Reminder: Selectable Character Gender is a "Minimum Bar."

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Pashid wrote:

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1453R wrote:

A lot of the Boomer Zoomer Must-Go-Faster players that have long since lost all sense of that grounding in the world of Wraeclast forget that they're a vanishing minority of the playerbase - fewer than four percent of players on Steam have the achievements for defeating the Eater of Worlds, and same for the Searing Exarch. That sense of grounding is actually really important for retaining more typical players, even if it aggravates high-speed-low-drag optimancers looking to get to maps fifteen seconds faster.

You can't really take steam achievements as a proper measurement tho.
Those 4% could be like 80 or who knows how many percent of the existing player base. The percentage is based on accounts with the game in their library and not the percentage of players who actually played the game lately.
A large portion of those players might not even play anymore and never experienced the boss fights to begin with as they simply did not exist years ago.
Some are probably players who've picked up this game but did not liked it much, not accounts which obviously don't encounter those fights anyways, and do on.

It's the same with those people who take the steam charts as active measurement of player numbers while it's also just inaccurate.

Some proper statistics after each league would be cool, but that's something only GGG can provide, so heavily unlikely to happen at all nowadays.

the point of POE2, as stated and indicated by the people who are making it, is not to continue to be the game where 75+% of the player base is the most sweaty members.

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BINARYGOD wrote:

There is nothing to lose by adding this is

The issue is that this is very low in the priority list, but for some reason, some people insist in treating it as high.

I can get into the game right now and reproduce at least 3 bugs and or "interactions" that should've be fixed years ago, yet...

Oh, and before anyone say anything, it's obvious one thing being fixed has no correlation to others being added, but the, let's say, "work force available" to resolve code related issues is very low atm, and i would rather it be used to fix stuff that affects everyone, not a small portion of players.

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BINARYGOD wrote:

the point of POE2, as stated and indicated by the people who are making it, is not to continue to be the game where 75+% of the player base is the most sweaty members.

That's not really set yet as the game's not even out yet.
Maybe not right at release but over time and further development the game will for sure not be any different to PoE1 regarding the point of content with some people having a harder time while some others fall asleep.
Aspirational content is always going to be a thing in any game in one or another way.
And who knows PoE2 might as well ends up just as fast as the current version of PoE once they stack up more and more player power over each league, just the same way they did with PoE with some players having a hard time to get things done while others again just fall asleep with how easy it might get.

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Pashid wrote:

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Unless they exercise self restraint and keep exercising it for years to come, i can very much see PoE2 becoming PoE1, in relative terms, even if it takes twice as many years, of half so. No way to know (yet).

I wonder what percent of GGG resources are going into the POE2 Acts versus the end game? I suspect quite a lot. It is the basis for everything that follows. It is likely the baby that the Devs have doted on and cared for and grown over the past few years. It will be the basis for all the future league expansions to follow. To get through all six Acts and make them playable will be a huge undertaking by its release. Lots of dollars and thoughtfulness and effort.

And yet six, eight, ten months before its release here we are talking about how to skip those same Acts. The Acts are already the red-headed stepchild. As much as I don't like running the Acts now after ten years, I would think that from the GGG team's standpoint, such talk would make me sad.

I hope the Devs find a waay to vary the passage to maps such that there are a variety of options or paths, or modifiers or whatever, such that running them stays fun and interesting for a few years.

Yeah, the zoomers will be zooming. The passive tree blossomed as did the Atlas and then they morphed into the atlas passive tree. I think Jonathon should be able to find a way to do something similar with the Acts. He has a clean chalk board to work with and scores of POE1 leagues to draw from.

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Pashid wrote:

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1453R wrote:

A lot of the Boomer Zoomer Must-Go-Faster players that have long since lost all sense of that grounding in the world of Wraeclast forget that they're a vanishing minority of the playerbase - fewer than four percent of players on Steam have the achievements for defeating the Eater of Worlds, and same for the Searing Exarch. That sense of grounding is actually really important for retaining more typical players, even if it aggravates high-speed-low-drag optimancers looking to get to maps fifteen seconds faster.

You can't really take steam achievements as a proper measurement tho.
Those 4% could be like 80 or who knows how many percent of the existing player base. The percentage is based on accounts with the game in their library and not the percentage of players who actually played the game lately.
A large portion of those players might not even play anymore and never experienced the boss fights to begin with as they simply did not exist years ago.
Some are probably players who've picked up this game but did not liked it much, not accounts which obviously don't encounter those fights anyways, and do on.

It's the same with those people who take the steam charts as active measurement of player numbers while it's also just inaccurate.

Some proper statistics after each league would be cool, but that's something only GGG can provide, so heavily unlikely to happen at all nowadays.

they are just trying to make their opinion sound like fact. Steam stats don't mean anything. Even if the steam stats are a small part of the people who keep playing after a few acts, it still doesn't mean anything I can use this number and say '' people don't like killing endgame boss '' I'd have as much proof as they do.

Personally i dont see selectable character gender as a minimum. Its GGG's story telling if they want a class to be either male or female thats totally fine for me.

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1453R wrote:

Jonathan is on record in recent interviews (the last ~5 months, I believe) as "not loving" the idea of a non-campaign level skip. He knows it's a huge community ask, but he's stated he's strongly resistant to it. His preferred solve is, rather than allowing players to skip the campaign, trying to find ways to make the campaign fun to play every time, no matter how many times you've done it, so you don't feel a need to skip it.

Level skip for PoE1...yes. PoE2 not right away.

How to implement though? Season-long cash-pay skip after the 1st run through? Or maybe per-account skip pass for mo money. Don't know but if they jack up the implementation, like every skip requires blood sacrifice, very few will do it anyway.

Yeah, i don't see character gender as a minimum bar in a game like POE, either.

The gender of a character is a non factor here and has literally zero impact on the gameplay. POE is neither a story driven game like The Last of Us or God of War (where gender selection would make no sense), nor a higly immersive make your own adventure roleplaying type of game like BG3 (in which case a gender selection option makes much more sense).

In POE i choose my class based on the build i want to play and idgaf if the model is male or female. But in the end it is GGGs decision.

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1453R wrote:

And yet I cannot blame players at all for not wanting to grind the campaign for the three hundredth time...

It's impossible to blame them.

There is no right or wrong here. But they (GGG) seem pretty firm in their choice and I can't do anything but to respect it. I think the best way forward, is to throw a character defining choice, like the bandit choice on stereoids, into every act. Increase the connection and commitment to your character.

Anyhow, playing through the campaign once every league should always be a requirement. I wouldn't whine or cry if they added the possibility for your second or third character to skip the campaign, but I do not think it's needed in a game that does not try to be as casual as possible.