So why does GGG want PoE to be a twitch reaction arpg?

I dunno. I've always thought PoE's gameplay was incredibly easy. Its more about loot, oldschool mechanics, and outside the game preparation: Trading ability, skills/builds/game knowledge/economy knowledge, etc. Hell, 9 times out of 10 you are literally running around mashing mouse 2 to kill the entire screen over and over, with maybe a pot or movement skill mixed in. The extreme oldschool simplicity of it all really hurts the actual difficulty, which manifests itself in 1 shots since there isn't a ton of crap you really have to manage. Its just the nature of the beast. Its the only real difficulty in the actual gameplay.

I mean lets just look at my current foray into D3 for example. I'm playing a Nat's Demon Hunter cause that was the starter set for the season. Lets see what I have to do: Use a resource generator, and use a resource spender. These come with added stipulations. They both buff dmg for 5 seconds after use(independently). Generator also buffs defense for 6 seconds after use. So there is 2 things you have to keep going every 5-6 seconds. Then, they cut the CD on the main skill in the set; Rain of Arrows. It has to be up for the set to even function. When it's cast, it gives 3500% dmg for 10 seconds to all your abilities. Using your generator and spender cuts 4 seconds of 30 second CD when you damage with them. You have to constantly keep doing those 3 things within small time periods to even function at a base level. Then, you got another big nuke, Fan of Knives, that you let build up for 30 seconds and use during the 3500% dmg buff. On top of that, you got another ability you keep active for passive dmg/defense. When you get enough CDR you can just numlock it but until then you probably manually casting it. Then, you got 1 defensive/travel ability(usually same for DH cause they are squishy) you use, and 1 potion on a 30 second CD. And yes, you have to keep doing all of this, all the time. You can't just say screw it to any of these buffs or CDs or you just aren't getting things done.

All that on top of rare guys that spawn will all sorts of dumb shit like walls, orbs, beams, mortars, teleports, various "lab traps" you have to constantly dodge or immune with your defensive ability.

Thats a hell of a lot more going on that mashing mouse 2 90% of the time, or worrying about if a mob has extra damage, extra crit, volatile, etc.

So no, I dont think they have designed it to be twitchy at all. Fast maybe, but the way they have cornered themselves on the actual gameplay has left little but 1 shots and damage spikes as true gameplay difficulty. You dont really have the same kind of crap going on that you do in other games.

I guess just reacting to something with an instant potion is kind of twitchy, but that's about it. The 1-shot mechanics are just a symptom of fast, simple gameplay needing some kind of difficulty mechanism.

1-shots are dumb, but what else could they do? Anything else and the game gets pretty damn easy without redesigns in a ton of areas. I dont even think slowing the game down is going to affect it. It was like this from the beginning of the game. You never died to an accumulation of damage. It was always a 1 shot mechanic as far back as closed beta. Reflect, boss 1-shot mechanics, lag. If you didn't actually die to those things, you just never died. I guess you died less then, lol, but the gameplay was exactly the same.

That is one of the reasons, that I liked the game most in the Beta Version. Max DPS (With really most expensive items) was about 20K. Super uniques existed like the 1000 Life chest. I never got one, but the feelings that it could drop was so great. The monster damage was balanced. Player life was not so high, but it could be fill up again easily. Energy shield was much higher but the only way to refill it, was to survive the time until it started to recharge. (And there was nearly no way to speed that up). This concept made sense. But it is complete unbalanced now and frustrating on both options. (Life and ES)

Now we have nerved uniques to feel all equal and either you one shot the monsters (with 100000th of damage) or they one shot you. In my opinion, the balance has developed in a wrong direction.

Getting to level 100 was an extreme challenge. It took 9-12 month to do so.
Now we have the leagues, somehow great. But doing all the same (yes it feels the same) stuff every 3 month... I don't know.

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Slaanesh69 wrote:

I'm old. And slow. And cold. And there are wolves after me. Okay, three of these are true. And I am currently playing a poor defense frost blades character that relies mostly on dodge and whirling blades to not die on the hard stuff. THAT is semi-twitchy, I suppose, but do-able even for old me.

That being said, I am just finishing the grind to 90 on her and really haven't delved much past T14 maps, so amateur twitchy then.

The current meta is high enough life to avoid most one hits, massive leech and Bob's your uncle. You by a Kaom's HEart to foundation your 12,000 life and a Disfavour or Starforge for your massive dps and there you go.

Or, like me, you fall prey to your pride, and SSF to your own level of accomplishment. Dammit I got off track again........where are my keys.......what was I doing?

*grabs glasses* where do i like articles here?

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鬼殺し wrote:

[...]

...Path of Exile is a better game than that, I reckon, but it'll probably never get the chance to prove it.

It could be a better game, but right now, it sure as hell ain't.

The passive tree and skill gem system hold tremendous potential. But the specifics of how they're currently realized, and many of the features layered on top, are a colossal waste of that potential.

GGG are too focused on coming up with new league gimmicks to get that spike on league launch, when instead they should be focusing on making the core gameplay more enjoyable to prevent the sharp dropoff afterwards.

"

鬼殺し wrote:

"

DeltaWing wrote:

That is one of the reasons, that I liked the game most in the Beta Version. Max DPS (With really most expensive items) was about 20K. Super uniques existed like the 1000 Life chest. I never got one, but the feelings that it could drop was so great. The monster damage was balanced. Player life was not so high, but it could be fill up again easily. Energy shield was much higher but the only way to refill it, was to survive the time until it started to recharge. (And there was nearly no way to speed that up). This concept made sense. But it is complete unbalanced now and frustrating on both options. (Life and ES)

Now we have nerved uniques to feel all equal and either you one shot the monsters (with 100000th of damage) or they one shot you. In my opinion, the balance has developed in a wrong direction.

Getting to level 100 was an extreme challenge. It took 9-12 month to do so.
Now we have the leagues, somehow great. But doing all the same (yes it feels the same) stuff every 3 month... I don't know.

...Yeah. Everything that made the game unique, including its flagship 1000 life chest armour, has been forced aside by the power-dozer. Which is deeply ironic, given the old page for PoE actually highlighted '1000 life!?' on Kaom's Heart as though it was was some major power that we can't believe is actually in an ARPG omg wow.

As for level 100 being a long, long term goal, I can confirm as late as mid 2012 this was the intention. I had a conversation about it with Chris, mostly curious why levels 90-100 weren't more significant power jumps. His response, give or take, was the Everest rationale: you climb it because it's there. Because you can. And I could tell he was very proud of just how long it would take players to reach the summit.

Then someone did it FAR quicker than anticipated, and GGG's silence on the matter was an implicit accusation of foul play.

Then someone did it FAR quicker on Hardcore, and it was clear that GGG had severely underestimated the zeal and commitment of their most addicted, obsessive players.

And once one person does it, and does it publicly, of course everyone else is like ME TOO ME TOO, and that was the start of the end of the idea of the 'long, long term goal of level 100'. Throw in utterly rampant power-creep and poe.trade and it's all over, red rover. 100 in a month. 100 in a few weeks. All that work by GGG, curbstomped by its most faithful.

Now GGG can't really win. They can only keep scooping water out of the leaking hull. Nothing they add will last long in the face of the tools at players' disposals. 3.0 was the most significant, most 'autonomous' update since Closed Beta, in that it brazenly said 'okay end-game players, you've kept us chasing our own tails for years, NOW we are doing an expansion that is purely to improve the actual game'...but of course the addicts didn't get that message. All they saw was 'waste of time'. So you can probably expect that 3.1 and onward will be more tail-chasing as GGG work to maintain the cycle of spikes and dips, the former accompanying a new expansion/league, the latter almost painfully inevitable a month or so later.

...Path of Exile is a better game than that, I reckon, but it'll probably never get the chance to prove it.

On a side note that is related to the concept of the 'leaking hull', their lack of a trade system has really fucked the game over immensely. The fact that they refused to implement some sort of trade improvement has reared its ugly head now. The only reason why we even have poe.trade in the first place is because GGG had to basically do a patch job with the premium stash tabs and the API to prevent people from literally blowing up their web server (because people used to literally run a crawler engine to gather all their item info from the board, huehuehue GGG).

Lots of things are starting to show issues; they never really addressed the boring combat, which is something D3 does immensely better (despite all the faults of the game, the combat is smooth, animations are crisp, you actually FEEL like you're playing and not just holding a fucking button down like you do in PoE 99.9% of the time). They never addressed trade really (and only did when it was causing massive server issues). They never really addressed the issue of power creep on both sides (player and mob power creep).