The Illusion of Choice

"

johnKeys wrote:

"

ggnorekthx wrote:

You know, I figured I should re-word that but was hoping people knew what I meant. Obviously dying because of a desync or lag isn't a build problem, but I see a lot of people who play Default and claim all this build diversity crap and then they mention how they only died six times trying to kill Vaal. I simply meant that straying a lot from the "HP>Defense>Res>All" mentality of the Passive Tree will almost always result in a character who dies a lot... and dying a lot indicates not being very viable. In Hardcore, you cannot die at all, so what do you do? You stack HP because if you don't you'll get one shotted. Hell, even with 10k life you might get one shotted. This severely limits your options on the Passive Tree.

my best two characters are near the end of act 2 and act 1 on Cruel respectively, so I may be new to this game - but I can already tell you that builds are far from balanced.
worse still: some builds just sound good, but are bad in practice - and there's no way for the player to know that.
it's a beta thing probably, but when I took that awesome-sounding evade-all passive and got something like 70% chance to dodge all damage - then stepped out to the cruel act 2 world and got 1-shot by the first regular monster, you can imagine how that felt.

does that make me a bad player or a bad character builder? I don't think so.
the game just isn't fair sometimes.

my Hardcore Shadow is level 8 and a build that looks good, but I haven't played him since because I fear death due to the lag spikes, which have occurred too often lately.
and what if I again took a passive that sounds good now, but will prove to be a weakness later? no way to tell.

the game is far from balanced right now.
and the enormous passive tree looks deceivingly versatile, but very few specific builds can handle this game properly. especially in Hardcore.

so (TLDR) yes I agree with the original poster. there is no real choice.
only one in a hundred character builds would keep you playing to high level (instead of rage-quitting in the middle, because you die every 2 minutes).
only one in a thousand character builds would get you to the top 500 in the Hardcore league.

the game needs to be a test of player skills - that's what good games are - but right now it's a total gear-check, and a "did you follow the exact guide by <top-player-name>?" check.
even active skills are a gear-check, and 80% of them are worthless.

Fixed.

"

ggnorekthx wrote:

"

Azidonis wrote:

"

ggnorekthx wrote:

If you die a lot (or at all really) playing your character, your build isn't viable.

Right... so deaths to desync means that the build isn't viable? Or, how about deaths due to random mistakes.. does that also mean the build isn't viable? Or, what if your dog eats your ethernet cable while you are playing... do you blame that on the build too?

You know, I figured I should re-word that but was hoping people knew what I meant. Obviously dying because of a desync or lag isn't a build problem,

I knew what you meant, just had to jostle you a bit for it. :)

"

ggnorekthx wrote:

but I see a lot of people who play Default and claim all this build diversity crap and then they mention how they only died six times trying to kill Vaal. I simply meant that straying a lot from the "HP>Defense>Res>All" mentality of the Passive Tree will almost always result in a character who dies a lot... and dying a lot indicates not being very viable. In Hardcore, you cannot die at all, so what do you do? You stack HP because if you don't you'll get one shotted. Hell, even with 10k life you might get one shotted. This severely limits your options on the Passive Tree.

We all know that Armour/Evasion/Es needs tweaking. I don't think that will keep many HC players from choosing life nodes, though.

One thing people seem to be missing, is the fact that in very many games your HP are practically handed to you. This game, D1, and D2 are the only exceptions I can think of, at the moment. So no matter what they do to the skill tree, you still are going to need to put points into life, and your main build will still be based around "get X, Y, Z, and all the rest goes into life". How much life is the question.

So the issue is not necessarily that people have to put points into life. I think that people are more concerned with the degree in which they feel that they have to do so, due to the ineffectiveness of other survivability options.

Edit: Just wanted to add that in D2, building a character pretty much held to the formula of, "enough Str and Dex to wear your gear, and all the rest into Vit". Hell, people even learned that using Annihilus and Torch would "glitch" your character, so they would level up using rushes, runs, (and later) bots. Then, when they got to 75 I think it was, the Annihulus and Torch would activate, and they would have free skill points available for even more Vit.

There were some exceptions, of course. Smiters usually wanted to max block, and hammerdins, maybe some necros. But for the most part, the formula was, "enough Str and Dex to wear your gear, and all the rest into Vit".

PoE seems to be going along a similar track. Enough Str/Dex/Int to level your gems, and all the rest into Life.

"

NagiSoi wrote:

If they made lets say armor more valuable than Hp, you would see the same crying stuff about how everyone is using armor instead of hp, it is alwats like that, peopel will always use stuff that is easiest to use and be most efficient with least effort.

Wrong, because armor only works against physical damage, so any form of elemental and chaos damage automatically ignores armor. Meaning that if you stack armor instead of hp, even if armor suddenly becomes more efficient, it still leaves you very vulnerable to both elemental and chaos damage. On the other hand, stacking hp like now, protects you against everything, as well as increase your resistance to getting stunned, frozen, etc.

HP is the answer to everything, any other form of defense answers some aspects while neglects others. That's why hp should be the weakest form of defense, not the strongest, and should complement the other forms of defense rather than allow the other forms of defense compliment it.

Krippclones unite.

Illusion of choice

"Choose between A and B where A is always better than B."
It is a choice because you have 2 options, but an illusion because 1 is better than the other. Let's turn those vague variables into numbers. Choose between 10dps and 5dps for the same cost of 1 passive point. I have a choice, because there are 2 options. At the same time I have no choice, because 10 > 5.

Choose between 5dps and 5dps. Put in specifics. Choose between 10 damage every 2 sec and 50 damage every 10 sec. That is a real choice.

"Why not both?"
I have a choice to make between A and B. At some point, I can simply take both, so there is no choice after all.

So, the only "real" choices in the pst are one's with downsides (measurable downsides), or trade offs (measurable trade offs).

"

Nonsensei436 wrote:

Lol stop with the "its beta" crap.

Open beta is an advertising period to get players hooked on the game and generate income while producing content. And just so we are clear, content means levels and story NOT skill tree design and balance. Minor changes may be made but the fundamental design, along with all its flaws will remain intact all the way to release.

I had to respond to this, because it isn't right at all. GGG is still hiring people for art work/story development and many other things.. basic things. The game is far from finished and its progression into OB was based partly on an agreement with their investors on a time-line that the game development was to follow. I know a lot of people are saying that the fact that an optional cosmetic shop exists entails that the game is released, but that is simply not correct.

Well, firstly, this has been kinda confusing. I read the whole thread, and I want to point something out.

The OP is specifically talking about End Game (i.e. Act 3 Merciless/Maps) based on the first post.

This whole conversation has gotten a little confusing because some people were talking optimal while others were talking viable without saying so.

Optimal is defined as "Face rolling end game or equivalent of" by OP, btw.

Viable is "Surviving End game, i.e. beating Merciless Piety and doing maps".

Now, he says you will either be struggling if you don't follow what he said, or you will be face rolling if you do.

This is not true. There are builds that don't follow his advice that can be good in end game. People have attested to that (specifically everyone who mentioned a build that didn't follow his advice on pages ~1-3).

There is plenty of choice. I can choose to do whatever I want. Make any build I want. I can even get to the end of Act 3 Merciless if I play right with any build I want. This is obviously next to impossible, but that's not the point.

When considering whether choice exists or not, you cannot consider what can influence the choice, or there is never a choice. Ever. You can only consider if there is more than 1 option and if those options are the same or not.

Either one option is better than the other, meaning there's no real choice. Or both options are the same, meaning there's no real choice because choice implies the options are different.

A Min-Maxer cannot say there is an "Illusion of Choice" in this game because, when it comes to choice, they only consider what influences that choice, which you cannot do. Or there is no choice. Ever. I really want to make that clear.

Now, imo, this post should've ended the thread.



That explains both what GGG intends to do (or rather, that they intend to do something), and why HP is king atm.

Lastly, optimal =/= viable. The OP is talking optimal. Viable implies there is indeed choice.

Oh, and starting in a certain spot and going opposite direction (i.e. Starting as Witch to go get all the Marauder starting nodes) is actually different from starting Marauder. You might say, "but it gimps the build", but it doesn't. Yes, the DPS and overall potential is lower, but when people say "gimp" I don't think they understand what that means.

It means the build is not optimal. Not that it is not viable. You can't say "Shadow summoners aren't choice because it's just gimping the build" just because it isn't optimal. It will survive End Game. That's the only requirement for a viable build.

"

anubite wrote:

Krippclones unite.

haha.

nerfing some of the clearly op skills (freezing pulse is CLEARLY op) would make some others look more attractive.


I think the ele resist damage recieved should have better scaling too.

"

BazzV5 wrote:

Lvl83 CI Templar checking in.

Solo'ed all the way.

with that highly original dual spork build.....

just nerf freeze pulse/light arrow/ek


anyways, there is no such thing as a game with choice (especially one with as much choice as this) that is balanced. there will always be a min/max route. (within a set of paramters that you take into account for the task you want to complete)

if you think otherwise you are a whiny bitch who is asking for way to much (do you know how hard it is to remotely balance even a small amount of variables? than have each variable interact with many others in multiple ways?)


most people who complain don't even play the game. i used to hear people bashing evasion everywhere than i made an evasion tank and pretty much dodged 99% of attacks. i bet 90% of people didn't even know the blind gem existed.