https://xcancel.com/pathofexile/status/1884769182409265253
GGG lied. They had said they were working on patch 3.26 and now say they haven’t even started it.
https://xcancel.com/pathofexile/status/1884769182409265253
GGG lied. They had said they were working on patch 3.26 and now say they haven’t even started it.
Supporting two games with extremely similar target markets is just a dumb way to do business
That definitely is not true. When Jagex released RS3 and lost a huge percentage of their playerbase, they released RS2 under the OSRS title. When Blizzard lost a lot of their WoW player base over the years, they released classic wow, SoD wow, and fresh wow. There are other examples.
Path of Exile 2 is a completely different game and honestly unworthy of the name. GGG should have named it something else. Most of the people who say that they like Path of Exile 2 are people who have never played Path of Exile 1. They only like the game because 2 is a bigger number than 1 and they never tried the other game. POE 2 stole the name cred and produced something that was much worse.
The 2 games have completely different game philosophy. The game design of POE1 is to go fast and have linear zones. Path of Exile 1 is designed like a race track. Path of Exile 1 had racing tournaments with thousand dollar cash prizes. Nearly all of the POE 1 streamers who promote the game are racers or people who play fast characters. Every Path of Exile expansion came with an economy reset. The fastest players were rewarded with the most in game currency, because they get the best loot first and sell it at higher prices.
The game design of POE 2 is that you’re not allowed to change your movement speed and the zones are massive and boxy and meandering, ie unrewarding and wasting your time. POE 2 game design is incompatible with racing. The campaign takes twice as much time to complete even though it has a much shorter campaign in terms of story and quests. All of the current promoters of POE 2 are POE 1 players who are playing this slop because they were promised that POE 1 would continue, or D4 streamers who are trying to get in on the hype. POE 2 is not going to retain the POE 1 player base.
POE 2 is also not going to retain the POE 2 player base. Many of the new POE 2 players have no idea what a “league” is. POE 2 players have no idea that Path of Exile 2 (following Path of Exile and Diablo 2) is going to have an economy reset after every major patch, where every account restarts with no characters and no items. (Your old character and items gets moved to a version of the game where you can’t access the new content.) I suspect that many of the new players are going to not return after this happens because anti-racing design is incompatible with the economy reset design. Also they’re not going to abandon the economy reset design because it matches the Diablo 2 design which GGG loves to follow.
Path of Exile 2 is not even a complete game. There are only 2 types melee weapons in the game currently maces and warstaves, and maces are trash. They have not yet implemented swords, axes, flails, daggers, or spears, as they had promised. There’s only 12 of the 36 promised character classes implemented in the game. Only 3 of the 6 campaign acts have been developed. The endgame is barren and tedious. It does not make sense to kill a complete game for an incomplete game.
GGG was supposed to release the new expansion for Path of Exile 1 in November. Instead, they re-released the previous expansion with a new economy with the promise of releasing the next expansion in February. Then they released Path of Exile 2 themed “supporter packs”. Supporter packs is how the game is funded. You spend money on a bundle which includes in game skins, in game store credit for more skins, and the more expensive supporter packs have physical merchandise.
People were told that the money from the supporter packs would go to the continued development of Path of Exile 1. People spent money in December so that they would keep working on Path of Exile 1. So that means that in November, GGG knew that they were going to discontinue POE 1, but lied so that people who wanted more POE content would give them money. That is fraudulent behavior. They knowingly lied to their core fans for short term profit seeking.
The whole franchise is basically over. The core POE 1 fan base is incompatible with POE 2 and the POE 2 fan base won’t stick around once they see what is to come. Everything was gutted for short term profits.
man why is every post about POE2 from POE1 vets like this. Every single one has to make it so anyone who likes POE2 doesn’t ACTUALLY like it, they’re just lying to themselves and to everyone else for fun i guess
let alone the fucking melodrama of ‘being unworthy of the name’ and it ‘stealing credit’. i guess even hexbear isn’t safe from brainworms if the game has enough skinner boxes in it
please i beg you to go outside. you’ve written an entire screed about how the only rational position is your own with no self-awareness while pretending anyone else is blind and too ignorant to have your superior taste for video games, let alone the fact you’re speaking like they’re literally taking the first game out back and putting a bullet in it when they’re merely pausing dev for a bit to focus on POE2 - you know, to fix the fact that its ‘not even a complete game’, considering it’s early access
i don’t want to seem like I’m completely reading into a stranger too much, but i think you really need to take a step back and contemplate why you’re posting in exact parallel to the way reddit is also talking about POE1 vs POE2, maybe you’re too bought in to have any other take than gamer rage
I did not say that people who don’t like POE 2 don’t like it. I didn’t say anyone is pretending. I bet that POE 2 players who never played POE 1 actually really enjoy it. I said that they don’t know that the POE 1 was better because they never experienced it.
Let’s say you’ve never been to a ramen shop and you try microwave cup ramen. Cup ramen tastes pretty good right? It’s not bad. People who go to the ramen shop might say, “Cup ramen is not bad, but I prefer to go to the ramen shop”. People who enjoy the ramen shop even start eating cup ramen on the side and recommend it to their friends. Okay but now the ramen shop says, “We’re closing down the ramen shop because cup ramen is making more money.” The people who enjoy ramen made at the ramen shop are upset because the quality of cup ramen does not match the ramen shop experience. The people who only have had cup ramen don’t really care because they never tried it before. They say, “Why are you mad, we still have cup ramen and I like that a lot.” POE 2 is the cup ramen. I’m happy that you enjoy cup ramen. I like cup ramen too but it’s not a substitute for the ramen shop.
And yes, this is a sign that “they’re literally taking the first game out back and putting a bullet in it”. The last POE 1 expansion was released in July 2024. POE 1 expansions have historically lasted for 3 months. POE 1 expansion 3.26 was expected to be released in November. POE 1 development has been delayed like 4 times now. In the video, Jonathan says that they have not even started working on 3.26. He also says that the expansion will not even be worked on until after POE 2 patch 0.2 is released. When will POE 2 patch 0.2 be released? March maybe? So they’re going to start working on POE 1 again in March? Does that mean 3.26 will be released in summer 2025? Two or three POE 1 expansion cycles have been missed in that time period. He doesn’t even provide any information about a future POE 1 expansion release in the video.
As for POE 2 being in Early Access as you said. During the Early Access announcement, GGG said that POE 2 will complete Early Access within 6 months to 1 year of the initial release. It has been 2 months since. We don’t even have a date or any information for Patch 0.2. At the current rate of development, do you think that Early Access will be completed within 6 months? Do you think that POE 2 will be fully complete within 1 year? How long will the Early Access run at this rate? Is it sensible to abandon a full game for an incomplete game for over a year? Time will tell.
you and I are literally not on the dev team, have no insight into progress beyond what the dev team say, and neither of us have ever made or released a game or a project of this size (unless hexbear is hiding some dark horses somewhere). Neither of us can answer this question with any amount of certainty.
And?
and then the people who really liked the ramen shop write screeds to the shop, nail theses to their door about how they’re fraudsters and liars, and of course completely ignore that the shop owners said they’re opening up again soon and just asking for some patience - it’s a very normal thing that happens
you’re right, you didn’t say they didn’t like POE2, you just said they only like the game because the number is bigger, not because of the game itself, my apologies.
attitudes like this are why I genuinely believe gamers are the last bastion of ‘The Customer is always Right’
I never said that I was owed another POE 1 expansion. I didn’t say that I was owed anything. There’s no “entitlement” here. I am not writing a “screed” for the devs. I said that the devs lied for profits. In November, they said give us money now and you’ll get a POE 1 expansion in February. They took the money and then there’s no planned expansion. That’s just a recollection of events that happened.
I make posts on hexbear for my own interests. Path of Exile 1 was my favorite game ever. I have made many posts about Path of Exile 1 and Path of Exile 2. If the devs say that my favorite game is indefinitely put on halt, then I’m going to say that it upsets me. I explained why it upsets me. You are telling me that I’m not allowed to be upset. You are not allowed to police how I feel.
At no point have I said you’re not allowed to feel upset. I admit I got curt with my last comment, but my points still stand - that in order to voice your disappointment, you’ve not only pulled in arguments about how the devs are lying (because they’ve moved back their initial plan of February, and then communicated that), but also arguments about whether POE2 ‘deserves’ to be called Path of Exile, treated the game like it’s stealing valour, and talked about how anyone who doesn’t see things the way you see things are at best ill-informed and at worst ignorant about their own tastes. I haven’t said anything about whether it’s allowed to be your favourite game, nor have I said anything to ‘police’ how you feel beyond pointing out that while I understand being upset, maybe it’s worth at least examining why all these peripheral points about other players comes into this for you.
It really follows the same line of thinking that seems to have become prevalent once again in the gamer space, that any time not spent on my particular thing is actively harmful to the thing I like - and not to put words into your mouth, but it really does feel like the end goal of an argument as presented here is that all the people who currently like POE2 decide one day ‘oh POE2 isn’t good’, all move back to POE1, and GGG falls over and relents and POE2 is treated like some bad dream - which is also why I believe it’s very ‘Customer is always right’ thinking. No other type of media gets this much push back or draws this much ire should something change between announcement and release, let alone a change that feels entirely reasonable, even if disappointing.
https://www.pathofexile.com/private-leagues/league/Settlers+Restart+xdd+Thanks+GGG
This is a link to join the POE1 Pohx Private league. It launched 2 hours ago and it will last for 60 days. A private league is a sandboxxed version of the game where you can only interact with other characters in the same private league. Pohx is a twitch streamer known for playing the skill Righteous Fire, a skill which will be added to POE 2 in the future. This private league has 18000 registered players, which is a pretty sizeable amount, though I think a typical poe 1 expansion launch has around 150,000.
Instead of arguing, I am inviting you to play POE 1 with active players and a fresh economy so that you can experience the game for yourself. If you don’t know what to build to play, go to youtube and search “poe 3.25 lightning strike”, “poe 3.25 righteous fire”, “poe 3.25 archmage ice nova”, “poe 3.25 hexblast mines”, “poe 3.25 power siphon mines”, “poe 3.25 holy relic”, or “poe 3.25 bama”. It is important that the video says 3.25 because builds from previous patches will not work.
Please try Path of Exile 1. Any in game purchases that you made in POE 2, such as stash tabs, are also accessible in POE 1.
Hey, look I don’t want to argue either - but I do have to let you know at this point, I have played POE1, bounced off it multiple times, have completed the campaign but haven’t gone back since. POE2 kind of is what’s gotten me back to paying Path of Exile, and while I appreciate the invite I don’t really think it’s going to sway me in the way you believe it will. But still, appreciate the offer and understand where you’re trying to come from - but again, it’s the assumption that I haven’t played something better being the only reason why I don’t necessarily have the same views you do, which I think you can see has not been a fair assumption this entire time.
Also as fair as your criticisms of 2 are, the game feels much better to play than 1, just in terms of controls and the feel of combat. You’re describing it as being so much slower than 1, but on my monk I generally feel like I’m moving around maps about as fast as I do in 1 before I have endgame gear; the main difference is that in PoE1 gear progression is smooth enough that anyone can slowly grind to make their character faster and faster, while 2 is currently in a horrible state for gear progression where making your character perform well is a balancing act of item rarity and fitting in Temporalis. I don’t see that as a fundamental design flaw, though, it’s clearly a consequence of how barebones the crafting system is at the moment, together with a lack of league mechanics and content to fill up the endgame. I don’t think this is a problem that wouldn’t be fixed via the usual GGG approach of powercreep via league mechanics and balancing every patch. It’ll get closer to where PoE1 is in terms of player power and content and PoE1 will get closer to where PoE2 is in terms of polish (and I know you’ll say PoE2 isn’t polished but I think most people who’ve tried to play both will agree PoE2 is more polished).
TL;DR the franchise is far from dead, PoE1 is in hibernation mode but it’s probably more accurate to say its golden age is over and it will see much smaller expansions moving forward, than to say it’s completely dead. But it’s speculation either way.