GGG claims they want to slow down PoE, yet their design says otherwise.

I find it odd how GGG thought it would work to have flasks that only give 1 sec freeze immunity. Or expect people to not spam flasks.

Meanwhile some game mechanics forces you to do exactly that. Like when you start a Ritual, its all a clusterfuck of monsters trying to kill you. 1 sec freeze and your dead.
Hell...It all turns into a potion mashing eyesore with very little depth. But thats your design GGG...
Most game mechanics rewards high clear speed. I would say its pretty much centered around it.

Ritual
Breach
Legion
Dilerium
Incursion
Blight
Delve
Strongboxes
Harvest

Its all about killing loads of monsters very fast. All of it isn't nessacarily bad. But you as the designers have to think of what your adding.
Problem is it gets to a point where it just becomes messy to look at and kinda mindless. I mean Path of Exile 2 looks great because we are actually watching the early game where you can see whats going on. If the endgame of PoE 2 is just like this. It will end up feeling (and looking) more or less like PoE 1.
GGGs gonna have a challange to solve that issue.

Maybe you shouldn't add those game mechanic everywhere? Not to mention if you aim to slow down the endgame, you can't at the same time have game mechanics thats all about speed.

I would happily play a slow killing tank if everything wasn't on such a small, strict timer. Also if I felt like there was a real and reasonable way to not get 1 shot or instagibbed by ground/on death effects etc.

I'm aware with enough investment there are some pretty tanky builds in existence but they seem to offend GGG's sensibilities since their existence keeps inspiring blanket defense nerfs.

Maybe they should support the slow playstyle if they want slower gameplay, I never even liked the zoom zoom, I have slowly adapted to and adopted it because it's the only reasonable way to play this game. I used to pick up every rare and id it too, isn't that a riot?

They conditioned us all to play this way and supported it, now they are trying to take it back with ham fists.

What GGG really wants is for different playstyles to be valued. The timers were introduced because they didn't want "slow and steady" to be able to defeat everything in the game. They really want every build to have a problem to solve. That's where skill comes in... or costs to avoid the situation that you can't beat by skill.

The current winning strategy is to be fast and powerful, but weak in defense. That's okay. But it needs a foil. It can't be the only solution, or the game is stale.

They're working on this problem. Give them time.

Am I giving them too much credit if I assume that they are smart enough to know that punishing slow builds with timers/less loot is doubling down on less rewards for slow play?

Am I giving them too much credit if I assume they know better than to make slow builds that naturally get hit more often even more likely to die than the squishy fast builds?

They've been working on this for a long time, it's basically the melee vs ranged problem we've had from the beginning. Their solution was to make most melee behave more like ranged and keep pushing the zoom.

They want players to die, it makes the game sound hard. You just can't have it both ways though, at least not this clumsily.

Zoom with deaths or slow without deaths. Slow and still dying just doesn't work.

Words are cheap!

Chris has constantly said that it's not about slowing the game down but allowing meaningful choice in support gems. They want PoE to continue to be a fast experience. Even after constant nerfs to top builds/skills/items/classes/etc and even after this patch of nerfs, it's still the same fast PoE.

Most of the leagues you mentioned are not based off of clear speed. It's not inherent nor required to be fast. Outside of Delirium and Legion.. maybe you could throw in Breach to some extent. Incursion really has never been difficult to nab the monster to change/upgrade and open a door and kill most if not all the monsters.

I would say Delirium and Legion yes 100$ award you far greater for clearing faster then other mechanics but I don't think that it's wrong to allow mechanics here and there to do so. I would say Synthesis would be in here but kind of moot now.

Yes being faster at a task will make you more efficient but that can be said for nearly every task or mechanic that ever existed. This idea that you have no choice but to zoom at 200%+ movement spd and one shot everything has always been overblown. Timers exist to put pressure on the player, not as some speed clear enforcement.

This kind of mindset has long poisoned the community into thinking this is how PoE is supposed to be and it doesn't have to be that way.

Incursion isn't hard because we've stopped playing builds for which it is. Same is true for many other mechanics added to the game.

That was really the uproar when Bestiary launched. Dozens of established builds were unable to net beasts simply because they could stop killing stuff and still function. People couldn't 'give up' their playstyle to match the mechanics.

We have with Incursion. If you can't kill mobs fast enough to run incursions, you're screwed.

So we stopped playing that way.

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e1337donkey wrote:

This kind of mindset has long poisoned the community into thinking this is how PoE is supposed to be and it doesn't have to be that way.

Oh what a relief, it's just our poisoned mindset. I thought I had experienced it first hand since open beta or something. Phew.

This is about nuance.

"Slowing down" does not mean "not going fast". They do want us to go fast. They do want the game to be fast. They just feel it was a little bit too fast, so they nerfed it a little bit regarding speed.

I still struggle to see how anyone can make such a big deal about it.

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Phrazz wrote:

This is about nuance.

"Slowing down" does not mean "not going fast". They do want us to go fast. They do want the game to be fast. They just feel it was a little bit too fast, so they nerfed it a little bit regarding speed.

I still struggle to see how anyone can make such a big deal about it.

Folks tend to fight when they lose something. It's not like these players made up 3.13. It was given to them to like. It was designed to be fun for their playstyle and ability. If it wasn't designed that way , then it was a stupid move, built upon earlier stupid moves, because it didn't get there overnight.

I understand where you are coming from, it's all good for you. I think we can both agree that if the game has evolved into something we no longer find fun then we should search for something that fulfills that requirement for us. It comes as no surprise to me though, that people are acting out on their frustrations.

Some folks are stubborn and do not realize they are beating on a steel door with a feather. Some will continue though, because to them...it is a big deal. To all the feather warriors out there, all I can say is there are going to be a whole lot of bald birds running around and their sacrifice is meaningless. You are never going to get what you want.