How to address the growing problem of power creep of items, and builds in PoE.

I'm all for content which is very very hard to achieve. Not equipment-wise, but an actual skill-hurdle in the game. Also that's how you keep the majority of the player-base interested.
Doing it the other way around and we have trivialized content without end like aforementioned WoW offers. That's not good, PoE would feel like Diablo 3 then. Nothing against the game, but it's one for casual playing, PoE is for fans of more complexity and choice.

So, basing it on your personal character level is something definitely doable, but that would make the equipment trivial to complete specific encounters. If you do 30 million dps (scourge arrow for instance) it doesn't matter if you hit only 50% of the time, you simply one-shot shaper the second time rather then the first.

My suggestion would be for a re-balance of the mods on items, raising several up many levels, as well as allowing ilvl 86 bases to roll mods up to lvl 100, with the strongest 1 or 2 gated behind that end-game goal.
Also this would make progression more sensible again, not allowing to simply skip tons of content.

Another layer of balance would definitely need to be the damage output of mobs, the scaling of mobs, as well as the scaling of the player. While it's definitely fun to build up a strong character which waltzes down everything, and it still should be doable, trivializing end-game boss-fights by shifting them from phase to phase without any interaction at all should be absolutely impossible. It's a shame when skill-less people can simply get everything while yawning in front of his PC while the ones sporting actual skill aren't rewarded in any shape or form. This has to be made more distinctive definitely. Despite the very awful wording robmafia has in his post I have to agree there fully, GGG has - like many companies in the last time - focused too much on accessability for the 'masses' rather then pleasing their core-audience. That won't be visible for a while yet if it goes on, but turn into a downward spiral as so awfully many games have ended up in.

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sublimenotions wrote:

I would say it totally is about ego. You don't faceroll end game content because you have knowledge or skill, you faceroll it because you googled a build, copy pasted it, and sat at your desk for 12 hours a day for 3 months.

the delusion is real.

i never used a build guide in my life (for any game).

12 hours/day for 3 months? my god, man.

yeah, the only reason people are better than you (apparently, via this absurd projection) is because they copy something and no-life.

the game is easy. the game is pathetically easy for anyone with game knowledge.

AGAIN, no one's ego is why this is easy. it's all the absurd amounts of power creep that trivialized the game's own content.

The thing with basing hit chance on character level is that you could still build to mitigate that. If your base chance to hit is reduced by 50%,you still have all of the extra stuff that boosts it. Its not a perfect solution, but it adds another layer of complexity for those trying to rush content, and it also takes away from DPS because you now have to spec to over come that hit nerf if you want to faceroll like you used to. Just like how a resistance nerf makes you have to care more about resistances.

I said keeping the end game exclusive is about Ego, not skill and knowledge of the game. You dont need skill to reach level 100, you can just google a guide and follow it and you'll get there. So, this idea that end game content is "only for the skilled lol gitgud" is false. It's not. Power creep is irrelevent because even if there wasn't any power creep, there would still be guides people could follow that tell them how to tackle the content.

Its different for something like say, the souls series, because beating bosses is dependent upon YOUR skill as a player. You can have the best gear that any buildguide suggests, but if you suck as a player you still won't beat Gael. PoE doesnt require individual player skill to beat bosses, you need gear and the ability to spam dps. Good positioning skills are optional.

The issue then is that any build not focusing on DPS - which are really really few since a few leagues now - are even more screwed then. Unable to hit, unable to deal big numbers while defensive measures don't do a lot in this game.
It's not a lot of difference if you're mitigating 90% of phys damage if you're hit with chaos damage. You can't pick chaos-res without loosing mod space to max your normal resistances, and if you combine both you'll loose offensive mod spaces in other places, costing you easily 10-20% of damage in total for a very slight increase in survivability. That then leads to being hit more often before a mob dies, mitigating the gained defense fully and leaving you at point 0... well, actually -1 since you'll do even less damage while surviving a few seconds longer.

Hence that's not a viable solution for our problem right now, the issue of multipliers and how they work together isn't taken care of then, it's just mitigated for the top-tier builds a little while making even less builds viable at all.

So, we need a mechanic to raise the 'bottom' up further whole quelling the steady raise of the ceiling at the same time, putting everyone at a more 'plain' playing-field which still keeps the difference of every single skill in the game intact, as well as every single play-style available.

I get you. Thats hard to do though.

I like some builds being more or less difficult than others though. I know I constantly refer to souls games, but when it comes to balance of a single player game thats what I think did a good job (not perfect though). PoE is basically a single player game (pvp is lel). In souls you could do a variety of builds and some were -flat out- no questions asked better than others. Typically the build revolved around particular items. Rapier, vs smoughs hammer, vs duel wielding shields, vs ladle, vs fist only etc. The parallel in path of exile would be skills. Some skills should be rapiers and others should be ladles, and all should be doable if the player has the right physical skill in avoiding damage from bosses and mitigating damage from trash mobs. I like this idea because it introduces actual challenges players could run if there were multiple tiers of skills. Which is sort of what we have now, but there are mechanics in the game that, regardless of player physical skill, result in people getting one shot.

I'm also personally a fan of squashing all of the numbers, things dont need to do millions of damage and bosses dont need millions of hp. Drop all numbers so that on the top end an "op" build is doing 10k damage. It is a lot easier to manage power when you are dealing with smaller numbers. With smaller base numbers, scaling is a lot less effective as well. If the maximum amount of base damage a two handed hammer can get is 500 max damage, and everything else is below this, for example, then scaling won't be as terrible.

Another thing you could do is have a hard cap on the number of things that can modify a number. Say your damage is 100, and you got a skill that does +50% of your base damage. Now your damage is 150, that's one modification. You got a ring that adds 20 to attack ontop, now your damage is 170, thats two modifications. And you get another ring that adds +20% cold damage from physical, now your damage is 200 in total, and its modified 3 times. Since the cap is 3 modifications (arbitrary cap, for this example) then no other skills or buffs or anything can modify it more. Maybe you have a keystone or something that allows more modifications. The actual cap needs to be worked out though, 3 is an arbitrary example. Perhaps you can only have 1 of each type of addition, 1 flat, 1 multiplicative, and 1 conversion. I feel like a game did this before but I cant recall which.

I also like the idea of caster skills needing a catalyst item that controls the DPS as well. But, thats a can of worms.

you are not looking at my point tho i like challenges and all.
but uber elder etc is old content, should be accessible. heck it is part of the quest.

maybe after the quest, uber elders or guardians should be able to add mods to make them stronger but then again reward is hard to balance.

the real players would find themselves some challenge. some go super deep in delve, some play ssf league.
actually in any game, best of the best players restrict themselves to make things challenge for them.
that is in my opinion, best players.
asking devs to make the content that only those type can do, is ego taking over.


i havent put much time in this league so i can't tell but if end bosses are not hard then, i do agree to make it harder. i personally believe that newer content end bosses should be difficult. not in a way of unavoidable one shot, but deeper mechanics. betrayal boss before some adjustment was fun to me. finding out the mechanic , figuring out the fight was fun.
altho this game has 6 portals, so that makes it a bit frustrating for players finding out the mechanics etc. but challenge is a challenge.


anyway making a game so difficult that only 1% or less can do , isn't gonna fit.
clear difference in thinking about the mass or ones ego

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sublimenotions wrote:

The thing with basing hit chance on character level is that you could still build to mitigate that. If your base chance to hit is reduced by 50%,you still have all of the extra stuff that boosts it. Its not a perfect solution, but it adds another layer of complexity for those trying to rush content, and it also takes away from DPS because you now have to spec to over come that hit nerf if you want to faceroll like you used to. Just like how a resistance nerf makes you have to care more about resistances.

I said keeping the end game exclusive is about Ego, not skill and knowledge of the game. You dont need skill to reach level 100, you can just google a guide and follow it and you'll get there. So, this idea that end game content is "only for the skilled lol gitgud" is false. It's not. Power creep is irrelevent because even if there wasn't any power creep, there would still be guides people could follow that tell them how to tackle the content.

Its different for something like say, the souls series, because beating bosses is dependent upon YOUR skill as a player. You can have the best gear that any buildguide suggests, but if you suck as a player you still won't beat Gael. PoE doesnt require individual player skill to beat bosses, you need gear and the ability to spam dps. Good positioning skills are optional.

literally no one has ever argued that maps (end game) should be exclusive in any of these power creep threads.

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Dudebag wrote:

you are not looking at my point tho i like challenges and all.
but uber elder etc is old content, should be accessible. heck it is part of the quest.

maybe after the quest, uber elders or guardians should be able to add mods to make them stronger but then again reward is hard to balance.

the real players would find themselves some challenge. some go super deep in delve, some play ssf league.
actually in any game, best of the best players restrict themselves to make things challenge for them.
that is in my opinion, best players.
asking devs to make the content that only those type can do, is ego taking over.


i havent put much time in this league so i can't tell but if end bosses are not hard then, i do agree to make it harder. i personally believe that newer content end bosses should be difficult. not in a way of unavoidable one shot, but deeper mechanics. betrayal boss before some adjustment was fun to me. finding out the mechanic , figuring out the fight was fun.
altho this game has 6 portals, so that makes it a bit frustrating for players finding out the mechanics etc. but challenge is a challenge.


anyway making a game so difficult that only 1% or less can do , isn't gonna fit.
clear difference in thinking about the mass or ones ego

...yeah, poe's supposed to be competitive. ie: you don't know what you're talking about. there is basically zero incentive for anyone to gimp their gameplay when the core of the game is based on ladders and economics.

re: pink - lolz. i thought the "ego" bs strawman was bad. i guess it's strawman time! now you're pretending that you're retorting an argument about how the game should only be playable for the 1%? my god. a+ logic!

ok sure robmafia. say what ever you like.

im going to stop right here since it will go nowhere with you.


good luck on your journey. i hope things go well for you.

run awayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy