Difficulty Curve Problems

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zagibu wrote:

To be honest, all damage dealing ailments are meh at best in 3.0. You are almost always better off simply scaling hit damage.

Very possibly.
Part of the appeal of going for bleed is it gives me a fairly simple (in terms of this game anyways) objective - hit as hard as possible. I don't care if doing 3attacks at 0.7 dam & double speed is better than one - I want big numbers, and hopefully everything else will sort itself out as a result.

Yeah, it should be okay until late mapping. You can bring almost anything to T10 mapping if you know what you're doing, but after that it's min-max or bust.

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zagibu wrote:

Yeah, it should be okay until late mapping. You can bring almost anything to T10 mapping if you know what you're doing, but after that it's min-max or bust.

Heh. This comment is actually less comforting than it sounds. If I'm only setting myself up for more pain down the road then that might be worth avoiding.

I'm starting to suspect one of lessons from this discussion is "It's a mature game with an established, active and experienced player base. It actually IS balanced with very little margin for error because otherwise the majority of our players wouldn't find it challenging".

Well, to be honest, it's a bit illusory to think you can reach red maps on your first few self made characters. Some people might be able to do it, but 95% of players would give up long before that and either roll new self-made characters or finally copy a build of someone else to see the last few bits of the game.

Personally, I have never even killed a Guardian or Shaper, because I roll my own builds, and not a single one of them has ever been good enough to do it. I do have managed to clear all maps up to there except 3 very rare unique maps and have also managed to kill normal Atziri and finish the endgame labyrinth with several characters. And I have managed to bring a character to level 84 in a HC temp league.

But it took me a long time of playing and reading the wiki until I was able to do these things. I don't expect I'll ever achieve the rest, because I don't have the patience to grind enough currency to be able to afford the items I'd need. That's also the reason why I'll probably never bring a character over level 90. The grind is just too much for me past that.

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zagibu wrote:

I don't expect I'll ever achieve the rest, because I don't have the patience to grind enough currency to be able to afford the items I'd need. That's also the reason why I'll probably never bring a character over level 90. The grind is just too much for me past that.

I don't quite get this logic.

If something isn't reliably available in game(*) then why is there an assumption that you will have it at all?

I get that the game is complex, and partly I like it for that - I like that character creation/development is this intricate puzzle of moving parts full of compromise without a clear solution.

But some of the game seems like complexity for it's own sake. Like the weird 'maximise your loot' trading mini game thing. Took me a while to work out why I was getting no treasure at all, and I just find it boring and grating. I want to be playing the game itself not spending my time on inventory management and sorting out my random junk haul.

Item trading seems to fall into a similar category. "Oh, in order to progress in game you need to do this extra thing. Good luck!"
"Why? Shouldn't I be able to actually progress the game itself without resorting to several external resources?"


Maybe I just have a bunch of unrealistic expectation and assumptions. I dunno.



*= Because that's how small probabilities work. it's entirely possible they will never happen.

Sorry, but I haven't understood a single thing of your last post.

What did you want to respond to the cited part of my message?

What is the weird "maximise your loot" mini game you are talking about?

What is the extra thing you have to do with regards to item trading?

I was responding to the concept that buying items from sources outside the game was essential and necessary to complete it.

Item trading doesn't happen in gameplay. It happens outside it. It's not actually a part of the game. All of the trading seems to be through external websites so I'm a bit confused why people seem to assume it's mandatory.

And the weird odd loot minigame thing is the whole vendor recipe mechanic whereby if you sell certain items in certain ways you get more useful/valuable returns. It just seems rather counter intuitive and an added layer of difficulty/complexity that doesn't add any thing.

You have only answered two of my questions, but anyway:

- Yeah, it's weird that you have to use third party sources for efficient trading. There is also trade chat, but nobody besides extortionists actually uses it anymore. GGG doesn't seem to want to make trading too easy, for some reason.

- I agree that the vendor recipe system is weird as well. I guess it is a result of the way currency works in this game, and also an attempt to mimic the Horadric Cube from Diablo 2. It's indeed a bit silly that you have to consult an external wiki to learn about some of these recipes, which are pretty essential. They should probably implement them as simple list items in the vendor trade menus that you can buy when you have the required "ingredients".