yoink

At no point have I said you're not allowed to feel upset. I admit I got curt with my last comment, but my points still stand - that in order to voice your disappointment, you've not only pulled in arguments about how the devs are lying (because they've moved back their initial plan of February, and then communicated that), but also arguments about whether POE2 'deserves' to be called Path of Exile, treated the game like it's stealing valour, and talked about how anyone who doesn't see things the way you see things are at best ill-informed and at worst ignorant about their own tastes. I haven't said anything about whether it's allowed to be your favourite game, nor have I said anything to 'police' how you feel beyond pointing out that while I understand being upset, maybe it's worth at least examining why all these peripheral points about other players comes into this for you.

It really follows the same line of thinking that seems to have become prevalent once again in the gamer space, that any time not spent on my particular thing is actively harmful to the thing I like - and not to put words into your mouth, but it really does feel like the end goal of an argument as presented here is that all the people who currently like POE2 decide one day 'oh POE2 isn't good', all move back to POE1, and GGG falls over and relents and POE2 is treated like some bad dream - which is also why I believe it's very 'Customer is always right' thinking. No other type of media gets this much push back or draws this much ire should something change between announcement and release, let alone a change that feels entirely reasonable, even if disappointing.

As for POE 2 being in Early Access as you said. During the Early Access announcement, GGG said that POE 2 will complete Early Access within 6 months to 1 year of the initial release. It has been 2 months since. We don't even have a date or any information for Patch 0.2. At the current rate of development, do you think that Early Access will be completed within 6 months?

you and I are literally not on the dev team, have no insight into progress beyond what the dev team say, and neither of us have ever made or released a game or a project of this size (unless hexbear is hiding some dark horses somewhere). Neither of us can answer this question with any amount of certainty.

So they're going to start working on POE 1 again in March? Does that mean 3.26 will be released in summer 2025? Two or three POE 1 expansion cycles have been missed in that time period.

And?

The people who enjoy ramen made at the ramen shop are upset because the quality of cup ramen does not match the ramen shop experience. The people who only have had cup ramen don't really care because they never tried it before.

and then the people who really liked the ramen shop write screeds to the shop, nail theses to their door about how they're fraudsters and liars, and of course completely ignore that the shop owners said they're opening up again soon and just asking for some patience - it's a very normal thing that happens

I did not say that people who don't like POE 2 don't like it.

They only like the game because 2 is a bigger number than 1 and they never tried the other game.

you're right, you didn't say they didn't like POE2, you just said they only like the game because the number is bigger, not because of the game itself, my apologies.

attitudes like this are why I genuinely believe gamers are the last bastion of 'The Customer is always Right'

Path of Exile 2 is a completely different game and honestly unworthy of the name. GGG should have named it something else. Most of the people who say that they like Path of Exile 2 are people who have never played Path of Exile 1. They only like the game because 2 is a bigger number than 1 and they never tried the other game. POE 2 stole the name cred and produced something that was much worse.

man why is every post about POE2 from POE1 vets like this. Every single one has to make it so anyone who likes POE2 doesn't ACTUALLY like it, they're just lying to themselves and to everyone else for fun i guess

let alone the fucking melodrama of 'being unworthy of the name' and it 'stealing credit'. i guess even hexbear isn't safe from brainworms if the game has enough skinner boxes in it

The whole franchise is basically over. The core POE 1 fan base is incompatible with POE 2 and the POE 2 fan base won't stick around once they see what is to come. Everything was gutted for short term profits.

please i beg you to go outside. you've written an entire screed about how the only rational position is your own with no self-awareness while pretending anyone else is blind and too ignorant to have your superior taste for video games, let alone the fact you're speaking like they're literally taking the first game out back and putting a bullet in it when they're merely pausing dev for a bit to focus on POE2 - you know, to fix the fact that its 'not even a complete game', considering it's early access

i don't want to seem like I'm completely reading into a stranger too much, but i think you really need to take a step back and contemplate why you're posting in exact parallel to the way reddit is also talking about POE1 vs POE2, maybe you're too bought in to have any other take than gamer rage

i mean, they're still being used they're just not minecraft style blocks anymore

enshrouded from last year is pretty popular, and entirely voxel based but looks very pretty (imo)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1203620/Enshrouded/

classic @Civility posting

since the ban got lifted, it's been insane seeing all the libs have to internalise the contradictions they've been present with by talking about how 'its hard to unsee all the propaganda that just played out in front of our eyes' or how 'obvious' it is that this is proof of TikTok trying to control the American public

as if every single chinese person on XHS is a plant lmao

the cognitive dissonance is just only gonna get worse from here out. maybe one day they'll figure out that the rest of the world doesn't spend every waking moment thinking about how to trick americans who are too docile and bought in to ever do anything but be led by the nose on behalf of their state department

And I mean I fundamentally dislike and distrust men in general and find the way they dehumanize, fetishize, and try to control women (or other men for that matter, because cis gay men--particularly richer ones--do it too) repulsive, but the counter to that isn't declaring that some adult women are literally children because they might hypothetically become the target of some creep's lust, it's giving women more agency, rights, and education and trying to prevent the actual power disparity in our patriarchal hellstate that heavily enables abusers to prey on women in general, not just younger women. Is a middle aged man specifically pursuing college students or recent college graduates a creep? Probably, especially if he's actively setting out to do it and it's not just some incidental meeting, and it probably ties into gross youth-fetishization aspects of our culture, but it's also not "literally pedophilia" nor can we can unilaterally say "actually this adult woman is not trusted to enter into this relationship for herself and so it must be prohibited on her behalf, as we have determined it's some percentage more likely to be an abusive relationship than the baseline chance of abuse that a closer-in-age relationship has, which is also sickeningly high because we live in a patriarchal hellstate that teaches men to prey on women and grooms women to submit to this."

Genuinely, I do agree with all of this, and my point really was that I want more conversations about this in particular. The point I was making is that, rather than being able to talk about the issues frankly like this, and how the patriarchal status quo we find ourselves in is the larger issue here, every single time instead the comments are full of jokes taking this to the extreme that effectively throw the baby out with the bath water. Whether or not my word is taken for it, I'm rational about this - I full understand the spectrum of human intelligence and agency, and I agree that in an ideal world this would not be something we worry about. I'm not so black and white in my thinking as to genuinely believe we can draw a line and say 'That's good enough' with any conviction. I'm just jilted that any time this comes up, we get lost in comments about 'oh in that case my relationship should send me to the gulag', which I think we can agree is actively not helpful towards this conversation - I mean, in this comment section alone, how many comments are just variations on that joke, let alone the other comment section just 4 days ago. If I'm being honest with myself and with the community, it's the response here that has me worried more than anything - the instant air of dismissiveness just rubs me the wrong way. Like at no point am I even bringing up pedophilia, but everything seems so centered around how such a thing would affect individuals here personally, instead of discussions that feel genuine about an issue whose discourse contains some 'ultras'.

it's not a 'thing', but it is one user wielding it to try and shut down any conversation, but maybe they were trying to make a different point and made it in the most crude way possible

sorry if i keep coming across as incensed with these comments, but it feels like an insane blindspot for hexbear to have

like why of all things is this being memed on? Sure, you'll see the occasional post that goes overboard but it's incomprehensible to me to log on to this site and see people acting like there is NOTHING to be taken seriously here. EVERYONE has to have some 'Power Dynamics' or 'well lock me up cos my girlfriend is two weeks younger than me' joke to post for a handful of upvotes.

Maybe it's because the users commenting have never dealt with this, or had friends who have, but it feels like this whole thing denies entire experiences that so many of my AFAB friends have had with older men manipulating and taking advantage of them at 16 (or if they have even a modicum of shame, waiting to pounce until theyre 18), and to see users here just brush the entire thing off - and for what? Legitimately for what?

That last question is why this whole thing smacks of defensiveness for me. Either that or a bunch of people being reactionary and scared of some imagined puritan boogeyman laying in hiding in the next generation.

and people had the gall to tell me the other day that users on this site aren't being weirdly defensive about this discourse

wonder if we're gonna get more comments complaining about the age of consent again this time

repetitive strain injury - i was getting constant wrist and hand pain for a while cos of all the clicking, i had to take a break to give my hand time to recover

i really enjoyed playing at launch but a week of straight playing left me with RSI lowkey lmao

i think i need to figure out how to get used to controller input