Please scale spectres up as well as down (Or another alternative for summoner QoL)

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Nssheepster wrote:

Didn't edit a thing. Don't have to, because what you've said clearly indicates you believe GGG DOESN'T GAF. "Sucked onto the hype train". If they GAF, then they'd put the players first, cuz, you know, they GAF. If they don't, then their desires, IE, the hype train, then they do as they please cuz they don't GAF.

Go ahead and backpedal, there's no shame in that. What I said is clear. They have bills to pay. The hype train pays a LOT of those bills. Is it the same as saying they don't give a fuck, to say that they got sucked into the hype train? I don't think so. You have obviously never worked on a large project requiring hundreds of participants. I have, and I know what it is to get focused on the exciting parts to the detriment of the boring parts. It's very hard not to, no matter how much you care about the wellbeing of the entire project. Remember, I'm being the Squeaky Wheel, and ironically, YOU are helping me.

"

Maybe you'd like to pretend that what you've said means something else...but you said it, more than once, and every word around it supported it. You decided to believe that GGG doesn't GAF about players and just does what they're interested in doing.

Since when is life so black-and-white as that? Put your thinking cap on and see if you can come up with an answer to that.

"

Feigned offense? Not really. And your cutesy images don't hide your intellectual issues with the concepts of diction and connotation. Or consequences, apparently.

If I say I got hit by a car, I don't really need to say I'm injured, it's 100% clear. If you say GGG is focusing on this mythical self-hype you think they have

Whoa, whoa, whoa... what?

Nonono... sunshine, the HYPE IS REAL. Now I'm certain that you've never worked on a large project. I understand the obstacles that come into play when you're trying to make magic of such a large scale happen. I am also loudly critical of decisions I see as mistakes. You want to know why? Because quiet complaints never get heard. Squeaky Wheel. I'm going to keep saying that until you get it, m'kay?

"

, then it's clear you think GGG values that over our concerns, and doesn't GAF. The flow from one to the next is clearer than the air in front of my face.

I think you're jumping a gap there, that's a bit larger than what you're used to seeing. Hope you don't end up like this guy:

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joachimbond wrote:

Gigantic post with wasted picture

I'm not backpedaling at all, but you can feel free to.

I'm not making any jumps, I'm just pointing out the obvious that you're attempting to deny.

You do seem to be making jumps as you're assuming I am not a computer nerd, and in this post asserting I've not worked on your arbitrary definition of a large project.

To answer this bout of foolishness....I don't deny people get excited working on things as large as POE patches. I don't decry them for doing so, or expect/desire them not to. Here's what your forgetting: Professionalism. You can be as excited as you want...but if you GAF, then you do the professional thing and fix what is broken before you add new things. Professionalism. Unless GGG has a very good reason for not fixing this, which I really think they do, it'd be fixed, because they ARE professionals. Or rather, everything I've seen of them is professional in results, actions, and speech.

You seem to think either that one can be professional and yet get sidetracked by personal desires, or that GGG isn't professional and thus can't avoid such a thing. Make no mistake, you've made it clear and I agree that getting "sucked into the hype" is a NEGATIVE. Hype is fine, letting it dominate you is not. If they can't avoid this negative for the sake of their work, then that's not professional, and they don't GAF enough to do so. If they CAN avoid the hype, but simply don't have a fix they can implement, then the results as players look much the same.

To get back onto topic here:

I really think you're misunderstanding the point I am attempting to make in this thread, so let me see if I can clarify it and perhaps get us back on topic, before you waste time finding another .GIF:

I feel that if this issue was easily solved, it'd be done, as GGG has, by word and deed, shown themselves to be a professional company that cares about their players, and doing their jobs correctly. The fact that is has not been solved clearly indicates to me that GGG has no easy fix, or has somehow, magically, remained unaware of the issue. As I very much doubt GGG is unaware, that further indicates that, for whatever reason, of which many are possible, GGG doesn't have a quick, easy fix, and the issue is not being fixed because they cannot, as things stand, spare the time/manpower to make the larger fix this would require. Possible reasons for this fix being an issue include, but are of course not limited to;

Only coding in downscaling, because no need for upscaling was foreseen.

Spectre downscaling functioning as a debuff on the monster, thus allowing players to apply it and allowing GGG to save code by relying on the player end code to query the zone and downscale the monster, and thus explaining why a buff of the same nature is impossible, as a player skill can't buff monsters, only items and the game itself.

GGG not leaving a way to have monsters/skills/corpses to query the zone level and respond accordingly.

Any of these are plausible, and even likely, in coding work of this size, as extra coding of any type is discouraged, to save work, time, money, data space, and server time/size. When you code something this big, even the notion of doing work that you may never need is terrible, and if any of these suppositions are correct, they'd have to have added a half of a system to a full system, just in anticipation of this issue. As they implemented Spectres as is....It seems clear they didn't expect this issue to crop up, so as players, expecting them to have coded for this unforeseen eventuality is unreasonable, as they had many reasons NOT to, and no reasons TO do it.

"

Nssheepster wrote:

I feel that if this issue was easily solved, it'd be done, as GGG has, by word and deed, shown themselves to be a professional company that cares about their players, and doing their jobs correctly.
<...>
Only coding in downscaling, because no need for upscaling was foreseen.

So in the first paragraph you say that GGG cares about players and do their job correctly.
And in the next one you say that they are unable to predict something so basic as the need of specters to be scalable up, not only down.
Either you have a very short memory or you just trying to blanch GGG over no matter what.

"

silumit wrote:

"

Nssheepster wrote:

I feel that if this issue was easily solved, it'd be done, as GGG has, by word and deed, shown themselves to be a professional company that cares about their players, and doing their jobs correctly.
<...>
Only coding in downscaling, because no need for upscaling was foreseen.

So in the first paragraph you say that GGG cares about players and do their job correctly.
And in the next one you say that they are unable to predict something so basic as the need of specters to be scalable up, not only down.
Either you have a very short memory or you just trying to blanch GGG over no matter what.

Can you really expect them to see everything the game might need at the outset? I can't justify such an unreasonable expectation. GGG is made up of people, and they DO make mistakes and miss things...and frankly I'd prob miss it too. Designing it, I'd say something like "Well, we don't want people facerolling lower content, so we need downscaling. But players will be picking up whatever's in the map as is, so should be strong enough." I doubt they expected specific spectres getting picked to be specially supported, and I'm not sure if GGG even had spell casting monsters in the game when Spectres were designed. So if they didn't expect spell support gems, they'd not expect WHICH spectres you had mattering, and if which spectres didn't matter, then this issue would never have occurred, and you'd never need to have them upscale.

You getting the idea, or do you still expect GGG to be perfect and expect everything? They do make mistakes you know.

If they make mistakes then you shouldn't claim that "they are doing their job correctly". Because in this case they clearly do not.
Also, assumption that "players will be picking up whatever's in the map as is, so should be strong enough" is hilarious. That's like assuming that players will pick up new weapon or new skillgem every map (we are still talking about spectre summoner, right?). If that was GGG's line of reasoning for absence of spectre upscaling, then... oh well, that's not the first idiotic decision made by them anyway. I can only hope that the real reason is that it's hard to code (although I can't believe it, if you can scale down then you should be able scale up as well) and so is queued for some very distant time in the future.

"

silumit wrote:

If they make mistakes then you shouldn't claim that "they are doing their job correctly". Because in this case they clearly do not.

"Correctly" is not the same as "perfectly." If the general guideline at GGG is "make the best game that we are personally capable of making," then they're doing their job correctly even if they make occasional (or regular) mistakes. It is not a job that necessitates perfection. I doubt you'll find many jobs that require perfection in order to be performed correctly.

On the general topic, summoners have been getting pooped on forever. I still play them occasionally because I love the general idea of summoners. It's fun for me to have a bunch of zombies, spectres, golems, and skeletons running around killing things for me. I just wish so many parts of the summoner experience didn't suck so much.

Spectres get it worse than anything else. There are many possible fixes and improvements for spectres, but here are my preferred:

1. Lock in a spectre when you summon it. If you cast Raise Spectre on an Evangelist, you can now cast it when not targeting corpses to summon more Evangelists. It will keep summoning Evangelists until you cast it on a different type of corpse.

2. Don't scale spectre level. If I summon level 84 flicker spiders, let me have those level 84s even on normal Coast.

3. Make minions and auras persistent between logouts. Number 1 would make this less important, but it still really sucks to have to cast upwards of 30 spells every single time you log in.

"

silumit wrote:

Also, assumption that "players will be picking up whatever's in the map as is, so should be strong enough" is hilarious. That's like assuming that players will pick up new weapon or new skillgem every map (we are still talking about spectre summoner, right?).

Well, not really quite the same, I've used some generalist spectre setups and you can usually get something on a map that will get you through, picking a random weapon with an attack build will drop your performance much further down. Granted, none of those summoners was a spectre specialist where spectres do 99% of your total dps output, it's clearly suboptimal.

Anyway, yeah, expecting from a spectre specialists to play like that is unrealistic, it's no wonder a typical summoner these days is a zookeeper.

Yes, please. Also, balance monsters for Summon Specter, so more monsters are viable Specters. Just like PvP got its own damage values.

Bumpy..

"

Nssheepster wrote:

"

joachimbond wrote:

Gigantic post with wasted picture [removed] because i'm too lazy/unsound in my reasoning to insert blockquotes and address point-for-point

I'm not backpedaling at all, but you can feel free to.

eh?

"

I'm not making any jumps, I'm just pointing out the obvious that you're attempting to deny.

I deny nothing except the words you try to crowbar into my mouth.

"

You do seem to be making jumps as you're assuming I am not a computer nerd, and in this post asserting I've not worked on your arbitrary definition of a large project.

Well, for most people, the cooperative effort of a hundred people, say, would be considered a large project. I don't know how large the staff at GGG is, but I'm fairly certain that the scope of Path of Exile qualifies it as a large project, regardless of staff size. If you want to call that arbitrary, fine.

Your niggling over semantic points where your comprehension is lacking is what is causing the problem you're having. NOT what I've actually said.

"

To answer this bout of foolishness....I don't deny people get excited working on things as large as POE patches. I don't decry them for doing so, or expect/desire them not to.

Are you, by chance, trying to draw a contrast between me and you? Are you somehow implying that I'm decrying them and maybe desiring them not to work on patches? Make your intention clear, and we'll have no lack of communication. Somehow, you're not doing your job as a communicator.

"

Here's what your forgetting: Professionalism. You can be as excited as you want...but if you GAF, then you do the professional thing and fix what is broken before you add new things.

Professionals are people, too. Don't forget it. When you forget that, you end up with an us vs them mentality.

"

Professionalism. Unless GGG has a very good reason for not fixing this, which I really think they do, it'd be fixed, because they ARE professionals.

They are a gaggle of lucky computer nerds. They are young and green. I don't expect world-class professionalism from them. Neither should anyone else. Just be willing to be the squeaky wheel when it counts.

"

Or rather, everything I've seen of them is professional in results, actions, and speech.

Like the chuckle from Chris when he was asked if there would be a legacy version of the Voltaxic Rift? Yeah right. He's a young guy with a great head on his shoulders, but is about as professional (in the sense that you're using the term) as Donald Trump is politically correct.

"

You seem to think either that one can be professional and yet get sidetracked by personal desires, or that GGG isn't professional and thus can't avoid such a thing. Make no mistake, you've made it clear and I agree that getting "sucked into the hype" is a NEGATIVE.

It's a negative, but not the mortal sin that you've made it out to be. I would HATE to be your employee. Really. I hope you don't have anyone working for you because their lives would be hell if you did.

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Hype is fine, letting it dominate you is not.

Ja wohl, herr Kommandant!

"

If they can't avoid this negative for the sake of their work, then that's not professional, and they don't GAF enough to do so. If they CAN avoid the hype, but simply don't have a fix they can implement, then the results as players look much the same.

Jesus, take that stick out your arse, please. Do yourself a favor.

"

To get back onto topic here:

I really think you're misunderstanding the point I am attempting to make in this thread, so let me see if I can clarify it and perhaps get us back on topic, before you waste time finding another .GIF:

I feel that if this issue was easily solved, it'd be done, as GGG has, by word and deed, shown themselves to be a professional company that cares about their players, and doing their jobs correctly.

I wonder how you got that impression, because the only phrase I can use to describe a company whose forums go down when the game does, is "fast and loose".

"

The fact that is has not been solved clearly indicates to me that GGG has no easy fix

You don't realize that's circular reasoning, do you? -____-

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, or has somehow, magically, remained unaware of the issue.

Everyone has a priority list. Don't tell me you take out the garbage on sunday night before you sit down to play PoE?

"

As I very much doubt GGG is unaware, that further indicates that, for whatever reason, of which many are possible, GGG doesn't have a quick, easy fix, and the issue is not being fixed because they cannot, as things stand, spare the time/manpower to make the larger fix this would require. Possible reasons for this fix being an issue include, but are of course not limited to;

Only coding in downscaling, because no need for upscaling was foreseen.

Spectre downscaling functioning as a debuff on the monster, thus allowing players to apply it and allowing GGG to save code by relying on the player end code to query the zone and downscale the monster, and thus explaining why a buff of the same nature is impossible, as a player skill can't buff monsters, only items and the game itself.

Your speculations at this point are unfruitful. You don't have knowledge, so generating conjecture is the best you can do. But the question is: why?

"

[blah blah blah more conjecture]

I have to hand it to you, you are more responsible and upright and disciplined than I would have thought possible for someone who spends a significant portion of their time playing an ARPG.

Really. I thought this was a hobby for nolifes and middling schlubs like myself. But you establish a new gold standard with your expectations of conduct. I hope you don't feel too badly about it when everyone lets you down.