Text/Wang Dan & Liang Letian

For most people in the game, it's hard to win your first success, but it's even harder to succeed again.

However, New Zealand-based Grinding Gear Games (GGG) doesn't seem to have to worry too much about this, as their EA version of Path of Exile 2 (PoE2), the sequel to Path of Exile (PoE), released on December 6th, has been a blast:

As the server is about to start, GGG co-founder Jonathan Rogers has announced that the pre-order of the EA version of the game has exceeded the million mark, and reminded players that they may need to face server queues;

On the day of its launch, the game received 86% special praise, and quickly topped the hot sales list of all Steam sales regions, ranking in the top 1 of the global hot sales for 5 consecutive days, and successfully won the first place in the weekly list of the week, according to SteamDB statistics, the peak number of simultaneous online users in "PoE2" is close to 600,000, ranking Top 15 in the most popular games on Steam so far, surpassing "Valhalla", "Terraria" and other works;

On Twitch, the highest number of viewers of "PoE2" reached 1.3 million, ranking first in the world, which is not only nearly four times the second place in the current period, but also surpasses the all-time record of "Diablo 4";

Even Musk, the world's richest man who said he was going to be in before the launch of the server, tweeted that "PoE2" is like a masterpiece of "Elden Ring" (hereinafter referred to as "Ring") and "Diablo". As we talked about earlier, Musk himself is very fond of the two games that are mentioned, so this comment also shows that he appreciates PoE2 a lot.

18 years ago, perhaps no one could have imagined that 3 enthusiasts who made games in the garage would finally launch "PoE" in 2013, which refreshed the dark BD degrees of freedom; And after that cool story, perhaps no one could have expected that now they can subvert the industry's understanding of the quasi-dark track for the second time.

The outstanding results prove to a certain extent that the success of PoE is not accidental. After digging through the history of GGG, I feel more and more that the re-success of PoE2 may not only be due to the dark track and PoE IP itself, but also because it eats some players who don't play this type of game in the first place.

01

The culmination of the Ring and the Darkness

However, before talking about the story of GGG, let's take a look at the "PoE2" itself that Musk has praised first.

As a "spiritual sequel" of the Dark series, the first generation of the PoE series not only provided more props to maintain the player's motivation to brush on the basis of the dark-like gameplay, but also made the BD deeper and more detailed, improving the playability and playability of the dark-like gameplay.

And as a sequel to the series, those longboards in the original generation, "PoE2" have also inherited. For example, the praised super large talent tree makes players smell familiar again;

Another example is skill matching, which can still be combined to create different elemental reaction effects.

In addition to inheriting the longboard, "PoE2" also made a "decision against the ancestors", that is, to add a lot of action elements on the basis of the quasi-dark gameplay.

When challenging the boss, players need to pay attention to the forward swing of their attacks so that they can dodge in time, and can use the cancellation effect between skills to smoothly connect moves;

Image source B station @灬与天同のobserver偬

When dealing with mobs, you need to move flexibly to avoid being surrounded by monsters and unable to move;

Many bosses not only have special moves, second phases, and even attacks, but also fast and slow knives...... These designs are not difficult to reminiscent of Souls-like games.

In my opinion, the addition of action gameplay has improved the operability and challenge of the game, making the movement in the brush game no longer just a symbolic existence, bringing more possibilities to the quasi-dark game. On social media such as Bilibili, you can also see many player reviews that affirm its innovative significance.

Overall, the PoE2 experience has changed significantly compared to the original generation, with a greater emphasis on handling skills, boss battle strategies, skill combos, and the use of roll dodges.

The combat experience of "PoE" is obviously simpler than that of the sequel

This also means that veteran players who are similar to darkness, as well as new players who have not been exposed to dark games, are likely to be on the same starting line in PoE2 - veteran players may be familiar with BD talent selection and equipment matching, but in terms of operation, it is difficult to say who plays better than whom.

In PoE2, players will not only be able to experience dungeons, ruin scenes, highly customizable characters, and intricate talent trees and other features of the Dark series, but they will also need to pay close attention to their positions, timing, and counterattack with more complex attack patterns than the original when encountering bosses. As Musk said at the beginning, "PoE2" is like a combination of the ring and darkness.

Of course, PoE2, which is still in the EA stage, is certainly not perfect. But in terms of the current content and design, it seems to me that it is already considered a conscience. With the optimization and update, the official version of "PoE2" that is finally launched may have more changes than the EA version.

02

3 water friends,

Figured out a hit in the garage?

However, such a breakthrough quasi-dark IP was born in a garage in New Zealand.

Yes, you read that right. In 2006, Chris Wilson co-founded Grinding Gear Games with Jonathan Rogers, Erik Olofsson and Brian Weissman based in his garage. The studio's name itself speaks to PoE's core gameplay cycle: to get top-of-the-line Gear, players have to grind.

Chris and Jonathan have known each other since middle school. After graduating from college, both of them were more inclined to devote themselves to the game industry than to software development, making a game that was "humorous and crazy".

At that time, Diablo 2 (hereinafter referred to as Diablo 2) had been online for several years, but its sequel had not been released for a long time, resulting in a lack of a brilliant Dark-like game on the market. Because they've invested thousands of hours in Diablo 2 and know enough about it, the duo saw an opportunity to improve and refine the gameplay and create something better to fill the gap.

GGG's initial definition of success was low. Jonathan later recalled that they initially thought that if 10,000 people were playing their game online at the same time, it would be a success.

As it turned out, they were conservative in their thinking. In January 2013, during the public beta test, PoE peaked at 70,000 concurrent users and 1.5 million registered users. In October of the same year, "PoE" was officially released, as a product launched at the same time as "Diablo 3", relying on the inheritance of the essence of the Diablo series, the improvement of the random brush brush mechanism, and the innovation of the BD system, it successfully gained a market share that exceeded expectations.

In 2017, the national server version of Tencent's agent was officially launched, and the following year, Tencent completed the acquisition of GGG. In response to the concerns of some players, the official also posted in response, saying that Tencent is known for respecting the decisions of the studios it invests in, and GGG retains full control of PoE and will only make the changes they think will be most beneficial to the game.

Facts have also proved this, whether it is an international server or a national server, after several years of continuous operation, "PoE" is still evergreen, and it shows a continuous upward trend.

The number of people online at the same time on Steam will increase

Seasonal updates fluctuate and continue to rise

03

Break through the limitations of the track,

to reach more users

Seeing this, some friends may ask, "PoE" is so evergreen, why does GGG bother to make a new game?

GGG really didn't have that idea at first. When it was first revealed in 2019, "PoE2" was only a super-large update, and it was not an independent sequel. It wasn't until ExileCon 2023 that GGG changed its tune: "PoE2" will be separated from "PoE" and become a separate sequel, which will have its own world, gameplay mechanics, balance system, and more.

Jonathan explained that PoE2 would be a standalone sequel

The new version that was said to be good, how did it become a new game? According to later interviews, there may be two reasons for GGG's change of mind.

First, GGG hopes that the IP of PoE can reach more users. Jonathan previously mentioned in an interview with a YouTuber that PoE has been online for many years, and a lot of established content can't be made big due to the acceptance of veteran players.

So he thought, anyway, in order to catch up with the quality of the times, the game modeling and art have been redone, so it is better to simply withdraw from "PoE" and make a new game directly. It's also a bit more acceptable for new players.

The second is that they summed up the experience of failure in "Diablo 4".

Jonathan has commented on Diablo 4 in many interviews before, and he feels that the Diablo series is becoming more and more MMO-oriented, and he can't even realize that it is an ARPG game during gameplay. At the same time, he thinks that Blizzard may have been too worried about overcomplicating the game mechanics, causing Diablo 4 to become less interesting.

Jonathan isn't the only one who finds Diablo 4 boring — even Musk, a Diablo fanatic, says Diablo 4 "doesn't need skills" when commenting on Diablo 4.

On the other hand, looking at his own "PoE2", Jonathan has repeatedly emphasized to the public: "We will not fall into the trap of "Diablo 4". ”

Since MMO and simplified mechanics can't make the dark-like gameplay better, what can be done to not only meet the expectations of old players for BD, but also break through the limitations of the track and make more new players interested in PoE2?

Jonathan, who is already a heavy fan of action games, came up with an idea: refer to the design of action games such as "Ring", so that "PoE2" can move away from pure brushing and focus more on action interaction, so that the combat experience becomes richer.

His tone for "PoE2" is "more action", "exciting boss battles", and "outrageously large content". If I didn't talk about the premise, just looking at these few sentences of tone-setting descriptions, I would immediately think of "The Ring", but now, these descriptions are applied to a kind of dark game.

As Jonathan explained, this does make the game a little more complicated. However, the design of various boss battle mechanics can also encourage players to explore more classes and BD combinations. From this point of view, he believes that the action-based design of "PoE2" can guide players to explore a deeper experience in the PoE series.

In addition, the fusion design of dark gameplay + action can also provide players with more choices in terms of combat: "Your character may not be strong enough, but if you operate well enough, then you can still beat this boss; If you don't do it well, it doesn't matter, go to other places to brush it first, and then come back to play after the value is raised. ”

Judging from the results, "PoE2" and "PoE", or compared with all previous dark games, have quite a difference in the starting point of development, and therefore have the opportunity to eat more new players at the audience level.

Some players who have not had much interest in dark games before

Instead, he fell into the pit through "PoE2".

This also means that the IP value of PoE has reached an unprecedented height in the quasi-dark track: they have both "PoE", which has been in operation for more than 10 years, and "PoE2", which breaks through the limitations of the track and has the possibility of breaking the circle.

04

Strength, ideas, and luck are all indispensable

A team of sailors born in a garage has become a cutting-edge team of innovative dark gameplay, why?

I think that GGG's cool story is probably inseparable from three key points.

First of all, these people really understand the dark gameplay, and they also understand what the dark players want. After all, the founders of GGG are die-hard Diablo 2 fans, and since the beginning of PoE, they have maintained close contact with users on the forums and are quite close to players.

Secondly, on the basis of understanding the gameplay and understanding the players, they have innovative intentions and want to make something refreshing. Judging from the evaluation of "PoE2" by various media, most industry insiders also feel that "PoE2" is a breakthrough and innovative in the ARPG category.

POE2 is the true successor of Diablo ARPG. Inspired by the classics, but with enough new ideas in PoE2, this ARPG sequel opens a new chapter in the genre.

"PoE2" is the direction that ARPG games should evolve (trial impressions).

I hate clichés, but PoE2 is really the Dark Souls of a top-down dungeon crawler.

Finally, there is an investor behind them who is willing to fully cooperate.

In fact, in recent years, there have been many breakthrough new products that have been developed for many years before they are launched, all of which are fueled by Tencent. For example, last year's phenomenal hit "Baldur's Gate 3", which took 6 years to develop.

This is no coincidence. As early as last year, Ma Xiaoyi, senior vice president of Tencent Group, said that Tencent Games is evolving from a platform company to a product company, so in terms of external investment, they will hope that the team will do enough on the track, game type or style they stick to. Therefore, in recent years, Tencent has been supporting those teams that are "one of the best" in the field of segmentation, or are expected to be "one of the best".

GGG also explained that their acceptance of Tencent's investment was actually more like a two-way choice: there were many people who wanted to invest in GGG at that time, but most of them did not understand "PoE", understood the similar dark gameplay, and had plans to meddle in GGG game design; Tencent not only understands the dark gameplay, but also promises not to interfere with GGG and will provide resource support.

The investment cooperation with the same goal provides a more secure environment for GGG's innovative dark gameplay, and Tencent's resource support also reduces the burden on GGG. When Grape Jun chatted with GGG staff at the Cologne Exhibition this year, the other party praised that the cooperation with Tencent felt very good, and GGG only needed to bring products to the exhibition, and Tencent helped with booth booking, exhibition arrangement, and logistics.

It may be said that we have been able to witness the evergreen operation of "PoE" for more than 10 years, as well as "PoE2", a new dark-like product that exploded this year, Tencent's trust in not interfering in GGG's R&D decisions, as well as its generous resource support, are also indispensable.

Just like Ma Xiaoyi said when talking about foreign investment this year, Tencent is actually the main promoter and even creator of many overseas games and categories, but many people don't know much about Tencent's overseas investment, so they don't know.

I think GGG has the strength and ideas, and they are also lucky, after all, not every team can meet like-minded investors who are willing to fully cooperate. Whether it is GGG's continuous exploration of dark-like gameplay, or Tencent's decision not to intervene and unconditionally support their research gameplay, it may have been confirmed: the novel gameplay and the quality in place are the key to innovating the track and winning people's hearts after all.

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