I realized this game is even worse than Diablo 3

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allbusiness wrote:

And please, don't be one of those shitty hipster gamers that never actually played an old game, because I know for a fact you aren't. Plenty of old games had massive problems with them but people just like to look at them with rose tinted glasses (Fallout 2 being one of the primary ones, but there are plenty others).

fallout 2 is one of the greatest RPGs of all time, as is the first fallout. they are games in which the concept of 'role-playing' actually is not a buzzword but an actual feature. and both of those games pack more actual, meaningful, subtle yet masterful choices and consequences than telltale garbage 'adventure games' that are focused around 'choie and consequences' nowadays.

there's nothing rose tinted about that game or similar games of that time. games back then weren't made for the lowest common denominator.

you can pick up fallout 2 today and enjoy it more than FO3 and FO4 combined (glorified shooter games really that are terrible as rpgs) if you actually are interested in actual role-playing than popamole shooting.

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grepman wrote:

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themrpid10 wrote:

The DEVELOPERS are fucking lazy. It is the job of the game to teach these things

no it is not. stop. some of the best games of all time did not teach jack shit and let the players figure shit out by themselves.

games provide a medium to have fun in, and it's the developers choice how to present it. there's nothing wrong into throwing you in the water and let you sink or swim. this is how most people learn how to swim in countries where a swim instructor is unheard of.

if I developed games instead of enterprise software, Id have zero fucking tutorials. tutorials and handholding make me puke.

You know, there is a middle ground between handholding and obfuscation, and it's centered on learnability. I think PoE (and games like DOTA) fall short there. They can be deep but they are not really well thought for being learned (and that doesn't have to do with tutorials).

One of my favorite games of all time is Myst. They dropped you into the game and told you to figure it out for yourself. That thinking and trial and error and learning how to solve the challenges is something a lot of people enjoy in games. I don't see how it can be considered a flaw when the game designers designed the game that way.

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Ruefl2x wrote:

but you know ... in those games you could set the difficulty to a level which was appropriate for your play style. those werent meant to be played at the highest difficulty by everyone.

how are you saying it for all games if you cant say for other games ?

wizardry IV didnt have difficulty settings. and I bet most people on here cant finish it on their own. same for gothic 2 night of the raven (and thats a *fairly* recent game actually), its nowhere as hard as w4, but still quite hard for a semi-modern game and you can make bad choices that will make your life hell the first playthrough.

I mean, are we really arguing that older games were harder, more complex and were less dumbed down ?

look at the dialogue, look at the effort, look at originality, look at level design.

look at how arguably the best sci-fi franchise of all time 'evolved' through the years in terms of level design:



look how we went from text-rich rpgs with multiple non-fluff dialogue choices to bioware wheel of 3 outcomes.

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NeroNoah wrote:

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grepman wrote:

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themrpid10 wrote:

The DEVELOPERS are fucking lazy. It is the job of the game to teach these things

no it is not. stop. some of the best games of all time did not teach jack shit and let the players figure shit out by themselves.

games provide a medium to have fun in, and it's the developers choice how to present it. there's nothing wrong into throwing you in the water and let you sink or swim. this is how most people learn how to swim in countries where a swim instructor is unheard of.

if I developed games instead of enterprise software, Id have zero fucking tutorials. tutorials and handholding make me puke.

You know, there is a middle ground between handholding and obfuscation, and it's centered on learnability. I think PoE (and games like DOTA) fall short there. They can be deep but they are not really well thought for being learned (and that doesn't have to do with tutorials).

agreed on difference between obfuscation and handholding- but I think vast majority of games mentioned did not obfuscate stuff, ie they did not on purpose make the game obtuse. w4, okay, maybe. but majority of games that were *hard* or had a big learning curve, expected the player to figure stuff out on their own and adapt, mostly through trial and error. they weren't making things super hard on purpose to mislead or fuck with the players head. they simply assumed a player is capable of intelligent decisions, can learn through game experience, and can live with a failure if he made wrong choices not knowing whats right or wrong. and learning through failure imo is easily the most effective way of learning.

I dont blame the industry too much tho- I blame the consumer. industry just makes what makes money. if suddenly complex games made money, industry would make them. if gamers didnt have add and if they got *stuck* they would explore, think critically and focus instead of playing another game, less companies would tend to handhold or appease with 'rewards' that dont mean anything but keep a player playing under influence of endorphins.

this is why I blame the new generations of gamers. instant gratification, short attention span, too easy access to games of their choice, inability to enjoy challenging games, treating games as pure entertainment on some *let me sit back and enjoy a movie with some popcorn* shit, etc etc

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grepman wrote:

agreed on difference between obfuscation and handholding- but I think vast majority of games mentioned did not obfuscate stuff, ie they did not on purpose make the game obtuse. w4, okay, maybe. but majority of games that were *hard* or had a big learning curve, expected the player to figure stuff out on their own and adapt, mostly through trial and error. they weren't making things super hard on purpose to mislead or fuck with the players head. they simply assumed a player is capable of intelligent decisions, can learn through game experience, and can live with a failure if he made wrong choices not knowing whats right or wrong. and learning through failure imo is easily the most effective way of learning.

I'm pretty sure GGG has obfuscated a lot of data because of a misguided idea of hardcore (i.e. affix information in items, lack of damage logs, YMMV) or that inherits unintuitive mechanics from other ARPGs (i.e. resist penalties, how much resists to have). It doesn't help that the trial and error means tenths/hundreds of hours to reroll a character. There is not a good solution for that, but just trusting the player (specially for those that don't hang in the forums, reddit or read the wiki) can fall short. You'd see it if you talk with non english talking people playing the game, they just don't have the same tool than the rest.

There is a gap between trusting people's intelligence and expecting a genius, :P

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grepman wrote:

I dont blame the industry too much tho- I blame the consumer. industry just makes what makes money. if suddenly complex games made money, industry would make them. if gamers didnt have add and if they got *stuck* they would explore, think critically and focus instead of playing another game, less companies would tend to handhold or appease with 'rewards' that dont mean anything but keep a player playing under influence of endorphins.

this is why I blame the new generations of gamers. instant gratification, short attention span, too easy access to games of their choice, inability to enjoy challenging games, treating games as pure entertainment on some *let me sit back and enjoy a movie with some popcorn* shit, etc etc

I disagree. Studio mergers and big publishers (think of Activision, EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard and others) means that there is not a lot of relationship between what the market wants and what the developers make. Like if it there were other options, HA!

Oligopolies have that property. If games like Portal and Dark Souls are an indication, people don't give a fuck about handholding and "casual" games (the problem is not casual per se), given the chance they will go for better options.

Then you have people with cellphones that can't know better (first game for them). They are easy prey.

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NeroNoah wrote:

I'm pretty sure GGG has obfuscated a lot of data because of a misguided idea of hardcore (i.e. affix information in items, lack of damage logs, YMMV) or that inherits unintuitive mechanics from other ARPGs (i.e. resist penalties, how much resists to have). It doesn't help that the trial and error means tenths/hundreds of hours to reroll a character. There is not a good solution for that, but just trusting the player (specially for those that don't hang in the forums, reddit or read the wiki) can fall short. You'd see it if you talk with non english talking people playing the game, they just don't have the same tool than the rest.

There is a gap between trusting people's intelligence and expecting a genius, :P

I dont particularly agree.
I WILL concede that there is some *secret* info GGG was reluctant to disclose (ie in the past- real minion base values) that made little sense and raised some weird thoughts. But I chalked it up to funky programming and they did fix most of those things. Id be willing to chalk up lack of combat log to funky programming too. But there definitely IS some stuff devs can be more open about, sure.

but I just disagree with bricked characters being bad solutions. its a great solution; you always need to have a possibility of failure, imo. otherwise, your build choices become meaningless. it's yet another offspring of today's gaming mentality- being idiot-proof. no. idiots need to be punished (figuratively). there are many games in which your first and second and third attempt and maybe even beyond will be failures. nothing is inherently wrong with that. I vehemently disagree with the 'you fucked up your build but because you were new it's ok'. no, that's not ok. ignorance is not an excuse. hard failure state is needed. it's kinda like invisible walls in FPS. why can't you fall from columbia and die in bioshock infinite ? is it because its hard to program ? no. is it because it's considered useless ? no, you could have a lot of possibility with falling off in combat. as a matter of fact, why can't you die *for real* in infinite, even on that 1999 mode (which is a joke, and just a sponge enemy hp boost) ? well, because the game wants to be idiot-proof.

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grepman wrote:

I dont blame the industry too much tho- I blame the consumer. industry just makes what makes money. if suddenly complex games made money, industry would make them. if gamers didnt have add and if they got *stuck* they would explore, think critically and focus instead of playing another game, less companies would tend to handhold or appease with 'rewards' that dont mean anything but keep a player playing under influence of endorphins.

this is why I blame the new generations of gamers. instant gratification, short attention span, too easy access to games of their choice, inability to enjoy challenging games, treating games as pure entertainment on some *let me sit back and enjoy a movie with some popcorn* shit, etc etc

I disagree. Studio mergers and big publishers (think of Activision, EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard and others) means that there is not a lot of relationship between what the market wants and what the developers make. Like if it there were other options, HA!

Oligopolies have that property. If games like Portal and Dark Souls are an indication, people don't give a fuck about handholding and "casual" games (the problem is not casual per se), given the chance they will go for better options.

Then you have people with cellphones that can't know better (first game for them). They are easy prey.

I disagree with your disagreeing :)
look, dark souls and portal are great games.

but lets take a look at them closely.

lets start with dark souls. one of main selling points is the game's difficulty. here you already see something different from past years- people are buying the game because its marketed as difficult. its a selling point and a 'challenge'. difficult games of yesteryear did not need to be marketed as such- they were all (mostly) 'not easy'. wizardry IV was never marketed as a difficult, challenging game. neither were games like F.E.A.R. or system shock 2. they were marketed as games, and devs didnt need to curb the difficulty to suit anything. this is why I refer to the 1980s and 1990s as FUBU days- for us by us. PC games weren't catering to teen console players, it catered to a smaller, older audience.

the mere fact that a game uses its difficulty (like roguelikes do) for its selling point should tell you that games are for most part dumb easy to the point the few people who dont want to be blown all day by the game, finally revolt. same with poe. many people came here because of 'hardcore' and 'gritty' mentality.

now, portal. let's say this- portal 1 is one of the games that everyone loves. not even the most elitist people will scoff at the first portal. it's that enjoyable and original and short & sweet

however, portal 2 came out and while the story was interesting and more fleshed out, the puzzles were dumbed down. it's not an opinion- they were simply dumbed down compared to the first one. now if you remember, the first portal was developed for PC as a HL2 mod. the second one was for the least common denominator and consoles after it gained steam (yes pun intended).
1)there were zero puzzles that involved opening a pair of portals on the fly, likely because of console funkiness with controller aiming as opposed to k+m
2)tons of panels greyed out in order to make it 'easier' on people. we come back to same idiot-proofness. p2 panels pratically scream 'shoot a portal here' effectively making the player thinking a certain way, instead of having player think for himself. what was particularly wrong with having panels that would result in a failure ? nothing. you were given more failure states and false leads. p2 is a linear excursion designed to not be 'too hard', and thats a big fucking problem.

now, valve is valve. it's very good at masking the dumbing down and handholding. it put together a more fleshed out story, it put in scripts, and it put in variety of puzzles to give an illusion of difficulty, but really variety!= difficulty. the fluff story and funny british voice isnt difficulty. so portal 2 is a great example of a game dumbing down as its iteration became more popular and accessible

this is actually going to happen to most games out there that dont market themselves as 'difficult' and 'very challenging' like DS

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themrpid10 wrote:

This game requires trade unless you've spent so many hours to know every little quirk and loot mechanic of a build. It is impossible to go from 1-70ish and beat all 3 difficulties with self found gear in less than 2 years. The quality of drops is never good enough in a zone to progress to higher ones, especially relying on currency to alter and craft gear enough to matter (5L/6L, 3+ good stats on a rare). People like to badmouth the auction system Diablo 3 had but without it you couldn't progress in that game either. This game mandates trading and groups even more than Diablo 3 did because otherwise you will always hit a gear wall around level 40 and level 60 that cannot be overcome with self found drops.

Actually ppl go self-found on start of each league and end in maps in matter of 10h... So no its not the game that is hard. It's the people who dont invest enough time to understand and expect everything to be plated for them...

@Grepman:

About those two points:

1)You have misread: I'm not against bricked characters. I think that the time to set up characters is too high for no discernible reason. Specially with unintuitive mechanics that require trial and error (I guess one can live with them).

Read this: http://supermeatboy.com/13/Why_am_i_so____hard_/#b. Basically, %chance player will fail (original article says die, but it applies here too) X penalty for failing = difficulty. For the record, Super Meat Boy is known for being a deadly game that a lot of people like to play.

I think that the penalty is too high not because you have to reroll, but because the process is stupid time consuming compared even to Diablo 2 (you had Grush there, for example). Cue the "remove cruel" and "I want to map, fuck the rest" complaints, :P

In my opinion the leveling phase to form a character should be quicker, harder, and it should give you more info about how a character would behave at higher levels (I know this is casual as fuck in your view, but I would move passive points in the 90-100 range to the 1-70 range to achieve this, or I would make reaaaaaally quick to get to high levels before it slows down). It shouldn't be trivial, but it shouldn't be time consuming either. Right now leveling is fillerific (and I'd call that fake difficulty).

Time investment is the shallowest form of hardcore, even korean grinders can do that. Just making something more punishing is not enough, it's better to bring some true difficulty to the table.

I don't know if it's possible, but it would be an ideal. Relatively quick trial and error that encourages people to try by themselves rather than following a build. Few people are hardcore enough to learn the game as it is (it's just easier to read canned guides and that discourages learning).

2)All you say about handholding and marketing difficulty doesn't contradict my statements at all. What consumer wants is not what they get, because competence is at a low this days. Until they get used and don't protest anymore. It's hard to have a choice with so many cookie cutter games out there.

Old games had a lot of fake difficulty, new games are swinging in the other direction too much today. There was a sweet spot at the end of 90's and beginning of 00's, but now that's a past thing.

The game is not worse than d3, but it has some very bad design decisions, similar to what d3 had.

And normally one of the biggest problem is that the drop rates in this game are very bad, as the game is balanced around trading, so the drop rates are very low compared to other arpg games. And in that regard, its even worse than d3, as you can not trade normally in this game without installing some additional programs, and even than, the trading is very bland.