Prediction: Breach will have the hardest player falloff

I hope they have their Essence league numbers handy, it will be interesting to see how dead this league feels in a couple weeks. We know that Breach had a huge start due in part to the bigger media ramp up. So they will have to compensate somewhat for that, but I suspect this league will start shedding players at a much more elevated rate than Essence even with Breach's bigger start.

Why?

Essence mobs were better tuned to the content you were in. Essences only got super binary (can do/can't do reducing the gameplay to a yes/no condition) when you corrupted a multi essence mob. or got super unlucky with your weakness being their strength.

Breach from Cruel onward in my experience is massively binary. and usually at best is harder than the zone you're in. One breach you open and keep open just fine, the next rips you instantly as it swamps you in so much packsize you can't even move. This sort of sharply binary gameplay will appeal to some, and it will turn some off.

I can see this league having similarly binary retention stats. Top Meta builds and highly skilled players will enjoy it, off meta, melee, and lowest skilled players will probably be turned off quickly in large part. And the largest swatch of players, the big middle, of mediocre skilled, with okay-ish builds will split to one end of the spectrum or the other.

Personally* I am wavering at the moment, the 50-ish percent of breaches that aren't super overtuned are fun, and exciting, but it seems about half of them at this point in merc are just a guaranteed minus 10% XP. So it's very very hard to choose to open the breach and mostly I don't. I will admit that I am about 2-3 under the zone level right now, but the zone monsters are not posing the same sort of binary risk. I also personally find Breaches to be incredibly low reward with only the elevated XP being something I felt was rewarding, but at this point I've probably lost as much as I've gained.

* For reference
I consider myself mediocre+ skill with Okayish build. I use all flasks without button mashing or "finger rolling" and all key binds I always have active attacks or summons/totems on all hot keys, I actively use a defensive flask and one or more offensive flasks when I have them (stibnite if EV, phys mitigation if not) in most situations. I usually have at least a curse on hit 4l coupled with a movement skill my current setup includes arctic armor and fortify, decent EV, and in Merc act2 4k effective hp. I soloed Normal Lab at the end of normal at whatever level is about 1 under for the harvest (didn't keep track) I also ran someone else to help them. haven't gotten to cruel lab yet but only in act 2 merc.

I am now avoiding breaches for the most part, and considering either giving up before maps or getting my character to 90-ish and dropping out to play standard to continue playing with my toys from previous leagues. Yes some people play standard, get over yourself. For the record, Trumpian calls to "git gud" and wordy passive aggressive implications that I need to git gud but with extra words, will be chuckled at, considered cases of Dunning Krugar and not replied to. Playing someones "top meta" (brokenly designed) build as a way to mitigate the poor design of Breaches is not gameplay, it's metagaming. if you don't understand the difference between them, then we don't have enough common ground to have a discussion.

So... basically the only response you will accept as valid is one that agrees with your assessment? Hmm.

IMO you do not have to be playing a "broken meta build" to successfully keep a breach opened. You just have to properly scale your damage and/or aoe to effectively clear. That should be a goal for any build. The much maligned "clear speed meta" involves a lot of focus on move speed (because everyone can do enough damage, but you gotta go fast to spread that damage around!). Breaches found in the wild actually don't require any of this, just enough damage to kill some of the tankier rares.

I share the opinion on "wavering" to open up breaches. Sometimes I look at it for 10 seconds and I really want to open it but constantly struggle with the question: "Is this going to be a decent breach or the 100-mobs-at-once-shocking-ground-why-am-silenced-wtf" breaches?

For me i look at it a little differently. I am going to rush to 90-92 and then just open every breach i see lol. At that point i could give 2 shits about XP after that and it prevents me from having to roll a shit ton of currency to chase the Shaper dream.

It will give me something to do in T11-T14 maps where I usually get stuck anyway...at least this way those maps will feel "different" and more rewarding.

Basically my attitude toward breaches at that point will change. I can laugh about a death instead of raging about the XP loss. I actually think people will be surprised late game.

I don't play HC though...I would be a nervous wreck playing HC with breaches.

Essence had way more advertising because the Atlas revamp came in the same patch.

Difficult content isn't bad, it gives players a goal to work towards (getting strong enough to handle breaches reliably) and it's incredibly rewarding when you pull it off.

Many people believe Breach is a much better league than Essence due to the difficulty and fun of tackling a breach compared to Essence mobs which were usually not very difficult but instead just cost a ton of time to work through their HP totals.

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Nykken wrote:

Essence had way more advertising because the Atlas revamp came in the same patch.

Difficult content isn't bad, it gives players a goal to work towards (getting strong enough to handle breaches reliably) and it's incredibly rewarding when you pull it off.

Many people believe Breach is a much better league than Essence due to the difficulty and fun of tackling a breach compared to Essence mobs which were usually not very difficult but instead just cost a ton of time to work through their HP totals.

Basically this.

You can always avoid them. People did that in Beyond and in Essence, until you could handle them, or never; and just enjoy the new League/Economy/Fresh start.


Essence was ultimately very boring and dry if you ask me, and the only reason it did so well was because it was released alongside a major content expansion and end-game overhaul..


And I think you underestimate the average skill of players who get to end-game past Brutus.

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Docbp87 wrote:

So... basically the only response you will accept as valid is one that agrees with your assessment? Hmm.

Well no actually, I'm just not going to bother with people who say "git gud" (or wordy version) or "use broken stuff" as a defense against poor balancing they seem to have done with Breach difficulty. I've seen your posts in other breach threads defending them against any and all criticism, so using your same premis to counter your argument: what criticism you will accept as valid that don't agree with your assessment?

I can't reply to your second paragraph as it seems to have been written without reading my post. (don't have any problem keeping them open). For reference I am using two considered to be top tier skills in Firestorm and SRS.

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Prisus wrote:

I share the opinion on "wavering" to open up breaches. Sometimes I look at it for 10 seconds and I really want to open it but constantly struggle with the question: "Is this going to be a decent breach or the 100-mobs-at-once-shocking-ground-why-am-silenced-wtf" breaches?

For me i look at it a little differently. I am going to rush to 90-92 and then just open every breach i see lol. At that point i could give 2 shits about XP after that and it prevents me from having to roll a shit ton of currency to chase the Shaper dream.

It will give me something to do in T11-T14 maps where I usually get stuck anyway...at least this way those maps will feel "different" and more rewarding.

Basically my attitude toward breaches at that point will change. I can laugh about a death instead of raging about the XP loss. I actually think people will be surprised late game.

I don't play HC though...I would be a nervous wreck playing HC with breaches.

I may take the same approch, good thought.

My experience of Breach balance (mob density and rippy random rolls) is contrasted by essence, where I played a LESS powerful build (a namelock melee ) with similar if not idenitcal defensive layers and effective HP. By comparison essences were much less likely to be binary pass/fail scenarios. Although essences may have tended to be a little weak. When they were powerful you had some indication of this (multiple essences implied tougher mob).

In breach not only are there no such mechanics for assessing risk or reward, the risk conditions are arbitrarily spikey at a level far exceeding corrupted essences at least I feel this in my experience.

Essence had better game design, it rewarded players, gave them something to base a choice off of, and something to imply the risk you were taking on. The rewards in beaches are also very lame.

Breaches are just nope or yep.

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alhazred70 wrote:

"

Docbp87 wrote:

So... basically the only response you will accept as valid is one that agrees with your assessment? Hmm.

Well no actually, I'm just not going to bother with people who say "git gud" (or wordy version) or "use broken stuff" as a defense against poor balancing they seem to have done with Breach difficulty. I've seen your posts in other breach threads defending them against any and all criticism, so using your same premis to counter your argument: what criticism you will accept as valid that don't agree with your assessment?

I can't reply to your second paragraph as it seems to have been written without reading my post. (don't have any problem keeping them open). For reference I am using two considered to be top tier skills in Firestorm and SRS.

You seem to think developers should design content so any build can succeed without trying.

I think developers should design content that is challenging and leave the problem of beating it up to the players.

Players that focus on the problem and engineer a build to beat it efficiently should succeed faster and earn more rewards. Players that don't put effort into their build, deliberately pick inferior options, or otherwise have an inferior build due to lack of build expertise should only succeed when tackling the content at a lower difficulty or by making up for their disadvantages through other channels.

I think Breach fits this design well. Some builds are really good at breaches and can clear them in high difficulty areas (usually by being engineered to be good at clear speed at the cost of having really bad single target) and some builds are really bad at Breaches but can still clear them if they are sticking to easier zones or by compensating with better gear.

Essence failed that design to some degree because Essence mobs were almost never challenging (except for some rare combinations that made volatiles into one-shots) and were generally boring to fight. However, the essences themselves were a great addition to the game and having a mediocre league is understandable when the dev efforts were probably more invested in the Atlas content update.

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Nykken wrote:

Essence had way more advertising because the Atlas revamp came in the same patch.

Difficult content isn't bad, it gives players a goal to work towards (getting strong enough to handle breaches reliably) and it's incredibly rewarding when you pull it off.

Many people believe Breach is a much better league than Essence due to the difficulty and fun of tackling a breach compared to Essence mobs which were usually not very difficult but instead just cost a ton of time to work through their HP totals.

"many people" is an ad populum argument and the conclusion you make after you state it is arbitrary and unsupported until such a time as GGG actually tells us that was the case.

Breaches initial popularity being tied to difficulty is also a very tenuous and unlikely conclusion to make, as without having TRIED breach how could a "record number" of players know it was going to challenge them and get them excited for it?

Essence was overshadowed by Atlas, Essence didn't get the same level of third party media hype because ATLAS got most of it. Atlas could be experienced in standard without needing to participate in the new temp league at all. So the main feature of that update was not intrinsically tied to the temp league.

In fact because lots of players have map level characters in standard and could start mapping the atlas on day one in standard it can be speculated reasonably that a lot of players probably chose to skip at least the start of essence league. In any case this is not really a "essence was more fun, no it wasn't" thread, it's a Essence had better game design compared to Breach thread. Difficulty not withstanding.

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alhazred70 wrote:

All the goals in games are just excuses to enjoy the process of playing. Once you feel
entitled to the rewards without playing, once you want the obstacles removed or the goals made trivial to achieve what you're really saying is you no longer want to PLAY.