Accuracy – The Last Remnant of Action?

Still can't believe how come the most useless thread could ever make 7 pages hahaha... Plain waste of time.

You dream of a car moving but without wheels.

There are imo three reasons why accuracy here is flawed and missing is so annoying.
At least for a melee char.

First
Melee chars here are dealing just few strikes per second.
Even using skills like cleave/sweep you could hit like 5 or 6 mobs at once.
So you can 'feel' every miss easily.
Compare that with D2 barb whirlwind which could hit a dozen per second easily.
It was hard to tell om a first glance whether you hit 8 or 12 times per second using ww.

Solution - more melee skills and upgrade of present ones.

Second
Stun thresholds (stun mechanic) and skill interruption

In PoE on later difficulties you have to hit hard to stay alive or at least to not play constantly on backpedal.
Getting mobs stunned is a must.
You are missing - you are not stunning mobs.
Also mobs stun some chars too easily and prevent them from doing any actions (stunlock), interrupting skill execution (mana is burned) and forcing them to retreat.

Solution - stun has to be changed to be just a bonus effect not a must have for melee char.
And it has to be done on both sides (players and mobs stun thresholds).
Average chars should be able withstand melee vs several random mobs on any difficulty without a need to stunlock them and without being stunlocked themselves.
It would also help a lot 1h and dual wield chars who are just not viable now because of that flawed stun mechanic.

Third
Game bugs and netcode
Game sound effects are still bugged and don't play when there's a lot of them so some hits that registered could be considered as misses by a player.
Also sometimes mobs still get desynched, so a player hit them on client and deal no damage since they are in some other place on server or damage dealt are registered after some time when mobs get auto resynched be the game.
Most common example is lagged mobs in dungeons when they are shown on the wrong side of a wall on client (they wander aimlessly and cannot be hit).
Also some more visually appealing animation on hit would be helpful.
I watched the very beginning of D3 and basic melee attack on some random mob generated more bang than some critical hit with a 15 lvl skill in PoE.
You may call it gimmicky, it might be indeed, but at least player knows that hit was registered, sounds are just complementary.
So some more wham bam shazzam on hit plz. A bloody one.

Solution - more work by GGG on netcode and game engine needed.

"

Joel_GGG wrote:

My opinion is the biggest problem with the tension is that the outcome of each hit/miss is not always apparent. When an arrow visually sticks into an enemy, the player is told that it is a hit (and a miss for a miss). However the game rules do not care weather the visual representation hits, its the calculation of the stats that matter. So here there is a disparity between the game state and the representation of the game state.

Just say the arrow hit your armor, therefore it did no damage.

"

So anyways, for the balance of overall accuracy in the game, that remains to be seen, but it is a tension and I do not doubt it is closely monitored.

Out of curiosity, have you guys even attempted to play a build without accuracy to get a feel for how an ARPG plays without it? Or at least devise a hybrid system of "glancing blows" instead of full on missing?

ARPGs inhabit the said limbo between direct input and dice rolling, but player accuracy feels jarringly out of place. You position, aim, and get timings in real time, but physical attacks missing arbitrarily interrupts that. I can't think of any sane player who would enjoy making the choice between less of accuracy in favor of another attribute.

A simple contrast:
A. Player swings for 100 damage, hits 100% of the time.
B. Player swings for 150 damage, hits 67% of the time.
C. Player swings for 75 damage, hits 100% of the time, crits for 150 damage 33% of the time.
D. Player swings for 125 damage, gets glancing blows for 50 damage 33% of the time.

Just compare the result of swinging a 100 times - in A you get a predictable result with no highs or lows, in B you feel you got dicked 33 swings, in C you feel awesome for 33 swings, and in D you feel like you are getting dicked but at least you don't feel completely screwed.

Rounding aside, all four situations are ostensibly equal. Yet, I am willing to bet my foot on it that if players are given the choice between four (equally expensive to make, equally "difficult" to make) builds they will always pick B, C or D just to avoid the frustration of missing every third hit or entering missing streaks.

Having an attack arbitrarily be negated is annoying, having it happen on regular basis when all other aspects at least feel like they are directly linked to player input is simply frustrating. You can still have the "dice" RPG feel by having less frustrating or simply entertaining chance based mechanics in place (crits and procs are simply fun when they happen, especially with obvious feedback - anyone tried out a Witchwild String Amazon build in Diablo knows how great these things feel).

Plain and simple – accuracy is a boring stat. It allows you to hit things. Having to spend passive points on accuracy is not fun.

Accuracy is a passive game mechanic.

Simple solution, remove the necessity for accuracy and balance around not needing it.

Add more dodge skills and dodgy enemies.

Make the game more active / reactive.

And, really, what Silver is saying simply once again opens up a primary question that needs to be asked, constantly.

What kind of game is PoE trying to be? Where on the spectrum of Direct Input Action and classic RPG do you believe the game should be? Close to RPG or closer to Action? You shouldn't be trying to mix and match fundamental mechanics from completely opposite side of the spectrum. Its trying to please everyone at once and invariably creating frustration amongst different parts of the player base.

Do you want the game to feel more akin to the idea of Shock Nova, Cold Pulse, Ice Spear, Infernal Blow, or Split Arrow where a player relies on physical ability and skill to interact with the world while the RPG aspect defines a set of relationships such as damage per hit, speed, AoE, tankiness, etc.? Accuracy as is has no place there. A Cleave user already has to deal with herding enemies and angling himself for the most ideal blow or real time target prioritization such as whenever he wants to leap into the archer pack first or second. A Shock Nova user already has to deal with keeping players at a certain range (jabs about Shock Nova's OPness aside).

Or do you want the player to give a general order/direction for a set of actions and then have the game carry those out for him? To tell the Marauder to charge forward and start bringing ruination, while hoping that the fantastic build the player made is up to the task?

This isn't a meaningless dichotomy. Mass Effect 2 nuked the first Mass Effect's accuracy mechanics, Diablo 3 removed Attack Rating for a reason, Titan Quest had it obscenely easy to keep almost a 100% hit rate for a reason. Missing after giving the player the choice and burden to do the action part of the gameplay is blatant bait and switch. Blending of the mechanics from the action side and the RPG side needs to be done in manner that feels organic and natural, otherwise the combat feels like a jumbled mess.

Whenever a player defeated by whatsoever. He/She unleashes his/her weakness immediately by opening a thread like this, which is indeed a prime example of.
For even about a game that is early in beta progression. He/She never cares what of others think, cause the only thing that he/she thinks is "always" him/herself all the way ! This could last for even it's guarenteed that it's gonna break the spirit of the game regardless.

I found really absurd THAT much whining, complaining for a thing that is a MUST.

What's graceful here is; you just don't have the rights to manipulate brains of hardcore loverz. By overdoing histrionics, you just can't get what you really would like it to happen.
Why ? Sure no one wants this game to bea dead easy one for sure.

As what J05H_DA said to you early in this topic. If you don't like challenge or stand up to difficulties, than you could just start looking elsewhere.

If you want it to be easier, than you've tons of other alternatives out there, just let alone PoE as a non-corrupt one.

yea theres a huge disparity between visually swinging my giant 2h mace directly into the enemies face and the gamefeedback: missed. lol

blocked would be ok, but that's not a thing i can influence with a stat then.

I dont have a problem with the mechanic though. It's fun to build your char around the constrains, around the must-have skills in an optimal way to achieve the best playability with taking several stats into consideration.

You need this little sucky mechanics for having trouble finding the optimal gear combination, but since it's still manageable it's totally fine. It adds depth to the itemconsiderations, which is a very good thing.

"

Why ? Sure no one wants this game to bea dead easy one for sure.

Interesting. Why are you equating the desire to remove an obnoxious mechanic with desire to make the game easier?