devs are 100% more active on discord

"

ArtCrusade wrote:

It'd likely include balance changes, new skills, reworks and whatnot so players would get to figure out what the new meta will be. Personally, that's a big turnoff.

I'm quite sure you're also past your 30s, Darth. I'm sure you remember when you had to buy a guide book to get your gaming spoilers or ask a friend who played the game before you. A lot of the excitement in games is figuring it out.

Or in short: a solved puzzle is just a picture

Have to agree with this times 1000

There is too much that is spoiled ahead of time with things like PTR and logs, this is seen in WoW where raids are known before they launch. And then detailed breakdown in game of what does what, its silly....

There was a time where if you wanted information, you had to buy a guide book or ask friends on their approach. Or figure things out on your own.

A lot more active learning process than what games are doing now with passive learning because they think gamers are all idiots or something, I cant say.


Players who did EA on POE2 had disclosure agreements as well.

And most of the games content is not even being tested, its just the early parts of what is made, not every single piece of content they are releasing.

The issue with spoilers is how much you want to participate in discussion and especially play with others.
These days spoilers are still mostly avoidable if you are willing to cut yourself off from most communication, but I guess that only a minority of players is willing to sacrifice this ?
(Especially with challenge leagues and season starts being so popular with PoE1.)

"

I mean GGG is doing EA for PoE2 (presumably to do the things a PTR would).

Depends what you mean by it. A PTR is very time-limited, has built-in cheats even in online-only modes, and player data is erased at the end of it. The ongoing closed beta is probably more like it ?

The Nov15 EA sounds more like a full-blown game launch, just like with PoE1's Open Beta.
(Which crossed the 3M players mark before even releasing on Steam !)

"

BlueTemplar85 wrote:

The Nov15 EA sounds more like a full-blown game launch

If thats true, whats the point? Just launch. Isnt EA vs Beta just semantics from a marketing standpoint? I mean just run a server stress test and be done with it. If they need extensive gaming test time, then we are just debating what it's called, not how it functions. Right?

And regarding spoilers, there are going to be tons of those from EA, so what is the difference in that aspect from a PTR?

(And looks like, unlike for PoE1, Early Access will also be on Steam and even on consoles ?)

Good point... managing expectations I guess ?

Like how Baldur's Gate 3 released 4 years ago, but didn't officially call it that until 1 year ago,
(during which 3 years they improved it a lot, notably thanks to those players that still decided to buy it even with the «Early Access» tag),
but even now that game is unfinished,
as the features that were added only a year ago are still not as polished that the 2-4 years old ones.
(And BG3 probably will never be finished, as almost all the devs have moved on on a different project, though AFAIK there's still a last big update, notably adding official modding support to the game, incoming this Fall ?)

And thanks to that extra polish, BG3 went on to win a bunch of «game of the year» awards... but for the year 2023, rather than 2020 !

Which makes me wonder : let's assume that PoE1 would have tried to win as many «game of the year» awards as possible : which year (/ update / challenge league) GGG should have called the game «officially released», if they knew about what the future (up to today) had in store ?

Yeah, I'm not a fan of people being forced to use all these other platforms to get information on the game. Its been like that a long time though, before POE even.

Developers do actually monitor and respond to things on the forum, so I think that's really good. I also think they should priorities their own platform. That's not currently realistic, as a large amount of player base prefer to use these other platforms, for a range of reasons, they find them better. GGG can't really ignore that if a large amount of people are doing it. So long as they always provide same amount or more information to their own channel I think it's fine. People shouldn't be forced to have discords, reddit etc, to get the information, it needs to be available directly through GGG's resources.

Overall they do a pretty good job. I think their monitoring of the forum and interacting with the community is quite good. Relying other platforms can lead to problems, like was seen when reddit mods striked. People couldn't access game important game information. If people are finding those other platforms a better way to share information, I'm not sure GGG can do much about that. So long as they are maintaining and providing information to their own channels, which they are, that's probably the best they can achieve to keep everyone happy.