[April 12] Initial Development Manifesto Feedback

Have you ever tried experimenting with Armor system in Alpha? The armor system in PoE is quite unique but I feel it harms the game more than it helps. Maybe if it would behave like standard flat reduction without being dependant on incoming damage, like in many other ARPG, might make melee more viable, and solve a lot of end-game problems for melee classes.

Regarding d sync

Action RPGS CAN wait until data arrives back from the server before doing anything. This is a very common strategy in RTS and MOBA games.

Positioning timing and responsiveness is far more important in dota/moba style games than it is in action rpgs.

The system they use works.

Please drop d sync for this already proven working system.

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Chris wrote:

Physical damage (closely associated with melee characters) is currently seen as inferior to elemental damage. One of the factors contributing to this is that it has no "on-critical" effect like the elemental damage types do.

I don't belive it's true - a lot of elemental builds uses Resolute Technique. Much bigger problem with melee is that when you reduce your physical damage with supports(LMP/GMP, Chain, Multistrike, Melee Splash) you lose much more damage than you should because of armor calculation. GMP + Chain elemental attack deals 25% of unsuported attack damage, physical one does ~10%.

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Chris wrote:

The physical-elemental disparity will be addressed. There will probably be an on-critical effect introduced for physical damage (which may be as simple as a guaranteed stun, but the options are still being considered).

Please don't - you recently reworked reduced stun threshold because it was so easy to stun-lock bosses like Vaal. Now imagine ~60% crit chance 4atps dagger builds stunlocking bosses again. And on top of that, it would work just as fine in elemental builds(unless you can convert 100% physical damage to another type). Please make it something that would benefit only physical part of damage like:
-puncture-like bleed effect(based on physical damage dealt)
-ignore x% of targets armour
-reduce targets armour by x(based on physical damage dealt) for x seconds

I've only read the Ranged vs Melee Disparity, because that's all I care about right now. I'm very happy with your bullets and greatly look forward to what may come.

The two top priorities of those listed have to be close-range mitigation and sync issues. I'm sure you know this, but I just want to make my voice heard. I honestly don't know how to fix mitigation without making ranged even more powerful, so, uh... good luck. Some possibilities I'll throw out for the hell of it:

* Make armor better: Not a good solution, but could work. Most phys damage is melee ranged anyway, so a buff to physical mitigation would help melee characters a lot. However, it breaks evasion would make IR/US even more required (if that's possible).

* Reduce mob physical damage: Basically the same as an armor buff. Still not a good solution. Couldn't hurt, though. I don't think there should be that many things that can 1-shot a well geared defensive character. I'm okay with things like VAAL SMASH because it's somewhat avoidable (desync notwithstanding). Crap, I'm rambling. Anyway.

* Some mechanic where incoming damage is greatly reduced from the mob you are currently attacking. Implementation would probably be tricky, and probably have weird unintended consequences. Maybe as a support gem for single target attacks? (Okay, I actually kind of like this idea now...)

Nothing new, just throwing in my two cents. Cheers.

Thanks for the great manifestos. Great communication and feedback. I have a lot of faith in the GGG team.

Any plans to improve use of the passive tree? I love the vision and thought that went into it, but there are a lot of passive rings and notable passives that seem impossible to invest in, especially for melee - Body and Soul by Templar, Leather and Steel by Duelist, Nightstalker by Witch, really most of the weapon rings.

It seems like either the rings are too long, that builds require certain keystone passives, or that hp nodes are so necessary that our limited passive points are wasted traveling.

Can we either have more passive points to allow us to invest in these passives, or remove some of the traveling needs, or condense the rings? Some of these are great passives, but I bet they're highly underused. Fixing the hp problem with melee will help, but I feel like there is a ton of potential in the passive tree going untapped. It's like you guys kept expanding it with brilliant ideas, but forgot to give us better tools to tap into it.

a simple fix for melee incoming dmg would to add some sort of dmg reductions into melee nodes like 10% inc dmg 3% atk speed and 3% reduced dmg. or inc armor or evasion based on the area of the tree.

This manifesto worries me deeply. These points are particularly worrying:

1. adding more AoE attacks to monsters in order to challenge groups. This is BAD design. Not only will this exacerbate melee builds' survivability issues (I'll explain why shortly), but it further removes from the player the power to actively avoid damage. I'm reminded of Torchlight 2 which, even solo, has so much magic and shit flying all over the screen that one quickly gives up trying to dodge any of it and instead soaks it all up with potions (boring).

What you need to do is add dangerous attacks that have the potential to hit multiple players (I'm thinking of Piety's lightning ball), but can be actively avoided. You do NOT want to, say, have trash mobs casting Fireballs with a large AoE, or Lightning Strike because 1) melee can get hit by the splash of a spell aimed at a ranged player, 2) the game's difficulty becomes even more married to one's passive defenses, amplifying balance problems and forcing players down the same, most effective path, and 3) higher chance of multiple AoE spells hitting the same player with their splash damage (sure, you can minimize this by spreading out, but what about tight maps such as Spider Lair?), which leads us into a particular case of 2), that of path of life nodes.

2. you want to add better rewards for groups once group play becomes harder. I presume that you intend to make group play more difficult than soloing, because if you made it equally difficult, you're afraid there would be much less grouping (because, as you said, groups get less items per player), which would have implications in regards to server loads. However, the only thing this will accomplish is create a bigger rift between solo players and groups, except that rather than having the former ask for the latter to be more challenged, you will have soloists asking for a new, harder tier so they too can enjoy the better rewards (and at this stage we'll enter D3 MP territory), to add to the /players n demands.

One thing I have always enjoyed about PoE is how its rules apply uniformly (mechanics by and large work the same with players, common mobs, and even act bosses), so this feels like a step in the wrong direction. I don't think that, even if soloing and grouping were made equally challenging, there would be much less grouping. This is because groups have an inherent boon that soloists can never have: your team members are great buffers against death upon disconnecting, crashing, and even desync. In a game with rather harsh death penalties, this is a considerable advantage.

I would like to see a poll to gauge the impact of making group play as challenging as soloing. I don't think very many group players (even pubbers) would make the switch, at least at high levels, particularly if more sane looting rules were implemented, as you have hinted.

3. you plan on segregating item gathering and experience grinding in the mapping system (or at least the choice to do so), supposedly to allow destitute soloists a more realistic chance to level up. I sincerely hope you will not nerf item rarity / quantity in an 'experience map', but rather leave it at default values, and just increase the odds of finding more 'experience maps'.

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Chris wrote:

This evening we posted the first articles in the new Development Manifesto.

Please use this thread for feedback about topics we've discussed in the initial Development Manifesto posts made today. I'm keeping feedback in this forum rather than that one because we're going to update the manifesto over a long period of time and the first few pages of comments will lose their relevance once we have updated the manifesto or deployed the changes it describes.

Note that there are plenty more topics coming to that forum - the ones posted today are just a small initial set to let you know what we're considering and to promote some discussion!

Regarding Melee vs Ranged balance, I have suggested this elsewhere before, but I think it is worth discussing as a potential option.

I think melee should recieve a flat.5% or so damage reduction (to a theoretical cap of like 20-30%) gained only from % melee nodes in the passive tree. The idea is regardless of which nodes you take if you take any melee type node you will improve your survivability very slightly. It would hurt a ranged characters dps greatly to take that many of those nodes and thus you create a benifit to melee without also buffing ranged and without creating a "forced key passive".

The assumption behind my suggestion is that "all melee builds will spec into at least some melee nodes" Honestly this may NOT be true as even as of right now i am working on a melee build that primarily spec's into str dex int because of the new unique staff, but even so it would work for 90% of melee builds.

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Chris wrote:

As a long-term change, we will be making sure that many monsters have the ability to deal area of effect damage so that they're more challenging to parties and summoners.

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Chris wrote:

and summoners

Please, NO! Parties yes, summoners definitely don't need a nerf like this.

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Odoakar wrote:

The only thing I found questionable was claiming the loot drop situation is fine for solo players. It is not. It's actually horrible, with very few currency and uniques dropping, especially compared to party play.

Unless your running crazy high magic find. I agree with this.