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

Slow build doesn't necessary mean low DPS

Look at other games, clumsy moves result in comparable overall dps compared to quick attacks, or sometime even more

A tanky build should like require you to do some preparation, tank some hits, and earn that superb hit.

No one will play slow and weak builds.

You all don't understand.

He have VISION.

...TUNNEL VISION!

This game is not fun anymore =(

playing since 2015 =(

the problem is they are more willing to nerf player builds defences, dmg, speed, support gems, and flasks, but not also monster speed, dmg, unlimited mana to spam their skills, defences, life to compensate to make it a more even-handed playing field.

If the whole vision was to slow the game down, then slow the game down with everything, not just player builds 0.0

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Shagsbeard wrote:

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

How much more do they need? Because so far they only make slow builds worse. Will another 8 years be enough? I honestly doubt it.

When they first introduced timers, I absolutely hated it. As far as I know, the first timers came with the masters release with Zana missions. At the time, it wasn't the easiest thing to complete because the game was not as fast as it is now.

Then came other timed mechanics like Incursions, which I really hated since a failure could ruin your entire temple. Then came blight. Although it didn't have the same kind of timer, the monsters marching toward you were effectively a timer because if they made it to the pump, you failed. Period.

Then came Delirium. My favorite league, bar none.

That's when it became clear to me that it wasn't timers that I had issues with. It was the timed events that had hard failures; meaning it was either pass or fail. Nothing in between. Delirium introduced a soft "failure" in that you got something for your time and going further just increased your rewards. The timer didn't gate anything specifically other than a linear increase to the reward structure.

I think the pass/fail gated by speed was a mistake, but others seem to like it so maybe not. That's for GGG to decide.

Disclaimer: I don't include things like ritual, strongboxes or harvest in my comment because I just don't view them as timed events. You can go as slow as you want and still complete it.

People have discussed this millions of times before. Here's my take:

Yes they always wanted to do it. I think the reason initially was that they tried a couple of expansions that go fast and people really like them so they started going down this path. However, I think they kind of realize the downside of this - high resource consumption when too much calculations and effects going on the screen, too much loot dropping on ground (mostly trash),harder to balance across skills (mainly because of clear speed), and more importantly maybe their POE 2 is designed at a much slower speed. As a result, they decide to change direction right now to get prepared for POE 2, or an experiment just like Harvest to test out a different pace of gameplay under POE framework.

HOWEVER, the losers here will be us, the POE 1 players. First, it's a complete change of playstyle and game pace and we will feel discomfort. Second, they work hard on new content but very slow on adjusting previous content to their current design philosophy. This explains why we feel so bad when playing past content, because it's not designed to fit the current philosophy. All they care about is how the current playstyle and player strength is compared to the current expansion, rather than the past content. Just like standard is not considered real "content" (or say "source of revenue) so they just don't care about anything that happens there, now they think that they don't even need to care about POE 1 seasonal players because they think all they should care about is POE 2 and it's development schedule.

To summarize, what we are feeling in this league is a very bad sign in the longer term - they put much less resource into POE 1 now in terms of game balance and holistic QA because of POE 2, and they are willing to sacrifice the user experience of POE 1 players for POE 2 beta testing opportunities. The last straw for me was that Chris on various talk shows have never, ever admitted any of that, and none of his talk points are relatable to me. I don't think he understand any of this. I personally find this unacceptable, and that's why I stopped buying anything from GGG since they destroyed Harvest and then this patch. I decide to do that not because of Harvest itself lost most of its power, but merely because of their prioritization and self-conflicting decision-making.

I really don't want to write here anymore because they don't listen, nor they ever care anymore. Just got some free time and hope this could help you making decision on struggling with this game more.