You break the game, or the game breaks you

The problem is that PoE is not infinite. They probably RNGed the map drops because of it. If players could drop the last level map they would stop as a mechanical limitation, and not a rng limitation.

That's why people most complain about and they just can't see this.


If we re-roll because there's actually no more content that we could do and we're already capped and at level 100, IT IS PERFECTLY FINE.

But the state of the game now FORCES US to re-roll. That's the whole problem.

If you're not rich and can't get the GG Top gear, you fail as a build vs absolutely insane one shotting mechanic.

But ok, i want to be rich. How ? Farming. And how can you farm since you can't achieve end-game because you don't have GG gear ?

???????????? RNGesus haven't revealed this yet.

+1

I agree whith OP as well. It's good to know that other people feel like this as well.

Hi

GGG is Bane, guess who the player is?



We all know what happens in the end, eh GGG?

cheers

"

Bars wrote:

I had a talk with a friend. He just finished his 30th or so full playthrough of Baldur's Gate 2 and said, "people whine how bards are useless but that's nonsense; I made this and this build and broke the game; I was overpowered". I replied that, in my experience, you can find a way to break the game with any class or combination. We started discussing various "overpowered" builds and quickly arrived at the same conclusion: you can pick any class and, if you know what you're doing, you can destroy everything.

This is still true of PoE. You simply have to know more and be better at it than a lot of other games.

I like it that way.

You provide example of BG2 replayability, but PoE already has that. You get your character to some arbitrary checkpoint (for me it's about lvl 80-85), where your build is mostly complete and functions as you envisioned it, then you create a new one and play through the game again. That's arguably one of PoE's strongest points - so much stuff to try out. Problem is - PoE doesn't have a clear cut ending, unlike BG2, so people don't have that "You win" screen at the end and see Jon Irenicus being mauled by demons :). I mean, what's the point of reaching 100 or getting a slightly higher dps weapon? The changes to your character after a certain point are purely numerical.

Also I, personally, wouldn't put BG2 in "difficult but rewarding" category. That game was so easily breakable it might've been made out of frozen spiderwebs. Most fun with BG2 for me came from roleplaying sub-optimal builds with self-imposed restrictions.

Overall I enjoy current difficulty curve and progression, then again, to me it doesn't feel that different from 1.3, maybe cause I'm not playing the highest level content (77+ maps) and don't really see the point in trying it out.

"

Bars wrote:

"

pneuma wrote:

The concerns about the game being too hard are completely disjoint from the game being badly balanced.

Would you be happy with enemy life and damage just being reduced to 80% (or some other fraction) of their current value? Or is there still some other concern?

Well, good morning. That's what I had to repeat 3 or 4 times. Why doesn't anyone actually read what I wrote? I made a whole fucking list of player vs. game balance categories.

What I would do if I had complete control:
- lower monster damage to about halfway between 1.3 and 2.0 levels to enable a bit more build variance
- more maps, period
- better loot, esepecially uniques. Unique drops in 2.0 are terrible. Most new uniques are also complete garbage. Most of them are targeted at a portion of the game which everyone who know what they are doing breeze through in a few hours. 99% vendor trash. You know it's bad when the golden beam of a unique dropping is hardwired to disappointment or disinterest in your brain instead of anticipation. And when your plans of equipping a character consist of botlike farming for orbs plus flipping because you know you'll most likely get only shit drops.
- ES flasks. Pure ES builds right now are screwed.

That's what I can think of in a few minutes. Perhaps there are other, better options. None of the changes can potentially affect PvP balance except perhaps ES flasks but I do think with the current sad state of leech they need this.

Man speaks the truth.

However, I expect GGG to hire Jay Wilson out of spite for their own players.

"

PaperRat wrote:

[...] Problem is - PoE doesn't have a clear cut ending, unlike BG2, so people don't have that "You win" screen at the end and see Jon Irenicus [...]

Have you played BG2 ? That's where the first third of the game ends.

It's like comparing BG2 with PoE -> Normal.

"

Bars wrote:

I guess I'll have to repeat some things.

I'm not appealing for adjustment of player vs. player balance, i.e. "buff this and nerf this". I'm appealing for a slight upward adjustment of players' power relative to the game. If done correctly, this will not affect the competitive aspect of the game. So, again:

Whether or not the game is competitive at its core is, at best, debatable - but it is irrelevant to this thread.

In DOTA, the characters destroy the creeps - the player there is a god compared to the NPCs. It does not affect PvP balance.

In Diablo 2, all classes had extremely powerful builds, stuff which would be called "broken" three times over on this forum - and yet the game had an enormous lifetime (in video game terms) and it enjoyed a rich PvP scene. Actually, PvP in D2 was a much greater part of the game then it is here.

For the Nth time: this is about player vs. game balance, not player vs. player balance.

Isn't it obvious to you that player vs. game balance affects player vs. player balance?

Suppose the game is flipping a coin, and your score is the number of heads you've gotten cummulatively. Player's scores will just be a function of how many flips they've done. There's no decisions to be made. A auto-click script would be competitive with a dedicated genius.

Now if we have a more complex game where different decisions have different pay-outs (poker for example), then the good players are able to differentiate themselves from the bad players by making better decisions on average even if they make the same amount of decisions.

So making the player stronger against monsters in PoE would lower the effect of making bad decisions compared to good decisions, and make the overall "score" of bad players closer to that of good players. It would disincentivize tinkering with your build, and learning about game mechanics.

I'd also like to talk about D2 since I have enormous amounts of experience in that game. I was successful at competitive PvP with a rigorous rule set (euro-pvp.net), and was part of the PvP rule-making team. The reason PvP was popular in D2 is because PvM was trivial in LoD. Any build that had the right runewords and uniques could carry 8-person baal runs. The only challenging PvM mode that D2 had was hardcore in classic (no runewords, no strong uniques). PvP in PoE is better and worse than D2, but we simply aren't inclined to participate in it if we don't want to because the PvM content is good enough to challenge us on its own.

Overall, your suggestion is short-sighted, and would make PoE a worse game.

"

MegaDeth666 wrote:

Have you played BG2 ? That's where the first third of the game ends.

It's like comparing BG2 with PoE -> Normal.

Kinda curious, do you mean Throne of Bhaal expansion? I did play it, was quite boring in my opinion, what with sloppily thrown together fights with nameless monsters all the time. Watchers Keep was the only interesting thing in it, from what I remember.

Sorry for the OT.

Thank you for bringing BG2 as a reference. Old days man :) that was fucking good. Still best game in the world.

On topic : imo a good design should allow players who invest time to understand the game and gear their char properly to "break" the game to a certain extent but yeah it's difficult to decide wether that sufficient time means 100 hours, 1 000 hours or 10 000 hours... some people seem to be able to break the game, even with the 2.0 changes.

"

Nephryo wrote:

Thank you for bringing BG2 as a reference. Old days man :) that was fucking good. Still best game in the world.

On topic : imo a good design should allow players who invest time to understand the game and gear their char properly to "break" the game to a certain extent but yeah it's difficult to decide wether that sufficient time means 100 hours, 1 000 hours or 10 000 hours... some people seem to be able to break the game, even with the 2.0 changes.

There are still some OP solutions. I have a phys tornado shot on tempest thats very promising atm (not enough time though). Also, if you can spare a death or three in standard a 6 link CoC wander with 2-3 spells will absolutely wreck. You can even build it tanky