GGG is stingy with spending money on adequate development?

What I don't get is that, on the surface, Path of Exile 2 looks like a commercially successful project. The graphics are top-notch, there's community support, and monetization is clearly in place. So why is it that GGG is seemingly so stingy when it comes to providing decent servers, hiring enough developers, or staffing a competent support team? (And seriously, the people in support are either painfully slow or just don't bother digging deep into anything.)

I recently came across some job openings at GGG — and get this: they're actually not serious about hiring people in-house. Trying to force office attendance when remote work is a thing and you're clearly overwhelmed? That's just dumb. In an era of widespread remote work, a stagnant IT job market, and the rise of AI, limiting yourself like that is just foolish — especially when you're already struggling to keep up.

GGG can't even fix minor bugs that have been around since the first league, they keep adding clunky mechanics, removing features that were actually useful and convenient for players, and they clearly don't test their own implementations properly (looking at you, absurd roll into sprint). Are they just that greedy and incompetent?

And let's talk about the constant shuffling of the dev team between PoE1 and PoE2 — how can anyone expect a stable, coherent development cycle under those conditions? Any decent product manager would look at this and immediately realize there's nothing "decent" about it.

The forums are basically unreadable, and I'm not even talking about the Russian section — which is basically dead anyway. The whole "community interaction" they keep hyping up in their podcasts? It's practically nonexistent. At this point, it's hard to tell who the game is even being developed for. Also, the forum itself is long overdue for an update — just attaching a stupid image feels like a full-blown quest. And it's pretty weird that PoE1 and PoE2 share the same forum, even though PoE2 has its own website.

The choice to split developing after the snake oil we were sold a year ago is the biggest reason I find myself unable to enjoy either game anymore.

Intentional time padding, 3rd party crippling dependency, bugs and limiting choices all have made the game intolerable on every level.

It's funny as well for anyone paying attention they will break or turn off a build in POE 1 and port it to POE 2 as a "new" feature. It's kind of pathetic given the year wasted and the countless months this title goes untouched... what a great use of "early-access"...

I totally agree with your forum RANT. The forums are terrible! Have been since POE1, they are bad..need a lot of work here

As too your RANT about POE2 I have issues with your comments. The game is stable and without a budget like WOW (Millions of $ and Developers), Holy COW what could be more awesome then these people making a game that is stable and playable! Jeez! Do you need more nipple time? Go play!

The next big FIX (HELLO DEVELOPERS!) is party play. The group playability is soo bad! Temples are just a mess, have to go through hoops to get back to the originators (map creators) temple

Well easy to complain, but maybe hard to fix. Keep up the work my friends. Love this game

- you cant just hire new developers and have them magically integrate. it takes a LONG time to get new devs productive to the tune of like 6-12 months.
software development is notoriously difficult in this regard. iirc they did hire a shit load of new people for poe2, its not just the poe1 team working there.
throwing random bodies at the game to brute force production is how you get diablo 4. we dont want that.

devs are also not necessarily interchangeable.
you cant take your networking guys and just throw them on the animation team, you cant just take your map designers and tell them to refactor a database.
sometimes team A needs to wait for teams B and C to finish certain things ect ect ect.

- im pretty sure NZ has some extremely strict laws regarding hiring people outside of the country, not very familiar with the specifics.

- bugs are also odd in something very actively in development. oftentimes a seemingly small bug can be caused by much broader problems that are planned to be fixed at a later date. thats simply how it is no matter how annoying it can be.

i have plenty of frustrations but when i think back, GGG always delivers eventually.
take a break, the game isnt going anywhere.

The crazy excuses being made to explain why they lied over a year ago is getting old.

They did not honor anything they said last January and the game is in a worse state than a year ago... and won't be touched for 5 entire months...

Excuses aside, that's awful management.

Another easy fix.

Stop with the leagues/seasons. Is it EA or is it a completed project?
Work on swords next week. Once they're done, add them. Work on another class, once it's done, add it.
Work on bugs and jank.

I lost two citadels because my character and boss wouldn't load in. Both of us were invisible. Apparently, this has been an issue for a while.
Why?

There is no reasonable excuse as to why we have leagues. Just finish the game.
The only way to explain this is if it's never intended to be "completed".

Imagine how much better the game would be if they stopped with their "brand new league content/mechanics" and just focused on finishing the game.

Why even have the forums if they don't listen to the customers actually playing the game?
If this is truly EA then why aren't there any forward fixes?

Why are the trials still something that an overwhelming majority try to avoid by paying to NOT do?
Why are they STILL taking XP when we don't have a combat log?
Why are we not using gold for trading?
Why are servers unreliable like an ex wife?

Take sprint for example.
-Maps are too big.
"Oh you want checkpoints?"
-No, maps are too big
"Oh you want sprint?"
-So I can sprint around an empty map? No. MAPS ARE TOO BIG.
*ignored player base.
At this point, sprint jank is my biggest killer and the rubber banding that comes with it.

Either put it back in closed beta or stop with the league crap. Someone at GGG convinced the player base that tedium=difficulty and that extending things makes the game "harder" when in reality, people just quit.
And the player base fell for it.

Yeah, if there were no leagues and proper EA patching I feel like this would be *much* further along. Weekly patches fixing bugs, optimizing performance, tweaking balance, and *fixing map sizes*. I would give up temple/abyss/etc if it meant seeing actual improvement in the game. Not to mention more core content in the form of classes, weapons, and a finished campaign.

3 tiers of orbs, sprint, checkpoints, and all the other bloat added is just going to need fixing in the future because of the current approach of "quick bandaids". It isn't working. Stop doing it.

"

Messai96#7414 schrieb:

What I don't get is that, on the surface, Path of Exile 2 looks like a commercially successful project. The graphics are top-notch, there's community support, and monetization is clearly in place. So why is it that GGG is seemingly so stingy when it comes to providing decent servers, hiring enough developers, or staffing a competent support team? (And seriously, the people in support are either painfully slow or just don't bother digging deep into anything.)

New Zeeland has more stringent hiring laws than most places. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe they can only hire foreign workers once they prove they have exhausted their national pool. This is great for devs in NZ, but your level of skill and amount of options is severely reduced.