Game Balance Development Manifesto Post

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Ashen_Shugar_IV wrote:

Are we derailing or can we take the point at face value?

Face value, like always.

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IceDeal wrote:

I reckon we'll see a couple of extremely hard nerf next major patch like the removal of double dip (the recent buffs on DoT and voidheart may hints that) and a rework of CoC.

I mean it's been 9 months of one shotting uber with a stack of mines, that's pretty retarded even by GGG standards.

^

I don't give a fuck about Act V at this point, they need a balance and performance issue patch imo. Give us some flashback leagues or bring back an older league like Talisman/Darkshrine to mess around with in the meantime.

Power creep is through the roof if you ask me - serious ajustments have to be made with 2.4 to make the game challenging again.

Just a few things that come to my mind immediatly:

Curses:
Since the introduction of Blasphemy, the curse mechanic need to be looked at. Just a simple numerical nerf would disappoint many players and would do little to the actual state of curses. GGG has to takle multiple instances at the same time when it comes to curses:
- curse quality bonus
- curse effectiveness on the passive tree
- Blasphemy support gem effectivnes and quality bonus
- monsters/bosses curse resistance/effectiveness modifiers

Especially Temporal Chains and Enfeeble must be rebalanced/reworked - there boni are just too good for the current state of the game and together can completly nullify all endgame content which isn't tagged hexproof (...and there is even Cospri's Will for that now). 60% reduced curse effectiveness doesn't cut it anymore since it is additive with curse effectivness modifiers. 70% less curse effectiveness would have some impact but the combination of hinder and slow would still be too strong. GGG really has to think about this.


Cast on Crit:
Worst thing that happend to PoE if you think deeply about it. CoC generated a form of power creep never existed before in this ARPG - nothing comes even close (not even Ascendancy classes have granted so much dPS/clearspeed/survivability to the player than CoC has in the past).
By nerfing CoC in 2.4 many people will outrage for sure... and then a little while later they will rediscover Mojlner and move on.
Mjolner provides the same playstyle as CoC with roughly the same clearspeed and safty. A switch from CoC --> Mjolner can be expected if GGG destroys CoC support gem and leaves Mjolner untouched.


Hybrid gear/state of rares vs uniques:
The power level of Endgame uniques is insane currently - for most builds actually multiple uniques are BIS however GGG's original design says that a perfectly rolled rare will surpass a unique item - uniques are intended to enable builds but never ment to be BIS without any noticable downside.
The affix pool of rares should be ajusted and expanded, also master crafting benches should be updated with additional mods for rares to make rares competitive again. Hybrid gears falls short in every way over a pure armour, evasion or ES piece right now - maybe enable an additional prefix/suffix on those to make them competitive.


State of twohanders for spellcasters:
With the recent buff to wands and scepters, two handed spell caster staves now feel even more obsolete than they felt before. Sure, you can get a 6 link while wielding a staff but you sacrifice a lot for it. Dual wield or 1h/shield now can reach even higher damage numbers than staves for spellcasters (if you don't really on +3 gems or the sockets) while beeing more durable.


Melee vs ranged:
I know, beating an old horse here, but GGG seriously has to give this some thought. There is no reason to play melee (no, i am not talking about earthquake and reave which are hitting the while screen) at the moment. Melee needs some purpose in this game where it shines, can outclass ranged and be competitive in a new leagues economy.


State of movement skills
Movement skills need to be ajusted in general - we are moving way to fast for too little investment and gaining fortify, which was supposed to be melee only, for free on nearly every character.
Making fortify not work with movement skills would be a healthy change i feel.


Double Dipping:
This has been in the game for far too long; many players gave feedback and wanted it to be removed for month now. Poison and Bleeding DoTs need to be rebalanced accordingly when this change is made. Poison, Bleeding and Burning should not work with trap and mine modifiers and elemental modifiers - oneshotting the hardest endgame bosses in the game just isn't fun and healthy for Path of Exile.


Specific Ascendancy class notables:

There are some notables out there which are trivializing the game without much investment made. For the long term of the game and future content they have to be looked at:

- Inevitable Judgement (Inquisitor) trivializes every boss battle in the game right now and every future boss ever designed be GGG in the future which isn't completly immune to elemental damage. Dealing "true damage" nearly 100% of the time is just OP. It is not healthy for the game and a balancing nightmare for upcomming content.
- Shade Form (Trickster) - overall numbers of boni are way to high at the moment and should be reduced significantly
- Elemental Conflux (Elementalist) - no comment needed, in its current form it is OP and has to go.
- Unrelenting (Juggernaut) - this mechanic has proofen to be too OP, because of various possible interactions with other items, skills and mechanics (Voll's Devotion, Discharge, Immortal Call CWDT, King's Guard etc.) - rework this notable or take a carefull look at all its interactions



That was just a little input from my side, i am sure there is more. I hope GGG doesn't fuck it up this time like they did with 2.3 (player retention and long term playability of the challenge leagues reflecting on that i feel).
Let's wait and hope they get it right this time!

While power creep is a huge issue, another issue is that the game still revolves around having to stack HP and resist rares, bosses oneshoting most of the builds and archaic mechanics like reflect that supposedly exist to fight the power creep but utterly fail at it, instead limiting build diversity further.

Honestly, the game needs a huge overhaul as far as mechanics go, the idea behind support gems is also backfiring terribly since it's all about stacking more damage instead of making interesting builds nowadays.


I personally avoid all sort of "fotm" builds and instead try to be creative, and surprisingly it results in my damage output being very tame, even low in some situations. So the power creep doesn't affect everyone equally. The biggest issue that I really find impossible to get around at this point has been racking up enough survivability while keeping my builds whole. It is really hard to get enough HP when you aren't going for a fotm build that can wreck everything with zero investment into offensive stats and gear.

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Curses:
Since the introduction of Blasphemy, the curse mechanic need to be looked at. Just a simple numerical nerf would disappoint many players and would do little to the actual state of curses. GGG has to takle multiple instances at the same time when it comes to curses:
- curse quality bonus
- curse effectiveness on the passive tree
- Blasphemy support gem effectivnes and quality bonus
- monsters/bosses curse resistance/effectiveness modifiers

Especially Temporal Chains and Enfeeble must be rebalanced/reworked - there boni are just too good for the current state of the game and together can completly nullify all endgame content which isn't tagged hexproof (...and there is even Cospri's Will for that now). 60% reduced curse effectiveness doesn't cut it anymore since it is additive with curse effectivness modifiers. 70% less curse effectiveness would have some impact but the combination of hinder and slow would still be too strong. GGG really has to think about this.

I don't understand why easier methods to apply curses aren't punished, why not levels slowly reduce the penalty of the curse effectiveness. Like curse on hit and blasphemy should have 50>30 reduced effectiveness, leveling it reduces the penalty, so can quality.

The "good" thing about cospri will is it is rare and it can't be used effectively with guardian, at least it isn't optimal.

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Cast on Crit:
Worst thing that happend to PoE if you think deeply about it. CoC generated a form of power creep never existed before in this ARPG - nothing comes even close (not even Ascendancy classes have granted so much dPS/clearspeed/survivability to the player than CoC has in the past).
By nerfing CoC in 2.4 many people will outrage for sure... and then a little while later they will rediscover Mojlner and move on.
Mjolner provides the same playstyle as CoC with roughly the same clearspeed and safty. A switch from CoC --> Mjolner can be expected if GGG destroys CoC support gem and leaves Mjolner untouched.

It just needs tuned down over time really, stuff like trickster and vegan weapons have made this build far more powerful then I think it was intended to be.

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Hybrid gear/state of rares vs uniques:
The power level of Endgame uniques is insane currently - for most builds actually multiple uniques are BIS however GGG's original design says that a perfectly rolled rare will surpass a unique item - uniques are intended to enable builds but never ment to be BIS without any noticable downside.
The affix pool of rares should be ajusted and expanded, also master crafting benches should be updated with additional mods for rares to make rares competitive again. Hybrid gears falls short in every way over a pure armour, evasion or ES piece right now - maybe enable an additional prefix/suffix on those to make them competitive.

In chest vs rares sure, but I don't think a rare chest by nature can ever really beat a unique, unless its pure armor or evasion, because those ones have specific benefits you would want. Hybrid I don't think ultimately matters, investing 1\2 assed into 2 things is generally worst then investing fully into 1 thing.

The best rares can still beat uniques in many slots.

State of twohanders for spellcasters:

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With the recent buff to wands and scepters, two handed spell caster staves now feel even more obsolete than they felt before. Sure, you can get a 6 link while wielding a staff but you sacrifice a lot for it. Dual wield or 1h/shield now can reach even higher damage numbers than staves for spellcasters (if you don't really on +3 gems or the sockets) while beeing more durable.

This is simply because getting 6 links might be a bit too difficult. I'd personally like to see 2 handed weapons be easier then chest to link, but that might be difficult.

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Melee vs ranged:
I know, beating an old horse here, but GGG seriously has to give this some thought. There is no reason to play melee (no, i am not talking about earthquake and reave which are hitting the while screen) at the moment. Melee needs some purpose in this game where it shines, can outclass ranged and be competitive in a new leagues economy.

I'd say the best example of this is something like izzaro, where being tanky and not needing massive aoe\clear is useful. Nothing but boss fights can be more melee friendly though, even then stuff like izzaro can be cheezed with mines.

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State of movement skills
Movement skills need to be ajusted in general - we are moving way to fast for too little investment and gaining fortify, which was supposed to be melee only, for free on nearly every character.
Making fortify not work with movement skills would be a healthy change i feel.

The problem is movement skills like cyclone should still have fortify, I'd argue that leap slam should as well. Just remove the ability to use it with WB would go a long way.

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Double Dipping:
This has been in the game for far too long; many players gave feedback and wanted it to be removed for month now. Poison and Bleeding DoTs need to be rebalanced accordingly when this change is made. Poison, Bleeding and Burning should not work with trap and mine modifiers and elemental modifiers - oneshotting the hardest endgame bosses in the game just isn't fun and healthy for Path of Exile.

Well stop the presses people have wanted it removed for a while month now. GGG does not do balance changes during the league, the few exceptions are relatively minor skill adjustments, that ultimately could have waited.

Burning is already a lucklaster way to do damage, which is why instead of addressing double dipping then psudeo nerfed it with conversion.


Specific Ascendancy class notables:

There are some notables out there which are trivializing the game without much investment made. For the long term of the game and future content they have to be looked at:

"

- Inevitable Judgement (Inquisitor) trivializes every boss battle in the game right now and every future boss ever designed be GGG in the future which isn't completly immune to elemental damage. Dealing "true damage" nearly 100% of the time is just OP. It is not healthy for the game and a balancing nightmare for upcomming content.

Literally the only thing that makes that class worth a damn. In addition it can be quite hard to get a high enough crit chance to apply it reliably. Because you aren't assassin and not all skills have a high crit chance.

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- Shade Form (Trickster) - overall numbers of boni are way to high at the moment and should be reduced significantly

This is just picked up mainly because CoC, nerf CoC and the class becomes weaker as a whole.

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- Elemental Conflux (Elementalist) - no comment needed, in its current form it is OP and has to go.

No idea why they buffed that class, that being said you do have to get the kills for it to work, which means its less powerful in a party setting.

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- Unrelenting (Juggernaut) - this mechanic has proofen to be too OP, because of various possible interactions with other items, skills and mechanics (Voll's Devotion, Discharge, Immortal Call CWDT, King's Guard etc.) - rework this notable or take a carefull look at all its interactions

Again the only thing that makes that class worth a damn.


I think your complaints with classes are in line with the complains about champion last league. You see how "good" champion is now, right? Its mediocre at best.

GGG should rly tell us what´s their goal here.

The problem with balancing in PoE si that there is big discrepancy among builds/equip/players skill (newbie vs skilled player, tank vs glasscanon, range x melee, 4l vs 6L etc...)

100 players 100 ideas how to "balance" the game.

According to myself I would reduce the disbalance among skills/builds.
How?


1) Skills should scale its damage according to AoE (less AoE = more skill damage)

2) Diminishing investment = not linear relation in damage and speed (investing in those should be less effective).
Probably everything should be like this = you can mix/max smth only with big sacrifice (= you can´t have any kind of imunity or smth like that but rather a bit of advantage in some situation)

I can imagine other possibilities how to get better balance here .. such as hard caps or possible passive skill point distribution into two groups (50% defensive and 50% offensive points to spent etc).

3) Make all (or the most) supporting gems not affecting damage. Instead of those more damage gems we should use life/mana leech, knockback, projectile speed etc (old ones should be reworked)
AoE gem should have downside in damage (smth like XX% less damage similar to GMP or diminishing return)
It would bring more build diversity and also reduce discrepancy among 4/5/6L items = better for balancing content

4) Range vs melee or rather close fighters vs ranged
The main issue for melee is how to survive so some sort of warcries that affect attributes (life, mana, def...) according to nearby monsters should work (smth like EC)
Fortify should be for "melee only" (hi champ!)
On the other hand we shouldn´t be able to trivialise the content = 1 shot everything from far distance without being touched = so probably monsters should be more agressive with better AI, faster, tougher (damage output vs monster´s ehp..) = back to point 3 - we need gems with knockback, blind, curses and such to sustain alive.

5) The best part ... after that we can look at player´s damage output vs monster´s ehp.
Because of changes above we probably don´t need to nerf anything but rather buff most of the gems .... (well depends on diminishing balance and such ...)

Ofc there are lot of other things to do (buffing useless uniques, drop rates, risk vs rewards, challenging content etc ...) but I refer to the most important ones.

1) this is already basically the case, skills that don't have built in AoE have higher base damage. But at this point I think it is more rare to have a skill without aoe, then one with.

2) Just makes for an overall poor gameplay IMO. You should be able to invest into basically whatever you want, defensive stuff like max res or block obviously needs capped, but no reason to limit the potential DPS or anything like that.

3) That is 100% boring and the wrong way to think about support gems. You can pick and choose what you would like now, by having none of the support gems offer damage, stuff like slower proj would literally never be used, except maybe ball lightning. This doesn't increase diversity it hurts it. Not only that investing into a 5\6 link should be substantially more rewarding.

4) Champion is fine, its already been gutted and made largely irrelevant. Fortify shouldn't work with WB and that would massively help melee.

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Ashen_Shugar_IV wrote:

I think we need this.

Do GGG even want a balanced game? Organic Metagame?

Or do GGG intend to dictate the terms of (competitive) play always?

A manifesto post outlining GGG's game balance philosophy would be much appreciated. Has it remained the same since the conception of PoE or is it a moving target?


At this point I don't even care about new content. Nothing would excite me more than the next major patch being dedicated to performance and balance improvements.
GGG, you seem to be uncomfortably quiet on game balance issues. Please communicate. These issues are important, probably more than you realise.

You probably knew this, but they're not going to post anything. If they did, it would read like this:

"We're not going to rework old underpowered skills because someone might still use them. Instead, we're going to introduce new overpowered skills that everyone will use."

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suszterpatt wrote:

You probably knew this, but they're not going to post anything. If they did, it would read like this:

"We're not going to rework old underpowered skills because someone might still use them. Instead, we're going to introduce new overpowered skills that everyone will use."

And yet they still end up undermining the player using old skills.

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goetzjam wrote:

1) this is already basically the case, skills that don't have built in AoE have higher base damage. But at this point I think it is more rare to have a skill without aoe, then one with.

2) Just makes for an overall poor gameplay IMO. You should be able to invest into basically whatever you want, defensive stuff like max res or block obviously needs capped, but no reason to limit the potential DPS or anything like that.

3) That is 100% boring and the wrong way to think about support gems. You can pick and choose what you would like now, by having none of the support gems offer damage, stuff like slower proj would literally never be used, except maybe ball lightning. This doesn't increase diversity it hurts it. Not only that investing into a 5\6 link should be substantially more rewarding.

4) Champion is fine, its already been gutted and made largely irrelevant. Fortify shouldn't work with WB and that would massively help melee.

Well you just picked up smth ... still don´t offer solution ... well lets look at it.

1) Yes but imperceptible ... compare f.e. cleave vs LA and XP/Hour

2) You can have balanced game or anarchism (=current state).
Well I don´t like hard caps (d2 got damage cap though ...). Although with diminishing return you can still invest into basically whatever you want but with fair downside.
Imo it makes much more sense too. Look at it in the different way... Usain bolt (or any runner at 100m) has been improving yourself quite fast until he reached 10 seconds. When he reached the limit he can improve yourself much slower now (but still can)

3) Sry but I think the current meta just 5x more damage gems (and maybe one leech) is boring.
My comment was more about gem philosophy than about specific gem. Some gems would have increased damage (not much) with fair downside (but should be more creative).
6L should be about perfection (doesn´t need extra damage)
Those who spent big resources just for a few damage or life in D2 knows what Iam talking about (415/15/3 eth botd etc.)

4) Fortitude still gives permanent fortify being melee or not right?