Heist...Im out again !

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Phrazz wrote:

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MuTayShuN wrote:

You... Don't understand Harvest? How? There is literally nothing hard about setting up a garden if you take 10-15 minutes to actually try and see how things work.

It's an endless circle: People want easy/simple, because they're not willing to learn, and when they're unwilling to learn, everything seems "too complex".

While you are 100% correct POE needs such players to keep the lights on and pay the bills.
Lest we not forget that this is not a 4x strategy game. This is an ARPG focus on the A since there are little to nil real RPG elements. And as such it is meant to cater to the people that want to just turn the game on and play it, and have fun mashing keys and watching monster explode.

An I know I just discribed games like Torch Light and Diablo but thats because they are in the same genre. POE not only expects far more out of its players in terms of building a character but it also obfuscates far more of the basic infomation that other games in the genre give the player, making things needlessly unclear.

An easy example of this I like to use is this - Essence, Fosil, Beast recipe, alchemy and the Harvest Bench from last league all say on them the exact same thing, - change an item into a rare item. Yet they are quite different from each other. Thats just one of the examples of bad design adding pointless complexity that subtracts from the play experience by forcing the player to tab out and look up 5 different wiki pages.

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Gravel86 wrote:

While you are 100% correct POE needs such players to keep the lights on and pay the bills.
Lest we not forget that this is not a 4x strategy game. This is an ARPG focus on the A since there are little to nil real RPG elements. And as such it is meant to cater to the people that want to just turn the game on and play it, and have fun mashing keys and watching monster explode.

An I know I just discribed games like Torch Light and Diablo but thats because they are in the same genre. POE not only expects far more out of its players in terms of building a character but it also obfuscates far more of the basic infomation that other games in the genre do, making things needlessly unclear.

An easy example of this I like to use is this - Essence, Fosil, Beast recipe, alchemy and the Harvest Bench from last league all say on them the exact same thing, - change an item into a rare item. Yet they are quite different from each other.

The game as a whole has (and will always have) a solid focus on the "A". No matter what they add, the focus will be there. Harvest focused on crafting. What does crafting do? Improve your gear to be able to kill more/faster. What does Heist do? Let you loot a lot of loot, while being swarmed by monsters afterwards, with a solid focus on the "A". Hell, it even give you some control over how much "A" you want.

Even though the game needs its "A"-focus, that doesn't mean that every league and every addition have to be "more monsters".

And yes, you are right. The game probably needs those players too. And they are more than capable of skipping the content they deem "too complex", and focus on what they know and like.

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Phrazz wrote:

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Gravel86 wrote:

While you are 100% correct POE needs such players to keep the lights on and pay the bills.
Lest we not forget that this is not a 4x strategy game. This is an ARPG focus on the A since there are little to nil real RPG elements. And as such it is meant to cater to the people that want to just turn the game on and play it, and have fun mashing keys and watching monster explode.

An I know I just discribed games like Torch Light and Diablo but thats because they are in the same genre. POE not only expects far more out of its players in terms of building a character but it also obfuscates far more of the basic infomation that other games in the genre do, making things needlessly unclear.

An easy example of this I like to use is this - Essence, Fosil, Beast recipe, alchemy and the Harvest Bench from last league all say on them the exact same thing, - change an item into a rare item. Yet they are quite different from each other.

The game as a whole has (and will always have) a solid focus on the "A". No matter what they add, the focus will be there. Harvest focused on crafting. What does crafting do? Improve your gear to be able to kill more/faster. What does Heist do? Let you loot a lot of loot, while being swarmed by monsters afterwards, with a solid focus on the "A". Hell, it even give you some control over how much "A" you want.

Even though the game needs its "A"-focus, that doesn't mean that every league and every addition have to be "more monsters".

And yes, you are right. The game probably needs those players too. And they are more than capable of skipping the content they deem "too complex", and focus on what they know and like.

My point was really that they should't feel like second class citizens for not wanting to roll the RNG dice and craft in an ARPG. The focus should be loot and action. The best loot in the game should be droped on the ground not crafted.
Crafting should be at most a way to augment drops.

When has there ever been a league where the focus was not spamming currency to craft the items you want? A league where killing monsters and looting them and using the items they drop was the focus?

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Gravel86 wrote:

The best loot in the game should be droped on the ground not crafted.
Crafting should be at most a way to augment drops.

This will never happen. Should it? Well, I personally wouldn't mind. But for the game and its longevity? I doubt it would be a good thing.

So many arguments I see are caused by a single factor:

The inability to consider that people are different from the author's perspective.


Phrazz, your statement is essentially saying "The students are dumb, it can't possibly be the fault of the teacher or the curriculum".

There's a reason that training encompasses multiple styles of delivery. Not everyone learns in the same manner or interprets things the same way.

I personally thought the implementation of the Garden in Harvest was atrocious, needlessly complex, poorly explained and with bad UI cues. Obviously others found it easier to understand with the information presented to them, or found it rewarding enough to push through the confusion and get to the other side.

I personally fucking hated it and left the league within a few days which I've never done before.

People will play this and other games because the enjoyment is considered a reasonable trade off for the investment required. For me, Harvest represented a poor value for investment. I'm pleased that you found the value proposition to be positive for you.

There's not necessarily anything inherently wrong with wanting something to be easy/simple. One of the basic tenets of gaming for a particular game company is that something should be easy to play but challenging to master. I don't think that is a bad approach really.

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Phrazz wrote:

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Gravel86 wrote:

The best loot in the game should be droped on the ground not crafted.
Crafting should be at most a way to augment drops.

This will never happen. Should it? Well, I personally wouldn't mind. But for the game and its longevity? I doubt it would be a good thing.

I think it would be really bad for the game if such a league lasted more than 1 month, but it would be very interesting to see what was really possible and how players looting habits would change. It would provide great data for POE2 from a dev standpoint.

It would be possible to add such a league for the end of a leage such as Harvest that was seriously lagging by the end of its second live month without harming the bank, or costing much dev time. It would only require a few lines of code to disable the use of currency items.

I'll snapshot my reply on another game franchise to illustrate the problem.

DOOM (2016): metacritic player reviews: 8.5
DOOM Eternal (2020): metacritic player reviews: 7.7

Now you'd think the 2020 version would be better, right? It kinda is. It has better graphics, arguably better ux, just as good sound and a reasonably interesting plot.

It's not DOOM though. The developers put way too much platformer content into the game and the player comments reflect that. Nearly every negative review I've seen (and written) about DOOM Eternal revolves around the design decision to turn it into a platformer.

That's not what DOOM is. DOOM is a game that walks the line between survival, exploration, fast paced combat and story. Sure DOOM has always had secret areas but those are not exclusively platformer elements. So when you're in the early acts for example and jumping on collapsing platforms while dodging laser beams floating in the free air it kills immersion. You don't feel like you're the doom guy, you feel like you're Mario.

This is the problem all modern game developers face. You first have to know what your product is and what your target audience is. I view the PoE audience as ARPG fans who want a large grind to work towards a worthy end goal. I think the game suffers for not having engaging P2P and I think leagues that add more puzzle elements do it no favors. I think Harvest illustrates this problem.

I think it gets complicated by the rewards. In that for example a league mechanic can be trash for the game but the rewards so good as to make it worth running. WoW has this problem as well. Where people absolutely hate World Quests and Dailies but feel forced to do them because of the exclusive rewards behind them. Rewards that affect other gameplay features.

I'm not thrilled about Heist as I do see the problem other players are talking about. There seems to be an identity struggle with PoE and it's unfortunate. We'll see if the league is really that bad and I'll take a look. Not holding my breath though.

I implore the devs to do their best to create a P2P league, with rewards and ladderboards. Bring out all the P2P ideas as that is what the game needs the most IMO.

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Izrakhan wrote:

You first have to know what your product is and what your target audience is. I view the PoE audience as ARPG fans who want a large grind to work towards a worthy end goal. I think the game suffers for not having engaging P2P and I think leagues that add more puzzle elements do it no favors.

I implore the devs to do their best to create a P2P league, with rewards and ladderboards. Bring out all the P2P ideas as that is what the game needs the most IMO.

These arguments are by now so old and repetitive that I can just recycle some of my old answers -

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Exile009 wrote:

People who want endless Breach-clones cos they've grown so jaded with the core game that they need a new coat of paint on their monsters every 3 months to make their playtime feel fresh again. They'll frequently be heard crying, "this is an ARPG! We play to kill things and get loot!!" never noting the fact that there's no shortage of that in the game as is. You'd think that all they'd done in Harvest league was growing their garden and trading, no maps, Delve, etc. They'll act like they're starved of their preferred type of gameplay just cos the league mechanic isn't solely about doing that (never mind that it always involves more killing and loot, just not only that), because the idea of there being something for any other kind of player of this game is an affront to their self-identity as 'core ARPG gamerz' (tm).

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Exile009 wrote:

One of the earliest game expansions they ever did was for PvP, and it was only the first step. But if you think the response to Harvest was negative, you perhaps weren't around for that patch. Even today focusing more on PvP is controversial - go ahead and make a thread suggesting it and see the response (though admittedly there's a few more approving voices nowadays since the size of the community itself has grown). They haven't left PvP to wither because they don't want to see it, they've abandoned it because the community response to it when they did try it was so icy that they decided it wasn't a good idea. So if you want GGG to push more PvP, it's not them you need to address, but your fellow players, cos they're the reason you haven't already got your wish.

Personally I've no issue with them expanding PvP support. But it's not only the devs fault we haven't got that yet. And if you think a full-on PvP league will fly with the community, oh boy have I got news for you. Seriously, make the post here pushing for it, see how well it flies with your fellow players.

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Exile009 wrote:

More broadly, you sound a like a 'purist'. However ultimately, in the long run, it's the experimentation that will be this games' legacy. No one's gonna be inspired by it for simply being the 2010's successor to D2, since they could just as well take inspiration from the original source itself then. It's the things that PoE does differently from D2, as well as from other ARPG's in general, that will be its contribution to the genre as a whole. It's from there that future designers will draw ideas from that're truly those of Path of Exile, and not simply copies of D2. If you want to just play an updated version of D2, there are mods that do that. There's even one for it that incorporates PoE mechanics (minus leagues). There's also Grim Dawn, which also has a mod that allows you to play it as D2. But this is Path of Exile, not just 'modern D2'. The game wants to have its own identity. Let it.

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Aldora_the_Summoner wrote:

Phrazz, your statement is essentially saying "The students are dumb, it can't possibly be the fault of the teacher or the curriculum".

Not at all. But when a student goes into his studies with an attitude of "I'm not willing to learn anything", the curriculum has already lost.

You're right, people ARE different, that's why a cycle of different leagues is a good idea. It is (or at least should be) OK to say "this league isn't for me, I'll pass", without blaming anyone or anything. Without whining. Without feeling the need of creating a thread, saying "I don't like this league, and it has nothing to do with me, only GGG". A league can not possibly appeal to everyone, so leagues being different is a good thing.

Legion, Blight, Metamorph and Delirium were all pretty "simple" leagues, with a main focus on adding monsters and loot to maps. Now we have had ONE league that focused on something else, and it looks like we'll have another one. I'm totally OK with that. My taste of coffee is my own. If I try a new brand of coffe and don't like it, I don't necessarily blame the company manufacturing the coffee, because "my taste" isn't - and shouldn't be - the blueprint.

I agree I came to poe to kill mobs and etc. If i need stealth, tower defense and etc - i would play other games....