why 4 months

4 month period is nice.

I've been cycling around my town, playing a bit of skyrim. For other players it allows them to enjoy other things in life that isn't PoE.

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Pashid wrote:

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DarthSki44 wrote:

My experience tells me that the PoE2 beta is going to be messy, full of bugs, performance issues, scaling problems, snapshotting, PoE1 MTX transfer nightmares, 3rd party tools issues, and much more. We will see who is talking about a finished product then good sir. Should be VERY interesting to see the response from the PoE Defense Force if that comes to pass.

Even if all those listed issues happen it's going to be a more flawless release than D4 was with all its own issues and lacking content, without doubts.

It's going to be just another L for D4, which is not really a accomplishment anymore at all as blizzard gives their own game a big L at all times.
The beta of PoE2 will just make it even more obvious of how bad D4 is lol

I bet some D4 players are already in fear about the release of the beta, which is honestly not hard to see with how much specific individuals gush up about their sick poor Diablo 4 patches while they also try to bad talk other products in their corresponding forums while not even playing said products lol

You've been proven wrong on this forum so many times regarding D4 as topic, and even other topics about PoE, so don't bother to come up with a 10 page essay of your glorious game and why it's good or better than PoE, everyone's going to take it with a grain of salt anyways by now.

Interesting that you can see the future!! You already know how good the Beta will be and that D4 is a failure and will always be despite getting continued content and updates! (We will ignore its ENORMOUS success in sales, since I don't consider that an accurate metric of a "good" game)

On a serious note:
We will see what happens, but poe is NOT known for good releases. Hardly ever. D4 release was pretty fucking good. The game? it wasn't bad, just meh. Especially when it gets compared to games with 10 years of content. But I don't expect you to understand that. (this is from a player who prefers poe to D4, btw. I haven't played D4 since launch)

Time will tell which one of us eats their words. o7

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DarthSki44 wrote:

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Pashid wrote:

at least they take their time with all the delays to deliver something decent and don't do the same mistake as blizzard with D4 to sell a rushed alpha product as finished game lol

4 months league do kinda suck and some events would be nice to fill the time.
but it's kinda reasonable that they also don't have the time for those but it is what it is in the end. There are lot's of other decent games to play in the meantime after all.

I have no idea what universe you are living in. GGG has been serving up undercooked leagues forever. The "what we are working on" posts have often been infamous.

Point is that GGG is absolutely not known for bug free, polished leagues. It's quite the opposite. D4, while one could argue was bland at launch, is for the most part, a clean, polished, finished game. Debate if you will on substance and what subsequent seasons mean to you, but lets not begin with the comparisons of PoE on launch in 2013 and D4 launch ten years later. That's laughable.

With PoE2, the development creep was so significant they had to abandon PoE1. It's been 5 fucking years lol. I guess now it's a "new game", but this beta in November better be beyond reproach or players will rightly wonder what has been happening since 2019.

My experience tells me that the PoE2 beta is going to be messy, full of bugs, performance issues, scaling problems, snapshotting, PoE1 MTX transfer nightmares, 3rd party tools issues, and much more. We will see who is talking about a finished product then good sir. Should be VERY interesting to see the response from the PoE Defense Force if that comes to pass.

Reading through, saw this and wanted to touch on it.

Blizzard is mostly known for one thing, at least inasmuch as actual game design goes and not, y'know...the other stuff. And that thing is polish. Blizzard games are generally among the most polished offerings in their respective genres, it's one of the advantages their gargantuan studio size gives them. A Blizzard game will never be truly rough, not in the way that stuff like, ohhh...release Cyberpunk was. Or every third PoE league.

There's honestly an argument to be made that Blizzard polishes its games to the point of detriment, polishing so much and filing down the rough bits so much that what's left is buttery smooth, perfectly executed tapioca pudding - bland and uninspired. It's been interesting to me to see the occasional D4 story in the wild which more-or-less reads "Blizzard Learns to Unclench a Little and Embrace Messiness", creeping a step or two closer to stuff like Path of Exile or Last Epoch throwing out messy but conceptually interesting ideas.

I have my own issues with Blizzard as an organization these days - it's real damn hard for a trans woman to justify financially supporting Blizzard after some of the shit they've pulled - but I'll admit that's the only reason I didn't give D4 a spin. Honestly came pretty close regardless, the initial drop landed at just the right time to punch me in my PoE2 jonesing.

It is a little funny to me to see people constantly bag on D4 around here, especially since one could argue that D4 took the Guild Wars 2 route as compared to GW1-inspired Path of Exile - "builds" in Diablo are a joke, sure, but there's also a lot less room for abject failure. Generally, whatever you want to play will be viable enough, whereas in Path the First it's very easy for a new player to get to Act 6 and end up hard stopped because their character is effectively bricked and they had no way of knowing it. Blizzard doesn't tolerate that, and it's one of the major reasons their game put up numbers Grinding Gear can generally only dream of.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that acknowledging a studio's strengths does no harm, I suppose. Heh. Blizzard is very good at NPE and polish, and it makes their games approachable and easy to pick up. They're comfy in a way Path of Exile just isn't, and cannot be.

'Course, Diablo will never be as buildy as any version of PoE. Grinding Gear's strength as a studio is a madlad willingness to let players do whatever the hell they feel like and enabling a level of complexity other developers consider factually insane. It makes Path 1 dense, indigestible and utterly unapproachable, but hell if I don't love watching a new Jousis video laying out some ludicrous Rube Goldberg nonsense I'd never dream of assembling and Blizzard would never countenance.

Does it mean stuff breaks in PoE? Oh yeah. All'a time. But hell if I don't appreciate a company willing to let stuff break in pursuit of letting players do ridiculous dumb cool-ass shit.

Eh, I'd really push back on Blizzards attention to detail and technical precision as detrimental, in any aspect really. I think that is really unfair to a very difficult part of game development.

As far as bland and uninspiring, I suppose I'd ask, compared to what exactly? I would agree that D4's launch was light in content, but the campaign was well done and solid.

If you look at other Blizzard titles, for all the memes and hate they do get (because it seems like all the cool kids do it), they all sell well, and have significant player engagement. Of the studios that have the biggest games of all time, across a number of genres, Blizzard is near the top. Say what you will, but you cannot argue with facts and results.

I'm glad that GGG is pushing the bar, and competition is great for players. I'm just saying that technical brilliance is definitely not one of the descriptions you would have for GGG, even after 10 years, and only one game in their IP. We can, and should, expect much better imo.

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vegeta1991 wrote:

last 2 months so boriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!!! bring old team back pls good league every 3 month. now 4 months wait and boring league so quit even sooner zzzz

How does a 3 month cycle change the fact that 2 months of it are boring?

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

I haven't kept up with their claims/offerings/plans for parallel development/updating/maintenance but...I would place about as much faith in them as I did in the notion that PoE 2 would be a functioning part of PoE 1. I was right that whole time, rare as it is, and I've nothing to lose believing there won't be much of it at all. There aren't many precedents for it and I don't think I've ever seen it work well. Everquest 1 and 2 maybe? Guild Wars 1 and 2 -- not so much, almost everyone hauled ass to 2 because it was a strong as hell continuation of the game world.

OTOH I've never seen a GaaS F2P ARPG get a sequel so it's all rather intriguing.

Yeah, I have not kept up with it very well either in terms of what they'll do with POE1/POE2 other than I don't think it will just be turning the lights off for POE1. I think they'll keep the lights on for a while at least.

If POE2 largely overtakes POE1 then I would expect them to just let it go. I enjoy POE1 and am worried that Ruthless influenced POE2 too much, but time will tell.

I will definitely be sad if they cut off the lights. None of the other ARPGs seem to scratch the itch. Last Epoch was fun for a playthrough. D3 was fun for an evening or two. D4 feels like an MMO (not my cup of tea). Wolcen seems like it isn't ready yet. D2R makes me sick for some reason when I play it. Literally sick to my stomach like vertigo or something.

I don't know man. I just hope they at least keep the lights on for POE1 with season resets like D2. I could live with that.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

If you look at other Blizzard titles, for all the memes and hate they do get (because it seems like all the cool kids do it), they all sell well, and have significant player engagement. Of the studios that have the biggest games of all time, across a number of genres, Blizzard is near the top. Say what you will, but you cannot argue with facts and results.

Sell numbers mean litteraly nothing in the end other than profit for the company.
Especially if you look at all blizzard games and how most of them are mere dead hanging on life support till blizzard decides to turn off the server for the last few remaining and paying customers.
That's not really a good accomplishment for such a large company.
OW 1 and 2 we don't have to talk about lol.
Starcraft dead without a new title to as replace for the genre.
Hots dead, didn't even survived long despite the big booming release.
hearthstone basically the same, used to be alive as fuck till better alternatives ended up on the market for the card game enjoyer. Server are just up to milk money out of the last players.
D4 big words and whatnot on what they want to deliver but in the end just overwatch 2 the 2nd lol.
WoW is the only game they have with some level of self respect towards their own game with classic being a success and even the last budget expansions being played by players for a longer time.
Sorry to crush your dreams or maybe even your crush on blizzard but the company is in fact not remotely as top as it used to be years ago lol
They simply take one big L after another and D4 was just no difference. 6 years of development by the way hoho

Why not?

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Nubatron wrote:

"

Foreverhappychan wrote:

I haven't kept up with their claims/offerings/plans for parallel development/updating/maintenance but...I would place about as much faith in them as I did in the notion that PoE 2 would be a functioning part of PoE 1. I was right that whole time, rare as it is, and I've nothing to lose believing there won't be much of it at all. There aren't many precedents for it and I don't think I've ever seen it work well. Everquest 1 and 2 maybe? Guild Wars 1 and 2 -- not so much, almost everyone hauled ass to 2 because it was a strong as hell continuation of the game world.

OTOH I've never seen a GaaS F2P ARPG get a sequel so it's all rather intriguing.

Yeah, I have not kept up with it very well either in terms of what they'll do with POE1/POE2 other than I don't think it will just be turning the lights off for POE1. I think they'll keep the lights on for a while at least.

If POE2 largely overtakes POE1 then I would expect them to just let it go. I enjoy POE1 and am worried that Ruthless influenced POE2 too much, but time will tell.

I will definitely be sad if they cut off the lights. None of the other ARPGs seem to scratch the itch. Last Epoch was fun for a playthrough. D3 was fun for an evening or two. D4 feels like an MMO (not my cup of tea). Wolcen seems like it isn't ready yet. D2R makes me sick for some reason when I play it. Literally sick to my stomach like vertigo or something.

I don't know man. I just hope they at least keep the lights on for POE1 with season resets like D2. I could live with that.

Wolcen is dead. Like seriously dead. Officially discontinued support. I'd be okay with that as an offline arpg with a fair bit of meat on its loopy bones but it's buggy AF on Ps5 so bye felicia.

DIV is definitely one for the Open World/ARPG hybrid fans. I've wanted that *since* Umbra was announced, ever since I started replaying a gently modded Sacred 2, and I just like being back in a well-crafted Sanctuary, so I'm cool with it.

D2R making you sick I can understand. Could be FoV, framerate, the usual issues. I was okay with it on console but only in a 'let's replay this with some old buddies' sense. Not in an 'omg this is MY Diablo 2 again!' kinda way.

As for POE 1, I said elsewhere the best possible outcome would be an offline mode made as a passion project by GGG devs in their spare time or something. Warhammer 40k Inquisitor is heading towards its end of life, and the devs are, having fucked up with their last online-only ARPG, making an effort to create an offline version that allows players to choose their seasonal content. That's rad. I'd play the shit out of an offline PoE, especially one curated to keep only the best of the things added in the past decade (subjective, of course, but we all know there's some flab in there).

I think it'd be bad business to keep both PoE 1 and PoE 2 running at the same time other than a 'keeping the lights on' for PoE 1. Sure, we have some stubborn as hell OG PoE 1 supporters in here who haven't surprised me with their obstinacy in the slightest, but from GGG's perspective, PoE 2 should be treated as carefully and yet ambitiously as Blizzard North treated Diablo 2. They also kept both games running on Bnet for years, but I don't recall much actual development going into D1 during D2's heyday. OTOH I don't recall much development going into D2 either, not compared to what players expect today.

...Meanwhile Elden Ring's over here laughing in Exactly One Expansion and it's considered almost the perfect addition. That game is, to me, the epitome of quality over quantity. It ain't my favourite game. I'm not very good at it. But jeeze if it doesn't raise the bar for what a good, discrete game should be.

Imagine a PoE crafted with the same attention to detail as Elden Ring. Given the GaaS model, the need for seasonal content which simply cannot maintain quality over quantity, it's a dream. But man, just imagine.

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Pashid wrote:

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

If you look at other Blizzard titles, for all the memes and hate they do get (because it seems like all the cool kids do it), they all sell well, and have significant player engagement. Of the studios that have the biggest games of all time, across a number of genres, Blizzard is near the top. Say what you will, but you cannot argue with facts and results.

Sell numbers mean litteraly nothing in the end other than profit for the company.
Especially if you look at all blizzard games and how most of them are mere dead hanging on life support till blizzard decides to turn off the server for the last few remaining and paying customers.
That's not really a good accomplishment for such a large company.
OW 1 and 2 we don't have to talk about lol.
Starcraft dead without a new title to as replace for the genre.
Hots dead, didn't even survived long despite the big booming release.
hearthstone basically the same, used to be alive as fuck till better alternatives ended up on the market for the card game enjoyer. Server are just up to milk money out of the last players.
D4 big words and whatnot on what they want to deliver but in the end just overwatch 2 the 2nd lol.
WoW is the only game they have with some level of self respect towards their own game with classic being a success and even the last budget expansions being played by players for a longer time.
Sorry to crush your dreams or maybe even your crush on blizzard but the company is in fact not remotely as top as it used to be years ago lol
They simply take one big L after another and D4 was just no difference. 6 years of development by the way hoho

It's not worth being this wrong just to try to win an argument that doesn't need to be made. Sandwiching a bunch of irrelevant facts between two fallacies doesn't make those fallacies any more true.