1 shot 95% of game content

"

Char1983 wrote:

I do expect games to provide me with meaningful content that does challenge me, and is not gated, yes. PoE is the first game I've come across which has not done that. Maybe that is why I am so surprised.

Im getting where you are coming from. Context matters :)

Everything in PoEs endgame besides low and midtier maps is gated behind RNG.
RNG translates into playtime - thats the way GGG is looking at it - and thats good enough reason for players to throw money at them.

Thats the business model and it works pretty good for GGG.


Maybe thats explaining why this ungated challenging content doesnt exit and might never exist.

"

Char1983 wrote:

Well, if their balance department actually did balance the game to lessen (not: remove) the gap between different builds, that would help a lot.

Also, if they made end-game-worthy gear more accessible (for example: 6-links), or alternatively made the difference between "normal" gear and high-end-gear smaller, and made rares that drop actually usable, that would also help. But I guess some players really can't handle it if they cannot feel superior to others.

I can agree about #1, cant agree about #2 (aside from rares- but thats a different topic for now; very interesting- but different)

this isnt about feeling superior or anything, but accessibility of high-end simply means simply removing time investment. in a game where gear progression for endgame is already fucked (you can trade for top tier gear at level 75 pretty much and destroy all content- this is why the whole concept of 'ungate content because I doez all content' never made any sense to me when you can acquire gear/currency via killing white mobs and deck out an alt at 75 which will destroy shaper and uber, anyway small rant over), this will just result in less interest for the endgame.

I thought you wanted to bridge the gap as in making maps harder, not making the higher level content more doable and accessible. I guess I misunderstood.

"

grepman wrote:

I thought you wanted to bridge the gap as in making maps harder, not making the higher level content more doable and accessible. I guess I misunderstood.

Yes, I want to make maps harder. To make sure that the average player isn't completely put off by this, make the average player stronger (i.e. make it easier for him/her to acquire appropriate gear). Alternative: Make the end-game easier, and at the same time take away power from the top-end of players (1 million DPS is ridiculous to start with). Lessen the gap between top-end and middle-tier players, and also lessen the gap between top-end and middle-tier content.

I see way too many players that struggle hard, for example because they can't get a 6link. Or they struggle to get good rares for their build. Or whatever. Doesn't have to be that way. I would not mind if more people could kill Shaper. I also wouldn't mind if I wasn't completely discouraged from making a second character, because just getting the 6link alone will be a pretty bad pain. And if I make a second character after having a strong first one, I want a strong second one as well.

What would probably also help is if every support gem got an intrinsic 15-20% less damage, and the HP of all the unique monsters in maps was reduced accordingly.

EDIT: BTW, I would likely have quit the league pretty early if I had not found a Doctor card by chance early, and traded it for a 6l Belly. So much for player retention by making everything take ages.

"

Char1983 wrote:

"

grepman wrote:

I thought you wanted to bridge the gap as in making maps harder, not making the higher level content more doable and accessible. I guess I misunderstood.

Yes, I want to make maps harder. To make sure that the average player isn't completely put off by this, make the average player stronger (i.e. make it easier for him/her to acquire appropriate gear). Alternative: Make the end-game easier, and at the same time take away power from the top-end of players (1 million DPS is ridiculous to start with). Lessen the gap between top-end and middle-tier players, and also lessen the gap between top-end and middle-tier content.

now you're trying to have cake and eat it too. you simply cannot balance the game between people who play 10 hours a day and 2 hours a week.

also, if you make an average player stronger and maps harder, you're just introducing power creep.

really, you have to decide what exactly you want. if you want a challenging overall game, you cant be carebear with 'average players'.

poe has always been a loot-based game and centered around time investment.
if you decouple time investment, then players will have no reason to invest a ton of time in poe.

I think you spent enough time in PoE to understand that your ideal approach of 'everyone plays by the same rules and gets accessibility to gear/"good" drops and let their skills do the content' doesnt ever work in poe. the faster people get accessibility to endgame gear, the faster they get bored after they beat top end content. there is no 'skill' here.

in poe, time investment will ALWAYS trump anything else.

"

EDIT: BTW, I would likely have quit the league pretty early if I had not found a Doctor card by chance early, and traded it for a 6l Belly. So much for player retention by making everything take ages.

doesnt this actually detriment your point ? you had something so rare drop that it was super exciting and valuable ? if this card was much more accessible and been 100th of its current value, it wouldnt actually be of strong enough value for you to keep playing, right ? this game needs top end stuff to be rare for people to actually to strive for something.

[also, I think you got taken on that deal. doctor is more expensive than a 6L belly] anyhow I have linked 6L belly in SSF before, wasnt too bad. just requires (again)time investment and is a thing to look forward to.

"

grepman wrote:

now you're trying to have cake and eat it too. you simply cannot balance the game between people who play 10 hours a day and 2 hours a week.

You cannot and should not make them equal, but you can certainly do a better job at catering both.

"

grepman wrote:

also, if you make an average player stronger and maps harder, you're just introducing power creep.

Cool, then just nerf the top-end. Fine with me, even though I probably count as "top-end" given that I can kill Shaper pretty comfortably.

"

grepman wrote:

really, you have to decide what exactly you want. if you want a challenging overall game, you cant be carebear with 'average players'.

Yes, I can.

"

grepman wrote:

poe has always been a loot-based game and centered around time investment.
if you decouple time investment, then players will have no reason to invest a ton of time in poe.

Well, I certainly would still have reasons. I could play more builds, try out all the ideas I have but will never actually try because it takes two weeks to actually do so, and the risk of finding out that they ultimately suck is too big.

"

grepman wrote:

I think you spent enough time in PoE to understand that your ideal approach of 'everyone plays by the same rules and gets accessibility to gear/"good" drops and let their skills do the content' doesnt ever work in poe. the faster people get accessibility to endgame gear, the faster they get bored after they beat top end content. there is no 'skill' here.

Oh yes, there is. I know my build can beat Uber Atziri, but I can't. I would love to learn how to beat her. So far I managed to figure out how to do the dual Vaal Oversoul and the trio deathless, but I cannot figure out how to do Atziri herself.

And I know there are players who could do her deathless on my build.

"

grepman wrote:

doesnt this actually detriment your point ? you had something so rare drop that it was super exciting and valuable ? if this card was much more accessible and been 100th of its current value, it wouldnt actually be of strong enough value for you to keep playing, right ? this game needs top end stuff to be rare for people to actually to strive for something.

I wasn't excited, no. I don't get excited by drops, I get excited by content. The first time I beat Atziri, great. The first time I beat Shaper, great. The first time I beat each of the guardians, awesome. That time I dropped a Shavs when they were 40 exalt? Nice. But not as exciting because I didn't have to do anything for it besides get lucky.

The Doctor card drop wasn't exciting, it was just necessary to get a 6link. I would have much preferred if the game would not have given me the card and instead had given me the tools to craft the 6link myself.

And no, I didn't get scammed, it was early in the league, Doctor cards were around 16 Exalt / 550c and so was a 6link Belly. And no, self-linking just is not a thing. Takes way too much time, and if I have to choose between having a 6link and having a life, I choose having a life.

"

Char1983 wrote:

"

grepman wrote:

now you're trying to have cake and eat it too. you simply cannot balance the game between people who play 10 hours a day and 2 hours a week.

You cannot and should not make them equal, but you can certainly do a better job at catering both.

catering to both is mostly a losing proposition. you lose hardcore no-lifers and dont necessarily appease 'average players'

"

"

grepman wrote:

also, if you make an average player stronger and maps harder, you're just introducing power creep.

Cool, then just nerf the top-end. Fine with me, even though I probably count as "top-end" given that I can kill Shaper pretty comfortably.

what you dont get is that while they can nerf the top end (and they should), they cant nerf the time investment part.

"

Yes, I can.

so you choose to be unrealistic. ok, then

"

grepman wrote:

Well, I certainly would still have reasons.

judging by your last two sentences in your post, you dont want to invest time in a game that requires (however artificially) time investment. for some reason you feel entitled to have access to everything in the game "as long as I haz skill". Im already tired of repeating myself here, but still- it doesnt work in poe.

"

Oh yes, there is. I know my build can beat Uber Atziri, but I can't. I would love to learn how to beat her. So far I managed to figure out how to do the dual Vaal Oversoul and the trio deathless, but I cannot figure out how to do Atziri herself.

this is just because of your lack of experience.

"

I wasn't excited, no. I don't get excited by drops, I get excited by content. The first time I beat Atziri, great. The first time I beat Shaper, great. The first time I beat each of the guardians, awesome.

what about the 40th time you beat atziri ? was it as exciting ? what about guardians for 40th time ?did you play d2, were you excited on 200th baal run ?

content isnt made out of rubber. they cant make it as fast as we can consume it. its precisely why it should be gated. if you had unlimited uber sets, you would run them until you got good and then you beat her and then its not exciting anymore. time investment gives you something to look forward to. the moment you beat uber for the first time you'll bust a nut (figuratively).

"

And no, self-linking just is not a thing. Takes way too much time, and if I have to choose between having a 6link and having a life, I choose having a life.

shouldve just stated this in the beginning for me to avoid writing all this.
you dont want to make time investment, yet want your content to be constantly challenging. this is not only unrealistic, it also is a pretty evident instant-gratification thing which you try to justify with the whole 'but I haz skills' thing. poe has never been, is not, nor will be about skills but mere time investment.

your assumption just because you have skills to do high end content, you should have all tools available WITHOUT time investment in a game about precisely grinding and time investment, is as entitled as any. poe is not a game where you are given all tools and asked to do a task. its a game where you spend a lot of time acquiring tools. its not chess, its a grinding game. literally made by a company named 'grinding gear games'

I believe Grim Dawn has a better philosophy...

Items are easy enough to get.

Endgame consists of just 3 major areas that are hard but not much harder than the last boss area.

There is a lot of diversity and many builds can kill the last boss + finish harder areas in the 3rd playthrough.

The focus is in the re-rolling and not insane power(even if there are some OP builds), you define a build, make it work with the things you find(which are mostly useful), beat the last boss with it(and 3 optional dungeons if your build is decent) and then it's time to roll a new char.

It would be nice to have more build options and a more challenging game overall, without endgame being so restrictive, that way the joy is in making the build work even if it's average in power.

If people want more challenge they should go play HC without using logout cheese.

Playing these kinds of games thinking ONLY about how OP your character will be is the least fun and more braindead way to play games like these.

Coming up with unusual builds and/or roleplaying a character then making a viable build around it is much more interesting and fullfilling.

I was a min/max kind of player, ARPG's were starting to get boring for me and I didn't know why...
Then I started worrying less about "moar power!!!1" and more about roleplay.

Thank God I changed my mindset :)

"

grepman wrote:

"

twothe wrote:

In this kind of game you are supposed to one-shot all nameless mobs. If that does not match your taste, you are playing the wrong type of game.

so why wasnt this the case when the game came out ? you couldnt one-shot some white mobs, let alone magic mobs.

To answer your question, ask yourself why that has changed.

"

Gordyne wrote:

I believe Grim Dawn has a better philosophy...

Items are easy enough to get.

Endgame consists of just 3 major areas that are hard but not much harder than the last boss area.

There is a lot of diversity and many builds can kill the last boss + finish harder areas in the 3rd playthrough.

The focus is in the re-rolling and not insane power(even if there are some OP builds), you define a build, make it work with the things you find(which are mostly useful), beat the last boss with it(and 3 optional dungeons if your build is decent) and then it's time to roll a new char.

It would be nice to have more build options and a more challenging game overall, without endgame being so restrictive, that way the joy is in making the build work even if it's average in power.

If people want more challenge they should go play HC without using logout cheese.

Playing these kinds of games thinking ONLY about how OP your character will be is the least fun and more braindead way to play games like these.

Coming up with unusual builds and/or roleplaying a character then making a viable build around it is much more interesting and fullfilling.

I was a min/max kind of player, ARPG's were starting to get boring for me and I didn't know why...
Then I started worrying less about "moar power!!!1" and more about roleplay.

Thank God I changed my mindset :)

Grim Dawn has a better philosophy regarding overall gameplay (i.e. cosmic clearspeed isnt allowed, players can oneshot whole screens, and mobs dont oneshot player as well - gameplay is slower and involves actual interaction between layer and his enemies.

But regarding items, Grim Dawn sucks badly.
BiS items are mostly "legendaries" (uniques, items with fixed stats), but very few of them are actually build-defining, most just have superior stats, that's all. As a result, characters gets BiS gear too easily.
Items with random properties in GD have just 2 mods, and rare items just have 1 (or in very rare cases, 2) "rare" mods, that are meant to be superior to "magic" ones. The problem is, most of those "rare" mods are pure junk, some are good, but only a bit better than corresponding "magic" mods, and only VERY FEW of those mods are actually very powerful. Their rarity usually doesnt justify their power.
Furthermore, GD has a huge number of different resistances (~10 damage resistance, and ~5 CC resistances), and almost all of them should be capped, if you dont want to take insane damage from certain enemies, or get "stunlocked". Even worse, many enemies can reduce your resistance with various abilities (that cant be easily countered by curse-immune flask, as it is in PoE), and if you dont overcap significant resistances, you're still fucked! If you think that 4-5 resistances in PoE is hard to manage, imagine managing 12-15, with overcaps!!! It's just a pure bullshit!
Also, GD has insane number of damage types (~15), and to make a damage type relevant, you should have ~1500% increased damage for that type (not ~300% as it is in PoE). As a result, focusing on 1-2 (in rare cases, 3) damage types in the only way to play, and you're still very limited, because if you lack some increased damage from certain items, skills, etc, you're fucked, and mere flat damage from "wrong" amage type is completely useless.

"

MortalKombat3 wrote:

"

Gordyne wrote:

I believe Grim Dawn has a better philosophy...

Items are easy enough to get.

Endgame consists of just 3 major areas that are hard but not much harder than the last boss area.

There is a lot of diversity and many builds can kill the last boss + finish harder areas in the 3rd playthrough.

The focus is in the re-rolling and not insane power(even if there are some OP builds), you define a build, make it work with the things you find(which are mostly useful), beat the last boss with it(and 3 optional dungeons if your build is decent) and then it's time to roll a new char.

It would be nice to have more build options and a more challenging game overall, without endgame being so restrictive, that way the joy is in making the build work even if it's average in power.

If people want more challenge they should go play HC without using logout cheese.

Playing these kinds of games thinking ONLY about how OP your character will be is the least fun and more braindead way to play games like these.

Coming up with unusual builds and/or roleplaying a character then making a viable build around it is much more interesting and fullfilling.

I was a min/max kind of player, ARPG's were starting to get boring for me and I didn't know why...
Then I started worrying less about "moar power!!!1" and more about roleplay.

Thank God I changed my mindset :)

Grim Dawn has a better philosophy regarding overall gameplay (i.e. cosmic clearspeed isnt allowed, players can oneshot whole screens, and mobs dont oneshot player as well - gameplay is slower and involves actual interaction between layer and his enemies.

But regarding items, Grim Dawn sucks badly.
BiS items are mostly "legendaries" (uniques, items with fixed stats), but very few of them are actually build-defining, most just have superior stats, that's all. As a result, characters gets BiS gear too easily.
Items with random properties in GD have just 2 mods, and rare items just have 1 (or in very rare cases, 2) "rare" mods, that are meant to be superior to "magic" ones. The problem is, most of those "rare" mods are pure junk, some are good, but only a bit better than corresponding "magic" mods, and only VERY FEW of those mods are actually very powerful. Their rarity usually doesnt justify their power.
Furthermore, GD has a huge number of different resistances (~10 damage resistance, and ~5 CC resistances), and almost all of them should be capped, if you dont want to take insane damage from certain enemies, or get "stunlocked". Even worse, many enemies can reduce your resistance with various abilities (that cant be easily countered by curse-immune flask, as it is in PoE), and if you dont overcap significant resistances, you're still fucked! If you think that 4-5 resistances in PoE is hard to manage, imagine managing 12-15, with overcaps!!! It's just a pure bullshit!
Also, GD has insane number of damage types (~15), and to make a damage type relevant, you should have ~1500% increased damage for that type (not ~300% as it is in PoE). As a result, focusing on 1-2 (in rare cases, 3) damage types in the only way to play, and you're still very limited, because if you lack some increased damage from certain items, skills, etc, you're fucked, and mere flat damage from "wrong" amage type is completely useless.

Grim Dawn is a bad comparison regarding that.

The game has clear cut classes and class sets. These sets are almost always what you aim for in the end-game, and these sets also provide exactly the resistances and other stats you need to be successful in your chosen class. It's just grinding them all out that is the name of the game in GD.

Path of Exile is nothing like that. You're not playing a class, you're playing a build. There are no set items and most uniques do not have resists on them. You're forced to play with stats and balance them all out or get destroyed in the end-game. It's a completely different way to go at it and nothing like Grim Dawn or Diablo.