Can i buy POE 1 as an offline game

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Echothesis wrote:

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Phrazz wrote:

Their whole financial ecosystem is built around online, temporary leagues, MTX sales and online hype/advertisement around league start. Why would it be in their best interest to let players leave that ecosystem? I mean, they don't even care about standard league.

More specifically about day 1 of league start, this is the main selling point. I think this opportunity of accumulating hype is why they refuse to run PTR and hence are willing to deal with occasional situations like this league's 5 known exploits in a row. However offended people may feel about mid-league hotfixes/nerfs, GGG already got their money, and in this picture player negativity is merely a fallout to be contained.

After all, such grindy and punishing game was never meant to entertain, right?:)

I thought they had a small group of trusted players test things, but they aren't disciplined enough for a public ptr. It always feels like they are making last minute changes without telling each other what is changing.

Heck they don't even pay a dev to test if the skills work. The start of affliction league has several skills not hit enemies, in fact every patch has several skills that just stop working.

A brief public test a week or two before launch would be good for them. If nothing else it would be apart of the hype cycle.

The problem is (I think) the testers are maybe not the fastest players and they don't have long enough to uncover things.

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kolyaboo wrote:

The problem is (I think) the testers are maybe not the fastest players and they don't have long enough to uncover things.

It's more that any testing you do before a launch is dwarfed by the amount of players who limit test the game after a new release

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ArtCrusade wrote:

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kolyaboo wrote:

The problem is (I think) the testers are maybe not the fastest players and they don't have long enough to uncover things.

It's more that any testing you do before a launch is dwarfed by the amount of players who limit test the game after a new release

You are both correct and incorrect simultaniously :)

While simply playing the game and reporting bugs is part of the job, its just a tiny fraction of the job.

The issue is as that customers or gamers have no idea how QA really works nor what the process looks like, resulting in unrealistic expectations towards the QA staff.


1. QA doesnt simply play the game and report bugs. Thats part of the job but just a tiny fraction.

2. QA usually tests new features/items/mechanics/etc following clear instructions what, when and how to test.

3. If they run into issues, reporting the bug isnt enough.
Log files and "steps to reproduce" will be needed as well. While QA is able to produce log files those logs arent anywhere near as detailed as the logs a programmer would have access to simply because logging everything in the background does cost performance which QA staff needs to be able to run the game while the programmer doesnt need to play the game.
But w/o "steps to reproduce" the programmer wont be able to trigger the issue and get access to the more detailed logs.

Figuring out the exact combo of stuff causing abnormal behaviour is time consuming but very much needed.

4. If a bug is discovered, the tester will create a ticket and attach all the available info to it, then assign the ticket to possibly the QA boss or department boss such as programming. Depends on how GGG handles this process.
Most importantly: The tester will also slap a priority tag onto the ticket, depending on how bad the issue is.

5. Whoever receives the tickets will work through them by priority.
Which always results in many many tickets sitting at the bottom and not being taken care off. QA could have done a perfect job in all relevant metrics and it still wont matter if nobody ever touches the ticket due to low priorities and/or time constraints.

6. Whenever a single person or an entire department is drowning in tickets a meeting will take place, tickets will be reassigned, priorities changed and so on. This is called: Triage.
Its a medical term basically describing who gets treatment first, who has to wait and who will be ignored during a crisis. This happens more often than you´d think.

7. Everybody responsible for fixing stuff will do just that and commit fixes - basically adding it to the game. Depending on how deep that fix needed to go, it might cause unforseen side-effects.
In other words: A bugfix might indeed fix bug ABC but the side-effects caused a number of new bugs, which need to be found, documented, fixed and the fix itself needs to be verified.
This is often times whats really ruining QAs day.

8. As mentioned above: Bugfixes need to be verified.
This does obviously take time too.

9. If the fix is verified, the ticket will be closed and thats that.
If not, the entire process starts over.

10. This is one the most important and most annoying factors:
Some bugfixes will come in late and there is little to no time to verify the fix itself as well as finding/documenting/fixing unintended side-effects but the bug is so severe that the fix needs to be implemented no matter what.
This is when the entire QA staff needs to "crunch" or basically work overtime and its this combo of late fixes, little time, exhaustion due to a potentially extended period of "crunch" thats causing the most issues.

This is dangerous and everybody knows it. It should be avoided at all costs but thats not how real life works.


The list is by no means complete, thats not the point.
The point is that QA has very little impact on the endresult and often times its not their fault, if bugs make it into the release version.
However the customers dont know that and wont ever know the detailled history of any given bug - how could they?
Yet they are quick to blame QA.

Thats the real shame of working in QA. Working your ass off, crunching for weeks or months even and then getting blamed by your customers for other peoples mistakes or time constraints or whatever else it might be.
It sucks. Ive been there, done that and didnt last long.


Ever since I do hesitate to blame QA.
Usually they are doing a great job and still get all the blame, which is as understandable as it is frustrating.
I wish more people, especially gamers, knew how this entire process works and consequently stop shitting on QA.

Which is why PTR is better solution, it takes part of load from QA hands. You can afford to log everything during PTR because CCU is intentionally limited, and can access this data later when investigating an issue.

About verifying, it is not as drastic as you paint. Programmers who worked on the engine for years and know the code usually have pretty good idea if they've managed to fix it or not, and also possible locations to check for side effects afterwards. It is not totally searching blind on QA part.

About drowning in tickets, well, to each its own. I've also written a combat system for an arpg game (not a tiny mobile game), and what a shock, it works without bugs. Whenever I add new mechanics from legendary items or skills, it works as expected, player complaints about skill or combat issues are rarest our team has currently.

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Echothesis wrote:

Which is why PTR is better solution, it takes part of load from QA hands. You can afford to log everything during PTR because CCU is intentionally limited, and can access this data later when investigating an issue.

No it doesnt.

PTRs or Early-Access are a intended to provide a feedback loop during a grace period and serve as a marketing tool. QA has to be pretty much done with their work, otherwise there wouldnt be a stable version ready to be launched in the context of early-access or PTR.


Now the feedback can be valuable but thats not QAs concern.
The designers will have a lot to talk about after disecting all the provided feedback, which is likely going to lead to some sort adjustments, which needs to be tested and thats when QA is involved again - not before.

Is it overall good for the game?
Sure, it can be. Its a great marketingtool, its great for collecting early feedback but its a terrible choice, if you really wanted actionable bug reports outside of a very limited stresstest and potential exploits, if the latter ones do get reported that is.

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Echothesis wrote:

Which is why PTR is better solution, it takes part of load from QA hands. You can afford to log everything during PTR because CCU is intentionally limited, and can access this data later when investigating an issue.

About verifying, it is not as drastic as you paint. Programmers who worked on the engine for years and know the code usually have pretty good idea if they've managed to fix it or not, and also possible locations to check for side effects afterwards. It is not totally searching blind on QA part.

I'd be more worried that PTR leads to players finding exploits, keeping them to themselves and abusing once the league launches.

And the notion that players can do QA's job, well, I just don't see it. QA is part of the entire development process from start to finish. PTRs happen at the very end, when everything is basically done to get early feedback to new mechanics & for marketing (people start talking about it).

There is a limit to how long players stay engaged with a particular content patch. PTR would legit be bad for retention making it a bad financial decision, especially considering that GGG has been able to generate hype without them.

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Orbaal wrote:

No it doesnt.

PTRs or Early-Access are a intended to provide a feedback loop during a grace period and serve as a marketing tool. QA has to be pretty much done with their work, otherwise there wouldnt be a stable version ready to be launched in the context of early-access or PTR.

Now the feedback can be valuable but thats not QAs concern.
...

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ArtCrusade wrote:

I'd be more worried that PTR leads to players finding exploits, keeping them to themselves and abusing once the league launches.

And the notion that players can do QA's job, well, I just don't see it. QA is part of the entire development process from start to finish. PTRs happen at the very end, when everything is basically done to get early feedback to new mechanics & for marketing (people start talking about it).

There is a limit to how long players stay engaged with a particular content patch. PTR would legit be bad for retention making it a bad financial decision, especially considering that GGG has been able to generate hype without them.

Agreed about PTR's original purpose is not about bugs, but poe is really a special case, no other bloated mess like this in the genre :) Which means even devs can forget to request tests of some exploit avenues.

Further, with how punishing the game is, players here became sensitive to slightest combat changes, and I bet bug reporting will be a large part of PTR feedback anyway.

And unless PTR population limited to 20 streamers, I wouldn't worry about hiding exploits. There will always be people more inclined to blow whistle and report it just because it suits their temperament more than shady abusing later.

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Echothesis wrote:

Agreed about PTR's original purpose is not about bugs, but poe is really a special case, no other bloated mess like this in the genre :) Which means even devs can forget to request tests of some exploit avenues.

Further, with how punishing the game is, players here became sensitive to slightest combat changes, and I bet bug reporting will be a large part of PTR feedback anyway.

And unless PTR population limited to 20 streamers, I wouldn't worry about hiding exploits. There will always be people more inclined to blow whistle and report it just because it suits their temperament more than shady abusing later.

Sorry my guy, this is not how real life works.


You keep painting PoE as well as the Devs in the worst possible way, sprinkling in your own perspective as the ultimate truth, while also ingoring the blatantly obvious downsides of your suggestions to make those look better.



If you play wordgames like that, you better make sure to address either an echochamber agreeing with your point of view or you end up pushing everyone else away because your wordgames are way too much "on the nose" and will only insult people with 2 or more braincells to rub together, because they are able to see past the BS.

Life isnt just black & white, its a million shades of grey in between, which you choose to ignore on purpose. Thats not going to fly.
If you want to make a convincing argument, at least try to acknowledge the world isnt as overly simplistic as you paint it.

I dont know why you are doing it in the first place, let alone keep doing it consistently but I do know that you lost me by doing what you do.