Counterintuitive to the current clear speed meta: Slow the Game Back Down

I was getting to this idea in other threads but decided to post it again here.

Watching the new bosses video, whether those premade characters were GGG controlled (I hope not) or controlled by game journalists who don't understand the use of utility flasks and auras, one thing stuck out to me:

I miss how slow the game used to be.

The huge hp, especially on bosses versus our potential dps, the damage bosses do with more choreographed attacks, everything about the characters and their previewed battles with bosses was so nostalgic to open beta. From a casual's perspective.

Clear speed should still be relevant against white mobs but magic and rares should be challenges again, not just volatile blood and bearers. Every unique monster - Vagan, exiles, corrupted monsters, bosses etc, should be a pain in the ass to kill to the extent that it is fun. Don't make them all just as hard to beat as say normal atziri, but follow that pattern of combat. Have some easy to see high hitting (not always oneshots but could be depending on preparedness) slow as hell attacks and regular decent hits from regular non-choreographed skills.

Right now, the whole design of defenses is to layer enough whether its evasion/dodge, armour/block, metric ton of es is to make most content tankable regardless of the damage it does. I still want defense stacking to be useful but a max block heavy arm/ev/es build of any kind should still want to need to move during map boss fights in order to not die.

This is related to how I think the game would have more build diversity if true tanks could be built, the ones that have shit for dps but can take just about all damage without concern of dying, bypassing those issues I just suggested be implemented. At the same time, dpser's should be so defensively screwed that solo runs are idiotic, but make it clearly obvious that if they have a tank along they have a clear advantage of knowing most damage is directed at the tank and can sit more still during the boss fight. When they are solo, the 1 person hp should be enough to justify manually ducking away from attacks and moving back in to attack. Similarly, curse and aura supports should have similar benefits of helping a dpser, curses to weaken the crap out of the boss or auras making the fight end that much quicker for the dpser. The tanks, curse and aura supports should be able to solo as well, but party play (assuming more drastic performance improvements) should be encouraged again if there is specialized synergy instead of EQ EQ EQ Bladefall mine, Blade Vortex, etc that could each run maps solo with ease but are just lonely without other things happening at the same time.

The obvious downside of this gameplay design is that melee combat range characters are kind of screwed versus ranged and magic characters getting to hide from the boss in the form of distance from the boss and still having effect kill range. I don't have a perfect solution in mind but it made me realize that the inherent issues of playing a melee range character versus long distance is probably also what prevents this from happening. Instead we have the current meta of "let's try to speed things up for melee as well as defend them better... Oops, it buffed long distance characters too." rinse and repeat cycle.

What do you think people?
"It's all clearer now
And I hear her now
And I'm nearer to
The Salvation Code"
Last edited by PleiadesBlackstar#6327 on Aug 16, 2016, 11:41:37 PM
Last bumped on Sep 2, 2016, 12:52:44 PM
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Also wanted to add that I want all these hp, damage, choreograph changes because only hp increases is all I usually see suggested and that isn't going to cut it. You can't just boost monster hp and say "There, it literally takes people 5x as long to clear gorge" because that is just a bandaid that lets power creep continue. You slow us down with just hp then you might as well just release the next batch of op item bases and uniques at the exact same time since you would just end up handing them out sooner or later to appease the complaints of "It's too slow and boring if all the changes are just massive hp pools" that go on to quit.
"It's all clearer now
And I hear her now
And I'm nearer to
The Salvation Code"
In Grimdawn I can clear it in a heart beat
In D2 I can clear anything in a heart beat
In shitty d3 same thing

Fast pace that's the entire point of an ARPG not this close paced thing you're talking about.
Dys an sohm
Rohs an kyn
Sahl djahs afah
Mah morn narr
Last edited by Coconutdoggy#1805 on Aug 16, 2016, 11:59:57 PM
The problem is, that is why I think we have everybody leave leagues after a month. The only difference between PoE right now and D3 is that it takes much longer to fully deck out a late end game red tier viable character for the average player than it is for the stereotypical 2 weeks and done D3 season.

I still want it to be pretty fast. It shouldn't be "oh shit a normal zombie group! Going to take 20 seconds to kill them" sort of deal but mostly aiming at bosses and having mechanics that don't scream "Kill me as fast as you can so defenses can be secondary" everywhere. I personally think there would be more flavor to the game if instead the typical boss interaction is Okay, this character can tank his elemental strikes no problem... Leap Slamming, better dodge!... Another one!... because defenses are not enough to sit there and just take every single hit as they come.

If there is some creative interaction with boss kills at least, ignoring exiles and such, I think the life of the leagues would last longer on top of the right balance of item accessibility (why perandus was so popular, although that was overaccessiblity to me). Something that encourages party play for those who want it, enriches solo play beyond, come home, computer on, tv on, right click to victory while watching tonight's football game, rotation that poe is falling into like every other game of this genre.

Before powercreep hit this game harder and harder, it was fairly decently paced for average players when I was first leveling my characters. Now it is all about "can I design my build to rip the boss before any of their unique mechanics matter? if not, it's a shitty build."
"It's all clearer now
And I hear her now
And I'm nearer to
The Salvation Code"
Before this was a frogger game, it had became a running game.
"
Siochan wrote:
Before this was a frogger game, it had became a running game.


I would like to point out that in my view, GGG was already trying to get us to slow down with traps and lab mechanics. Instead a good chunk of the forum community took arms to point out that the (purposeful?) slowing down of speed running labyrinth areas was just flat out vehemently hated by that group. Between seeing the new boss footage and realizing how GGG maybe was attempting to reward people who played thoughtfully to make it through the lab just makes me miss how evenly paced leveling and mapping for the first time was.

I personally believe GGG did fail with the lab, make it entirely a pain in the ass for low life and CI characters for no reason on launch and then the following fixes still just encouraged us to have juggernaut runners didn't work. At the same time, I do like the lab for what I believe they were attempting to accomplish especially in uber lab. They were probably hoping that uber lab would be punishing enough that you would have to look at the trap before you and navigate it relatively safely or be screwed, and thus a nice reward at the end, not shield charge and health flask your way through everything. Probably was related to why the lab prohpecies were completely removed, too rewarding to those who brute forced the system.
"It's all clearer now
And I hear her now
And I'm nearer to
The Salvation Code"
One of the reasons I that feel was behind the need to speed up the gameplay/clear speed, is that it took a year to get through all 3 difficulties. So I think if they WERE to slow it all down (I would like to see them do this) they should also get rid of the 2nd difficulty at the same time, especially now that the end-game content is finally being fleshed out.
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Last edited by Nicholas_Steel#0509 on Aug 17, 2016, 12:46:56 AM
"
PleiadesBlackstar wrote:
I was getting to this idea in other threads but decided to post it again here.

Watching the new bosses video, whether those premade characters were GGG controlled (I hope not) or controlled by game journalists who don't understand the use of utility flasks and auras, one thing stuck out to me:

I miss how slow the game used to be.

The huge hp, especially on bosses versus our potential dps, the damage bosses do with more choreographed attacks, everything about the characters and their previewed battles with bosses was so nostalgic to open beta. From a casual's perspective.

Clear speed should still be relevant against white mobs but magic and rares should be challenges again, not just volatile blood and bearers. Every unique monster - Vagan, exiles, corrupted monsters, bosses etc, should be a pain in the ass to kill to the extent that it is fun. Don't make them all just as hard to beat as say normal atziri, but follow that pattern of combat. Have some easy to see high hitting (not always oneshots but could be depending on preparedness) slow as hell attacks and regular decent hits from regular non-choreographed skills.

Right now, the whole design of defenses is to layer enough whether its evasion/dodge, armour/block, metric ton of es is to make most content tankable regardless of the damage it does. I still want defense stacking to be useful but a max block heavy arm/ev/es build of any kind should still want to need to move during map boss fights in order to not die.

This is related to how I think the game would have more build diversity if true tanks could be built, the ones that have shit for dps but can take just about all damage without concern of dying, bypassing those issues I just suggested be implemented. At the same time, dpser's should be so defensively screwed that solo runs are idiotic, but make it clearly obvious that if they have a tank along they have a clear advantage of knowing most damage is directed at the tank and can sit more still during the boss fight. When they are solo, the 1 person hp should be enough to justify manually ducking away from attacks and moving back in to attack. Similarly, curse and aura supports should have similar benefits of helping a dpser, curses to weaken the crap out of the boss or auras making the fight end that much quicker for the dpser. The tanks, curse and aura supports should be able to solo as well, but party play (assuming more drastic performance improvements) should be encouraged again if there is specialized synergy instead of EQ EQ EQ Bladefall mine, Blade Vortex, etc that could each run maps solo with ease but are just lonely without other things happening at the same time.

The obvious downside of this gameplay design is that melee combat range characters are kind of screwed versus ranged and magic characters getting to hide from the boss in the form of distance from the boss and still having effect kill range. I don't have a perfect solution in mind but it made me realize that the inherent issues of playing a melee range character versus long distance is probably also what prevents this from happening. Instead we have the current meta of "let's try to speed things up for melee as well as defend them better... Oops, it buffed long distance characters too." rinse and repeat cycle.

What do you think people?


That's basically how I play now.
I use a pretty tanky groundslam decent dps, my friend has an archer and wherever possible we run with an auradin.

Its almost as you discribe for us in very high tier maps with hard mods.
Lots of fun.

I'd like more engaging boss fights, on similar level as Atziri. Keep the rest of the map a "clearspeed meta", but make the boss a lot harder - mechanically & with HP.

Anyone remembers the times when Temple Piety, Shock&Horror, Megaera... were actually dangerous and you had to swap your flasks accordingly, before the fight? I'd like some of that scare feeling back. Most bosses (you can get to) are now just stomped in a few hits.

The last boss designs are an indicaton GGG is going in that direction (Pale council, Plaza map), but those are still too easy to counter the power creep.
When night falls
She cloaks the world
In impenetrable darkness
As long as the game has safe 1mil dps builds that cost 10c we can't really talk of challenging gameplay. Buffing content globally is no answer because a puny ice crash dory fister witch that has to work its ass off for boss kills is going to get screwed and expecting people to have some self control or enjoy taking ten seconds to kill a white pack after oneshotting uber isn't an answer either.

The ideal build distribution we can have is a truncated pyramid, the lower the better



But we got this instead

Wish the armchair developers would go back to developing armchairs.

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Last edited by raics#7540 on Aug 17, 2016, 3:03:04 AM

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