The pros and cons of power disparities (aka "bad" game balance)

Hi all!

This league has made me think a lot more about the power differences between the various skills than previous leagues did. Fact is, the diffference in power and clearspeed of say, an arc trapper to one of the more "normal" skills like caustic arrow is humungous. It is so large that I firmly believe GGG want it that way.


So why do they?

Pros of huge power differences
1. People regularly ask for a difficulty setting. There you have it: Play an OP skill for easy mode, play others for harder modes.
2. Change of pace. Let's assume you like a challenging game. Still, every once in a while you get tired of slogging through medium maps, continually fearing for your life and just want to mindlessly slay everything. Switch to your OP character with the mirrored gear and play god for an hour or two, then go back to your favourite play style with new enthusiasm.
3. Such differences make for wildly different characters and play styles, more than if all skills had similar power levels.

Cons
This is very much dependent on you and your goals in the game.
1. If you feel the need to compete, or simply often compare your progress and wealth to that of full timers like streamers, then the imbalance forces you to play one of the relatively few OP builds of the season. This limits effective build diversity for you.
2. The game is very hard to balance. If an OP character struggles on a particular boss, a "normal" character will not have a snowball's chance in hell to do this boss. Conversely, if all bosses are doable by normal builds, an OP build will never be challenged, ever. To solve this, GGG has built in huge damage spikes which allow normal characters to do most content, but do also endanger OP builds occasionally. A death by such a spike can feel really unfair and demotivating.

My thoughts
There is certainly a case to be made for large power differences between skills. And mostly, POE is great even with these differences.

But some elements of the game ruin that fun. In incursion league, it's the timer. This ensures that my character which can clear most content quite nicely (but slowly) utterly fails the incursions. I get a door or an architect on about 1/5 incursions and both maybe once per temple run. This means I will often not even get to the boss room, never mind getting interesting rooms to level 3. In effect, a slow and steady clearer is completely excluded from the league and might as well play standard. Some might say "Just ignore Alva then", but that's unrealistic. Every time I see her, I am reminded of the lost opportunity for my character and lose some motivation to play.


TLDR
Power discrepancies need not be bad. They are only made bad by adding too many game elements which require high DPS.

My wish to GGG: Please allow more play styles to fully participate in POE. Get rid of timers and big DPS checks in all but the end game maps or occasional (and optional!) bosses.
POE is big enough that I don't feel the need to amass huge wealth or farm über elder each league. But I do want to be able to participate in all "usual" content with many more builds, even if progressing to 90 takes much longer and I end the league in relative poverty.

This post became much longer than I intended, I hope you find some food for thought and am looking forward to your opinions. GGG opinions would be especially welcome!

May your maps be plentiful, exiles!
SB

PS: In games which have easy vs hard modes, the really great rewards are often reserved for hard mode. In POE, it's the reverse, assuming that the hardest bosses drop the best rewards.

A well written post and thorough analysis that largely echoes how I feel about the skill power balance, so I don't have much to add. But I will leave these here for emphasis:

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SisterBlister wrote:

a slow and steady clearer is completely excluded from the league and might as well play standard.

"

SisterBlister wrote:

In games which have easy vs hard modes, the really great rewards are often reserved for hard mode. In POE, it's the reverse

Thanks for the reply.

I hope I didn't come across as too negative, though. The OP was not meant like that at all. Rather, I believe my main gripe with POE can be fixed quite easily, without requiring any huge skill balance changes. That is rather positive, innit?

"

SisterBlister wrote:

I hope I didn't come across as too negative, though.

Nope, I just quoted the negative parts that resonated with me the most.

Unlike the white knights who feel the need to defend the game (and the devs) at every opportunity, I like to criticize in the hopes that the game will improve.

I believe pointing out the flaws in a game (especially when it's an "ongoing experience" like PoE) without going full baby rage is probably the best thing a player can do for it's long-term health.

/opinions

Any other opinions? Do you consider large power differences good or bad?

One more con in my book:
The "wrong" skill can be a noob trap. This may turn off new players who are quite likely to start off with one of the many "hard mode" skills.

Another pro would be:
Vets might try skills they might not normally play if they happen to be OP this season. I for one did not expect to play a trapper, preferring bows and occasional ucap mellee builds.

Any further suggestions on how to mitigate the cons without requiring a major rebalance?

I appreciate your enthusiasm, but GGG don't give a flying fuck about balance. It's all powercreep, all the time.

"

suszterpatt wrote:

I appreciate your enthusiasm, but GGG don't give a flying fuck about balance. It's all powercreep, all the time.

Erm, yes. The whole point of the post is to show that "good" balance isn't required for a good game if the mechanics are clever enough. So maybe GGG needn't "give a flying fuck" about balance at all.

What with all the complaints about the game's imbalance, I really expected a more lively discussion...

"

SisterBlister wrote:

What with all the complaints about the game's imbalance, I really expected a more lively discussion...

We've been complaining for years. GGG have proven they don't give a shit. You can keep complaining if you've got any steam left, see what happens.

You really didn't read the OP, did you?
Hint: It was not a call for better skill balance.