Those who say the game is just fine,those are the one who ruine the game.

Most players read the development manifesto and newsletters and get their game design ideas from that. That's the only thing informing them about game design. You have to keep in mind though that these ideas are pretty unorthodox and when they work, they work great, but when they don't they are very destructive. They are really pushing their luck sometimes and if you can't contest these flawed ideas or see what's wrong with them, your toolbox to improve the game gets very narrow.

One buzzword that keeps on coming up is balance. The devs have great trouble balancing the game right now so people keep talking about balance. The devs are using damage formulas and mechanics that are intolerant of balance in the higher regions and cause one-shots. That's too hard edged of a mechanic to be a core mechanic in an ARPG, where you can't avoid taking damage.

One-shots are used in games that have either

A team structure:

Marvel vs Capcom 3, where you have multiple characters on a team (Touch of death combos)
Pokemon, again more characters to take over (It's super effective, OHKO attacks)
Dota 2, a 5 man game with respawns (Nyxnyx)

A point system:

Divekick (Game has only one-shots! 5 Point system.)
Marvel vs Capcom 3 (depends on tournament structure)
Danmaku games (5 Lives)

A way to avoid getting hits by perfect play, AKA a very controlled environment, Hack n slash:

Devil may Cry 3
Dark Souls
etc

The latter applies to some of the boss fights in POE, like the Vaal Oversoul, and that is a well designed fight, mainly because it is very controlled. Nobody complains about that. But POE is not a hack and slash.

The interface, the netcode and the engine don't support that kind of gameplay natively. You'd need frametables, a close third person camera, complex enemy AI, gamepad support, audible tells, a netcode and server system right from the mount of olympus if it were online only.

POE is an ARPG. In an ARPG your playstyle is designed around taking hits, you will take hits, you can't avoid taking hits and you gear up for that.
In an ARPG you lose life constantly and regain it just as fast. It's not a big deal.
All your defenses are passive and you regain life quickly, so taking hits ok.
The genre teaches you from the beginning, getting hit is fine.

Which is unlike a hack and slash where as long as you stay out of trouble, you are completely fine every time. All your defensives are active. You are always in an advantageous position if you actively pursue your safety. If you play perfectly you will never get hit. Thats the main rule you are being taught in Dark Souls. You are never going to facetank so don't even get used to it. Stop getting hit.
If you attack, do it from a distance. If you fight melee, do it reactively and proactively.
Evade every hit or get your shield up.
Passive defenses like life are only there as a margin of error. If you get hit, it's because you're making mistakes. So these are games with a skill requirement. Every hit is earned. Your stamina is very important because your defensive is active, you have to evade everything manually and that costs stamina.
Yes, You have life but don't count on it as a defense. It's a signalling margin.
If you lose life that's always a bad sign.


In one case signal A means "You're fine", in the other case signal A means "You gonna RIP"

The main idea behind POE seems to be that elements of the HnS are being included so that player plays an ARPG like a hack and slash. But these elements are intermixed and not separated.

That means one of the strongest signalling devices the player has to evaluate danger is useless if you mix up the two kinds of gameplay. How is a player supposed to know that the gameplay switches from A to B, here?

In each genre taken separate, the signal is absolutely clear and reliable.
Not so taken together.

When the player hits half health he might still think hes fine, because he's playing an RPG.
But the gameplay changed and hes dead the next second.

Mix that with an unusual damage formula and you are begging for trouble. The player is incapable of evaluating his position in POE.

So you have boring, paranoid gameplay where nothing happens, and leisurely content where you get one-shot out of nowhere. And that's the norm. That's really nothing I would use in a sales pitch. I don't think it would go over well.

Design problem. Not balance problem.

People here take great pride in bearing design flaws like this because it's flattering to them. They think it's difficult and skillful, it makes them hardcore to put up with shit like that. There are more ways to make a game difficult than there are variables in a game. Just being difficult is not a quality. And fake difficulty doesn't make the game more challenging.

It's not fun and most people leaving have some sort of feeling that something is off but can't quite put their finger on it or can't put their thoughts into words. They know that it's broken but because everything is according to the questionable design principles the game gets to keep marching on unaltered. It's kinda sad.

@WeekendGamer: I appreciate the fact that you've separated the two concepts, which you label "hack and slash" and "ARPG" (the label names aren't important, the concepts are). What I don't understand is why you see them as mutually exclusive from a gaming enjoyment perspective.

I view PoE much as you do, except that I enjoy it. I also see PoE as a hybrid of your "hack and slash" and your "RPG." However, I don't see the waves of small hits from non-threatening monsters as somehow counterintuitive to the large hits from specific threats. Instead, I see it as a threat-determination and signal-reading problem for the player... a problem which can be challenging and fun. In a sea of noise from many monsters, your challenge is to pick out the ones which pose a threat in your "hack and slash" sense, and to avoid those at all times. You're not supposed to facetank them, so you don't; you avoid getting hit by them completely. Meanwhile, you have numerous minor threats which are far less relevant, and regardless of whether you can take hits from them or not, you certainly don't mind it as much, so you do, because it's better than taking hits from the big bad.

By far my favorite moments in Path of Exile involve situations where this is the case. For example, having (pre-nerf) Igna run away from you into unexplored areas of the map, combining elements of chasing a foe in retreat, kiting hits from a powerful enemy, and managing (mostly ignoring) hits from minor threats as you push further into unexplored territory with its own native mobs.

In short, it's about knowing which hits you can tank, which you can't, and for how long you can.

Fun for me. Not quite understanding how it's not fun for you.

"

WeekendGamer wrote:

Most players read the development manifesto and newsletters and get their game design ideas from that. That's the only thing informing them about game design. You have to keep in mind though that these ideas are pretty unorthodox and when they work, they work great, but when they don't they are very destructive. They are really pushing their luck sometimes and if you can't contest these flawed ideas or see what's wrong with them, your toolbox to improve the game gets very narrow.

One buzzword that keeps on coming up is balance. The devs have great trouble balancing the game right now so people keep talking about balance. The devs are using damage formulas and mechanics that are intolerant of balance in the higher regions and cause one-shots. That's too hard edged of a mechanic to be a core mechanic in an ARPG, where you can't avoid taking damage.

One-shots are used in games that have either

A team structure:

Marvel vs Capcom 3, where you have multiple characters on a team (Touch of death combos)
Pokemon, again more characters to take over (It's super effective, OHKO attacks)
Dota 2, a 5 man game with respawns (Nyxnyx)

A point system:

Divekick (Game has only one-shots! 5 Point system.)
Marvel vs Capcom 3 (depends on tournament structure)
Danmaku games (5 Lives)

A way to avoid getting hits by perfect play, AKA a very controlled environment, Hack n slash:

Devil may Cry 3
Dark Souls
etc

The latter applies to some of the boss fights in POE, like the Vaal Oversoul, and that is a well designed fight, mainly because it is very controlled. Nobody complains about that. But POE is not a hack and slash.

The interface, the netcode and the engine don't support that kind of gameplay natively. You'd need frametables, a close third person camera, complex enemy AI, gamepad support, audible tells, a netcode and server system right from the mount of olympus if it were online only.

POE is an ARPG. In an ARPG your playstyle is designed around taking hits, you will take hits, you can't avoid taking hits and you gear up for that.
In an ARPG you lose life constantly and regain it just as fast. It's not a big deal.
All your defenses are passive and you regain life quickly, so taking hits ok.
The genre teaches you from the beginning, getting hit is fine.

Which is unlike a hack and slash where as long as you stay out of trouble, you are completely fine every time. All your defensives are active. You are always in an advantageous position if you actively pursue your safety. If you play perfectly you will never get hit. Thats the main rule you are being taught in Dark Souls. You are never going to facetank so don't even get used to it. Stop getting hit.
If you attack, do it from a distance. If you fight melee, do it reactively and proactively.
Evade every hit or get your shield up.
Passive defenses like life are only there as a margin of error. If you get hit, it's because you're making mistakes. So these are games with a skill requirement. Every hit is earned. Your stamina is very important because your defensive is active, you have to evade everything manually and that costs stamina.
Yes, You have life but don't count on it as a defense. It's a signalling margin.
If you lose life that's always a bad sign.


In one case signal A means "You're fine", in the other case signal A means "You gonna RIP"

The main idea behind POE seems to be that elements of the HnS are being included so that player plays an ARPG like a hack and slash. But these elements are intermixed and not separated.

That means one of the strongest signalling devices the player has to evaluate danger is useless if you mix up the two kinds of gameplay. How is a player supposed to know that the gameplay switches from A to B, here?

In each genre taken separate, the signal is absolutely clear and reliable.
Not so taken together.

When the player hits half health he might still think hes fine, because he's playing an RPG.
But the gameplay changed and hes dead the next second.

Mix that with an unusual damage formula and you are begging for trouble. The player is incapable of evaluating his position in POE.

So you have boring, paranoid gameplay where nothing happens, and leisurely content where you get one-shot out of nowhere. And that's the norm. That's really nothing I would use in a sales pitch. I don't think it would go over well.

Design problem. Not balance problem.

People here take great pride in bearing design flaws like this because it's flattering to them. They think it's difficult and skillful, it makes them hardcore to put up with shit like that. There are more ways to make a game difficult than there are variables in a game. Just being difficult is not a quality. And fake difficulty doesn't make the game more challenging.

It's not fun and most people leaving have some sort of feeling that something is off but can't quite put their finger on it or can't put their thoughts into words. They know that it's broken but because everything is according to the questionable design principles the game gets to keep marching on unaltered. It's kinda sad.

A pity this was buried in a thread by such a known troll. I almost didn't see it.

I think you've totally nailed the problem with your approach to what 'life loss' represents in various games that can fall under the 'Action RPG' umbrella. People who enjoy PoE, myself included, should read your post with a sense of despair, because it's true and, more importantly, because it IS a design issue, it's not easy to rectify.

Just to be clear, I believe you're using 'hack n slash' in fairly arcade terms, where getting hit is dire. You cite Dark Souls and Devil May Cry. I think the word you're looking for is 'twitch'. There are various arcade Hack n Slash games that do use twitch mechanics but aren't as dire when you get hit as you point out. Gauntlet in its various iterations has a grey area of 'life' and healing, as does the classic Shadow Over Mystara. In fact, I find your lumping-together of DMC and the Souls games a bit half-cooked, because DMC's healing typically comes from successful combos and destructibles (curiously the first one is how you get healing in PoE, something I'll come back to in a bit), whereas the Souls games' healing is very limited but player-controlled. Healing is much, much more tactically deployed in the Souls games -- essentially, an expert player shouldn't have to even do it.

As you noted, that's unavoidable in other games. You will get hit, you must heal.

If you're going to talk about what ohko means and what taking-damage means in a game, then its means of healing is very significant, I'm sure you'd agree.

Getting back to the game at hand, I somewhat disagree that GGG are pushing PoE as an ARPG meant to be played 'as a Hack n Slash' -- we don't have an active dodge (as D3 now does), you take damage-without-dying from the very start. You have potions without cooldowns. You know you're playing an ARPG and not a hack-n-slash because of the obvious aesthetics: the life/mana globes, the skill bar, the inventory, the character screen with its barrage of stats. That damn fucking Skilldrasil. PoE is an ARPG, not a hack-n-slash, and anyone feeling otherwise, expecting otherwise, is in for worlds of disappointment and confusion.

And if it's an ARPG, then your goal is not to not-be-hit, but to be able to survive the hits. You've covered this, and covered it well.

But it's not that simple, because unlike other ARPGs, we have a hack-n-slash approach to healing. We have this very strangely 'proactive' mentality of 'to kill is to heal' -- you have to kill things to get flask charges or hit them to leech. There is, beyond leveling up, no way to heal in Path of Exile that doesn't involve hitting and killing things, and even leveling up is a result of doing that en masse.

This is also why running back to town is so important, more so in this game than any other ARPG I've ever played, where you can typically run around hoping for a healing shrine or a potion from a barrel. Or, even in D3's case, you can wait for that stupid cool down. In PoE, if you're almost dead and your flasks are empty, you have two options -- run to town/logout, or brave the fray in the hopes of a kill getting your flasks back up.

This is, of course, assuming you're not geared to regen/leech effectively, which virtually everyone at the so-called end-game is. It's considered a necessity. This to me contradicts the whole 'you will be hit, it's okay to be hit' mentality typical of ARPGs, but at the same time it isn't quite as clean as the 'don't get hit, ever!' mentality of the twitch Hack-n-Slash genre.

On paper the idea of killing to get healing looks fine, but once you get into the upper echelons of play, all it really means is 'leech, regen or run back to town'.

This is that paranoid play style you mentioned, manifesting even before the OHKO angle comes into play.

I think PoE turns us into paranoiacs well before OHKO is a real problem. I THINK that's the devs' intention, but where that falls down is our paranoia and the precautions we take are still not enough. The hoops you need to jump through aren't just on fire, they shock, freeze and bleed you as well.

And that's where so many players are coming undone. As I said elsewhere, the wall is a failure. Whether it's the Act 3x Cruel wall, the Act 3x Merciless wall or the Map wall, the walls of PoE aren't encouraging or challenging. They do not, as good walls in games do, tell you if you try just one more time, you'll get through. They don't tell us, 'look, try something else next time' -- in short, they don't prompt our eagerness to get past them.

They're just walls. If you do get past them, you don't feel like you've achieved anything. You feel exhausted and angry. How dare this game ask so much of you for so little reward?

In a good Hack-n-Slash, knowing your skill was enough to overcome the boss/level is the reward. You sit there grinning like a maniac when you finally dodge/dash/run/block/combo enough to fuck that fucker up. You stare at the assessment screen like it's a certificate of high distinction with your name on it.

In a good ARPG, knowing you were prepared enough through leveling and gearing up to overcome the boss/level is the reward. You've sat in town fiddling with your items for ages; you've used other zones as farms, getting what you think you need based on earlier experiences and probably deaths. Maybe you've just said fuck it and have enlisted the help of higher level friends. Whatever it takes. And when that boss dies and the loot explodes everywhere, it's like manna from heaven...although most of the time you've overgeared just to beat him that whatever he might drop really isn't that good anyway.

...I can safely say that I get neither feeling from PoE *other than when I am racing*.

THEN AGAIN, I got neither feeling from other ARPGs once I reached that point where it was no longer about getting through content anyway, so maybe we need a third reaction type. Something that isn't twitch-rewarding, and something that isn't character-rewarding.

This, to me, would be when the game has become a grind.

How do you reward grind? I am not asking this hypothetically. I think D2 pulled it off because it was a different time, with different players and different standards.

We've gone way past damage and healing and even OHKOs here. We're looking at people who can clear high end maps effortlessly. The answer 'add higher content' merely exacerbates the problem -- people will just reach the same point of effortlessness, sooner rather than later.

I think it'd take a much more experienced, hardened development studio than GGG to answer this problem.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

@WeekendGamer: I appreciate the fact that you've separated the two concepts, which you label "hack and slash" and "ARPG" (the label names aren't important, the concepts are). What I don't understand is why you see them as mutually exclusive from a gaming enjoyment perspective.

I view PoE much as you do, except that I enjoy it. I also see PoE as a hybrid of your "hack and slash" and your "RPG." However, I don't see the waves of small hits from non-threatening monsters as somehow counterintuitive to the large hits from specific threats. Instead, I see it as a threat-determination and signal-reading problem for the player... a problem which can be challenging and fun. In a sea of noise from many monsters, your challenge is to pick out the ones which pose a threat in your "hack and slash" sense, and to avoid those at all times. You're not supposed to facetank them, so you don't; you avoid getting hit by them completely. Meanwhile, you have numerous minor threats which are far less relevant, and regardless of whether you can take hits from them or not, you certainly don't mind it as much, so you do, because it's better than taking hits from the big bad.

By far my favorite moments in Path of Exile involve situations where this is the case. For example, having (pre-nerf) Igna run away from you into unexplored areas of the map, combining elements of chasing a foe in retreat, kiting hits from a powerful enemy, and managing (mostly ignoring) hits from minor threats as you push further into unexplored territory with its own native mobs.

In short, it's about knowing which hits you can tank, which you can't, and for how long you can.

Fun for me. Not quite understanding how it's not fun for you.

Glad that you see it positively and enjoy that. We're all different. New genres emerge every once and so often. But it is pretty safe to say that kind of gameplay is only for a minority of ARPG players. And you see how it could cause problems if you have any sort of latency in addition to your reaction time. Then it just fundamentally can't work. It's super risky.
As a designer you are making it very difficult for yourself to attempt to balance that.

For a hack n slash you get to prepare for every boss encounter. You get cutscenes, you see the arena and you are mentally in the zone in the first place. And you know, boss fight.
You get to be prepared. So these fights are usually very fair almost regardless of difficulty. They could be almost impossible, yet they are usually fine.
The difficulty is justified here. This is easy to balance.

So this is why I don't like balance talk or balance demands. Design alterations could direct the player more in the direction you are talking about and focus development around that gameplay transition if that is how the game is supposed to be played. That's better that flipping numbers.

"

WeekendGamer wrote:

Spoiler

Most players read the development manifesto and newsletters and get their game design ideas from that. That's the only thing informing them about game design. You have to keep in mind though that these ideas are pretty unorthodox and when they work, they work great, but when they don't they are very destructive. They are really pushing their luck sometimes and if you can't contest these flawed ideas or see what's wrong with them, your toolbox to improve the game gets very narrow.

One buzzword that keeps on coming up is balance. The devs have great trouble balancing the game right now so people keep talking about balance. The devs are using damage formulas and mechanics that are intolerant of balance in the higher regions and cause one-shots. That's too hard edged of a mechanic to be a core mechanic in an ARPG, where you can't avoid taking damage.

You make some interesting points, but I disagree that a game needs to be one or the other. I also don't think precedence is a good reason to perpetuate stale game mechanics. If the sports world thought the same way, you would either be able to dribble in soccer, or pass but not both in the same game.

The one shots in PoE are not the problem. Characters taking very high damage or getting one shot because they aren't prepared for the monster isn't an issue either.

The difficulty scaling from area to area and from act to act needs to be smoothed out, so the progression is more in line with character progression. A few monsters here and there(rares, bosses or specific area types) dealing excess damage for the level is OK, it takes away complacency and adds a sense of danger.

Part of the problem is spacing. When a game intentionally spaces its opponents in clumps so that every encounter just triggers the next clump ad infinitum, then the player's ability to use tactics is severely diminished.

PoE could fix this by randomizing its clumps somewhat. Occasionally there would be huge mobs, and sometimes they would be spread thin. I do think the monster aggro range needs to greater, and much much greater whenever there is combat that the monsters can hear.

A large part of the instagib grief is due to the runaway inflation of linear result tables. When characters have access to good gear and make good passive choices their numerical abilities skyrocket.

This means the monsters need to keep up, and so they need huge damage and accuracy to get through the character's defenses.

Characters who are not optimally geared and skill built can be at the mercy of this combat system.

While player damage and defenses should increase as they acquire better skills and equipment, it shouldn't remain a linear expression.

Let's take a look at Olympic 100 meter gold medalist times:

Year: Time(Seconds)

1896 12
1904 11
1920 10.6
1936 10.3
1972 10.14
1984 9.99
1996 9.84
2008 9.69

If the race was done like an ARPG we would probably see these medalist times:

1896 12
1904 11
1920 10
1936 9
1972 8
1984 7
1996 6
2008 5

The game needs a bigger dash of physics and some diminishing returns.

The combination of the various elements above would give the game a more consistent feel and allow the player the chance to really insert themselves into the game more. If their style of interactions is smart and/or dextrous than they will be able to defeat monsters that the skill tree and gear alone would not allow.

It would put the RP back into the ARPG.

Right now we have a huge A and an rp so small it almost belongs on microfilm.

"

WeekendGamer wrote:

I see no problem in "you have to kill to heal yourself", if it's implemented properly. To be honest, for early stages of the game, it is implemented well enough. Potions are enough to heal you in most cases. When potions arent enough, it usually tells you you're undergeared. Or it's a boss, that was made too hard. The problem is, as your character progresses, flask healing gets weaker and weaker (relative to intended HP pool), while damage deal by enemies gets harder and harder. So, at some point (lets call it "endgame") players realize, that flasks are just NOT enough. And when they also realize, that life leech has opposite scaling (negligible at start of the same, but vastly out-performing flasks in endgame), they just choose life leech. Or %HP regen, sometimes.
It's just a poor implementation, no more. It can be fixed just by tweaking some numbers.

Am I not allowed to say that the game is just fine if I like it as it is? Am I the destroyer of games? x(

"

Xavderion wrote:

Am I not allowed to say that the game is just fine if I like it as it is? Am I the destroyer of games? x(

it's fine to say that, but if you enter everybody's feedback threads and start shitting in them because you think the game is already perfect, you're being counter-productive to the feedback forum and are indirectly potentially hurting the game over the long term, depending on how much you do it.

"

Veruski wrote:

"

Xavderion wrote:

Am I not allowed to say that the game is just fine if I like it as it is? Am I the destroyer of games? x(

it's fine to say that, but if you enter everybody's feedback threads and start shitting in them because you think the game is already perfect, you're being counter-productive to the feedback forum and are indirectly potentially hurting the game over the long term, depending on how much you do it.

I never shit on the feedback itself, I sometimes shit on the manner the feedback is presented in.