Yeah, and your point is valid.
Still not the topic. I solely presented the reasons I see for why the monetization didn’t or isn’t working well.
As for the PoE question: 99% sure it’ll be around, yep 
Both PoE 1 and 2, because otherwise GGG would be utter idiots in terms of business.
There is enough. If I add in the supporter packs and what is available ingame I feels plastered with MTX.
Uhm… duh? Like in every H&S game. Even the awesome looking D4 skins don’t offer much when things are in motion. Sure they offer a tad bit more but it’s still not cutting the cake for me.
What are you talking about? I played LE mostly in groups and I see the MTX of the ppl I play with. I’m not 100% sure but I would say I see MTX of other players in the hubs as well.
Many people would disagree with you most likely but I’m saying the basic gameplayloop isn’t that entertaining too.
Outside of testing a build or a new mastery it hasn’t. It “feels” all the same.
Well you forgot the quality of MTX and the outstanigness (is this a word?) of MTX. Yeah it sparkles and you maybe get some wings or whatever but you look like a fairy that was thrown into a unfortunate colour pallet and then draged through a dumpster.
For over a year already. For me things went downhill from 0.8 on.
No. Their existence means potential competition. That’s the scope of the arena I’m talking about. And competition builds up over time. It doesn’t just fall from the sky, which is what players seem to expect or believe these days. Ferrari and Honda, too, didn’t simply fall from the sky as they are today.
Are you comparing LE 1.0 to PoE1 1.0? Or are you comparing it to Grim Dawn? This kind of comparison is precisely one of the major problems some players have. It turns into this completely different kind of competition, and it becomes toxic and petty. Some people think they have a 50/50 say, that they’re the center of the universe, and that their opinion is the only right one. Think about it, some players consider themselves so important here that they write “farewell letters” when they quit playing the game. And, no, constructive criticism about why someone quits isn’t often offered. Constructive criticism is generally… well, rare here. It often boils down to “you don’t do what I want, so I’m angry”.
Years ago, there was another development team working on an indie game (I think it was something similar to Doom) that wanted to involve the players more. This ended with the players behaving disgustingly, so the developers withdrew for their own protection and barely communicated with them anymore. It reminds me a bit of EHG.
I sincerely hope that if you ever start something new, you’ll immediately be compared to people who have been doing it for years, and/or that you’ll be constantly reminded of how little you actually know. And remember: if this were applied in a work environment, it could be considered workplace bullying.
Ok? So no Detonate Arrow MTX is fine?
No Erasing Strike MTX (which was the most played skill in 1.2) is fine?
2 Daggers for example is fine? One a basically invisible reskin and one a Lagon themed one which could be nice… if the effect for it would be more visible to at least make it seen.
No character effects at all.
It’s laughable.
That’s why you add effects to push visibility to it.
And I dunno… my ages old Abyss Supporter Pack MTX is still clearly causing my character to look very different in PoE.
In LE I have to squint to see the difference in style.
I’m talking about towns being a mess for being social.
I talk about no enforced social environments at all.
You have to go out of your way to make it happen, which means groups of people you either know… or actively seek out.
The point is that visibility is not existent until someone actively seeks out others.
I can compare it to different stages of the game if you want.
Want the timeframe when they had the same employee number?
Or do you want the timeframe of actual existence?
In both cases LE doesn’t pull away better.
The only thing LE does pull away better with is player numbers in relation… but beware, while better customer-side wise for the business it means they failed even harder actually.
Why?
Because despite substantially more players they’re going bancrupt. And that’s not too far from the stage of when in comparison GGG stated (we can survive off of 5k players permanently) at their specific time.
We can indeed draw many unfitting comparisons… but if the fitting ones already fail then we kinda do still have a problem ongoing.
If you offer your product to a customer then the customer compared it to all other similar products.
I mean… it’s kinda baffling to argue about that aspect.
‘Is the product better or worse then others which are very similar?’ and that’s it. No more needed.
We can then compare price-range as well in relation to quality, but given that LE costs more then the ‘comfort prize-zone’ of PoE 1 even it’s even problematic there. There’s a reason why people state ‘if you buy the cheapest supporter pack in PoE 1 then you’ll be able to comfortably play as long as you want’. Which we can state is hence their ‘shelf-price’.
We could also look to the other competition then. But doing so with D4 isn’t all too realistic given their core target audience… and for TL:I? They’re actually functionally ‘F2P’, even if their functional monetization aspects are really not good ones.
If you wanna compete then you gotta provide, it’s simple as that.
Nobody will buy your bread if it tastes worse then the random baker around the corner… and no customer gives a single shit that ‘you’re new and inexperienced’ in a business.
Provide or die, that’s what capitalism is.
its something to be experienced. if you didnt feel it, it doesnt mean it didnt happen. i’ve played since open beta. they were very reckless with how they treated standard league players. standard was all about permanency but GGG kinda poofed/retroactively changed what standard players had.
also, after tencents initial investment (2018), ggg actually had the funds to expand the game a huge lot and in a direction that i didnt really like. before the tencents investments. the game’s end game was at t14-t16. triggering a league specific boss was t14 letting weaker players learn the boss but still being able to access it early. there was more build viability/diversity as the ceiling was low. suddenly ggg kept adding more stuff that raised the ceiling increasingly higher. t16s were no longer the limit. also, with the introduction of maven, it kinda felt that GGG gave up on balancing the game. for example in elderslayer invite, if you take too long, maven could clone baran, and you would have a huge lot of the screen being denied by baran’s mana sucking squares. its just a dps rush. also we got arch nemesis, which some people such as myself hate to this day. why am i against it? because it lacks balancing. you might not know/remember, nemesis mods were more difficult mods, but they balanced it by only allowing it on mobs or maps that enabled nemesis. this gave some balance to the game where not everything is stupidly deadly, and it let players do content more easily. for example if you were playing a trumelee build and needed to defend something, the monsters you had to face could be strong and dangerous but you could just kill them normally. but after Arch Nemesis (AN) enabled all mods on monsters, suddenly you could have lightning mirages/lightning spires, exploding orbs all chasing you. like wtf. i need to kill shit and defend the objective but i need to avoid all these BS mechanics. every second not spent doing dps is another second of monsters getting against my objective. and GGG is fine with that. if you dont play a true melee build you likely wont get that experience. the best way to play melee in poe is to be as non melee as possible, attack a gazillion times a second with aoe that hits practically the whole screen. but thats a separate issue.
also, in the many years of me playing POE, never once did GGG ever take away GEAR that players earned within a league. there was always the idea that if you spent time playing in a league, you would keep all the gears you earned. but after tencent. ggg changed this and at the end of sanctum league, for the very first time they voided all sanctified relics, which was a new gear/equipment slot. granted it was a new item slot, getting a good relic and enchanting it cost people around 16 or so divines? POOF.
the way me and my friends play poe is we were standard players FIRST. we played in leagues only because we want the league challenge mtx rewards OR because we saw some gear that would make us much stronger in standard. i can tell you with 100% certainty that i HATE having to restart everything from scratch. i fucking despise it. i know its something people enjoy, not criticizing people who do, in fact i m happy for you. but its not for me. anyway i bring this up because, with this one act GGG has changed the entire landscape of leagues.
previously i could rest assure that if i played in a league, i would keep my hard earned gear. but now it could mean all the efforts i put in would have been for nothing. if you want to say “oh but you got other gear/currency” - fuck that, i got better stuff on standard. i could farm currency on standard. the entire purpose of me going into the league was certain gear that was specific to the league.
now we’re in a weird position where if you play a league, theres no guarantee that the stuff earned is kept. on the flipside, if you dont play a league, theres no guarantee the stuff would reappear in core.
for example, crucible introduced powerful crucible weapons. its so crazy many people thought it would be voided/poofed. but it didnt. i m a proud owner of a huge ass crucible two hander. one of my guildies skipped the league thinking it wont go core. if he had just joined he could have got a very powerful weapon for maybe 100 divines? now all the crucible weapons left on standard are sold for hundreds of divines since crucible didnt make it to core. some even mirrors. i would say my friend is hugely demotivated to play poe at that point. but yeah. all this happened after tencents involvement. you might not see it and maybe that because it didnt effect you or the way you played.
yeap, i totally agree, which is why i say EHG trying to copy POE’s business model doesnt work. the people who supported ggg back then grew with ggg. where the game looked shitty but it was the best thing we had so we continued supporting them. we stuck around their shitty game but it was OUR shitty game. and we loved it. we supported ggg, and as the player base grew, so did their revenue. and in return they kept making the game better.
now POE is a mammoth. LE went up against a mammoth without the chance of growing with a player base. their player base loved them but it was much smaller, yet the expectations people had for LE’s content was huge. how can EHG make a game that looks as good as POE? how can they make it have seasonal content as rich as POE? it takes a lot of their resources. and i’ll say it again. they did a lot that was impressive. just its not enough if you’re up against POE.
true. we cannot expect that. but on the flipside, as a consumer is that our problem?
if a toymaker makes handcrafted toys and sell them at a proper rate, considering the effort spent, it can be equal or more expensive than a mass produced toy. but qualitywise and cost wise, the manufactured one wins out. this is the same with POE vs LE. i can justify LE being the way LE is as being an indie. but if LE is competing against POE, well… LE is 10 years behind. i’d rather play POE.
lol, are we talking about krafton whose ceo used chatgpt to try and weasel out of paying subnautica’s team a hefty bonus? PUBG is a huge success but i think its more of them hitting the right audience rather than a calculated business decision. i seriously dont think that purchasing EHG was a good business idea.
the way i see it, sometimes business just succeed despite their management. its not because their management is good, but because they have a good product. PUBG is a great product enjoyed by many. i dont like it but i m not the target audience. PUBG is hugely successful. but that the problem with success. sometimes with success people make bigger risks. like one of my uncles. he bought a tractor. did work. got cash. saw more work. bought another tractor. got more work. got more cash. he only saw acquisition as a good thing without realizing that the jobs he did was dwindling up. he bought a few too many tractors and suddenly he had no more projects. he got into debt because of the tractors.
ceos in top companies are not exempt from bad decisions. look at jaguar with its hilarious diversity rebranding. sony lost millions on concord.
lol true. even back in poe’s early days the mtx they had were horrible. but i bought them because thats all we could buy.
agreed. i would say LE is a good case study. it had a good vision but not enough player base to support the vision. it doesnt mean it cannot work, just it didnt work in LE’s case. TLI copied POE1/2 a huge lot, but went mobile/china first, and went cartoony. it never was a direct competition and decided to tap an untapped market. TLI being crossplay on PC was just a little added bonus.
I worded that poorly. What I meant was that I never experienced the game before, during and after the Tencent acquisition, and therefore never saw/experienced how the game changed.
I know and accept that I’m far too bad at PoE. I would only ever play a few levels, feel briefly proud of myself, and then close the game again, until I finally decided to seriously tackle Graveyard Season with a build I found online. The season was awful. Not because of the build itself, but because there were more graves in the graveyard than you could store corpses in. Additionally, each coffin took up two storage slots. A deliberate design choice intended to gently but firmly steer you toward the shop. And then there was the lantern, which initially frequently had the Divine Orb bonus. This was fixed a few days later, but despite numerous requests from players, the servers weren’t reset.
Trading was no longer possible for regular players, and some quit playing altogether. GGG probably didn’t care, because some of those players had certainly already bought something in the shop, and most of the money is always generated at the beginning of a new season, so it probably wasn’t a big loss.
I haven’t touched PoE1 since then.
And after what you’ve experienced since the Tencent acquisition, I personally wouldn’t want to start playing PoE again either. However, I’m not emotionally attached to GGG.
Well, many people here are making this their problem. Instead of being patient, they’re creating unrealistic expectations. It’s long been proven that a product improves over time, not under time pressure, and even AAA games prove it time and time again.
I’m not even sure what role the CEO plays in game purchases. Maybe he only gets involved above a certain amount, and doesn’t care about smaller sums. Who knows? And as for Subnautica, I won’t have an opinion until a court has issued a final ruling. I know he said that, but as I understand it, there are no chat logs to prove it and anyone can claim anything.
True, especially if they can afford it. That’s why I had the thought that they might not care about EHG’s future. Since there haven’t been any dramatic changes that would suggest Krafton had a say, I’m curious. The thing with the new class could also have come from EHG themselves.
to me its not about being unrealistic. in fact, people are being very realistic.
if a friend has the skills to build a car and built you a car, the car works but doesnt feel right. we can understand that he built it from scratch and we can understand that its unique and cant be compared to a premade factory built car. but the fact is, if i had to choose, i would get a factory built car.
thats the angle that many people are viewing the issues EHG/LE has. we know its unrealistic to expect POE levels of quality and content from a “new” and smaller company. but as consumers, we want the best thing. you cant excuse EHG by saying theyre an indie when they came into the market as a rival to POE. if you go into a boxing ring with a pro as a rookie and find yourself beat. people can empathize that you’re severely outmatched. we get it. but i’ll put money on the opponent that a pro. not on you.
EHG dreamed big. but too big. for sure its unfair to compare a pro with a rookie but thats how it is.
And here’s the crux of the split between positions.
One side says ‘we gotta be patient’.
The other side says ‘we should’ve received it years ago already, we’re done with being patient’.
It’s not about ‘unrealistic expectations’ per se. They might be… but only because EHG sold us the world and delivered a pebble instead. It’s very much grown on what they told the customers.
And as @ExSea said: “As a customer, is it our problem?”
Which the answer is: No.
We as customers don’t have to care how a company provides us something, just that they do as they told us.
We can care if we want to, but we don’t have to. That’s a very important difference there.
Umh… Skull and Bones, Suicide Squad, Forspoken, Marvel’s Avengers, Redfall, Anthem, Mass Effect Andromeda… do I need to go on with the list?
Yes, potentially over time products can improve. But the crux of the matter is… they surprisingly rarely actually do. If we simply look at the overall percentile then very very few do… we just love to raise those that do on a pedestal.
To be entirely fair here… that he did it is a clear-cut thing. Krafton simply said ‘the logs don’t exist anymore’. Which is stating ‘yes, he did it, but you won’t get anything written down in detail’.
Even if they cannot, that’s the major issue. People leading large company decisions are still people, and especially in a position of power many do feel like they’re invincible… only to be proven wrong either right away… or after gradual ongoing long-term self-dismantling of their company.
People speak their mind. It’s up to EHG if they listen or not. It’s even up to EHG if they answer to it or stay hidden. Lastly it’s up to EHG if they act accordingly. People are very open right now without many filtering or goodwill towards EHG. What they get now is pretty normal everywhere in the gaming industry. If you mess up or post plans that most likely backfire people get emotional because they are invested into the game.
It’s like telling people “The Witcher series is a masterpiece without any flaws and completely lore accurate.”.
Just wanted to say: Love the example at the end 
GGG started 15 years ago when there was nothing else in the market. Standards were lower, the scope was smaller and culturally people happier with less.
We are in the big 25, these things don’t fly. You can’t just start the same thing 15 years late. I don’t like the idea of paid characters. I don’t like expansions either. But guess what, they are not making money right now.
For me, the game has always been mid and the underdog of ARPGs, and the bleeding revenue is proof of that. Unless that image changes, either they have to downsize to adapt to this level of revenue or change their strategy.
Anyone who blindly says “just do what GGG does” is missing the point entirely and it must be incredibly frustrating for devs to read this.
(this is not addressed to the OP btw, i agree that a grim down approach is better)
You’re 100% right with that comment there.
But that’s not related to the monetization aspect itself, it’s related to the production of the product.
Early adopters have time. They exchange a fixated roadmap for success for high risk and insecurity. Will it pan out? Maybe? Maybe not? Who knows, nobody did it yet!
So they got time while established companies lean back and watch, only jumping on the bandwagon with hefty investment by the time they realize ‘yes, this is actually a potential gold mine’, often times then to a degree the market gets oversaturated.
So if you’re a smaller business wanting to go into this area then you better ensure that your plan is rock solid. And with that I mean you have it down to the details, every step along the way, with contingency plans for every aspect of it should anything even so little as go awry by a millimeter.
How much can we invest into graphics? Should we postpone it?
How much do we need to invest into mechanics?
How big does the monetization need to be?
What is our selling point exactly that other products cannot provide? And how to we convey that properly to the customer?
How big can our company be at any stage of growth to sustain itself?
How much buffer do we need to have leftover to avoid any failures?
What should we do should the buffer still not suffice?
How can we guarantee that releases are on time with a proper schedule?
What is actually our exact audience we cater towards?
All important questions and plainly spoken… I don’t think for half of them EHG actually has an answer since years by now.
You need to have a completely different setup compared to everyone moving in formerly… your success is based on strict excessive planning and fallbacks instead of being a trailblazer.
I think downsizing and changing the strategy are both mandatory.
And oh wow did I get flak for even suggesting to downsize rather then simply shuttering up entirely. Wow that was a shit-show.
Which yes… is true to a degree.
But - and that’s important - the business concept is made out of parts, and some of those parts are a pure upside business wise with extremely low risk and high return.
Those are the things mandatory to use.
It includes the things like sales psychology, which EHG really really sucks at. The aforementioned ‘full point return’ of supporter packs. The flooding of the store even at mid-tier quality products (if you cannot provide quality at least provide quantity of variety), the reduction of scope for releases to ensure timeframes can be kept to the dot. Alternative monetization methods rather then a singular avenue.
Those things are relatively basic. There’s a reason why the competition does well. D4 has a massive franchise power and is established. PoE provides absolute monstrous amounts of content for the timeframe they use. TL:I is available on mobile and the qualitative highest game of that genre there.
EHG has nothing of that… and that’s the premise with which they hence need to work with. If you don’t have a unique position then better ensure that you create one for yourself in some way. And this has been entirely missed sadly.
The last part is wrong though. Things weren’t flowerfields back then either. GGG had good timing as well as Grim Dawn to throw somethign else into the mix. Another good example is Diablo 4… the timing was good as well.
That’s why would move as far as possible from classic H&S games as possible if I want to create one. You can’t bring on the same shit, paint it purple and call it something new because it’s purple. Modern day H&S games stick to much to what worked in the past already without taking any risks or at least trying to come up with something new.
For LE things are a bit more different even. Le was carried by the goodwill of people because at some point the devs have been realy awesome. This changed lot sadly. I don’t wish them ill or LE to crash and burn but without goodwill people look at LE for what it is.
Graphis… meh.
Gameplayloop… meh.
Balacing… crap.
New Content… meh.
New expension… maybe good.
Payed classes… have you lost your mind?
When I look at LE and try to get all my personal oppinions for it out of the picture it’s a 5/10… nothing to write home about. A mid game some people like and others don’t. It’s no complete crashout like Superfuse but far from beeing a banger like PoE.
i still hope something awesome happens and the Devs find their oldselfes again and at least look like they care at all. So far EHG just became a faceless company… heck even Mikes friday streams lost a lot of ease from back in the day and feel forced sometimes… at least to me.
Sure there is only so littel EHG can do but payed classes is kind of a last straw scenario.
the devs ARE awesome! and yeah people wanted a new game as an alternative to POE. i never backed LE per se but i did buy an early supporter. pack to gain access to the game. i really liked what i saw with LE. it really was different from POE. even back then i didnt like the art direction but the game play and the potential kept me playing.
in hindsight they really dreamed big. it was an unrealistic expectation but admittedly its not easy to see the issues.
Compared to the past? Nah. To be clear I don’t hate them or anything and I guess they are nice and whatever but they lost of their qualitys when it comes to communication and interaction from my point of view.
They just became another faceles company that writes paragraphs of words without telling anything realy. NOW we have a new roadmap… do people need to get mad every time so LE is doing the bare minimum? Aren’t they able to tell “More information is coming” before things go south? At least in my memory, that is pretty bad 
, I can’t remember such outburts outside of the trade discussions.
The comparison is flawed in my opinion, because a car is always sold by the manufacturer fully assembled and roadworthy. There are regulations and safety protocols. In some countries, your friend wouldn’t even be allowed to cross the street with his self-built car. And if something goes wrong, it could be fatal.
Some games are unfinished and are still allowed to be sold. There are fewer regulations, and if something goes wrong, it’s usually not fatal.
I just don’t understand it. If players don’t give newcomers time to establish themselves, the options either remain nonexistent or very limited. There’s PoE or Diablo. Maybe you play Torchlight or Grim Dawn now and then, but that’s about it.
Why don’t players want more choice? Why do they just think: “Oh, the developers have problems. Yeah, hmm… I have problems too… especially with their decisions. Let’s take them down!”
As a player and customer, I also benefit when there are more games in this genre.
What’s happening now could end up being a short-lived problem, and in a year we’ll laugh about it because they were successful.
No one has established fixed rules, so no. Comparing EHG with GTG is definitely a conscious decision, and one could decide differently.
If people are so fixated on PoE, why do they play anything else? They don’t want variety or anything new. They want a PoE look, with PoE speed and PoE money, so that the PoE quality is there.
Define a car, is it closer to Yugo or Maserati, does it have a bluetooth
And if your friend built it it’s also fully assembled and roadworthy… still a piece of shit with low quality
Nobody stated they haven’t been upheld. Can still suck.
If properly licensed and within regulations you can get anything onto the road… as long as it follows regulations and you’re willing to pay a boatload of money.
And plainly spoken… there should be more regulations, by far more nowadays. Software is the wild wild west for consumers.
Ok… how many group-FPS games which have a proper name are on the market and still ongoing?
How many RTS?
How many actual RPG MMOs?
How many Mobas?
The market is always small. And plainly spoken the H&S market is oversaturated by now.
So provide or die, simple as that.
A good business provides a product which others don’t, or one which has higher quality then the competition.
Which is LE again?
We want more choice. But said choice has to be on par or superior to existing choices. Lower quality doesn’t cut it.
tbh, EHG now and EHG before are more or less two different things. the people behind them are still awesome people. they have a huge lot of love to the game theyre creating and they’re trying their very best to keep the game alive to the point they became sell outs. they cant post as much and theyre no longer in control. i would say EHG as we knew it is no longer available. theyre still awesome people but they are slaves to the whims of krafton. every decision and every post they make requires krafton to sign off. its very different.
i see. you need exact 1:1 analogies that are highly specific or else you wont be able to comprehend or agree with em.
put it this way. ehg is a friend who learned to make bread. its home made but theyre still getting there. the bread texture is uneven, and tastes a little bit off. but is actually more expensive than bread found in convenience stores. as a friend, i know the hard work and effort they put into making the bread. its home made. and they even got it certified somehow so its safe to eat and complies with all government/health rulings. but as much as im a friend. i still find it more worth buying bread from larger corperations which simply are better in every way. its cheaper, more consistent, tastes better. better ingredients. only its not home made and is factory manufactured. majority of people would simply prefer this bread over ehg’s.
its good that you are humble enough to admit you dont understand it. at most i can help explain it to you. its like what i mentioned about the bread analogy. home made vs manufactured. some home made bread are more expensive but they taste better than the manufactured ones. so they sell. in EHG’s one the bread is still a work in progress. why would i buy bread thats sub par at a higher price? its a very simple concept. ask 1000 persons would they support a growing business that has sub par products that are more expensive or just buy products that are cheaper but more reliable?
not everyone is charitable enough to just support the devs. if they were, EHG would not have been sold off to krafton.
agreed.
very much a possibility. and i really hope that it happens. tho seeing the current state… it really depends on whether or not krafton is willing to invest a huge amount to improve LE to be competitive. if they are then yeah. i ll eat my words and be happy for the devs and the community and laugh with you when the day happens. i ll even laugh at myself. but until that day happens… we have to be realistic.
as per my bread analogy. why would anyone want to buy bread thats subpar and more expensive?
LE is actively trying to compete with POE. of course people will compare both.
i use POE as an example because when we’re talking about D-Likes, POE is one of the biggest players. D4 despite “d4 bad” memes is actually at the top but if we’re talking depth, pricing, content, POE and LE are the closest games to each other, with the little difference where LE requires an entry fee purchase.
as for “if people are so fixated on POE why play anything else”. thats exactly one problem that LE has. if d-like enjoyers prefer POE/D4. why would they play any other d-like?
i used to be a dedicated d-like lover. i’ve “played em all”. and to me, D4, LE, POE, TQ1/2, GD, TLI are the top games in the genre. however, due to the nature of d-likes, i only have so much time to spend on gaming. i actually am forced to remove some games from my playlist. if i compare each game side by side. ultimately i m left with POE1 and TQ2. the rest dont make the list.
to share with you, at one point in my life, LE was actually above POE. there are a few reasons.
this made LE different from the other games and gave it an edge. LE was a very deep game but rewarded organic growth and was more casual friendly. a nice in between where it was something in between POE and D4.
but once LE made harder content, such as abberoth and uber abberoth it all changed. the following changed to the 2 points mentioned.
hardest difficult encounters are now at corruption 500. you are hard pressed to hyper optimize or else your build cant get that high. trying your own build out CAN work, but its possible that you build wrongly and end up wasting a lot of time and resources.
the generous loot drops can help you get t20 gear (all level 5 affixes), but now you’re expected to get t25-t30 gear. suddenly you realize the game is VERY stingy in that regard.
so the game that used to be in depth but casual friendly just turned into another POE. so why not compare the game to POE? its being very hard to follow POE. and if anyone is being honest, POE is still the best POE like game.
and that goes back to the point. if people are so fixated with POE why play anything else? thats exactly one reason LE failed. LE tried to be another POE-like game, but POE-like enjoyers already have POE. why bother with LE. LE failed financially. people voted with their time and wallets.
you might not like that people chose POE over LE but its already a fact.
This was a thing long before Krafton.