jewels discussion: bringing RNG and Economy to the Passive Tree

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Temper wrote:

Blizzards reasons for using BOA go far beyond balance ...... you may want to research on the legal ramifications that played a huge part in the sweeping changes to their design philosophy.

Why not simply explain instead of making vague claims?

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Temper wrote:

It's entirely possible and proven by many ARPGs that not balancing the whole game around trade works just fine.

Yes, in ARPGs that don't allow trade or where it simply doesn't matter if you can trade during a LAN-type multiplayer session.

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Temper wrote:

Your statement is based on a false premise itself,because the only games you have to back up your claim do in fact use trade reliant systems but you ignore the slew ARPGs that released and ran for years without this reliance.The number of western ARPGs you have for reference totals around two (D3 vanilla and POE) and the opposing argument a whole slew of titles that date back to the D1 era.

See above, you're comparing offline games to online-only games that enable full trade.

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Splift wrote:

In d2 there was builds you can do self found, just like poe.

In d2 there was builds you could NEVER do self found, like enigma hammerdin, just like poe.

In d2 you could easily MF with 750 mf hell meph for a whole day like its a full time job and not find anything that day, just like dom runs in poe.

Even if d2 may have had slightly higher unique drop rates, who cares? most of them are trash, just like poe. At least in poe currency is easy to find, good luck with HR and SoJ's in d2.

Trading and economy are huge in d2 just like poe.

many items in d2 are so rare you could farm till the sun explodes and not find them just like poe.

You are aware that the *player made* economy in D2 was based and driven by dupes,bots,hacks and RMT and not developer designed right ?

Balance encompasses far more than just drop rates and rarity of drops....

SoJs were candy,don't kid yourself,there was far more valuable prizes than SoJs wanting to be had.

The problem with trying to compare anything to D2 is that most people never REALLY played D2. At least not the way it was actually intended to be played. Nearly every aspect of how people perceived D2 was affected by the fact that such a large number of players would simply make a new character, get rushed through all the actual content in a couple hours, get powerleveled by Baal bots, and then either run their own bots overnight or trade for whatever they needed in an economy that had been completely ruined by other people who did use those bots and any number of other hacks, dupes, and cheats. Even the people who tried to play legitimately would have had a hard time avoiding ALL the affects of this.

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we had this discussion a million times before: "hardcore", "competitive"...

but answer me one question, which pretty much sums up this thread.
both you and Xav:

why must the one thing which wasn't yet balanced around RNG and Trade, and is a huge part of what draws most players into the game - SF, and traders alike - get RNG injected into it?
don't we have enough of that crap in every. single. damn. part of the game already?

sure, the game is balanced around trade. but where do you draw the line? where do you say "I have to keep this an ARPG"?
can Chris/Jonathan/Qarl answer this question?

Jewels - as a concept of "dynamically changing builds" - are a great idea.
Jewels - as an actual implementation - may very likely be the last straw of overwhelming trade-simulator, real-RNG-everywhere design, which could make me quit.
2.5 years of being completely addicted to this game... takes one hell of a screw-up to make me quit - and littering the Passive Tree with RNG, taking away what little deterministic control I have over my own character, is exactly that.

ohh its RNG , RNG is the devil , MUST hate the RNG .

Why don't you play chess or something instead , In my opinion RNG is what makes games interesting , and i think more people then not appreciate that its not something stale but something alive that keeps on changing up your game everytime you play it, and the randomness of jewels is once again make this game even more amazing.

Stop being so angry all the time and let yourself be a kid and explore new worlds with open eyes for once.

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Xavderion wrote:

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Temper wrote:

Blizzards reasons for using BOA go far beyond balance ...... you may want to research on the legal ramifications that played a huge part in the sweeping changes to their design philosophy.

Why not simply explain instead of making vague claims?

"

Temper wrote:

It's entirely possible and proven by many ARPGs that not balancing the whole game around trade works just fine.

Yes, in ARPGs that don't allow trade or where it simply doesn't matter if you can trade during a LAN-type multiplayer session.

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Temper wrote:

Your statement is based on a false premise itself,because the only games you have to back up your claim do in fact use trade reliant systems but you ignore the slew ARPGs that released and ran for years without this reliance.The number of western ARPGs you have for reference totals around two (D3 vanilla and POE) and the opposing argument a whole slew of titles that date back to the D1 era.

See above, you're comparing offline games to online-only games that enable full trade.

Because it's a rather long winded legal story that I'd rather not spend a novel's worth of words trying to explain or describe and is best left to the individuals capable powers of internet research before making claims of why any particular system in a video game exists.

The information is publicly available and old news.

How many ARPGs don't have a trade window enabled ? .... How many ARPGS don't allow free trade ? 1-2 ?

The comparison is fair enough at a basic level,they're all supposed to be ARPGs no ? But I digress,I've stated somewhere else in this thread that I'm aware of the fact POE is designed from the ground up to bolster the economy,which means it will always be balanced in all aspects to protect that economy.

My issue is with certain posters *projecting* their opinion as fact that ARPGs with trade enabled MUST be balanced around trade.Where the actual fact is only ARPGS designed around trade and an economy require balancing around trade and the economy.

Just a heads up.Some of these Offline games as you call them had a rather large online only communities and some had dedicated servers.There are hardcore multiplayer clans still active that pre-date any from the D2 era and were so large that one developer decided it was worth running a dedicated server for one particular clan alone .

I'll not be coy,I find many of the so called *hardcore* D2 fans/pros to be obnoxious prats who's ARPG career mostly resides in the D2 trade bubble and little else.

=P

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khemintiri wrote:

ohh its RNG , RNG is the devil , MUST hate the RNG .

RNG isn't "the devil", it's a valuable building block.
without RNG, your area layout will be exactly the same every time you play it, and inhabited by exactly 10 packs of 5 white Zombies, all standing in the exact same locations, and dropping white Rustic Sashes from the 3rd one you kill, every single time.

but what I specifically hate about GGG's implementation of the RNG, is they take great care to break several unwritten rules about how RNG should be used:

• RNG should have rule-sets. checks and balances depending on where it is used and how. careful, case-sensitive biasing.
  let the dice-box just randomly pick numbers between 1 and 4 billion, every single time, and you get chaos.
  not the Orb obviously - the way you can get a Mirror from a white zombie in Normal Twilight Strand, or on the other hand utter low-base, 1-socket garbage from the absolute nastiest Map Boss you ever faced, with the scariest mods you ever dared take on, while fighting the worst possible monster pack compositions for your build, along the way.
• RNG has very well-defined roles in an ARPG. some of which I explained in the example (at the start of this post). you should never abuse or overkill with RNG. and you should never put RNG into places where it simply does not belong.
  GGG do. consistently.

and now they will put it into the one place it wasn't put into before. the last bastion of deterministic player control in the game.
I don't think I need to explain why "RNG" and "determinism" are opposites.
some things should remain deterministic. the Passive Tree where the player has full freedom to pick whatever he/she wants, should not have RNG restricting the player from doing just that.

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grepman wrote:

I genuinely don't get your point. since you play SSF, if you dont look at others, jewels will only widen your arsenal of builds and possibilities.

widen, if you find them or trade for them.
otherwise you'll just have to carefully avoid any Jewel Sockets in your path to wherever you wish to path to - which means less options. less control and freedom of choice.
which kind of is THE main point of why RNG in the tree is bad.

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Xavderion wrote:

The tree got RNG injected into it because it simply makes sense.

no, it really does not.

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Xavderion wrote:

By introducing jewels not only did GGG add further complexity to the game, but they also introduced a whole new branch of valuable items.

true. but "valuable" for me isn't what you think it is.

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Xavderion wrote:

you somehow believe trade and ARPG are seperate entities. This shows that you have no clue why trade/economy is a great thing for an ARPG, namely the fact that by making items tradeable, you give them value. The whole point of ARPGs is to kill monsters and get some value for it.

I believe Trade is a feature in ARPG. it should not affect the core game and/or its mechanics, in any shape or form. Economy is great for ARPG because some people like Economy, and enjoy taking part in it, within an ARPG. I don't, so I don't want to take part in it.
more importantly, I don't want to be punished for not taking part in the Economy.
lack the obvious benefits like faster/smoother leveling, or always getting exactly the items I need? sure. but not punished.
locking me out of nodes or even entire paths in the Tree, unless luck/trade? that's the ultimate form of punishing "heretics" like myself. and it may indeed be the "last straw" for me.

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Xavderion wrote:

Without trade 99,99% of items would be trash, see D3.

with trade-centred design, instead of a proper RNG-using loot system like a loot system in an ARPG should be - 99.99% of the items will be trash.
see D3 at release.
do you want Path Of Exile to be "D3 at release"? I sure as fuck don't.
but that's for another discussion.

Heya jK, I'm in agreement with you as far as the potential impact that jewels will have - from the simple stuff of being able to choose and achieve the elements of the build you want, to those who need to find duplicate jewels in order to be able to follow a build guide.

I'm going to reserve judgement until I see how they play out in the beta and are then balanced or modified for release - but I think there are some posters in this thread who are trying to use this opportunity to push the No Trade agenda, and it is diluting what is potentially a very valid discussion.

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johnKeys wrote:

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khemintiri wrote:

ohh its RNG , RNG is the devil , MUST hate the RNG .

RNG isn't "the devil", it's a valuable building block.
without RNG, your area layout will be exactly the same every time you play it, and inhabited by exactly 10 packs of 5 white Zombies, all standing in the exact same locations, and dropping white Rustic Sashes from the 3rd one you kill, every single time.

but what I specifically hate about GGG's implementation of the RNG, is they take great care to break several unwritten rules about how RNG should be used:

• RNG should have rule-sets. checks and balances depending on where it is used and how. careful, case-sensitive biasing.
  let the dice-box just randomly pick numbers between 1 and 4 billion, every single time, and you get chaos.
  not the Orb obviously - the way you can get a Mirror from a white zombie in Normal Twilight Strand, or on the other hand utter low-base, 1-socket garbage from the absolute nastiest Map Boss you ever faced, with the scariest mods you ever dared take on, while fighting the worst possible monster pack compositions for your build, along the way.
• RNG has very well-defined roles in an ARPG. some of which I explained in the example (at the start of this post). you should never abuse or overkill with RNG. and you should never put RNG into places where it simply does not belong.
  GGG do. consistently.

and now they will put it into the one place it wasn't put into before. the last bastion of deterministic player control in the game.
I don't think I need to explain why "RNG" and "determinism" are opposites.
some things should remain deterministic. the Passive Tree where the player has full freedom to pick whatever he/she wants, should not have RNG restricting the player from doing just that.

But it's your opinion , when you say you should never abuse or overkill with RNG , this is your opinion, and that it becomes chaos is not a bad thing for me , i like the highs and lows of an arpg , thats what makes the game for me.

As i have seen from the videos and i think it is quite obvious from them aswell is that there is different jewels for different stats , which makes it easier to craft them , rare jewels seems very powerful and not very hard to craft .

I dont know for sure ofcourse , but the videos of them show such a sign , and therefore i don't understand why this is such a big deal .

I believe this will make it easier to make builds , and improve build diversity , also adding "charms" to the game which has always been a thing ive want to see in the game.

RNG is for me a good thing , so don't go on assuming that RNG will ruin the passive skill tree , i think it will make it easier for all to make builds with less gear.

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khemintiri wrote:

RNG is for me a good thing , so don't go on assuming that RNG will ruin the passive skill tree , i think it will make it easier for all to make builds with less gear.

Jewels are "gear" too. gear for the Passive Tree. and like any gear, they are subject to the whims of RNG.
the Passive Tree has had zero "whims of RNG" to it, thus far. no direct ones at least.

read my response to Grepman in the post you quoted.
it applies for your claim too.

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johnKeys wrote:

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khemintiri wrote:

RNG is for me a good thing , so don't go on assuming that RNG will ruin the passive skill tree , i think it will make it easier for all to make builds with less gear.

Jewels are "gear" too. gear for the Passive Tree. and like any gear, they are subject to the whims of RNG.
the Passive Tree has had zero "whims of RNG" to it, thus far. no direct ones at least.

read my response to Grepman in the post you quoted.
it applies for your claim too.

YOU have claims , i have opinions , don't put me down to your level.

And you dont have to allocate those nodes until you get a jewel that works for you , and you can craft them with drops you have ingame .