Unsustainable game design - PvE vs PvP

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Caiada wrote:

I can't believe in tyool 2020 I'm still reading the opinions of people who think D2 was popular because of its PvP.

PvP has been part of very limited endgame stuff there. So yes it was quite popular despite being unbalanced (with an exception of private leagues).
(it´s also very easy to access PvP there --- through Blood Moor)

About PvP in PoE:
I tried LLD some leagues ago. It was quite fun till they added more automatic skills such as Volatile Dead / Poet´s Pen etc.

I played lots of PvP in Diablo 2 (private leagues included) and I have to say that PoE builds are even more based on gear with very low skills involved (LLD used to be a bit better though).

There are too many automated skills / abilities / active skills that require minimum effort to hit the target.

Despite all this I think it could be still a lot of fun for some people to enjoy pvp from time to time with a bit of effort from GGG but it requires some tweaks.
- easy way to access pvp
- blood moor style pvp arena
- reduce damage and cut recovery mechanics significantly
- nerf the most broken stuff
- some events with prices to attract people
- working rankings

All this shouldn´t limit PvE players to enjoy the game but it could bring fresh air to the game -- especially standard league.

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I'm still lost in this debate.

I understand people wanting PvP, both for the social aspect and for the challenges. But to call it "unsustainable"?

Fact 1: GGG pushes out A LOT of content each quarter, more than any other developer I know.

Fact 2: "Most" people are more than happy to come back each league. While some demand MORE monsters, MORE content and a changed META, a lot of players would return just for the ladder reset, like they did in D2.

Fact 3: Claiming D2 survived for as long as it did because of PvP, is a rather "unsustainable claim". I know for a fact that me and the friends I played with, returned solely for PvE.

Fact 4: PoE keeps growing and has been for 7 years. Sure, some leagues are better than others, some leagues will have better numbers than others. But all "modern" leagues have one thing in common: No focus on PvP.

Unsustainable? Nah.

I think you are missing the point, it feels unsustainable because its almost like the "kicking the can down the road" phrase. Yes things seem to be working every league, month after month, year after year but it FEELS like things are slowly stagnating in terms of principle design/creativity. The design idea of repeat 100% PvE leagues is unsustainable in the long run. What happens when they stop? The game will die if the pve content stops, whereas some games like D2 survived long after development slowed/stopped because of things like pvp.

1. All of this new PvE content is great and all, but it starts to feel like rehashing and "doing the same thing over and over again".

2. You have to look at what people are doing throughout each league, not just who is coming to play at the start of a league. It's well known that players are leaving the game faster and faster the majority of the time in more and more leagues.

3. I have my own anecdotal reference also in which I know for a fact that my friends and I ONLY played Diablo2 for pvp. We geared, farmed, traded, for the sole purpose of pvping. And I knew many people that returned to D2 just to do this, including one of the developers on the diablo 2 dev team that worked on balancing pvp back then. Even the D2 devs knew this about pvp so they worked on pve content with pvp balance in mind.

4. So are you saying that having no focus on PvP is actually helping with the growth of PoE? If so then I highly disagree with such a statement, GGG im sure is big enough now to be able to handle the development of multiple different aspects of the game. Them working on pvp would hardly impact the work they do on pve, if any.

Which leads to my final point, PvP IS the weakest link in their game at the moment. Them working on the weakest part of the game can only HELP them. It's generally a good approach for any business to work on the weakest parts of a project. Not only does it prevent things from falling apart, but it can also transform the work into something with a lot of potential.

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Liquid_stone wrote:

You clearly dont know what you are talking about. You mention D2, did D2 have expansions every 3 months? NO

Next you mention that its easy to implement PvP and that they need to put few developers to it every league. Did you ever in your life tried to code a game? Did you try to balance skills for PvP? No, its not a few poeple, it would have to be whole team and they would not be able to do balance for PvP in 3 months, not even in a year.

Then you mention D4, well just because there are bosses that you cant kill on your own is the reason that i would never buy D4.

I don't care about social part of the game and i'm sure that a lot of people think the same

Expansions =! Unfinished content updates
At least we see who bought into GGG marketing.

Still, I am happy about the ladder resets even though I think three months are too short. However, I can understand that people that have experienced more of the game would like to have something else than a broken new mechanic that usually feels rushed (hello blight).
I hope that GGG either starts to explore pvp or reintroduce the race seasons. maybe they could focus on that instead of making mobile games and gambling machines.

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You clearly dont know what you are talking about. You mention D2, did D2 have expansions every 3 months? NO

Next you mention that its easy to implement PvP and that they need to put few developers to it every league. Did you ever in your life tried to code a game? Did you try to balance skills for PvP? No, its not a few poeple, it would have to be whole team and they would not be able to do balance for PvP in 3 months, not even in a year.

Then you mention D4, well just because there are bosses that you cant kill on your own is the reason that i would never buy D4.

I don't care about social part of the game and i'm sure that a lot of people think the same

*facepalm*

Since GGG seems to have enough resources to create poe on mobile phone they must have enough to make pvp great again

Well I play both POE and D3. D3 is 100% guilty of not introducing new content and their seasons are a total joke. Same stuff with a tiny buff. I'm not even going to address PVP - that is not POE.

And I have to totally disagree with you about the Masters and the new Atlas. It is pretty clear you have not played POE for long because the old masters and the old atlas (where almost everyone blocked and played the same maps over and over) sucked, was repetitive and fairly boring.

But, I will say that POE's (GGG) continued refusal to test shit is really pissing me off. And I'm about the biggest fan of GGG there is, but at some point you have to say WTF? Anyway, Harvest blows and not for the reasons most people are expressing. Is it tedious? Hell yes. Is it confusing for all except for vets? Hell yes. Is it fun? No way. Does the crafting make the already bad trading unbearable? Oh yes, this is by far the worst league for the douchebags, snipers, price fixers and just general rude people to flourish.

So my primary issue is that leagues like this are absolutely terrible and they bring out the worst in an already spotty player base who has little manners and pretty much no guilt about scamming people. That is the issue that GGG needs to address. When on every trade you have to go down an entire page to figure out the real prices of anything because the scammers are putting in fake prices it makes an already bad system worse. The cure is obvious, if you list something you should be forced to sell it (like an AH). Put it in some "selling que" but also with an ability to negotiate somewhat off of that price if you choose to.

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MrWonderful99 wrote:

Well I play both POE and D3. D3 is 100% guilty of not introducing new content and their seasons are a total joke. Same stuff with a tiny buff. I'm not even going to address PVP - that is not POE.

And I have to totally disagree with you about the Masters and the new Atlas. It is pretty clear you have not played POE for long because the old masters and the old atlas (where almost everyone blocked and played the same maps over and over) sucked, was repetitive and fairly boring.

But, I will say that POE's (GGG) continued refusal to test shit is really pissing me off. And I'm about the biggest fan of GGG there is, but at some point you have to say WTF? Anyway, Harvest blows and not for the reasons most people are expressing. Is it tedious? Hell yes. Is it confusing for all except for vets? Hell yes. Is it fun? No way. Does the crafting make the already bad trading unbearable? Oh yes, this is by far the worst league for the douchebags, snipers, price fixers and just general rude people to flourish.

So my primary issue is that leagues like this are absolutely terrible and they bring out the worst in an already spotty player base who has little manners and pretty much no guilt about scamming people. That is the issue that GGG needs to address. When on every trade you have to go down an entire page to figure out the real prices of anything because the scammers are putting in fake prices it makes an already bad system worse. The cure is obvious, if you list something you should be forced to sell it (like an AH). Put it in some "selling que" but also with an ability to negotiate somewhat off of that price if you choose to.

But that's the problem. They don't intend to make boring leagues. The issue is attrition and developer-driven content. It takes a lot of time, energy and money to produce this stuff every 3-4 months. On top of that as the game grows more popular the league features are going to be more polarizing.

Retail WoW has already gone through this. No matter what those guys do half the community thinks the game sucks. I'm one of those guys in the current iteration. I also know if the WoW dev team made WoW something I'd enjoy again half the audience would leave.

So developer-driven content has this problem. It's not unlimited like P2P driven content is. But P2P driven content needs to be crafted just-so to be an attractive and long term feature.

With regards to P2P content in WoW I look at the AH, Battlegrounds, Arenas, so on and so forth. Ways that players can interact with each other and be rewarded for doing so can be the injection a game like this needs when creative attrition becomes a problem. Also obviously making more polarizing features optional is good from a PvE perspective.

The benefit of P2P driven content is it isn't scripted. Players are an endless well of creativity that should be harnessed. Whether it be PvP, hosting maps, clan wars, an actual AH or anything like that with reward structures attached would bring unprecedented popularity to the game. I say that because there's a giant audience for P2P content, as always and D2 proved the isometric ARPG model works in a P2P way.

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I_NO wrote:

Hahahaha PVP in an ARPG? Good one.

in my book pvp is what drove ppl to farm pve in d2.

until BLUEMOONPK's scripts became wildly rampant.
at that point pvp was ruined ; unless you did it with someone you knew.

Duels were so popular at one point youd be hard pressed to join a duel game that wasn't full ; from "duels" to "duelsssssssssss(whatever is the max character limit)" with everything inbetween. games would be up all day 24/24 with ppl joining as soon as someone left. *oh and when all the "duelsssss" game names were taken youd even see "duelz" to "duelzzzzzzzzzzz.." popping up.

and you could have 8 ppl in a game as opposed to forced 1v1 and a questionable always empty arena , somewhere? im not even sure. *8ppl per game without performances being affected, btw* PoE still has stuff to learn from it's step-brother d2.

tl;dr. pvp can work in an arpg ; im not sure why or how but it can... until cheaters become rampant.

p.s Gotta love I_NO's posts. always a hint of troll in there but generally ends up making you think. <3