What is POE's target audience?
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I ask because I've been playing graphical online games since Meridian 59. M59, Ultima Online, Everquest, World of Warcraft, and Diablo 1/2 are the games that have taken most of my online time. So far I'm enjoying PoE immensely, but there are some features missing that I thought were pretty standard in today's online market.
Today I joined my first group, couldn't see the other person in the party and couldn't see an easy way to leave once they stopped responding. I'm hoping there is an easy way to perform the normal party functions, including changing the loot style, but I didn't see it in the few minutes I was in the group (that ended up with a completely non-responsive leader.) I've also had a hard time figuring out the difference between a good build and a poor build. I realize there are forums that help out in this area, but I have seen a ridiculous number of people asking questions that should be answered by the tool tip (passives or item effects.) I'm not sure how many people have to ask what "low life" means before someone changes it to 35% in the appropriate tool tips. If GGG's goal is to appeal to a broader audience, which I assume it is, then stuff like inventory management, joining/leaving a group, figuring out the right build, or selecting the right gems/items should be much easier than it currently is. I'm personally okay with finding out my build is complete garbage after 50 levels, but my wife, who enjoys online games if they are implemented well, would be horribly frustrated by the current state of the game. I've used the "wife enjoyment" metric on a large number of games in the last 7 years, and so far there is a very solid correlation between her semi-casual gamer mindset and the success of the games she has tried. The difference between a fantastic game that succeeds and one that barely misses the mark is the difference between the I-phone and the Palm Pilot. I really want POE to be a huge success, but right now the barrier to entry for casual gamers is high enough that it looks like another one of the many games that come so very close to success but doesn't make it across that final barrier. Ce fil de discussion a été automatiquement archivé. Les réponses ont été désactivées.
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A lot of hte support type features are still under construction. The game is in beta, and things such as trading setup and party setup are in the works.
A lot of the things you bring up are valid points that need improving (and hasve had suggestions towards). Inventory management is as it is, and will stay that way from what I understand (its aimed to be a semi tetris style) However something such as tips/a mini tutorial/help such as that is something they have been trying to improve for a long time |
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People with no life.
"I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity." - Edgar Allan Poe
IGN: DarkenedSoui |
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" This, and elitists in general. |
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"You're both wrong. The correct answer is masochists. Including both casual masochists and submissive masochists. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
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I don't think GGG had a clear concept of their game's target audience to start with, besides maybe any kind of afficionados of hack 'n slays and this OB is to constitute such a target.
On topic, I think this game's fellowship mainly consists of people who like much ado about nothing and are to obtuse for anything else at all, except maybe for pushing buttons on the slot-machine. |
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" 1. you can leave a team at any time in the group window. 2. figuring out good builds is the act of playing the game - or use google/read the forums. takes about 10 minutes, and the same goes for game mechanics. People bombard general chat with questions because they are to lazy to spend those 10 minutes finding out the answer themselves. 3. Your wife enjoyment metric is inherently sexist, presumptuous and flawed. 4. GGG's target audience is the "hardcore" player, not the casual player. They want the player who can spend hours on the game at a time. This should be obvious to anyone who looks at the current game mechanics. The 'crafting' system being totally random, the need to farm events to win points for prizes, no free respecs, punishing death penalties at higher levels, prohibitive end game system ... etc, not to mention it's made by GRINDING gear games. "the premier Action RPG for hardcore gamers." -GGG Happy hunting/fishing Dernière édition par Wittgenstein#0994, le 7 juil. 2013 à 11:29:14
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PoE had a much more diverse audience when OB first hit. More streamers, more people just trying it out, and more ARPG fans comparing it to the other popular games out there. Regardless of what their target audience is, the potential customer base is pretty massive just based on the box sales of other ARPGs.
If we're just speculating based on what PoE is now, clearly GGG does not want to go off the deep end of casual-appeal, or even get too close to that side of the swimming pool, but I don't think they are expecting to be successful purely as a result of people that want to invest $250, $1k, or more, into the game. FTP models are trendy because they do result in more income than box sales or subscriptions for pretty much every genre, but don't inherently mean that having a wider audience with lots of $10-$50 transactions is not a goal. GGG also consistently treats PoE like a passion project as opposed to a financial endeavor, so there's also a lot of reasons to think that they want their success to be a byproduct of the game simply being good, rather than tailored to some kind of niche ARPG market share. Sometimes people form their opinions in stone based on their first impressions, regardless of the point in a game's development, but I think it's a pretty safe expectation that the full release will again have as much or more of a spike in the active playerbase that the OB soft-release did. GGG has put work into adding more voiceovers, story, atmosphere, artwork etc. in addition to the hardcore aspects such as end-game, nuances in balance, etc. The former being stuff that would have a greater affect on people trying out PoE for the first time than the people who have been playing through every patch since open beta and closed beta. So, anyways, regardless of whether or not there is a target or favored audience by design, pretty much anyone that has ever gotten into an ARPG is interested in how PoE turns out, if not actively following it. I'm looking forward to the full release (act 3.X content patch and the end of open beta) and all of the renewed interest and publicity it will surely bring. IGN: Calico_
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As mentioned already the game is aimed towards hardcore arpg fans. You can look at the passive tree and easily tell they want a wide variety of builds to be playable. On top of that it can take a ton of hours just to get good gear together.
My only complaint is how hard it is to get a fair amount of life and how you have to target the life nodes while still trying to work your way around the tree. It's hardly enjoyable putting in 3 str points just to get to the next group of life nodes let alone putting in those points for life. I'm rolling an es character in hopes that all of the int nodes I get in this build will work out as all of those annoying life nodes I had to get in my health based builds. The difference being I can actually traverse the skill tree without fear of avoiding life nodes. |
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" Why are cosmetic items only appealing to casual players? I would say the opposite. If I wasn't going to play a game for hours, why would I care what my weapon looks like? "the premier Action RPG for hardcore gamers."
-GGG Happy hunting/fishing |
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