Don't nerf Syndicate encounters

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pphnx wrote:

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Albinosaurus wrote:

Here's a simple fact: The majority are happy to see these changes. GG, GGG.

I remember how a game fucked up when devs listen majority of the players. It's called Diablo 3.

Oh daaaaaaamn what a burn!

I really hope for the patch notes.. Maybe, just maybe i will stand a chance to get rid of this abomination..


For perspective:
I have 5.3k ehp, 40ish phys red (fortify, flask, 3 end charges), +22% chaos res, all res 75, 40/30 dodge, leech and 0.5mln shaper dps and i freeze everything on top.. but its all irrelevant with her. I can do t15 8 mods sharkari with 100% area, -res and damage mods without a problem, uber izaro np, catarina in area 77 no problem.. elder and his guardians in t8-t10 (they spawned to early) i can do, i can prep for those fights and probably i could do guardians by now (not deathless).

I last around 0.5 second in a normal (no bad mods) t10 map.. It goes like this:
A portal opens and autohit (yeah she has autohit area ability), autoshockcryt (5 times in a row so auto) and i am goners even fully buffed and its almost offscreen i can't even whirl out of this as she shoots first than talks and i get screen and "good hunt" in the end.

At first i was like man this is fine, its challenging i will adapt. I buffed my ehp to over 6.5k with a shield and still one shotted in estuary t10 with no mods. I asked a block tank to run with me on maps to kill her.. she doesn't spawn as most intervention don't when in party (you usually get fortification).

I made a mistake, its true, had a bargain to lose a member of syndicate i need for challenge or max rank tora.. I should have just left that choice with no option chosen, i went with that upgrade, was probably to greedy for a gilded harb scarab. The problem is i can't get rid of her now besides running t1 maps in hope she will spawn and i will survive. Yes i don't know if i can survive against that shyt in t1 map.

Tora is not needed for challenges just get rid off her from the syndicate as fast as you can or your life might be far more complicated than you might think.

And for all those that think, well you should have picked a super freaking tank with 10k ehp with 10 layers of defense.. I could have, but i didn't want to. I have fun from learning the mechanics and avoid the big shyt mechanically, else this game is just walking simulator, which i don't want to play. I will never play 15k ehp jugg just because. If a guardian godlike exile can spawn in a t10 map on a whim and one shot a char like mine with no time for any reaction i call this unbalanced, especially if you are not really in full control over the syndicate. I can live with that if they add one option - to remove a syndicate member for lets say 10c per rank from current position (he drops to unnasigned position, no one takes his place), if not i call this bullshyt. Challenge should be by choice with the option to opt out if its too much for you now. This ain't

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Anduvriel wrote:

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Well, game should have some difficulty "by default". You can't manage the default...

I am running CI 8.5K ES Temp Chains + Enfeeble occultist.
No Fortify, no end charges, no armor, no evasion, no dodge

I get oneshot very rarely, /maybe one in 10 deaths is oneshot / , i die a lot by misplay, currently at 94 , doing everything but Uber Elder. My gear is probably around 1ex in total.


Player decisions how to build characters matter more than people are willing to admit.

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pphnx wrote:

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Albinosaurus wrote:

Here's a simple fact: The majority are happy to see these changes. GG, GGG.

I remember how a game fucked up when devs listen majority of the players. It's called Diablo 3.

What are you even talking about? Diablo 3 on release was everything the fans did not want. Only after Blizzard admitted that the gameplay was a colossal failure did they start listening to fans, and the expansion (RoS) pretty much fixed the game, and was like Diablo 3 2.0. Aaaaaand then they abandoned the project, and only injected a few quality of life fixes here and there.

And if we are at Blizzard: look at the infamous "you think you do, but you don't" comment about WoW vanilla. Then look at how crazed people are now that they are getting it.

There are no empirical evidence in the gaming industry that listening to fans lead to bad games. After all, they are the ones who are playing it, so it would be silly not to consider their woes and suggestions.

The only people annoyed by this business model are the ones who want to act cool and edgy. I understand, feeling special is cool. Telling your mom at a sunday dinner that you are the 1% makes her proud, and thus make you feel better about yourself. I don't covet that feeling from anyone, and even with the nerfs, you still earned a lifetime long bragging right about the Syndicate and how you liked the way it was. If anything, the nerfs cemented your "legacy".

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Marxone wrote:

Well, game should have some difficulty "by default". You can't manage the default...

Yes. And game developers' job is to introduce it properly. GGG failed to do so.

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Volband wrote:

I understand, feeling special is cool. Telling your mom at a sunday dinner that you are the 1% makes her proud, and thus make you feel better about yourself. I don't covet that feeling from anyone, and even with the nerfs, you still earned a lifetime long bragging right about the Syndicate and how you liked the way it was. If anything, the nerfs cemented your "legacy".

Why it is so difficult to admit that there are people who like hard games because they just like them and not because they want to brag about it? They are not trolls, not elitists, they were just happy about something finally.

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and the expansion (RoS) pretty much fixed the game, and was like Diablo 3 2.0. Aaaaaand then they abandoned the project, and only injected a few quality of life fixes here and there.

There was already a second expansion planned but they scrapped it because RoS was a failure. If it was so good, if it fixed the game(it really didn't, it made it worse) they would have kept working on it. Why leaving a cash cow after all? This is not Blizzard's way.

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Volband wrote:

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Marxone wrote:

Well, game should have some difficulty "by default". You can't manage the default...

Yes. And game developers' job is to introduce it properly. GGG failed to do so.

What you mean?
Big effects! Big Danger! Stay away!

Whenever i see the Haku or whoever that is with the MASSIVE hammer swinging over half o the screen with circle on the ground, i get the fck out of there immediately
I have bts bigger problems with the walk through traps from the C character, i want to walk to talk with the syndicate and pop pop pop and my ES is gone.

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Johny_Snow wrote:

There was already a second expansion planned but they scrapped it because RoS was a failure. If it was so good, if it fixed the game(it really didn't, it made it worse) they would have kept working on it. Why leaving a cash cow after all? This is not Blizzard's way.

By that logic Diablo 3 would have never been changed, because it was one of the most profitable videogame sales of all time. It was like daylight robbery. So why change it?

The answer is easy: it was bad. People bought it, because of the hype and some false promises (PvP). Many realized that the game itself was extremely shallow, and the real money auction house took the remaining little fun away as well.

RoS was not only well-received by the fans, it revitalized interest in the series. Of course it couldn't match D3 sales, especially after many fans felt betrayed, and didn't trust in Blizzard. But it fixed many issues, including the end game grind.

The only reason people still play Diablo 3 is because of RoS.

Why didn't they continue? Well, take a look at Diablo Immortal and the fact that Blizzard announced that many of their best talents are working on mobile games. You see, Diablo 3 was a financial success, but people either hated or disliked it. RoS resurrected the game, but after the travesty of D3 (and the aftermath *COUGH* Jay Wilson *COUGH*), it had no chance to be a cashcow.

The Blizzard way is outsourcing a mobile Diablo 3 adaptation, naming it Immortal, and not doing actual quality game they used to do. Yes.

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Marxone wrote:

What you mean?
Big effects! Big Danger! Stay away!

Whenever i see the Haku or whoever that is with the MASSIVE hammer swinging over half o the screen with circle on the ground, i get the fck out of there immediately
I have bts bigger problems with the walk through traps from the C character, i want to walk to talk with the syndicate and pop pop pop and my ES is gone.

Visual clutter.

But my main point was introducing difficulty according to what the game should expect from a players' character level. That is like game design 101. When the majority of people are getting frustrated by being one-shot on maps they can facetank the boss while drinking some soda, then something is off.

And before you say it's only people here and reddit who are complaining: GGG has actual data, so if we were the 1%, they wouldn't have nerfed it. They would have released a manifesto talking about that 99% of the players have no issues with the Syndicate, and we suck.

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heedkid wrote:

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Volband wrote:

I understand, feeling special is cool. Telling your mom at a sunday dinner that you are the 1% makes her proud, and thus make you feel better about yourself. I don't covet that feeling from anyone, and even with the nerfs, you still earned a lifetime long bragging right about the Syndicate and how you liked the way it was. If anything, the nerfs cemented your "legacy".

Why it is so difficult to admit that there are people who like hard games because they just like them and not because they want to brag about it? They are not trolls, not elitists, they were just happy about something finally.

Enjoying [insert anything here] in a video game? I believe you.

Insulting the others (in majority) and being condescending to them because they don't feel the same way you do? Elitist.

You have no proof that RoS resurrected the game. None, zero. Your feelings about it have nothing to do with the reality and the reality is that it was not received as well as you think, people left in droves and Blizzard pushed away their last competitive players with the complete removal of trade.

Once again, a second expansion was in the making meaning they had no intention to stop making content but the poor RoS reception forced them to abandon it just how the poor Mass Effect Andromeda reception stopped any talks about future DLCs.

It is what it is and you cant change the reality.

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Johny_Snow wrote:

You have no proof that RoS resurrected the game. None, zero. Your feelings about it have nothing to do with the reality and the reality is that it was not received as well as you think, people left in droves and Blizzard pushed away their last competitive players with the complete removal of trade.

Once again, a second expansion was in the making meaning they had no intention to stop making content but the poor RoS reception forced them to abandon it just how the poor Mass Effect Andromeda reception stopped any talks about future DLCs.

It is what it is and you cant change the reality.

I will gladly continue this discussion in a place, where more ex-D3 players are, so they can chime in.

Bringing up money in this debate is so disingenuous man. So Diablo 3 was a good game because sold well, and RoS was bad, because it didn't. Like, really? Is FIFA the best game then? Seriously, I don't envy people who are not familiar with the trainwreck which was D3, and actually believe history revisionsts like you.

The fact is, D3 has been criticized for its art style and exclusion of trademark characters like the paladin, necromancer or druid since the beginning. But if people wanted a Diablo game, they bought it. Imagine enjoying Diablo 2, then not buying its expansion ~10 years later by one of the biggest, most trusted game developers because you think the art style is funky. Back then, you had no reason not to trust Blizzard.

Even after release, they kept lying to their fans that PvP is on the way in a future patch, so people kept playing. But many people stopped playing after finishing the campaign, because unlike Diablo 2, Diablo 3 lacked the social part of the game. You had to go through a badly optimized nightmare, hell and inferno, and farming gear was a subpar option to Auction House, because the items were completely random. Oh, an axe dropped? Too bad it rolled with an Int, so it's useless! You had to play marketplace simulator instead of Diablo.

Sure, some people like a few of my friends enjoyed the real money aspect of it. I'll never forget when I asked my friend if he likes the game and said no. Then I asked why is he online all the time I log in then? He said he is working. I laughed at first, but he wasn't kidding. He grinded stuff so he could sold on the auction house, and earned himself a monthly average salary, so he didn't have to do a "real" work.

Diablo 3 was also good for the hardcore fans, because the difficulty was insane. Now, the majority of the players have given up, because Syndicate had nothing on that. At least in PoE you get many good items and whatnot. The race to the first Inferno Diablo kill was real, but that's it. Diablo 3 was a game for some of the most hardcore gamers and to those, who wanted to make real money. It was a terrible Diablo game.

Insult to injury is that Jay Wilson (lead developer) was extremely cocky. Imagine the guy I am talking to right now in a game developer position. He actually believed he made a good game because of the sales. Lies about PvP which never came? Who cares, the game sold well. :) Not listening to any of the community outcries? Who cares, the game sold well. :) Calling the mastermind behind DIablo 1 and 2 a "f***ing loser"? Who cares, the game sold well. :)

Needless to say, once Blizzard realized that the game is on collision course and they lost the faith of the fans (+ they already cashed in, so it was safe to make changes), they fired Jay Wilson and promised a new way of developing the game, actually caring about its players. Real Money auction house was also shut down, the diffculty was rebalanced, and with RoS, almost the whole game was remade.

Go back and read threads on reddit or the forums (or ask your friends) from years ago, when people are asking about whether it's worth playing DIablo again, or buying it for the first time. Every response without a doubt will be: "yes, but buy RoS, that is the real game". I could lie to you now, but my evidence is all over the internet.

RoS introduced an actual endgame goal instead of bashing your head into the wall until you suffer through content and eased out many annoying aspects of the game.

RoS was what Diablo 3 should have been, but it turned out too little too late, and with the success of Hearthstone blinding Blizzard, it had no chance of growing. And I don't blame them for not caring about Diablo 3, because they are a company, not our friend. Why invest millions into a good game, when you can literally outsource a D3 knock-off to another company and get more money?