GGG: Your System encourages RMT and Botting.
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Scrotie, people LIKE slaying monsters. That's why they want to be able to CONTINUE slaying monsters.
What this game does is make it so that slaying monsters at a high level becomes unfeasible because a.) you need good gear to slay monsters at a high level, and b.) you need currency and gear to make new characters to slay more monsters. The ARPG model has always been limited content, but indefinitely replayability and a large encouragement to remake a bunch of characters to try a different build. GGG conflates this with the MMO model, which is that it has a very, very lengthy endgame grind intended to keep players on one character. The problem with this is that the lengthy endgame grind also gates a lot of endgame items you need to do the endgame grind. The result is that people see it being very prohibitive (unless you trade a lot instead of playing, go figure) to enter the endgame grind, so in effect the game's 'actual content' becomes much smaller than it was designed to be. People who do manage to enter the endgame grind tend to find themselves worn out and don't reroll characters as often. Take D2 in comparison. In a single ladder season a hardcore player may roll 3, 4, 5 or more characters and get them all to level 90. How many players in Nemesis/Domination/Onslaught/Anarchy got 3+ characters to 90 in PoE? Players get to the endgame grind, see how much effort and currency it takes to get there, and go, 'well fuck that, I'm burnt out and will maybe try again when there's new content or when the economy resets' (i.e. it becomes easier to 'grind', aka trade, up to a level of currency). The game would be much better suited if they had a more smooth progression curve that allowed people to get to endgame without as much of a hassle, and then players were subsequently encouraged to reroll new characters once they achieve their endgame goals. It's almost as if GGG is not confident that their game is FUN enough for this to happen, so they rely on the gimmick of forcing people to spend actual weeks of in-game effort on a single character. Last edited by UnderOmerta#1203 on Jan 1, 2014, 10:29:40 PM
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I have to agree. Scrotie, you seemed to have ignored that an ARPG isn't just about slaying monsters. It's about slaying bigger and more powerful monsters.
To slay bigger and more powerful monsters, you need upgrades to your gear (or skill). That's why finding upgrades IS absolutely necessary. Last edited by Gravethought#3018 on Jan 1, 2014, 7:40:25 PM
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" The whole problem with this slaying monsters theory is that the process of slaying monsters isn't actually that fun in PoE. There isn't a lot of tactical maneuvering or strategic decision making, heck a lot of the time it boils down to "spamming a single skill", and any kind of tactical decision play is often killed due to desync anyways PoE is not a game that has depth in killing monsters, single player FPS games like Farcry or HL2 greatly beat PoE in this area. This means the reward has to come from somewhere that is not killing monsters, and in aRPG's the reward comes in the loot If you get enjoyment from just killing the monsters, then you are a very easy person to please, you are also in a minority demographic. PoE's depth is meant to come from the skill tree and from the loot, not from the actual act of killing monsters, because there is little depth in this area |
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" The sad thing is that even if you're willing to grind for your currency, the most rewarding way to do it is to trivialize the game into a milk cow. Three cheesy, yet entirely legitimate, things to exploit: 1. Orbs of all levels drop just as frequently in Act 1 Normal as in maps. 2. Cheap Uniques with IIQ and OP DPS can be equipped at low char levels. 3. Twinked low-level chars can quickly blow away anything in Act 1 Normal. So when your currency runs low, just roll another twinkie and harvest Act 1 Normal ad nauseum... |
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@UnderOmerta/Gravethought/deteego:
Essentially you're saying "the game is always fresh and interesting as long as you're continually progressing from one tier of content to another." Although that is one way to skin the "grinding = fun" cat, it's also by far the most expensive from a development perspective because it requires GGG to use any particular content a scant few times, meaning an excessive amount.of content must be developed. Economically, it's just more sensible to come up with ways to make a single piece of content more.intrinsically replayable; that's why we have things like random map generation. What you're talking about is a pipe dream, because GGG needs players to play different iterations of the same content multiple times, stretching use of that content to the maximum before unlocking further content. It's much more productive to accept the mass replay of same-tier content, and to approach the problem with the mindset of making that experience more pleasant. There are ways to do that. Good monster affixes make you play differently (or encourage gear swaps) instead of being gear checks. As much as people hated it when it came out (and in some cases still do) for its obscure, explanationless delivery of a potentially lethal situation, Corrupting Blood is a great example, as are several other Nemesis mods (but not all of them). Stuff like that which encourages different decision-making and/or "sideboarding" of skills and/or gear. That's how we can realistically achieve replayability. If that means adding more tactical manuevering to the game, then so be it, but that also makes fixing desync a higher priority. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted. Last edited by ScrotieMcB#2697 on Jan 1, 2014, 9:31:40 PM
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" You're never going to push this agenda through because people don't ENJOY doing stuff like that. NOR is it a particularly feasible in the hyper endgame setting when you don't know what you're going to get when you enter the map. |
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"That's exactly what they did with the Dominus fight, right down to the "not knowing what to do the first time" thing, and thinking of Dominus fights on Nemesis gives me an e...lating feeling. And know I'm not alone. I'm sorry, but we need more situations like that where positioning is very difficult, beatable if you play smart and a "huge gear check QQ" if you play dumb. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
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" What you claim is "beatable by playing smart" only applies if the game can be played in a LAN environment. There's no such thing as "good positioning" if you could be a screen away from where you appear to be simply because you clipped a corner, and then get melted in less than a second because of it. If the game had a higher TTK, then yes, you can have more clever positioning boss fights that take 20 minutes. If you want that, go play an MMO. And no, that's not exactly what they did for the Dominus fight. You don't need to swap any gear for the Dominus fight, nor was the fight in normal harder than very lategame content in maps. Damage and pack size scaling late game trumps anything else found in the rest of the game altogether. You absolutely need GG gear to do high maps in Nemesis even if you have the best positioning and smart play. |
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The game is overall completely gear orientated. Having better gear trumps anything else (including smart play), and this is a deliberate design decision by GGG
So in a game that is completely gear orientated, it makes sense to reward players with gear if they invest into the game, and more importantly if they take risks. Scrotie what you are going on about is never going to happen to PoE, you are playing the wrong genre, and the amount of dev required to do what you are stated far outtrumps any alternative in regards to balanced drops GGG already shot the whole "tactical play thing" in the foot when they did things like drastically increase mob pack size, which further reinforces the "spamming single AoE skill" mantra which PoE has. This is also the same mantra that D2 has |
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Dominus is pretty sweet, but look at what happens on nemesis, unless you absolutely overgear the fight to all hell, or use cheese freeze to beat him, people avoid him pretty much till they can safely smash his face with no risk.
It might be that piety's loot is way too good, for a fraction of the risk and effort, but I think it kind of gets to a problem GGG faces. How does GGG make a properly rewarding and difficult fight? The problem is that if you balance the loot around how difficult it is for someone to beat something appropriate to their level and gear, people who can trounce and farm that boss can get gear way too quickly. If you balance it around the people farming, then the player who just barely scrapes by feels cheated and unrewarded. This is compounded by the fact that dominus is 100% optional on merciless. What's the point of creating hard content if noone is going to do it because it isn't worth the effort? |
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