Failure of Communication and Mid League "nerf"

I'm so confused.

Last time I checked you guys didn't do mid league balance changes, yet here I read about "fixing" the clarity mod for the jewel 5 or 6 weeks into the league?


Yes I read the reddit post about a week or more ago that read it was fixed internally, but wasn't sure on the time frame on when it would be applied. To me this indicated that you guys were considering not deploying this fix mid league, because of the economical impact it would have.

You then further lack of communication on your official channels, ie news post about it (or lack of) seem to indicate that might be the case.

If you communicate something like "we going to change how an item works mid league" on reddit, you absolutely should make a post about it in the news area, like you did with the VD enchant.


Now don't get me wrong it is bugged and maybe people shouldn't act on something that is bugged, but the longer and longer you go without communicating and without changing something, the more people are willing to accept something isn't going to change.


Its half way thru the league and this jewel, as you likely know is rare, expensive and powerful. One could easily argue that the damage based ones provide far more power then even the bugged clarity mod, but those ones aren't getting changed. The extremely broken extra phys as ele mods aren't getting changed, so the reason why this is getting done can't be for balance reasons.


You guys should have made a separate post about this the min you decided A) it was bugged and B) whatever your course of action was going to be.


Unlike the VD enchant, which was made clear it wasn't intended to go that high, was fixed very early on and communicated well, this was handled quite poorly and the funny thing about it is if you communicated it better it wouldn't be as bad, if you made the change earlier in the league it wouldn't have been so bad, but you let it go so long, that it is almost more logical for you to make an official post about it, but fix it after the league is over, so no economical damage is done. This is a change that can easily make people quit a league, while I might not quit any earlier then I would otherwise, I'm going to be far less interested in playing my powerful character I invested in.

The VD enchant needing to get fixed was crucial as it would have defined the meta, what is the "crucial" aspect of getting this fixed, especially when it went for over a week since the reddit post before its even communicated in the official channels?

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"No mid-league balance changes" has never been an official GGG policy. Yes, they don't like doing it. But they have happened in some cases during almost every league.

Can you list the last 5 times they have done anything after 4 weeks into the league?

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Further, this is not a balance change. This is a bug fix. Yes, it affects balance. But the reasoning for it is not "X is too powerful". The reason is "X is not working the way it is supposed to".

It has massive effects on those that have this.



It was posted in a buried post a week ago, they could have easily made a news post at the same time so everyone was on the same footing. I could have sold my jewel within 20 min of the original post and likely stuck someone with what would effectively be nerf tomorrow, but I'm not a scumbag.

Fact of the matter is if you want to call it a bug fix or whatever, they let it go for so long without action and with terrible communication that needs to be addressed.

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goetzjam wrote:

It has massive effects on those that have this.

I did the calcs on my build prior to this(no clue if it's live yet since i'm playing on SSF atm) and i lost around 3k ES or so.

Not really a massive impact considering the amount of total ES it gave me.(around 6800)

Honestly the real issue i see that this revealed in my opinion is that either

1) gaurdian is broken
2) hierophant needs a buff

One of the two is under/over performing in the general balance sense.

I don't disagree that they could have communicated a lot better about this though, but then, that holds up for a lot of things these days and not just this.
I'd say your probably correct that a post + follow up time-line would have been highly appreciated by the community. And if the community gives a knee-jerk reaction to this(like the VD fix) then they are sure to feel it. If that's any concern to GGG at this point i don't know, we are already a month in the league(i think?) so most of the "play and leave" crowd probably already passed along for this season leaving only the more hardcore player-base.

Peace,

-Boem-

3k is about what I'm slated to lose, its massive enough to complain about it, but others are much more impacted by this, because they paid a significant amount for the jewel, because prices are based on current power, not "unbugged" power.

GGG can do whatever they want , it's their game at the end of the day .

there are no hidden posts

gggtracker.com

You state that VD fix was okay but not the eye?

Prob because you have an eye and salty that it dropped in price.

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vio wrote:

there are no hidden posts

gggtracker.com

I'm not going to and more importantly people that don't browse reddit aren't going to visit that website to get important news about upcoming changes.

Its as if they have a place where they can announce unintended interactions and the plan\timeframe to fix it.....I think a place called "news" might be a good place for it. Not only does it hit the front page of the website, but also making an official news post triggers post on facebook and stuff too right?


Its almost as if they could have communicated this more clearly and MUCH earlier. Yet they didn't.

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GGG can do whatever they want , it's their game at the end of the day .

Not disagreeing with that, but they can still be held accountable for lack of communication on an issue, when its over a week between the reddit post and patch notes, you must wonder why it takes so long to communicate this to players. When its over a month after the initial videos coming out with how much ES they were providing you must wonder why its taken 5 weeks to make a post about something.

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You state that VD fix was okay but not the eye?

Prob because you have an eye and salty that it dropped in price.

VD fix was going to upset people regardless, but ultimately so many factors went into it being an OK change.


1) It was done in the first 2 weeks of the league, its expected that GGG fixes interactions during this time frame

2) With it being done that early into the league, the economical impacts usually aren't that large and can easily be recovered

3) It was clear from a previous podcast with Rory and ZiggyD that it was never intended to be 3 for uber lab, but rather only 1 and only available from uber lab. Maybe everyone doesn't know about this, but the other points here are strong enough if you want to ignore this one.

4) The enchant literally gave the build 100% more damage, if you had the means to create enough corpses.



The eye change is not ok because, lack of communication, the time it has taken to implement the change, the fact that its literally an item that is rare and people have saved up a significant amount to get.

In terms of the jewel, it was gifted to me, it has no merit on its value in terms of price. I was going to play that character until the end of the league with the jewel, not sell it off.


As I've said before, the longer and longer it goes with GGG saying or doing nothing, the more ok people are with spending money on an item and how it works. Considering how far it is into the league, if anyone has saved up a good portion of their wealth to buy one of these, because keep in mind they are expensive, they may likely quit the league and may not return, this is the sort of change that screws over players and its done for little reason during the league IMO.

Let something be broken for the first 1\2 the league, might as well let it finish out and fix it afterwords, so you don't screw your players over in the process. OR next time communicate clearly, like you did with the VD enchant, at least that way you arent leading people on for weeks on end.

Hello, i totally agree about bad timing of this change.

First of all, losing 3-5k extra ES in the middle of season is no joke - it's like losing an invisible top ES chest (with no stats) equipped on your character. Many owners of this jewel will quit the game or at least have a strong desire to quit once they are done with their main goal in this season (my case).

Secondly, it splits all the owners and sellers of this jewel to 2 categories: those who owned/sold before, and those who owned/sold after.

Considering that we are in the middle of a season, some owners of this jewel already had enough time to clear/farm the most difficult content with that extra ES. If they achieved everything they wanted, they can basically end their season right now, being unhappy by this sudden drop in power which forced them to quit the game earlier than expected.

Those who have challenges to do and levels to get (like me) won't be happy by this fix even more, as this situation continued for so long, that, for example, a week ago nobody could say that this bug would be fixed anytime soon. Yes, there was a dead bug report topic, but it indicated nothing. Everyone got used to these high prices, and i decided to make this investment. Some guys already did "high end grinds" challenge with that jewel. Who decided that it is fair to lower other players ES while they still have liches to kill, labs to run, shaper guardians to farm, etc.?

Also, all who will see this jewel drop from now on will be cursing themselves for not getting it a couple of weeks ago.

You're providing a terrible POE experience for quite a large amount of people with that change, GGG! I hope you really conisdered the economical part, not just fixed "a bug which must be fixed. coz its a bug. hulk smash".