What's wrong with deterministic crafting?

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Phrazz wrote:

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QuiquePoE wrote:

TL;DR: It's not about effectiveness or efficiency: It's about making the whole crafting process a less frustrating experience.

Sadly - and objectively - it will always be about effectiveness and efficiency in a game centered around an open, free economy. The most efficient players will set the "bar". They will set the supply.

People always go on and on about how "PoE isn't balanced around trade", but it very much is. The market is an important element in how easy it is to acquire gear - and as most people should know, acquisition of gear and the balance between drops, trading and crafting is close to impossible when there are no hard limits to trade.

Acquiring gear isn't supposed to be "easy", especially during the end game. When efficient players get too efficient tools to play with, the market gets flooded - and gear acquisition becomes "too easy" in GGG's eyes.

No, that doesn't affect me. I play very unefficiently and trade the least that I can and yet, last league I played (3.13), I managed to complete The Feared (which is the most difficult content?).

What does affect me is the quality of the time I spend playing the game. I can love it or hate it. And I prefer to love it.

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Phrazz wrote:

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QuiquePoE wrote:

TL;DR: It's not about effectiveness or efficiency: It's about making the whole crafting process a less frustrating experience.

Sadly - and objectively - it will always be about effectiveness and efficiency in a game centered around an open, free economy. The most efficient players will set the "bar". They will set the supply.

People always go on and on about how "PoE isn't balanced around trade", but it very much is. The market is an important element in how easy it is to acquire gear - and as most people should know, acquisition of gear and the balance between drops, trading and crafting is close to impossible when there are no hard limits to trade.

Acquiring gear isn't supposed to be "easy", especially during the end game. When efficient players get too efficient tools to play with, the market gets flooded - and gear acquisition becomes "too easy" in GGG's eyes.

Perfect Post my man. Couldn´t have put it any better.

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Thats pretty much what the Uncharted Realm is supposed to be in my mind.
Its not meant to be completed, its meant to be a goal to work towards

yes :)

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I, for sure, don't play like that. I value my time INVESTED in entertainment and avoid doing things that are unfun as much as possible. And that's where my gripe with this crafting system lies: This crafting system induces frustration and the sense of time wasted. And every effort made to reduce that experience, is a welcome addition in my eyes. Doesn't have to be harvest. But if it is, so be it.

fair point. I really enjoy games from a efficiency- and progressoriented perspective, you´re completely right about that and you´re also right in the sense that I should possibly not set this as a bar what "fun" is to everyone. I can´t just be "chillin" around, I´m like Oshabi - WHY FIGHT PROGRESS xD Keeping that in mind, it becomes even more difficult to balance stuff when those views clash into each other. Now it´s not about how much someone plays, now it´s about what they want from the game in terms of fun. I personally wouldn´t be in GGG´s shoes trying to get all those views and attitudes under one roof, I think we can agree on that.

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It sure is possible: Blizzard did it with WoW when they realized they were developing very complex raids that only a very small number of players could ever see. And now there's even scalable dungeons that are the same content-wise, but can be made increasingly more difficult.

Interesting, I did not know that. The underlying question would then be if the drops are the same, getting into the same problems - if higher difficulty means higher drops I bet you my next years salary there will again be people that call that system catering to streamers as they "are the only ones that can clear such hard stuff".

@ Orbaal this is going to be a bit OT by i feel like i have to clarify and it is kinda the root for the problem so here i go.

For me this isn't about difficult fights. Uber Elder, Aul, Sirus arguably even Maven are difficult fights. Their mechanics are deadly but fair and i know that even if i have a zdps zhp build i can beat them if i am just playing well enough. Even if GGG doubled trippled or quadruppled their HP it wouldn't matter. I'd still love doing them just as much as i do now.

Maven invitations are not like that though, they are NOT difficult. They are simple DPS checks and in case of The Feared and The Forgotten also heavily RNG gated. I don't know if you have ever attempted any of those invitations, especially The Hidden and The Feared, based on your remarks that you don't care about that content i'll just assume you haven't so i'll explain. What happens in these fights is that GGG took 4-10 Bosses whose mechanics are individually balanced and threw them all into one arena, all at the same time without restrictions. The result are common situations that simply aren't solvable by player ability.

The Hidden is probably the prime example of that. If you have less then 10 mio dps you will with almost certainty end up with having all 4 active in the arena at the same time. Uul nethol will gradually cover the entire screen in exploding spikes, Xoph will plant fire tornados in the few remaining spaces and Tul and Esh will use their AOE attacks simultanously where one demands you to get away while the other requires you to get close but with all the shit from Xoph and Uul in the arena chances are you can't do either. Meanwhile Maven is dublicating and healing them. There is no solving this with player skill. The only way to do this fight is to boost your DPS to the point where you can kill them one by one and just avoid that situation. If you don't have the DPS you are just plain fucked and locked out from this content along with all the benefits it brings to your mapping activities which is the core of POEs endgame so that's a very major punishment.

This is not difficulty, it's just lazy game design and it's been introduced as a new core pillar of the end game and atlas progression. Saying it's not mandatory because the Atlas was there before Maven was introduced is invalid as far as i am concerned. Because then you can just argue that everything beyond Act 3 is optional because it wasn't there back in the day. The goalpost for this game is moving, you can't just pretend it doesn't to close your eyes towards the glaring balance issues.

GGG is implementing mandatory questline related endgame content that can only be beaten by stacking DPS into the realms of the top 0,01 while simultanously nerfing meta skills and farming methods and removing crafting leaving it in a situation where large parts of the current atlas functionalities are simply unavailable to any player who doesn't have the exalts ready to satisfy the DPS checks. This is utter bullshit from a design perspective and has nothing to do with difficulty.

I'll agree that harvest shouldn't be heralded as the solution to this shit design but i am a practical person and the sad matter of fact is that there aren't any other solutions out there and frankly i don't expect GGG to come up with solutions, i don't even expect them to try. There is so much literally broken shit in this game they never bothered to fix and i am not only talking about balance here. They simply don't care enough about quality, they only see the $$$ from throwing out new shit no matter how bad and unfinished it might be. Plus they have their idiotic philosophies like: "Players need to literally ruin their wrists to pick up shit otherwise it doesn't have enough "weight"" that outright prevent them from even attempting to fix the issues.

Oh, and just to let you know so you don't have any wrong ideas about me being frustrated about not being able to do certain content. I have in fact beaten all those invitations and Maven by now. I succeeded my last the Feared attempt about 2 weeks ago. So for me personally, this isn't a problem. Even if they reset it with the new league, i have 2 chars by now that i know can do this shit. Suprise, one of them is a slammer and the other is a BL archmage build. The amount of other existing builds to do that content without shitting exalts is pretty slim though and that's the point that causes frustration here. It's GGGs complete inability when it comes to balancing.

browsing the forums i`ve just read this:

"Also, can we please open a debate on your view of what "crafting" is? I don't mean in the sense of socketing/fusing/chroming, but in terms of creating items with stats. Now that I play Standard for example, I require very specific items in order to finish my build. But there is only ONE ring published on XYZ with the stats I need, the guy never logs on, and there's no possibility for me to even craft what I need. Crafting could really make this game so much better. There needs to be a way to enable the common player to do it. Look how fun it can be to yolo exalt in Descent Champions! Yet in the real game, I exalted just once, and cringed at the sacrifice. You guys really need to find a way around this, causing players to suffer due to RMT is not a solution."

post is from 2014. i guess nothing has changed much for the last seven(7) years...

i`m yet to experience the cringe exalt slam.

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Vennto wrote:

Interesting, I did not know that. The underlying question would then be if the drops are the same, getting into the same problems - if higher difficulty means higher drops I bet you my next years salary there will again be people that call that system catering to streamers as they "are the only ones that can clear such hard stuff".

You don't have to bet anything this happened a day ago on the front page.

Wow is designed so that even a grandma can play the game <-- literal comment from a former head dev fyi. And yet they want to dumb the game down even more. The casuals in wow are a completely different breed of cringe. The op in that wow reddit thread essentially picks flowers all day and whines that he doesn't have the same gear as the best players in the world that are slaying raid bosses or doing high level pvp.

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Maven invitations are not like that though, they are NOT difficult. They are simple DPS checks and in case of The Feared and The Forgotten also heavily RNG gated. I don't know if you have ever attempted any of those invitations, especially The Hidden and The Feared, based on your remarks that you don't care about that content i'll just assume you haven't so i'll explain. What happens in these fights is that GGG took 4-10 Bosses whose mechanics are individually balanced and threw them all into one arena, all at the same time without restrictions. The result are common situations that simply aren't solvable by player ability.

The Hidden is probably the prime example of that. If you have less then 10 mio dps you will with almost certainty end up with having all 4 active in the arena at the same time. Uul nethol will gradually cover the entire screen in exploding spikes, Xoph will plant fire tornados in the few remaining spaces and Tul and Esh will use their AOE attacks simultanously where one demands you to get away while the other requires you to get close but with all the shit from Xoph and Uul in the arena chances are you can't do either. Meanwhile Maven is dublicating and healing them. There is no solving this with player skill. The only way to do this fight is to boost your DPS to the point where you can kill them one by one and just avoid that situation. If you don't have the DPS you are just plain fucked and locked out from this content along with all the benefits it brings to your mapping activities which is the core of POEs endgame so that's a very major punishment.

This is not difficulty, it's just lazy game design and it's been introduced as a new core pillar of the end game and atlas progression. Saying it's not mandatory because the Atlas was there before Maven was introduced is invalid as far as i am concerned. Because then you can just argue that everything beyond Act 3 is optional because it wasn't there back in the day. The goalpost for this game is moving, you can't just pretend it doesn't to close your eyes towards the glaring balance issues.

We disagree on a lot of things, but this I can cercainly subscribe, at least from a logical standpoint I get the argumentation. I still see it very possible to just get a carry to enable the atlas passives, as well as I don´t see them as mandatory as you do, but all the rest... yeah.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

@ Orbaal this is going to be a bit OT

Yes and no.
Yes our little discussion here isnt about Harvest anymore but also No because it helps me to understand where you and others are coming from and why Harvest seems to be this important you to you guys.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

Maven invitations are not like that though, they are NOT difficult. They are simple DPS checks and in case of The Feared and The Forgotten also heavily RNG gated. I don't know if you have ever attempted any of those invitations, especially The Hidden and The Feared, based on your remarks that you don't care about that content i'll just assume you haven't so i'll explain.

I did attempt and failed both.
My immidiate conclusion in both cases was that these encounters arent meant to be completed except for few builds I didnt want to play.
So I´ll just wait for a metashift adding another build I actually want to play to this list and take them on later.
They wont go anywhere and I dont need those perks.
Do I want to have them? Yes sure. Are they crucial for me to have fun? No.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

... locked out from this content along with all the benefits it brings to your mapping activities which is the core of POEs endgame so that's a very major punishment.

Lets agree to disagree here. I dont care about those perks enough to really go after them. Its not like I couldnt do it. Im aware what I need to do to get those perks, but since Im a league player and this progress will be wiped out anyways I dont see why I should do it.
In standard this might different, I get that. As a league only player I really dont care all that much.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

I have in fact beaten all those invitations and Maven by now.

GZ!

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Baharoth15 wrote:

The amount of other existing builds to do that content without shitting exalts is pretty slim though and that's the point that causes frustration here. It's GGGs complete inability when it comes to balancing.

Hmmm I can see why you would say that I just happen to disagree.

If GGG´s goal was to achieve balance, then yes they are doing a terrible job.
I dont think its what they are trying to achieve at all. Balancing this game is impossible given their production schedule and they know it.

Instead they are going for what I´d describe as perfect equilibrium of imbalance as a concept and it works well enough for me to keep me entertained.
Im not interested in balance and I dont think PoE would benefit from being perfectly balanced at all. Pushed to the extreme this would mean all skills/ascendancies/whatnot are on the same powerlevel and at that point it really doesnt matter what you are doing. It´ll work just fine no matter what.

However if the game is imbalanced then your job as a player is to find the right build to get the job done. Until that build gets the nerfhammer and you start all over again.
This is perfect for a league only player like me and I think this is what GGG is going for. I get to pick a skill to achieve whichever goals I have for this specific league, then I get kicked out of my comfort zone or pick other goals and need a different build to accomplish just that in the next league.

I like that. I truly do enjoy this concept of imbalance and its one of the major reasons why I kept playing this game for so long.
Taking their production cycle into account, this is pretty much the best they can do. If you wanted balance, you cant ask for new content added frequently as well. New content will inevitably disrupt if not destroy a previously achieved state of balance.

Again pushed to the extreme it boils down to two options:
- Play a balanced game that rarely if ever receives new content or meaningful changes
- Play an imbalanced game with frequently added new content and meaningful changes

Asking for both is a pipedream and I dont think it would be financially viable. So pick your poison, you cant have it all.
I chose mine long time ago and Im content enough with the game to keep going for quite some time to come.

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QuiquePoE wrote:

No, that doesn't affect me. I play very unefficiently and trade the least that I can and yet, last league I played (3.13), I managed to complete The Feared (which is the most difficult content?).

What does affect me is the quality of the time I spend playing the game. I can love it or hate it. And I prefer to love it.

What doesn't affect you? The "easy crafting" that 3.13 introduced (or prolonged)? You didn't use harvest crafting? You didn't take advantage of what GGG deemed "too easy gear acquisition"? OK, then yu're right, it didn't affect you.

I play like you (I think); I play in my own tempo, trade only when I really "have to", and sell way more than I buy. I loved Harvest, mostly because it let me play exactly what I wanted to play, and could tailor my gear thereafter - myself. But I can EASILY see why it needed a nerf, I just disagree with HOW they nerfed it.

But they gutted Harvest because it made gear acquisition too easy for the playerbase as a whole - in GGG's opinion. Too easy to craft, too many (close-to) perfect items on the market, too easy/cheap to gear an endgame+ ready character.

Look, GGG have a certain vision on how easy it should be to gear a character. You and me may suit the "Harvest" playstyle; it makes it possible/plausible for us to "easily" reach certain goals within a certain time, and we can say "fuck the rest, it doesn't affect me". But when we're playing in ONE economy, everything affects everyone when it comes to balance. It doesn't matter if you trade a lot, little or not at all, even in SSF. The sum of everything (AKA the economy) sets the standards.

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Vennto wrote:

I wonder why people can´t just be happy clearing Sirus, or Elder, or Shaper. Why does it has to be Uber Elder + Maven and the hidden invitations? I remember fondly my time in TERA, being in one of the top gier guilds that was able to clear Manayas Core. There were like 3 Teams on the whole server able to beat that instance consistently. I rarely ever heard people complain about it, they simply understood that in order to do that they need to train more. ....

I mean, I get that. And that´s totally fine having different priorities in life. Then again, what you are asking here is rather to balance from the top to cater to people who can´t or wont commit as much. I feel what people miss to understand is that stuff gets easier, the top-end also gets easier and you just simply have another group that is concerned. Why is it so important for you to be able to clear maven if you just want to enjoy the game and play 3 hours a week? why do you need to be able to produce OP items? Before harvest people did not ask for those things, now they do - just because u got a taste of something and they took it away?

Regardless of where you come down on Harvest, I think Ive seen everyone agree that it is unfortunate / awkward design that it was in the game and now is not.

Instead of making new, interesting, harder bosses, they lower the gear ceiling and the content is back to challenging/out of reach for some when it previously was not.

That is a much less satisfying way of making challenging content than releasing new hard content.

Why Im responding with this is I think people would more likely accept being unable to do content if it had always been hard (first few leagues with Uber Atziri, Shaper), rather than being able to do it, then effectively all builds being nerfed to make the content challenging again.

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Orbaal wrote:

"And no, Im not trolling."
"because its flatout stupid"
"I checked your builds"
"meaningless buzzword"

Few things.

Trolling is not a buzzword.

You are trolling, its what its called when you just call people stupid or try to disprove things by mocking their characters instead of addressing topics.

Humorously, my bleed gladiator you are mocking killed the Hidden (though not Feared or Maven yet), which you say you were unable to do with significantly better gear. Kind of a self-troll there.