempt me to try it.
Agreed, it’s pretty silly how it works in that regard at the moment.
Also, the fact that we can’t filter for LP, which brings back the same problems that we would have without lootfilter when we have a screen full of uniques.
But I still wouldn’t call it failed until EHG officially states that they won’t do anything regarding boss loot.
I bet you were the star in your kindergarten debate club.
I thought so, too.
But I have to disappoint, I pretty much never drink soda.
Do you mean GW2 initial Living World bullshit?
That was horrible for several other reasons, like ruining the existing world and the actual content not being available after the season ended.
As I understand it, GW2 is actually doing very well for the last few year and has growing player numbers. In fact, I believe it’s the only really profitable game NCSoft right now.
Still not an accurate comparison, but if anything then more like ESO does it with their yearly additions that then will be complemented each season.
It should be reasonably easy to come up with ideas how that would work.
Assumption and not common in the “whole” field. Just look at D4. Yeah, horrible game, but still an notable example of the opposite.
Have they actually ever said that? If so, I wonder if they still think that way.
Partially true. There are different forms for elitism and gatekeeping.
You are just describing the most basic one.
These are also very different things.
A potato will never be able to kill the boss at a certain difficulty.
But a guy who might easily be able to might never get a chance because he can’t afford hundreds of hours of grind.
Again, nothing I ever proposed would change a single thing game-wise for you or anyone else who likes the seasonal reset in cycles.
So why is it a problem for you, that other players could get the same content in legacy at the same time, which wouldn’t affect you directly?
Or that cycles would be smaller but still offer enough competition between the few thousand players that are relevant anyway?
Or do you feel your name needs to be on some leaderboard position no. 10001?
Or do you feel that you’d have to play legacy then to follow the path of least resistance? – Maybe the seasonal reset, the competition and the leveling experience wasn’t really what you wanted and enjoyed in the first place.
If it’s not gatekeeping or narrow-mindedness, it’s all irrelevant outside of the monetization question, isn’t it?
And that isn’t a question for us to solve, but for EHG, and our only responsibility would be to provide feedback on their decision / vote with our wallets.
Very good point indeed, but that’s probably something that EHG, or any other developer, will have to learn over time. Just like GGG had to.
My impression of EHG is, that they are very willing to experiment.
And there wouldn’t be much harm to have the same mechanics in legacy only to remove them if they turn out to be bad for the game in the long run.
Seasonal items could easily become vanity items etc.
There are lots of creative ways to handle these things.
True, but these are also not the things we are talking about. Thank god.
What harm could there really be, unless it’s an obvious exploit that ruins economy?
And would even that be relevant considering the size of an open-ended economy where many player would be at the resource / money cap anyway after some time?
Why? I don’t think that would be a problem. Seasonal content should always be optional anyway, as can be seen in the current PoE league drama.
I’d wager that Standard league is so small is because the content is diluted, and nerfed to hell and back (if it even gets there), before they can play with it. THAT is the problem with delaying content. And, there’s no way to word-play your way around it.
And this is the slippery slope, that always comes with this kind of stuff. First it’s multiplayer, and ‘everything should be the same’, until we eventually see the ‘we need incentives to play in groups’ or ‘why doesn’t everyone in a group progress the same (even tho it’s faster due to being in a group)’ demands.
And now we’re back to the ‘we need incentives to play cycles, so give us special things’.
This entitled behavior just keeps screwing things up because they want their playstyle to be special. Because just having it available isn’t enough, now it requires incentives to make people want to play it.
Once again, if it can’t stand up on its own merit, as a playstyle, without special incentives, then it isn’t good enough to be offered in the first place.
As I said before, most players follow the path of least attrition. So if you give the players 2 choices:
1- You have to start over every 3 months to play the exact same thing legacy plays
2- You have all the time in the world to play the same thing cycle does;
the vast majority will choose option 2. And this will lead to cycles being mostly empty. Which means there’s no incentive to keep making cycles. Which also means there’s no incentive to keep releasing new content regularly.
Except that cycles serve as a testing ground for new mechanics. It’s where you evaluate if a mechanic is good enough to add to the game, where you balance it so it’s just right.
The alternative is to break legacy every 3 months. It’s not good for the game. Breaking a 3 month cycle isn’t a problem because it has no lasting consequences to the health of the game, whereas constantly breaking the game mode that is supposed to be stable does.
I would argue it not to be, it’s one of several games which provide feedback on how a live-service game has to be set up to survive a longer duration.
As mentioned, PoE was the first providing that in this exact genre under the limitations for the business models it can have.
It’s well established that cyclic content causes a big influx of people (duh!) which means retention rate automatically goes up. This aligns with the knowledge that timed events known far beforehand allow a bigger crowd to attend since they have a fixed date… which goes actively counter to ‘it’s done when it’s done’ for quality argumentation (which seldomly works and needs to have hefty amounts of quality to do).
It’s also well established what brings people back to a game, which is new content, a fresh economy and changed balance/new meta for the major factors.
Now combine em and see what happens as a business model.
Both?
Low retention times means a lower overall amount of playtime.
Low amount of players initially also means less playtime.
This relates directly to sales numbers, both in the influx of fresh players (initial sale) as well as the follow-up sales of MTX.
If no MTX and initial sales happen then there’s no money.
If there’s no money devs and servers can’t be paid in the amount which they wish for.
If they can’t pay as much then development becomes smaller-scale and servers become a limiting factor of available mechanics.
If it falls too much then the business has failed and is shut down.
Is anything there anything new actually? I would say it’s common sense after all.
So, now to the topic of cycles:
They’ve proven to cause a influx of players for major reasons as mentioned above.
The first is a fixed time known beforehand. You can leave the game for 3 years, come back and know… yeah, this month the new cycle will release! Unless something major happened in-between.
This is a massive point for people who wanna enjoy their time in the game and only have limited amounts of said time, needing to ‘make time’ to do so.
Then we also have that the new economy and the fresh start with all it entails (including a ladder as LE has to a small degree) which is another aspect that’s been known to bring people back. D2 proved it, no changes between ladder resets and nonetheless the player count when it did was high, even for those which were not actively doing any competition for it… which was the majority even.
Oh, you’re getting me quite wrong there… I’m a legacy player, I’m one of the few PoE Standard players, I don’t care about playing cycle since it’s not my playstyle and I know that personally.
Surprised that someone can say it’s good despite not using it? Actually disliking it personally?
Well, that’s because I’m not only looking at things from my perspective directly but take into consideration the longevity of a game I enjoy… because if it does badly I won’t get as much out of it as I could, which means I’ll gladly push cycles down your throat if that’s what needs to be done to keep me playing the game, the bugs fixed, the balanced properly handled, new content to enjoy arriving and so on and so forth.
Ok, which one?
I can guarantee you ‘they do’, like every company which is worth more then just a few flowery words beyond failed promises (most ‘AAA’ companies nowadays) does.
Do you see an alternative having sprung up?
No? You neither?
Well shit… I guess nobody found a solution to the issue yet then! I guarantee there’s a few out there… but I can also guarantee that making sure the product is as good as possible now rather then chasing sky-castles is a far more viable business model overall. Outliers always exist… but outliers also nigh always fail. Known stuff works because the systems have been proven.
Why should they take the risk when they’ve got a proven functioning system going and nobody is their competition currently in the niche they’ve settled in? With more then enough players moving around through the cyclic systems the other games on the market have set up as well and mostly failed to take a foothold unlike LE?
Once more, D2 proves you wrong. Minimal changes, spike in player-count.
Might wanna think why that’s the case then.
Especially with the raising amount of live-service games and the demands set on them to keep functioning in the first place.
But I agree that a solution would be nice! Go and look for it then, people have searched, haven’t found it yet. Demanding one as none exists though? That takes some gal to do.
True, it’s about the journey of your character, nobody to powerful god-slayer. Which entails the leveling process and the itemization + crafting aspect nowadays (since without the RNG would cut in too early).
You can’t take one part out of it though and keep the system running smoothly, that’s the point.
It’s what in PoE is called a ‘core expansion league’. Sure, they also provide a league mechanic on top nowadays, but overall those were usually ‘simple’ ones back then.
Essences when the Atlas was introduced, which is just a mob frozen in stasis.
Harbinger with the Elder implementation, which was solely a singular mob with a few mechanics and spawning other mobs.
Betrayal with the master-rework… which was in-built into the mechanic and a disaster for standard players a whole league long, also the first one where they were bought by Tencent and had massively more funds, hence the sudden change in scale.
Same with Conquerors, Echoes and Siege, all core expansions afterwards that were big.
EHG doesn’t have the ability to divert their efforts into secondary things yet, we have not even a finished campaign and are already getting the first end-game core expansion.
Why before the campaign is finished? Because you named it… endgame needs improvement, not even fundamental, just more content available then it has now since you’re ‘through’ in theoretically 5 hours or so.
Unless a better solution is already present you can’t fault a company for doing it, since that’s what makes them even function.
It’s a nonsensical argumentation line.
Provide a new one, make it hold up against scrutiny and people actively dismantling it through the aspects known in game-development that cause something to fail and then we can talk on about it.
Before that it’s a ‘nothing argument’ since there is no existent solution yet.
I mean… someone needs to invent spontaneous food materialization… us farming for food is such a old method, and everybody does it! But it causes so many issues… someone should do something against that, right?
Same argumentation line. No alternative yet available means no argument to talk it down… yet.
I hope it changes though, and the sooner the better.
Because it’s not ‘we always did it this way’ but instead ‘we don’t have a functioning alternative yet’ and experimentation on such a fundamental level is more then dangerous.
The second a company comes up with a solution you’ll see the bandwagon jumping on it happily though.
Just because humanity always had to work it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t thrive towards not needing to do it anymore.
But alas… we still need to, that’s called ‘reality’.
Then play legacy and you don’t have that in the first place.
Working force needed to provide said code and assets.
Money to buy assets if the work-force isn’t available.
Time-investment needed with such a high quality product as LE to uphold at least their quality standard.
Van Helsing. Great base game. Little content. No funds to continue expanding and no method built into it to allow it in the first place.
Chronicon, single player, no method for monetization beyond initial payment. Hence no option to endlessly develop further.
Needs some more?
A live-service game provides the opposite of a single player one because people enjoy staying with a single game for long times if it provides content… content isn’t free though, DLCs can flop majorly… a time-based investment system which allows for small-scale payments has proven to be superior… that’s why the mobile gaming sector is massive.
Only if it entails the fundamental aspects which makes the game this game at the core.
Then it’s viable.
Otherwise nope, I don’t.
Then name viable ones.
If you don’t know what they initially said about making the game and the ‘why’ then we don’t need to argue in the first place.
Inform yourself and come back with said knowledge in that case.
I’ll give this game 3 cycles if they don’t.
EHG doesn’t seem like they’re stupid.
Hence yes, it’ll become available.
Not to speak that the devs already said they would best-case give everyone the same content at the exact same time before.
So rather thinking it won’t happen is out of the norm. Why would they hurt their own business model? Would make no sense to provide a legacy league when it doesn’t get the stuff that’s… well… legacy. Also returning repeatedly to the basic system causes the game to fall out of favor as well, PoE’s bad core implementations are already a major downside for them which people critique heavily and reasonably so.
Yes, cosmetics are a way to support the company, I personally don’t give two shits about vanity stuff, my character can look like hobo-mcscrounge and I would be fine with it as long as the mechanics work.
But first off… for a vast portion of people that’s not the case. And also it’s a constant monetary influx without any actual gameplay effect of any kind.
Unlike your suggestion there, which has quite severe gameplay effects.
In the setup EHG has for LE… yes. It is.
If it’s set up in a different way? Absolutely fine.
This is not a game which hinges on DLC though, this is a game which hinges on cyclic free content given out and sales through a microtransaction service of some kind.
Actually… no.
CoF was implemented to counteract the reduced drop-rates which became a necessity with a economy present.
That’s it, to allow those not engaging in the economy to not have a rather atrocious experience which doesn’t align with the expected progression speed… and they went beyond that, probably so it fits to future content as well.
The only experiment was to create a functioning and not inherently detrimental ‘frictionless’ economic setup, unlike PoE where trade is fully based on friction as a limiting factor.
Their setup works since it’s - at the basis - functional. The details though were messed up beyond end, lack of knowledge about the topic.
MG is failed in 1.0.
We’re at the stage of hyperinflation and market collapse currently.
The reasons are not important for it, 1.1 with adjustments will make it a next try.
Yeah, since the re-introduced the content of the living world again as well as all the missed story content that was event based.
Also by changing their model completely afterwards.
Doesn’t change the example that GW 2 was a failing product until then. Massive player influx which got less and less and less with each change in quite the substantial amount.
True… say the same at a story-based game like Witcher 3… ‘But I don’t have 40 hours to get there in the first place!’
Yeah, still ‘tough luck’, pick it up again sometime else simply and keep on playing.
Here we have Legacy for that exact reason, cycle’s not made for that type of gaming simply… so why enforce it to be?
I agree!
Which is why that shouldn’t be a direction EHG goes unless they wanna directly compete with PoE rather then cater to their own niche audience.
And directly competing with PoE in that regard as well? That would be a baaaad move, they don’t have the funds to do that. Whatever LE implements in a cycle will be copied over and adjusted to PoE the next league + 2 extra things on top to be in an even better position… they’re competition after all.
And competition is fantastic! As long as you’re on top and not the others when it comes to business
