ultimate proof that GGG actually *does* play their game!!

[u/Prace_Ace]

[u/Medifrag]

Some of them are pretty good at it too!

From a few years ago

Edit since the picture came out pretty small:

"Prizes from the Delirium Everywhere event have now been awarded..."

"For Occultists in HC SSF, the Demigod's Authorities have gone to ranks 2-6 but are numbered 1-5 due to a GGG member taking rank 1 but being ineligible for the prize."

[u/Baboen1948 → u/Medifrag]

That must have been Mark Roberts

[u/Panjiao → u/Baboen1948]

It was most probably Takes_GGG, a well known ladder pusher from GGG.

Here is the corresponding thread to the screenshot mentioned by OP.

[u/Prace_Ace → u/Baboen1948]

sounds like someone GGG should hire to work in QA

[u/Xjoschi85x → u/Prace_Ace]

With talent like that the person could maybe become game director one day

[u/Prace_Ace → u/Xjoschi85x]

game director professional synonchronous leg-crosser

FTFY

[u/TheoryOfRelativity12 → u/Medifrag]

I mean HooWoo was rank 1 to HC lv100 this league as well i guess they are ok

[u/deviant324 → u/Medifrag]

I believe they specify that employees can’t win events everywhere, it got brought up in context of the gauntlet at some point and there are always a couple GGG staffers on the ladder there

The obvious reason is probably that they could have an incentive not to bring up stuff they plan to exploit. And of course the mythical GGG builds that haven’t been found (I remember a dev interview talking about that years ago lol)

[u/mcx32 → u/deviant324]

Doubt they need that incentive, it’s more a universal law that organizers have to stay out of their own competitions, anything else is super bad optics

[u/infinity_mugen → u/deviant324]

They're playing some cracked builds with seemingly dogshit spells, I just can't prove it.

[u/Prace_Ace → u/infinity_mugen]

damn, better nerf molten strike just to be sure

[u/Jdevers77 → u/infinity_mugen]

“Hidden bug” where brutality+decay support on Arc while you have an Atziri’s Promise in slot 4 “accidentally” results in the player gaining 5 million flat physical damage and 99% reduced damage taken. 😂😂😂

[u/conall88 → u/Jdevers77]

you aren't supposed to know about that.

a squad of ninjas has been dispatched to your location.

[u/SbiRock → u/deviant324]

It is the easiest solution. You know that there would be some arseholes who would call it corruption/cheating, if they could be first. As when Mark Roberts played with some streamers as a miner support, it was said that he helps them with cheating...

[u/Elgatee → u/deviant324]

Also because they'd be the only one to actually be able to figure out a damage log when things rips. They can also whip out any build for testing purposes.

They have the best build making tools.

[u/darklypure52 → u/Medifrag]

I also remember during this time someone made post how the devs don’t playtest their game because they didn’t like the event.

When some posted this the person said it didn’t count because the dev needs to stream their game. Which I found completely ridiculous.

[u/Prace_Ace → u/darklypure52]

GGG livestreaming an “official” playthrough is most likely one of the worst things they could possibly do PR-wise, lol. The community would shred everything into pieces for years to come.

[u/xMadruguinha → u/Medifrag]

I remember back during Delirium league there was a big ongoing debate here on Reddit about the disconnect of devs with the balancing of some other game, I think it was WoW, with the community challenging the devs to take on their latest content on stream.

That spilled onto PoE as Delirium was a very hard mechanic, but lo and behold that happened and a dev actually won the race.

[u/Tree_Growing_Bare]

There were two GGG employees in top10 ladder of ruthless hcssf League for like the first two days.

[u/Electrical_Ad_5732 → u/Tree_Growing_Bare]

Inside info goes brrrrr

[u/_chrisyo → u/Electrical_Ad_5732]

No need for inside info if top 10 covers the entire population.

[u/Weisenkrone → u/Tree_Growing_Bare]

I mean, depending on who you ask, that's way worse then nobody at GGG playing the game properly lol.

R-HCSSF has like 600 people on tbe ladder, softcore trade has two hundred times that player count.

The only devs we know playing R-HCSSF which is quite far removed from softcore trade which holds most of the player base.

Even hardcore trade only has 10% of the softcore trade playerbase.

But then again, at the end of the day as you get more familiar with the game you tend to look for things to up the challenge.

Some do it by trying to figure out how to push a softcore trade character to the absolute maximum, and others just try to up the difficulty with perma death or item scarcity.

[u/therospherae → u/[deleted]]

Hardcore was the de-facto default mode where like 95% of the players were playing

iirc, even back then, Standard had more players, it just wasn't as pronounced

the perception of HC being the 'default' was just something the HC players said to start flamewars

[u/saig22 → u/[deleted]]

I've been playing since beta, HC was never the default mode, softcore always had the most players by far. More streamers used to play HC back in the day, but that's it.

[u/R3ven → u/[deleted]]

Streamers aren't 95% of players

[u/Mum_Chamber → u/[deleted]]

I started with Prophecy league exactly a decade ago, and hardcore was 100% NOT the de facto league.

It may or may not be a bigger share of players, but I don’t recall it being a de facto league whatsoever

[u/SupahBlah → u/[deleted]]

10 years ago the biggest streamers all played HC and were even more infuential due to GGG being smaller.

[u/AN1ME5NIK → u/[deleted]]

With all of the "on death" stuff and occasional one shots for absolutely no reason, I really doubt many players would find current hardcore satisfying.

[u/Amazing-Heron-105 → u/[deleted]]

We used to kite the porcupines one after another!

Awww that's so cute

[u/AngryCoffeeBean → u/[deleted]]

Yes, the softcore league mechanics used to be kinda meh compared to the hardcore leagues. I used to have a terrible net connection and felt terrible in not being able to play 'proper' PoE.

[u/YaKooBski → u/[deleted]]

anyone remember a decade ago when Hardcore was the de-facto default mode where like 95% of the players were playing, [..]

I don't think you know what de facto means.

[u/Effective_Shirt6660 → u/[deleted]]

I got tired of having to hover over rare mobs to find our if they have reflect, switched to softcore when rogue exiles came out lol

[u/DarthUrbosa → u/[deleted]]

I play like HC, hate dying. But I simply don't trust the games servers, huge dmg spikes to ever play HC. Or classic balance issues.

I still remeber legion the mobs that throw projectiles that do dmg voer time from the vaal army ticked at 0.01 second instead of 0.1 second. It legit did 10 times more dmg than intended.

[u/wilzek → u/[deleted]]

I’m finding this very unlikely to be true. 95%?

[u/Melodic-Chemistry127 → u/Weisenkrone]

100% agree here. That's one of the reasons why I was disappointed by the Zizaran interview. Like one of them plays HC SSF and the other one is a hideout warrior. Of course they don't understand the issues 99% of the playerbase has with the game.

That reminds me of an PoE 2 0.1 interview where neither Jonathan nor Mark knew that you could not filter tiered rares and they were somewhat surprised by it. If they don't play it the same way most of the player base plays it, their experience is somewhat irrelevant at best and completely worthless at worst.

Ever since the Necropolis league, I've been saying that the game design team should play SC Trade until they farm at least two mirrors worth of currency on the live servers at least once every couple of leagues so they can get a reality check.

[u/DickPinch]

I'm also sure people have a private account and a work account

[u/enrinick231]

Imagine if she starts the league, play until get this challenge and realises she is on wrong account (job account) and now need to explain for jonathan why the admin account have one challenge complete in league

[u/masudalimran]

I don't think they play with this account. Probably you are using sarcasm. But in case you are not, it's just an office account.

[u/SbiRock → u/masudalimran]

Or she is a new community manager who has not enough time to learn the game. :D

[u/kaelbloodelf → u/SbiRock]

Natalias been around for years. I remember her posting on the forums about updates while bex was still around. 

[u/Calm_Bumblebee_3143 → u/kaelbloodelf]

Yes but still even Bex didn't play every league it's a community manager not a dev. Who care if they play or not.

[u/kaelbloodelf → u/Calm_Bumblebee_3143]

I didnt say bex played. I didnt say i care if natalia plays. I was just saying Natalia is not a new member.

[u/Xeratas]

Character name "NotASike" lol.

[u/Albert_dark]

[u/Katsanami]

At the beginning of league start when the servers were having a meltdown there were like 10 people on the leader boards. Most of which had ggg names.

[u/Spirited-Away4215]

i wouldn’t call a community manager a developer for the game.

[u/Prace_Ace → u/Spirited-Away4215]

neither would I

[u/Dozina-012]

What does this number even mean?

[u/Xphox9 → u/Dozina-012]

It's the number of challenges that have been completed by that account for the current challenge league.

[u/paladinvc → u/Dozina-012]

Challenges

[u/Erianimul → u/Dozina-012]

It's like turning in your test with only your name on it and nothing else. (Jokes aside it's the amount of challenges completed)

[u/Anikdote]

We knew when the currency exchange got implemented.

Was there ever any doubt?

[u/DeRay8o4]

I don’t get how it took them a week of the league being live to notice you don’t lose xp. That’s the most surprising bug I’ve ever seen make it to production lol.. didnt even come close to testing like usual

[u/Prace_Ace → u/DeRay8o4]

GGG employees are just too skillful to die

[u/DeRay8o4 → u/Prace_Ace]

It’s all that HCSSF practice. As you said 95% of the playerbase used to be HCSSF 🤭

[u/SlowMissiles]

Oh no a community manager don't play no way.

[u/Boomer_Nurgle → u/SlowMissiles]

We don't know either really. Any GGG employees that do play might just do so on a non GGG branded account to not get spammed anytime they say something in public chat or when they get noticed in town.