What happened to GGG?

"

鬼殺し wrote:

"

ACGIFT wrote:

"

Boem wrote:

Trial and error over a period of five years.

Which, to be honest, is the worst way a game should expect its players to learn.

A GOOD game teaches its players how to play it, as they play.

A MEDIOCRE game teaches its players how to play it, interrupting play to do so.

A BAD game assumes players will find a way to learn to play it without its help.



Sure, the blinded white-knight fans will love to go "Hey, if you wanna be a REAL FAN like me, you gotta blindly grope about until you figure things out!" But most newcomers will get bored soon enough, as this process gets repetitive with no indication when it's close to the end.

Why else does each new league see PoE surge to the top in popularity (nearing 100k simultaneous players) yet then drop off each league, even when it's a GOOD league like Breach or Legacy? Sure, there's a tiny handful that race to the top in under a week no matter how many speed bumps GGG broadly throws in EVERYONE'S way, but for the new players, it's that they get bored of trying to figure their way through the game.

The "Tutorial" (more of an FAQ) is a mild step in the right direction; it upgrades some more basic elements from "bad" to "mediocre."

Not sure I agree with this. I think you're creating a false dichotomy between game accessibility, and game 'quality' or game 'goodness/badness'. While I do agree that a good video/computer game *should* teach the player through play, with as little intrusion or interruption as possible, I also think there are quite a few *good* games that don't, that are good despite the absence of early-on hand-holding. Some games are worth learning in an external sense. Admittedly this may require some reaching back to keep the conversation about ARPGs, but it wasn't really until recently that any ARPG received much in the way of tutorial. Both Diablos were pretty deep-end-straight-off, as was Titan Quest. On the other hand, that's back in the day when people read manuals I suppose. Can we say the modern equivalent of reading the manual (an exercise in learning the game before you even load it up) is reading a game's site, maybe looking up a few beginner's guides, watching a video or two, etc?

I'd say no, given I remember the Diablo 1 manual. It was a hell of a lot of Metzen art (gorgeous stuff), some lore fluff, and pretty basic explanations of the controls. It had nothing about how your first experience in the cathedral might go, or what each monster might do (although as I recall there was a bestiary, probably just to show off that aforementioned sweet-as-fuck Metzen art, oh god dude, why did you ever stop doing that and start writing don't write you can't write okay I'm done)...it was little more than a mood-setter. Still, it was prep. Of a sort. More like a 'this is what it's about. What it's actually LIKE, well, that's why you're installing the game, right?'

Or has the extinction of the game manual also meant that pre-game preparation is redundant a concept as well? Path of Exile used to require a beta key just to play, and you couldn't even buy the damn thing. I waited days for one, and I spent that time really immersing myself in whatever information I could regarding the game. That was my reading of the manual, and probably gamefaqs while I was at it. So by the time I did get a key, I was pretty well-armed to get through a beta that had precisely ZERO user friendliness. I thought PoE was well worth that effort.

Whether or not it still is is a different discussion. This is about refuting your stance that a good game must teach the player through play, and that a bad game does not. PoE 2012 for me was an exemplary game experience and it had no tutorial, no teaching-on-the-fly. It was a hell of a lot of trial and error. Hell, it didn't even have much in the way of external resources. Poe 2017? I can't really say. I have no idea what this game looks like to a newcomer. But we still see very positive posts from newbies so I figure there are at least a few who feel now as I did then. And no, Poe 2017 is still nowhere near 'teaching the player as they play, with little to no interruption', despite having an amusingly sparse 'click here, click here, do this, BAM YOU'RE READY TO FACE KITAVA!' introduction.

Other examples I'd cite for games that are both very good and do not hold the player's hand would be Eve Online, the Souls games (you just can't do that much without researching a lot of the ins and outs of that series), and, to be a little tongue-in-cheek, Chess. Wait, Japanese-character-person, we're talking about video/computer games here, not board games! Well, yes...but we're also talking about the concept of a game that demands the player rise to the challenge of self-education and self-study to learn it, let alone master. And Chess is the grandest example of that. It's also the most balanced game in living history, so y'know, maybe there's something to be said for games that give players nothing more than the pieces, a board and some rules you have to learn before ever thinking about starting a game.

Or maybe I'm the one creating false dichotomies there! Ha.

edit: of course if you're talking purely in terms of profit and player retention, then PoE's been a bad game from the start and never will not be a bad game. On the other hand, I recall a time when most Exiles railed against a game that would be considered 'good' by those terms. Railed pretty hard. Who thanked all the gods that GGG weren't that other company. So not only is your good/bad scale less than tenable, it's potentially dangerous if your aim is to create a 'hardcore ARPG'. If.

Manuals have been done away with because no one reads them. In game tutorials is how everything is done now.

"

鬼殺し wrote:

Spoiler

Not sure I agree with this. I think you're creating a false dichotomy between game accessibility, and game 'quality' or game 'goodness/badness'. While I do agree that a good video/computer game *should* teach the player through play, with as little intrusion or interruption as possible, I also think there are quite a few *good* games that don't, that are good despite the absence of early-on hand-holding. Some games are worth learning in an external sense. Admittedly this may require some reaching back to keep the conversation about ARPGs, but it wasn't really until recently that any ARPG received much in the way of tutorial. Both Diablos were pretty deep-end-straight-off, as was Titan Quest. On the other hand, that's back in the day when people read manuals I suppose. Can we say the modern equivalent of reading the manual (an exercise in learning the game before you even load it up) is reading a game's site, maybe looking up a few beginner's guides, watching a video or two, etc?

I'd say no, given I remember the Diablo 1 manual. It was a hell of a lot of Metzen art (gorgeous stuff), some lore fluff, and pretty basic explanations of the controls. It had nothing about how your first experience in the cathedral might go, or what each monster might do (although as I recall there was a bestiary, probably just to show off that aforementioned sweet-as-fuck Metzen art, oh god dude, why did you ever stop doing that and start writing don't write you can't write okay I'm done)...it was little more than a mood-setter. Still, it was prep. Of a sort. More like a 'this is what it's about. What it's actually LIKE, well, that's why you're installing the game, right?'

Or has the extinction of the game manual also meant that pre-game preparation is redundant a concept as well? Path of Exile used to require a beta key just to play, and you couldn't even buy the damn thing. I waited days for one, and I spent that time really immersing myself in whatever information I could regarding the game. That was my reading of the manual, and probably gamefaqs while I was at it. So by the time I did get a key, I was pretty well-armed to get through a beta that had precisely ZERO user friendliness. I thought PoE was well worth that effort.

Whether or not it still is is a different discussion. This is about refuting your stance that a good game must teach the player through play, and that a bad game does not. PoE 2012 for me was an exemplary game experience and it had no tutorial, no teaching-on-the-fly. It was a hell of a lot of trial and error. Hell, it didn't even have much in the way of external resources. Poe 2017? I can't really say. I have no idea what this game looks like to a newcomer. But we still see very positive posts from newbies so I figure there are at least a few who feel now as I did then. And no, Poe 2017 is still nowhere near 'teaching the player as they play, with little to no interruption', despite having an amusingly sparse 'click here, click here, do this, BAM YOU'RE READY TO FACE KITAVA!' introduction.

Other examples I'd cite for games that are both very good and do not hold the player's hand would be Eve Online, the Souls games (you just can't do that much without researching a lot of the ins and outs of that series), and, to be a little tongue-in-cheek, Chess. Wait, Japanese-character-person, we're talking about video/computer games here, not board games! Well, yes...but we're also talking about the concept of a game that demands the player rise to the challenge of self-education and self-study to learn it, let alone master. And Chess is the grandest example of that. It's also the most balanced game in living history, so y'know, maybe there's something to be said for games that give players nothing more than the pieces, a board and some rules you have to learn before ever thinking about starting a game.

Or maybe I'm the one creating false dichotomies there! Ha.

edit: of course if you're talking purely in terms of profit and player retention, then PoE's been a bad game from the start and never will not be a bad game. On the other hand, I recall a time when most Exiles railed against a game that would be considered 'good' by those terms. Railed pretty hard. Who thanked all the gods that GGG weren't that other company. So not only is your good/bad scale less than tenable, it's potentially dangerous if your aim is to create a 'hardcore ARPG'. If.

Some good points in here, but also a couple of problems.

It's not difficult to find games which suck at teaching new players how to play and yet are masterpieces. That alone is enough to disprove ACGIFT's statement about bad games; logic dictates it be so. But it ignores the spirit of that statement and/or perhaps its intended meaning, which is to characterize one aspect of a game as good or bad.

Of all of the examples you point to, would any not be improved by a gradual learn-as-you-play tutorial? Yes, we are talking about improving accessibility, but not at all about making a game easier or "dumbing down" its content. Having a deeper understanding of the rules of a game won't automatically make you better at it: You still require skill and/or good decision-making abilities. And being able to develop this understanding without leaving the game's world--when is this not a good thing? I do believe that is the crux of ACGIFT's point.

Also, a little off topic, but chess is very much a learn-as-you-play game. You start with trying not to make tactical mistakes, and then the more you play the more you focus on strategic elements needed to win. The tutorial? Your opponent. An opponent in chess is a much more effective teacher (even if not willingly) than any opponent in PoE, whose method of killing you can sometimes remain forever a mystery ("wtf just killed me?!" or "I have 15 billion armor--why didn't it protect me from this one-shot?!"). Finally, of course chess is perfectly balanced, because it is a PvP game in which "build diversity" is zero. Make PoE PvP only and allow only Duelists with standard attack only, and it will be perfectly balanced too.

Balance in this context is about being given the opportunity to make meaningful choices (genuine choices, not lies disguised as choices a.k.a. "noobtraps"). Those opportunities are arguably what make ARPGs (and almost all RPGs, for that matter) as compelling as they are. Until GGG's devs and balance team fully recognize and embrace the distinction between a meaningful choice and a lie dressed up as a choice (via aggressive skillgem nerfing/buffing, for example), they will continue to fail to even appear to be attempting to create this balance.

In short, an absence of balance is the result of an absence of genuine choice, and an absence of genuine choice makes the game far less compelling and interesting. I already made this point earlier in the thread, but putting it into the context of accessibility and tutorials only drives it home further.

"

ACGIFT wrote:

"

Boem wrote:

Trial and error over a period of five years.

Which, to be honest, is the worst way a game should expect its players to learn.

A GOOD game teaches its players how to play it, as they play.

A MEDIOCRE game teaches its players how to play it, interrupting play to do so.

A BAD game assumes players will find a way to learn to play it without its help.



Sure, the blinded white-knight fans will love to go "Hey, if you wanna be a REAL FAN like me, you gotta blindly grope about until you figure things out!" But most newcomers will get bored soon enough, as this process gets repetitive with no indication when it's close to the end.

Why else does each new league see PoE surge to the top in popularity (nearing 100k simultaneous players) yet then drop off each league, even when it's a GOOD league like Breach or Legacy? Sure, there's a tiny handful that race to the top in under a week no matter how many speed bumps GGG broadly throws in EVERYONE'S way, but for the new players, it's that they get bored of trying to figure their way through the game.

cause temp leagues are a fuckshit. who wants to start all over again with no currency or items every three months, when currency and items are so fucking rare in the first place?!?

the game could have 100k every day of the year if they put in a permanent mode worth playing. and it would be a cakewalk to come up with one, I even made up a concept myself

Let me counter your points 1 by 1:

1. When they will improve the goddamn performance on Lightning Strike + Multistrike + Faster Attacks at >10 APS on an FX 7600P + R9 M280X, an FX 6300 + R9 570 and an i5 4450 + R9 290X (all systems with 16 GB RAM and SSDs), I will concede they improved the performance. NOT BEFORE.

Hint: Dynamically dropping resolution does NOTHING regarding that...

2. Heh, remind me to reiterate regarding builds: "choice is an illusion, Exile"...

These days you either go "meta" or deal with PoE with "hard mode ON" by choosing a single target namelocking melee skill.

Much choice. Much balance. Much "WOW"...

3. Some of us played SSF or mostly SSF without the need of an explicit league. Regarding builds, the same that I explained above still applies, especially as there is a huge discrepancy between cast vs ranged vs "ranged/AoE melee" vs single target namelocking melee playstyles.

When (hopefully not IF) GGG actually addresses this sore spot regarding balance, we might have more confidence they will also adjust all the other broken skills, items, mechanics or interactions...

4. VP was "conveniently" reworked for life instead of ES.

Much choice. Much balance. Much "WOW"...

So, my experience shows some of the lacklustre advancements. Should I go on?

I'm not bragging, and I don't mind the brats, as they should actually add something to the discussion by providing fair arguments.

I also support GGG more than the average, as PoE still feels "fun", and I prefer to talk with actions instead of a simple "Perfect game GGG", and not care anymore.

I became invested, so I feel that I should actually offer suggestions that might improve the game, not only for me, but for other players also...

And I still believe in PoE attaining it's potential, as a marvel of the ARPG genre, and one of the best games of all times. It's getting closer, but there is still a very, very long road until then...

My biggest gripe about 3.0.0 and GGG's decision making with changes are, specifically, map bosses.

I run a dual wield gladiator, and using concentrated effect at least makes bosses bearable, but the massive HP steroid that just about every boss has receive wouldn't be so bad if the rewards weren't so terrible. Very rarely are you going to get something decent off of one of them.

Not to mention that with the introduction of Bisco's Collar, just about every top player in the league just doesn't finish bosses and clears through a map instead because it's altogether more efficient and more rewarding.

If they just made killing bosses worthwhile, then at least it wouldn't be such a massive pain, but the trade off of time in return for literally nothing is frustrating.

"

gibbousmoon wrote:

"

鬼殺し wrote:

Spoiler

Not sure I agree with this. I think you're creating a false dichotomy between game accessibility, and game 'quality' or game 'goodness/badness'. While I do agree that a good video/computer game *should* teach the player through play, with as little intrusion or interruption as possible, I also think there are quite a few *good* games that don't, that are good despite the absence of early-on hand-holding. Some games are worth learning in an external sense. Admittedly this may require some reaching back to keep the conversation about ARPGs, but it wasn't really until recently that any ARPG received much in the way of tutorial. Both Diablos were pretty deep-end-straight-off, as was Titan Quest. On the other hand, that's back in the day when people read manuals I suppose. Can we say the modern equivalent of reading the manual (an exercise in learning the game before you even load it up) is reading a game's site, maybe looking up a few beginner's guides, watching a video or two, etc?

I'd say no, given I remember the Diablo 1 manual. It was a hell of a lot of Metzen art (gorgeous stuff), some lore fluff, and pretty basic explanations of the controls. It had nothing about how your first experience in the cathedral might go, or what each monster might do (although as I recall there was a bestiary, probably just to show off that aforementioned sweet-as-fuck Metzen art, oh god dude, why did you ever stop doing that and start writing don't write you can't write okay I'm done)...it was little more than a mood-setter. Still, it was prep. Of a sort. More like a 'this is what it's about. What it's actually LIKE, well, that's why you're installing the game, right?'

Or has the extinction of the game manual also meant that pre-game preparation is redundant a concept as well? Path of Exile used to require a beta key just to play, and you couldn't even buy the damn thing. I waited days for one, and I spent that time really immersing myself in whatever information I could regarding the game. That was my reading of the manual, and probably gamefaqs while I was at it. So by the time I did get a key, I was pretty well-armed to get through a beta that had precisely ZERO user friendliness. I thought PoE was well worth that effort.

Whether or not it still is is a different discussion. This is about refuting your stance that a good game must teach the player through play, and that a bad game does not. PoE 2012 for me was an exemplary game experience and it had no tutorial, no teaching-on-the-fly. It was a hell of a lot of trial and error. Hell, it didn't even have much in the way of external resources. Poe 2017? I can't really say. I have no idea what this game looks like to a newcomer. But we still see very positive posts from newbies so I figure there are at least a few who feel now as I did then. And no, Poe 2017 is still nowhere near 'teaching the player as they play, with little to no interruption', despite having an amusingly sparse 'click here, click here, do this, BAM YOU'RE READY TO FACE KITAVA!' introduction.

Other examples I'd cite for games that are both very good and do not hold the player's hand would be Eve Online, the Souls games (you just can't do that much without researching a lot of the ins and outs of that series), and, to be a little tongue-in-cheek, Chess. Wait, Japanese-character-person, we're talking about video/computer games here, not board games! Well, yes...but we're also talking about the concept of a game that demands the player rise to the challenge of self-education and self-study to learn it, let alone master. And Chess is the grandest example of that. It's also the most balanced game in living history, so y'know, maybe there's something to be said for games that give players nothing more than the pieces, a board and some rules you have to learn before ever thinking about starting a game.

Or maybe I'm the one creating false dichotomies there! Ha.

edit: of course if you're talking purely in terms of profit and player retention, then PoE's been a bad game from the start and never will not be a bad game. On the other hand, I recall a time when most Exiles railed against a game that would be considered 'good' by those terms. Railed pretty hard. Who thanked all the gods that GGG weren't that other company. So not only is your good/bad scale less than tenable, it's potentially dangerous if your aim is to create a 'hardcore ARPG'. If.

Some good points in here, but also a couple of problems.

It's not difficult to find games which suck at teaching new players how to play and yet are masterpieces. That alone is enough to disprove ACGIFT's statement about bad games; logic dictates it be so. But it ignores the spirit of that statement and/or perhaps its intended meaning, which is to characterize one aspect of a game as good or bad.

Of all of the examples you point to, would any not be improved by a gradual learn-as-you-play tutorial? Yes, we are talking about improving accessibility, but not at all about making a game easier or "dumbing down" its content. Having a deeper understanding of the rules of a game won't automatically make you better at it: You still require skill and/or good decision-making abilities. And being able to develop this understanding without leaving the game's world--when is this not a good thing? I do believe that is the crux of ACGIFT's point.

Also, a little off topic, but chess is very much a learn-as-you-play game. You start with trying not to make tactical mistakes, and then the more you play the more you focus on strategic elements needed to win. The tutorial? Your opponent. An opponent in chess is a much more effective teacher (even if not willingly) than any opponent in PoE, whose method of killing you can sometimes remain forever a mystery ("wtf just killed me?!" or "I have 15 billion armor--why didn't it protect me from this one-shot?!"). Finally, of course chess is perfectly balanced, because it is a PvP game in which "build diversity" is zero. Make PoE PvP only and allow only Duelists with standard attack only, and it will be perfectly balanced too.

Balance in this context is about being given the opportunity to make meaningful choices (genuine choices, not lies disguised as choices a.k.a. "noobtraps"). Those opportunities are arguably what make ARPGs (and almost all RPGs, for that matter) as compelling as they are. Until GGG's devs and balance team fully recognize and embrace the distinction between a meaningful choice and a lie dressed up as a choice (via aggressive skillgem nerfing/buffing, for example), they will continue to fail to even appear to be attempting to create this balance.

In short, an absence of balance is the result of an absence of genuine choice, and an absence of genuine choice makes the game far less compelling and interesting. I already made this point earlier in the thread, but putting it into the context of accessibility and tutorials only drives it home further.

Dark souls

"

k1rage wrote:

Dark souls

The funny thing is Dark Souls 1 and to a extent 2 actually had pretty decent build variety that could do 99% of the game, even if it did have a few ridiculous things like the damage magic could do to bosses.

GGG doesn't seem to realize that player skill doesn't play nearly as big a factor in PoE as it does in DaS no matter how much they bloat Boss health bars and fill the screen with glowing garbage.

If you think any fight in poe takes skill you're undergeared/underleveled

"

SodanKerjuu wrote:

"

thraSh25 wrote:

It's only a matter of time before others notice and the game rapidly declines; which it's starting to show from what I'm seeing.

Steam player chart disagrees with you:
http://steamcharts.com/app/238960

Meanwhile a total fuckwad is president of my country, also due to the magic of data aggregation.

Patch 3.0 could be is a total turd but still a spike in players at this time isn't surprising. Does that mean the game is better? I mean, I guess, since "popular" = "better", I already have my answer, right? :rolleyes:

"

Chess

Yeah, but when you've spent a lifetime trying to master Chess, you'll have Chess. When you spend a bunch of time trying to master PoE, you'll have ... PoE. (/wah wah sad trombone just in case you couldn't already hear it.)

"

鬼殺し wrote:

Not sure I agree with this. I think you're creating a false dichotomy between game accessibility, and game 'quality' or game 'goodness/badness'. While I do agree that a good video/computer game *should* teach the player through play, with as little intrusion or interruption as possible, I also think there are quite a few *good* games that don't, that are good despite the absence of early-on hand-holding.

It's not a false dichotomy; to go with what you suggested, it seemed you were more of leaning towards that.

A game CAN skip out on teaching a player how to play it, but it will be less of it. And perhaps, it seems, I didn't make it clear enough: tutorials are not an example of the "good," they are an example of the "mediocre." Tutorials inherently require slowing down/stopping game progress so they can teach the player, whether it's as little as stopping long enough to glance at a pop-up, or the as much as game outright sending you to a tutorial map to complete before you can resume progress.

A GOOD way of teaching players is to make the game very intuitive; rely on clever design, to funnel the player towards the logical choice that just so happens to be the correct thing to do.

Path of Exile *has* done a few of these right; the first five-ish seconds of the actual gameplay match this, where the game quickly teaches ANY new player with ZERO experience in the entire genre the very basic parts of how to handle input. You can literally sit *anyone* down, even if they've basically never played a video game before, and they can figure out the basics of "what they're doing" in just a matter of seconds, with zero need to, say, consult a manual:

• One of the first things a player might notice is that they have a mouse cursor, which biases them to favor clicking something before they press any keyboard keys.
  
  
• The first things highlighted are a weapon on the ground, as well as the "Dying exile;" coupled with the above, players would reflexively try to click these before doing anything else, especially noting that they DO "highlight" (look different) when the cursor goes over them.
  
  
• As the character moves the moment you click, giving instant feedback to confirm the player's natural assumption. They see their exile instantly wield the starting weapon, and the voiceover from the Dying Exile also lets them know it's how they talk to people.
  
  
• Armed (pun maybe intended) with this new knowledge of clicking, when the first zombie shows up, the player's first response WILL be to click on it. They'll be rewarded by watching their character take a swing; they now know how to attack!
  
  
• Once the zombie dies, they see a gem drop to the ground; for any that somehow didn't know how most games (especially RPGs) work, this makes it clear what "loot" is.
  
  

The intuitive part of the beginning of the game ends after the above, but it teaches the player pretty much ALL of the core basics. Were PoE a very simple game, this would really be all that's needed... But the game is vastly more complex.

"

鬼殺し wrote:

Or has the extinction of the game manual also meant that pre-game preparation is redundant a concept as well? Path of Exile used to require a beta key just to play, and you couldn't even buy the damn thing. I waited days for one, and I spent that time really immersing myself in whatever information I could regarding the game.

Well, I definitely separate the concept of "getting psyched/hyped for a game" to be separate from learning how to play it.

To be honest, I'm the sort of player who, if I can help it, NEVER reads instruction manuals before I dive into a game the first time; the only reason against it is much like it was for you; trying to sate my desire and bide my time until I can finally get the chance to install and play. (last major case of that was back in 2002, when I learned I needed a DX7 or later card to play Morrowind)

Hence, it HAS given me a pretty good gauge of how intuitive a game is. Almost all games I could figure things out pretty quickly, in fact. (the only two exceptions were the series by Egosoft and, to a lesser degree, Paradox) Even still, I noticed that while in MOST games I'd fidget a bit with the controls before I figured out what did what, there was a small subset of games where, in fact, I literally didn't need to try anything out at all; I so automatically just picked it up and ran (without walking) that it may as well have NOT been a new game!

That's where I'm drawing those lines; obviously, with most games there's more to just figuring out your controls at the beginning, but that shows what it can be like for the REST of it.

"

鬼殺し wrote:

Whether or not it still is is a different discussion. This is about refuting your stance that a good game must teach the player through play, and that a bad game does not. But we still see very positive posts from newbies so I figure there are at least a few who feel now as I did then. And no, Poe 2017 is still nowhere near 'teaching the player as they play, with little to no interruption', despite having an amusingly sparse 'click here, click here, do this, BAM YOU'RE READY TO FACE KITAVA!' introduction.

Again, it's less that it automatically makes a game bad, but more that it DOES become a bad part of it, detracting from the game.

I guess you could say that I wasn't giving a hard and fast litmus test (or, ahem, dichotomy) over what a good game HAD to be (after all, a BAD game can still teach its players well!) but rather, going by the sort of "Good idea/bad idea" set of examples.

Make no mistake; Path of Exile has ALWAYS had major good parts to it, that granted points towards being a "good game." But on the opposite side, it's always struggled with issues of how to teach players about a lot of the more important parts of it, such as making builds... And these have detracted from the game.

And to be quite fair, it's NOT about stuff like tutorials and the like. A good example is one thing that's been mentioned a couple times, the "noob trap," which describes a gameplay choice that, to the inexperienced, can LOOK like a good option, but in fact is a BAD one. The only way a player would know to avoid such a pitfall is through prior knowledge; it's either a matter of looking up a guide beforehand, or simply piecing it together personally through trial-and-error.

That means teaching the player is ALSO a matter of balance; not all choices have to be EQUAL, but there shouldn't be some clearly BAD choices that are masquerading as anything but; same as why the OP meta is problematic, too; it's a matter of rewarding players for nothing more than preexisting knowledge; e.g, knowing the metagame. (This is why they're called "meta" builds, after all!)

So again, perfect equality isn't necessary, (e.g, the game should still have a sort of "tier list" for builds) but the top ("meta") and bottom ("worthless") tiers should, ideally, be empty/nonexistent, because they only provide reward/punishment for metagaming.

"

鬼殺し wrote:

Other examples I'd cite for games that are both very good and do not hold the player's hand would be Eve Online, the Souls games (you just can't do that much without researching a lot of the ins and outs of that series), and, to be a little tongue-in-cheek, Chess.

As I've not picked up EVE in a long while, I can't vouch too much for that. For Dark Souls, I go into that with a bit more detail below on why it's actually the opposite; a lot of its good COMES FROM actually teaching players.

Chess, though, is a poor example for one very core reason: its two-player nature is fully inherent to what makes it what it is. The very basis revolves around having two players situated, in-person, on either sides of the same board. The very nature of it means that one's first experience is INTENTIONALLY made as a teaching exercise, whether it's another human who pulled out the set to teach you, or one opened up a program to teach themselves.

Videogames are distinctly different in that regard; with EVERY major genre in use today, even ostensibly "online multiplayer-only" games (e.g, even Hearthstone) are, in fact, single-player at heart; the other player(s) are not treated on equal grounds as the human sitting down to play it, because the role they serve, obscured behind a computer screen and the Internet, means they may as well be a bot in that regard; they can't literally or physically hold your hand.

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鬼殺し wrote:

edit: of course if you're talking purely in terms of profit and player retention, then PoE's been a bad game from the start and never will not be a bad game. On the other hand, I recall a time when most Exiles railed against a game that would be considered 'good' by those terms. Railed pretty hard. Who thanked all the gods that GGG weren't that other company. So not only is your good/bad scale less than tenable, it's potentially dangerous if your aim is to create a 'hardcore ARPG'. If.

In fairness, a big rule of thumb is that most players don't know what they want, and that's why most of them aren't credible game developers and never will be.

Back in the 90s, with the rise of the Internet, and concepts like what we'd now call CrowdSourcing got started, we saw the first example of a AAA game development cycle rely very heavily on community input for important decisions, in making the sequel to a very major game... The result was Master of Orion 3, which basically destroyed its studio in a single fell swoop; virtually everything wrong with it was the way it was because that's what the players asked for.

Not that PLEASING players is bad at all; in fact, it's the opposite. However, more often than not, while many put stock in the belief that "people know what the like," the truer statement is that people who know how to please others are better at it than those who've not worked at that.

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k1rage wrote:

Dark souls

Another funny thing is that Dark Souls actually *does* teach its players through the game itself. No player needs to go look up a guide to find out when to time their iFrames when dodging each individual enemy. Sure, there's a BENEFIT to looking up some strategy guides, but even at its worst, the game is far from blind trial-and-error. A smart player can very quickly identify where their mistakes are, and attempt to address them on the very next attempt.

This contrasts to a lot of PoE's tougher parts, where you might find yourself repeatedly RIPing, and you MIGHT try changing certain things (a gear upgrade, different tactics, etc.) and you get NO feel from the game of whether you're even getting warmer or cooler, much less the direction of where you should focus your efforts to improve.

You basically either struggle, or the moment you got everything right, it just clicks and you breeze past. It denies players the thrill of struggle and aspiration, replacing it just with a dichotomy of frustration without any clear ending, and relief over having finally trivialized content.