3.0... Slowing down the game a tad maybe?
" As far as I'm aware, one of the major reasons why melee is hurting right now, is due to the speed of the game. I've heard that way back when, melee used to be on par with range. Then, packs increased in size, and so melee with its limited AoE (Due to Melee Splash being no-where near as good as things like Flameblast) and need to actually get in range to hit stuff started to fall behind. While, ranged builds that could just walk past, drop an AoE and carry on their way started to excel. Though, this is more to do with "Speed of clearing maps", rather than your original premise of "Number of actions per second" Apparently, some people started to go off-topic when assuming this thread was about the former rather than the latter (Then, I'm just amazing at taking things off topic...) But yeah, as for balancing APM you'd be looking at stuff like Multistrike and Spell Echo which are the biggest offenders for the sanic speed attacks. As well as looking at potentially converting some Attack/Cast Speed passives into hybrid Speed + Damage ones (For example, does Berserking really need to be 12% attack speed?) | |
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@tinko:
I agree with Korgoth. My dad summed the basic thought up very well: "Never attribute to malice what can just as easily be explained by incompetence". In my opinion, incompetence is much more common than malice. May your maps be bountiful, exile
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Sorry about that, hit submit in wrong window :(
#1 rule of official forum boards of every video game ever: use the forums to relay info, gather suggestions, or the rare narrow-focused Poll; but NEVER as "feedback". #2 rule: Never say the #1 rule in an official capacity. Let some guy on the forums say it, leaving yourself plausible deniability. Last edited by themousemaster on Apr 4, 2017, 4:48:28 PM
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" No. As Tinko92 said, "
Definitions
Let's sort characters into 3 rough groups.
1. Melee characters, which I define as characters using a melee attack skill gem in conjunction with an attack from their melee weapon to inflict their primary damage source.* 2. Ranged characters, which I define as characters using an attack skill gem in conjunction with an attack from their ranged weapon to inflict their primary damage source.* 3. Spell characters, which I define as characters not fitting into (1) or (2) for the sake of this discussion.* *The following skills receive special consideration: Abyssal Cry Blade Flurry Blade Vortex Blight Discharge Earthquake Flame Surge Ground Slam Ice Crash Ice Nova Lacerate Lightning Tendrils Lightning Warp Righteous Fire Shock Nova Shrapnel shot Sunder
Premise
You'll notice I said roughly. In the traditional sense, melee is thought to mean immediate vicinity. Toe-to-toe. Adjacent. Ranged is thought to mean distant or afar, and spells often don that trait. The abilities listed above push against/break those norms - melee skills that have high distance or ranged/spell abilities that are proximal in nature. Additionally, there is one very important common trait in all those gems:
All of them have the AoE tag. GGG's recent adjustment to AoE scaling results in less "abuse" of that aspect, meaning Earthquakes won't be as global as they used to be, and discharge will not cover the whole screen. It keeps those abilities more adjacent, more poximal, more "melee" than could have been the case beforehand. Take a look at the abilities again. Consider how efficient (or "meta", as you will) each is. Shrapnel Shot is the only ranged ability. Though the stormtrooper build was novel, it is not high-efficiency. For those spells? Only Blade Vortex and Righteous Fire remain popular, but notice you need not actively cast those with high frequency. This makes them more efficient. The melee abilities listed are just the opposite; they are longer range than their truly adjacent, toe-to-toe sibling abilities. Until Blade Flurry was introduced, lacerate, earthquake, and ice crash were relatively popular as far as melee went. After all, why use Glacial Hammer or Heavy Strike instead? Ground Slam and Sunder's players funneled into the mostly-superior skill of earthquake. Blade Flurry dominates them all because of its high attack speed scaling, able to inflict on-hit effects many times more often. The patterns above indicate favored skills are ones of distance in ability use & area of its effect. Thus the problem is one of distance. In recognizing this, melee has 2 deficiencies when compared to ranged or spell: 1. Melee needs to spend time closing more distance to each pack. 2. Melee's necessary closer proximity exposes them to more danger. Themousemaster, the melee vs. ranged/spell problem relates to your thread because of the time between packs point above. Consider the effects of changes if they were implemented in the game: 1. Increased health, defenses, and damage of enemies, moreso for normals/magics than rares/uniques. Why? Those are the monsters that come in packs. If it takes longer to kill them, they will have more time to endanger players at long range who will actually need to react to the (real) danger beyond the pre-emptive off-screen volley they do currently. 2. Increase the output/utility of melee skills not listed above. Why? The ones above already have an edge in the distance race. It makes sense the most cumbersome abilities (like Glacial Hammer/Heavy Strike) get some edge to make up for it; otherwise, there is little/no reason to use them. 3. Rework Fortify to benefit sustained melee combat as a baseline passive mechanic for all characters. For example, it could be similar to Gladiator's Violent Retaliation; perhaps for every melee attack striking an enemy, you receive a stack of fortify for some duration with each stack being much weaker than it is now - two-handed weapons yield 2 stacks per strike. The maximum damage reduction could be raised as casters would not be able to utilize it without significant tradeoffs. The monster adjustments slow the game, while the others make the sustained combats more feasible for melee, helping level the playing field. Obviously, disparity in armor vs. evasion vs. ES (really the unholy GR-VP-CI trinity) needs to be fixed as well as double-dipping and huge damage spikes to truly round things out. In the meantime, if you want to slow down the game, get in a group with 5 summoners. It works. Promise! Here lies a toppled god; his fall was not a small one. We did but build his pedestal - a narrow and a tall one. - F.H. Last edited by Immermnemion on Apr 5, 2017, 1:07:40 AM
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GPU/CPU load is not in "speed of attack/game" or any other mechanics.
Its in how many particles/polygons are on screen, maybe how physics is handled. 2nd issue is that game is loading all time. | |
" Mathematically speaking, if we took all player attack speed and halved it, and all player damage and doubled it, the Clearspeed would be exactly the same, while the number of actions, and therefore screen objects, to do it would be decreased by by a factor approaching 50%. I'm not saying there isn't some correlation between "melee" vs "ranged" builds, particularly with respect to how many "objects" they can create (vaalspark build anyone?), but that's tangent to my point. If anything, if we increase the health and damage of enemies, then it will actually take MORE activations of skills to bring them down, creating even more "attack objects" on screen. If anything, I should rename this thread to "slowing down the Objects per Second". Also, I play a summoner (aura-support variety). I've never GPU/network-chugged "myself" ;p. #1 rule of official forum boards of every video game ever: use the forums to relay info, gather suggestions, or the rare narrow-focused Poll; but NEVER as "feedback". #2 rule: Never say the #1 rule in an official capacity. Let some guy on the forums say it, leaving yourself plausible deniability. Last edited by themousemaster on Apr 5, 2017, 8:59:48 AM
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I would agree, but I don't trust GGG to rebalance the game for slow gameplay to be rewarding.
Unfortunately, this game only gives you decent loot if you clear maps in 1 min or less. All of those people that complain about "Never getting anything good because my RNG sucks"? Yeah those people aren't playing "efficiently". The problem with POE is that "efficiently" means play so hard until the game feels more like work that play. In other games, "efficiently" means just play the game... doesn't matter how slow or fast... just play. POE isn't (unfortunately) like that. I don't think GGG can slow the game down at this point. People expect a playstyle when you condition them over many many seasons that clearspeed = best way to play. If you look at newer IP's like grim dawn, you can see what benefits slower clear speed + more rewards can bring. POE unfortunately can't do that. If GGG attempts to "slow the game down a little", but somehow over shoot that mark they will lose a shit ton of players. They have openly said that about other changes like these. They have firsthand seen the loss of chunks of players of changes to the game that effect the playstyle. | |
" Dev's had to optimize game and netcode because it's obviously problematic and it's a reason of bad performance. A lot of DC, BIG lags when nothing happens on the screen, a big FPS drop on some locations (Imperial Garden is my favorite lagfets!)... This game a much charge processor because optimalization is very low. BTW: Where da hell damn is a "Blilinear filtering"? Why I had to use "Trilinear" and "Medium quality" textures if I want everything on low? Baby don't Vaal me, don't Vaal me, no more!
Vaal me baby one more time! The eVaalution is now! Hakuna Matata, Warriors! | |
" I'm not going to say any part of this statement is wrong... while there are certainly players (like me) that wouldn't mind being able to, like, SEE the things before they die to 82347582 explosions, there are others who don't. However, this whole post makes the GGG playerbase sound like a bubble. GGG (by definition) cannot simply continue to increase speed to infinity, and there will come a point that no amount of "appeasing to the fast" will retain the "shit-ton" that would leave otherwise. It's like good old American (or any other country, really, though most pronounced in Democracy/Republics) politics... push off the problem as long as possible, rather than deal with the short-term cost of fixing it. With, and this is an important point, when that happens, no one is going to point to this post from the future, and say "it should have been fixed then". The loudest complaints/complainers will pick whatever the shortest-of-short term fixes GGG didn't implement at that time as being the cause, rather than analyze the general trend of "going too far" that has occurred for at least the last 4 leagues, and arguably even farther. (Remember when there were actually threads on this board that said that you need to tamper your DPS if you were killing yourself to reflect mobs, rather than just assume Immortal Call would solve all your problems, and yelling at GGG when it didn't?) This may be their only point to "not crash" the population bubble with 3.0 coming out, as a significant # of people (including people who left a while ago, I know a few at least) will load up the game to see acts 5 through 10 (and I mean "see", not rush through A5-A10 just to get to maps). If the mean-time-of-player/hours of that group is higher than the loss of "top-end" player/hours, then GGG won't actually notice a per-league hit. Granted, us players don't have access to the data GGG ACTUALLY uses... if 99% of their Microtransactions come from 1% of the playerbase, then nothing anyone says is going to matter. It's not until those 1% get fed up that a massive overhaul will happen... though I fear that will be because the 1% no longer have a 99% to sell their 2374587234 wares too, but no one will say THAT on the forums, as it would be "unpopular". #1 rule of official forum boards of every video game ever: use the forums to relay info, gather suggestions, or the rare narrow-focused Poll; but NEVER as "feedback". #2 rule: Never say the #1 rule in an official capacity. Let some guy on the forums say it, leaving yourself plausible deniability. Last edited by themousemaster on Apr 5, 2017, 5:27:28 PM
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" I mean... Theoretically, they could try working on slowing down the game in baby steps. Like, instead of literally just forcing EVERYONE to play slow. Start with an OPTION to play slow that is comparable to Speedy Gonzalez: Atlas of Worlds. Start with stuff like, conversion jewels and keystones that convert Attack Speed/Cast Speed to damage (To help with APM, though not necessarily clear speed) Make +monster health come with additional IIR/IIQ/Experience. Implement a system so that time spent on a map increases IIR/IIQ/Experience gained. Do it well enough that slow play becomes COMPARABLE (You can't make it the same, otherwise slow play would become king due to fewer maps required) and then you'd get a viable slow play type game for those who like it. Which would then give them data about how to go about moving forwards (If slow play shows far greater numbers than the sanic style, then they could implement larger, gamewide changes to make the game as a whole slower) |
