That’s a no brainer and will require them to have smaller cycles if necessary. Get the minimum up and ready to go and if there’s time add some more. By next year they will be competing with POE, POE2 and D4. Ideally they want a 3 week gap but two weeks should be enough to get the ARPG hoppers to come and maybe buy some MTX.
EHG does very little to help content creators. While GGG has now mostly abandoned races, they were very helpful to content creators when the game lacked content. Exclusive cosmetic rewards for the winners is all EHG would really need and they have a lot of the infrastructure in for level races. They’d just need to add in things like defeating T4 bosses, reaching a certain corruption level and maybe reaching a certain level in the arena.
I believe VisionGL used to run something like this manually that required video proof. but EHG could remove that requirement.
Heck, the cycles don’t even have any cosmetic rewards for doing content like POE challenges or seasonal journies in D3/D4.
I very much doubt PoE2 will be ready next year, unless you mean Xmas next year. And even then I still have my doubts.
The main difference is that GGG had to make money from the start to sustain themselves. So MTX were an important thing since 1.0.
EHG, however, have a nice financial buffer from the launch sales. So they don’t need to focus on MTX, MTX rewards, or even doing gimmicks to attract players. They just need to add the base core stuff they want to add and make LE a good base game.
That way, when they do start making cycle-content, they can start worrying about building up the playerbase. And if the game is good, players will come.
Solely because of your very inaccurate statement I just wanted to let you know that PoE 3.25, a league that is not even up yet (in 30 minutes), has currently about 120,000 players on Steam waiting in queue + way more on standalone client.
Please, think again when you claim that no one cares about Path of Exile 1 anymore.
Speaking as a cc. Dont favor cc. We dont represent the game larger audience, even if we try to. And i got good intentions. Cc usually just go in for the money, they want pump and dumps for their engagement every 4 months to have consistent revenue.
Cycles are only good for CC marketing, and bad for the players and the devs. Why i mention making cyles much longer. Problem is most games are slaves to large CC as they provide millions in free marketing. Its a cycle that is parasitical in nature.
