0.10.8 Information and Race Updates

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Hilbert wrote:

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Having Merciless Act Three pitched at higher levels does make it harder to progress through it in one sitting. You do have to repeat areas. It is an intentional part of the design that there comes a point (in the higher difficulties) where the game is too hard for your character and you have to improve it by gaining new items before you can progress. I completely agree that there's substantial work that can be done to make earlier areas feel a little less grindy.

This is the problem. You waste time grinding. I'd rather fight a boss 1 hour than grind 3h get 2 levels and get nothing in return. I miss something like the ancients in 1.09 you got a certain amount of experience. If you were level 20 you got to level 25. (40-45 in nm and 60->65 in hell)
By the time hit act2 merciless most of my items are still from normal maybe some cruel drop.
The game is nowhere to be hard.My feelings about this changes are that it will end up in even more terrible grinding. I don't want to play 50h you get a single character on level 70 just because the mechanics are so unrewarding.
You got maps till level 77 then make it easier for players to reach level 77 and after that you can start this exping hell. In D2 even after the terrible 1.10 I got characters to level 80-83 on a normal playthrough and even without massive time investment level 87 was possible which was the monster level of rares and highest unique requirement. After that you could do whatever you want. I want that back you have a reasonable level in a short amount of time where you can do anything.

I've been saying since OB this needs to be the case and why D2 was so much fun. I shouldn't take a few days grinding City of Sarn from 60-69, it should have taken like 2 hours in D2 exp scaling.

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Chris wrote:

People keep suggesting we're caving to the masses, but these changes are motivated by our internal testing and design philosophies that we have been following since we started the project.

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A large part of any decision we make is asking ourselves what we would want as players. We're in a unique position where we can make the decisions that are best for the game without being held back by some parent company or oppressive publisher.

How can i take this seriously when the OP basically says "based on positive feedback from the thread, we are gonna go through with the changes although there are some very valid concerns regarding the change that have to be adressed" while you proceed to completely ignore the "adress" part, because as far as i can see there is no real adressing happening at all.

Making a change based on "empty positive feedback" (most of the positive feedback was a +1 post without any argument on why the change would be good), thus coping to the masses (yes you coped to the higher number of positive feedback), instead of going with the change that would result in a better game (valid concerns being brought up).

This post and the OP contradict each other.
If that feedback thread would have had 100% negative posts, would you have gone through with it?
If the answer is yes, then why open a feedback thread anyways? To pretend that you care?
If the answer is no, then why lie about "coping to the masses", the answer "no" clearly means that you are gonna cope to the feedback that is in the majority, thus coping to the masses.
I mean you even acknowledged that the negative feedback was indeed of utmost importance, but you did not provide any real information on how you are going to adress it.
This is the only thing you brought up:

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Maps
Maps will get signature monsters: one dedicated pack slot with the rest random. This reduces variance.
Rewards will be revisited.
We are currently investigating implicit mods and new map zones. This will probably not make it in to 0.10.8.
Map bosses are being reworked. In 0.10.8 Asphyxia will be redone.

I dont see how reducing variance helps with 66-68 maps being useless.
I know you keep bringing up that people need to do them in order to progress in the map tier at all, but people dont wanna do that even now (as is evidenced by your statement that people still farm docks instead of maps, dont deny this now), so why would they do it after these changes which take even more incentive away from earlier map tiers?

Signature monsters reducing variance is good and all, but the problem is that the variance is not the issue in the first place.
I probably did 5000 maps in total (open beta and closed beta combined), and i had it all: running 25 nicely rolled maps in order to get nothing VS 3 blue maps dropping 7 maps per run.
One thing that never changed is that i was never able to reach the higher level maps without investing about 15 chaos per map (and 4 chisels), and even then it never lasted long.
The other thing that never changed is that hard mods are useless and should be avoided at all costs, otherwise you even run the risk of running out of maps.
The hard mods grant additive quantity increases (EVEN lower in value) while the easy mods grant multiplicative quantity increases (higher in value).
I dont see how reducing variance helps this at all.
Here is my thread where i explain that the hard mods are useless (and why this is the case):
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/345277

"Rewards will be revisited".
Very vague statement that basically does not tell us anything.

"We are currently investigating implicit mods and new map zones. This will probably not make it in to 0.10.8."
Another vague statement that basically serves as a stalling attempt.


"Map bosses are being reworked. In 0.10.8 Asphyxia will be redone."
Thats unrelated to the negative feedback in the thread.

So basically we have no specific adressing going on at all, while you already want to implement the changes from the manifesto, undermining all of the hard leveling that the people above level 80 had to go through (using currencies), without giving them anything.
I want a refund on those currencies if you go through with this change.
I burned through 15-20 exalted worth of currency since open beta (i even have this on tape i think since i was recording stuff for my youtube channel).
I will even give it away on my channel since im not playing anyways, since there is just no point, i am perpetually losing wealth by leveling in higher lvl maps and rather fast since i am playing solo.

I love this game and i love you devs for creating it, but that does not mean that i have to agree with your decisions, and your last few decisions are terrible imo.

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raics wrote:

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Moosifer wrote:

Cannot wait for all the complaints about the new area levels. The same people who gave a +1 or quick "ya sounds good" are going to be the ones losing their minds on the forums because act 3 merci will be hell to get through. Just imagine while leveling you jumped into an easy mod lvl 66 maps middle of act 3 when you clearly aren't ready to handle mapping. You will be stuck grinding act 2, then city of sarn, then getting frustrated at docks, then in lunaris then once you have enough lvl 68 maps (as all that grinding will give you alot of 66s and you'll be close or over 80 so what's the point of starting at 66 maps, vendor them up and take RNG out of it) you'll finally reach the end game, where you can grind for gear to do lvl 77 maps (ofc you have to find them first).

It's grinding so you can grind. Not even being most effective either, just to allow yourself to progress. This is one of the reasons D3 was so frustrating, you farmed act 1 inferno to allow yourself to farm act 2 inferno, to allow yourself to farm act 3 inferno then you hoped to get gear 1% better to speed up your clear speed in the slightest. All of this knowing that 50m upgrade you just bought will only be significantly improved by a 2b gold upgrade.

I'm begging you, don't do it. I was so happy you did away with it in alpha, please don't bring it back.

Agreed on all points, it's a very bad idea.
Why not simply making Grigor sell maps after you finish merciless if they're meant to be readily available?

On the other hand skill rebalancing is very welcome and first four are chosen spot-on, not that they can't be used but there are a lot of skills that are much more efficient AND much more fun.

The changes are fine, starting act 3 merc will be about the same difficulty as coming from cruel to merc, that wall you hit with your resists and you overall gear SHOULD be there. Something to make you maybe craft or find some better gear, not level to 65 and hop straight into maps. This gives most builds time to really flourish too. The game right now pretty much dies around 75 unless you have a healthy amount of maps stocked up(and even leveling to 75 is quite a chore for most new players) This will allow people to get to 75 with no exp penalty, now 85 doesn't seem so unreasonable now, and people can farm some better gear to get ready for maps. They have said this is still not the solution they want, but a temporary one. Get off your high horse and let them do their jobs, which is start to make a more concrete solution. There is way more pros than cons to the changes and they are going to do what they want to do.

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Heh, I thought I was the only one who played that :)

Nah I remember the special areas after you cleared the challenge areas. At first you get your ass wiped there many times but then it gets ok.
The zombie town with those grave diggers and poison lancers in a1, the darkness area in act2 with the panthers and leopards and act3 the darkness area filled with many nasty invisible mobs.

On the highest difficulty the act3 after you finally defeated the invisible last boss you enter the invisible area and you only see red dots and attacks and you die and die because you have to guess what you are dealing with.
I still couldn't figure out what was were the 3 monsters in the north west corner. They hit hard but without animations and in the center was even another invisible boss with other bosses like 2 king hawk, 2 wizard wens, 4 war elephants, 6 king tigers, 3 succubus sues and many many other ugly mobs like grave diggers, manaburner apes. So you better were luring them away or you were done within 2 seconds.

But it's funny that in act2 there was only 1 panther on the lake. Somehow I remember an incredible hard claw King Jaguar(mmx2 Sigma like claws and repeating charges similar to the hellhound) but that could be the second game too.

I even played the 2nd game but I could never finish it because my chinese friend Feng who translated it for me went to rotterdam and I got stuck at a part which seems to be similar to the helldog mission but you must kill a certain amount or certain mobs(like finding chicken in Zelda)

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Many changes didn't work out, it just takes reading the forum to see. I second on chaos resist in particular, annoying and makes no sense. If you treat it as an element, make it an element dammit.

I critisized it after OB release when I was A2 merciless the second day and got hit hard by Poison arrows that the skill tree doesn't offer enough options and many players will be fruststrated(I had -60 chaos res) but all I got was invalesco posting "payback is a bitch CI chars had to grind hard in CB to get 5k ES now you have to grind hard to get chaos res"

With my defensive playstyle I could deal with it but I don't think it makes sense that a Crit -60 Poison arrow does far more damage than being hit by Vaals laser without enfeeble on 50% res.

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I've been saying since OB this needs to be the case and why D2 was so much fun. I shouldn't take a few days grinding City of Sarn from 60-69, it should have taken like 2 hours in D2 exp scaling.

Rather 3-4h on workable builds 8h on underpowered builds but that's because 60-69 was end of nightmare till act2 hell.
One reason I want usercode leagues is because I will make the game actually hard but you can progress much faster and only the last levels will be a grindfest.
Players being satisfyed having a mapable character will roll a different build.
Totally different from now where all high ranked players have 1 high level character aside from race characters and reroll once it dies. Because THIS is MMO.

Not offerng total refunds, being forced to relevel gems, taking forever to level a character.
That's not an ARPG style.

But before we get such leagues PoE gets advertised as grindy ARPG from Grinding Gear Games and every feedback that game is too grindy will be answered with: "Hey we are Grinding Gear Games"

I would really like to see more signature events each day. Some days there are none and other days there's only 1 max. And on the days there are 2 or more? Oh cool i have to work all day........




Anyways, all this butthurt is hilarious.

I can't wait to have more end game farming options before maps.

Docks is really starting to get old.

How I feel about the upcoming patch: Great more stuff to do until I hit a brick wall. Eventually everyone will, this is an unfinished game so hitting the wall at level 80+ is tons better than hitting it at around 75. Map runs will be more accessible to most people and hopefully catacombs will become a zone of interest in comparison to what they were so far - a dead zone nobody visited.

As far as desync is concerned (my eye caught some posts on it): Well, GGG is working on it, but these changes actually help people deal with it. If I can regain the lost exp from a bad case of desync in Act 3 Merciless and actually not have to worry too much until I hit level 80, I feel like endgame which is the most concerning area of the game, got a lot more forgiving to people who had problems with desync. At least I can mindlessly join in a couple of Docks runs with random people and let them regain my exp for me without any danger.

What I dislike: The rebalancing of gems worries me an awful lot. If they are going to rebalance everything, many builds may be rendered useless over time. How do I know if I want to farm for 20q gems in my current skill build if these gems are subject to change? I would want to see GGG post all the rebalancing 2 or so weeks prior to changing the gems to allow people to go out and actively look for the proper socketed and linked items and proper gems for their builds to work after patches, so that we do not have to reroll the character from the ground up or play new builds to get the gems we need. Please, if anybody in GGG reads this, make this a thing, it is extremely important to keep us informed prior to changes, so we can prepare accordingly!

Sounds good.

nothing about desync or melee? ... ... well, i gonna wait 10.9 :(

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Hilbert wrote:

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I've been saying since OB this needs to be the case and why D2 was so much fun. I shouldn't take a few days grinding City of Sarn from 60-69, it should have taken like 2 hours in D2 exp scaling.

Rather 3-4h on workable builds 8h on underpowered builds but that's because 60-69 was end of nightmare till act2 hell.

Yeah that seems about right, my memories from those days are a little foggy at times, but I do wish we had an ancients like thing in PoE that instant 5 level ups was the best feeling in the entire world.

Was one of the many reasons D2LoD was so much fun. I remember D2 vanilla solo felt a lot like PoE now though, but thats probably because I was 12 and didnt really understand the game too well.

But I had fun and thats all that matters.

But I know for sure me and my 3 D2 friends would level from 1-90 in like maybe a week and a half after ladder resets then do hundreds of Baal runs and some Uber Trists and then just re roll random builds over and over and it was the best.

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Minzy wrote:

Have the massive lag spikes that kill off HC characters been fixed yet? No? Shocking. Bye.

EDIT: Follow up after seeing other posts. Saying "I don't know why you complain about desync, all that ever happens to me is a slight desync and I'm fine" is completely ridiculous. I've had some desyncs that are just awful, I'm three rooms away and get teleported back and die instantly. Those types of desync I know about, can minimize, and when I die to them I rage a bit and move on. My last character I killed every single monkey on the screen, and then they all came back to life and instantly killed me, there was LITERALLY nothing I could do to prevent this/survive. I want to play PoE, I really do. And when the MASSIVE desync/lag problem is fixed, I can't wait to play again. I'll play the one month race casually, but otherwise I'm done. I enjoyed the game in alpha, and was excited for "permanent" characters. In reality no characters are truly permanent right now. If you're a HC player, desync/lag is hungry, and one day it will eat you. Peace out.

Dude being an obnoxious prick who just makes a rude comment in a patch announcement does nothing.

How was your post helpful in any kind of form?
DEVs know about desync, and they made a manifesto about it. What do you want? Why not study net coding or some s**t and actually help if it annoys you so much.

Really dude I cannot stand people like you.
They announce a new patch with tons of cool things and all you do is "but what about this and that".

We all know desync exists, posting in here DOES NOTHING to remove it. All you do is being a prick and piss of people like me, or worse make people bandwagon and soon this thread derails into a discussion about desync, as if that wasn't talked to death already.