How did GGG lose touch with the silent majority?

I feel I am a bit part of "silent majority" i stop playing PoE for almost 4 weeks now. I come back and check forum for cry posts.

I just... stop playing...

And if GGG decides to develop the game for streamers. Sure. But i am not staying.
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Phrazz wrote:


And that brings forth a different discussion.

In an ARPG, where choice (should) matter, how "successful" or strong should a build made up by "weird dabbling" and "obscure build enabling uniques" be? How far should we expect to take them? Should ALL weird builds be able to beat Maven? Sirus? Red maps? Yellow maps? What counts as "working" in your assessments?

What is a "successful build" and what is a "successful weird build"? And should their goals look the same?

I don't look at build diversity from a pure statistical point of view, as others are doing. I look at how many melee builds there are, how many self-casting builds there are, strike skills, DoT skills, RT builds, crit builds and so on. And in my head, that's the right way of looking at it. Are there enough different builds, from different parts of the tree - made up by different Ascendancy classes present? I don't think there is.

BUT, an endgame is designed to be a pyramid to climb. I think the hardest parts of the game should require certain things of your build. What those "things" are, are of course up for discussion. But tree efficiancy, good gear in all slots and a solid choice of character/class for what you are doing are all no-brainers here.

I always make my own builds too. Always. And while I've always been able to do Sirus 8 with all my builds the last X leagues, I will this league too. No quite there yet, but I will be.

There's a HUGE game out there to enjoy. And there is a HUGE pool of "weird builds" out there too. A weird build can be tons of fun, even if your expectations are to reach yellow maps. Or even just white maps. Or beating Kitava.


For me personally I think you should be able to experience the entire game at least if you put enough time in to it. You make all these items and skills and possible builds but only a fraction of them are viable ( there are still a lot of viable builds mind you but given the depth of POE it is still just quite a small selection of the possible permutations ).

Maven, Shaper, Elder.. a lot of content is gated behind T16 maps. I don't think everything should be able to actually kill these bosses or deep delve or finish simulacrum but they should be able to reach that content and engage with it. The actual completion of that content and the 100% deli maps, deep delve etc etc can be the chase content for the better builds but completing your atlas and engaging these bosses should be doable given that you put in the hours to properly level and gear a build.

There is just something about spending time theory crafting a build gearing and levelling it and being soft locked in yellow maps that doesn't sit well with me. I played maybe 300-400 hours during Harvest and never managed to kill uber elder but at least I got a few attempts. The gear was worth enough to build 5 cookie cutters that would have melted uber elder but that wasn't the point. You put in the time and you got to interact with every aspect of the game. That build wouldn't be able to do that in the current patch sadly enough and that is really sad.

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Impiousbe wrote:
For me personally I think you should be able to experience the entire game at least if you put enough time in to it. You make all these items and skills and possible builds but only a fraction of them are viable ( there are still a lot of viable builds mind you but given the depth of POE it is still just quite a small selection of the possible permutations ).

Maven, Shaper, Elder.. a lot of content is gated behind T16 maps. I don't think everything should be able to actually kill these bosses or deep delve or finish simulacrum but they should be able to reach that content and engage with it. The actual completion of that content and the 100% deli maps, deep delve etc etc can be the chase content for the better builds but completing your atlas and engaging these bosses should be doable given that you put in the hours to properly level and gear a build.

There is just something about spending time theory crafting a build gearing and levelling it and being soft locked in yellow maps that doesn't sit well with me. I played maybe 300-400 hours during Harvest and never managed to kill uber elder but at least I got a few attempts. The gear was worth enough to build 5 cookie cutters that would have melted uber elder but that wasn't the point. You put in the time and you got to interact with every aspect of the game. That build wouldn't be able to do that in the current patch sadly enough and that is really sad.



And I totally understand your point. But I still disagree. Mind you, there's no right or wrong here - it's just how we view an "endgame" differently. "The whole game" in my eyes, are the acts.

But a line has to be drawn somewhere. While your "weird" builds probably have a nice balance between offense and defense, other people's "weird" builds may consist of 40% life on the tree, INT-stacking on a physical Marauder and Blood Magic and Chaos Innoculation on the same build, while 'demanding' to be able to reach red maps. So where do we draw the line? A knowledgeable player can, in the current patch, probably reach and beat Uber Elder on 95% of all skills designed to be your main damage skill within 40-100 hours. I will probably beat UE this league - with Smite. Not exactly META, not exactly the strongest skill.

If I understand you correctly here, you want more room to do experimental stuff with your builds, original ideas and "weird" choices, and still be able to reach and beat the end of PoE's endgame (T16 maps)? By "weird", do you mean engaging in mechanics you KNOW will put a handicap on your build, or are you talking about "weird" in a search of something amazing?

Anyhow, I do agree that the disparity between some skills is BAD(!) right now. I don't like the fact that you KNOW you are putting a handicap on yourself by choosing certain skills/ascendancies/classes/archetype. But I do firmly believe that to beat an endgame, the game should force you to make GOOD decisions when it comes to the passive tree, gear choices and so on - but there should be good choices available for all classes/archetypes. And for there to be "good" choices, there have to be "bad" choices too - and that's the hard part.

It's a very difficult thing to balance.

Sometimes, just sometimes, you should really consider adapting to the world, instead of demanding that the world adapts to you.
Last edited by Phrazz on Sep 9, 2021, 10:09:53 AM
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Phrazz wrote:

I don't like the fact that you KNOW you are putting a handicap on yourself by choosing certain skills/ascendancies/classes/archetype. But I do firmly believe that to beat an endgame, the game should force you to make GOOD decisions when it comes to the passive tree, gear choices and so on - but there should be good choices available for all classes/archetypes. And for there to be "good" choices, there have to be "bad" choices too - and that's the hard part.



Agree in theory but in reality, if you take a skill that you have no reason to think is bad, and make a reasonable tree, it very often will be unviable.

Pick like, blast rain, or maybe artillery ballista, and pick up bow nodes and maybe fire, elemental damage with attack, and maybe 160% life and some evasion, you are still going to be doing awful dps and probably unable to tackle a lot of the content.

To even have a shot you would have to get deep into endgame crafting and just have insane items to make the build work.

Thats not really punishing bad decisions, its making it so at any given time, maybe 1/4 of the skills are actually viable (more with 100ex gear obviously), and they are only viable if you follow the meta for them (like using totems for FR).

On the broad spectrum between (1) only a few meta builds working, and (2) any skills with any supports with any tree works, do you really think we are not already vastly, almost inconceivably closer to (1) than (2)?


I will add in the downside of my own argument - yes if you make it more so reasonable trees with most skills, with good supports, can beat content, then it is a lot easier for the uber players.

However, I feel like that should be handled with endless content, like delve. Nerfing 5-deli map farming suggests they dont actually want harder content to be accessible, which is weird. If we need to make the game hard for uber players, why not shove them right at it? Why not make 6-deli maps for 1c from zana and make them near impossible?
Last edited by trixxar on Sep 9, 2021, 3:59:11 PM
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trixxar wrote:
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Snorkle_uk wrote:
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trixxar wrote:

Many builds lost up to 91% of overall dps with multiple layers of nerfs. Replica Alberon Wander or Claw cobra? Boots nerfed, assassin nerfed, supports nerfed, does 1/10th the damage from before. Tell me how its playable?



you just named 1 build, so 0.0001% of builds in the game.

"many"



peoples bleed and poison weapons still exist on standard, they didnt nerf peoples gear.





you say many builds, it would be closer to a representation of the truth to say 0 builds lost 91% of their damage than 'many'.


You don't really know what you are talking about. Either in PoE, or in statistics in general.

There is a simple way to show this.
Before 3.15
https://poe.ninja/ultimatum/builds?skill=Ball-Lightning&sort=dps
After 3.15
https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds?skill=Ball-Lightning&sort=dps

First, 10 builds doing over 15M dps, now 1 build doing over 2M dps.

Lets keep going.
Before
https://poe.ninja/ultimatum/builds?skill=Ice-Nova&sort=dps
After
https://poe.ninja/ultimatum/builds?skill=Ice-Nova&sort=dps

First, 10 builds doing over 40M dps, now not even 10 doing over 15M.



Meleee?


Before
https://poe.ninja/ultimatum/builds?skill=Cyclone&sort=dps
After
https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds?skill=Cyclone&sort=dps


Please dont comment about things without doing the barest possible effort into research.

I can post the next 50 skills and its all the same story.




I have a ball lightning build, i loaded it after the patch so see what it was like. it still completely obliterates high level content just like it did before, its fine, i dont think i changed a single thing on it, just loaded up t16 maps and it just deleted them with no effort, everything dies instantly just like before.

i have tried several melee builds, they all lost maybe 1/4 of their damage, they all still kill everything as easily as they did before, cant notice any change.

the guy i quoted was talking about cast on crit, all those builds still work, you just need the insanely deep poe knowledge only available to people who have played 30k+ hours that to fuel your mana on a skill based on an attack you either need a small bit of attack leech or mana/es+eb on hit. i know its asking so much that people actually try and add one stat to their setup in order to solve an issue, that they have such hidden knowledge like mana on hit exists, but maybe people need to step up and spend a whole minute thinking about things and then fixing them?


we used to get complete tree changes league to league and your entire passive tree didnt even exist any more and you had to replot everything and work out how the enitre build was put together every league. now people are saying their builds dont work because of mana issues and they havent even tried spending 2 points on a mana node so dont talk to me about putting in effort. ive actually played multiple melee builds and ball lightning and multiple coc builds since the patch and theyre all fine. maybe if you stopped reading poe.whatever.whocares and tried playing the game rather than worrying about misleading paper stats?




talking about 1/4 of skills are viable, i bet if you gave every skill to someone like nugi and got him to league start them solo self found in hardcore he could make 95% of main damage dealing skills clear t16 maps with ease.
The "silent majority" term cracks me up. How the f do you know who the silent majority is? Here is a hint, you don't. You might be right, but you have no clue and it does nothing but weaken your argument.
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
Chris and Woodful want to make their game, the way they want it, and they don't care if that vision only appeals to maybe 250k people around the world.

That's it.

There's nothing wrong with that, at all.

They aimed for 250k but instead got 62k- their numbers were off, but at least they stuck to their guns.
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Snorkle_uk wrote:



... i loaded it after the patch so see what it was like.
,,,,
i have tried several melee builds, they all lost maybe 1/4 of their damage, they all still kill everything as easily as they did before, cant notice any change.


I link hard data from PoE Ninja using PoB for many players, you say you tried some stuff and 'didnt notice'... ok?

This is not a fruitful conversation. Good luck to you.
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trixxar wrote:
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Snorkle_uk wrote:



... i loaded it after the patch so see what it was like.
,,,,
i have tried several melee builds, they all lost maybe 1/4 of their damage, they all still kill everything as easily as they did before, cant notice any change.


I link hard data from PoE Ninja using PoB for many players, you say you tried some stuff and 'didnt notice'... ok?

This is not a fruitful conversation. Good luck to you.


Sorry but every single person I saw linking pobs saying their build was broken never answered the question 'did you try and fix it?' The answer was always an unspoken 'no'. Because, had they tried, it would have been fixed.
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innervation wrote:


Sorry but every single person I saw linking pobs saying their build was broken never answered the question 'did you try and fix it?' The answer was always an unspoken 'no'. Because, had they tried, it would have been fixed.


So the PoE ninja uses ACTIVE players this league, meaning these are players on the ladder actively making good builds.

I linked to pages with dozens of players, you can check the specific links. Then I linked players on the ladder in the last few league, showing the difference.

So the comparison is between players actively playing the game, this league vs the last few. Its not between dead builds that could easily be improved vs current skills.

Across the board its a 60 to 90% damage cut.

60% is probably still playable, 90% is not, unless you were deleting all content and instaphasing all bosses.
Last edited by trixxar on Sep 9, 2021, 9:29:09 PM

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