Don't nerf Syndicate encounters

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Volband wrote:

As for being bad or good: GGG will decide what kind of game they want to make, and how they want to make it. Difficulty and complexity are not necessarily synonymous, and both can be achieved through various methods. The majority of players did not like difficulty being tied to random one-shots and barely telegraphed nukes, and as of now, they seem to agree. The game itself is still complex and still very alienating for a new player, so I wouldn't worry about "overcasualization".

...

Blah blah blah, uneducated drivel. GGG don't give a shit whether PoE is difficult to the point of impossible or the most casual game of this generation. They just want to make the most profits out of it. Casualization of the game is beneficial because it enables the largest number of new players each league. Because PoE requires quite the specific type of personality, vast majority of the new people will quit the game; that said, the more people they can attract each league, the higher the chances are that they manage to roll a +1 player for long-term retention.

Those who return every league are the biggest source of profits for GGG. They're the most likely part of player base to buy all the new supporter packs and mtx. In order to keep these people playing the league for as long as possible and have them buy all the new mtx that gets released mid-league, GGG needs to add content. A lot of easy, instant gratification content. They need to fill the game with so many different options that when the money gets bored of roflstomping one part of the game, they got another one readily available. As long as the feeling of playing god mode stays fresh, the money is more likely to stick around.

Just like pretty much every AAA developer, GGG is no longer in the business of making a good game. They're in the business to make a popular game.

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Fruz wrote:

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grogzor wrote:

yeah I give up. we are playing a grindfesty action rpg here where you farm enemy ai minions all day and people act as if this was competitive starcraft or chess. my god, the delusion is so real.

Beating another strawman, AGAIN.
Nobody here said that PoE was a very compliated game mechanically.
like wtf.


There is so much wrong in what you said again, it's mind bowing how you seem to think you know the game .... yet don't.

you are acting as if you are heavensent and play like a "pro" while everybody else is too stupid or noobish to even beat some tier 5 map boss or something.

the truth is this: you probably played this game for many years. you also probably play much more than the average casual, like several hours a day? this would easily explain why you think everything is easy in this game.

now, because you dont have the slightest bit of empathy, you assume that everybody else has to do the same in order to enjoy the game. that's what's wrong with rob and his friends also. they assume everybody is a nerd who has been playing this game for years and has a daily poe routine of like 8 hours. zero understanding, zero empathy. just pseudo elitism at its finest considering that this is a grind game and not a competitive game where you can outskill or outplay anyone but ai minions.

just an honest question for fruz, rob and anonymous: when you played poe at your peak, how many hours did you invest daily approximately? I mean, when you really decided to play a certain league, how many hours did you then play daily? I am willing to bet that you play INSANELY more hours than any average player.

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Anonymous1749704 wrote:

Blah blah blah, uneducated drivel. GGG don't give a shit whether PoE is difficult to the point of impossible or the most casual game of this generation. They just want to make the most profits out of it. Casualization of the game is beneficial because it enables the largest number of new players each league. Because PoE requires quite the specific type of personality, vast majority of the new people will quit the game; that said, the more people they can attract each league, the higher the chances are that they manage to roll a +1 player for long-term retention.

Those who return every league are the biggest source of profits for GGG. They're the most likely part of player base to buy all the new supporter packs and mtx. In order to keep these people playing the league for as long as possible and have them buy all the new mtx that gets released mid-league, GGG needs to add content. A lot of easy, instant gratification content. They need to fill the game with so many different options that when the money gets bored of roflstomping one part of the game, they got another one readily available. As long as the feeling of playing god mode stays fresh, the money is more likely to stick around.

Just like pretty much every AAA developer, GGG is no longer in the business of making a good game. They're in the business to make a popular game.

As I said, the game is still complex and extremely unfriendly to the newbies, so GGG is still true to their core principles.

And it is expanding in way which doesn't make it any easier. Beastcrafting, fossil crafting and now veiled mods are now on top of the regular crafting. While the streamlining of crafting made everyone's life easier, this is still a huge headache for new players and I bet most of them are not even bothering to understand it yet, while they have other lessons to learn. How interesting, I don't see any threads here complaining that they are too overwhelmed by all these crafting options so they want to take it away. They don't want to take anything away from others, they don't get off by that.

Their business model has been the same for how many years now? Nothing's changed, you've just burned out into petty bitterness. It is understandable, I've been like this with other games. "OH, YOU WANT TO MAKE IT EASIER?? THESE KIDS RUINING EVERYTHING!!! BACK IN MY TIME...." - sometimes we need a reality check, and ask ourselves if we really enjoy what we are doing.

GGG is not a AAA developer yet, so that's another no-no from me dawg. The pressure is not on them yet, and if they ever become that successfull... well, everything has a price. I think the Diablo: Immortal fiasco was a huuuuuge feedback to them that people still yearn for a complex ARPG, so making PoE much more casual wouldn't really benefit them. Chris Wilson said himself that the main focus of 4.0. is bringing current assets of the game up to date, ie. voice actors, character models, possibly new engine, etc.

At this point, you might as well define what does casual even mean, because this game was built up brick by brick, so it's really-really subjective to pinpoint one brick and label it as "the one that went too far".

Interesting trivia: Chris said himself that they don't want to repeat what they've done with Incursion, where many people had access to some of the best gears very early on. Seems like the lead developer does not exactly agree with your sentiment of instant gratification.

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grogzor wrote:

you also probably play much more than the average casual, like several hours a day? this would easily explain why you think everything is easy in this game.

Mate... Fruz still hasn't finished the campaign. Let that sink in before you get too upset. :D

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Anonymous1749704 wrote:

Just like pretty much every AAA developer, GGG is no longer in the business of making a good game. They're in the business to make a popular game.

Why not both?

You and I, clearly, differ greatly on our opinion on the accessibility and it's measure in the success of this game.

I certainly don't criticize your desire for a beefy challenge, but understand that "beefy challenge" games are generally very niche.

Sure, The Souls games were great successes (eventually), but only in so much as they literally created their own genre of "gain through pain" gameplay.

I am sure GGG is happy to peel off the 1% of players who feel the game is too "Easy" (and tend to condescend dramatically all over the forums) if they add on 10% to overall accessible gameplay that the increased playerbase feels is a Good(tm) game.

It's all relative, man.

Remember this...

If a player think the game is 'too easy', s/he has all the options of changing that. You can decide to go white or blue items only, do SSF or HC, and so on.

The players what think the game is 'too hard' has only one option... To stop playing.

Given that, it is understandable that GGG balance for the second group.

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Cyzax wrote:

Remember this...

If a player think the game is 'too easy', s/he has all the options of changing that. You can decide to go white or blue items only, do SSF or HC, and so on.

The players what think the game is 'too hard' has only one option... To stop playing.

Given that, it is understandable that GGG balance for the second group.

You should know that it's considered haram around here to tell the no-lifers to make the game more challenging on their own. They love to whine about all the options casuals have to make the game easier but for some reason, by some strange magic, those options can't apply in reverse.

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Cyzax wrote:

Remember this...

If a player think the game is 'too easy', s/he has all the options of changing that. You can decide to go white or blue items only, do SSF or HC, and so on.

The players what think the game is 'too hard' has only one option... To stop playing.

Given that, it is understandable that GGG balance for the second group.

This is the part that I dont get... the die hards that are angry/condescending to us plebes because we are influencing the game to a more "casual/easy" mode...

Fine. Play HC. Play SSF. Play SSFHC. Play private mode. Set your own rules in any of the given leagues.

You want it hard? Fine. Make it hard. Why condescend and push us out?

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grogzor wrote:

you are acting as if you are heavensent and play like a "pro" while everybody else is too stupid or noobish to even beat some tier 5 map boss or something.

the truth is this: you probably played this game for many years. you also probably play much more than the average casual, like several hours a day? this would easily explain why you think everything is easy in this game.

now, because you dont have the slightest bit of empathy, you assume that everybody else has to do the same in order to enjoy the game. that's what's wrong with rob and his friends also. they assume everybody is a nerd who has been playing this game for years and has a daily poe routine of like 8 hours. zero understanding, zero empathy. just pseudo elitism at its finest considering that this is a grind game and not a competitive game where you can outskill or outplay anyone but ai minions.

just an honest question for fruz, rob and anonymous: when you played poe at your peak, how many hours did you invest daily approximately? I mean, when you really decided to play a certain league, how many hours did you then play daily? I am willing to bet that you play INSANELY more hours than any average player.

- No

- I don't think that everything is easy in this game. That's what you seem to be thinking though ( blaming the fact that other players have better gear than you, missing the fact that they just know how to get there faster and beat the content with thing that you would not think about to begin with. )

- If you want an actual example of lack of empathy, don't go farther, read the what I quoted, what you wrote.

- No idea about average hours, when I have a lot of time on my hands, it could be 4~5 hours a day, for couple of days in a week. 1 hour per days is already enough to not be playing casually to be honest. There are have been days with more hours for sure, but that would not be an average at all. And right now, it's 0 hours per day for a little while still.

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Volband wrote:

Their business model has been the same for how many years now? Nothing's changed, you've just burned out into petty bitterness. It is understandable, I've been like this with other games. "OH, YOU WANT TO MAKE IT EASIER?? THESE KIDS RUINING EVERYTHING!!! BACK IN MY TIME...." - sometimes we need a reality check, and ask ourselves if we really enjoy what we are doing.

^
- joined 19 Decemer 2016

Yeah, you know nothing, that's the reality.
A great many things have changed, but you don't know ****.

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Deliverme wrote:

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Cyzax wrote:

Remember this...

If a player think the game is 'too easy', s/he has all the options of changing that. You can decide to go white or blue items only, do SSF or HC, and so on.

The players what think the game is 'too hard' has only one option... To stop playing.

Given that, it is understandable that GGG balance for the second group.

This is the part that I dont get... the die hards that are angry/condescending to us plebes because we are influencing the game to a more "casual/easy" mode...

Fine. Play HC. Play SSF. Play SSFHC. Play private mode. Set your own rules in any of the given leagues.

You want it hard? Fine. Make it hard. Why condescend and push us out?

because they are tryhards and I can understand them to a certain degree. I am a tryhard in other games, but not in poe.

the tryhard mindset for this game should be something like the following: play a strong build or even the absolute metabuild to get maximum value in the shortest amount of time. get rich fast and farm stuff that you know brings a nice profit and can be done without much trouble. also play a ton of hours.

because you play a lot and because you have lots of experience from previous seasons and because you generally play strong builds to maximize your value, the average content will obviously get trivialized. and since we are talking about a grind and farm game, it will be trivialized even faster. the tryhard doesnt neccessarily want to make his own life tedious by choosing to play a trash tier but "fun" build to maybe get some challenge out of the game. the tryhard just wants to make sure to roflstomp everything and then hates all the casuals for not playing exactly as much as they do and for not having the same kind of idea of the game.

what boggles my mind is their lack of empathy. I mean, in this thread we were clearly talking about the basic mechanic of this league, which you get access to from level 1 and during every part of the game. and they simply dont want to understand that there is a huge majority of people who play this game casually like maybe an hour or two every day, but not much more. and they dont even want to give an inch to these people because they somehow have the pompous feeling of being more deserving. so their ideas must be taken more seriously and everybody else is simply denying "facts", as rob put it in his incredibly self satisfied and smug way.

the answer from ggg was pretty obvious and all sides saw it coming though. core mechanics should be accessible for the average player of the game. late game mega bosses or multi mod red tier maps are there for the challenge, unless you grinded a billion hours while playing a top tier build every time. then it will be a cakewalk I guess.

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grogzor wrote:

core mechanics should be accessible for the average player of the game

This is vey relative though.
The core game itself was not as "accessible" as it is now many years ago, in a way.
Was in a problem ? no, it was what made PoE what it was, it was not a big deal to not reach maps, it was not a problem to not reach lvl 90+.
The game itself was still challenging.
Now, the challenge are couple of encounters ... and ... that's it ? Reaching red tiers in HC and sustaining them is somewhat challenging I guess, but it's very different.

And it was imho really more fun when the game itself was challenging overall, was not just about smashing everything mindlessely.