Poe 2 further away from the ''Broader Audience'' goal
" It is not my take, it is literally the developer stated business strategy. Jonathan Rogers has explicitly said multiple times they want to expand beyond the niche, citing Elden Ring as the benchmark for a hardcore game reaching the masses. If they only catered to the hardcore niche, they would not have added WASD movement, Gold for currency, and Couch Co-op. Those are features specifically built to compete with Blizzard products and attract that exact broad audience. Telling people to go play D4 ignores the reality that GGG is actively trying to take D4 market share. They got the broad audience (459k peak), they just failed to keep them. |
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" Actually, Elden Ring proves my point, not yours. Elden Ring reached that massive broad audience precisely because it gave casual players tools to bypass the difficulty—like Spirit Ashes (Mimic Tear), open-world over-leveling, and overpowered magic builds. It allowed casuals to enjoy and beat a hardcore game on their own terms. PoE 2 invites the broad audience with marketing and WASD, but then locks them into a rigid, punishable combat system without those Elden Ring style safety valves. You cannot redefine broad audience to exclude casuals when you are citing a game that sold 25 million copies. That volume requires the casual market. If you exclude them, you remain niche. |
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Elden ring doesnt reach masses so your premise falls short again lol
Mash the clean
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" 25 million copies sold. Since when is selling 25 million copies considered not reaching the masses? It outsold wildly mainstream titles like Cyberpunk 2077 and many Call of Duty entries in similar timeframes. It won Game of the Year and permeated pop culture globally. Calling a 25 million seller niche is just delusional gatekeeping. If that is not the masses, then the term has lost all meaning. |
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You’re rage ba… arguing how much a game sells.
From software games are not attempting to appeal to a broad audience. They have their own hardcore audience to appeal to. They don’t hold your hand and cater to the thousands of reviews asking for things to become easier. Much like this thread of yours Mash the clean
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" The definion of casual gamer by google AI (with which I agree 100% here): A casual video game player is an individual who plays games for entertainment, relaxation, or to pass time, without investing significant time, money, or intense effort into mastering them. They typically prefer games with simple rules, low learning curves, and short, accessible sessions. Are you sure this applies to Elder Ring players? Also existence of exploits/bugs and/or broken combos doesn't make the game "casual friendly" imo. Dernière édition par Sakanabi#6664, le 14 févr. 2026 à 03:25:21
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" That is objectively false. FromSoftware explicitly designed Elden Ring with an open world and Spirit Ashes (like Mimic Tear) to allow casual players to bypass skill checks that would have walled them in Sekiro or Dark Souls. That IS catering to a broad audience. You do not sell 25 million copies to just hardcore players. And the irony is, Jonathan Rogers cited exactly that success as GGG's goal. He wants PoE 2 to replicate that broad appeal. The problem is not that they tried; it is that they failed to provide the tools (like Spirit Ashes) that made Elden Ring actually playable for the masses. |
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" Using a generic AI definition meant for mobile games to define the PC/Console audience is disingenuous. In the context of ARPGs and Soulslikes, casual does not mean playing Candy Crush; it means players who have jobs and families and cannot treat the game like a second job. And calling Spirit Ashes or over-leveling exploits is false. They are intended game mechanics explicitly designed by Miyazaki to let less skilled players beat the game. That is the difference. Elden Ring provided built-in accessibility tools. PoE 2 provides friction. If you think 25 million people are all hardcore players fitting your strict definition, you are ignoring reality. The broad audience is the casual/mid-core market. |
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" So everyone who is not "hardcore" is automatically "casual" now? Nothing in between? And by "exploits/bugs" i didn't mean spirit ashes and over-leveling. I meant real exploits/bugs like Giant Jar exploit where you let enemies fall from the cliff and die which is used by casuals to get over challenges. Dernière édition par Sakanabi#6664, le 14 févr. 2026 à 04:31:58
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this post is pretty much what i was saying in my angry rant that deleted and i just put it back on the forum. the moment you start telling the truth that the devs dont know what they doing it gets removed.
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