Ending the Speed Meta, or Redefining Chris Wilson's "better builds are faster"

buffing rewards for slow builds will benefit only speed builds.

it's a double edge sword.

GGG trapped themselves on this.. there's no point in return now each player must choose which path they want to follow.. slow or fast.

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Xystre wrote:

buffing rewards for slow builds will benefit only speed builds.

it's a double edge sword.

It's a tricky one, but it's not impossible to find a better balance than we have right now. The idea that fast players can also do content aimed towards slower players is an obstacle, but one that can be avoided if care is taken.

Let's take my example from above, full-map clear rewards.

Now sure, someone with super-fast movement-speed boots is going to fully clear areas faster and more frequently than someone going slowly. But you have to weigh-up the pros and cons for such speedy players actually doing that.

Would a speed-oriented player really give-up his strategy of beelining from objective to objective, and take the time to fully clear areas, just for the sake of a chaos orb or two? Two reasons why he wouldn't:

a) It would substantially delay him from reaching higher-level, thus automatically more rewarding, content that is worth substantially more than doing meticulous full-clears . Thus he would *lose* wealth rather than gain it due to a thing called opportunity cost.

b) It would cause him to overlevel, and be hit by XP and drop-rate penalties. Instead of hitting level 80 on day 1, he'd end up around 30.

Meanwhile the slower players would recieve a bit more reward than normal for their efforts, just for playing in the unoptimal way they already likely do. They still wouldn't make as much wealth or progress as faster players, but wouldn't be left as far behind: that wealth could help them catch-up here and there, even if they couldn't overtake the faster players.

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Xystre wrote:

buffing rewards for slow builds will benefit only speed builds.

it's a double edge sword.

GGG trapped themselves on this.. there's no point in return now each player must choose which path they want to follow.. slow or fast.

The difficulty is in rewarding slower/tankier play without punishing a faster build and also without simply making it a waiting game. If nothing else, more mechanics which didn't punish slower builds would only be beneficial.

♥ Just look at the current league. If the world encounters allowed a player to activate the monolith, unfreeze enemies and then activate the monolith again to start the fighting, a slower build would have the same opportunities as a fast build, but the faster build would be completing more of those encounters because of their speed and would be more confident in breaking open all enemies in the encounter.

♥ Or something like when the Vault boss consumes a treasure pile to create a golem, that golem could drop items with higher rarity than the original treasure pile. The fast player still completes five vault maps in the same time that the slower player completes three, but the overall rewards would be a fraction closer to parity.

♥ Another possibility is Soul Eater also granting increased item quantity/rarity to the monster along with their other buffs.

♥ Also higher item rarity/quantity for chests which are a naturally player-slowing encounter.

Of course, even with these, the faster player is still better-off since they're clearing maps faster, delving faster, defeating bosses faster and safer, etc. But things would be a little more balanced.

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crystalwitch wrote:

♥ Also higher item rarity/quantity for chests which are a naturally player-slowing encounter.

So much no to this, chests are already broken OP, they just shower you with six slots and currency. I take it you aren't a regular chest opener.

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BloodPuddles420 wrote:

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crystalwitch wrote:

♥ Also higher item rarity/quantity for chests which are a naturally player-slowing encounter.

So much no to this, chests are already broken OP, they just shower you with six slots and currency. I take it you aren't a regular chest opener.

I open most chests I encounter, I hadn't noticed them being that amazing.

I guess chests are good then. I'll have to pay more attention to what comes out.

Last two leagues strong boxes have been not up to "par". It doesn't seem to matter it you alch them or use upgrades via magic they are mostly empty or contain a couple of portal scrolls. I tend to pass them by cause they are always a tough fight to little or no reward.

Obviously, in every ARPG, being fast = good.

But game should have some sort of penalty for glass cannon builds, that go "all for speed" (death penalty, for example) and/or limit their speed (MS/AS caps, etc).

In PoE, going "glass cannon style" and oneshotting everything before it even reacts is the fastest the safest way to play it. And cleaspeed, that players can reach, is just ridiculous. Oneshotting shole screens in 0.3 sec and moving at supersonic speed is too much by far.

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MortalKombat3 wrote:

Obviously, in every ARPG, being fast = good.

But game should have some sort of penalty for glass cannon builds, that go "all for speed" (death penalty, for example) and/or limit their speed (MS/AS caps, etc).

In PoE, going "glass cannon style" and oneshotting everything before it even reacts is the fastest the safest way to play it. And cleaspeed, that players can reach, is just ridiculous. Oneshotting shole screens in 0.3 sec and moving at supersonic speed is too much by far.

While the whole 'top speed builds are way too fast' thing may be true - it's also not likely to change.

Personally i just wish they'd stop with these "fast or fuck you" league mechanics. At least breach/abyss/incursion the definition of fast to get full rewards wasn't all that fast. In synthesis it got noticeably worse and was very rng dependant. And in legion it's just ridiculous - builds that'd clear all those old time checks with big margins to spare might get half a monolith on a good day. It's really pushing the super speed/gigantic AoEs far more than is healthy, and feels like the devs are just spitting in the faces of anyone who dares not play a build that deletes screens with a single button

The slow-fast dichtonomy is a bit misleading. Faster is better and being slow should not be something to strive for. I guess everyone agress with this bit.

The real issue, however, is not about fast/slow but rather about arcade-tactical gameplay and the related build diversity implications.

The current state of PoE heavily incetivies the arcade kind of gamestyle where you just instantly clear screens and move at lightning fast speeds. You act so quickly that there is no room, or even need, for any thought and consideration. You regenerate so quickly that only one-shots can really kill you. Some players like this, others find it ultimatelly tedious.

Since the arcade style is so viable, and it gives much more rewards, game content gets balanced around it. This means that not playing with an arcade-build causes you to rarely ever get to see certain content (breach domains etc.)

The reason for why the arcade style is so viable now is, apart from the removal of reflect, the huge dps and recovery power creep accrued over the years. The lastest patch (3.7) tried to deal with this by nerfing some recovery options (occultists es regen/leech/recharge, immortal call full immunity), but it was very partial and also introduced massive dps boosts. Much more would have to be done to make the gameply more tactial again. Well, at least if that is the goal.

They are not re-introducing reflect, but there are a number of other ways the gameplay could easily be made more tactics-friendly. Just to name a few:
- Remove incursion timers and instead make the temporal incursion more lethal over time.
- Abyss timers do not run if the player is sufficently close to the crack.
- Legion timers are a lot longer but get reduced for each released special mob (you have time to choose, but you can't choose everything)
- Ground degen effect in Shaper/eleder fight have a max limit so that you will always have some room to play with.
- Reduce the effects of more-modifiers for dps to reduce scaling effects.
- Reduce regen/recovery values and boost effective hp values (or reduce monster damage values). Re-balance rf to compensate.
- Reduce the amount of flask charges gained, but make flasks last longer.
- Breachdomain timers do not run if you are sufficently close to the expanding boundary.
- The emblem fight have a set number of re-spawns and each respawn is harder that the previous one.

Let's see what 3.8 brings.

Vanilla PoE was pretty slow paced and it´s an overall better experience now.
GGG has tried to artificially slow down the game with phased bosses, shaper monologues, tricky lab trials, gauntlets, puzzles in lab etc.
People don´t like being slow or slowed down.

Bringing back the old reflect mechanics though is certainly thw worst suggestion of all, this was an already annoying and outdated mechanic in D2, and is for sure in a game like PoE.