0.9.13 (Closed beta) was more balanced, and funnier

Disclaimer: This post aims at bringing constructive criticism to the current state of the game balance. If you think this game is flawless and shouldn't be changed a single bit, or if you opened this topic to jump at the reply button and stamp it with a "this is BETA" or "your build sucks", I suggest you simply close the tab as you have nothing to bring to the discussion.

Bit of backstory about myself, in spoiler tags for those who can't bother :



Ever since Open Beta launched, and up to a few days ago, my girlfriend and I have played this game whenever we had the chance, and enjoyed every moment of it, until we reached Act 3 Merciless.

I am now level 75, and she is level 72, as she remade her build 3 different times in an attempt to cope with the "nerf sledgehammer" CI, ES, and witches in general have taken in Open Beta.

After Act 3 Merciless, came maps. And after a while we both came to the same conclusion, the game isn't as fun as it used to be.

The balance between difficulty and fun in 0.9.13 was nice. Being a melee was hard, but doable, and rewarding, and eventho some things were still way unbalanced (I'm looking at you, Chaos Inoculation), running maps was fun and the game in general was much less frustrating to play.

Frustration is the word for the two of us right now. The difficulty in Act 3 Merciless, and in maps after that, goes full derp and takes away a lot of the fun out of the equation. I can't wrap my mind around some design choices that were introduced with Open Beta. -60% resists also applying to Chaos? The new CI? The new, higher levels of the mobs making armor nothing more than a joke?

And it doesn't look like we're the only ones with that feeling: the amount of "Melee is not viable", "HP passives are too godly", "builds are even more restricted than before", and similar threads are flourishing.

After a lot of thinking, I am left with a sour taste, and a big doubt. What if the new design choices that came with Open Beta are nothing more than an attempt at artificially lengthening the game, by making progress even slower, and ensuring people with less experience will have to reroll a few times before they find a viable build?

I think some of the design choices have to be seriously reconsidered. The game used to be fun, challenging, and extremely rewarding. Right now it feels slow and frustrating. Still fun of course, but way less than before.

And apparently I'm not the only one thinking that.

TLDR : Close tab, nothing to see here.

In the CB, I heard it said that they compared their game to D3, but said that unlike in D3 "where you start the game powerful, and end weak," in POE "you start the game weak, and end powerful." That's absolutely not the case currently, in the OB. I'm not sure where they are coming from. At most I can guess they are making the D3 design team error of listening to a vocal minority of gamers who want the game as hard as possible. That won't turn out well in the end if they stick to their guns.

The game starts getting a noticeable difficulty wall in Cruel, A3.

I have a whole set of minor items recorded here:

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/163839

One of the things I recommend is multiple difficulty levels. That way the vocal minority can have their way, and so can the rest of us.

I agree that balance-wise, PoE feels much worse in OB than in CB. Hopefully GGG are on it.

I feel the same way. Played PoE since the first open weekend through late August last year and it was more fun back then since I didn't have to build so defensively.

You guys get an 'Amen' from me.

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AlphaNerd wrote:

I feel the same way. Played PoE since the first open weekend through late August last year and it was more fun back then since I didn't have to build so defensively.

This. It feels like they were afraid of people going complete glass cannon and trivializing the game. For one, there's reflect that handles this perfectly well. Secondly, the death penalty pretty much ensures that anyone dying with any semblance of regularity will never really hit over level 80.

I also feel like OB mobs have higher effective damage than CB mobs for factors that aren't accounted by with numerical comparisons alone. Even if CB mob DMG+HP= OB mob DMG+HP, OB mobs would have higher damage throughput since they can actually get more damage off given their greater mobility.

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Courageous wrote:

In the CB, I heard it said that they compared their game to D3, but said that unlike in D3 "where you start the game powerful, and end weak," in POE "you start the game weak, and end powerful." That's absolutely not the case currently, in the OB.

Agreed. It's a great feeling seeing your character get powerful as the levels increase and it was a huge part of why PoE was so addicting (at least to me). Now it's about trying to scavenge resistance gear and running away when the mobs as much as look at you bad.

That came out a bit too harsh. I'm not saying PoE sucks now or anything, it's still a nice game... but nice feels lame compared to what it used to be.

0.9.13 (Closed beta) was the most balanced and fun .


There fixed it for you .

+1

Been screaming about it for a while but feel ignored or part of the minority. Glad everyone is catching up.

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Been screaming about it for a while but feel ignored or part of the minority. Glad everyone is catching up.

Honestly, if some folks want a hard to play game, I'm all for giving it to them. I think they should start multiple leagues with multiple difficulties and other rules (XP penalty and the like). They said originallyt they wouldn't do this, though.