Hey, I just wanted to say thank you to Eleventh Hour Games team of Devs and everyone working on this game. I have long been playing ARPG’s since Blizzard North D2 days and am looking forward to supporting this game any way I can I truly am enjoying this game and see something very special in it. A few weeks ago on a plane ride back to Dallas, this video popped up on my news feed it’s quite lengthy but very interesting on how Grinding Gear Games took a free to play model and became if not the best ARPG in the face of multiple Tripple A Studio’s. The link is down below if you want to watch.
He makes a statement that very few PVE Games grow their user base over time and one of the reasons for that is because ARPG’s usually have only one storyline and after that storyline is complete one can only replay it so many times whereas in PVP all kinds of different scenarios unfold. I put in about 3,000 hours in D2 and not counting the Private server I played on until the beta release of this game. I think we all ask ourselves sometimes why we sunk so much time in D2 and enjoyed doing so? I whole heartily agreed with grinding gear on their 5 pillars for a successful ARPG I just feel they missed a few.
GGG Pillars for Sucess & MY THOUGHTS
1. Secure online Trading Economy
- I feel this is the number one thing that most if not all studios ruin an ARPG on release. You have to have a IN GAME NON Purchasable currency and trading option. That way items have value and Lore, creating competition amongst friends and player base. I remember when I got my first SOJ like it was yesterday. I wouldn’t trade that for anything in the world!
2. Randomly Generated Levels
- Replayability
3. Randomly Generated & Craftable Items
- If you can get your random items system good it makes the game replayable and the reason why is in a game like this your items are your progress.
Cosmetic only Microtransactions!
4. Visceral Action Combat & Examples
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Black Desert Online
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Final Fantasy Online
5. Deep Character Customization
- Now this is were I began to have a difference in opinion with GGG there skill tree is so advanced and so hard to understand that if I was 15 and played POE I would immediately abandon ship and honeslty its why I never played their game along with the clay looking graphics. In my opinion Its not new comer friendly nor is it easy for a 12-15 year old to understand whats going on. Thats what was so good about d2 it wasn’t so complicated and if you messed up something you could respec for gold. I feel so far that this game is a very good start skill tree wise not to much but not to little.
1000’s of ways to play but keeping it simple as possible
6. Interface and Server Customization
The old battle net to this day has been one if not my favorite things about a game in this genre and the reason why.
Creating Games, PVP
Ladders
Communication/Chat
Updates
Trading
Visuals
7. PVP
This, in my opinion, is of utter importance if this studio could develop a PVP system that was fun and competitive it would truly set them apart from every ARPG that has released in the past 15 years. when PVP becomes important items become important and more valuable, also in the beginning of this post I talked about how PVP creates a whole new scenario in replayability no studio caters to PVPERS I hope this studio is the first.
8. Scheduled New Content
This is also very important coming up with a steady stream of content so the community can faithfully expect and look forward to new exciting things but also keeping in mind of not ruining and screwing other items in the process I can’t tell you the number of times I played Leagues only for them to change it midway through wasting all the time I put into that Char.
GGG Content release Scedule
Why New Content = Marketing & Making Game Better
Economy Resets
Leagues- Balance Changes between leagues
Challenges
Expansions
New Acts
New Items
This Graph shows the player numbers when the content is released on a steady basis with the content time frame posted above!
That’s all I have for now love to see what the Devs and people think about this post. Im very excited about this game and very much look forward to the future of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM_5S55jUzk&t=227s
“Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”
― Edmund Burke