Golems, Brutus, Monster Collision and the Ever Nearing Release

Are we* really going live like this?

As beta players, open and closed, we* accept that things will be less than perfect.
As beta players we* work around issues and adapt.

Monster mechanics such as Brutus/Kole/etc hook and smash, we* soon learn how to counter.
With PoE having a relatively close camera, with the AI and sync being less than perfect, with tools at our disposal, as both melee and ranged, we* learn that we* must be able to effectively facetank, if only for a brief time. But the result is, the mechanics of Brutus become rather irrelevant as if one decides to glass cannon kite, play smart with the AI, one decides to die.

I can't recall if the Golem roll was introduced late CB or with OB, but it has been around 6 months now. When it first appeared, we*, as beta testers just think "well this isn't working right". 6 months on, 3 months to release and nothing has changed. Again, we* gear/spec/utilise to survive Golem impacts. We* don't depend on player ability to avoid them as this would require the actual roll damage to happen at the same time as the animation.

Monster v monster collision, why do we* even have this?
If we* must for some reason have this, why do we* have so many narrow passages, choke points and small doors?
Again, as beta testers, seeing a Necro float towards you, port back, float towards you, stand there, port back...repeat infinitely; we* accept this is beta, we* learn that using a skill on a desynced monster like this without 'attack-in-place' will likely result in us being ported to a room full of death and we* not only avoid this, but gear/spec to survive should it happen.

The point being, that we* learn about these things and adapt during a time when it is acceptable, because it's beta. We* will play at release and be aware of all this.
But, a new player to PoE, picking up this game at release is green to all of this and will expect to be able to play a glass cannon (rightly or wrongly). They will expect to be able to play tactfully to counter monster mechanics, rather than full out defensively.

There's nothing wrong with the new player learning the hard way that they really must embrace defence. But when they find this out because Brutus just one shot them from 3 screens away, hooked them through a solid wall, a Cinder Golem's fiery trail was actually a fiery path that set off, connected and killed them before the Golem even moved. When Kole is porting up and down stairs like some mage rather than a melee brute. When tightly packed monsters are approaching and rubberbanding, continuously, when a resulting port into the room ends in death, when Piety is still rubberbanding in fire form 10 times in 3 seconds; they are not going to think "meh, it's beta", they are going to think "WTF is this broken shit?"

Why have monster AI/mechanics at all, that we* just learn to negate through stats rather than tactics as the tactical approach can't be relied on?
Why have monster collision that does nothing but cause them and us to desync?


We* are getting scarily close to launch now and a lot of things which were probably designed with the intention of being good mechanics are going to be nothing more than very bad advertisement. Serving no purpose, we* learned to work around them in beta expecting them to improve, new players won't see it this way.


*this does not include ciknay.

Apologies for what is apparently a wall of text /shrug.

The truth is that no game is perfect at release anymore.
Day one patches are common for just about every game out there.
Unfortunately that patch cycle that starts, stops just as quick.
PoE will continue patching long after most mainstream games have their support shut down.

Desync/resync is part of the territory btw.

You're right, this game isn't close to a release state despite the amount of content in it. Yet, they're working on more content. I still have faith they can fix it up though, and we had these very concerns during closed beta. We said going open would kill the game because no one would be willing to grind their faces against the problems the game has, but that wasn't true.

On top of mechanic issues, there is also the unoptimized graphics problems. I have huge FPS drops on some particle effects like fire, poison clouds... when a group of voidebearers and phaserunners start rolling toward me, everything slows down... unless I disable everything there is to disable in the graphical settings.

On a solid desktop comp.

You can fix golems easily (just comment out the rolling code :), but polishing the game engine before release? I dont expect it to happen.

"

morbo wrote:

You can fix golems easily (just comment out the rolling code :), but polishing the game engine before release? I dont expect it to happen.

Well this is the worry, though.

A week of these Golems in Beta was enough to tell us it didn't work.
I expected it to be either fixed or removed around then.
6 months later???

Same with monster collision, doorways and desync.
A year or two has been well enough to learn that there is a problem here.
But the work on desync appears to be concentrating on resync (and with poor progress it would appear) rather than addressing glaringly obvious desync aggravation which in this case also looks bad.

Very good read.

I agree, golems are weird, sometimes they hit THEN roll. It seems that whatever an animation duration is it counts as 1 Frame. (So, if you are in the way of the golem rolling and tryed successfully to move before he gets you, the attack hits anyway.)

I had some horrible scary experience with golems in Crematorium map. Each hit was doing +130% of my life ( without Ashrend, www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/398601/page/11 )

Second the golem rolls. Calculating whether or not they hit at the start of the roll, rather than via actual collision detection is... Dumb. Really, really dumb.

GGG should definitely work on and resolve some of the desync issues before they go full release (marketing...) with PoE. It would really suck to lose a lot of potential players due to the issue.

OP, the problem in one word: priorities. GGG is focused on creating more act content, fixing up the skill tree, creating microtransactions, etc., while they need to be fully focused on what you listed here since they are nearing official release. Now, this wouldn't be a problem if they had a sizable dev team, but I think they have less than 10 people or something. Maybe they'll quit microtransaction work a couple months before their projected release in October (or something) and double down on fixing the problems once and for all, but I won't hold my breath. The problems seem to be more with the game engine and level design, more than anything else.

It's a good point, but one I really doubt will be fixed ever. Like you said we can take a lot of shots on the chin since we understand that "it's beta things aren't going to be the best right now" but what are you going to say when a wave of new post release players die to desync? "Actually because the way mob collision and hit evasion works the game is designed to randomly teleport you around"

I can see desync being brought up a ton post release and a main reason why people won't want to play.