Welcome to GGG forum AKA "The Void"

Why Void?

Because 99% of the posts written here will descent into nothingness, most probably never even read from GGG, at least that is my impression.

Furthermore, it's a place that people can berate each other with absolutely no consequences. Reminds me of some forum sections, back then when forums were more relevant, that were mostly unmoderated and everyone could do as they pleased.

GGG, what kind of a place are you running here?

GGG used to read this stuff.

Gaming evolved to pretty much rely completely on streamer culture as a huge bulk of income generation, so GGG will go hang out with streamers (who IMO are also not representative of us hardcore fans, but absolutely represent giant chunks of ready-to-spend-small-amount gamers)

So GGG won't listen to someone like me who has supported and played their games consistently for a long time, just like how Blizzard wouldn't listen to us D2 vets when we said runewords were a god damn mistake. Blizz came out with D3, GGG with PoE2, and on and on it goes.

Hardcore fans just don't matter anymore when it comes to live service games, the hobby of gaming is not made for us bar a few great one-off single player games.

They probably have an algorithm that looks up key phrases or words to put into a pile for whomever to read for a minute. What company reads their customer complaints one by one these days.

GGG used to genuinely read user feedback.

Then they pivoted to using AI to aggregate player opinions into easily achievable fixes.

Then they just said f*ck it, we're the most successful ARPG of all time, while only being fractionally complete, just let it ride.

Can't really blame them when instead of saying I don't like X and explaining why players instead make long rants about "trash design", "bad design", "What idiot made X", etc. And then top it off with the same 5 people that admit they don't even play the game running through every thread posting the same misinformation or just fanning the flames.

"

Kaboinglefop#0955 wrote:

GGG used to read this stuff.

Gaming evolved to pretty much rely completely on streamer culture as a huge bulk of income generation, so GGG will go hang out with streamers (who IMO are also not representative of us hardcore fans, but absolutely represent giant chunks of ready-to-spend-small-amount gamers)
[...]

The streamer bubble is by no means representative. That's probably 0.5% of all players. They play 12 hours a day and treat the game as work, not entertainment. This in turn causes them to have a distorted point of view. Of course, this probably does not apply to everyone, but to the vast majority.

If they are indeed based primarily on streamer opinions, then RIP.

"

Valsacar#0268 wrote:

Can't really blame them when instead of saying I don't like X and explaining why players instead make long rants about "trash design", "bad design", "What idiot made X", etc. And then top it off with the same 5 people that admit they don't even play the game running through every thread posting the same misinformation or just fanning the flames.

I lead a support team in the past and took some classes on this. If you want to be serious about this job, you need to be able to look between the lines of such messages.

Behind every angry, bad taste post there's a real person, most probably riddled with anxiety from something he experienced from your product. If you as support, find a way to comfort him and bring him on your side, then you did a good job you can be proud of.

If you have a big volume of messages you ask for help and more people. We never left a message without answering. It was inconceivable in my mind. And to be honest i never worked somewhere where we would ignore our customers.

"

Valsacar#0268 wrote:

Can't really blame them when instead of saying I don't like X and explaining why players instead make long rants about "trash design", "bad design", "What idiot made X", etc. And then top it off with the same 5 people that admit they don't even play the game running through every thread posting the same misinformation or just fanning the flames.

Thing is though, a lot of these people (such as myself) are on the forums "fanning the flames" because that's the only way to (hopefully) get some fixes rolling out.

Because I'm going to be perfectly honest here:

I want to play the game. I love the concept of PoE1 and the majority of PoE2.

But every time I log in, my desire to trudge through the RNG Atlas to find my SECOND CITADEL is zero. My desire to run the same basic map for the umpteenth time to get dogshit rares, zero divines, and almost no progress toward a single upgrade is very low. Then when I instantly die to some absurdly goofy 1-shot from 100% health in an otherwise very safe map, that very low desire to keep playing drops to below zero, and I log the f*ck off.

It's a new game in early access by a company that historically does listen to user feedback pretty closely. Why wouldn't I voice my opinions and reiterate opinions I agree with? How else will improvements come?

I for one enjoy the trauma bonding. Forums are great.

"

Kaboinglefop#0955 wrote:

GGG used to read this stuff.

Gaming evolved to pretty much rely completely on streamer culture as a huge bulk of income generation, so GGG will go hang out with streamers (who IMO are also not representative of us hardcore fans, but absolutely represent giant chunks of ready-to-spend-small-amount gamers)

So GGG won't listen to someone like me who has supported and played their games consistently for a long time, just like how Blizzard wouldn't listen to us D2 vets when we said runewords were a god damn mistake. Blizz came out with D3, GGG with PoE2, and on and on it goes.

Hardcore fans just don't matter anymore when it comes to live service games, the hobby of gaming is not made for us bar a few great one-off single player games.

The small impulse purchase gamers (minnows and dolphins) that you mention have actually been the pillar of GGG's income since the very beginning. I chatted with the GGG devs years ago, at a media tour for Ascendancy (almost a decade to the date, wow). The devs themselves told me that MMOs and live service games like PoE make most of their money on casual gamers who come back at the start of every league, drop some money on impulse purchases, then play for a few weeks and leave until the next league. Hardcore players keep the game afloat in between these boom periods, but those casual players are what keep the lights on, at the end of the day.