Remove 6 link divination cards

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davidnn5 wrote:

Aim: My point was exactly that. Whether you're average or not in terms of time played per day (I strongly suspect not), by your numbers you would normally be expected to take 1.2 (900 fuses) to 2 (1500) months of a 3 month league to get a six link. I.e. most of the league may be over and you may well have quit that character.

Yes, this change makes achieving a 6-link quicker. The first question is, by how much on average? Do we actually know? How many people actually got one within a week? What about if we exclude tabulas? How many people left the league without a 6-link at all?

Next question is if you can get to maps within a day or two, why shouldn't a 6-link be achievable in a week? Should 6-links be level-gated somehow? What minimum level would you set? 90? 95? 99?

In that sense, your personal experience means little to nothing. It's about the broader playerbase. To reiterate, trading doesn't in any way change the theoretical amount of 6-links cards *can* add into the mix. It simply changes your personal timing for getting a 6-link.

What if 2 third of the league is over and you get a 6L ?
This is sooo much better than getting it very early, at least you can feel some progression still after.
If you get your 6L from the start and your setup is at max potential, then you won't be progressing but for xp ....... The very high end 6L objective still gives more appeal than just levels.

Leaving a league without a 6L does not matter, 6L should never be something that most players can access because it is far from being needed, let the holly grail of PoE's gearing still be the holy grail.

First you were asking how many hours an average players plays, and then you are mentioning 2 days map reaching ???
Reaching maps within 2 days is nowhere near average for a player, especially in a fresh league ( during a weekend, then some definitely will, but an average player will not be able to keep that pace during the next days and therefore the 6-links in a week things is kind of ridiculous imo ).

Seriously, the "give everybody everything so that no players gets frustrated" trend is even reaching PoE ..... sad.
( And I have played without 6L > 99% of my time on PoE )

Path of exile has never been about the very broad target/audience, PoE is still a niche game.
It is not because it got more popular that gear should be given more easily to anybody, and I do hope that GGG will stick to that.


EDIT : I want to add that I would be more for an increased rarity of those cards, and maybe make the base chest random ( could be somewhat level gated ). Removing them completely is not the only solution.

I have a few simple points to make in response to the various responses to my post.

Most of them were variations of 'no one should ever feel they need a 6-link, 6-links do not matter and everyone should be happy with less' etc. We even had mention of a player doing without a 6-link for 99% of their PoE playtime - don't think you're selling the game there by the way! Nor do I think GGG get as much perverse pride over such a statement as they used to. And PS, it's not a niche game that has hundreds of thousands of people playing at once (and aiming for more). Sorry. You thought you were playing a hipster ARPG and it turns out you're in the rat race.

Anyhow, you've been taught by experience that 6-links are a holy grail. Like I said. And as Aim said you can actually get a 6-link for pennies at most - i.e. Nycta's Lantern or heck, Bitterdream? Correct me if the second one is another league-limited item though. There's so many nowadays.

Guess what - there will be a new holy grail for you some day soon, and if not and you happen to stop playing, as sometimes happens, the game itself will have a new holy grail. And again. And probably about once per 3 months. It just won't be a white 6L chest armour.

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Another good point. I go from 3L to 6L though skip 4 AND 5.

Best weapon in the game until you get a tabula/astral plate

Using a ghetto 6L isn't relevant to the discussion.
Bringer of Rain is 1c for a 7L, no one is crying about it as far as I see and that is probably because you can only fit it in melee gampeplay which no one wants to be harder compared to ranged.

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Aim_Deep wrote:

I'm pretty casual. like 2-3 hrs a day and 8 hrs on weekend and have no trouble getting 1500 fuse in 2 month just off vorcici daily + casual farm

that appropriate IMO

Don't see how 8 hours per day during weekend is casual, that is a whole work time.

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What if 2 third of the league is over and you get a 6L ?
This is sooo much better than getting it very early, at least you can feel some progression still after.
If you get your 6L from the start and your setup is at max potential, then you won't be progressing but for xp ....... The very high end 6L objective still gives more appeal than just levels.

Big proportion of the people playing the league will burnout after 1/2 of the league, they won't keep on playing.
To those people then the 6L might as well not exist because grinding 2/3 of a league for a thing that is advertised as the game selling point (gem links + combinations) is without sense.

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EDIT : I want to add that I would be more for an increased rarity of those cards, and maybe make the base chest random ( could be somewhat level gated ). Removing them completely is not the only solution.

The most common 6L cards are indeed random based, not sure if you noticed.

@davidnn5

Great points, agree with you 100%.
And since no one seem to even address my last post I will paste a part of it back:

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I never said 6L was mandatory, but it certainly is endgame. Having access to full link combination sounds rather endgame to me.
Whether the game content is easy enough to be passed with a 4/5L is irrelevant, a 6th link can in some cases be a utility and not a DPS gem and open up more builds.

The whole premise that a 6L is luxury is baffling to me, it shouldn't be.
If the players damage is out of whack because of a 6th link then I would rather they tone down player damage rather than make a 6L happen once in a blue moon.

Edit:

For people who want to have an endgame goal Labyrinth Helm enchant is a good place to start.
It will take you time and you will have a good sense of achievement while not making the game any less enjoyable for the rest of us.

And if you say it's RNG and not something to work towards, do know that is hypocritical when you argue that another RNG element (6L) is a endgame goal.

To answer the 2 previous post ( trying to make not too long, but that's going to be tough ) :

- Of course Path of exile Exile is a niche game, and has always been a niche game. This is the very objective of GGG, and it has worked well so far.
Are you aware for example that the majority of the player that try the game .... do not go past Brutus ? That also means that another chunk of those players will not reach cruel, or reach endgame either ( I mean maps ).
Should we just adapt the whole game for those players ?
I don't think so ......
This is because PoE has not been designed to target broad audiences, like D3 does in multiple ways ( Chris explained this in some interviews ).
I thought that this point was very obvious, honestly.

But PoE suffers from the "games becoming more and more casual" trend unfortunately.

- Now bringing up BoR and saying that melee is harder than range, are you serious ?
Ranges were kings couple of years ago. Obviously most bosses are easier for ranges if you have crappy stuff.
But melee have been king for at least the past year ( if not the past 2 years ).
BoR has obvious downside, like any good strong unique should have.
And bringing this after calling Nycta's lantern a "guettho 6L", really ??
He was just showing you that a 6L is nothing like required to bit high level content.

- I was of course refering to the 6L Astral plate card ( And even if the rarity is different, you don't need 11 of those ).

- 8h for a WE is pretty casual, yes, especially for PoE.

- What if many people "burn out" at 1/2 of the league ? And what if they cannot get a 6L ? so what ? 6L is not supposed to be something that everybody gets.
Everybody does not get a 6L, well, great ! Seriously.
6L is not the game selling point, you already have the gem combination with 3L, 4L or 5L.

You guys should really understand that PoE is not supposed to please everybody and *easily* give its best items to all the casual players playing it. I'm often pretty casual, and I don't honestly mind not having a 6L at all, because it's nothing like a required item to play the game, it has always been a luxury, that's the kind of game that GGG wanted to create, and before the cards it was working pretty well.

And about your "unadressed" point as you say :
If the whole premise that a 6L is luxury is baffling to you, then maybe you picked the wrong game, idk.
Have you tried D3 ?

Labyrinth has been said by the dev to be an optional content, like a side quest, nothing more ( ascendancy classes are pretty required tho, I agree, but you don't need to run the lab over and over for it ).

I have no idea where the last part about not wanting RNG endgame comes from ... seriously

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- Now bringing up BoR and saying that melee is harder than range, are you serious ?
Ranges were kings couple of years ago. Obviously most bosses are easier for ranges if you have crappy stuff.
But melee have been king for at least the past year ( if not the past 2 years ).

I really can't take anything you say seriously past this point, you seem to be totally disconnected from the state of the game if you think melee is the king when it comes to gameplay.

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If the whole premise that a 6L is luxury is baffling to you, then maybe you picked the wrong game, idk.
Have you tried D3 ?

Gating one of the game selling points behind a RNG wall IS baffling.
If you cannot see that then it is your problem.
And the amount of combinations per a link goes up exponentially, locking out those combinations is bad strategy.

You saying that this game isn't for me because I do not agree with your opinion is such a poor and bad argument, please try to make valid points in future debates...

Melees are kings in term of efficiency ( even tho some caster builds seem ridiculously strong atm ).



I am not saying that this game is not for you, I am just saying that, just that RNG is the basis of this game basically, and everything is more or less locked behind RNG.
The only ways to go through that are trading, and increasing one's chances by the numbers.
If you do not like this, there might indeed be better choices that PoE to you.

If you cannot read my points, it is your problem.

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Fruz wrote:

Melees are kings in term of efficiency ( even tho some caster builds seem ridiculously strong atm ).

Maybe during the first 60 levels while leveling, after that they are a strictly inferior archetype.

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Fruz wrote:

I am not saying that this game is not for you, I am just saying that, just that RNG is the basis of this game basically, and everything is more or less locked behind RNG.
The only ways to go through that are trading, and increasing one's chances by the numbers.
If you do not like this, there might indeed be better choices that PoE to you.

If you cannot read my points, it is your problem.

So basically GGG introduces divination cards to lessen RNG, it does reduce RNG, complain because it reduced RNG?
There is such things as too much RNG, if everything is RNG based then it's not a good game.

Your point is that you can bypass RNG by trading and that it should be the only way of doing so. Excuse me for wanting to play the game rather than play economy simulator 2016 in order to obtain a 6L item in a temporary league.

A portion of the players don't want to trade at all, ruining the game for them isn't what I would call a good move (if you noticed the solo self found vote was quite high on the 2W event poll).

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davidnn5 wrote:

What you and Snorkle are suffering from is cognitive dissonance. The increasing availability of 6-links is challenging a perception GGG has created by training you. Yes, we're all in a Skinner box.

no david, what we are suffering from is giving a shit about game balance, gear progression and having a game with some longevity to it. Sorry if you dont share our concerns.

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davidnn5 wrote:

Next question is if you can get to maps within a day or two, why shouldn't a 6-link be achievable in a week?

it is achievable in a week, without the cards. Shouldnt it be achievable for anyone? No, getting to maps in a day or 2 isnt achievable by anyone, anyone capable of that is capable of getting a 6 link within a week or so. No everyone should not be given the best gear for simply turning up and playing, this is a stupid idea and I will not even humor debating something so ridiculously basic.

I get it, you want everything to be easier because the game has trained you to want want want want want want, yeah, we all want, but some of us are perceptive enough to see that getting everything we want right now is not a long term plan for a healthy game.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

Shouldnt it be achievable for anyone? No, getting to maps in a day or 2 isnt achievable by anyone, anyone capable of that is capable of getting a 6 link within a week or so.

This is such bullshit and you know it.
It takes me ~7 hours to reach merciless dried lake and around ~10 before I start mapping if i go all tryhard without afking.
Gathering 1500 fuses? Yeah good fucking luck with that in a temp league unless you trade like a madman. I will rather play the game than economy simulator 2016.

Because leveling fast is based on skill and getting a 6L is based on luck or your trade skills, or dumb luck, not skill.

Give harder content and nerf the damage output of skills but cutting down 6L availability on rare items is beyond dumb imo. Gating a game selling point behind a RNG wall on the excuse that it should be hard and luxury when it has no corelation to game difficulty (you said it yourself the game content can be done with a 5L) is not really a good proposition.

If you want a harder game then make harder content, do not gate core mechanics behind RNG walls.

High amount of time spent grinding doesn't make this game hardcore, complex mechanics and variety of challenges do. Otherwise every Farmville-like F2P game would be more hardcore than PoE.

These cards just transition 6-links from rare prize for a very dedicated player, to a rare prize for a moderately dedicated player. Which understandably pisses off very dedicated players, since they have one less thing to grind for. I don't really see how this makes the game unhealthy though.

So more people can reliably get a 6-link (astral plate or random base), if they spend time specifically working towards that goal. 12 hours farming crypt, frankly, sounds not worth it to me, even not taking into account bad rng streak, that'll turn these 12 hours into 24 or 36. With random base all the farming time can even go to waste, producing 1 divine essentially. Astral plate even 6L also just isn't useful to a lot of builds.

It's not like 6L are given for free, you still spend significant amount of time (currency) for what is a luxury item for the most part (nice but not necessary for the majority of builds). Guess the argument comes from the definition of "significant amount". For some people 2 hours a day is peanuts, for some it's all leisure time they have in a day. I'm willing to bet second category of people won't spend those two hours farming crypt and won't spend currency that they farmed over several weeks on one piece of gear that their build doesn't even need. So the fear of casuals swimming in 6-links is unfounded, IMO.

As far as standart economy goes, I believe it was broken to pieces ages ago, what with being the dumping ground of temp leagues and hardcore and all.