I noticed something about the playerbase

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Nasreth wrote:

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Aim_Deep wrote:

No idea? Really? How about a difficulty slider like almost every other game including D3 and TL2.

Then the "faceroll all content" people complain that they don't have access to the highest tier content without being a "tryhard nolife keyboard warrior."

Seriously, if you include lower difficulties, the people who want to faceroll will complain that the hardest difficulty is "mandatory for fun" and refuse to play on a lower difficulty while simultaneously demanding that their characters be made stronger so that they can faceroll it. It may not make sense, but it happens.

That's why in Diablo 3, rather than add new content, Blizzard just power creeps everything. Look at ancient weapons - "Hey, we took our previous content, inflated the numbers by 30%, and made it 90% rarer. Have fun facerolling once you break the gear wall!"

Some people prefer that, others prefer a challenge regardless of gearing achievements. Different strokes for different folks, but it is impossible to please both in a single game.

A lot of the people are the same people, just talking at different times in different threads.

People want the game to be a challenge and to faceroll it so they can say they facerolled this very challenging game.

So seeing there being a strict distinction between two groups seems obviously wrong to me. It's more like conflicting desires from a lot of players. There are people who want the game to be challenging only, and don't want to faceroll, but they're not common, at all.

Part of it is intrinsic to PoE's design. D3, which you mention, has difficulty scaling. You can always make the game into a faceroll or a challenge by pushing the difficulty up/down and you don't get the "But I have to play on X difficulty!" deal that you complain about there (much). You can just gain levels and loot more slowly on the lower settings.

Whereas with PoE there are stark difficulty divisions, and to gain levels and loot you ABSOLUTELY MUST play on the hardest difficulty settings, or just grind to a halt eventually. So sadly the "mandatory for fun" people have a point. When you can't gain XP or meaningful loot upgrades any more, you have to push to harder difficulty.

There isn't a simple solution to any of this, of course.

Games these days are no longer just offering content, they're building communities. And the content itself constantly becomes more fluid and amorphous. That goes double for MMO's.

So when is the game done? Never, ideally. Not having a true ending is one of the core elements of the MMO world, it's what keeps players coming back endlessly to do 1 more little thing, one more raid, one more map. It's good when it keeps people coming back. It's bad when it burns people out.

The current skilltree changes and increased difficulty have burned out alot of players. In theory increased difficulty will have people coming back for more, but in practice there's probably better ways to achieve that.
On that topic, let's talk diversity. I made a point to remember the observations of a player whose name I can't be bothered to look up: a minimum of 60% defense nodes is alot, sure, but there's not as much choice here as you might think. There's a certain minium of defense, and it doesn't matter much if that minimum is 40% or 80%. If the minimum was 40% or even less, then you'd have more points for utility and offense, and therefore higher clear speed and income. You can't take 20% because you'll die too much and you can't take 80% because it'll hurt your income. In essence, everyone will home in on the ideal amount of defensive nodes and spend the rest on offense, regardless.

So how do you increase diversity? By adding options, obviously. But the more options you add, the less coherent the game becomes. This too burns people out, especially in games that try for symmetry between various builds. After all, if all your choices boil down to an equally strong character, why try?

But the reverse is just as true, if there's only 1 build that's best at X, why try?

Wether players want to faceroll the game or want a true challenge even at the highest level and with the best gear, is therefore ultimately irrelevant. Either type player will fail to find meaningful choices sooner or later, and all GGG can do is add difficulty, thereby reducing diversity, or increase diversity which results in decreased difficulty. Forsaken Masters added diversity, Awakening added difficulty. The only true debate is if they did it properly this time around, and I'd say they have. The peak amount of players logged during Awakening is the highest ever, so there's that.

Perhaps I'm just defending status quo, but I'd argue many of you are clinging unreasonably to a better past. The days of being successful with improvised builds were good, no doubt, or people wouldn't keep bringing them up. But what's done is done, the (skill)tree has been trimmed. Are you not excited to see what new things will grow?

I think most of the people who can't start a sentence without mentioning that they love a challenge and only play big boy games for big boys, want respect from starngers on the internet more than they actually want a challenge.

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yungwhiz wrote:

I think most of the people who can't start a sentence without mentioning that they love a challenge and only play big boy games for big boys, want respect from starngers on the internet more than they actually want a challenge.

There may be some merit to this theory.

I've noticed that no mater what the topic, there will be people who complain about it. Since we have the internet, there's a place for them to complain. Thus, it looks like everyone's complaining, when really it's just a fraction of the people but they're always going to be there. This goes for literally any topic... not just games.

Don't base your opinions about a group based on what you see that group doing online. You'll only see the extremes from the group and not be able to generalize to the entire group from it.

I hope this game will continue to offer a challenge, because there are already a million games out there that allow you to faceroll, and few modern games are made to provide a challenge

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Telzen wrote:

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Aim_Deep wrote:

No idea? Really? How about a difficulty slider like almost every other game including D3 and TL2.

What do you think map mods/levels are? Blizzard admitted they can't balance their game and took the easy way out by just putting in different difficulties.

I agree with this.

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Miathan51 wrote:

I hope this game will continue to offer a challenge, because there are already a million games out there that allow you to faceroll, and few modern games are made to provide a challenge

Exactly, and being a niche game might be better profit for GGG. If they cater to the masses too much; their game will become more in competition with other games made for the masses.

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Miathan51 wrote:

few modern games are made to provide a challenge

This is an odd opinion.

Pretty sure there are now more genuinely challenging games available than at any point in gaming history. I mean, I've played since 1984, when was there better availability of challenging games? As a percentage of games made, games which are challenging by default may be a smaller percentage than, say, in 1990, but as a number of games, they're much higher and there's much more genuine challenge and much less "whoops you were a pixel off" or similar arbitrary faux-difficulty.

D2:LOD, for example, was far easier, generally, than PoE, particularly at endgame. In early/mid-game some bosses and mob-types were more challenging than anything in PoE at similar points in the game, but by the end? It was pretty face-y-roll-y.

I do feel like PoE could do with one thing from D2, though - the /players X command or an equivalent. That allowed you to tailor difficulty in a way that made the game more interesting whilst leveling. Instead of it being straight-face-roll up until Merciless with a good build/decent gear, you could make it so it was a lot more "Uh-oh!", and PoE could do with that.

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Eurhetemec wrote:

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Miathan51 wrote:

few modern games are made to provide a challenge

This is an odd opinion.

Pretty sure there are now more genuinely challenging games available than at any point in gaming history. I mean, I've played since 1984, when was there better availability of challenging games? As a percentage of games made, games which are challenging by default may be a smaller percentage than, say, in 1990, but as a number of games, they're much higher and there's much more genuine challenge and much less "whoops you were a pixel off" or similar arbitrary faux-difficulty.

D2:LOD, for example, was far easier, generally, than PoE, particularly at endgame. In early/mid-game some bosses and mob-types were more challenging than anything in PoE at similar points in the game, but by the end? It was pretty face-y-roll-y.

I do feel like PoE could do with one thing from D2, though - the /players X command or an equivalent. That allowed you to tailor difficulty in a way that made the game more interesting whilst leveling. Instead of it being straight-face-roll up until Merciless with a good build/decent gear, you could make it so it was a lot more "Uh-oh!", and PoE could do with that.

I think he meant that few games are made, specifically, to challenge you. As opposed to games that are first made to entertain with elements of challenge stapled on after. It's an assumption about the authorial intent.

At any rate, if I were to describe games from 2014-2015 to my friends, there's not a lot where "Challenging" is the first word I'd use.