Feedback & request: future proofing the in game economy (decade loyal player and multi AAA game dev)

First, thanks for checking out and reading my post!

For context and relatability (or apologitically lack thereof for our casual fans); I've been playing PoE2 since release, PoE1 since 2014 where I hunted ALL the achievements and then tried to master creating across over 4k+ hrs. I also have over 850+ hrs on PoE2 where I run an active guild for casual and new players,and have worked on AAA to Indie Games Awards winning ARPGs, MMORPGs, RPGs.

This will be a long one with no TLDR because more engagement (views and time on the page) will increase the likelihood of the devs seeing this page. Also, I agree it's wordy, but I promise you I tried to be considerate by being concise, but candidly we both know you can copy this text to an AI to summarize it yourself or just skip to the last paragraph. I personally don't use AI though and my points are very intentionally laid in a specific order that a TLDR simply can't capture that well. I'm not a writer, just an ex game dev hoping my favorite game developers see this and acknowledge the post before PoE's 0.8.

Let's get some stuff out of the way for any rage baits;




To the devs; I've been silently enjoying both your games for decades across every platform (especially PC w/ controller) and I love them both dearly. For targeting demographics you can consider me VERY loyal semi-hardcore league player; I'll always start in hardcore, but usually switch to standard if I die in endgame, I play every league for weeks, run a dedicated guild that's popular enough to get new crafters and casual players every single league while maintaining a healthy corre group of over 30 dedicated hardcore players (5 who always make it in top 100 in hardcore), and an usually included in the core audience tag lines during the dev talks. However, with as much time as I put into the game I am first and foremost a crafter and experimenter. For example, I found the compounding ignite bug/exploit myself using oil grenade and incinerate within 3 hrs of the league start just because of I was trying t to access all the new content ASAP and experimenting with the compounding tag was the newest toy at level 31.

All of that is to say I truly understand what you're trying to do, the reality of limited resources even as AAA/AA company, the need to focus on the most impactful gameplay related aspects, and boy do I understand that loot based game economics is unimaginably difficult to address due to there being more variables as there in real economics PLUS about 20 RPG novel series after the big boss is defeated. I also want to recognize that there have been an abundance of massive, impressive, and impactful changes and content that have positively impacted the player economy over the years since I starting playing on PoE 1's 1.2 update. Every new crafting mechanic has been a genuine pleasure to interact with and nothing I say next should diminish any of that exponentially impactful asks incredible quality work. I've been silent because I've trusted you.

Unfortunately the mass layoffs and job hunting pandemic in the USA have forced me to switch careers to one that doesn't exactly value exploring PoE 2's systems nearly at much. So as an official personal goodbye to my career in the gaming industry I wanted to provide a data driven request to my all time favorite game devs; You recently announced the additional head count for the game balancing team for PoE2, and especially touched on end game fairness, which is awesome and I'm glad you're company is thriving! On that note the note of future headcount and resource application; My very pleading, humble, and frustratingly NDA censored request is to PLEASE ensure the teams dedicated to in-game economy have a voice in core pillar, OKR setting, and related discussions while supporting them with data science (especially multi-year economy-focused telemetry), multiple longitudinal user experience research efforts focused on loot exploits before each league, and other resources to ensure PoE2's 1.0 standard leagues have built-in safety nets and automation systems to directly impact the economy within the first 14 days of each league.

From my 15+ years of experience, I understand this is a huge ask that has tons of implications for negative player experiences and feedback early in leagues. However, in its current state the player economy is increasingly becoming more and more inaccessible and unfair to everyone who is not a streamers, high hour hardcore, and/or lucky. Moreover, the ever growing popularity, shareability of glitches/bugs/exploits, and (understandablly set in store) core gameplay loop that hinges the playability of the ENTIRE league (Standard and Hardcore) directly to each player's ability to generate in game resources. AI is only going to exacerbate these issues as content creation and "views" become key aspects of IRL profits.

So while I'm well aware of and will quickly acknowledge GGG has absolutely made great aned impressive strides to improve the player economy, the teams that will have the most impact to player economy management in early leagues will increasingly struggle to compete with the resources, productivity, and agency to ensure the player economy isn't ruined early by intentional and unintentional exploiting players. It is especially important to acknowledge these needs to increase the productivity and executive level support of these teams because the impact to churn rates and negatively player experiences for casual, medium hour hardcore, and crafting-focused players can be directly linked to resource costs skyrocketing due to unaddressed exploits.

This league was especially harsh on the casual and crafting focused players from my perspective as changes to the league mechanic were well done, but far too late to stop the economy being ruined within the second day. I personally witnessed 6 different crafting and casual focused guilds struggle excessively this league (enough for 4/6 to lose almost all their casual players even with crafting support) because by the time most of their players had enough resources to craft or completed the campaign the economy was already well past inaccessible to them. I saw way too many casual get excited about the first divine only to find it far less useful than any previous league and for their very proud moment to instantly become extremely negative when they tried to use it for a weapon upgrade from a crafter. I'd genuinely hate to see all the potential new players on full release experience that and I very much doubt you don't feel the same way. However, I'm not seeing public announcements addressing this very complex issue directly (just casual mentions so far), so I strongly felt the next to speak up.






For all my fellow exiles; thanks for helping make this game great! Sorry for the wall of text. I'll keep this part shorter for both our sakes. I know many of us have mixed feelings about the economy and how to address it, especially when it comes loot tables, drop rates, and maximizing your own sweet dopamine rushes from great drops. As such, I hope you'll support this post and my request for more publicly announced resources dedicated to early league economy balancing. Whether you do or don't, I still hope to see your own professional/elegant/neurodiverse/constructive feedback and commentary. Let's make Sin and "The Hooded One" proud by working together to keep it civil.



PS I wrote this in one go (and then found many glaring errors that I fixed) after a 14 hr shift, so please excuse the likely many errors. Stay sane even outside the game exiles.

I couldn't even read this. Bro wtf. Also dropping things like "AAA dev" but not even mentioning ANY games or even introducing yourself is not going to gain you any trust.

Anyway, amidst this wall of text I found this

"

(especially multi-year economy-focused telemetry)

Wtf is this supposed to mean? Multi year economy? Each league is like 3-4 months, what multi year?

Am I getting trolled or something?

What is this

"

However, in its current state the player economy is increasingly becoming more and more inaccessible and unfair to everyone who is not a streamers, high hour hardcore, and/or lucky. Moreover, the ever growing popularity, shareability of glitches/bugs/exploits, and (understandablly set in store) core gameplay loop that hinges the playability of the ENTIRE league (Standard and Hardcore) directly to each player's ability to generate in game resources. AI is only going to exacerbate these issues as content creation and "views" become key aspects of IRL profits.

This league is by far the wealthiest anybody has ever been. Everybody and their mom gets a headhunter, 100+ div build, pretty much anything they want, much easier than before.

I'm gonna stop quoting because the whole thing feels like a big troll or chatgpt trap.

"

3aek#4200 schrieb:

For context and relatability (or apologitically lack thereof for our casual fans); I've been playing PoE2 since release, PoE1 since 2014 where I hunted ALL the achievements and then tried to master creating across over 4k+ hrs.

https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/3aek-4200/achievements

97/127. That's not all. Debunked yourself in the first paragraph.

ChatGPT bot,

0 challenges done on any past 10 leagues. Some cooked profile, report and move on.

We aren't playing the same games, I don't think.

There's no way their design choices are are limit of resources or allocation of them. I really hope you're not oblivious to the core design flaws of PoE1 because they plague PoE2 as well. They copied over mechanics without asking themselves why or what purpose those mechanics serve.

Do I need to pull a video of 0% Action Speed bosses because they forgot why you don't use linear additive scaling? It doesn't take much thought Ignite being based on Hit damage will never work either. Or how skills have been changed by 300%? Something that should be impossible.

There's also no point in focusing on game economy if no one stays around more than 3 weeks to play said game. When 50% of the time your most dedicated streamers aren't streaming your game. That's a pretty big red flag and it means you'll lose them soon.

You can't make a good game out of bad core designs and I made better game mechanic designs when I was 15. Literally. I used to make MUDs. Two of them are still live 30 years later.

Gemstone and The Dead of Night are the MUDs. Rune Quake, Diablo 1 The Dark, DOS2 Conflux.
I don't mind name dropping because I'm proud of my work. You can play right now.

"

https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/3aek-4200/achievements

97/127. That's not all. Debunked yourself in the first paragraph.

Catching up on messages after another long shift. I stopped playing PoE1 on PoE2's release due to needing to use a controller. I hated the need for flasks and how hard they are to use on controller without third party applications. So, before I read the other replies I just wanted to address this and the many other similar ones easily. Thanks for checking out my Alt / main PoE2 history though, genuinely appreciate the due diligence!

"

Also dropping things like "AAA dev" but not even mentioning ANY games or even introducing yourself is not going to gain you any trust.

For clarity of future replies I meant Steam Achievements specifically across multiple accounts. I'm not at all comfortable linking this thread to my real life, so while I appreciate the due diligence, the expectation that someone share private information online is extremely, and I do mean, extremely unsafe from a privacy perspective. So, sorry not sorry I'm not at all willing to build trust that way and if you're open to education on the topic trying googling your own full name. You'll be surprised by what you find.

Even naming the games I've worked on means you can Google the credits and "economy" and find me, so that's not happening either. Below is a screenshot of my steam profile with all the achievements. As politely as I can, this is the most you'll get out of me and I'll be deleting even this within the week.

"

Wtf is this supposed to mean? Multi year economy? Each league is like 3-4 months, what multi year?

Am I getting trolled or something?

That entire section is filled to the brim with jargon intentionally. It's not meant to troll you, just streamline complexity.

Multi-year telemetry essentially boils down to having internal measurements of thousands upon thousands of in-game player actions and "events", where an event can span something as simple as picking up a single loot item to as complex as "how many divines have been traded by all players from x to y date". So I'm asking for the devs to basically focus on manage the early game economy much more closely using data from all the past leagues over that past x years, with x being whenever they start(ed) tracking all the different aspects that account for the how the economy changes over each league.

"

Xzorn#7046 schrieb:

We aren't playing the same games, I don't think.

There's no way their design choices are are limit of resources or allocation of them. I really hope you're not oblivious to the core design flaws of PoE1 because they plague PoE2 as well. They copied over mechanics without asking themselves why or what purpose those mechanics serve.

Do I need to pull a video of 0% Action Speed bosses because they forgot why you don't use linear additive scaling? It doesn't take much thought Ignite being based on Hit damage will never work either. Or how skills have been changed by 300%? Something that should be impossible.

There's also no point in focusing on game economy if no one stays around more than 3 weeks to play said game. When 50% of the time your most dedicated streamers aren't streaming your game. That's a pretty big red flag and it means you'll lose them soon.

You can't make a good game out of bad core designs and I made better game mechanic designs when I was 15. Literally. I used to make MUDs. Two of them are still live 30 years later.

Gemstone and The Dead of Night are the MUDs. Rune Quake, Diablo 1 The Dark, DOS2 Conflux.
I don't mind name dropping because I'm proud of my work. You can play right now.

Definitely not playing different games. I love fire magic in just about every game, so no I'm not ignoring these points and the many many other imported and new issues. Like armor and evasion calculations making no sense from a melee perspective and that going unaddressed for far too long.

But sadly I don't have a similar professional or private background, so I can't really speak to those issues as much as I can about how broken the economy is. The other saying it's the wealthiest most players have been in many past league is definitely something I can speak to though. From my perspective many of those issues should or are already on the docket or at least have teams that can address them, but I'm not seeing the same thing for the economy at all.

We've already seen enough leagues in PoE2 to have a great idea of what a good economy looks like, yet this league and the last one were absolutely horrible economy wise for player retention. Yes, many many players are rich and yes that is a good thing, but it's also an extremely bad thing for the economy to be as up and down the charts as it has been.

I very much do mind my own name dropping, but glad you've got a great indie game in the making!


PS: As I stated in my original post I don't use AI. I'm just autistic and try to be very clear and concise with my word choices. *Shrug* it's not my fault if my info dumps and wall of text come off as some unsafe and poorly trained machine learning tool. But, last I checked AI doesn't use *'s for describing actions, if at all.

"

This league is by far the wealthiest anybody has ever been. Everybody and their mom gets a headhunter, 100+ div build, pretty much anything they want, much easier than before.

I agree with your entire post except for this. 100 Div in this league is about a 100Ex build in the last one. It's relative. I play a lot, but I can't keep up with the economy when there are so many people who play this for a job.