Unsustainable game design - PvE vs PvP

I guess it's time to make this thread for GGG as I've done in other forums for other games. Namely Diablo 3.

I'm feeling it myself now in Harvest league. In truth I really only play a couple weeks of a league because I hit a ceiling on my progress and the time investment becomes too steep to keep my interest. However league over league it feels as though the patterns are so overwhelming that the little bits of new content are eclipsed by it. I don't feel like I'm playing as much. More AFK than anything.

The incredibly monotonous atlas system, the masters, the league mechanics we've done countless times are grinding us down.

All of it PvE. All of it is getting the most bang for your buck on developer costs. I get it. It makes sense. It just does not make for a good game. Not alone anyway.

What's the issue with PvE? It doesn't change. It's developer driven content. There's nothing dynamic in it. GGG pays a developer to create a thing and rare are the circumstances that thing ever changes again. Because to change it means paying more money. The risk vs reward of doing so prohibits change.

Player created content (P2P, PvP, etc) on the other hand is dynamic all the time. It's why BGs and Arena in WoW remain popular even when the expansion itself is trash. It's why D3 never reached the acclaim of D2. The fact you can login at any time of the day and find something new is exciting, engaging and I think extends far beyond player vs player combat. It goes into socialization, into organization, team politics and a lot of engaging content on top of that.

I urge you to take PvP seriously. I know not everyone comes to the game for PvP and that's fine. A PvP flag for character creation I think is necessary. Then an invasion system like Dark Souls with clans and all the social organization that goes along with it. A way to call in other players, mixtures of PvE and PvP for future leagues to work with others would be ideal.

If you introduce systems that work around P2P designs I think the game would have a lot more longevity league to league. Anyway that's where my mind is today.

Hahahaha PVP in an ARPG? Good one.

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Izrakhan wrote:

Unsustainable game design

Designing Path of Exile to Be Played Forever

I don't know, dude...

The few times they've tried to "improve" PvP in this game, they have more or less proved two things:

1) It's more or less impossible to balance in a game this complex.
2) The PvP community is rather small.

Now, ask yourself this; is focusing A LOT of resources on an area of the game that VERY few players are interested in, very "sustainable"? People have been coming back playing leagues for several years now. Not many games achieve this.

You find Harvest boring. It's OK. Every league can't appeal to everyone. But I will tell you, and others will tell you; balancing PoE for PvP is more or less impossible, and if it IS possible, it would require 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 "boring" Harvest leagues in a row, to find the time and manpower to do it.

I think PoE has one of the most "sustainable game design" we've seen in recent years.

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I_NO wrote:

Hahahaha PVP in an ARPG? Good one.

+1

PVP for POE happens in General Discussion.

I don't recall PVP in D2 so fondly. This just isn't the genre for it.

I really don't understand you guys.

1) To the ones laughing at the idea of PvP in PoE:

D2 had excellent PvP and it was the one thing that drove most of its users to continue playing.

That was an ARPG with PvP.

2) This isn't the genre for it?

That's a very substantive claim (Sarcasm), as are the numerous other notions presented here.

Please, stop with the mindless baseless assertions and at least attempt to be scientific and honest in your arguments.

Make a claim and bring evidence to support it.

Now, what does genre have to do with this topic? Explain why that is even a valid argument; otherwise, it is a senseless argument.

Commenting on this matter, I want to mention the similarities between LoL (an RTS game) and PoE with regards to gameplay. Both games use point and click QWERTY controls for movement and use of abilities. At times, they both feel incredibly similar in their gameplay. The things that distinguish them are many, but primarily the foundational principles that govern conditions of use for abilities (mana cost, cooldowns, ability ranges, etc). Aside from these differences, LoL and PoE seem to be related to each other in "genre" based on the ways their basic gameplay is designed. The aim of these games are different, thereby separating one another in game classification.

Nevertheless, PvP works in LoL. So why can't it work in PoE? I don't think it is genre that makes it impossible. And by the way, it is not yet proven that PvP is impossible in PoE. Indeed, the game design indicates that PvP was meant to be part of its originally-intended framework. You cannot conclude PvP is impossible for this game just because your perceptions deems it so, just because you have never seen it be "successful" based on your standards.

If end-goals and a few mechanical conditions land PoE and LoL and WoW in different genres, I see insufficient cause to maintain that the genre of a game somehow makes PvP impossible, seeing how the base of PoE allows for PvP (same for LoL and WoW).

Bring some better arguments to the table so that we can have a better discussion.

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Phrazz wrote:

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Izrakhan wrote:

Unsustainable game design

Designing Path of Exile to Be Played Forever

I don't know, dude...

The few times they've tried to "improve" PvP in this game, they have more or less proved two things:

1) It's more or less impossible to balance in a game this complex.
2) The PvP community is rather small.

Now, ask yourself this; is focusing A LOT of resources on an area of the game that VERY few players are interested in, very "sustainable"? People have been coming back playing leagues for several years now. Not many games achieve this.

You find Harvest boring. It's OK. Every league can't appeal to everyone. But I will tell you, and others will tell you; balancing PoE for PvP is more or less impossible, and if it IS possible, it would require 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 "boring" Harvest leagues in a row, to find the time and manpower to do it.

I think PoE has one of the most "sustainable game design" we've seen in recent years.

So I don't think it's a good idea to make a PvP league rather PvP updates every league. Something you dedicate a percentage of dev effort to.

I also don't think PvP exclusively comprises P2P gameplay. The game has a party system but as we see with the growth of SSF the various game mechanics encourage solo play. So the various game mechanics could be designed to encourage group play. This is easy to accomplish with more difficult boss design.

I don't think a fixed grouping system is the right way either for that reason. The fixed party system is restrictive and takes time to form. That's why people prefer solo play and SSF.

The P2P would have to be done in a way to take all of this into account. When's a good time to introduce other players. Kinda like how D4 is planned to have community zones where you'll see other people and have the ability to work with them or against them.

I like Dark Souls invasion approach for PvP but that's another polarizing design because there's no agency for the person getting invaded. I think it should be conditional, like some areas of the game are setup for invasions but others are not. Dark Souls 2 in a sense.

Also the extreme variety of builds in PoE would work well with PvP. D2 endgame was PvP and testing out all the various builds. A lot of them sucked but people would find some very good ones here and there. Like fishymancers, telestompers, double ber skelemancers, etc to fight the zealots and fury barbs. You reach a point in PvE where your build is done and there isn't much reason to keep pushing. So having an outlet where you can theorize builds for PvP and a reward structure for PvP would be something else to chew on.

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HwtChirino wrote:

Nevertheless, PvP works in LoL. So why can't it work in PoE?

If you want a solid discussion, you need to drop stupid comparrisons like this.

LoL is a PvP game, built from the ground up for PvP, with ONLY PvP in mind. It has "talent trees" and items designed around ONE match, number-crucnhed to match the skills of other champions. PoE is not. It is (and should always be) a PvE game first. If you just take a quick glance at the passive tree, and all possible builds, you would understand why it's more or less impossible to balance this game for PvP.

I understand the comparison to D2. But if we remove our overly-romantic view of that game, it was fairly generic in its passive trees/talen trees and itemaization. It had fairly "locked" classes, with a limited amount of skills, locked to each class. Just these few factors, made it possible to balance around PvP.

I just can't understand how anyone can believe that PvP is possible in PoE, based on design - without limiting the PvE diversity. And that's the thing; the moment they limit PvE diversity to push PvP, they have lost. Because no matter HOW MANY players like PvP, MOST players are here for PvE.

To make PvP possible, they would need to make it 100% separated from the PvE game... And would that still make it PoE?

pvp hasn't worked for this game because ggg has given a half-assed effort on it

There's a very crudely maintained ladder that has the bare minimum implementation, no reward or itemization structure, next to 0 balancing efforts, unusable ui, 0 interaction/incentives tied to the main game. That's pvp in poe.

If you put in no effort into a product, expect nobody to buy it.

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Phrazz wrote:

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HwtChirino wrote:

Nevertheless, PvP works in LoL. So why can't it work in PoE?

If you want a solid discussion, you need to drop stupid comparrisons like this.

LoL is a PvP game, built from the ground up for PvP, with ONLY PvP in mind. It has "talent trees" and items designed around ONE match, number-crucnhed to match the skills of other champions. PoE is not. It is (and should always be) a PvE game first. If you just take a quick glance at the passive tree, and all possible builds, you would understand why it's more or less impossible to balance this game for PvP.

I understand the comparison to D2. But if we remove our overly-romantic view of that game, it was fairly generic in its passive trees/talen trees and itemaization. It had fairly "locked" classes, with a limited amount of skills, locked to each class. Just these few factors, made it possible to balance around PvP.

I just can't understand how anyone can believe that PvP is possible in PoE, based on design - without limiting the PvE diversity. And that's the thing; the moment they limit PvE diversity to push PvP, they have lost. Because no matter HOW MANY players like PvP, MOST players are here for PvE.

To make PvP possible, they would need to make it 100% separated from the PvE game... And would that still make it PoE?

It's a fallacy that PvP has to be balanced to be enjoyable. It really depends on the implementation. D2 had builds that were next to impossible to kill regardless of how simple the trees were.

Can players work around the disadvantages is an important question here. If an advantage can be nullified in a strategic way then people won't care about balance. You can have a tanky jugg with a gazillion abilities and 9 endurance charges if there are ways for players to deal with it like imprisoning the jugg, outrunning the jugg or tag teaming the jugg.

Where balance becomes a problem is in fixed PvP environments. Like WoW arenas make imbalance intolerable because you can't work around the imbalances. You can't call in more people. You can't outrun them. You can't do much of anything but outplay them or lose.

So I'm not advocating for that. I'm not saying the game needs arenas or fixed size battlegrounds. I'm talking about a PvE world that neatly and creatively implements PvP in a way where it's engaging, mysterious and different every iteration.

Again I'll reference Dark Souls here. In Dark Souls you could build a character very difficult to kill. Some would abuse the latency issues especially with the longest sword they could find and the best attack speed. It was janky but very fun and when you saw the guy with the washing pole you could bait him into PvE or call in allies to deal with him. I like that kind of flexibility.