Content is too easy? Am I just overpowered? Idk...

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Slaanesh69 wrote:

To a fresh player, this game is still VERY challenging.

Once you figure out the core skill/gem mechanics and how to balance defense, damage and resists, and to a lesser extent the synergies between effects, the base game is very, very easy.

Act 5 and 10 each have one boss worthy of the name, and once you learn THEIR mechanics they are easy too.

But so is every other ARPG. D3 is a far greater joke levelling to cap than PoE by a long shot. Most ARPGs are good at making you feel powerful as you level, but in most of them you eventually hit a plateau.

And you certainly do in PoE as well. In PoE in particular, some of that journey to plateau is fraught with layers of stupid RNG (Atlas completion and map sustain), but it definitely gets harder.

As with most games, don't judge it on the leveling content, it is there to give you the illusion of power until the end game eventually squashes you.

Yeah, its a problem with the whole ARPG genre in general, but it feels way worse in PoE. I've played Grim Dawn a lot, and at least there is an incentive to using single target skills there.

But I guess ARPG's still have an extremely dated concept of basing the combat on stats too much. That's why I really like some GGG's boss design like Kaom, Daresso, Malachai. In these bosses your stats matter, but they don't dictate the whole fight. If you don't move correctly, you're dead.
Sadly that's only 1% of the game.

We will only see real improvements to ARPGs gameplay design when they stop basing most of the content around stat checks and start making it more about real battles, you know? Where you actually get to play?

Imho Torchlight 2 Elite mode, although horribly balanced, was on the right track when considering reflex/awareness vs. Stat checking. You definetely can't stat check your way through the content on that one, unless you are using an extremely cheesy build, but there are very few of those in that game.

I want more fights where I actually have to fight and my stats help, not only stat checks which give me the illusion I'm fighting the opponents.

GGG boss design is on the right track.

Ok. Rant over :)

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demon9675 wrote:

It shouldn’t be this way, but powercreep (accompanied by the occasional overnerf, which is just as problematic) and GGG’s dismissive attitude towards balance have made it so.

But Powercreep is global.
Even the bottom tier builds trivialize most of the game content nowadays.

You really have to go out of your way to make your build get out of "I oneshoot normal monsters" territory (like using 3 utility support gems in your 6L instead of multipliers on top of playing some very weird main skill and a very non-damage-oriented skilltree and gear setup).

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Peterlerock wrote:

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Gordyne wrote:

I guess "Bad" means good in PoE's vocabulary and "Overpowered/Meta" must mean that you can play while brainstorming your next build.

a) crit is better than non-crit by a wide margin
b) stacking "adds x% of physical as y elemental damage" is better than pure elemental base damage and better than pure physical damage or chaos damage
c) therefor, dualwield is better than non-dualwield (more of b) available)
d) projectiles are better than AoE are better than non-projectile-non-AoE
e) ranged is better than melee
f) certain skills have access to more "more" multipliers than others (point blank, extra projectiles etc).

However, all pre-Delve content has been beaten by non-crit physical damage life based 2h melee. It is perfectly fine to play this stuff.

It is just that one thing being overshadowed by another means the first one is "dogshit" for a lot of players, especially on the forums.
So they feel forced into playing "the meta", instead of playing what they want to play.

Yeah, I get it. The problem I have is with this wide margin. It forces the balance to become too hard for builds that aren't on the top, OR they make everything easy to appease the non-optimal builds, so you have to intentionally gimp yourself in order to not trivialize everything.

The only way I found to enjoy ARPGs again is to roleplay my character. I used to be a powergamer and everything that wasn't overpowered was boring, but that burned me out of ARPGs really quickly.

I find it strange that people would think: "Hey I want to try a Cyclone build now." That seem so boring and uninspiring.
Instead I build something like: "I'll try replicating Neverwinter Nights arcane archer as best as I can here. Now let me pick skills and passives to achieve that."

The problem with wide gaps like these is that it ruins it for those who want to roleplay instead of power play. Roleplayers won't mind that their build is not at peak efficiency if the difference isn't that big, even if they clear slower or have to be more careful in order to survive. There is nothing more enjoyable and rewarding to me than replicating some other game character playstyle and it ends up being a solid build.

Blowing up every enemy on sight? Yeah that's fun... For the first 5 minutes.

But making you roleplay or replica character come to life is just pure joy.

Your last sentence is funny to me, because I usually end up frustrated if the character I came up in my head ends up using meta skills by accident.

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鬼殺し wrote:

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Vesuvius079 wrote:

It’s a matter of business metrics imo. They make a lot more money from you if you reach maps and they don’t want you to give up and quit before then.

Nice speculation, but that's all it is. Don't confuse your experience with the game making the game easier for you for genuine dumbing-down of difficulty across the board to get more people Mapping and supporting more -- which is also a very questionable claim, given the biggest supporters I know (and I know a lot of them) typically don't care to Map all that much and preferred races, events and fresh leagues. Were making the game simpler to attract more support TencentGGG's goal, I imagine there are better ways to go about it than making the core game easier. I also imagine the drop-off before Mapping hasn't changed dramatically since 3.0 with the introduction of part 2. And even if it has, it can't be traced to something as nebulous as 'the game's easier now, more people are getting to Maps'. The people getting to maps are typically the people who want to get to Maps. They'll follow whatever meta or guide will get them there as quickly as possible. They are not, as you seem to think, fresh wells of support money.

In short, your theory is only that. It's not stupid, but it's particularly resilient to knowledgeable scrutiny.

I don’t believe it’s just me being more experienced in the game. Certain things have absolutely been heavily nerfed. The most recent example is the scorching day totem mobs in act VI. They used to just murder you coming out of act V with poor resistances, now they’re much more tame(and this was explicitly called out in patch notes). Another example is Hailrake, that guy used to just murder you with his ice spear, now he’s using glacial cascade and not doing nearly as much damage and you can run away without sucking behind cover. Vaal side area bosses are also notably less rippy. In invasion they were one shorting hardcore players from off screen. Now they give you plenty of opportunity to flask and DPS them down.

I don’t think it’s too much of a leap to conclude this is probably a business decision. They have all sorts of metrics about players and from a business standpoint one of the most important metrics is when do players just up and leave the game. It’s certainly a driving force in player retention, which GGG clearly cares about. It might be slightly more fun for 6/10 people to encounter super hailrake and get their asses handed to them but if easy hailrake retains 9/10 players there’s a strong business incentive to go with easy hailrake. It’s of course impossible to be certain that this is how it happened.

I also don’t think the story mode being easier necessarily detracts from the overall game. Sure I enjoyed it a bit more when there were bullshit OP minibosses to overcome, but the core of the game for me is putting my build together and getting it to the point where it’s plowing through end game content. Even though I miss super hailrake and friends, easy hailrake is probably even a net benefit to the endgame experience where I spend the most time. Better retention means a larger/better endgame economy and gives GGG more money to develop more new content.

I probably shouldn’t have said “business metrics” like it’s a bad thing. I just can’t quite get over the Hailrake nostalgia lol.

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Vesuvius079 wrote:

It’s certainly a driving force in player retention, which GGG clearly cares about.

Sure but can't they do something for the player that want harder overall content(not just endgame)? Because they are part of the retention too.

Instead of making 100 different difficulty options like D3, make just two. That way they could balance Overpowered builds/skills and the players playing in the easier difficulty almost wouldn't feel the nerfs and the game would be balanced propely.

But I guess the problem isn't that. The problem is that they want to give the casual player the feeling that he has become l33t at the game by spamming his godly buffed AoE. Hope that's not GGG's goal.

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MrsDeath_ wrote:

yea its pretty easy.
even in ssf. it takes me 2 weeks to kill uber elder from 0.
when you know how to play every game is easy i guess.

That is pretty impressive. How many hours a day in your 2 week playthrough to uber elder? I know my problem, I am an alt-holic and tend to play like 6 characters in a league and haven't been playing seriously once I hit maps, but I am still curious. How many hours from zero to uber?

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Gordyne wrote:

Yeah, I get it. The problem I have is with this wide margin. It forces the balance to become too hard for builds that aren't on the top, OR they make everything easy to appease the non-optimal builds, so you have to intentionally gimp yourself in order to not trivialize everything.

There's 3 tiers of content in the game: Storyline, maps (endgame), end-endgame (Uber Atziri, Shaper etc).

GGG failed the lower content, they have basically given up on the balance there. You don't even have to use "twink leveling gear", you only need a very basic understanding of what you are doing (a.k.a. you do not suck) and you will trivialize it.

Maps... Based on how much you are gimping yourself with your build choice, you will run into trouble at some point in maps. Some things will kill you, some things will live longer than you want them to (and then kill you).

And then there's the "end-endgame" for people with millions of DpS and crazy gear and whatever.
If you are not part of this group, this content simply is not for you.
If you are part of this group, everything below t16 is braindead for you.
Membership in this group is not "skill" per se, it's a mixture of build choice, time investment, dedication etc.

Problems arise when you feel entitled to belong to this group, but did not make the right choices to get there. But - imho - that's on you then.

Also - I had a membership once or twice - it's not like it's all "rainbows and unicorns" there.

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The only way I found to enjoy ARPGs again is to roleplay my character. I used to be a powergamer and everything that wasn't overpowered was boring, but that burned me out of ARPGs really quickly.

For me, I want power. The whole point of playing an ARPG is character power.
But not at any cost. I want to play what I enjoy, and only then get as much power as I can.

I usually just start playing something I find interesting enough (happens to be melee most of the time), and then I try to make the best out of it. Usually this is not "meta" stuff, but strong enough to clear all content I have access to in the short time I have to play per league.

This league, I decided on an allout lightning damage twohanded melee build.
This is certainly not meta, but it turned out fine (it is easily t16 viable, but not braindead viable).

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BJWPDaemonSadi wrote:

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MrsDeath_ wrote:

yea its pretty easy.
even in ssf. it takes me 2 weeks to kill uber elder from 0.
when you know how to play every game is easy i guess.

That is pretty impressive. How many hours a day in your 2 week playthrough to uber elder? I know my problem, I am an alt-holic and tend to play like 6 characters in a league and haven't been playing seriously once I hit maps, but I am still curious. How many hours from zero to uber?

100-150 if i have to guess. well tbh it was a flashback event so resources were easier to get compared to a normal league.
that was my first uber elder farming in the game. i did not expect that build to work that well. but i did like 6 uber elders in 2 days after that w/o wasting any extra shaper sets.

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Peterlerock wrote:

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demon9675 wrote:

It shouldn’t be this way, but powercreep (accompanied by the occasional overnerf, which is just as problematic) and GGG’s dismissive attitude towards balance have made it so.

But Powercreep is global.
Even the bottom tier builds trivialize most of the game content nowadays.

You really have to go out of your way to make your build get out of "I oneshoot normal monsters" territory (like using 3 utility support gems in your 6L instead of multipliers on top of playing some very weird main skill and a very non-damage-oriented skilltree and gear setup).

Agreed. But powercreep boosts meta builds even more than non-meta; at the level of red mapping, there’s still some challenge/risk for non-meta builds while gameplay is indeed “braindead” for builds with 7-digit dps and huge health pools.

But red mapping is, of course, the endgame, and all content before then is trivial unless your build is actually nonsensical.

My point is that build balance and engaging gameplay (including more challenge) are goals that have to come hand-in-hand; you really can’t have one without the other, unless you’re fine with many builds being unplayable or much of the game’s content being unplayable for those builds. And that’s an unacceptable state of affairs IMO; it just makes playing feel pointless.

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Peterlerock wrote:

And then there's the "end-endgame" for people with millions of DpS and crazy gear and whatever.
If you are not part of this group, this content simply is not for you.
If you are part of this group, everything below t16 is braindead for you.
Membership in this group is not "skill" per se, it's a mixture of build choice, time investment, dedication etc.

Problems arise when you feel entitled to belong to this group, but did not make the right choices to get there. But - imho - that's on you then.

Also - I had a membership once or twice - it's not like it's all "rainbows and unicorns" there.

I'm not a fan of hardest content being only for extremely specialized builds, not because I want to belong to some l33t group, but because I want to see more combinations being viable so there can be more different playstyles and roleplay potential.

And by different playstyles I mean deeper than: "I shoot orange AoE, he shoots green AoE".

I would prefer if current easier content was a lot harder, but endgame content be a bit easier or maybe make it easier to build different playstyles that can hold up until the end.

I would prefer true and viable diversity even if extreme hard content had to be a bit nerfed. Power gamers will always find a way to "break" things and trivialize the hardest content anyway, so it won't matter much to them.

But that's just me.