Beta feedback The biggest problem of PoE-Leeachers

Now, played the game for few weeks, and its great, super, adicitve as hell.. bla, bla, but i'll jump to biggest problem for me in beta.

Existence of so called leecher, that join the group of players, where 1 does all the killing, and others do nothing, and get items for free, and no effort (and then sell them to others). If there are leecher (and mechanic that works same way), it means that system is heavily not balanced. Possibility that a player can do 20k dmg and more per second, and can play alone in full party means that it needs fixing.

Now, before you all jump on my head to kick my ass, saying "this is for god sake a beta", I know this, and that its a work in progress, but I just want to suggest few things how to fix it temporary or for good. Because of PoE complex system and ton of possibilities, and interesting pvp options (that i hope will be implemented as said in manifesto),the balance will make, or break this game for me, and it is one of my biggest concerns about the future of PoE.

Chaos (even if temporary in beta) should always be hard, not only for players with crapy items, but for all. When player joins, you should not be possible to kill monster alone, and will need to stay together and survive.

This are my few suggestion:

-lowering heavy the dmg of all skills that can do more then 10k dmg with best items and gems.
-for every player that joins, monster should get 100% more health (not 50%), and 5% or more dmg.
-if your in chaos, and you are lower 4 lvl then character with highest lvl in party, you get almost no exp.
-removing increase quantity of loot for every player that joins, or implementing individual looks so players that leach (and most of time have low lvl), would not have same drop rates as the highest party membar lvl (or it could work for all players if there lvl is to much diferent).
-lvl scaling monster in chaos (starting min lvl should be 60) to the highest lvl character in party.


The other big problem, that is same (or similar) that was in d2 is the spaming of 1 skill,and mostly it's some area dmg skills. What i would like to see is the increase the damage of area dmg skills, but putting a cooldown of 5 sec, or more. It will make you not spam the same skill over and over, and you'll need to plan and wait when monsters group, and then use it.

Last thing are boss fights. I think every boss should have a super slow attack, that charges slowly (2 sec), so you can see his animation , and move away from him. If not, you'll lose a lot of health, or 1 hit dead, or lose always 90% of health, no matter how much you have. This will make it more dynamic, interesting, and at least force you to evade his attack, and not stand in 1 position and spam skill. Somthing similar to titan quest typhus boss with meteors, or diablo boss with the red lightning strike.

Anyway, hope devs will read this at least.

Those are some good initial suggestions. I have some comments to make it clearer more specifically what I also find problematic in terms of the gameplay:

- The lowering of damage is a complex problem. It has a lot to do with percentages and when they are calculated onto the total damage. It is inflating the numbers because of that and I really hope they intend on doing something about it since a few solutions have been brought up a lot. I even think Mark mentioned some inconsistencies that, if they are brought on line with the rest of the game, would reduce the inflation considerably!

- Increasing damage on monsters is overall a no-go given how the defensive skill of rangers work (evasion). Getting one-shot is bad gamedesign and increasing monster-damage can increase the chance of that happening.
More monster-life is always an option though it gets a lot more boring if the monsters take too long to kill. I would prefer that these effect starts applying already at first player in the group if it is implemented instead of how it works now.

- There is already a group-penalty on level-difference given by the pooled amount of experience gained distributed through the influence calculated in a formula. Unfortunately the formula is heavily penalizing at lower levels, while above level ~40 it is relatively meaningless even if the level-difference more than 10 (at level 40 and 50 that is about a 2 to 3-distribution, level 40 and 70 is a 1 to 4-distribution). Level-difference is probably a better measure in general like the one applying to areas. As it is now I feel the formula is too generous towards the lower level player in general.

- Increased quanitity and quality of loot is the whole point of the leeching. Maybe you can decrease the bonuses from grouping? I do not understand the way the calculations are made in this situation so I cannot truely be constructive here.

- Level-scaling was the pre-0.9.3 solution to all of this games balance-problems. I think veteran players can tell you more about the disadvantages of such a system. Also games like The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion seems to be used as an example of exactly why it is a bad idea in general. Furthermore it is not really a problem of the monsters being too easy to survive for underleveled players since the high-level player is just tanking/kiting them all night long and the days too!

About scaling, i don't how they did it in older builds. I was thinking that only the last lvl (chaos) should use enemy scaling, and not other acts and difficulties. Scaling allows you to have challenge no matter what lvl you are, and I think chaos needs exactly that (with min lvl of 60, like it is now, and increase with your lvl).

As far as leeching is concerned - I feel like it is very prevalent right now only because people can't continue through content in order to level up at a decent rate, once people can level through more acts it will probably be easier to level up on your own rather than needing to leech for experience (since a lot of players are unable to defeat merciless when they first arrive in it) - if they are a higher level however (from additional instances prior to hitting Merc difficulty) then they won't need to leech.

I could be wrong, but I don't think it is as big of a problem as you might think.

Well leacher per se are not the problem, but possibility that they exist. If you have a group of 6 characters, and only 1 is playing and killing everything in few seconds, that is the real problem. If they fix it, leecher will stop to exist, because everyone in group would need to fight to survive, and one player can not do it by himself.

It's really crappy that there is an incentive on both sides for leechers to exist.

Simple, kneejerk fix: kick people out of the instance that haven't moved in X time.
Better, still kneejerk fix: kick people out of the instance that don't continuously encounter new mobs. Force people to at least attempt to kill a mob and walk around (almost like they're playing the game or something).

"

pneuma wrote:

It's really crappy that there is an incentive on both sides for leechers to exist.

Simple, kneejerk fix: kick people out of the instance that haven't moved in X time.
Better, still kneejerk fix: kick people out of the instance that don't continuously encounter new mobs. Force people to at least attempt to kill a mob and walk around (almost like they're playing the game or something).

You'll still get all the leechers that run around grabbing 'free' lower quality loot.

The system exists because of the Item Quantity global increase applied for party members (50% quantity each).

Now, a few points first:

1) Item Quantity goes up by EXACTLY the same rate as hp. So the Runner gets the exact same loot-per-monster-hp.
2) The reason it is good is that it decreases run-time, zone spawn-time, and clusters all loot together better.
3) Leechers like it because of free xp and sometimes free loot.
4) Leechers like the free xp because there is such a sharp increase in difficulty between finishing Merciless and starting Chaos. If that gap weren't there, more players would continue playing without leeching.

So:
Any solution needs to focus on those points, and how to solve the problem as a whole.
Kicking inactive players does not do that, it just forces players to fiddle with their mouse on occasion.
Making them participate just means they run around with level 1 ice spear (or a bow) and do minimal damage.

A solution has to:
1) Lessen the desire to leech. This doesn't mean denying them xp. It means giving them OTHER options for how to play the game that make standing around getting no loot less desirable.
2) Improve the xp split formula for groups so that a level 75 player hogs enough xp from level 50-60 players that leeching is less rewarding.
3) Revamp the loot system for groups so that difficulty scales up *faster* than loot, but doesn't make normal grouping feel worthless.

I can think of plenty of options for fixing #1 and #2, but the third part is the tricky one. Anyone out there have genius ideas for that?

The Quantity buff must go away FOR EVER , period .

The mobs at higher difficulties should scale better - bigger % increased dmg / hp ( i'm talking 400 - 500 % increase here yep and even this will be too low ) depending on number of players in the party .

Atm a person oneshotting everything while in a full group smells like a major flaw to me .No real incentive for grouping with other players , feels too good to play alone an online game - maybe to you but not for me aaand lots of other players .

Balance the game , better lean towards " TOO HARD OMG "
instead of " I alt tab and 1 shot everything , boring as f@#k game which I'll just forget in a month ".

Put a lvl cap so people can give real feedback , what is this crap i'm fighting lvl 60 mobs on my lvl 75 witch - you want feedback ok - the game is not even close to balanced atm and it's too easy / boring , k good .

Not even going to start on the crafting system , feels like I'm playing an NCSOFT game - farm for eternity , roll 100000 times = get some avarage crappy item , yeah right .

All of the above promotes mindless leechers AFK and item farming 3rd party websites , sounds good right ? So have fun with it .

I think games will be better without any stat for MF...but i know that a lot of people like it... by the same way i don't like the possibility to be able to leech xp in doing nothing... the 2 combined are lame and define what the endgame may be in the future of PoE if it stay like that. I know that chaos is a temporary game feature. but if players get the possibility to skip content to only have to "play" the endgame they'll do it, and we eventualy all do....

I've 2 nasty ideas :

- Using Quantity without Quality decrease overall quality of the loot. this way you have to stack quality and quantity from your stuff and you can't have a godly 100% + quantity only stuff!
I could give example to manage that, but I think everybody understand my point here...

- Chaos and/or "static" endgame mobs Repop!
very well suited for chaos, dead mobs respawning (reviving) behind the frontline will force the group to stay tight. add to that some really wandering mobs : passive full leecher's problem solved!
last, decrease xp range gain...

"

skaterboy80 wrote:

The Quantity buff must go away FOR EVER , period

IMHO, the quantity increase is a MUST for regulary playing the game in a party (as intended): if I consider (as example) 1 of 10 items to be useful for a single player, every added char in a party doubles this number of needed gear - and there's no similar way to increase the quote, since even better quality did not guarantee usefulness.