Diminishing Returns-Final view, final post

I think my final view of this game as it stands after playing multiple characters to level 50 is that the game is fun until a certain point when the laws of diminishing returns take place.A strength plus ten link at the end of the chain doesn't add much to help you in merciless or the end game maps. This is when most people think they messed their character up and complain about the passive tree, the skills, the lack of respecs etc. But honestly the game is just broken. Even if you get to level 80 and take all those small increments, it wont help you kill anything faster. It modifies your damage slightly, your life slightly which only works when the monsters don't have massive life and there aren't fifty of them running around.

What keeps people interested in the game is before the laws of diminishing returns take place the game is fun, but once you reach the end links it requires more to stay alive and do more damage. They revamped merciless to make the game harder but never compensated the skill tree to adjust with the changes and balance the game out. If they added perks and larger gains at the end of the tree then the end game would be functional but right now it's not.

I've seen games with hard difficulties use small increment gains like Path of exile. An example would be Demon Souls, the difference though is that every stat in Demon souls adds to your physical damage reduction. Making damage harder to achieve but survivability stay on par. So that you don't have to make huge choices between living and doing no damage or dying and doing workable damage.

Anyways, I know their is a huge fan base and their will definitely be one of those commentators who says "NA UH I DO AWESOME DAMAGE." and to that I can only say good luck. Keep the game as you want or change it, i'm just giving my feed back as a beta tester, not as a Path of Exile Occultist.

Thanks

Gear becomes much, much more important than your passives at that level. You are assuming that passives are the only customization and optimization for a character, and that's an incorrect assumption.

In general, I found that passives that buffed my survivability always were worth more than ones that didn't.
A lot of passives just don't seem to add up enough for the late game without amazing gear.

The entire genre of games like this one depends on using diminishing returns for both skills and gear so you don't blow by the last levels and run out of content.

Passive tree is only 1/3 of your character power. And a perfect passive tree selection can only max out 1/3 of your power.

1/3 also comes from your skill gems and their combinations with support gems. Once you got all of those at 20% quality arranged in most optimal way then you are also maxed out on this.

Last 1/3 comes from equipment, and this is the hardest part to get perfect. And this is the only part that is affected by what you call diminishing returns. You focused on wrong part of the game, passive tree is not your problem here.

I do agree with MaxtheLimit to a certain extent. The reward of a passive skill point becomes so low in higher lvls compared to the amount of time u put in them, that it could be discouraging...I also see a lack of rewarding "final skill achievement" in the skilltree, that makes me truely want to go "the distance".

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Antigegner wrote:

I do agree with MaxtheLimit to a certain extent. The reward of a passive skill point becomes so low in higher lvls compared to the amount of time u put in them, that it could be discouraging...I also see a lack of rewarding "final skill achievement" in the skilltree, that makes me truely want to go "the distance".

It depends on your build. If you plan it well it is not as bad. Things like additional block chance never diminishes, also 8% more life gives more total life at lvl 70 then at lvl 5 or 35.

In normal you should be going attack skills first and defense after and all the defensive nodes you take in late game, you will feel the difference more then if you took offensive nodes then.

In Hardcore you take offense/defense mixed with more defense and you are rewarded with getting to late game :)
That should be enough, then you work little by little on offense.

It's interesting that someone said you have to have diminishing returns in this game because of the support gems and potential for being over powered.

I wanted to add i've got some of the best gear in the game as i've played the game since early May. I don't think gear is the issue here. I've also taken all the defense and life passives I could possibly find, I don't think that is the problem either.

I've created about 5 characters to level 50.

There's a point where the game stops being fun. Theirs absolutely no motivation to continue leveling when the increments are so small that it does little to affect my damage, life and survivability. There's no point in playing merciless because of the high death rate. For item finding I find more gem cutter prisms and exalted orbs in normal. There is almost no point to level a Character past fifty in this game.

You hardly do more damage and hardly gain more life.

In games like diablo 2, you gained greater sets of skills that compensated to make it rewarding to go up in levels and make it to 99. I've also played games like Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, where the perk system gets stronger as you level and it adds more fun to the game in higher levels. Even final fantasy with the similar passive trees, the rewards get better as you go.

My opinion is that if they wanted to keep it small increments then make it so the higher level you have, the more base damage reduction you have.

Either way, I just wanted to provide more info to the posters.

Thanks again.

http://images.wikia.com/finalfantasy/images/9/94/Final_Fantasy_10_Sphere_Grid.svg

Just to drive the nail further. I'd like to post the final fantasy X skill tree system which path of exile seems to be similar to.

If you look at it you can see that the heavier skills are locked up and at the end. These skills though allow for much stronger survivability.

When you view the increments, you see that yes most of them stay the same, but the overall percentages are higher in total out of what you receive. In other words plus 200 hits points offers much greater returns then plus 6-8 percent life nodes. If your base life is 1000, then plus 8 percent only adds 80 life...woohoo. Adding ten strength adds 5 life which doesn't make a huge hell of a difference. Even when considering that it adds to the base life before percentages are figured in.

This is why I would say the game is broken. To receive a plus 200 increment from an 8 percent life node, you would need 2500 as your base life. Which is very difficult considering for every 2 strength you receive one life.

The greatest percentage multiplier a marauder can reasonably receive to life is 77 percent when adding all the nodes reasonably balanced with damage. A good figure estimate for strength is between 300-400. All in all the most this Marauder can hypothetically get to is 1500.

At a kill rate of one white per a swing and 2 swings per a blue you still wouldnt be able to traverse Merciless without long range gear.

Any who my arguments been made and i'll check back to play the game again next patch to see if it's improved.


Good Luck