0.9.13 (Closed beta) was more balanced, and funnier

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Wittgenstein wrote:

I still think the worst thing they did was limit the paths from any starting location to 2. Not on topic I know.. but nobody else seems to miss that. :(

No way not to agree with this. Within each patch game is becoming more and more watered down and tailored to a generic, casual one.

In past i had been giving in-depth, detailed feedback passionately, but after seeing that most of them had been ignored, (cause they were favoring hardcore camp) i just stopped doing. Now GGG can not expect from me feedbacks like i did frequently in past, since i can not do it willingly anymore.

And the biggest cause what has put me off playing PoE as well as a 5 month break was thiis !

From now on , if i ever give a feedback, even rarely, it would just be in the same level of any new player out there, since investing further time does not worth to bother with.

It is GGG's decision, so be it.

Edit: I see my reply where it lead to was a bit-off topic, but in the end i had to express my feelings.

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BrecMadak wrote:

"

Wittgenstein wrote:

I still think the worst thing they did was limit the paths from any starting location to 2. Not on topic I know.. but nobody else seems to miss that. :(

No way not to agree with this. Within each patch game is becoming more and more watered down and tailored to a generic, casual one.

If there was 4000 opening paths people would gravitate towards the one that gives them the most EHP every time. It just makes more sense. Things die easily so you don't really need DPS until later. I can't imagine many maras will ever not start on the life route, even if they want stuff off the lower path, they will start with life.

Five pages in and it's funny how we haven't had a single 'l2p noob' or 'this game isn't D3. If you don't like it, don't play it' post.

Just shows the power of having respected members and GGG devs agreeing with the OP.

Really illustrates how people care more about who is saying things than what's actually being said, even though many less well-known posters have been saying the EXACT same thing for weeks now and have been met with abuse from fanboys. Sad world we live in.


Anyway, I'm glad a GGG dev has weighed in on the issue and has acknowledged that some tweaking to game balance needs to be done. Looking forward to see what they come up with!

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flab wrote:

In CB, I could "comfortably" face Vaal in merciless with about 2.5k hp while spending some points on offense as semi-melee (HS, GS, Sweep, Flicker strike). Now, I wouldn't dare try it with less than 5k hp any more, because I did (with 4.1k hp) and I had an almost entirely empty hp pool after one slam, my party member wasn't lucky enough to survive it with 4k hp. It would've been the first time I'd ever died to Vaal, yet I could almost facetank Piety in cruel at about lvl 35 with fairly average gear. But Piety was nerfed? What?

I now have to stack exclusively life (where it was only about 80-90% before) to feel like I *may not* get destroyed by some spike around the corner. In a game where playing conditions can easily be less than ideal, desync is a reality and getting hit is by far the most dangerous aspect of the game, having these huge hits just isn't good.

So your problem is not the amount of life required, but the current issues with desync. Vaal his smash is not supposed to be taken, especially on Merciless. If you do, you die. See no flaw in this (other then that it sux to die when you did dodge it, but didn't due to said desync!).

Sorry, but I don't see what your post adds to this discussion. Desync is a real issue. Vaal smash is not.

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jimi89 wrote:

Five pages in and it's funny how we haven't had a single 'l2p noob' or 'this game isn't D3. If you don't like it, don't play it' post.

Just shows the power of having respected members and GGG devs agreeing with the OP.

Really illustrates how people care more about who is saying things than what's actually being said, even though many less well-known posters have been saying the EXACT same thing for weeks now and have been met with abuse from fanboys. Sad world we live in.


Anyway, I'm glad a GGG dev has weighed in on the issue and has acknowledged that some tweaking to game balance needs to be done. Looking forward to see what they come up with!

I think it is easier to just write "l2p noob" or similar phrases than explain why a rebalancing can't happen in an instant. The amount of feedback given every single hour is just overwhelming. And after they had to address stability issues first they can now address balance-issue and the first they did was change the armor-mod, which isn't major, but something that was of balance anyway.

The game has a rather high complexity and small changes can easily snowball to an extent that breaks balance again. I think they know about the issues, but fixing them is a whole other point.

And there is always the problem of "fun" vs. "balance". In my opinion a game can't be perfectly balanced and fun at the same time, since balancing stuff normally means making it more equal, which just means that you have the same stuff for everyone under a different name. A game like PoE doesn't have to be perfectly balanced. If you increase the amount of viable builds, something that makes the game more fun, you automatically make some builds even stronger resulting in certain builds that are most likely conceived as OP.

The most tricky part that lies in front of GGG is deciding which players they want to address. Many companies tried to make games for everyone and every single one of them failed. Choosing your playerbase is propably the most important part, and if you make a game that is good overall you may give players the ability to convince friends to play the game even if it is not the type of game they normally play.

"

In CB, I could "comfortably" face Vaal in merciless with about 2.5k hp while spending some points on offense as semi-melee (HS, GS, Sweep, Flicker strike). Now, I wouldn't dare try it with less than 5k hp any more, because I did (with 4.1k hp) and I had an almost entirely empty hp pool after one slam, my party member wasn't lucky enough to survive it with 4k hp. It would've been the first time I'd ever died to Vaal, yet I could almost facetank Piety in cruel at about lvl 35 with fairly average gear. But Piety was nerfed? What?

I'm not sure, he one-hitted me with 3,1k HP and 91% Fire-Resist in CB, but it only happend by mistake (well I managed to pop my flask to get max resist, but I wasn't expecting it to change anything^^). Also the laser did far more damage in CB than it does now, which is a bit sad, since you can even get hit twice and still survive.

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Ferumbras wrote:

Vaal his smash is not supposed to be taken, especially on Merciless. If you do, you die. See no flaw in this

Personally I've always thought this is extremely dumb. There shouldn't be a skill that regardless of what you do, kills you. At that point you have no option but rely on movement and a good connection. I play often on a shitty laptop and knowing that I'm going to die to vaal because I just cannot get tanky enough ever to take whatever he dishes out annoys the shit out of me.

I like act 3 and i like the increased difficulty, i just wish more of the difficulty was from increased monster skills and synergies and less from walls of numbers (mostly excessive damage).

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Wittgenstein wrote:

I still think the worst thing they did was limit the paths from any starting location to 2. Not on topic I know.. but nobody else seems to miss that. :(

Agreed, that was one of my most disliked decisions to date.

I also agree with the person who mentioned the weapon elemental damage gem being overpowered. It needs to start at 30% like the melee damage gem, and all those weapon elemental damage affixes on gear need to cap at 20%. Stunning should also be restricted to physical damage.

Lastly, i miss maelstrom of chaos. Maps should have supplimented it, not replaced it.

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Moosifer wrote:

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Ferumbras wrote:

Vaal his smash is not supposed to be taken, especially on Merciless. If you do, you die. See no flaw in this

Personally I've always thought this is extremely dumb. There shouldn't be a skill that regardless of what you do, kills you. At that point you have no option but rely on movement and a good connection. I play often on a shitty laptop and knowing that I'm going to die to vaal because I just cannot get tanky enough ever to take whatever he dishes out annoys the shit out of me.

Well in that case it is easy to only fight him when he is not able to cast the smash. I prefer staying in melee-range because the smash isn't very dangerous and the fight goes way faster, but it is easy to play safe and only attack him while he is doing other stuff. It was never a requirement to dodge the smash, since it is easy to battle him without him even trying to smash you. But only attacking him while he is occupied with other attacks makes the battle longer, which is a drawback but propably acceptable. If the smash still kills you the connection or the laptop are bad enough that tons of other stuff kills you too.

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Emphasy wrote:

Well in that case it is easy to only fight him when he is not able to cast the smash. I prefer staying in melee-range because the smash isn't very dangerous and the fight goes way faster, but it is easy to play safe and only attack him while he is doing other stuff. It was never a requirement to dodge the smash, since it is easy to battle him without him even trying to smash you. But only attacking him while he is occupied with other attacks makes the battle longer, which is a drawback but propably acceptable. If the smash still kills you the connection or the laptop are bad enough that tons of other stuff kills you too.

I know how to face vaal. Because my laptop is shitty, all it takes is him throwing down the ice and I'm lagged to hell. I couldn't get out of the way of anything. I understand I have to deal with this so I build for HC (a little less extreme than HC because I'm a balance nut) but play default. Generally my only deaths are to lag or being one shot from a crazy situation, vaal has both of these factors leaving me with no option but to die. He inactive enough after his slam to have enough time to recover but if you are one shot there's no option to recover.

And that's only merciless vaal. I can't imagine what Maze map vaal is like now as he was insane on a 68 map, now that he's on a mid-70 map I don't see many builds having a remote chance of tanking him.