A little constructive criticism from a fanboy

So there are things about this game I love. The difficulty, the learning curve, the variations in builds, the graphics (yes I know thats not a popular opinion but I appreciate consistent styling and it is gritty), the leagues, races, the currency system. I could go on.

However I need to vent some constructive criticism.


1. Ephixa's death at #1 1MHC race.

Desync has always been a bitch. Those who continue to play have made their peace with it and Ephixa's reaction (albeit on stream) was graceful. Personally if that was me I would have felt sick. All that time grinding, being first place and then dying in a way that was entirely out of the hands of the player.

Now if it was a one shot that is fine. If the internet ceased to work and death was a result. That is kind of fine but not the game's fault. The thing is he was playing how he should, was an entire screen away from the mob that killed him and literally had 0 chance to save himself. I call this unfair.

I understand the policy of no resurrections for HC chars whether it is a bug or not but I think this case is slightly different in that he was first in the race and he had streamed evidence of the desync. Maybe it is time for a referee system in the races that keep an eye on the top 10 players who stream (no stream no ref) and if a particularly bad desync unfairly kills a racer they can get back their char with a little downtime. I would guess there are backups of characters and this wouldn't be too difficult to implement.

This might not be viable as it would require refs to be online when streamers are online and people play a varied and lengthy hours so make streaming a 100% requirement and a system for providing that evidence for moderation. I think it is only fair to those who strive to be the best and are taken from the race by the dreaded desync. It would be easier than coding out the desync I guess.



2. Desync in general.

Now I have done my studies into desync and understand client/server technology on a programming level so I feel for GGG with this problem.

The thing is the accuracy reason is nice in a way, as passionate games developers who want something won't budge on their baby, but does anyone really care about it who plays the game?

I have never built for accuracy. It is a stat I completely ignore unless I get an item that says "hits cannot be evaded". It isn't a stat that defines a build. Let's say you "accidentally" end up with two items from the 10 slots that gives you accuracy and you run the game with 80% chance to hit. By the time it matters you will most likely be hitting fast enough that the 20% misses aren't bothering you when it comes to killing monsters.

If you are trying to peak dps you would care about it sure. But it won't be your primary concern. +dmg, crit, crit damage, attack speed would be. Accuracy is more of an annoyance than an entertaining game mechanic.

Natural accuracy, ie you shoot at a monster and it moves out of the way, is another issue. This is a nice system to have. Nobody who wants to play a skillful game wants aimbot mechanics. However nobody who wants to play a skillful games wants their skill to be negated by a death like Ephixa's. It's just not worth it.

So I would say it is time for accuracy to take a back seat to resolve desync deaths and build accuracy over the top. It would be simpler to do that than keep accuracy and work around it with code.

(Note: I don't really get desync much. Monsters desync more than I do. I rarely type /oos and never in a fight. This problem isn't one for me so much as I fear the day that desync killed my high level char and it breaks my tender little heart ;) )


3. Shader FPS and spawning effects.

Now I know people run this game with solid FPS but there is an issue on lower end machines.

My spec is as such. 2.4ghz Intel dual core. 8gb ram. 1gb rad hd4850. 7200rpm hdd.

This computer is roughly 6 years old now. The GPU is old but is a real gem card that still runs today's games. The CPU is mobile phone quality now but again it runs games fine. Ram is fine for this game. The HDD is slow I know.

I run the game in a ramdrive. It helps my loading times by a large factor. The one thing it doesn't help is the effects.

If a skeleton spawns my system stalls for half a second. Sparks cause my fps to drop to sub 30fps. Lightning seems to lag me (Piety in Crem for example does a lightning storm that is consistent but every now and again it does a catch-up and hits 3 or 4 times instantly). Last night I opened a strongbox with 3 rares inside and my system stopped. When the frame updated I was on roughly 2% HP. I did something I never wanted to do and I logged out. I took a minute to log back in because I was positive I had died. Fortunately I lived to see another day but I felt dirty for this. However the general consensus in chat was that such a performance issue would warrant logging out.

I have all my settings on the lowest possible except for my resolution (1920x1280) but I have tried to reduce my resolution to help and to no avail so I leave it at my native desktop res.

Now I presumed the assets included shaders and models that spawn so all that is loaded into my ram but it still kicks the crap out of my machine so I know it is probably CPU related.

I would garner a solution to this would be to create low-cycle effects and shaders as selectable fallback options for low end machines. If you don't want to cater for the lower end machine that is perfectly understandable and I really should upgrade my system. Also a low setting for textures wouldn't go a miss.


4. Trading posts.

Chat trading is niche. You love it or hate it. It has advantages and disadvantages.

Now in a race environment you are forced to trade. There is no way around it if you want to compete.

There won't be an auction house, which is fine, but I think there is room for a trading post.

Here is how I imagine it would work.

Step 1.
Create a buyable tab called "Tradepost Item tab". Im sure people wouldn't mind paying 200gg for it. Currency would continue to be traded in chat. Makes more sense that way.

Step 2.
Seller adds items to his tab that will be visible to those using the trading post search. He also adds a buyout value for automatic trading.

Step 3.
Buyer uses a trading post. He searches for an item by name. A list of people with that item in their tradepost tab alongside a textbox that allows the searching buyer to leave a bid. They cannot see the highest bid or any bids except their own. They can check a box that says "willing to barter" which indicates they would pay a little more if someone else bids higher or will swap it for an item for equal or higher value. If they bid the buyout value they get it automatically at the value they bid and NOT the buyout value. So if you bid more than they want for it... you pay more than they want for it.

Step 4.
Seller logs in and can see all the bids for that item in their trading tab log. They have currency paid for an item added to their main stash or possible in a section of the trading post tab.

Step 5.
Barter will occur and all bidding players and the seller will be notified when bidders come online so trading can occur.


I believe this still gives the human element to trading, bartering can still occur, anonymity of bidding keeps it far away from an auction house style and it simply gives you the ability to sell a limited amount of items whilst offline or whilst playing the game. Personally I get sick of spending half my time in trade trying to barter upto items I could be dropping whilst I play. Also it requires GGG points to sell things which is profit for the company and isn't pay to win necessarily. If it is considered too close to a pay to win options then give everyone a free tab that lets you add 18 blocks of inv (2x3 boxes enough for 3 large items) and the pay option increases the size. Nobody can complain about that.



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Summation.

I love this game. I have died in bad ways before. I have even died whilst waiting for Docks to load (hence my use of a randrive now) and it made me quit for quite some time. I came back and I always keep coming back because it is simply the best ARPG ever made (and I have played D2 thoroughly but this peaks my interest more as a games fan and a game developer).

The issues are fixable and I know the budget for an indie company is critical to survival so I will give you two days to fix all this before I come down and hit you all with puncture and run away. In all seriousness I hope you can build the company up to get more developers and do an even better job than the amazing one you already are. Can't wait for expansion day. Thanks !

Believe when i tell you that the Devs know how much they are losing on D-Sync.

Most of the My HC players friends quitted due to this.

I know they have been trying to figure this problem out for a long time.

I stopped playing HC for the same reason, now i only play the 4 months Non-HC leagues.
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By the way this is the reason why the game seems to be dead at the moment wich i think is bad business model.

Leagues should be 5 months long and have a month of rest in btwn.
EXP should be harder to get as soon as you HIT lvl90.

My 2 cents.

SSSHHHHHHHH!!!! You are not allowed to use the term "F****Y" here. I was messaged by a moderator and that word was removed from a post a few months back as being a derogatory term to describe a fan that thinks GGG can do no wrong and PoE is perfect.

 GGG shouldn't be held to supporting your out of date Radeon HD 4850. Two years ago my aging Radeon 4870 was upgraded to an MSI Hawk Radeon 6870. On my Core-i5 660 (dual core with HT) it runs PoE with no problems so your 4850 is below minimum specs for PoE. Anyone who games should never use a 128-bit memory interface gpu, always use a 256-bit or better video card. Same for trying to use a laptop. Just don't do it or suffer serious frame rate problems but don't QQ GGG over it. Yes, PoE being a custom game engine has graphics performance issues aplenty but knowing that and then using an inferior gpu is wrong and you shouldn't call GGG on it.

"

poliboy wrote:

Believe when i tell you that the Devs know how much they are losing on D-Sync.

Most of the My HC players friends quitted due to this.

I know they have been trying to figure this problem out for a long time.

I stopped playing HC for the same reason, now i only play the 4 months Non-HC leagues.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By the way this is the reason why the game seems to be dead at the moment wich i think is bad business model.

Leagues should be 5 months long and have a month of rest in btwn.
EXP should be harder to get as soon as you HIT lvl90.

My 2 cents.

I'm sure desync has cost GGG 100s of thousands or maybe millions in revenue over high drop out rate because of it. They have yet to cross their not just "ocean" sized problem but "planet" sized problem they have with their super tight server controls to prevent client side hacks/cheats and massive desyncs. With each new zone the desync gets worse. Look out for mini-expansion and new zones (OMG, the desync, the desync!).

5 month leagues with a month break so we get 2 a year. Law of Fives rules... Woohoo!!!

"

Arrowneous wrote:

 GGG shouldn't be held to supporting your out of date Radeon HD 4850. Two years ago my aging Radeon 4870 was upgraded to an MSI Hawk Radeon 6870. On my Core-i5 660 (dual core with HT) it runs PoE with no problems so your 4850 is below minimum specs for PoE. Anyone who games should never use a 128-bit memory interface gpu, always use a 256-bit or better video card. Same for trying to use a laptop. Just don't do it or suffer serious frame rate problems but don't QQ GGG over it. Yes, PoE being a custom game engine has graphics performance issues aplenty but knowing that and then using an inferior gpu is wrong and you shouldn't call GGG on it.

You have a point here but my friend has a top end pc and his still freaks out with some shader effects. It is less severe than my case as it is amplified by other issues in my case but the shaders and spawning mobs is still an issue for those with high end computers in some cases.

I will be upgrading at some point and getting rid of the ATI/AMD card in favour of nvidia but for the lower end pc market, which is larger than the high end, this game could use some optimisation options rather than the "clay factory" texture settings that don't help the shaders.

I just wanted to comment too. I know desync will never go away but that shouldn't stop us from criticizing how much of a problem it still is. I literally can't even play my cyclone character, he will desync after the first cyclone, almost every time. His move speed is practically 0%, I play in open areas, I don't click all over or act like a maniac. Nothing I do helps.

The first step would be to remove skills that cause heavy desync. Cyclone is the worst one, maybe whirling blades should go as well. And if not removed, those skills should *Definitely* be removed from the monsters that have them. I can't tell you how many times I've almost died to a Cyclone exile or vaal boss because they get so desync'd I can't tell what is happening.

It really is the worst part about the game. And it is infinitely worse for melee characters.

EDIT: On the topic of performance, this game is also terrible. I have a sweet system that can run any game completely maxed out... and yet, I constantly get little lag spikes when new effects are loaded. First time I drop a totem, first for basically anything when I start up. It really is uncalled for when every other game ever manages to load resources into the game session without freezing my system for a full second.