How We Approach Console Development

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Zaximus704 wrote:

The real question is, does GGG think they'll gain enough PAYING Xbox One customers to make up for the loss of the PC players that choose not to buy supporter packs, at least for a while? I feel PC gamers by default will drop more money especially since they've been playing this game for years and are very ...

Spoiler

attached. If you lose even 20% of those people that always buy supporter packs, do you think a niche game (even more of a niche game on console) will make up for it? PoE is NOT Diablo 3. It doesn't have the following. It doesn't have the name (Blizzard) behind it, which is probably why a lot of people tried D3 on console in the beginning. And then you have it only on xbox and not ps4, which cuts a lot of money out as well. I tend to find PS4 players a bit more hardcore than Xboxone (just my experiences).

This is a very risky plan. You risk alienating your paying customers (for years) to gain more, but you may just lose more than you gain. I don't think PoE will be as popular as you would hope on console. I think Blizzard realizes this too, and that game as went to trash with dupes and whatnot.

It's also kind of a slap in the face to tell your PC customers that the reason we've getting some performance upgrades is only because of the console team/idea? That really gives me pause for concern.

I hope everything is fine, and I'm not going to jump off the cliff yet, but I seriously may hold off on supporter packs for a while to see how it goes. You guys

... had to expect this, right? Also will our MTX be usable on the Xbox version? I think it's important that if PC players WANT to play on the xbox realm they should be able to have their MTX and whatnot over there as well.

I think instead of f2p they shoud charge an initial $5,- up to $10 for the console version. With 1 or 2 cosmetics tied in. Generally I feel that on the console small games are bought a lot faster, compared to cosmetics. It is somewhat similar to the mobile phone platform, whereas the biggest income models are pay to win or pay for an advantage (start league with 10 essences) for example or buy an essence.

I read a lot about mechanical concerns in the development cycle, but if you play older skills vs newer melee skills, the newer melee skills are just mechanically far more comfortable than the older ones on pc as well. I find that there is absolutely no loss here. A lot of old skills need a revamp or should be removed (but why remove? you can still do some semi viable stuff).

I wonder if a console version will work. GGG has improved the leveling aspect of this game by a lot, it used to be pretty horrible for a lot of builds. Yet there still remains a lot of hidden mechanics and the storyline/ missions are still not delivered well. I mostly refer to master story lines and the in town interaction with npc's where the order of conversation is somewhat lacking or not intuitive. Quality is there, but it is not intuitively accessible.

Example story:
Grandaddy crab or the dweller of the deep. We get hints about it being a problem, but the world shows little to no signs of it. We kill it and we get a reward in town that gives us a skill point. We go past each npc to see if they drop us a line.
The proper way would be: in the cave on an island are the remains of an expedition force. Mangled bodies and starved corpses and a piece of writing about their last moments, unable to leave their plateau they starved to death. Among their corpses you find a skill point if you've defeated the crab, who lurks at the entry. It is a bit hard for me to accept that in chapter 1 the poor people have anything of value to give away. In fact opening the pathway should refill or restock town 1.
The library only randomly spawning pieces of story elements... needs to be removed.

Example mechanic: Prophecy
I need to kill shaman something. I don't know what this something is or where to find it. Thank god for the PoE wiki. It is a rare goatmen I have to kill, who spawn a lot in the prisoners gate. Without the PoE wiki I would be unable to complete a lot of the content let alone make sense of it. I still do not fully understand the Atlas. Path of exile could do with a bestiary, what damage does it do, ranged or melee, what it used to be and where you come across them. In here it will also mention if they are undead, beast, human etc, which ties in explaining some map mods.

Unless this gets covered in 3.0.0, it could seriously hurt how the console version gets received. All these aspects are long overdue for the pc version also.

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iCatalin wrote:

Bye PoE. I guess this is how it ends.

I don't know how I would feel if I had thousands of dollars worth of supporter packs bought (like some people here), now that I paid for some 12 years old to play on their TV a retarded version of my game ;_;

I hope they'll fail hard with this version and return to PC only. Fuck Xbox, fuck consoles.

"your game" don't make me laugh.

I'm rooting for you and hope things work out the way you want them to.

I think it's kind of crazy to see how entitled some seem to be about which decisions GGG can and can not make with the money you spend. Laughable.

People that bought MTX "because it looks cool" now gone mad because "they paid for the game".

I spend my money on this game because it is fun to me and because I want a little eye candy while playing. And as long as the game stays fun... I will continue to support.

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We hired new team members specifically for the the console project. They were directly responsible for the massive improvements to frame rate, client load times, memory use, as well as the introduction of the 64-bit client, DirectX 11 renderer and new audio system. These changes were immediately released to the PC version as soon as they were available. Even if you're not a console gamer, this project improved the game for you.

So what the fuck was everyone else doing?, this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, so if it wasn't for the new miracle console team, we wouldn't get a single new improvement?, is that what you are trying to say?, no wonder the PC client has been a mess for a while, STILL getting issues with shock/burning grounds on a lot of computers for example, we STILL don't have a proper way to trade in-game, STILL random servers lag and disconnects, and the DX11 release was a mess of glitches and issues even after the community did a FREE beta testing for it for 2 whole weeks.

If anything, all this mess clearly show us than there's very little left of transparency or respect for GGG to their consumers.

explains the "lack of manpower" to update other things like Guilds / Hideouts / Guild Hideouts

or what about old skills updating to current standards like incinerate and lightning tendrils or even cyclone to the new channel thing?

we had tempest/warbands mods how did we track them we had to use external sites! well now we got an great atlas map well maybe update those league mods so the random spawn on our atlas and we can track them??? properly no because off "lack of manpower"

well what about... ?? "lack of manpower"

"lack of manpower""lack of manpower""lack of manpower""lack of manpower""lack of manpower"


well fuck this xbox version hope it fails!

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Gasshunk wrote:

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We hired new team members specifically for the the console project. They were directly responsible for the massive improvements to frame rate, client load times, memory use, as well as the introduction of the 64-bit client, DirectX 11 renderer and new audio system. These changes were immediately released to the PC version as soon as they were available. Even if you're not a console gamer, this project improved the game for you.

So what the fuck was everyone else doing?, this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, so if it wasn't for the new miracle console team, we wouldn't get a single new improvement?, is that what you are trying to say?, no wonder the PC client has been a mess for a while, STILL getting issues with shock/burning grounds on a lot of computers for example, we STILL don't have a proper way to trade in-game, STILL random servers lag and disconnects, and the DX11 release was a mess of glitches and issues even after the community did a FREE beta testing for it for 2 whole weeks.

If anything, all this mess clearly show us than there's very little left of transparency or respect for GGG to their consumers.

What he said

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PaladinSMD wrote:

explains the "lack of manpower" to update other things like Guilds / Hideouts / Guild Hideouts

or what about old skills updating to current standards like incinerate and lightning tendrils or even cyclone to the new channel thing?

we had tempest/warbands mods how did we track them we had to use external sites! well now we got an great atlas map well maybe update those league mods so the random spawn on our atlas and we can track them??? properly no because off "lack of manpower"

well what about... ?? "lack of manpower"

"lack of manpower""lack of manpower""lack of manpower""lack of manpower""lack of manpower"


well fuck this xbox version hope it fails!

Dont blind yourself , its a company and money is still what drives it


They will put their money always where they expect the best return ;)

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iCatalin wrote:

Bye PoE. I guess this is how it ends.

I don't know how I would feel if I had thousands of dollars worth of supporter packs bought (like some people here), now that I paid for some 12 years old to play on their TV a retarded version of my game ;_;

I hope they'll fail hard with this version and return to PC only. Fuck Xbox, fuck consoles.

Im sorry, it's non treatable.
I mean this cancer if you didn't get it.

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Chris wrote:

We hired new team members specifically for the the console project. They were directly responsible for the massive improvements to frame rate, client load times, memory use, as well as the introduction of the 64-bit client, DirectX 11 renderer and new audio system. These changes were immediately released to the PC version as soon as they were available. Even if you're not a console gamer, this project improved the game for you.

This right here is the part that gets me the most tilted. PCs are objectively better from a hardware standpoint in every way, shape, form, but it took a console development team to bring forward good fixes for the PC side. So am I right to understand that without doing a port, these changes would never have happened and a big middle finger to PC players?

Then there's the claim that PC and console development is 100% exclusive from each other. Except that you've already contradicted yourself because you just stated that these PC performance issues were solved by the console development time. So the teams are in no way separate from each other because of this revelation. You can't claim separation, then in the same breath, claim that PC players benefited from the work of an xbox team.

And the final thought on this is that, before people peg me as some kind of anti-console elitist, I want to make it clear that I have legit concerns for console players as well. Every attempt by Chris to assuage PC player fears has been dotted with things like "we'll delay releases for console LONG before we will ever delay releases for the PC version". Basically console players are going to be bitter because they're going to be thrown under the bus every time a patch comes out due to Microsoft's certification requirements. The console players are going to get shafted at every turn, which is going to create a massive backlash. The only way to do anything about it is to 1.) Discontinue console version or 2.) Give in to the very much feared and ill-regarded way of dumbing down the PC version so that it works on both PC and console.




I'm glad that GGG has gotten big enough that console ports are being considered, and I really do relish the thought of more people coming to the game through a console version. I can say that getting the game to work with a controller is a serious technological achievement and they should be proud of that. But as I see it, GGG has basically 'bet the farm' on this being successful where the rewards are potentially doubling their current player base and vastly increasing their revenue, which could in turn, be used to make the PC fixes that are needed (remember, there aren't any 2.6 or 3.0.0 patch notes out yet, so anything could happen there that nobody is allowed to talk about currently). But the negatives, if learning from the mistakes of other companies that have tried this and failed is worth doing, is that this will pretty much kill off the game on PC side, which would be a death knell for GGG as a whole.

Most gutsy bet I've seen from a game company for sure. It's like playing financial russian roulette with only one empty chamber. I hope to god they succeed because the odds are REALLY stacked against them at this point. But hey, they took the risk of making a non-cartoony ARPG with a kickstarter backing in an age where this was considered financial stupidity and they proved the naysayers wrong and made it into arguably the best ARPG title and game company in the business currently. Maybe rngsus isn't done bestowing blessings on GGG yet and this will give them the benefits they are chasing. Time will tell and as a person that really loves and admires the game and the company, I sure as hell hope they do it.

Best of luck guys, I hope it works out. For all our sakes, really.

i admit i reacted very harshly to this change but after reading this post i kind of feel relieved. I'm still concerned but at least I'm not baby raging like I was. Personally I don't think there should be PoE on console but hey difference of opinion should be expected.