How We're Developing Our Next Expansion Differently

Hype!!

Nice, I could not give less of a fuck if we get a league with 0 voicelines, and all the new npcs are some no texture dude (kinda like oak was for a period of time) as long as THE GAMEPLAY is fucking good, when you play a league for like 400 hours yo dont give two fucks about how pretty the new area looks, how cool and unique the new npcs are, and what they have to say, you only care about gameplay not being shit, not being unrewarding, not being BORING.
Props for finally listening to the playerbase chris, hope the next league will be playable at least after the first week.

PD: Doors are cancer

needs to be done proud u do the step and , if u wanna do things like heist just get more testers or prolong the develop time i think 4 months wouldnt hurt , if the results are a stable tested league more players will stay longer.

Pray for ggg.

The testing part was sorely needed. I'd gladly offer up some features for a more stable and playable league.

Heist has been the worst experience with POE I've ever had due to bugs and crashes, and it's a shame to feel annoyed with a game I've loved to play since it's Beta.

Looking forward to a great December league and forgetting Heist.

You speak like politicians....

Just make a league that can be playable since launch.

If we have to wait 1 month as betatesters every league is no fun.

Heist "launch" with patch 3.12.4b and league is done...

Hello evryone at GGG ! Thanks for the good decision that you guys have made.. I played the game since closed beta and going for a safer decision for once is a good choice! People already love the game, all they want is to play it ! You guys did amazing trough the years and cant wait to see the years to comes! Enjoy and have a good one!

Ps: Please dont read reddit too much!

Oh, a science fiction essay we see! xD

"

(...) To some extent, we were lucky that a black swan event (such as a key team member leaving) (...)

Hmm, I am wondering which Key Member of GGG got such a big impact that it was more harmful that the whole covid/lockdown state. I try to remember which of the Devs were not posting any details/comments/interviews recently - probably we will not be given answer about that directly from the GGG.

As an experimental approach to the new league/expansion development, I am looking forward for the results - judging how the next release will be received is impossible right now.

Chris,

I know you might not see this but I am going to throw it out here anyhow.

You have a lot of detail in here regarding limiting scope creep and direct focus on the league/expansion. I agree this is critical and I hope the team is not stifled in creativity as you have also noted. I am aware of the ever changing battle to try to respond to your users immediately and continue handling things they are completely unaware of.

This leads me to my question. Has the team considered planning an A/B release, similar to how Heist was launched with the bosses a full sprint later, for future releases? By having an already planned release for post launch of the league, you are able to stay much more focused on a subset of the league and also have a plan for post release content. I feel this would also create further engagement with the league as you are trickling content similar to your social media strategy.

For clarity, I am not suggesting the team expand their process to have as many post release patches as Heist. I am fairly confident the team engaged in so much scope creep specifically due to the amount of excitement they had for the product they were producing. While this passion is amazing and very clear in the dialogue and design, it needed to be managed, which was probably very difficult with the global and local situations.

With all this said, we appreciate the vision you and your team have for the game and hope to continue seeing more from them at the quality we have come to know and love. We know you you will manage the feature creep and plan for it within your projections to more healthy levels. We love the game you have made and want to see it continue to succeed.

From,
A Project Owner who has been there before