It's Hard

I like it.

I know that feedback hammer will come very soon including words: this is impossible, that is terrible etc.

I'd like to see devs carefully look into this. The game seems to be much much better when monsters actually force to start thinking instead of mindless clicking with one ability. And harder mean always better this direction is right direction !

I like the lowered drops too now it will take more than week for me to get godlike EQ and wealth again ^^. I just hope it will be possible to farm solo instead of party / leecher farming only and those rates were improved.

Small suggestion for now, is freeze mechanic fix/addjust ... I mean It's goddamn too annoying it either freeze you totally or don't work at all (high cold resist owns) I think it would work much better with slower freeze duration and longer chill duration so the slow effect would be harmful but player would be avaliable to have at last illusion he can do something more than waiting for death.

I agree with you to an extent, it's definately a challenge compared to games like D2 and Torchlight. Diablo 2 has some challenges, yeah - but all you need to do to win is be a Paladin with the right Aura's and a fast enough attack and you're laughing. I like the skill required to not die so much in PoE, it really adds difficulty and makes you think strategically and try new things with your character instead of "Run in, hit stuff, Pick up gold"

Do you guys also like to cut yourself, or pour salt on your arm and then hold an ice cube on top of it just to torture yourself? (Don't try it if you don't know what it does, it sucks)


There's a fine line between "challenging" and "torture" and this game crossed it in my opinion. I like hard games. However, a hard game only becomes a good game if it gives the player the ability to improve. PoE does not, for the most part. The game starts out easy. Typical kill all the things and collect all the loot. It remains this way until you reach hailrake. Hailrake is a well designed boss, and forces the player to adapt to their surroundings to get him down. You have to dodge the ice spears, kite (if possible) or use hit and run tactics. I feel hailrake is perfectly designed. After you kill him you feel pretty accomplished and continue the game.

Now, the game goes back to being incredibly simple again. Kill all the things and collect all the loot. It remains this way allllll the way up until the ledge, where it throws a very difficult boss in front of you and is like "here, let me piss in your cereal." However, the boss is immobile, so those not up to the challenge can avoid it altogether if they so choose. This is also a good choice. Providing a challenge to players up to it, but not forcing it down their throats.

The game then scales back to the normal difficulty upon leaving the ledge.. up until you reach the upper prison. Here, the game decides that you can no longer have fun anymore. It wants to do everything possible to make you rage so hard you snap your keyboard in half. Why? Necromancers. They're everywhere. They have ENORMOUS range on their raise dead spells, that cost nothing and they can use it as many times as they want, and even cast it over walls (multiple walls in some cases)

This wouldn't normally be a problem, if you could adapt to them. However, there is no room to do so. If you're not melee, you're out of the fight. The tight corridors mean little room to maneuver around, and make it incredibly difficult to actually hit the source of the problem; the necromancer.

Assuming you do manage to actually take down one of these monsters, and proceed further into the map.. you just run into more. A lot more. Wayyyy too many if you ask me. Especially since there are even harder versions deeper in. Necromancers with "allies cannot die?" Really? What sick twisted person came up with that idea?

The monster idea was good, but in such tight areas and without limiting the amount of zombies they can raise, it becomes less about adapting and more about getting lucky and zerging them down.

Once you finally manage to kill brutus and escape (who was at a good difficulty level, by the way. No complaints here.) you continue back to the boring difficulty where you can kill everything and nothing will tell you otherwise. This lasts until the ghost ship area where several flicker strikes nearly made me throw my mouse out the window. I dont know what it is, but whenever I ran into more than 2 of them at once, they all would flicker strike me for instant death. If you manage to beat the area, you have smooth sailing for the entire rest of the game.

This is a great game, and definitely has a lot of potential, but I really feel this was a step backwards. I'll have to wait until the open beta to see when the larger playerbase can see the game in its current state.

I can't help but feel that this game was designed by a bunch of angry people with the mindset "fuck wow, its too casual"


TL;DR- I'm not saying I want a nerf, I would just like to see a stable difficulty ramp up that leaves room for player adaptations and skill rather then "lolol get owned noob u suck /ragequit"

huummm I just managed to get out alive of a prison room filled with 3 necros and their immortal flock of skeletons fire mages on my ranger with a L5 white bow.

And surprise ... no loot !!! all whites and 1 useless blue wtf. Seriously frustrating, if you are going to ramp up the difficulty this much ... at least make those necros drop some useful rares.

I dont mind the amped up difficulty but adjust the rewards accordingly.

I agree that that the necromancers should be limited by line of sight.

Other than that, the OP has a very good post.


I feel that the difficulty is just right after this patch.

"

Aezurr wrote:

Do you guys also like to cut yourself, or pour salt on your arm and then hold an ice cube on top of it just to torture yourself? (Don't try it if you don't know what it does, it sucks)

...

I can't help but feel that this game was designed by a bunch of angry people with the mindset "fuck wow, its too casual"

But in all seriousness, you are providing good feedback. The roller coaster of difficulty observation is definitely something I agree with, but it's not necessarily a bad thing.

Personally, I found all of the areas fairly manageable with the exception of the cave in the ship graveyard, thanks to those flicker pirates. Other bits of the game were difficult, but those flicker pirates took it to another level. I was eventually able to beat them, but not without dying a handful of times first. I was using a witch though, and I'm guessing having ranged attacks helps a ton in a number of areas.

What class were you and what skills were you using? I think that information is pretty important for them when they consider balance issues.

At the time, I was a ranger. I was using poison arrow and split shot for aoe, burning arrow/auto attack for single target, and bear traps to help with kiting.

I feel like the class I'm playing shouldn't really matter. All classes should be able to play solo to some extent.

Someone made a good point earlier in global. It feels like theyre trying to encourage players to group up, but they don't actually have the systems in place to support group play. Players will constantly run around in a zone and flip over all the boulders, open all the chests, and snatch up your rares while youre fighting mobs.

I feel that is the one thing diablo 3 is doing right, seperating loot for each player. Another good suggestion I've heard of is adding a 3 second delay to items from monsters you kill, making it so only you can pick up the item for those 3 seconds but once that passes its free game.

It really feels like being trapped between a rock and a hard place. Either I suffer through solo and probably end up breaking one or more of my computer's accessories out of sheer rage, or I group up and end up with 0 gear because I lose out on everything to legolasarthusdkswordbr111 who ran around and snatched up all the items while I was fighting more mobs.

My thoughts on the new Normal difficulty after playing through a good chunk of it on a Marauder:

Brutus and The Burning Menace both nearly killed me a few times during the fight, and needed most or all of my pots to kill them. And those fights were FUN.

I found the Necromancers frustrating because of the speed they resurrected allies, they force you to kill the Necromancer first. Which can be near-impossible if they're in the middle of a large group, which you would usually handle in small chunks at a time.

I found the exploding minions frustrating because they killed me before I saw them (I was in a small passage and didn't see them coming, I didn't know what hit me). I found the Seething Brine frustrating because they did huge damage to me even before I got them in vision/had the chance to mouse over them and discover that all 3 were casting Cold Snap. I found the Viper Strike spiders frustrating because 2/3 stacks of poison out-damaged a health potion.

With regard to the above mobs, I feel like bosses and rare mobs should be the only things in Normal difficulty that have such strong killing potential for two reasons:
1. Players playing the game for the first time should have the chance to make a mistake against these mobs. With the exception of bosses/rares (which players expect to be strong), learning what a mob does by dying to it is not fun.
2. If mobs can kill you so easily in Normal difficulty, the scaling into Cruel and above becomes a lot less obvious. The monster is consistently hard, which defeats the purpose.

Overall the new difficulty is good though. It was too easy before, even for newbies.

I think with the difficulty increase there should be some extra help for players in the early levels - I'm not a noob but Hailspike is now D1 Butcher level difficulty and killed my first HC ranger - perhaps a comment in the medicine chest quest like 'The last person to try and recover this was found frozen' would give people an idea of what resistances to prepare with.