Development Manifesto: Game Balance in Path of Exile: Harvest

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MandrulDuce wrote:

Each time you add new stuff to the end game it has to be harder and slightly more challenging than what is already in the game. It wouldn't be fun and appealing otherwise. As that accumulates over time, the gap between vanilla alc an go red maps and current end game widens. Yet you are still balancing the average power lvl around vanilla red maps, indirectly nerfing all the builds in the game.

Delirium proved the flaw in this design philosophy the best. How many builds could clear juiced t16 maps? (not to bring into discussion t19s). Very few. And the majority of builds have ceilings they can't scale above regardless of investment.
Not to say that most builds that average people build couldn't handle delirium on a regular t16 map.

Let's take the example of Herald Stackers. Everybody complained they were OP. Most of them probably just saw clips of empy's 3000ex build trivializing Sirus. The medium budget version of that build (which is already an insane investment) could engage with the end game content of delirium (juiced maps with full delirium) at a good pace and would still have to be careful and in danger of dying.
Nobody built a stacker to engage with regular t16 maps and trivialize them. They did it because it was fun to build and manage all its moving parts, it would always have something you can invest into and improve, and it could engage with actual delirium end game content.
Crit builds were also amongst the few that would scale enough to do juiced delirium maps.
You are gutting all of the above described because "let's not trivialize vanilla t16 maps".

Why put harder content in the game if you take away our ability to scale builds to engage with it? And if we can't engage with it, for people that played for years, what you expect us to have fun with??? Vanilla mapping?

This design philosophy literally makes zero sense for me at this point. Nerf builds to bring them to the power level of average builds which become trash builds with the addition of more difficult content.
More buffs less nerfs.

I want to report this ad say I agree. I have been playing hack n slash games for roughly 25 years now. many can blindly say its for balance reasons, but i will tell you from experience this sort of nerfing philosophy (the builds i play were not hit with this) is one that goes down a easy but poor path. D3 did this. If GGG is starting to fail to understand the very important difference between a high effort high investment power build vs an average build, and nerfing the high-end so it doenst trivialize content, something is very wrong.

Add harder content.
Add harder content, add harder content.

Making sweeping changes like this suppresses your player-base because the volatile nature of changes like this leaves people questioning of their investment and time in PoB/Excel/Etc is going to be wasted after 3 months. This slowly leaves the hardcore playerbase only, and in turn scares new players away due to general elitism that surrounds that crowd by majority when trying to do simple things like craft a nice rare.

ALLOW people to make op builds. NERF them mainly in how hard they are to attain. be OK with content being trivialized. Its going to happen. When it does, create new keys and thresholds of power for player to open with new harder content that actually put their builds to the test. Nerfing things is the sign of a lazy developer that cannot detach themselves from how they push out boss battles. (why is every boss a humanoid?) If you dont want a mechanic skipped, THEN MAKE IT UNSKIPPABLE FOR THAT ENCOUNTER. and so much more. Dont make the game less fun for people, because that gets the community to make fun of itself, and we dont need that toxicity. Nerf lightly, content heavy.

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TreeOfDead wrote:

ty GGG for all ur work and for awesome game!

GGG pls test more before release and prepare servers more for start and also dont be scared to nerf broken or very strong and buff weak and very useless stuff pls!

ty <3

OK buddy just stop, this isn't going to happen, and you spamming every thread for the top post isn't going to change their testing habits.

PATH OF NERF! TIME TO AFK!

I'm excited to check it out! Thanks GGG for all your hard work and willingness to nerf when it is called for. The game is better for it!

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demsdal wrote:

two handed weapons are flawed by design they hit hard and slow in a game where it matters most to kill monster fast and you can scale damage very hard so too so you end up with the options of one shot trash mobs 50times over slowly or oneshot them and be the fastest fast boi of course you go for the optimal option because being inefficient is infuriating my point : two handed weapons have a fundamental disadventage that defines their identity as weapons and thusly can't remove that stops them form competing on faster weapons's playing field they irronicly can't brute force themselves into the same spot without loosing their well brute force identity which means they need to diverge from it earthquake works because having massive aoe helps you not have to hit fast to hit a lot of units (in certain maps) the problem isn't dps it's clearspeed looks cool tho

Let me be the first to introduce you to a writers best friend... it's called PUNCTUATION!! Make it YOUR new best friend!

RIP Self Curse HH builds :(

Wow epic. It's crazy how you people "balance" this game. Of course VMS needed a nerf but the rest of these game changes especially impacting melee(which is underused except cyclone) is completely arbitrary BS.

So I come here to read arbitrary nerf of random, actually balanced PVE skills and mechanics in a PVE game get gutted even more? Do you understand this isn't a PVP game? It isn't. But you keep pretending it is. Why? The way you are basically coercing people who have to play balanced characters in HC and SSF into a churner to play your handpicked skills just fuckin sucks.

So Why do you keep cucking people's options just so you can push them to play how YOU want? Because that's what you are doing currently. Obviously impacts HC more than SC and that's why HC in this game is dead n dying. And you don't give a shit. SC balance only, because you people are apparently, both totally unable to balance and don't care to balance the game at all. Just a few decent changes. Rest arbitrary changes, rinse repeat for a long time. It's not that you balance anything, you keep killing skills for your meta. Who cares about your meta? IDC about ur fucking meta.

Melee is pretty much dead, cyclone, last decent melee skill is looking killed as well. Why does GGG balance for 4K HP Immortal Deathrushers in SC? Why does GGG hate melee so much? Why?

Hey balance dev have you ever made a BALANCED NON-SC HC melee character? Even with cyclone it's clear and late bosskilling is garbage compared to the investment(of other cast/spell/minion skills), and the mitigation and ENJOYMENT FACTOR is basically the only reason you live reliably and why would want to play melee at all, the enjoyment factor you ruin by unfairly killing skills.

when you stated that most major bosses and Map bosses have a stun immunity duration of 2/4 seconds after being stunned, does that timer start at the beninning of the stun or at the end

" buff to Ball Lightning damage and nerf to Hegemonys Era " GGG ladies and gentleman.

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I want to report this ad say I agree. I have been playing hack n slash games for roughly 25 years now. many can blindly say its for balance reasons, but i will tell you from experience this sort of nerfing philosophy (the builds i play were not hit with this) is one that goes down a easy but poor path. D3 did this. If GGG is starting to fail to understand the very important difference between a high effort high investment power build vs an average build, and nerfing the high-end so it doenst trivialize content, something is very wrong.

Add harder content.
Add harder content, add harder content.

Making sweeping changes like this suppresses your player-base because the volatile nature of changes like this leaves people questioning of their investment and time in PoB/Excel/Etc is going to be wasted after 3 months. This slowly leaves the hardcore playerbase only, and in turn scares new players away due to general elitism that surrounds that crowd by majority when trying to do simple things like craft a nice rare.

ALLOW people to make op builds. NERF them mainly in how hard they are to attain. be OK with content being trivialized. Its going to happen. When it does, create new keys and thresholds of power for player to open with new harder content that actually put their builds to the test. Nerfing things is the sign of a lazy developer that cannot detach themselves from how they push out boss battles. (why is every boss a humanoid?) If you dont want a mechanic skipped, THEN MAKE IT UNSKIPPABLE FOR THAT ENCOUNTER. and so much more. Dont make the game less fun for people, because that gets the community to make fun of itself, and we dont need that toxicity. Nerf lightly, content heavy.

You don't add harder content for one build, that trivialized everything, while the other builds have to play it regulary. If you are ok with content beeing trivialized, and just add harder content for those OP builds, it will result in the same bullshit that D3 did (good of you to mention it, this is the exact same stuff), where only one or two builds are viable for the end content, and the rest will need to be brought up piece by piece with random 3000% more damage multipliers on specific items/skills.

This is how you kill a game. Powercreep is good in small amounts, builds will get stronger and stronger each league, the issue is how fast this happens.

Take the herald stacking from delirium as an example. It was the most powerful build that ever existed in PoE, 90% phys mitigation 90% chance to evade, 90% max res, insane recovery, so much damage and speed that it literally did not even matter which skill you used, be it attack, spell, direct damage, dot damage, crit, non crit. it was superior to everything else. There is no point in making harder content for this kind of build, since it will be literally impossible for other builds to do the same kind of content unless they introduce another mechanic that will allow us to get the same amount of damage and mitigation.

They will add new content, the builds will become stronger and stronger, but simply saying "make it harder to obtain" is not a valid option, when this kind of builds exist in a league, it will lead to having the entire market catering to them. you saw it last league, over 40% of SC delirium classes were guardians, everything ES/reservation based was way more expensive than in any other league before.
the quest jewel with reduced mana reservation went up to 80c uncorrupted, and 15ex with a reduced mana reservation corruption.

Voices, megalomaniac with herald affixes, herald cluster jewels, all of those were super expensive, to a degree that they become undesireble to chaose for non Aura stacking guardians. The entire market will revolve around those super broken builds.
Its not healthy for the game, its a direct line to a stale metagame.