I'm Unhappy I Put As Much Money As I Did In This Game

POE does many things very well, which is why so many people care about it and write such long opinions about it. What's frustrating is the things which POE doesn't do well have gone largely unchanged for numerous months (possibly years). This makes it appear as though GGG priorities and player priorities are not the same.

There was one thing Rhys said in his late-night stupor that really accentuated this point: "If you don't [trade] then you will have to adjust your expectations accordingly." It sounds as if he really believes players expect to spend a great deal of time trading in ARPGs. In truth, the only other ARPG I've played which has such a strong emphasis on trade as POE has been D3. In that game, trading was so unpopular that the removal of trade capabilities is a selling point for its expansion. POE developers appear to be charging ahead in the opposite direction. I'm not saying trade should be removed, just citing an example where community expectations and GGG intentions seem to diverge. The rift only expands with time.

GGG is very attentive and overall I think they do a good job communicating. Which is why I am baffled as to how such a rift between expectations and deliveries can occur. That is aggravating.

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PolarisOrbit wrote:

POE does many things very well, which is why so many people care about it and write such long opinions about it. What's frustrating is the things which POE doesn't do well have gone largely unchanged for numerous months (possibly years). This makes it appear as though GGG priorities and player priorities are not the same.

There was one thing Rhys said in his late-night stupor that really accentuated this point: "If you don't [trade] then you will have to adjust your expectations accordingly." It sounds as if he really believes players expect to spend a great deal of time trading in ARPGs. In truth, the only other ARPG I've played which has such a strong emphasis on trade as POE has been D3. In that game, trading was so unpopular that the removal of trade capabilities is a selling point for its expansion. POE developers appear to be charging ahead in the opposite direction. I'm not saying trade should be removed, just citing an example where community expectations and GGG intentions seem to diverge. The rift only expands with time.

GGG is very attentive and overall I think they do a good job communicating. Which is why I am baffled as to how such a rift between expectations and deliveries can occur. That is aggravating.

This is a great point, and one of those things that strikes me with alot of fear. I played FFXI back in the day when the dev team to that game had a motto of "trust us, we know you will like our ideas better than your own". This mentality lead to the game almost crumbling under... and then was repeated with FF14 1.0 and we all know how well that turned out (whole dev team was removed, game went under and was rebuilt from scratch, etc)

If you plan to force ahead with your own ideals and say that everyone will need to adapt to your way of fun... you might suddenly not have anyone interested anymore.

Edit:

Felt like posting this that I read in a different thread:

"In a perfect world without desync and lag, this comment would make sense. And I would nod, sagely and agreeable.

Alas, this is not a perfect world, and desync and lag exist, which in turn means that despite "you not being meant to take those hits", and your best efforts to not take those hits, those hits will take you. Because desync and lag are things that you as player have very little control over.


I've said this in another thread already: But if you expect your player to act with pinpoint precision and near-perfect reflexes to beat your challenge, you must enable him to act with that precision and reflexes.
If your infrastructure cannot support that level of perfection from the player on a consistent basis, you cannot present those challenges to the player, and instead have to plan for the shortcomings of your infrastructure.

I do not mind desync too much. It's a technical limitation. I do mind, however, that it is responsible for the absolute majority of my characters' deaths because the devs seem to design some encounters with your mindset, but not with the necessary support structure for players."

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PolarisOrbit wrote:

POE does many things very well, which is why so many people care about it and write such long opinions about it. What's frustrating is the things which POE doesn't do well have gone largely unchanged for numerous months (possibly years). This makes it appear as though GGG priorities and player priorities are not the same.

There was one thing Rhys said in his late-night stupor that really accentuated this point: "If you don't [trade] then you will have to adjust your expectations accordingly." It sounds as if he really believes players expect to spend a great deal of time trading in ARPGs. In truth, the only other ARPG I've played which has such a strong emphasis on trade as POE has been D3. In that game, trading was so unpopular that the removal of trade capabilities is a selling point for its expansion. POE developers appear to be charging ahead in the opposite direction. I'm not saying trade should be removed, just citing an example where community expectations and GGG intentions seem to diverge. The rift only expands with time.

GGG is very attentive and overall I think they do a good job communicating. Which is why I am baffled as to how such a rift between expectations and deliveries can occur. That is aggravating.

Excellent post.

I am so glad that a thread like this exists and is getting the serious attention, from the community at least, that it deserves. I agree with the OP and many of the other posts in this thread.

For myself I guess the drop mechanic, desync and other issues are quite small in comparison to the GGG's design and balance model. Having played since CB I guess I'm use to the desync now and see it as an unfortunate issue, but ultimately one the designers will not address. Similarly, the constant downgrading of loot is getting a bit old, but if I take my time I have been, at least up to pre-1.1.0, able to mitigate these issues through smart playing.

This brings us to the current state of the game post 1.1.0 and my statement about GGG's balancing model, which to put it bluntly is simply to nerf anything popular or helpful. It's one thing to nerf block which is more or less something one can build around or ignore, but to nerf life which is essentially required for every build, with the exception of CI, is ignorant of the realities presented by the game itself.

Furthermore, nerfing how leech works is similarly ignorant as it again ignores what for the majority of builds is essential. Thus, we do not end up with more build diversity, but simply more points invested in passives that do not enable us to access higher level content. This is illustrative of GGG's balance philosophy, which seems to be to nerf a bunch of essential stuff (read useful stuff) and boost almost nothing.

I think they should be ashamed of the state the current game is in and it's a pity that so many threads like this exist.

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BisuProbe wrote:

just wow, so life leech was nerfed just to accomodate an elite item like this??
http://imgur.com/a/iatME#xYn8e8r

Its like they destroyed they way people were currently building just to make those gloves have a purpose. If this is true and those are real, they have truly lost it. Why screw over 99.999% of the player base so that unique has a purpose, and it would make them godly and only get nerfed to legacy in the next patch etc.....etc...

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jaxxxson wrote:

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Wittgenstein wrote:

For the record, I consider my 1k+ invested to be a waste. They've gone off the rails with RNG and some of the recent post's from the dev's just infuriate me. Wish I had given it to the folks making GD. Ah well. such is life.

This is incredibly disheartening, what unique did you make? Did they nerf it or make it so you couldn't make it the way you want? Also, Grim Dawn...is it good haha, it's on sale, I would try it if you recommended it.

I will respond to more posts tomorrow, I wanted to send one out before I went to bed, the internet went out and I just got it back, so I will respond to posts then. I appreciate you all for responding with your thoughts and ideas, I hope it reflects on this game at a later time.

No, my unique isn't implemented yet. It requires some unique graphics to be created for it to work and I am sure that isn't high on their priority list (rightfully so) it will be a ring that converts a high % of cold damage to fire, increases burn damage, and also has an effect called 'burnt to a cinder' which eliminates corpses. Keep in mind my idea for the unique came quite a while ago - roughly a year - so a lot of things have changed since then, most notable, fire damage is now highly viable.

I've just come to realize that the game they are making, the audience they are targeting, isn't the man I am but the boy I once was (no offense to anyone here) - by that I mean they are targeting people who can invest a lot of time. Maybe you're an adult that can invest a lot of time, that's fine, I just don't happen to be as fortunate.

As for GD I play it and love it. It's just like TQ which, to me, is superior to D2 except for the fact that in TQ you had to farm specific areas to get specific drops (as mobs actually used the uniques they dropped) however GD doesn't seem to be following that path. Also GD like TQ has deterministic crafting which I find much more palatable given my aforementioned lack of play time hours.

I deplore trading. I do not have a lot of time to invest. I hate teams... so, yeah, PoE isn't for me. sadly, because with the exception of the 'crafting' system I truly believe PoE to be the best ARPG ever made.

@Rhys - thanks for the feedback. Sorry to be harsh. I think what I meant was that I regret giving the money to design a game that isn't for me, but I do not regret supporting GGG which by and large seem to be a great number of guys.

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Wittgenstein wrote:

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jaxxxson wrote:

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Wittgenstein wrote:

For the record, I consider my 1k+ invested to be a waste. They've gone off the rails with RNG and some of the recent post's from the dev's just infuriate me. Wish I had given it to the folks making GD. Ah well. such is life.

This is incredibly disheartening, what unique did you make? Did they nerf it or make it so you couldn't make it the way you want? Also, Grim Dawn...is it good haha, it's on sale, I would try it if you recommended it.

I will respond to more posts tomorrow, I wanted to send one out before I went to bed, the internet went out and I just got it back, so I will respond to posts then. I appreciate you all for responding with your thoughts and ideas, I hope it reflects on this game at a later time.

No, my unique isn't implemented yet. It requires some unique graphics to be created for it to work and I am sure that isn't high on their priority list (rightfully so) it will be a ring that converts a high % of cold damage to fire, increases burn damage, and also has an effect called 'burnt to a cinder' which eliminates corpses. Keep in mind my idea for the unique came quite a while ago - roughly a year - so a lot of things have changed since then, most notable, fire damage is now highly viable.

I've just come to realize that the game they are making, the audience they are targeting, isn't the man I am but the boy I once was (no offense to anyone here) - by that I mean they are targeting people who can invest a lot of time. Maybe you're an adult that can invest a lot of time, that's fine, I just don't happen to be as fortunate.

As for GD I play it and love it. It's just like TQ which, to me, is superior to D2 except for the fact that in TQ you had to farm specific areas to get specific drops (as mobs actually used the uniques they dropped) however GD doesn't seem to be following that path. Also GD like TQ has deterministic crafting which I find much more palatable given my aforementioned lack of play time hours.

I deplore trading. I do not have a lot of time to invest. I hate teams... so, yeah, PoE isn't for me. sadly, because with the exception of the 'crafting' system I truly believe PoE to be the best ARPG ever made.

@Rhys - thanks for the feedback. Sorry to be harsh. I think what I meant was that I regret giving the money to design a game that isn't for me, but I do not regret supporting GGG which by and large seem to be a great number of guys.

Interesting idea, I'm glad you shared it with me. When you say it's low on their priority list, how do you mean? I mean, I don't know the process at all, so if you could share any insight on that, it'd be neat to know, certainly not necessary, so don't worry too much about getting back to me on that.

I do want to try that game, I think I want to wait until it's at a released status or just one more act is added, it looks quite interesting. I am surprised you consider Path of Exile to be the best action RPG, and don't have interest in it, seems like to conflicting ideas, but again, I'd love if you'd inform me.

I am sorry you invested into the game and share similar feelings, I would love if this entire thread was overseen by someone from the balance department or lead, anyone with pull.

by 'low on the priority list' I meant that of all the things these guys and gals have to get done, my unique isn't in the top 10. I am just guessing. Maybe Chris is screaming at them every morning to get mine done... "To hell with ACT 4 we need to get this ring in the game!!"

I consider PoE the best ARPG due to its overarching ideas, like the open passive web and the skill system. However the layers of RNG and the restrictions they are putting on this openness in the name of 'balance' I just don't like. So what if a % of the playerbase uses the same skills? Why give us an open web if we can't break it? So, no, I don't regret giving them the money per say, I just regret the direction they have gone with the game and how that direction restricts my enjoyment.

For an example. In an earlier build of PoE you could have multiples of the same skill gem in different pieces of gear linked with different mod gems - and it would be treated as if you had 1 skill with 12 mod gems on it. Now, of course, that lead to very broken builds, but at the same time I LOVED being able to just create this fire spewing god of a witch who shot off spells like a Gatling gun. it was just FUN to do, you know? Now though everything is just beaten down and washed out. Like the web, you used to have 4 paths from any starting point to choose from but now you have 2. So why have the web at all? Why not just have different passives unlock at levels and then have those slightly branch into different areas... because that's basically what you have now.

Originally I thought this game was going to be a much more open experience with a much less punishing RNG crafting system. Why did I think that way? No idea. I just did. So I am not angry about supporting GGG - hell just knowing that I helped in some small way to bring a game to people who really do love everything about it, that's just awesome.

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Wittgenstein wrote:

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As much as I respect your opinion... this is just dumb. Saying that you dislike balance because it's not "fun" is by far one of the dumbest things I've read on these forums.