How do people enjoy Cycles/Seasons?

General
61

I think you wildly underestimate how much some people pay each season. PoE has always had expensive supporter packs, some even going upwards of 200 bucks, and plenty of people still bought them.
Whales are very likely to spend upwards of 1k+ per season.

GW has but a very small fraction of players compared to GW2. It’s mostly entirely supported by the money that GW2 makes, and that has a lot more aggressive sales than GW had.

D2 had regular ladders. It didn’t introduce new content, but it did have exclusive content. So that’s why players kept returning to play it.

My reasoning is simply the history of all games and their expansions. Barely any game in history has had more than 2-3 expansions. And they all came at least a year apart.

Does it, though? It released a DLC a few weeks ago. Before that, there was a QoL update in march which didn’t add anything new to the game. Before that, there was another DLC in December. Before that, it had another DLC in July.
And their DLC’s are kinda small in scope. They don’t add that much to the game. They basically add another “map” to the game.

You mean the game that has a premium monthly subscription? Right.

Also, just look at the chart history and see that it only has baseline players except for a huge spike when the Fallout TV show aired.
It started at 32k players and since has around 15k daily players.

Likewise, look at GD (which is, after all, the game being referrenced as a model) and see that it always has baseline players except when major patches come out.

Also, are you trying to compare the popularity of the fallout brand with LE? That’s like saying that RE4 still has 10k players to this day, so EHG and GGG were better off making a campaign game.

Fallout 76 was a notoriously criticized game at launch, with vastly negative reviews when it came out. They’ve since fixed it a bit, but it’s nothing to model on, even among fallout games.

And yet no game does that, barring some very rare exceptions that don’t really have enough success to be relevant.
So I’d say maybe studios know something you don’t through the combined experienced of decades.

As you well know, MTX sales are all done primarily in the first week of a new season. Which means you need to regularly call out new players to join.
If all you have is, in practice, legacy/standard (because if both get the same content, the vast majority will simply join it due to being the path of least attrition) and content isn’t going away, then there’s no real reason to rush day 1 and no-life the first weekend. Might as well join in a week or two or four after things are more stable.

GW1 was also riddled with hacks and exploits for that very same reason.
It was pretty easy to get around their “verification”. Especially because it didn’t properly check for duped items.

Because they’re still adding core content and they don’t feel pressured financially yet to go into the full seasonal model.
I expect once they feel happy with the core content, then they’ll start doing it. Or maybe not. Maybe they will give it a go and not make seasonal exclusive content. I doubt it will work, but I would be rooting for them.

I’m actually curious to know the evolution of player numbers in LE for legacy/season since launch. If I had to guess, I’d say most players were in season for 1.0, kinda 50/50 on 1.1 and only about 25% of seasonal players in 1.2.
Would be nice if EHG released those numbers.

Either way, I’m sure they have those numbers internally and will make a decision based on them.

They’re working on offline MTX already (even for full offline which has no server communication at all).

I don’t really see any difference between that and a game launch from any AAA game. There’s a huge hype, most players will want to buy it and play day 1. Even for single player games. And they’ll splurge their money on the game.
Is that predatory?

If not, how is it any different from annoucing a new season, players rushing to play day 1 and splurging on MTX?

You even see this with movies, where people will all rush to see a marvel movie or fast and furious π*​r^​2 (because it keeps going in circles :rofl:). Is that predatory as well?

The sad truth is most of the time, players are the ones that generate their own FOMO, even if the game isn’t actively doing it.

D2 had regular ladders with exclusive content, which is when most players would return. It didn’t have a new mechanic each ladder, but it already enforced the reset philosophy. That’s how this whole model evolved. It started with D2.

TQ didn’t have servers where you could play and trade with random people, so it’s not the same thing. It’s like saying that any multiplayer game has no reason to exist because I played Super Mario Bros alone for years.

Yes, this is the main issue. The reason why GGG leaned into this so much is simply because they analyzed their numbers, saw where the money was coming from and tried to make the most of it.

62

I just want to add that another reason why seasonal model is preferable is simply balance:
New content is balanced around a fresh start. This makes it so that new players are kinda on par with everyone else and their progression is easier.

If all content is available for both season and legacy, then content needs to be balanced around legacy, which means that when you’re starting a new character, the ceiling is much higher. Which, in turn, means that new players have a much steeper hill to climb and will likely quit sooner.

63

Yeah, I was spitballing numbers that felt reasonable to me. Whales are definitely keeping GAAS afloat and (imo) it’s hurting the rest of us. Thankfully TQ2 devs already confirmed 0 microtransactions and going for the DLC classes/expansions model.

Right, I noted that GW2 is likely covering the majority of GW1s expenses, but GW1 was successfully running for ~5 years (iirc) before GW2 launched and was able to maintain servers and release quality expansion content with the only income being limited character slots/bank tab expansions + the purchase of the game+expacs. So if a game like GW1, competing against WoW in it’s prime for players, could sustain servers + release quality content off of the price of the game and some insignificant microtransactions, then LE and other ARPGs can do the same without resorting to GAAS models.

Problem is, when GAAS works, it really works and the company makes insane profits, but when it doesn’t work you end up with the thousands of half baked and shut down slops we wade through looking for gems. For every PoE and Fortnite Battle Royale there’s thousands of games like Exoprimal that don’t make money and are thrown on life support or shut down

64

And you seem to wildly overestimate the percentile of people actually paying for a game.

Yes, whales make the majority of the income for a company.

But the amount of people not paying a single cent even it out surprisingly well.
It usually changes when you implement such hefty monetization that people with an addiction are prone to ruin their whole life by paying the company so much they’re ruined… which is when those companies tend to make a surprisingly large amount of money which vastly offsets the non-paying customers.

Another reason why I dislike the business model so much.

The primarily returned for the ladder.
Not for the content that was exclusive.
That concept wasn’t so massively ingrained into the brains of players back then, many people didn’t even know about it.

Sure, there was a decent chunk which did over time… but not at the early seasons.

I present… The Sims.

I rest my case.

The main reason why few games have many expansions is because formerly many games were based on a story together with gameplay, and since the story wasn’t set up to expand on it massively it wasn’t done.
When no side-stories that were respectively worthwhile were available you rather did a new game with a new story. Why? Because you have the experience. You can improve on the former concepts and you can properly convey it in a full manner without enforcing you to go through the prequel first as examples.

Even MMOs did that. Everquest and Everquest 2 as prime early examples. The first game which diverted from it was World of Warcraft. And that game is a pure disaster nowadays because they retconned so much that it became a mess to even experience the storyline properly, everything is different. WoW classic is not only gameplay wise gone but also story-wise, which made the return of the classic servers… which is a mess as those then go through the same mess of progression of the story as the core game did… rather then having it freely available at any time.

And what do you know? The game was a success so companies got the ‘grand idea’ to copy the worst aspect of it, which is the permanent expansion of a game rather then making a sequel for it. Reduction of risk overall.

As well as commonly new resources. New machines, sometimes new systems.
The scope is not massive but they provide more then what D2 did.
And people still play that game heavily despite it being our for quite a long time. It’s a fantastic game.

And their DLCs themselves rather then the updates which add a surprising amount and come in troves comparatively to other games? They actively change the whole progression premise with a complete revamp of the strategy needed to get through it.
Same exact framework… other experience.

ONI does provide what many games don’t do. Which is keeping the core of the game the same while providing ‘more of the same’ in a proper manner.

Yes, it has.
OSRS has too and is cheaper to handle for Jagex in total then 5 WoW servers likely.

And 15k players is a healthy playerbase by the way, for a game which flopped like nearly nothing else it shows how much they changed and improved over time. Not great, by no means… but it’s decent nowadays.

That’s because RE 4 was the last great RE before they changed the formula majorly. That’s why so many play it.

They had a great formula but 1-3 were simply more dated, so people stayed with 4.

Make a good game and people stay, simple as that.
Heck… why do you think Dwarf Fortress has so many players and everyone knows it despite it being a disaster of a UI like nothing else before the steam introduction? And even now it’s more complex to learn then PoE is. Still a large fanbase.
Yes, it dimples around at 1k concurrent players but if those brothers weren’t solely dedicated to 2-3 updates a year (which often don’t change anything substantial for one of the 2 modes) but actual business-savy - which goes against the premise of it being their love-project - then it would’ve vastly higher numbers as well from merchandise, potential DLCs, maybe a few devs which work on specific systems to increase the size of the game and improve it overall a lot faster then those 2 ever could.

Yeah, I know what they know.
Got a surprise hit? Capitalize on it! Milk that cash-cow into obvlivion! Make 20 games with 15 of them being mediocre or even absolutely garbage until you’ve ruined your reputation, everyone hates you and you’re seen as the scum of humanity for your business practices which are anything but consumer friendly while laying off hundreds of employees so your CEO can cash out dozens of millions every year and buy a new yacht whenever he wants!

Think that’s a good thing?
Capitalism hurray?
It’s not a good thing, it comes at the cost of the customers.

Simply make a good game and when you wanna do cash the milk-cow solely for financial reasons then you need to get kicked into oblivion.

Moon Studious could’ve milked the ‘Ori’ franchise like a darn cash-cow besides their merchandise. It’s the best received platforming titles of… 2 decades I think? But their goal wasn’t milking it, it was providing a complete enjoyable story which in 50 years people will look back and say ‘Yeah, that… that is a masterpiece of a product, it’s worth to keep it in existence’.
It’s the same as The first Supreme Commander, which was a completely unique spin on the genre.
Or Zelda: A Link to the Past, which is still seen as one of the best games of the franchise, unlike the new ones which are mostly generic slob. Even despite the absolutely atrociously aged graphics of Ocarina of Time that one is still known by basically everyone who plays - or played by now - Nintendo games.
That company was for a long time ‘the good guy’ by providing interesting creative new ideas, banger after banger after banger of top-end games of all sorts, furthering the whole gaming sector massively. And then they started to follow modern trends and make full-scale game-slob as well, and now everyone hates them too… even many hardcore fans which stayed until the Switch 2 which was the last straw.

So yeah, I clearly know how to predate on customers to make cash solely for cash’s sake.
I’m not a piece of steaming shit though… so I wouldn’t do it. Which is the difference between those ‘wildly successful games’ that nobody really really likes… and those which are just well made well received games and everyone knows… but despite not playing it they can say ‘Yeah… that one… that’s a special thing. Not mine… but it’s definitely a good thing!’

That was mostly their security measures, they were new in the gaming sector and especially multiplayer aspects.
Nowadays protocolls and measures against hacking are vastly more advanced, there’s such a myriad of possible verification methods out that even people at the top end of coding have troubles creating a good hack to circumvent some of those systems. And prevalence makes it an issue, not some individual nitwits.

Plainly spoken? They’re released… f their ‘core content’.
Shouldn’t have released.
No excuse there, I’m sick of hearing it. ‘But they’re still adding xyz!’
Nope, they get judged by how they present themselves. They wanted to present themselves as release-worthy, so they get that.

Plainly spoken? I do neither :wink: should tell you enough.

Depends? Are you offering things like ‘play 3 days early for another 50 bucks’ or ‘season pass pre-launch’? Or ‘Get those things in-game only with the 250€ collector’s edition’?

Then yes.

One word here:
Arrrrrrrr!

And yes, it is nowadays. Movie prices have become exporbitant. I remember when you went to the cinema and used up maybe 50% more money then going for a meal, you had popcorn, you had a sizeable drink, maybe a small snack of some sort… and your ticket. And they played older movies regularly still rather then solely new releases. You just went there for the experience of a cinema and now because you could only experience your 3D movie there and hence you gotta pay quintuple the price of a streaming service while having to wait a year for it to even get there even while everything is digital nowadays anyway.

So yes… absolutely yes. Hollywood is a shit-show for a reason. Disney is too. Heck… Dreamworks showed them up in all areas. High quality despite low costs, ridiculously well made movies comparatively. Everything.

Welcome to a prime psychological aspect of humans.
FOMO is a thing which is powerful, it’s not at the responsibility of the customers to not be predated on, it’s the task of the predator to not be one.

Hence proper regulations.

65

They will also, from what I’ve seen, not use servers for the game. It’s the same model as GD where you can connect individually to players.
So no servers to maintain.

Only a small percentage of players even cared about the ladder.
The main reason why people joined ladder every few months were the BiS runewords and charms that weren’t available in non-ladder.

So… like I said, barely any game? The fact that you have to point out an exception only proves my point.
Also, looking at the expansions for Sims4, you have pretty much one per year, which also furthers my point. You don’t get 3-4 expansions per year like you do with a live service model.

And yet that is what GGG has been doing for over 10 years and it’s lauded as the best in the genre and GGG as a great company which everyone loves to support (barring the PoE2 debacles).
So what changed?

You seem to miss my point. Companies don’t have to create predatory practices to still benefit from FOMO. Look at BG3. Nothing in the game feeds into FOMO. And yet, when it released, players created their own FOMO and everyone had to play it day 1.

Why? Because of the social aspects of our society. If you’re not playing BG3 on launch, you’re not cool and you’re on the outside. If you don’t want the new SW movies in the first day, you’re on the outside.
And yes, some companies will lean into it without being predatory. While others will take advantage of it. But most of the times the FOMO is created by the players, even when there isn’t a reason for it.

I, for one, mostly play buy games when they go on sales. I see no reason to play 70 bucks for a game to play it day 1. I don’t mind playing them 1 year later.

Much like I don’t mind not playing GD for a year or two. It won’t change. It’s still there waiting. I will return to it eventually.
Much like I wouldn’t mind doing the same to LE.

However, it’s not players like me that sustain a game studio.

But ultimately, like I said before, I believe the main reason why the seasonal model evolved the way it did is simply balance. You balance new content around a fresh start. This keeps the ceiling fairly accessible to new players since everyone starts fresh.
The ceiling isn’t too unattainable.

Whereas if you have the same content for both, then you need to balance the game around legacy. Around level 100 characters with 2LP red rings/double corrupted magebloods. Which means that each new content that gets added has a higher ceiling than the previous one.
Which in turn means that new players will have a huge ceiling to climb to reach the same point as other players.

This does compound until you reach the point of “Oh yeah, you have to grind for content A, then grind for content B, then C, etc. You should catch up in a year or so”. Which drives players away.

66

this is one of many reasons why i dont play poe. poe’s drops are balanced around trade. the existence of trade economy gave the devs a reason to nerf the drops. similarly in LE the devs were cracking their heads trying to solve this issue.

i feel their CoF vs MG was a brilliant solution. BUT they fucked it up themselves by introducing exclusives locked behind aspirational content. as a “weaker” player, i feel quite betrayed as i spent so much time on CoF, enjoying the game only to get this absolute wall. i should have rolled MG so i could just by pass the content and buy what i need and be done with it.

as for your statement that multiplayer shouldnt exist because you played mario alone. i think that is a significantly different scenario.

people who play mario single player barely miss out anything and can enjoy most of the game. as is.

permanent players lose all progress if they want to enjoy seasonal content in a POE league. they actively lose out. if they dont, the lose out exclusive content that might not return to the game.

experience wise, reset only seasons are a net loss to permanent players. you can try to justify it all you want. suffice to say i m already done with this game model to care anymore.

this is correct and this should always be the case for new seasonal content. it should be balanced around a fresh experience hence it should be balanced around players who choose to reset.

10000% disagree. legacy by definition was never meant to “balanced”. the entire concept of players enjoying permanency is the infinite acquisition of wealth. you seem to not understand that.

but if i were to entertain this notion. do you realize that sometimes players can get MORE powerful in a season compared to legacy? it sounds weird but thats exactly what can happen. and it happens in poe once in a while. harvest gave player access to deterministic crafting. crucible gave players access to weapons that can make a random weapon better or on par with mirror tier weapons on standard. ToTA gave players access to powerful tattoos that no longer drop. sanctum gave players an extra boost with an extra item slot (sanctified relic). affliction gave players HALF a new ascendancy. in the latest league players now have access to mercs which give players more power.

if i dont use poe as an example then lets look at d4. in d4, right before the first season, the devs slapped a heavy nerf on everything. instead they introduced borrowed power where players always got some form of power if they played in a season. one streamer put it as “blizz cut off one of your arms, if you play in a season, you get the arm back, but if you play on eternal, you’re stuck with one arm”.

thats a bigger extreme in the opposite direction.

so when you say seasonal content should be balanced around legacy, what are you actually asking for? legacy players can be weaker than reset season players.

the reality is you simply dont want players to skip the grind. and for me, i m doing just that. by simply not playing the game anymore. i m doing what you want. there may be others who would follow suit. the numbers maybe small but thats the result that will eventually happen when players realize theyre playing a substandard version of the game.

my d-like experience is worsened because of season enjoyers who refuse to allow permanent players to have fun. congrats. i m playing by your rules. i m playing other games. i m having fun elsewhere. tho i do still haunt the forums once in a while in hopes things change. tho i doubt that will happen.

67

And yet, if legacy and cycle both have the same content, the majority of players will play legacy. Seasonal will be the underdog. That means that if you don’t balance for the majority of your players, then the majority of your players blasts through the new content much faster. That means a much lower retention rate, which is vital for games with a live service.

This happens quite frequently, actually. That is because you need to add power creep every single season, otherwise players don’t really have a reason to return.
If you add new content but you can’t make your character stronger, then what’s the point of returning? It’s the same thing as before.

Every season (much like every expansion in the GD model) always brings power creep along new harder challenges. Those that don’t aren’t as successful.

That is because D4 actually uses the worse model of them all, which is seasonal content that never goes to legacy.
At least in PoE most of the content does make it to standard, even if it’s in a watered down version. And if they always did that, then standard players wouldn’t feel as much FOMO. Because they would know they wouldn’t be locked out of it. They’d just need to wait a few months to also get it.

Again, I’d like to point out that I do like the current system of both modes getting the same content (and even offline). But I do understand why companies use the GGG model, because it makes a lot more money.
I would like EHG to come up with a way to make it work. I don’t have great expectations on it, though.

Personally, I’d be fine if the content was simply staggered. Not like in PoE, where you get an overblown and unbalanced version of the mechanic which then gets watered down for standard.
If the woven mechanics for this season were exclusive to seasonal and I knew for certain that come season 3 I would get the exact same mechanic everyone played with, then I wouldn’t mind it at all. In fact, I would even prefer it, since I could enjoy a more stable version with the bugs and kinks fixed.

The main problem, like you pointed out, is simply seasonal stuff that doesn’t make it to standard/legacy. And the fact that you never know if GGG will make it core or not.
If you knew it would always make core, then that would be fine (for me).

This would be my ideal model. Just a staggered release between season and legacy where you always get the last season mechanics/items and don’t miss out on anything. You just wait a few months.

68

Yep, the majority just ‘started fresh’ true.
Many didn’t know specific items only available there existed. Internet wasn’t quite the large thing yet and fewer read up on it.

I presented the reasons for why it wasn’t done though. Don’t dismiss half the example.

Because they are not needed.
You don’t need massive cadence for those games because of the lack of ongoing costs.

How prevalently are you ‘nudged’ into their shop?
Does it exist but isn’t forcefully shoved into your face?
Do you open a menu and the first thing you see is ‘Buy our crap!’ while interacting with core gameplay elements like in Torchlight Infinite?
Or even open the game and the first thing you see is an ad about the current ‘buy this shit!’ stuff showcased like in Fallout 76?

No?
That’s the difference.

Which is why the concepts of EHG and GGG are fine but many many others aren’t.
With exceptions in the case of GGG where there’s aspects which are not fine (mystery boxes and Kirac’s pass)

Which is fine then, I’m specifically talking about the predatory aspects of it.
GGG also has partial issues with their mystery box system. And the Kirac pass. I detest both of them.

Which is fine. They didn’t provide a ‘play 3 days earlier!’ or ‘limited digital collector’s edition’ or any of that absolute crap.

Game mechanics also use FOMO, which is fine, it can be a positive experience if done well. But the point is that predatory usage of it is something which should be condemned, heavily.

Yes, and that’s absolutely fine and the optimal method in my eyes.

Balance the game. Create a new meta. Add some gimmicks to enjoy, let people start fresh, have a fresh experience and play parts and builds of the game they haven’t experienced that way before. All dandy :stuck_out_tongue:

And as a special mention to get into:

This is absolutely wrong.
It’s the permanency which is the thriving force there, not the balance for it.
As long as the market functions and doesn’t break for trading players.
As long as you can properly run content there.
As long as you aren’t missing out on stuff, actively.

Then all is fine. Balance for leagues, that’s what’s supposed to happen.
And heck… even for Legacy players a change in pace of that kind is nice, maybe make a new char since something seems enticing! It enlarges your rooster! Or play on your since 12 Cycles existing and steadily improved character that only needs a few adjutsments with the new meta. Because new meta or not… top-end of every skill needs to stay viable.
In PoE I can kill uber-bosses with my Tornado Shot speed farmer build. Why? Because my equipment is just that strong by now, despite being a dedicated map farmer and ill-suited for it. Needs skill… but I can do it.
I could also do it with a zoo-build. Or a melee build, or a self-caster build. Or friggin fireball if I want since the top-end makes everything viable. Sufficient investment makes all skills viable… not good… bot viable.

That’s something LE still has to learn. Extremely few skills are viable for Uberroth… and that’s a problem. Even with extreme investment, not high investment… extreme one.

That was an issue in Archnemesis league, where they actively did that.
It has since then been revised entirely.

SSF was never in a better state then in 3.26.
Memory Strands make crafting individual items vastly easier.
The recombinator makes it very possible for an individual with limited currency to get a top-end item as a result.
The scarab system allows extremely dedicated and targeted farming of content so you don’t get a random ‘spread’ of loot but specifically the things you search for. Be it Temples for corrupting your gems, beyond for currency to use on corrupted items, harbingers for getting fracturing orbs to create top-end bases which make crafting very easy in some cases. The essences, delve juice, delirium for the cluster jewels, abyss for the stygian vise and eyes and so on.
The Atlas passives and the scarab system which since 3.26 focuses to drop more of the content you actively run to re-run it makes that experience worlds better.

The vast majority of sales happens in the first 2 weeks.
EVen when blasting through content if the core gameplay is enjoyable players stay such a timeframe. It’s a common attention span aspect.

If your game lacks content variety to not cause people to go ‘ugh… I can’t see the same crap anymore’ then you need more, you failed to provide variety.
If your game can only achieve it through enforced resets then you also have failed, your game is not enjoyable enough to ‘just play’.

I can go back to Palworld and play on for hours whenever I want, since it’s good. And I do so from time to time despite it not being my core gameplay style. It’s just ‘a good fun game’ where the gameplay itself is fun.

If you need a crutch to keep players in your game then your game might not be as good as you think.

And they do in a LE cycle as well compared to Legacy.
Do you know why? Because the playing pace is more relaxed in the permanent content. There is no pressure. No ‘I need to be there before everyone else is’, which is substantially reduced through CoF at least.

Which is why I praise the economy in PoE so much, it’s stable in Standard. In LE Legacy is a disaster, and even the Cycle becomes one after a while.
You don’t have the pressure despite being in a economy which provides obviously incentive to get exclusive wares to sell for a premium before supply overtakes demand.

Which is the preferred way form every Standard player. But GGG hasn’t shown proper competence in that aspect.

Why do nonetheless play 10% in Standard? Because it’s still a good game. How many would play in Standard without this limitation? Many many more I would expect.

Exactly, there I agree 100% with you.

Staggered release.
But full guaranteed release.
And if it shows severe issues then deletion of anything which can’t be acquired anymore. Nobody should’ve items which a new player can’t get anymore.

69

How is it wrong? If the majority of your players are legacy you need to balance for them. Otherwise they will finish new content in 2 days and leave.

Do they, though?
As we can see by the stats, for a fresh start, the majority of players stays around for less than a month. That’s when most are satisfied with the goals they wanted to achieve.

If you already have an uber character, you’re not likely to last 2 weeks. Because you’ll reach those goals in a week, at most. This is especially true of whales. And streamers. Both of these will pick their uber character and be done streaming the game in 2-3 days. Nothing new left to achieve.

Yes. From time to time. I do the same with GD and D2. I usually play them for a few weeks once a year.
And as I mentioned before, I’m not the type of gamer that will sustain servers.

That is the main issue of having content be the same for both. You don’t have a need to return. Thus you don’t. You come back now and then. You might even skip 2-3 seasons.

Which isn’t a viable business model. Because at times your servers might have 100k+ or they might have 1k+. You can’t plan for that. And thus you need your servers to be at peak condition always, being able to host 100k+, even if most of the time you only have 1k+.

At least with seasonal models you know that you’ll have a peak at that exact time and that it will taper off regularly until you get to baseline players. It’s more predictable (not that it helped this disastrous launch for GGG, a clusterf*** not seen since Scourge. Actually worse, because 10 days later it was still happening).

70

They even do in D3… so yes :stuck_out_tongue:
Commonly they do.
Also Standard players after a new league start tend to stay around roughly the same timeframe. It’s between a week and a month commonly what’s seen.
It also correlates heavily with engagement in many other games, SP games primarily…
MP has other rules, majorly the social aspect or the competition, which both are very missing in this genre.

Seasonal changes and permanency are not mutually exclusive, which is the point of the argument.
You can have a fresh experience and still have a thriving community.

I mean… just look at Warframe for example. I think you got what… 5 factions nowadays? 6? Which is 6 sets of endlessly repeating enemies? And people nonetheless play it nigh endlessly? With 50k people online roughly?

That game is just a good game, period.
No seasonal model.
Regular changes but with no fixed timeframe.

Just normal… good… gameplay. End of it. Also live-service, one of the best monetization systems existing since you can entirely bypass it and you can get the premium currency through in-game trades from stuff you don’t even need anymore.
The trade system is ‘eh’ to say the least but works at least, time intensive.

Just well done.
Live-service.
None of those ‘mandatory things’ spoken of. Because they’re not mandatory. They are generally done though because they make success chance higher… if - as mentioned before - your product is not up to quality standards to provide a concruent proper experience good enough to sustain keeping people inside, with system that also focus on allowing long-term play but not enforcing it so you ‘don’t miss out’ on things.

1 Like
71

Do they? Most people finished D3 seasons in a week or less with a fresh start.
Most of the eternal players in D3 were just people that competed for leaderboards.

We don’t have anything to compare with, since no game uses that model.
What we do have to compare with is starting with a level 1 character and no items in your stash or starting with a level 100 character with every item in your stash.
You’re trying to tell me that the time required to achieve your goals is the same in both situations?

It’s not if you use the staggered model.
It is if you use the “everything is the same at the same time for both modes” model. Because with that one, your peaks are much lower, since most people don’t feel pressured to play day 1. Which means that your first week of profit is much lower as well.

And how many games didn’t survive? You keep pointing at the exceptions while disregarding the vast number of good games that didn’t make it.

Just look at Marvel Heroes. Lots of people claim they love the game. Many even say it’s their favorite. And yet it didn’t survive.
It didn’t push seasons, it didn’t push transactions. And it died.
This despite being a good game that people enjoyed.

So no, being a good game isn’t enough to keep servers afloat in the majority of cases. Players are notoriously fickle and will switch games on a whim, constantly. And sometimes they return for a bit, sometimes they don’t.

72

I enjoy the game.

That’s how I enjoy seasons.

It really is that simple.

73

By that logic, you should be able to enjoy Legacy just as much. There has to be something about cycles specifically that Legacy doesn’t give you.

74

as much as i agree with you and possibly a greater level of passion AGAINST forced seasonal resets. i feel that you’re being kinda unnecessarily antagonastic to maksi. he simply answered the original question that you asked but you didnt like the answer.

i’ve been on poe subreddit and forums for years. the notion is standard is a dead league. seasonal players are even antagonistic towards standard players to the point of mocking them for playing in a “dumpster league”.

its been a long time since standard players were the majority. i would say theyre a small minority.

you do realize some temp league players DETEST standard? i have some poe friends that exclusively play temp leagues. at the end of the league the give away EVERYTHING. they have no love for permanency and are at the point they delete old characters with no qualms. to them seasonal resets are the exact experience that they want.

assumption. we have no real full data. but i would say its fair to say retention for new leagues are usually 1-2 months.

i’ve also mentioned. the existing standard player base could be a large number. we do not know how many standard players have QUIT the game like me because we dont like being treated like 2nd class citizens. but i can guarantee one thing. IF resets was not forced, old school players who love standard would actually return and bolster the number of players.

but again that too is an assumption. we do not have the numbers. so i would just say any assumption on retention and regaining player interest is all guesstimates at best. i can theorize that it will entice standard players to return and its logical to think that way but i cannot give you any numbers. no one can. could it be more than seasonal players? who knows.

that is true for standard players. if i have nothing to chase i would not touch any temp leagues. but for season enjoyers, its a non issue. as long as the content is interesting they will come. look at kingsmarch. besides the melee rework (which i could enjoy on standard), the town building content was a breath of fresh air and without any power creep.

did you casually forget about stuff that never returned to standard such as crucible weapons? do you realize how great the FOMO is for standard players? my guildie was kicking himself for skipping crucible as he thought the items were going to be nerfed/poofed before hitting standard. the amount of salt he has for NOT participating is sky high. that level of FOMO is unhealthy and i participated in it for a large part of the last 5 years. crucible weapons, sanctified relics, tattoos, anoint oils, catalysts, charms/affliction ascendencies. some entire mechanics made it to core, some got nerfed, some exclusive gear was allowed to go to core but newer ones could no longer drop, and some were outright DELETED.

i’ve been through a lot of shit FOMO that i feel your statement downplays how bad things can become. as per the squidgames meme. “ive played these games before”. if you dont have that level of FOMO, then try to understand where i m getting at. if you don’t then you’re not arguing in good faith. by choosing to ignore experiences that others have literally went thru and if you didnt know then now you do. as i just told you how it is. how it was in poe. i dont want to go thru that in LE or any other game for that matter.

so you do want players to get all content too. so we are in agreement.

however when you talk about making money. neither you nor me can pinpoint whether or not seasons are the actual money makers. how many whales are there? how many of them are impulse buyers? i was a whale/impulse buyer. i HATED leagues but i supported GGG regardless. i spent a great deal of money too in fact my real name is in the credits.

i ll be real. i can actually agree with you that it is HIGHLY logical that seasonal content brings in a lot of money. but i m gonna point out you have ZERO data whether or not forcing resets would give any impact. no one has that data and you’re insisting that you’re right for some unknown reason. dude. ZERO DATA.

your ideal model based on zero data.

waiting a few months is missing out something.

personally i think poe is still way too stingy on drops. i’ve played a decade but besides harvest league, i’ve never crafted anything myself. i always save up and buy stuff directly.

competent players complete the campaign and probably drop 1-2 div/ex, 3-10 chaos, 20-50 alts.

how can players expect to craft their gear when its highly rng but super stingy? LE exceeded POE by leaps and bounds where players are crafting gear during campaign. i always actively slap upgrades on my gear till i run out of currency or stability.

i cant return to poe after playing LE.

2 Likes
75

Some people will do seasonal resets no matter what the model you use. Just like some people will play standard no matter what the model you use.
Both are minorities.

With the PoE model, most players gravitate towards season and a new character because that’s where the new stuff is and there’s no guarantee it will go to standard and even if it does it won’t be the same.
With a model where content is the same for both, most players will gravitate towards standard/legacy, since that’s the path of least attrition. Even if they start a new character, they’d still have lots of resources to make the experience easier.
With a staggered model like the one me and Kulze defend, it might actually be evenly distributed.

And it’s dumb to hate/detest other players. That’s like league players hating SSF ones. Or HC ones. That’s not a fault in the game, it’s a fault in the person.

Like I asked Kulze:
Do you seriously believe that the time required to achieve your goals is the same whether you start with a level 1 character and an empty stash (and empty economy) or you start with a level 100 character with a billion gold and a stash full of powerful items?

It seems clear to me that the latter will always reach their goal first, thus quit sooner, thus retention rate would be lower.

Season enjoyers, like I mentioned, are a minority. Most people join a new league in PoE because of FOMO.

Highlighted because you seemed to have missed it.

Compared to D4 (which is the context for that quote), PoE isn’t as bad.

I’d say that GGG and Blizzard already made that research and came to a conclusion.

My data is that the most successful games in the genre have access to all the data and they have decided to lean into this.
Especially Blizzard, who only cares about profit, would have changed the model if there was a better one.

Is it? Do you miss out if you play GTA VI on launch day vs 6 months later when it goes on sale? Or do you play the exact same game, only 6 months later?

76

There is no seasonal content at the moment, it’s all core which is why it’s being added to both season & legacy at the same time. As has been discussed at length (in this very thread), they might go down the PoE route but they may not.

That’s kinda fair, but on the flip side, seasonal games do also have to add new stuff for the enticed players to come back & play.

When did WoW come out versus D2? Do you think the cashflow from WoW might have made things a teensy bit easier?

Laat I checked, GW1 was fully online & required a permanent Internet connection. You could play it solo but that’s not the same thing as I believe you know.

What’s that train driving game that has ~£10k’s worth of DLC? Eurotrain or something similar? And Stellaris. That said, just because a small handful of games may have a lot of expansions does not mean that most games do. The Sims, Stellaris, etc are likely the exceptions that make the rule. DJ also said “barely any” which means that it’s rare.

3 Likes
77

I had no intent for it to come off as antagonistic. I simply wanted to further the discussion, as Makszi’s reason’s are entirely his or her own, and I’m just curious as to what about Seasons makes them the defacto way of playing the game over legacy for them. If it’s just for the sake of enjoying the game then there shouldn’t be a difference between Cycles and Legacy, leading me infer that something about Cycles is more enjoyable than Legacy for Makszi.

@Makszi, if I came off antagonistic, I apologize!

78

Umh… the reason they closed were financial issues based around licensing problems.
Marvel is from Disney… and we know how ‘great’ Disney is :stuck_out_tongue:

The game was good! But it wasn’t profitable enough to pay for those licenses.
Which I’ll only mention that it’s the fault of the current licensing system and how the pricing is set. Same with sports games btw. Same with racing games and so on.
It’s a shit-show and companies going into those areas tend to all fail unless they’re absolute disgusting… imagine what I wanna call them afterwards… like EA with FIFA is for example.

Yep, this is a problem for the campaign stage, I absolutely agree.
Currency during the campaign is awful. And they didn’t learn in PoE 2 at all. It made the perception of their game ridiculously bad in 0.2 combined with the struggles for progression since they reworked balance majorly in the worst way possible.

It is, and then it falls off massively.

In PoE it’s the other way around. The further you play the more prevalent crafting usage becomes.
In LE the further you play the less you craft since basically nothing dropping is worthwhile to craft on.

I will say compared to D4 it is worse actually.

Why?
Because if you don’t play leagues then you might not solely miss out on the experience… no… you’ll maybe even miss out on the gear permanently after which other people own. You can’t ever get it… but others own it.

That does actively feel worse for a min-maxer then it not existing at all anymore.

Yes and no.

In a social framework it is, you can’t talk to people about it because you don’t play it. Which is the social FOMO aspect… likely what’s meant there.

But no because there is no ‘content FOMO’, which is the one I’m talking about majorly related to those models.

Both are FOMO but both from a different perspective.

Unlikely given that WoW released 4 years later. 3 years after LoD was released.
So Blizzard at that time had a RTS game with massive success and no monetization. A ARPG with massive success and no monetization and worked towards a MMO without having yet any monetization while upholding a universal server verification system framework which expanded over the years… with no monetization.

So nah… absolutely nah I have to say.

Yeah, the verification process was still ongoing, which made it online-only.
But the system load is quite a bit different then it was back then. Instances were loaded and created locally as much as I remember for GW 1, not handled by the server actually.

Could be wrong though, but such systems at least existed and I wanted to relate back towards the server load aspects and hence the respective costs needed to uphold a server structure.

One is relatively cheap - in comparison - while the MMO-style server setup of all being server-side as much as possible is simply expensive to keep up.

79

There are also plenty of good games where studios simply don’t have the means to deal with them being big. Splitgate and Knockout City are two great examples of this. Lauded games that players loved, but maintaining a big server farm isn’t easy.
It should be noted that neither of those games had seasons nor did they have heavy MTX monetization.
And they’re far from being the only case. They’re just the two I’m the most aware of.

A game being good isn’t enough guarantee that it will survive as live service if you don’t lean into the seasonal model.
Sometimes it is and it flourishes. Sometimes it isn’t and it dies. As a studio, would you really take that chance when you know a formula that works?

80

The seasonal model isn’t the issue.
The type of setup for the seasonal model still is.

Kirac pass? Oof…
Mystery boxes/Lootboxes? Oof…
Supporter packs? Absolutely fine! Phasing them out again? Oof…
Immediate shop-related ads when opening windows or starting the game? Oof…

Those are the problematic things.

The same with the content.
Exclusive content for season/cycle/league? Fine! Removing it afterwards? Oof…
Even worse, allowing rewards to go over but no chance anymore to acquire it? Double-Oof…

There’s several aspects, and none of the mentioned ‘Oof’ ones is in any way/shape or form mandatory to uphold a successful product. Those are all either bad design decisions which piss off a portion of your playerbase or are actively predatory.