Contractors. But they’re expensive and that’ll just run 'em into the ground even quicker.
1 Like
You want to say who is more experienced then some guys from reddit who make their first game in unity? Well like everyone who already knows the drill and worked 1+ game already. They needed manpower for an otherwise undoable ammount of work. If this explenation is more to your liking.
speaking as a poe whale, heres my thought process.
first of all i cant actually afford to whale. whenever i buy an expensive pack, i suffer financially for 1-2 months before i stabilize. so if i ever buy anything its because i really wanted it.
there are practically a few factors that weigh heavily on my purchase
- do i like the look/fomo
- do i think the devs deserve the money/is it worth the money spent
- YOLO lets just buy some shit to support the devs
in poe’s case
- many mtxs make me go FUCK THATS SO COOL I WANT THAT.
- its GGG of course they deserve my money… but if its too expensive i ll reconsider and hesitate. either i cave in or i dont. if its cheaper or on discount, the hesitation is reduced.
- in many cases especially during the early days of POE’s history i became accustomed to random mtx just to support the devs. i no longer do that as i have too many mtx that i realize i end up never using.
D4
- holy shit, some armourset/piece look just so damn good and i really want em!
- due to me not vibing with d4, primarily because its very focused on seasonal content (season characters have access to seasonal powers while eternal realmer only have access to their OP gear. seasonal characters with decent gear tend to be competitive or downright better than eternal players thanks to the seasonal powers. also their cosmetics tho VERY HIGH QUALITY, are only for one class so to me its not worth it.
- NO YOLO, fuck blizzard
LE
- some of the mtx looks cool, but never to the point that i felt FUCK I MUST GET THIS. even now most of the mtx doesnt appeal to me
- i dont feel the mtx is worth my money. its like buying a sticker for a bike that i only use once in a month and then again i’ve lost most interest in biking.
- YES, i have bought mtx just to support the devs. do i feel its worth my money? fuck no. but i recognize that they’ve created a great game.
as for timing, i would say its VERY reasonable to assume MOST people buy new mtx/packs near any new league announcement/release.
new league announcements are a great way to market mtx and make older players check out the entire catalogue to see what they’ve missed. this is how i actually end up buying mtx. i’ve bought supporter mtx on league announcement day several times. it really depends on if the mtx looks nice.
on a different note, back when i was going hard on poe, league announcements didnt matter. i YOLO bought mtx if i felt like it. in fact i had normalized “supporting POE” at that point that it didnt really matter.
adjacent to this yolo spending is how people buy stuff on clash of clans. i dont like the game but i know how some people with disposable income, dont mind paying the devs a few bucks here and there but ends up to 20-70 usd a month. and talking to these people, its more of “spending spare change on things they find worth it”. in CoC, theres a huge amount of p2w. to these people speeding up a buildings progress is valuable enough to them to spend money.
there are many reasons why people buy mtx. but to me a huge part of it depends on whether or not players find the mtx worth it. and thats the crux of my thread.
i simply dont find anything worth buying in LE. and most of my friends tho they like LE’s systems dont like how LE looks like to begin with so they dont even care for mtx as its to the point they dont even feel like playing the game for too long.
Personally? I don’t buy cosmetics. I’m probably a minority in that regard. I still haven’t even used the box price store money yet. Expansions being free with classes being something extra feels the safest way to go about things given their initial intentions. If they are legitimately not getting the money they need to achieve their plans, let alone keep the lights on and not have to make a stand alone/P2P client, they had to pick something from the sounds of it. They are in an unwinnable situation, so as long as they intentionally release the paid classes a bit under powered maybe they can keep the complains to a minimum.
thats the problem. the game as is has content that around c500. there definitely are a lot of builds that can do that but there definitely are many pitfalls that players can fall into which make them have a harder time. i dont believe the game is balanced enough to begin with. member back in s2 when sentinels were all the rage?
as for paid classes being under powered. the obvious problem is, why bother buying them if theyre underpowered? you might struggle more if they are so theres literally zero incentive to buy them.
also i heard the devs use maxroll build guides to play their game. do they even know why certain builds work better than others? i really have low confidence that they can balance things out as its already S3 and classes still dont feel equal enough.
as for not buying cosmetics ever, i used to be like that too, and if i m being honest, i m leaning towards being like that nowadays. i m more tight with my wallet at the detriment of the devs. gamedevs have POE to thank for that as i dumped a huge load of cash on them only to end up with a game that i dont really enjoy playing.
but that said, if you really love a game and the devs, try and support them by buying their stuff.
its funny, in WWM i actually bought some paid cosmetics but i m being very stingy with my purchases. the game stays a float because they have different tiers of cosmetics.
5-10 dollar tier - for regular folk who want to support the devs
100 ish dollar tier - for people with more disposable income
40K dollar tier - for those who have so much money that they dont know what to do with it.
no one shames freeloaders, nor the whales there. in fact i find it wholesome that a lot of people actually thank the 40k supporters as the gamers there are mature enough to realize that they’re helping the game be free for those who cant afford/choose not to spend.
and as a disclaimer, i only encourage you to buy mtx to support devs, no shaming. you dont have to justify why you dont. theres nothing wrong with not buying anything extra.
“How I think LE should be monetized” – and initially, it’s all about GGG. Brilliant. I thought the post was in the wrong forum or had the wrong title.
Honestly, I’m not interested in GGG at all. Except that back in 2018, when Tencent bought 86% of the shares, they should have renamed themselves “Grinding Tencent Games.”
MTX are a thing. It might not be your thing, but let’s put it this way: tastes differ.
Let me quote EHG.
They could lose so many players that nobody would play anymore, and your fever dream of “screw the entire seasonal model” is highly unlikely, unless they go into debt somewhere and buy the game back if Krafton makes a buyback offer. The Krafton acquisition will probably also mean that quarterly targets will be set immediately or after a certain period, and those are impossible to achieve with a game model like Grim Dawn’s. They might not even be able to make such a drastic change without Krafton’s approval, or it could even be considered a breach of contract. And Krafton paid $96 million. They probably won’t be investing any more money in the near future.
1 Like
The classes or addons untill the store groweth and the graphics upgradeth for better quality skins.
EGH doth not follow GGG. There is no convenience fee. Unless, of course, ye count the purchase of the game as such, although it is not enow, cos it’s happen only at once in Last Epoch, and GGG releaseth more new stash tabs. Another words, the prices are very different,
lmao you’re one of the tencent haters. its thanks to tencent that ggg has so much funds to go bonkers with their content. but anyway not too relevant to this topic.
i agree actually, just LE mtx specifically arent selling well. i also agree, tastes differ. it differs so much that EHG literally could not support their game. EHG openly went and said they couldnt get it to work. i wonder why…
for sure. you can quote their original intent. but it didnt work. simple as that. theres a saying. something like keep trying something over and over again despite not working is insanity.
maybe you’re right. but then again, creating modern seasonal content costs a huge lot of money. i bring up POE a lot because LE did rely on POE’s seasonal model, where the major difference is LE has an initial cost. do i need to remind you that POE started with league content thats just a crappy lootbox that spawns random mobs? they had organic growth where their costs of making league content was low as the league content was actually quite simple in comparison to now.
look at LE’s current seasonal content. ITS HUGE. it takes a lot of company resources. it simply is not sustainable as they dont have enough playerbase. d-likes are a niche market. LE is a niche of a niche.
you mean to say people are not leaving already? based on steam charts the peak number of players keep dropping with the recent peak being what? 80k ? dropped to 20k within a month then 5k then 2k.
have you not seen reddit/these forums/youtube. many people are pissed for many different reasons.
yeap. thats likely.
do you think EHG can meet these targets with such a small playerbase that are already pissed off with EHG and saying stuff like theyre done with the game?
the only way LE can succeed is if krafton pumps a lot of money into the game and take a gamble.
No, GGG has so much cash to go bonkers making content because they have had a lot of people throwing cash at them on a regular basis. If you look at GGG’s statutory accounts they’ve been cash-rich for a long time, well before Tencent bought the rest of the shares. I’m not surprised you don’t know this because normal people don’t peruse a company’s statutory accounts.
I wonder if PoE would be possible now, given the content expectations are leagues above where they used to be back in the day. I’m not sure if GGG started up now they’d get away with the scale of seasonal content that they had early on. Infact, I kniw they wouldn’t because people were saying this about LE, that they need to provide PoE-scale content out of the gate.
i dont know if you know this but as a standard player, a lot of GGG’s actions became quite reckless after they tencent money injection. i will agree that GGG has money before the acquisition but it definitely gave them more breathing room and empowered them to do more radical changes. arch nemesis for example was one of the biggest changes that got a lot of backlash. also many actions that did not respect standard league players happened after the acquisition. i played the game actively back then and i actually felt this shift.
definitely not lol. thats why LE is suffering. it costs a lot to create modern seasonal content. ggg’s shitty seasonal content was accepted by the players because it was new and we had nothing else to compare it with. in fact we were celebrating all the piss poor league mechanics they pissed out. i say all that in a joking tone, because if we’re comparing them to what we have now, its really laughable. but i remember back in the day, everything ggg gave us, no matter how shitty compared to today was something we celebrated. also it gave us a reason to shit on d3 “look at all these new league mechanics, what does d3 have?”. the first league that converted me to actually go hard in a league was talisman. it had the basic template of modern seasonal content, with exclusive loot and a league exclusive boss that can be summoned/triggered. other past leagues were basically RNG.
d4 is not my cup of tea, and a lot of poe enjoyers dislike d4. but one thing we all cant deny is it appeals to a larger audience. how many players do they have? a huge lot. and their mtx sales are huge despite many people saying D4 Bad. if the mtx wasnt priced so high and if i was still invested in d4, theres so many mtxs that i would have bought in the game. the feeling of want is strong. their mtx sales and their player base is huge so they can actually afford to make seasonal content.
another game not to be forgotten is TLI. its p2w but many players can get far without spending a cent, which keeps them playing. some end up getting the “support the devs” mindset or some go goon and see a new hero/hero skin that could be their new obsession and pay money for em. tli too has a large playerbase. tho you cant exactly track the numbers accurately. steamcharts show a laughable 500 concurrent player number, but the big reason why this number cannot be trusted is the game can also be played on mobile using your steam account. they have actual paid classes and actual p2w mechanics but they have enough revenue to keep pushing new content. they have tons of cool looking mtx. with the revenue they have, they are able to constantly create new seasonal content and new heroes/skins/mtx. and the most important thing is, the stuff sold SELLS. back when i played tli, there are many things that i WANT. and i actually forked out cash for.
i guess TLI managed to do what they did is because the publisher is HUGE. they can afford to sustain losses for a few years and TLI is not their only game.
on a separate note. i think there could be some sort of seasonal fatigue in effect too. like for me, i prefer not to touch new seasonal content and prefer permanency. GD has a steady rate of roughly 1-2k active players, despite having more or less no seasonal content. i would argue GD has more actual long term enjoyers than LE. titan quest 2 is on the horizon too. speaking of titan quest 2, its pretty solid. the game is incomplete and theres no cosmetics but the visual style is in my personal opinion far more pleasing than LE.
i actually would be playing tq2, but right now i m hooked on WWM.
2 Likes
If you play on mobile using steam, then it’s counted on steamcharts/steamdb.
It’s only accounts outside of steam that aren’t counted in those sites.
true but, you can play TLI using facebook or google accounts. or even other various ways to login. and for those people they might not even use steam.
personally i started off playing the game using my mobile. but once i got invested, i ported over the account to steam so i use my steam account instead. that said, steam accounts are definitely not necessary to play tli
EDIT: out of curiosity i checked. TLI released in 2022 while LE released in 2019. TLI now just finished season 9 and is awaiting the release of s10.
the game originally started off with 5 heroes. inclusive of sub class, there now are 24 heroes. each of them look cool and their skins can be really desirable. then again it also caters to gooners so i guess thats a reason for success
2 Likes
In 2019 LE was in EA, not released. They didn’t have seasons. They didn’t even have MP by the time TLI released.
You can only compare with LE since release, meaning early 2024.
true, and regardless of everything i will still standby my words of praise when i say EHG did accomplish a huge lot with LE. sadly its doesnt have the support/revenue it needs to keep up its original vision.
XD kinda had a lot going for it. they copied POE2’s skill system, added a hero system and a separate class system (taken from TL3). got an existing IP. made a ton of waifu/husbandos, didnt neglect and in fact prioritized mobile market and on top of that they have a lot of china players enjoying the game. china people tend to be VERY loose with their wallets when it comes to games they like. p2w or cosmetic. its a normalized spending habit.
I heared a lot of times PoE2 has to little endgame content and mapping alone isn’t doing the trick. Then again people look forward to new content because of GGG’s track record. Them beeing a no name studio with no funds making a new game or with the same approach as in PoE1? I think they could end up in a bad place. Then again having a giant but mostly meaningless skilltree hooks people up.
2 Likes
Not really. Since I’ve never actually seen how a game has changed after being acquired by Tencent, I can’t really comment on that. It just sounded good and honest.
The questionable gameplay mechanics I experienced in PoE, or that you currently have to pay for a game that’s supposedly going to be free in the future, could have come directly from GTG.
I watched some videos of PoE 1 from 10 years ago and checked out the MTX. In my opinion, that stuff was ugly. I’m surprised anyone bought it at all. But PoE had time to evolve. With LE, many expected a certain design and top-notch quality from the start. If PoE were released today in its original form, I think it would be torn to shreds.
The player base and their sometimes unrealistic expectations are probably also a problem when it comes to their failure to finance themselves through microtransactions. You simply can’t expect the same level of quality from an indie studio in the same timeframe as from a multi-billion dollar corporation with a studio that’s been around for 10+ years.
Their view on paid expansions was addressed and confirmed again, I believe in a post yesterday. Nothing has changed in that regard.
Last season wasn’t particularly huge. If you ignore the story, it basically consists of killing a dinosaur, running through the new map, defeating the final boss, selecting the next currency, and repeating the whole process. Compared to the Weaver season, the current one is really quite “small”… I don’t know how else to put it. Anyway, it was perfectly fine, as they were also working on the story in parallel. So it was a small season plus the story.
Since version 1.0, if I haven’t miscounted, I’ve counted three seasons and one event. That’s not too much considering it’s been a year and ten months since release.
However, there are constant bug fixes and occasional graphics updates, though I’d perhaps neglect the latter a bit at the moment, as the game looks good. Yes, yes, I know, “the MTX…” So, neglecting the in-game graphics for a certain period (1-2 seasons, for example) and instead improving the graphics of the microtransactions and adding new ones. It would be worth a try, I think.
I’m generally very rarely on Reddit. Regarding LE, I mainly stick to this forum, and there’s only one YouTuber who, while expressing his concerns, says he’ll take a look at it first and then condemn it if necessary.
The mob that sometimes forms is pure madness. No wonder the EHG employees are hardly active on the forum anymore.
I will answer this question with a counter-question: Do you believe that Krafton did not have an overview of EHG’s finances and player numbers before they even considered the purchase?
I’m no financial expert, but I think they were given a deadline. Either profit must be generated by then, or the game must be improved to such an extent that Krafton can then promote it (as cost-effectively as possible, perhaps via YouTube and social media) and from then on generate player numbers and profit. Or, because 96 million usd is peanuts to Krafton, they simply don’t give a damn.
Where there basically is nothing you can hardly sell anything 
Yep, but it’s also the only reliant method which has been proven to provide a somewhat steady playerbase sadly. So it’s a sort of mandatory thing for live-service games which function only with a steady playerbase.
Yeah, but that’s because they were in a position to be bailed out as Tencent wants them to stay open, which is one of their fundamental aspects. Hands-off until shit hits the fan… then they insert themselves until a crisis is averted. Allowed GGG to be more prone to risks.
So yeah, you’re kinda right with your argument.
The first argument makes it worse for EHG.
And the second is a big ‘no’.
As soon as it’s accessible by players we can compare progress of development.
Absolutely true!
But they’re also in the same area and directly compete… so kinda their own fault.
If they were a car company they would’ve stated ‘we wanna be better then Ferrari!’ and then went along to make a Honda Civic instead… lofty dreams and nothing else hence.
Gotta know what you go into before going into it.
At their pace mostly 4-5 Cycles long likely… but yeah, not only worth a try… it’s the thing they need to focus on instead of adding in-game graphic upgrades.
You can only compare quantity/quality/speed of seasons when both games have a seasonal model.
LE only switched to seasonal in 2024 with 1.0, so comparing TLI seasons between 2022 and 2024 with LE is nonsensical at best.
I can absolutely compare speed of progress overall depending on employee size. In terms of visible changes and also in terms of long-term mechanics which won’t show the results directly but lay the foundation for future changes.
There’s companies which work at a snail’s pace and there there are those able to churn out quality content in no time over and over again with basically no costs.
I mean… it’s the same in every single sector, you got a few companies which do good stuff, a lot of mediocre ones and a lot of bad ones.
EHG is mediocre. Not bad… but absolutely not even remotely ‘good’.