General reason why the game is failing and I want your input !

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Phrazz wrote:

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Jadrann wrote:

Most player play softcore trade and just want to be strong and reach their goal like killing maven or whatever. I really don't believe they care about the guy they never met to be stronger. Also, we don't have leaderboards and they wouldn't work anyway because of RMT and Group play.

It all boils down to how high you think you're supposed to be able to climb. Yes, "everyone wants to reach their goals", but should "everyone" be able to have Maven as a goal? I sure as hell don't think they should. And the amount of people (like me) actually being able to have her as a pretty short-term goal because of all the power creep, is maybe too big?

FUN is subjective - and misunderstood. For me, progress is fun. Playing is fun. Reaching every possible goal means no more progression and no more playing - for me. That's why I always like there to be goals I cannot reach, which is totally OK.

If someone requires to be able to do everything to have fun without grinding, there are tons of games out there.

Some very good points here but is that the goal of dealing with power creep ? Maybe I don't really understand what it is.

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Jadrann wrote:

Obviously you don't know what's going on with the game and why they make those podcasts, I don't need your input.

Oh I quite obviously do know what's going on.

And you'll be getting my input whether you want it or not.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

One thing that irks me is when "who cares what power the other player has" comes into the argument.

You absolutely SHOULD care how powerful other players are, because the game is then balanced around that high end. You may think short-term it doesn't affect your day-to-day playing, but in reality the absurd damage/speed/health of enemies continues to increase BECAUSE of those high end numbers that most players can't achieve.

If the game was static (no regular balancing/updates), which most modern games simply aren't, then you might not have to worry about what's going on outside your own single player experience. However, PoE is a game that regularly changes every 3 months and it takes into account the top dps/top skills/top survivability when determining the nerfs of the next update.

This is one of the worst arguments I've seem come up time and time again in various forms because it is so so so misguided and shortsighted.

Well I understand your point and it's very enlightening. But obviously the way they approched the problem isn't adequate but I'm not sure what should have been the right approche. What do you think ?

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Sabranic_SilverDeth wrote:

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Jadrann wrote:

Obviously you don't know what's going on with the game and why they make those podcasts, I don't need your input.

Oh I quite obviously do know what's going on.

And you'll be getting my input whether you want it or not.

XD go pollute other posts or waste your time here, I don't care.

ARPGs have fallen into a trap over the years called Enemy Density.

Enemy Density is important for many reasons. It dictates how effective your AI is allowed to be. How strong player recovery can be. How strong AoE is vs Single Target, esp AoE layering. It controls the flow of the game well as the player's perspective towards typical enemies.

Diablo 1 > Diablo 2 > Diablo 3 all increased density through each game. PoE is no different.

I believe this to be one of the game's biggest fundamental flaws and yet few talk about it. As players we go from 100% to dead because of Enemy density. Burst damage is the only thing which can affect players at this point because of our fast recovery thus deaths feel very RNG because they are.

Power Creep is inevitable in any long term RPG. The important part is to keep it minimal so the rest of the game can be easily adjusted. This includes countermeasures for Power creep.

A lack of proper itemization is what I feel hinders game progression the most. The spectrum is simply too high and players look towards band-aid solutions like Harvest yet the root problem still exists.

Currently we are beta testing PoE2 concepts. It's not right that we are but that's what's happening. I don't think this will affect the game long term but I also don't think it will be very effective.

@jadrann: yea blanket nerf did little to fix any kind of issues apart from global creep. It still maintained power and skill imbalances.

one of the only ways I can see combating power creep based on player differences, is reducing the power gap between the BEST items and the lower tier items. Have all numbers/stats/effects gained by gear be less dramatic. They need to exist, but there doesn't really need to be a 1000% difference between t1 rolls on everything vs t4 rolls on everything.

You still want a clearly defined tier system, where players are constantly upgrading for more life/damage/defense etc., but influenced mods/top tier crafting have just gotten so out of control powerful that its hard to make any kind of balance without first tackling those mods.

Personally, I hate that tailwind/elusive/onslaught ever made it onto boots in the first place. Other mods elsewhere too, but specifically these. They should have been class-specific mods and KEPT class specific. We need more of THESE kinds of "ascendancy choice buffs" and less gear buffs. GGG over the last few leagues has seemed like they want to systematically remove uniqueness from ascendancies which, in my opinion, makes absolutely no sense.

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Xzorn wrote:

ARPGs have fallen into a trap over the years called Enemy Density.

Enemy Density is important for many reasons. It dictates how effective your AI is allowed to be. How strong player recovery can be. How strong AoE is vs Single Target, esp AoE layering. It controls the flow of the game well as the player's perspective towards typical enemies.

Diablo 1 > Diablo 2 > Diablo 3 all increased density through each game. PoE is no different.

I believe this to be one of the game's biggest fundamental flaws and yet few talk about it. As players we go from 100% to dead because of Enemy density. Burst damage is the only thing which can affect players at this point because of our fast recovery thus deaths feel very RNG because they are.

Power Creep is inevitable in any long term RPG. The important part is to keep it minimal so the rest of the game can be easily adjusted. This includes countermeasures for Power creep.

A lack of proper itemization is what I feel hinders game progression the most. The spectrum is simply too high and players look towards band-aid solutions like Harvest yet the root problem still exists.

Currently we are beta testing PoE2 concepts. It's not right that we are but that's what's happening. I don't think this will affect the game long term but I also don't think it will be very effective.

Oh shit, I think you might be right. They seem to be testing iterations that are incomplete though. Rather than gradually reducing player power and increasing interaction time shouldn't they do a clean cut ? That clean cut would be with PoE2 release ? Or is it to smoothy adjust player perspective ?

Great stuff btw ty !

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jsuslak313 wrote:

@jadrann: yea blanket nerf did little to fix any kind of issues apart from global creep. It still maintained power and skill imbalances.

one of the only ways I can see combating power creep based on player differences, is reducing the power gap between the BEST items and the lower tier items. Have all numbers/stats/effects gained by gear be less dramatic. They need to exist, but there doesn't really need to be a 1000% difference between t1 rolls on everything vs t4 rolls on everything.

You still want a clearly defined tier system, where players are constantly upgrading for more life/damage/defense etc., but influenced mods/top tier crafting have just gotten so out of control powerful that its hard to make any kind of balance without first tackling those mods.

Personally, I hate that tailwind/elusive/onslaught ever made it onto boots in the first place. Other mods elsewhere too, but specifically these. They should have been class-specific mods and KEPT class specific. We need more of THESE kinds of "ascendancy choice buffs" and less gear buffs. GGG over the last few leagues has seemed like they want to systematically remove uniqueness from ascendancies which, in my opinion, makes absolutely no sense.

So if I understand correctly, it might be the philosophy of the game to keep every classes generic that makes it very complex to balance ? It makes sense and quite frankly I never thought much about the slot used for specific crafts and the relative power of the tier system.

well, no, you can have more generic ascendancies and still maintain better balance. That was more of an aside issue I have with itemization.

The real problem though is items, not ascendancies per se

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Jadrann wrote:

Hi everyone,

I would like to say what I've been thinking of for a while and ask your opinion on whether I'm right or wrong and why. I watched the 3 podcasts so far and really liked the last one because Grimro is very good at explaining things and they touched some subjects they didn't discuss before. With that being said here is my thinking about the "Main" issue aka big picture stuff.

I don't care what some youtube drone says about PoE. Form your own opinions and make your own arguments. This Grimro person could suddenly catch fire and burn to ash... or live eternally in opulence - I don't care either way. Total apathy on my part with respect to their opinion.

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Jadrann wrote:

According to my own reasoning, the issue might be with the hypotheses they make and believe them to be facts

Word salad.

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Jadrann wrote:

...instead of doing the good engineering thing and test them with experiments (like in a PTR or by labeling something as a clear experiment in the live version).

The leagues every three months are, in every measurable way, a beta test. The content is stress tested, bugs worked out, problems identified, and it is either fixed and eventually moved to the permanent league - or discarded.

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Jadrann wrote:

What I mean by that is for example, the most obvious one, why they don't do something like endless delve for secondary character leveling or something similar as an alternative. Because they think it would be boring even faster and disregard the idea.

They are correct in that assumption. People are wanting to level faster and easier, and they often frame that desire with a host of disingenuous arguments.

"We're bored with this old content." "It's too hard." "We've done this a million times."

Translation: "We want to level new characters faster and easier."

I rather wish people would just be upfront about the situation. The various cloaks are transparent, and the only people fooled by them are role-playing along.

And this is a bad thing. Because people conquer the content too quickly and become bored. A fine line needs to be found between "too much grind" and "everybody has killed Maven on day 7."

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Jadrann wrote:

If we take that example and compare it to a game like Diablo 3 (I know most of you hate it but disregard this as a thought experiment), there is a campaign or adventure mode (mostly rifts) to level. Most people don't do the campaign because it's obviously less efficient but also the rifts offer different layouts, monster types, rift guardians, etc. I feel it's way more diverse than a straight path you play exactly the same over and over like the campaign (which for me means way more fun).

Well, then I'd say your solution is clear - patronize the product you enjoy.

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Jadrann wrote:

The second obviously bad hypothesis would be that power creep is bad. This will probably be very controversial but I don't think it's bad for several reasons.

You are wrong. Power creep inevitably destroys the game. Full. Stop. There are no exceptions to this.

1: Power creep sets in.

2: Content becomes trivial.

3: Players get bored and complete content too quickly.

4: Devs make content harder to account for power creep.

5: Barrier to entry goes up, reducing the number of new players.

6: Old players grow bored, begin to drop off - but are not replaced due to 5.

7: Game fades out and goes into maintenance mode.

8: Game eventually shuts down.

There are no exceptions to this.

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Jadrann wrote:

1- Compare the game environnement to the real life, can you have too much money and too much power? Yes but those are very specific cases and generally people look towards improving their life not destroying them which I feel they are doing.

...I keep thinking about The Sphynx from the film "Mystery Men" while deciphering what you're trying to get across here.

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Jadrann wrote:

2- Most player play softcore trade and just want to be strong and reach their goal like killing maven or whatever. I really don't believe they care about the guy they never met to be stronger. Also, we don't have leaderboards and they wouldn't work anyway because of RMT and Group play.

And?

They can work toward the goal. Most won't reach it. This is not a problem - the top-end content is, by intentional design, gated behind a great deal of grinding and luck.

There should be games out there with a high bar to entry - just as there should be games made by Blizzard appealing to the Candy-Crush crowd.

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Jadrann wrote:

3- The answer to the game getting easier is not a power creep problem but a progression design problem.

How? You have not demonstrated or described how there is a "progression design problem." I look at the game and see a very clear path forward - one gated behind progressively harder and time-intensive challenges - which is not a design flaw, but an admitted feature.

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Jadrann wrote:

Finally, I believe they lost complete touch with the fundamental of a video game which is to have fun.

That is your opinion, not a statement of objective fact.

Thousands of people, myself included, are having a great deal of fun with this product. To say they've forgotten how to give the players a "fun time" is provably false as lone as there are players still having a good time with Path of Exile.

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Jadrann wrote:

I see all the streamers playing PoE and NONE of them smile except for cutedog_

So what?

1: Don't care about what streamers do - see above. Total apathy.

2: I'm enjoying myself as I play, yet not "giggling like a school-girl" or splitting ear-to-ear grins. So facial expressions are a useless metric.

3: Do you have any of your own opinions? Or do you let other people form them for you? Not to go all Devon Stack on you, but it seems like your entire world-view is being plugged into your head like an NPC dialog-tree. Where are YOUR thoughts in this? I. Don't. Care. about some dude on YouTwichCord. Actually, I LESS than care about their opinions.

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Jadrann wrote:

which is a big memer :P. I like to laugh and smile. MAKE ME SMILE, how hard can this be.

-_-

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Jadrann wrote:

Well thanks for reading and I'm looking forward to reading your answers! :)

Based on your replies above, I doubt your sincerity.

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Jadrann wrote:

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” - Aldous Huxley
Show me some facts boys !

"Opinions are like ***holes - everybody has them, and most of them stink.
- Me