New Skill Development - Part 1

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

sid is 100% correct. I don't think I've typed that before. Tastes funny.

Spoiler

It's too late to fix melee. The level of commitment in the development from OB to now to encouraging, rewarding and even demanding ranged+AoE play is staggering. Any and all true melee options are eventually absorbed into the ranged-AoE collective with crap like melee splash and Spectral Throw and now Static Strike (which is fun enough to use, but is hardly a nice, meaty weapon-based attack). People still use 'DPS' but only because 'KPS' isn't numerically friendly. Do not doubt that Kills Per Second is the real metric here. 'Not enough clear speed' is a thing, it's a BIG thing, and that's a real tragedy. Your ARPG, rich and deep and nigh infinite, has turned into a shmup for a lot of people, and worse, a shmup where you have to spend significant time trading to outfit your little spaceship instead of just finding upgrades as you go. Nothing I've not said before. Nothing a lot of you haven't said before.

It's not only too late to fix it -- it's too late to reprogram the users. You've given them entirely too much candy and despite the rotten teeth, they just want more and more. Oh, some part of them knows that this isn't exactly healthy but that's the nature of being spoilt and addiction.

Unless there is some miracle worked with 1.4 wherein not only the game is reinvented but also the playerbase's expectations completely reworked, I absolutely believe the game needs to end at 4 acts, GGG need to seriously look at what they had in Closed Beta, and look at what they have now, and ponder every single change as a lesson, a question: did we do that, and if we could do it again, what would we do differently?

And then, after figuring all that out, GGG need to start making Diablo 2. Sorry, Path of Exile 2.

That I would be calling for this when I've put so much money towards a game I ultimately want to be dismantled and rebuilt should strike you, dear reader, as a very, very significant statement. I've put over 20k USD into PoE. Not into GGG, as I'd like, but PoE itself. And it's been an incredible experience, but it's felt like tying rockets to a skateboard for a while now. That cliche is unusually apt here -- the basic model is rickety and unstable, fine if you don't mind a bunch of scrapes and bruises as part of the fun, but adding new things cannot and does not improve on the basic model. They just make it more dangerous, more unstable, more unattractive as a ride.

It's time for GGG to graduate from these unwieldy additions to their frankly unbalanced skateboard. Get back to the drawing board and start building that car. I know you can.

And who cares if it takes years again? Or more development money? You know there are more fans of GGG than of PoE, right? Announce a new game, especially one that promises to address some of the issues we have with PoE, and watch the support pour in. I guarantee it. I'll be first in line.

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Xavderion wrote:

We need pants. This is not a meme, we need pants as another 4-link source.

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Boem wrote:

Mind over mater is actually receiving some love for it's current placement.

Very glad to see that, i hope more things are added to boost the power of this key-stone in it's current position
(also +1 for news updates like this, very cool rory, thanks)

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onizuka1488 wrote:

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Xavderion wrote:

We need pants. This is not a meme, we need pants as another 4-link source.

Templar needs pants, because his balls already frozen.

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

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geradon wrote:

you could be wrong that ggg can't change basic mechanics, think of open beta and how they nerfed race rewards and damage afterwards.

I didn't say change. I said fix. The course has been chosen and there is no way I can see for this train to get back to its original set of tracks.