GGG's Balance Team is a Laughing Stock
" Agreed 100%. Level 100 used to be waaaay less accessible than it is now and casual players were just fine with it. Because level 100 wasn't an expectation, it was an accomplishment. The fact that we see so many people complaining about how hard it is to reach level 100 at the easiest time to reach 100 in the history of PoE just shows that players have gotten more entitled. GGG certainly is not pandering to the "no lifers," if anything they are pandering to casuals these days. You see the same thing with early WoW vs modern WoW. Back in Vanilla and BC the game was HUGELY popular among casuals despite the fact that most of them would never see "endgame" content. The game was still fun for them. Why? Well, they didn't expect to complete all the hardest content. They didn't expect to have raid loot handed to them just for playing. Now jump ahead a few years... Blizzard starts giving away welfare epics, eliminates the challenge of dungeons, etc. and suddenly the player base feels entitled to those things for the rest of the game's lifespan. And now it's too late to turn back. Dumbing the game down is a one way street, since if you try to make things hard again the backlash will be HUGE. Chris pretty much confirmed this is the reason that they haven't done anything about power creep in the latest Q&A - which makes me worried that we're headed on a similar trajectory to WoW. Last edited by QuarkCatcher on Jul 16, 2016, 10:17:56 PM
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" What are you even talking about , no white knighting here , he is making a very solid point. If you are a scrub without time , well don't set your expectations high , and you should be fine. Last edited by khemintiri on Jul 17, 2016, 12:28:40 AM
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Haku. Reddit getting more attention than the real forums. Lab Traps. CoC Discharge. Izaro. Experience penalties. Metabuilds. Chaos damage. The Goddess Unleashed. PvP. Reflect. You Have Onslaught While You Have Fortify. You Have Fortify. Haku. Bandaids. Brick'd Uniques.
Sorry, had to. C'mon, Qarl, do something tangible about balance that I can take seriously. Dear God, I keep thinking of more... " Been doing game design about 3 decades now, I might have some idea what it's like to try to balance game content, just a little. Yeah, hi. People who don't like the Labyrinth are not a minority: Be heard - say you don't like it in your signature. Don't leave complaining about lab to others - GGG needs to see how many people dislike it. Ascendancy must be gated on true ARPG content, not a poorly-crafted internet Legend of Zelda wannabe. Last edited by TheLastZica on Jul 17, 2016, 11:49:45 AM
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" I need to "achieve" access to a Red Map that I can steamroll anyways, if GGG has provided me with (since 2.0 when Red Maps were released) Tree Node Updates, Jewels, 289275092475824 "More" Multiplier Support Gems, temp league bait OP items, and 8 Ascendancy Points? Fucking please LOL Power Creep has done a lot for this game in terms of relative player strength and content "challenge." Also don't lump this argument in with Level 100, there is a small relation but the subgroup of people who are just fucking bored to the subgroup who wants 100 only contains a minor overlap. Before criticizing my post, please understand: - I can sustain Red Maps np, this is not the issue. - I'm actively trying to get 100 in this patch, and will probably get it within the next two days. - At no point did I say I wanted GGG to give me 100, but instead I wanted to feel rewarded for doing Red Maps (that the general populous has issues acquiring). - I currently do not feel rewarded for doing Red Maps, as I can load up Gorges/Plateaus and get basically the same returns in term of XP, in most cases faster if you consider the Shipyard/Excavation style tilesets to more linear maps. - I understand the time commitment required and agreed to it. Anecdotal stories about your real life are irrelevant to the conversation and to me. Fake Temp League Elitists LUL
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" If you don't agree with the whiners you're a whiteknight. Learn 2 general discussion. GGG banning all political discussion shortly after getting acquired by China is a weird coincidence.
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" I think the question of how accessible maps should be is different from the question of how long it takes to reach level 100. I am not a fan of content being gated so heavily behind currency, but I am a fan of a long and arduous journey to level 100. I think drawing that distinction is important. My main problem with the current map system is how much it rewards parties, who can pool maps and split the currency cost of Zana mods. Why exactly should running in a party make mapping cheaper AS WELL AS easier, faster, safer, and more lucrative? Solo players, especially self-found ones, get screwed if red maps are the premier way to reach 100 since without absurd RNG you will never sustain them. So in light of that, I'm actually ok with the fact that yellow maps provide a reasonably sustainable path to 100. The problem with yellow maps is that they are just too damn easy. In every other aRPG I've played, content is easily available but in order to not get your ass kicked by it you have to farm for gear first. PoE has it backwards these days; gear is easy to a acquire and content poses little threat, but you have to spend most of your currency on content in order to not run out of it. That's just not satisfying for me at the end of the day. I want to sink most if not all of my currency into gear; after all, we play these games for the fun of progressing, not for the fun of "sustaining" (i.e. farming Gorge for more Gorges). Getting a valuable piece of gear is one of the most rewarding feelings in any ARPG; map drops on the other hand, only feel like a relief and never an accomplishment, since the best case scenario is that you end up where you started, while the worse case scenario is that you actually go backwards. So I agree that currency-gated content has huge problems, but that doesn't mean that I want level 100 to be any easier to obtain. I just think the challenge should reside in completing the content instead of accessing it. |
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" The problem is that making completing content challenging requires a functional balance team and finding ways around users that will continuously find ways to break the hell out of the game (or push for things that are broken from the start, see "You have Fortify"/"You have Onslaught while Fortified") and then whine when it's fixed, which is actual (difficult) work that GGG does not appear prepared to do. So instead we get currency gating, because PoE's current development style isn't capable of producing meaningful skill requirement/completion challenge. See also: Labyrinth, which is maybe "hard" if you don't cheese it, but is absolutely trivial to cheese to the point almost everyone who isn't whining about it, cheeses it. Why even HAVE traps if they're going to be inconsequential YOLO bait... PoE does not currently present actual difficulty. It presents illusion of difficulty which simply requires cheesing to bypass, with cheese widely accepted and used, even as an excuse for justifying the "difficulty." Until that changes, any real attempt at difficulty or skill-based gameplay is doomed from the start. Luckily the main skill tree and currency systems are fun enough to crutch the game along in spite of its problems.  Labyrinth Traps vs. Movement Skill Gems, Life Regen and Life Flasks in a Nutshell So why even have them? People who don't like the Labyrinth are not a minority: Be heard - say you don't like it in your signature. Don't leave complaining about lab to others - GGG needs to see how many people dislike it. Ascendancy must be gated on true ARPG content, not a poorly-crafted internet Legend of Zelda wannabe. Last edited by TheLastZica on Jul 17, 2016, 2:00:17 PM
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" I refuse to believe GGG is incompetent at balancing this game - it is just so mind boggingly unreal how badly things are balanced in this game that I refuse to believe they are bad at balancing. I am only left with the conclusion that GGG purposely creates gross imbalances in the game to entice players to continue playing and trying strong builds - this is the only explanation I can come up with to explain why this game is so badly balanced and CONTINUES to be so badly balanced. How else can you explain things like Juggernaut ECs, RotC, and all the things you mention above. I've also read about cases where alpha testers would give feedback on certain new gems being too OP - but GGG just ignores them and introduces them anyway (first BV and BF). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ | |
" I never totally understood these balance thematic out of pure competition games. Sure, there's a part (a small one imo compared to RTS/FPS/Moba games) in PoE, sure. But I played such long a game like Diablo II, where balance was simply non-existent, and never cared about it regarding my fun with that game. Never cared 'bout Enidins who cleared 8pl CS in seconds, or OpiOp dreamer carry full games and other, while I played my much loved selffound phoenix-Assasin which barely was able to beat Hell difficulty. Same is here, why so much people bother with that? If you have many builds with many different mechanics there are necessarily differences in therms of effectiveness. Or we have to go a point, where probably many skills feeling the same regarding playstyle. Why not playing some OP shit if you want, or playing something slower/more difficult next time? Maybe some1 can enlighten me on that issue. "better to simply go balls deep full retard if you gonna go retard." -Boem-
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" I would prefer to think they're bad at it because if that is the case whomever would be able to learn, grow and get better at it. If it's intentional, and you're right evidence does suggest that to be true, this is worse as this could mean the only real solution would be to replace the people putting the game in an unbalanced state. :/ |
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