A realization about Path Of Exile economy, from watching Streamers

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Phrazz wrote:

I couldn't care less that the rich people can do what they want, as long as the game isn't balanced around them.

Oh but it sure as fuck is.
But I'll tell you what - let's assume it isn't.
how many times can you, me, or a "less than 10 hours a week" player, fight Level 8 Sirus? Uber Atziri? Cortex boss? Simulacrum? Pure Chayula? Uber Elder?
once or twice, right? with the right broken meta build because you can't really afford the gear needed for non-meta to get to that point.
in my case literally once or twice in years, but I'm very casual.
so let's assume once or twice during the League.
and you need to dodge shit because it will likely kill you. and you need to fight the thing for at least a couple minutes and know the mechanics. and you may actually fail one attempt, or both.
and then you see some Streamer chaining that shit "for science". skipping the dialogue. not even knowing what the fight is about.
and he literally stands in one place and tanks the thing that killed you when you did it. and he doesn't know nor give a flying fuck about the fight mechanics. and he kills the boss is seconds with a quadrillion DPS, then proceeds to do 5 more in the next half hour alone.
and he sells the drops and gets paid for the "carry", to make more Exalts in that half hour alone, than you will see in the entire League.
and you may - like me - stare at the screen and think "fuck this game".
or you may be a Phrazz and say "whelp yeah this is knowledge". THE FUCK KIND OF KNOWLEDGE???

So how about GGG just give these guys some ultra boss they can bash heads with? one that's protected by 2^64 layers of RNG and you need at least one Mirrored item equipped or a Mirror Of Kalandra in your inventory, to access. one that has the HP of a fkn World Of Warcraft Raid Boss, with 90% resistance to all, and does 2^16 damage with his most basic melee attack + 75% penetration and 100% added as Chaos that ignores CI because why the fuck not.
and then maybe, just maybe, they can remove all the RNG layering and on-screen crap they added to the "core endgame", as a stupid attempt to balance around those fkers.

"

johnKeys wrote:

Spoiler

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Phrazz wrote:

I couldn't care less that the rich people can do what they want, as long as the game isn't balanced around them.

Oh but it sure as fuck is.
But I'll tell you what - let's assume it isn't.
how many times can you, me, or a "less than 10 hours a week" player, fight Level 8 Sirus? Uber Atziri? Cortex boss? Simulacrum? Pure Chayula? Uber Elder?
once or twice, right? with the right broken meta build because you can't really afford the gear needed for non-meta to get to that point.
in my case literally once or twice in years, but I'm very casual.
so let's assume once or twice during the League.
and you need to dodge shit because it will likely kill you. and you need to fight the thing for at least a couple minutes and know the mechanics. and you may actually fail one attempt, or both.
and then you see some Streamer chaining that shit "for science". skipping the dialogue. not even knowing what the fight is about.
and he literally stands in one place and tanks the thing that killed you when you did it. and he doesn't know nor give a flying fuck about the fight mechanics. and he kills the boss is seconds with a quadrillion DPS, then proceeds to do 5 more in the next half hour alone.
and he sells the drops and gets paid for the "carry", to make more Exalts in that half hour alone, than you will see in the entire League.
and you may - like me - stare at the screen and think "fuck this game".
or you may be a Phrazz and say "whelp yeah this is knowledge". THE FUCK KIND OF KNOWLEDGE???

So how about GGG just give these guys some ultra boss they can bash heads with? one that's protected by 2^64 layers of RNG and you need at least one Mirrored item equipped or a Mirror Of Kalandra in your inventory, to access. one that has the HP of a fkn World Of Warcraft Raid Boss, with 90% resistance to all, and does 2^16 damage with his most basic melee attack + 75% penetration and 100% added as Chaos that ignores CI because why the fuck not.
and then maybe, just maybe, they can remove all the RNG layering and on-screen crap they added to the "core endgame", as a stupid attempt to balance around those fkers.

OK, this took an emotional turn.

Sirus, you can fight once every 1-2 hours if your knowledgeable enough to make a pretty fast and good build (and no, it doesn't have to be meta). Uber Elder is more RNG-based because you need the map drops. Simulacrum you can get every 15-20 maps, even less with a good build. No matter how accessible they make those bosses, some will feel that they aren't enough accessible. And the more accessible they are, the more they can be farmed "by the rich bois", maintaining the same differences as now.

But I agree with you; there should me more "uber" bosses outside of the main path for the dedicated fans. Rare bosses. But you know what? People will whine about them being too rare too; like you are doing, with Uber Elder, Shaper, Uber Atziri, Cortex boss; all bosses outside of the main path, ready to be fought by dedicated players.

Path of Exile has always been marketed as "hard core". Hell, most people would even say it was WAY more difficult in the past. So I struggle to see where this is coming from now.

But I get it, you feel you're unable to put in enough time to progress and enjoy the game. And that's a shame, but the line has to be drawn somewhere. We have to accept that some games on the market require a certain amount of... Dedication and time. The market is being overflown with casual titles. Isn't it OK for some games to seek a different path?

The line WAS already drawn somewhere.
And yes it did take dedication and time.
That's why you and I both, are here playing this game and not some pay to win bullshit.
But now that exact line moved, and new lines were drawn even further.
Why? Because the "rich bois" were abusing that. But the "rich bois" abuse the new lines too - and profit immensely off it even more than before - so the result of balancing with them in mind, means everyone else gets screwed over, and the gaps get even larger.
Do you know what other games redraw lines and massively reward "rich bois" while fucking over everyone else who's trying to actually learn the game? The pay to win, RMT infested bullshit that Path Of Exile prides itself on not being.
It's like someone is making sure PoE steadily sinks into the dark side.

the lines get moved because power creep and familiarity render the content too easy, Shaper was a superb boss (still is design wise) when he was released but by the time we got Uber Elder he was trivial even on HC

I think its a shame that the most heavy players render the bosses irrelevant by killing them in seconds but that's always been the case, I remember trying to get a boss mechanic guide in breach league and I found something like 15 consecutive Uul-Netol vids claiming to show the fight but only showing the three autos before the boss died.

Hard to fix that though without sending the tower of cards one way or the other.

Hard, but doable.

The primary mistake GGG keep making is trying to catch up to the "rich" via balance, instead of just giving them a "hard cap" in the form of some ultra boss that is extremely hard to handle even in full mirrored gear.
GGG can easily make one, because they know the theoretical cap for full mirrored gear and can even scale assuming a full party of mirrored gears like Empy.
I can certainly live with one such "Streamer only" boss I can never hope to fight, being in the game. Heck make it stacked with RNG layers and require a Mirror to attempt, consuming the Mirror.

The rest of the Endgame is - and was - already hard enough for us "peasants". There was absolutely no need to lock it behind even more layers of RNG and even more splinter pennies gathering, besides of course trying to make things harder for the "rich" which only made things worse for everyone else, while the "rich" can actually access more than before, and melt it better than before.

And the Endgame item drops can be soul bound like a trophy, or otherwise capped in the amount of times one character can drop each, for example.
So no more "carry service" bullshit for the ridiculously rich to get ridiculously richer, and yes to a more challenge and achievement oriented mentality.

And/or things can scale with each time you beat them, so the next time will be incrementally harder.
A lot of games do that.

Want to carry a friend and help him out vs. Sirus? You can. But
A) get ready for an ass kicking because you already beat Sirus 10 times and there's 2 of you in the party
And
B) you don't get to keep that Savior Sword, of which you have 9 already, while also charging him an Exalt because of the shitty fucking "friend" you are.

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johnKeys wrote:

Hard, but doable.

The primary mistake GGG keep making is trying to catch up to the "rich" via balance, instead of just giving them a "hard cap" in the form of some ultra boss that is extremely hard to handle even in full mirrored gear.
GGG can easily make one, because they know the theoretical cap for full mirrored gear and can even scale assuming a full party of mirrored gears like Empy.
I can certainly live with one such "Streamer only" boss I can never hope to fight, being in the game. Heck make it stacked with RNG layers and require a Mirror to attempt, consuming the Mirror.

The rest of the Endgame is - and was - already hard enough for us "peasants". There was absolutely no need to lock it behind even more layers of RNG and even more splinter pennies gathering, besides of course trying to make things harder for the "rich" which only made things worse for everyone else, while the "rich" can actually access more than before, and melt it better than before.

And the Endgame item drops can be soul bound like a trophy, or otherwise capped in the amount of times one character can drop each, for example.
So no more "carry service" bullshit for the ridiculously rich to get ridiculously richer, and yes to a more challenge and achievement oriented mentality.

And/or things can scale with each time you beat them, so the next time will be incrementally harder.
A lot of games do that.

Want to carry a friend and help him out vs. Sirus? You can. But
A) get ready for an ass kicking because you already beat Sirus 10 times and there's 2 of you in the party
And
B) you don't get to keep that Savior Sword, of which you have 9 already, while also charging him an Exalt because of the shitty fucking "friend" you are.

you seem very annoyed by people having a lot of stuff that you will never have

"

johnKeys wrote:

Hard, but doable.

I don't really get what you actually want GGGG to do. Make it easier to reach bosses? You still won't kill them if you don't have any gear. Make bosses easier to kill? "Rich" players will still kill them more often than you and subsequently have more currency. Make drops more abundant and currency less important? You play a loot-based-game and doing that would basically destroy what is the whole point of the game.

I understand that PoE can sometimes be frustrating and I am certain there are things that can be done to make it more accessible. But I also am certain that some people should just be honest with themselves that they are simple not the target-audience for the game and never will be. To me all these requests for changes feel similar to requesting chess to be played on a smaller board with less pieces - you can do that, it just isn't chess and will lose most of it's core audience. Maybe a bigger audience can be found for such a game - but this game will not be chess. The same goes for PoE: There are other games that are easier accessible and playable with less time-investment. It probably makes more sense to seek those out than trying to change one game into another.

So watching some Streamer and believing that's the normal Go in PoE these Days? Not even close, most Ppl still have a hard time getting anything done. Don't waste your time watching this Twitch BS.

@john

I get what you're trying to say, but recommending the creation of an inaccessible boss when your primary complaint is the lack of accessibility to the ones now doesn't make a lot of sense.

The hardest bosses to fight are locked behind rng in delve. I've literally killed every boss that I'm aware of (including synthesis ones I missed thanks to the added maps) except for 2 or 3 in delve. In standard I still have my original delve seeding. I didn't push terribly deep since for a long while you could farm previously completed paths for xp, and even delve chests if you didn't pop walls. The last aul node that should have spawned bugged for just an empty square. At this point if I can somehow stay interested long enough to surpass my original delve depth before delirium ends I can finally reset it.

But again, you really can't compare your experience to someone like empy. One of the last videos I saw of him was something about him pushing delve and the most I remember about it was him ignoring chaos drops.

The closest I've come to that is avoiding (mostly) the hassle of bothering with uniques worth just a few chaos (or less).

And as for Uber Elder - technically right now I have the currency that I could chain the fights if I bothered to buy more frags. However, given the state of the league, that leaves me at the mercy of relying on those still left to still be buying. At this point I'd rather hold the currency in case I decide to buy something pretty, or for it to go to standard and buy something there.

I think its a totally valid complaint that balancing for the wealthiest players moves the bar and decreases the amount of end game content accessible to the majority of the player base.

But, one also has to at least be mindful of one's personal limitations as well.

For example, I was playing with the idea of hitting 100 since I'm so close to 40/40. However, the beach heads that helped me finish 97 were mind-numbingly boring. I'm slowly working to 98 and while mapping and delving are a lot less monotonous it's still pretty clear my tolerance for the repetition is all but gone.

And to clarify why I mention this - As an individual player I recognize that I simply get bored and can't do the zoom zoom for long. As such, I adapt my play with that in mind, especially taking into consideration that what I end up playing can't cost more than the time I'm willing to put in.

I'm finally trying to level one more character to play around with the auras before that setup gets gutted. I was originally not going to at all but I found several items/jewels to further reduce the cost. But I may just abandon it over lack of interest as the league winds down.

The last time I can remember feeling envious of another player's wealth was YEARS AGO when I first picked up D2 again. I was desperate for a tal rasha plate, and this guy puts up several most unid. I wasn't even pushing past nightmare then so there was no way for me to find it on my own. And of course as such, I didn't really have anything worth trading (that I'd be willing to trade). After getting scammed (different person) I rage quit. A few more years later, I go back, but things play out differently because this time I find something more interesting than farming the same boss or area endlessly.

What I'm trying to say is that when I realized and accepted my own personal limits, I was able to grow beyond them. I also had to set reasonable expectations within those limitations.

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johnKeys wrote:

The line WAS already drawn somewhere.
And yes it did take dedication and time.
That's why you and I both, are here playing this game and not some pay to win bullshit.
But now that exact line moved, and new lines were drawn even further.
Why? Because the "rich bois" were abusing that. But the "rich bois" abuse the new lines too - and profit immensely off it even more than before - so the result of balancing with them in mind, means everyone else gets screwed over, and the gaps get even larger.
Do you know what other games redraw lines and massively reward "rich bois" while fucking over everyone else who's trying to actually learn the game? The pay to win, RMT infested bullshit that Path Of Exile prides itself on not being.
It's like someone is making sure PoE steadily sinks into the dark side.

Maybe the line has been moved, but it has been moved for the easier. It's EASIER to beat everything in the game now than it was 2 years ago. It's EASIER to make a good budget build beating all content today. The only thing that has changed, is you watching streamers and are having an epiphany of what's possible, something that has "always" been possible.

No one is being "fucked over".