What happened to GGG?

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vio wrote:

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sidtherat wrote:

people spoiled once wont heal over time. they remain spoiled and as such you eiter cave in again or loose this part of playerbase

losing this (now massively whining) part of the user base wouldn't be that big of a loss i guess.

i'm glad they're back to provide a challenging game while ignoring those spoiled kiddos with only trading skills and too much time who want to change the game to their advantage by making ggg trivialising trading.

it's back to the poe roots, hopefully.

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Boem wrote:

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gibbousmoon wrote:

With all due respect, "This is not new" is a terrible defense for... just about any flawed design decision I can think of, really. Or, to be more precise in the case of PoE, persistently neglected existing design flaws.

In my opinion, it's perfectly fine to require players to do their homework (or learn themselves through shitloads of trial and error--but really, most people would rather do the homework) late in the game to learn advanced techniques for success.

It is not perfectly fine to require players to do their homework to succeed (or rather, not to fail utterly) on the character select screen, nor on their initial assumption that certain apparently strong defense-buffing nodes on the passive tree are not trash tier (a reasonable assumption), nor on their initial choice of an attack skill that is presented to them as a primary attack with no indication that it is in fact trash tier.

These are decisions which are literally made within the first 30 minutes of play. Super, super basic things. Good game design requires they be intuitive. And interesting ARPG game design requires genuine choices, not lies dressed up as choices.

Your pretty right and i enjoy reading your post's.

What i would pose, is that most choices are actually viable IF we consider the game to be from
act 1 to act 10. And entirely neglect the existence of the end-game mapping system.

In such a light, certainly a non-optimized build will struggle, but most likely still be able to complete the story line, a defensive node if supplemented with a good baseline value (armor + armor% nodes) will actually yield desired incremental results to player power.

I think it is only accurate to say that freedom of choices is a lie when contemplating the entire system against the mapping system or end-game, where GGG pushes exponential scaling in therms of damage and health pools.

In such a scenario, if your build also doesn't scale exponentially or is "efficient" it gets left behind very rapidly.

And i can see this as being a big issue since GGG is pushing everybody of their player-base into the mapping system with the new 3.0 release.

Endgame mapping is no longer an afterthought for the "hardcore", but rather an extension incorporated into the story line now.(epilogue, zana quest + story continuation of shaper)

As a result of this, a lot of the player-base who would otherwise neglect or skip the end-game will most likely participate in it, as such the part of the player-base that realizes how "choices are an illusion" if you want to compete in the end-game will most likely increase by quite a margin.

This in return will enforce the perception of "only meta is playable and desired" in the community and create a backlash.(since this is true, but not necessarily appreciated by a lot of people)

They did something cool, push players into end-game, but i hope they are prepared for the consequences of such an action because it will be an eye-opener for quite some people who would otherwise be blissfully unaware of the end-game state and play-ability of PoE.

Peace,

-Boem-

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sidtherat wrote:

anyone defending the insane spike Kitava is.. please, just take a step back and look at it again.

<snip>

btw - once i reached kitava on my latest char i was like 69, 3900, relatively good dps, but Charged Dash did barely any damage to it thanks to hitboxes. i died like 70 times because i STOPPED giving a damn. this is a very very bad design when players feels that it is all pointless and just zergs it.

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Raudram wrote:

I think the main issue is that they don't really play the game, maybe a few from the team do rarely, but using some cheesy meta build so they never get to experience the game in a normal way. For the rest they just listen to streamers and reddit circlejerk.

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sidtherat wrote:

anyone defending the insane spike Kitava is.. please, just take a step back and look at it again

acts and their bosses have difficulty scaling something like

act1: 1 / 2
act2: 2 / 3
act3: 4 / 5
.
.
act10 20 / 100

sure, it can be done and it is somewhat mechanical. you can farm for it - sure. and after you do, you can go straight into tier 10 maps. no exageration. it is this bad.

this is not cool. this is pretty reckless and irresponsible. i know 'ggg likes to have the content difficult on release' for some obscure reason. but there is a price to be paid for such design

people will leave (cost A) or will cheeze it (zerging, cost B) or - what is probably the worst outcome - will be forced into meta stuff. stuff like SRS.

this will have higher impact on 'build diversity' than ES nerfs (that make mostly small group of detached individuals affected - as they simply have no clue what to do now once their 'I win' skill got taken away)

btw - once i reached kitava on my latest char i was like 69, 3900, relatively good dps, but Charged Dash did barely any damage to it thanks to hitboxes. i died like 70 times because i STOPPED giving a damn. this is a very very bad design when players feels that it is all pointless and just zergs it.

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PigJuicer wrote:

Well, long story short, GGG realized they now have enough fanboys that will buy any supporter pack regardless of the quality of content and defend every non-sense "balance" change with same stupid arguments that I've been seeing here in this forum for the past 2 years.

It is no surprise that things turned out this way, every company eventually pursues what makes them the most money. I have no doubt that GGG is doing better than ever financially and that is why they don't really care anymore.

I had high hopes for 3.0 but it is just boring and underwhelming with copypasta acts. League itself requires no introduction, by far one of the worst leagues. Armor set of the new supporter pack? Utter garbage.

Don't get me wrong, I supported GGG in the past because I wanted them to succeed. However, with their current anti-fun balancing policy I don't think they deserve more. But I guess one less supporter doesn't hurt when there are thousands of people buying RNG boxes ;)