jewels discussion: bringing RNG and Economy to the Passive Tree

I don't really know what else can be said in this thread. John, in order for the economy to be number one (as it is intended by GGG) a lot of RNG has to be in the game. So basically what you can expect is that even more RNG will be added somehow, even in later patches.

This is what GGG wants. And like I said, the economy and RNG go hand in hand. Like it or don't. This won't change.

You mentioned Grim Dawn somewhere. I hope you get an opportunity to play it since I find its in a good place as far as RNG goes. But again. Thats not necessarily a typical POE players cup of tea.

Its good that you try and discuss change and I'm sure the devs appreciate your input but when it comes to fundamental parts of the game (RNG feeding the mighty economy), do not expect change..

I play POE in small sprints because of the same problems you have but I see it for what it is and ultimately my go-to ARPG is another game. You should do the same..

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Chameleon wrote:

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miljan wrote:

The thing is your positive example is not about balance on trade. That shit you can do in any game, the one that has balance around trading, and the one that doesnt have it, but still has trade. I am not against trading, but I am against BALANCE around it. You did not post anything good what does a game get from BALANCE around trading and trying to make a game around a economy.

Now, do you want a list of all problems that bring balance around trading?

First we have core mechanic with sockets and gems. They are made for currency sink or trade. The character customization is heavily limited by items (and additional layer of RNG for currency sink), there are no skill tree, everything except passive tree are items(now we are getting gems even in passive tree, and guess what it is also limited because of trading).

Or lets talk about map system. The reason you dont get easily high level maps is also because of trading. So you have currency sink to lower the inflation.

Or the fact that balance around trading bring all the scum from booters, RMTs, hackers, cheaters, account stealing and similar.

Than you have lowered drop rates so people would need to go to trade and so the inflation is not as fast.

Or do you want to talk about lack of time invested reword? Or the fact doing some hard content like some map bosses and similar doesnt bring anything good (difficulty/reward is unbalanced) so people skip them.

Or the fact that the game has the worst drop rates for unique item from all arpg ever made. Hack they can make some of unqiues items that change your build (not talking about top end items)even a quest reword, but guess what, they cant because of trading and economy.

Or the fact you will not see some currency items that you could theoretically use for crafting ever drop (not talking about mirrors), or some that are so rare that you will have only few.

You listed only one good point, that has nothing to do with a game balanced around trading, but just with a game that has trading.

I can go on, but i guess you get the idea why balance around economy in loot based games doesnt bring anything good. Getting upgrades from monster kills is something that can not compare to trading. It just feels so good and 10 times better than trading.

In fact, I dont know one positive thing where trying to balance the game around trading brings to the game (not counting RMT for people that use it). Maybe you will have more player interactions compared if you only had optional trading, where you would get most upgrades from your drops (for people that like that).

So, can you say anything good that balance around trading/economy brings to the game?

Everyone at GGG should read miljan's post multiple times until it sinks in.

John I'm not looking forward to RNG on the Skill tree either. It was the last RNGfree zone in PoE...I was hoping GGG would reevaluate the RNG glut and pare back the RNG in 2.0 but no, they added more. -_-

No, they should not, because it is based around stupid idea.

You are against balancing with trade in mind, so you are for balancing with self-found in mind, correct? We still are allowing to trade. Good job, 99% of items are worthless now, and trading is OP-as-fuck.
10/10 game design, would design again.

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In fact, I dont know one positive thing where trying to balance the game around trading brings to the game (not counting RMT for people that use it).[

The fact you don't know any doesn't mean they do not exist. They do, but everything I will ever say will be debunked as "I do not like it". It is the way it is, and it DOES have good sides to it. If you haven't seen them yet, I'll go ahead and (sadly) say that this game is not for you. Jewels add another GOOD layer for us who play with trade - imagine that! So to me, this thread seems silly as heck, because not only everyone knew from the very beginning that PoE is trade-based, but also it is expected that this idea will expand. And it is here to stay.

Ya know,it's a brilliant idea that could be expanded on by applying it to the whole passive tree.

Characters could start out with zero nodes open and have to open them up with their leveling skill points as usual,after opening these empty nodes the player can then fill them in with any of the randomly found skill scrolls he/she has found on their adventures and potentially create the most awesome builds from the absolutely huge variety of randomly dropped skill scrolls. (oh my goodness,it sounds a bit like good old D1 ! Wooty woot)

Man they could even put a quality level on them just like gems and they could be manually leveled up to add new and exciting variations to the skill.Which means the skills must also be detachable from the nodes on the passive tree for trade purposes.

The hundreds of thousands of absolutely useless low percent multiplicative and additive type passive skills (useless on their own) could also have recipes to combine them into higher numbers.These type of skills would of coarse have to be changed to numbers such as .00005% or lower and be capped at to 5% of total character power to get the desired developer effect out of them.

And don't forget... the orb gambling/crafting system could also be used to tailor skills that are desirable to the player,with the caveat that a rerolls/crafting could in fact ruin the skill scroll completely.There's also the opportunity to incorporate mechanics into the illustrious hideout/masters design that could see the player acquiring randomly generated missions from new NPCs,that upon completion may or may not result in the reward of random skill scrolls and giving the player the opportunity to trade them in with a *Skill Master* for the opportunity to detach an already attached scroll from the tree,making it available for the player to trade upon max level,with a 50% chance that the process fails,the skill is lost and locks that node again .

Gating these scrolls behind the appropriate level of RnG would also ensure that the economy prospers exactly where it matters ... the top end of the pyramid and the nasty casuals and bottom feeders get exactly what they deserve .... second rate trash.

Wishfull thinking,I know.But one can dream.


=P

<Edited by support> Ive decided I agree with you somewhat adding jewels kinda does bring RNGesus and the economy into the tree. To what extent we dont know yet.

Personally I dont care Ill just buy the jewels I need if they are indeed important

I hate to say this as its such an overused cliche on these forums but "adapt or die"

PoE is an ever changing and evolving beast you will like some changes and some your wont but if you dont like some changes just try and take the high road and deal with it.

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k1rage wrote:

"adapt or move on"

Fify - it's a game after all.
I understand and sympathize with you, John, but this is simply a battle you can't win; so you'll have to either accept this or move on.

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Wazz72 wrote:

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k1rage wrote:

"adapt or move on"

Fify - it's a game after all.
I understand and sympathize with you, John, but this is simply a battle you can't win; so you'll have to either accept this or move on.

Spoiler

I've heard of another PoE that really kicks ass ;-)

I will lose, but I'll go down swinging that's for sure.

as for "the other PoE" (Pillars Of Eternity), I just started it. it's insanely fun.
but it's not a H&S ARPG, just like another brilliant game I recently played the hell out of - Legend Of Grimrock 2 - isn't.
you can't talk about a game from a different genre, as a "move on" alternative.

I still play TL2. it's one of the best damn games I played in a long time, AND it's in the same genre as Path Of Exile - but what makes me come back to Path Of Exile every weekend, is just this massive skill tree that makes me feel like a kid in a candy store, every single time.
this brilliant system where you can link gems to other gems, and suddenly get the skills acting completely differently.
these cool uniques that outright change the way your character plays...

but the uniques are RNG, and economy is the only reasonable way to get to play around with them, because fucking hell even grinding your ass off or killing something nasty, doesn't mean shit in this game.
and the skills gems are RNG too: they drop with RNG. they socket with RNG. they link with RNG... AARGH!

the tree is all I have left, really.
please GGG, I beg of you. seriously. don't let RNG and "poe.trade" fuck up my candy store.
please.
dynamic character builds can be done differently. even Jewels can be done differently.
please just reconsider. implement it differently.

because as much as I care about this game, played the hell out of it for thousands of hours, wrote thousands of posts on the forum. contributed to the wiki. watched Streams. met some cool people online... take away the one thing I enjoy the most, and this may just break me enough to leave for good :(

One thing is for sure no game worships RNGesus more faithfully than PoE

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k1rage wrote:

One thing is for sure no game worships RNGesus more faithfully than PoE

Looks like you have never played oldschool Korean games :3 They shit on PoE in terms of RNG.

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nait2k4 wrote:

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miljan wrote:

<snip>

This is not an argument about positives/negatives - it simply IS what the game is. It has been designed this way to meet the needs and desires of the Developers, and very clearly wears its heart on its sleeve.

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Path of Exile is an online Action RPG set in the dark fantasy world of Wraeclast. We're a small independent team of hardcore gamers based in New Zealand and have created Path of Exile as the game that we'd want to play ourselves. It is designed around a strong barter-based online item economy, deep character customisation, competitive PvP and ladder races.

While there are some elements that could use work - especially around item affixes and risk/reward as you mentioned, tailoring the trade and drop system to meet the needs of those who desire account bound or Self found only experiences is against the principles that drove the games development.

There is already choice available in the market. If the fundamental system of the game limits or prohibits your enjoyment, then you are able to seek your fun in other games. But, if you choose to play PoE you have to compromise by working within the boundaries set and established by GGG.

There is always opportunity for refinement, and there has been plenty of constructive discussion around that very topic, but at the same time we need to be cognizant of the original aims and desires of the team that created the game.

It is argument, GGG are not gods, they make mistakes as we can often see. And one of the core mistake they made is to build a game around economy, and we should talk about it what positive and negative things it bring to the game. If blizzard made a mistake and build a game around AH and later changed, so can GGG.

There is a very good reason why PoE is th only game on the market that uses this type of balance, and that is that there are more cons than pros to this way of thinking. Blizzard saw it, hope GGG will see it also with time (and they see it, as they are adding here and there more things like masters, with time I hope it will improve even more).

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Xavderion wrote:

If you make a game where every item is tradeable, you absolutely have to balance the game around that fact, else you get a game where everyone literally finishes their character in a week or so. Where's the fun in that?

No you dont need to balance around trading if you have trading in the game. The only thing you can do is have one high tier item that is hard to get so for people like you. Not sure about your question where is fun in what? In playing a game and getting loot from the game? You are playing a loot based game, not trading game, where is fun in trading? What is more fun, to kill that hard boss and get a upgrade, or to trade for it?

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Xavderion wrote:

These are only problems if you refuse to trade, or they were problems, GGG made PoE much more viable for self-found play over the past year or so. If you are willing to trade you won't have a problem with anything you mentioned.

Good that you agree that this game is full of problem that trading brings. Thats the thing I am saying. This problems are in the game because of the exact thing you said to move player to trade. And I am for removing those problems as trading is not fun and never was a core part of arpg games. It is more core part of MMOs. And the funny thing is, they want people to trade, but they want to make it as time consuming as possible because at its core, the economy doesnt work, so they need to slow it as much as they can.

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Xavderion wrote:

Well, the BALANCE makes sure the game isn't too easy to finish. If everyone would steamroll through the game and acquire near-BiS in a week PoE wouldn't be fun and GGG would be dead. What the trade/economy itself brings to the game is in my last post. I'd also like to add that there are certain worst case scenarios with no trade (as in current D3), where for example say you want some high end unique but it literally never drops, ever. What do you do? You can't do shit. With trade you can at least, well, trade for it. You can work towards that item and after a couple of days of farming you get it. Feels quite rewarding to me.

No, the balance is there as you said it in your same post to push people to trade, not to make it hard. Remove trading and balance the game around it will have the same difficulty as for people that have now with trading so you can drop that way of thinking right now.

GGG would be not dead, as this is not MMO, this is arpg game, where playing the game comes from replaying and remaking characters, playing in 3 month leagues with new updates and similar.

You didnt say anything what working economy brings to the game in your last post, the only thing you said is what trading in a game brings.

Also you contradict your self. You complain about d3 where you need to farm to get loot, and you can not trade to get it, but in same post you complain that if they balance the game not around trading you will get your items easy in week. Decide, what you are posting about so you dont contradict your self.

There is a very bad analogy going around that artificially limiting the game and balance around trading in some way makes it more fun. In reality it doesnt. So again I ask you can you literally say one thing that game balanced around economy brings to the arpg genre? One little thing, I gave a you a whole list that is not even full, as I can add even more to it. Fuck, even say I like more to play trading games and flip flop that to play the game, kill monsters and get loot from them. Even that I would accept, because there is nothing I can say against it.

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Xavderion wrote:

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k1rage wrote:

One thing is for sure no game worships RNGesus more faithfully than PoE

Looks like you have never played oldschool Korean games :3 They shit on PoE in terms of RNG.

I have not

but I have heard tales of the Koreans love for the mighty RNGesus

I also hear they love grinding