I think the concept of Seasons or Leagues is pretty broad, and EHG could go a number of different ways with it. Some of the options include, but are not limited to:
Ability to “test out” new things before committing to adding them permanently to the game. If they don’t work out, then they don’t have to be permanent. This includes classes, skills/skill changes, gear and mechanics.
Ability to release overpowered, strange, different, game-breaking, game-altering or otherwise out-of-the-box content which they know for a fact must be temporary, but would provide a ton of fun while active. This can also include seasonal things like a Christmas-type event, or a St. Patty’s Day thing (please add beer to game, kthx), etc. Without leagues/seasons, it would a lot harder to do cool stuff like this.
Ability to provide a competitive event for players. Sometimes players like to get “good” at a game, and then find ways to compete when there is no PvP. Leagues/Seasons can be set up with just standard Ladders, but also include race-oriented objectives and other ways players can compete with each other.
I’m sure there are other concepts that seasons facilitate that I’m just not thinking of.
Yes, seasons and leagues are necessary.
If you think they are not, you can see player count on steamcharts, on the month the patch is released, and then 2 months after.
Take a look at 0.83 patch.
2400 players in september
600 players in november
No leagues in a game like last epoch is just death sentence within 1 year.
I have to disagree. Content Patches are necessary, yes. If you look at player count whenever any game without leagues/seasons has a big, new patch, you’ll see the same spike in players followed by the same ebb.
No one is saying EHG/LE doesn’t need new content patches. The question is about league/season vs. all changes just rolling out into the main game.
I am 100%, unequivocably, against seasons and even the “expectation” that a game needs to change every few months.
10 years ago, games were released in full, and were played for years until the next big game came out. The game remained good, familiar, and popular. I’m talking about D2, Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, etc. Yes they had very minor content updates sometimes, but the developers actually put a decent amount of thought into what would make a “complete” game BEFORE releasing it.
Nowadays, gamers have ridiculously short attention spans, and they play for TOO GODDAMN LONG every day. Why do we need to cater to players who decide to spend 10 hours a day playing a game? That shouldn’t be encouraged by ANY game developer, except in situations like esports (which is a whole other can of worms for another day). Seasons are necessary for these people because gamers can’t focus or enjoy anything for longer than a week at a time anymore.
TL/DR: Imo, seasons are actually a reflex of POOR game developers that simply don’t feel obligated to release an actual finished game. If constant updates and new content are “necessary” for the survival of a game, then it isn’t a very good game.
In humans, a “generation” is the span of time from a parent to a child, approximately 20-30 years currently.
In computer games, a “generation” is about 6 years, in this case, representing a major paradigm shift in the fundamental playability and design of video games. Think difference between “Pong” and “Pac Man”, and then “Pac Man” to “Mortal Combat”.
10 years ago was nearly 2 full generations of video games. Those designs do not work today. Today, video games have the ability to “patch”. Not just bugs, but full-out new content. You can yearn for yesterday, but that ship has sailed. No game company today is going to “hold off” and spend millions and millions to develop a game “in full” and release it. It would be like a car company coming out with an all-new horse + buggy.
This game isn’t even released yet. Its version starts with a “0”. It has the “Beta” label as well. It is being designed like most new video games - a base game which contains some level of content which the company feels is a “complete” game, playable and enjoyable as they originally envisioned it. And then subsequent patches, additions, leagues, events, races, and other online activities which are now possible in this generation of online gaming.
If you just want a static game, I would heartily suggest Minesweeper or perhaps a nice game of chess.
I very much disagree with almost everything you said right here: There are numerous, I would say MORE games now that are released “in full” with no plans for major content updates every few months apart from an inevitable expansion released years down the line. Just look at almost every single game that has won “Game of the Year” or received universal acclaim in the last decade. 99% of them are full, static games which you label as “minesweeper”… I stand by what I said, the mark of a POOR game is a game that requires constant new content to remain relevant after release
the most obvious one is Grim Dawn, although by your standards thats a generation old. There’s also as I mentioned all of the most recent Game of the Year winners. While not strictly aRPGs they are close. We aren’t talking strictly about LE either: this thread is about seasons in general as a good or bad thing. I am aware LE is in beta, beta is the time to experiment with league-like content to see what works and what doesn’t which LE is doing really well. But once its actually released, the goal should be a standalone game that has replayability for years WITHOUT the need for brand new content thrown in our faces every few months. I am NOT saying games shouldn’t release new content. I am saying that new content should not be needed so frequently.
lol posting the patch notes…out of the 69 patches there are maybe 4 “major” content updates which resulted in extra items / changed items and VERY little new content otherwise. That actually helps prove my point that games should not require SEASONS. You are confusing seasons with patches. Same with your frequency point: you are confusing patches with seasons. With that, I bow out of this because we may spiral into a PoE bullheaded slugfest that has no business in LE forums
For what its worth, I don’t like PoE Leagues. I played almost exclusively Standard, knowing that the “decent” league content would make its way there and I could enjoy it at my leisure without having to start from scratch unless I wanted to.
Leagues don’t protect against anything in times of general digital defragmention of the gaming community.
Wouldn’t it be much nicer to have a big permanent player community than a few thousand jumpy “hype-chasers”?
Whereby the latter is more or less simply a kind of renaming to something like temporal timeline.
[Which again would border on a kind of hair-splitting ].
Both are useful examples to show a certain kind of ingenuity ala “easy to learn, hard to master”.
→ By the way, one of the main attributes used back in the 90’s about hack’n’slays/arpgs in general, and of course Diabo 1/2 in particular, to highlight its excellence. May be evaluated differently today, who knows.
They should make whatever kind of Season Content they want to make. The thing they should look out for is to have fresh ideas and make sure the New Season doesn´t look too much like the one that was before the new one.
Because that is what some other games is doing. People grow tired of that.
Yes it is necessary in my opinion, if they keep a standard league aswell.
Players in POE (like me) return to the game for the new league content, skill updates and uniques.
Those first weeks of a new week is the part were POE is getting there new income.
They do that by releasing new supporter packs MTXes, discounts etc.
That fresh income gets GGG the money to keep updating the game etc.
New content keeps the game fresh and interesting for a lot of players who get bored after playing the game a lot. Not only for big streamers.
Conclusion:
So yes, it is necessary in my opinion.
However the time when to cycle in a new update may varie for LE depending on different things.
It depends on if they can deliver enough and stable content within the time frame they use. It depends on if they get enough money to keep making content and pay for all the costs. Since LE is a pay to play game, i think they need to change how they will get there money.
Yes MTXes will help but i already saw a lot of people disregarding this approach. Especially since we paid for the product already were POE is “free to play” (tabs excluded, which most people see as a must have, so you have a better play expirience).
Iam really wondering how EHG’s strategy is going to be, budget and incoming wise with leagues.
A different approach could be DLC for a small price like Grim Dawn and Diablo 3. Iam not sure how people will react to that.
Iam open to a lot of things. At the same time i realize that not everybody has a full time job to pay for those things. Even people who do have a full time job might think that its not fair to have to pay more for a pay to play game which is fair enough to some degree imo.
Iam just having an idea but it might be stupid.
Would it been a possibilitty to update the “new league” at the league server and at the standard server at the same time? Or maybe a bit later on the standard server instead of the standard boys having to wait for the new league to be done?
Yes, they are 100% necessary to bring players back every couple of months, and to provide new and exciting experiences for people who love their game.
Do you want there to be like 200 40-year-old gamers playing this game forever and everyone else quit or do you want the game to have longevity? This is the difference between having content cycles and not. The days are over of there being 1 $60 release and then starting development on a new game. Unless you release an absolute masterpiece, you will make 100x the money adopting a seasonal model as a company. Look at the most popular games on twitch, they all have seasonal content models.
Most studios have realized that if you continue to support and release content, you can bring back old players and even get new players many years after release, time and time again. This argument of “But I would enjoy x” just doesn’t apply. You are the minority. People crave new content in the games they love and EHG would be very wise (and are) to take advantage of that by supporting this game for years to come.
They’ve already claimed to want to continue development for many many years, without seasonal content what exactly would you propose they do for that time? Sit at the studio and make a salary while fixing minor bugs for 5 years without bringing in new players? Even Wolcen is making seasonal content lmao
Well there is content and there is … content. Believe it or not, most former hardcore gamers are old fags now. We’re all not getting younger and about 90%+ of the worlds population has other things to do than playing one, and only one, game for 40h a week (e.g. like…playing other Games). And yes, that discussion is as old as online gaming.
Jokes aside, PoE in my opinion is a prime example of making money with “bad” content. You are basically forced to play if you want to continue to play or you fall so far behind the curve that it stops being fun. PoE isn’t content - it’s a bloated timesink where you do things that aren’t fun for most of the time to be able to do something fun. But well, I suppose we have differences for our respective Definition of content.
That’s not saying seasons are bad per se. It depends how they are done. Seasons aren’t necessary for Player Retention. There are other Models that work well. Take Guild Wars 1/2 as an example or Star Wars Old Republic. Or Elder Scrolls online. Releasing a large DLC with new Story, new Dungeons, new Equipment for e.g. 30 Bucks every 6 Months with new cosmetics is possible too.
All in all I suppose Seasons will be a part of LE. I Just hope it’s not like PoE. I’d prefer a DLC Model but I’m conservative - and lets bei honest, MTX create much more revenue.
What curve does one fall behind if you don’t play for significant amounts of time?
True, but all of the ga.es you mentioned are MMOs. 2 of them have subscriptions and one of them (SWTOR) gives you the expansions if you have the sub (not played ESO). That they are all MMOs shouldn’t make any difference to the point you’re making, but its curious that there aren’t any current arpgs (that I’m aware of) that use a similar model to the one you describe.
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