I agree with the sentiment generally, but the bolded part is a step too far, imo. I consider Grim Dawn successful, even if not “competitive” with PoE. It just depends on what you mean, but I regard them as separate categories in the genre, so I compare their relative success differently.
Grim dawn is successful in that it’s widely known as one of the better ARPGs, it is a great game. If we are measuring success in growth and longevity then it falls behind PoE by a huge margin.
I’m gonna be honest, I desperately want some competition to PoE. I’m sick and tired of those devs spending 98% of their resources on a fluffed up untested 3 month league while performance, bugs, quality of life, UI, underused skills/items, and outdated mechanics sit untouched for years. As it stands this game has a shot, though it’s going to be an uphill battle. The game “feels” a couple years behind PoE. Without trade I fear that is going to be a much steeper hill to climb, maybe too much so.
4 Likes
I sometimes wish I could “Like” a comment more than once…
1 Like
I don’t quite agree with these takes. Like I said before, Trade economies have a much larger and broader function in MMOs, and cannot be directly compared to ARPGs 1:1. D4 may be going down that route for sure, by the looks of it they are trying to indeed go towards a hybrid model of a “top down” MMO with a semi-open world, and combine that with a typical dungeon crawler. Whether that works out remains to be seen, i’m somewhat sceptical of it thusfar, especially as I’ve not seen them deviate strongly enough from the D3 itemization so far.
I will maintain that the biggest reason PoE is so successful is its constant content pipeline. It keeps people engaged, and keeps attracting new players. Trade is generally a very controversial topic over there, and definitely not a major selling point for most.
Other games like Grim Dawn cannot compete with the content pipeline even in the slightest, others such as Wolcen are simply not distinct enough and do not stand out to grow much. This is where LE differs, and can capitalize. It has enough familiarity mixed with good innovation and progress in features based on what has come before. If they happen to find a version of Trade which satisfies most and maintains the integrity of their game philosophy, it could be a real winner for sure.
I don’t disagree that Trade is a good selling point and something which does attract more players, it’s the nitty-gritty of how it plays out and works that is the crux of the matter here. In my opinion, the game could cut out a good chunk of the playerbase without ever incorporating it, if Cycles work and the content in them is good enough to keep people interested and attract new players. That, to me, is the major aspect that can make or break the long term success.
Curious, I’ve not encountered the notion that tabs will be tradeable drops so far. Why do you believe this is so certain?
It’s also very important to note that a game can be a wild success financially for the company without becoming the market leader, or even a Top 3 representative of the genre in terms of player numbers. Cost/investment and returns are factors here.
While the community may desperately be seeking the new “big thing”, it is much more likely that most games will simply find their respective niches, be financially profitable and successful in them, and not ever become “the” ARPG. Especially with PoE2 and D4 on the horizon, I wouldn’t place these expectations on LE at all. In fact, I think their major chance to have sustainable financial success is to be distinct enough from both those games to appeal to different tastes, because the market is certainly large enough for that.
See above. I think this is a misguided community perception to consider any ARPG which doesn’t compete with PoE or Diablo on a numbers level a “failure”.
Almost no games are 1:1. That’s not the point.
I’m skeptical because it’s Blizzard. If it was GGG, Gearbox, Crate, or Larian, I’d be much more inclined to see what they can do with it. I have negative faith in Blizz–I actively anticipate they will overly monetize, underdevelop, and get caught up in some community shitstorm that tanks the game (and their rep) even further.
I don’t think this is wrong, but I don’t think it’s the whole story. Trade is undeniably a driving factor or everyone would play Standard over the temp leagues. However, the things I hear most that people hate about trade in that game have to do with the manipulation that is enabled by the forced encumbrances you previously praised. A strict buyout system is susceptible to some manipulations too, but every game I have played that features them is still better off with them, except for D3–and that had a lot more to do with other issues we already discussed.
As for other games…
- Grim Dawn never set out to compete with PoE, so it doesn’t. They didn’t want the game to be a lifetime project for them or a full-time job for their players.
- Wolcen’s problem isn’t that it isn’t distinct enough. It’s roughly about as distinct as LE is. It simply mishandled its resources, focused on the wrong things/in the wrong order, and they still haven’t fixed the most critical elements of the game–let alone added meaningful content.
Content cycles without trade wont’ cut it. Even when D3 was getting new content, it saw very temporary spikes and quick fall offs (just like WoW after MoP released). I think you gravely underestimate the importance of PoE’s economy in the context of its content cycles–people actively enjoy and chase that early rush each league, then get bored later in the league when other people begin catching up, their items have devalued, and they know another league is coming in a few weeks anyway–and that’s assuming the new content was even popular/interesting, because it has seen its share of failed leagues.
LE is implicitly accepting a similar cycle of player behavior by going with the same content model [all of these being temporary states]: growth, retention, loss, stagnation, repeat. For PoE, the two-pronged approach of content and economy resets provides a widely cast net for player types/personalities. If you cut out the economic factor, your content must be spot on every time or nothing else will save you. I see this creating downward pressure over time on the overall player retention average. This is why I (and a couple others) state that the game would be relegated to a Grim Dawn category and wouldn’t be competitive with PoE.
It’s actually hard to see the game managing more than a year (maybe two) without it. As overall player retention slides, so does MTX sales, so does financial capacity to keep devs, so does content production frequency/quality, etc.
I feel like you’re not quite getting my point about D3.
The quick fall-offs in D3 2.0 seasons have to do with the overboard smart loot system, as well as the fact that there is essentially no new content in any given season. You can’t do no new content AND not have a trade economy (along with a seasonal reset), the result is the logical small spike for seasons and quick drop-off, because ppl may play for a few days to try a new set meta or whatever and grind a few GR levels, and then get bored.
This is the apple to the orange of a League/Cycle system, which has the express intent of delivering new content and mechanics and expanding the game continuously. Even without a trade economy, this is the major factor driving player interest and engagement, I feel. Obviously, having a functional economy on top of that would be the cherry on top, we agree there.
Fyi what you said about Grim Dawn and Wolcen is precisely what I was saying: neither was setting out to become market leaders, for one, and Wolcen specifically is not distinct enough. I believe LE is, however.
Finally, i will repeat my earlier comment: LE does not have to be competitive with PoE to be a success. I’m aware large parts of the community have this perception and want to be playing “the” new thing that everyone is playing (the evolution of streamer/youtuber-driven communities over the past decade is part of that, and certainly MMO-type perceptions play a role there as well), but it’s not really the way one should estimate a genre representative.
I do agree that having both content and economy resets is the optimal situation to be in, I simply am of the opinion that just good content (which longer Cycle spans compared to Leagues would help to ensure, I might add, as the tight schedule certainly plays a large role for GGG) resets alone can be sufficient to carve out a nice portion of the market.
Your entire premise about the game being sustainable rests on the assumption of Trade being the crux of player attraction and retention, and I don’t agree on that front, even if I enjoy Trade a lot myself. There are too many examples of smaller ARPGs doing just fine with different models, naturally not being the kind of behemoth PoE turned into (relatively speaking), but being perfectly profitable and sustainable.
EDIT: it should be noted, again, that none of these smaller games have the type of content pipeline to attract more players continuously either.
I think the community would do itself a favour if we move away from the expectation of wanting LE to reach the kind of level as the market leaders are on anytime soon (if at all).
Ignoring anything we players have voiced about our favourite games and the direction LE should go in, and only considering what EHG has said.
It is the simplest solution of “stash tabs will always be for gold, that mechanic is fixed (I paraphrase)” and “we will have trade for gold, but you find the best gear going out and killing monsters yourself.”
I think it’s still a bit of a leap to assume stash tabs as “drops” or tradeable based on that.
More likely I would see specific stash tabs with special MTX or functionality as maybe Cycle or achievement rewards, something you can earn with gameplay as well as buy with gold.
1 Like
No, I get it. I just don’t agree, because we see the same pattern even when they did introduce new content.
You’re sort of misstating my position here. You need good content and trade for each cycle if you’re going to adopt that as your business/development model. If you try to do it on the basis of just one (or neither) of these, the cycle model falls apart because it can’t withstand the impact that a failed cycle produces without the other to pick up the slack.
I’m basically assuming that LE will make every reasonable good faith attempt to provide quality content each cycle, but like PoE, it isn’t a question of if, but when they produce an unpopular one. Without the excitement and chase that trade provides, this will be of great detriment to the game’s longevity because…
When has D3 last had a season that added anything compelling outside of set balancing or new sets? They haven’t added anything significant in many years, just new tilesets or maps don’t count either imo, the game hasn’t received any functional expansions, storylines, new bosses etc for ages (if you don’t count the Necro content, which simply cannot compare to the types of content updates PoE delivers).
We’ll agree to disagree here I guess, because I maintain new, regular content is the main driver of interest and retention over time.
Well no, you’re still insisting that Trade is the deciding factor, which I disagree with, and connecting a lot of conjecture to that premise.
I think we can leave it at that for now, I think we both want the same thing really, we just disagree on the factors contributing to or standing in the way of that thing becoming a reality.
I would argue against a game that only offered trade without content updates. You really do need both.
I agree having both would be an ideal situation if Trade can be implemented in a good way, I just disagree Trade is required for LE to be sustainable or successful (regular content updates would already put it well ahead of other smaller ARPGs with box prices), or generally a baseline requirement for the long term health of any ARPG.
I simply feel the content pipeline is the far more important aspect here.
More important? Absolutely. To the exclusion of the other? No.
See, the same way you could argue we haven’t seen a compromise solution between the extremes of Trade applied yet, I think you can similarly argue we haven’t seen a well-designed SSF game attempt a content pipeline in this way yet either. My money is on that constant flow of content being the key to growth.
I just don’t believe it’s sustainable. The logic doesn’t check out.
SSF is a niche market. It’s why games like Torchlight, Grim Dawn, and Sacred–despite being good games–were never massively (commercially) successful. If you’re going to have a “games as a service” model, which this is–make no mistake–you need to appeal to a broader market. Even with MP, it still faces the problems I just described in my last few posts on the topic. Further, for this “games as a service” model to work, you need a way to monetize it, which means you need a very large player base because, statistically, only a tiny minority of them pay enough to keep the lights on–Pareto Principle in MTX is quite widely documented and understood. Box copies alone won’t cut it. I see this “SSF” model having lots of hype on release and rapidly losing its player retention. Each cycle will recover some of that temporarily, but will ultimately still lose more than it gains back.
That’s my intuition on it anyway. I agree it hasn’t been tried, but it’s not the kind of thing I would invest into as a model either–regardless if it’s from the perspective of a financial investor, a developer, or even a player.
Basically, without trade, it ends up being just like D3. It will try to provide content updates regularly, but will eventually be financially forced into a position where that is no longer viable.
Some key differences you’re neglecting here: those smaller games monetize exclusively with box price, and do not churn out regular content. The service-based monetization is part of PoE precisely because it’s an F2P model, LE is not going down this road.
LE is in a unique spot in more ways than one. It’s going for box price and monetization with cyclical content, which imo is the smart move because as you correctly state, pure service-based monetization wouldn’t work without faster content turnover rates than have been proposed.
I think the 5-6 month Cycle schedule with a box price could actually work pretty well to service a new approach to the genre in the long run, especially if monetization is purely cosmetic.
I will repeat that we simply disagree on D3 being comparable here, they just do not provide the content required to draw or retain or even grow an audience, and haven’t for a very long time.
A friendly reminder to everyone to please stay on topic. This is a great discussion, let’s keep it that way.
Thanks.
1 Like
The D3 comparison is that LE would end up in the same position eventually because the player retention would decline below financially sustainable levels, so the content cycle would close. While I think it’s better for the devs to have a longer content cycle–have even suggested on many occasions that PoE should move to 4 months–that comes with the drawback that player retention could dip even deeper. 5-6 months is just not realistic, imo.
Just try to imagine that. You’re 3 months into a cycle, and basically done with all the characters you were interested in, or maybe just burnt out. You have to wait another 3 months for the next cycle? Then that one introduces some really unpopular/disliked mechanics or content, so you just aren’t inclined to play. You now wait almost 6 months for the next. What if this one is also not great? You’re up to/over a year between content updates that you actually want to see.
This is why trade is such an important counter-balance. Even if you don’t like the current cycle’s content much, it might still be fun to play on the trade side of things. You at least have reason to farm out and sell items for the current meta builds. The economy can be its own means and ends to enjoyment of the game when the content falters. This has happened for many players several times in PoE’s life. It’s also happened to players in Warframe. Trade keeps the game alive–at least on life support–until the necessary changes can be made to truly revitalize it.
Trying to without trade is just a slow form of suicide (for a “games as a service” model).
I do agree that Trade can play an important role here, but at the same time you have to consider that the models you’re comparing are not quite the same. D3’s content pipeline dried up because they went into maintenance mode pretty soon after 2.0.
As for the league/cycle schedule, I would agree that an economy would be essential to maintain retention for longer spans - if the game were relying on ingame monetization, and not coming with a box price. With a box price, you’re in a very different situation imo and can afford to not have to fish for constant new spikes - quite to the contrary, with regular content releases that aren’t break-neck pace you can reliably generate new waves of box price sales, which significantly reduces the pressure on the content itself, imo.
I’m aware we’re drifting here a little in the topic btw, but I do agree that you cannot really discuss the ramifications and implementation of trade without considering what it’s connected to, and its intent in the game design.
To go back to your point about PoE, I think you’re mistaken that Trade is the main thing keeping it alive, it’s the resets along with new content that generates the spikes imo.
Well I agree, but LE is precisely not doing that model.
Edit: I’m aware i may sound a little contradictory here, on the one hand I claim Trade isn’t that important for retention, on the other I state it can be relevant. I’ll just restate that while it can certainly play a factor, I think it is just vastly diminished in importance to ongoing content delivery.
Well no, a box price by definition already takes a huge chunk of the load off of the live service model not being the main source of revenue generation, which is what i said earlier.
In other words, PoE or any game going F2P with full live service revenue needs to throw everything including the kitchen sink at the customer to ensure sustainability (or even growth), a box price game does not and can afford to be less aggressive and pick and choose its targets.
It is. I’m not sure how else you can describe a content cycle + cosmetic MTX system, regardless if f2p or b2p (because box sales eventually reach a saturation point). That content cycle requires income to pay the devs, which is what the MTX is for, but that requires a large player base over time. There really isn’t a logical counter argument.
This is incorrect. You can’t view box price income as sustained income. It’s more like a temporary buffer. Whatever the game’s average sustained player base ends up being, only a tiny, tiny fraction of that will provide new box sales (the fraction of players who didn’t return but were replaced with new players).
MTX is the lion’s share of the sustained income in this model.
In either case, both ends of this grow more as (as a ratio) as the total player base expands, so they actually do need to make every reasonable attempt to push that growth. They don’t have the luxury to be choosey like you suggest.