GGG's Balance Team is a Laughing Stock

Do you read all the comments? Look at the facebook, the forums here, or reddit. The balance team is subject to mockery for their incompetence and asinine balance changes. And honestly, it's been getting worse and worse.

The more interesting point is why this is the case.

Is the balance team new to this, is this the first game they've ever tried to balance?

Maybe GGG in general isn't putting enough man hours towards balance.

Maybe the skill/monster/balance people are not communicating well enough to make a cohesive environment.

Would be interesting to peak in and find out.

Balance is hard and certainly should not be based solely on vocal redditers.

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GeorgAnatoly wrote:

The more interesting point is why this is the case.

Is the balance team new to this, is this the first game they've ever tried to balance?

Maybe GGG in general isn't putting enough man hours towards balance.

Maybe the skill/monster/balance people are not communicating well enough to make a cohesive environment.

Would be interesting to peak in and find out.

It would be. A lot of the changes are laziness though. It's obvious GGG knows how to actually balance but I can only imagine they always take the quick band-aid fix that is a short term solution. Why? Because it takes less effort

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Nephalim wrote:

Balance is hard and certainly should not be based solely on vocal redditers.

You're right, it is hard, but it's more than reddit lol. Streamers, big ones, even ziggyd is saying "what the hell was GGG thinking when they nerfed red map experience, it makes no sense to me"

the game is fast and easy now, exp nerf is expected

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Nephalim wrote:

Balance is hard and certainly should not be based solely on vocal redditers.

So let's nerf the hardest maps, so people who want to level up fast are forced into chaining yellow maps? That's why it's easy, nobody is doing the hard shit because it's pointless to do.

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GeorgAnatoly wrote:

The more interesting point is why this is the case.

Is the balance team new to this, is this the first game they've ever tried to balance?

Maybe GGG in general isn't putting enough man hours towards balance.

Maybe the skill/monster/balance people are not communicating well enough to make a cohesive environment.

Would be interesting to peak in and find out.

I never tough that i will say it, but when game was closed beta and OB, game was more balanced (sure ranged vs melee vs caster was problem, but lesser then it now).

After each patch and each league balance worse and worse. Clear speed meta and uber insane OP skills vs old skills unreal to compare, as gab betwin there two skills UNLIMITED.


Next league will 2-3 skills even MORE dominated, while other skills even more useless. End game content will be super duper RNG based and rich only exclusive.

The free to play model requires new content regularly, which makes balancing VERY difficult in the long run due to power creep, new items and so on.

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FireEvil wrote:

the game is fast and easy now, exp nerf is expected

Yeah, for the 1% of no-lifers that rush to 100 in less than a week. For the rest of us normal people? This game is a soulless grind with no actual goal, and we can't even reach that. I don't want to run gorge until the heat death of the universe, I got other shit to do with my time.

Playing PoE should not require I put in more effort in more hours than my actual fucking job.

Balance is the wrong term for many of the issues people bring up. The experience point changes to higher levels is one. That has nothing to do with it. That's a design choice to slow down progress past 90. You might not like it, but that doesn't mean you can label it a balance problem.

There is one huge balance problem I see with the Lab:

Armor+regen trivialize traps. ES doesn't do much, but it helps. Evasion does absolutely nothing. That's a balance issue.

That makes some builds far less able than others. While typically that doesn't matter much, putting it in the way of character development makes it matter a whole lot.