POE Heading to D3 Land...please reconsider

Another problem are the drop only skill gems. I think PoE is one of the few games that actually prevents you taking part in the core game system. Take for example recently added Multistrike - it's great, gives the players the incentive to try melee, to return to game, but the fact is you probably won't have it drop and if you can't afford it, tough luck, you will not be able to experience this new skill. And it's actually demoralizing to know that you probably won't be able to be a part of the group that is trying out the new aspects of the game.

I think we´re out of way to some matter.

First: Crafting and trading should´nt be keypoints of a game they should be the tip of the top for those who are really deep in the game trying to get the last percentage of perfection out of their playstyle!

Second: To be a really succesful game you need a big amount of players and these are mostly casuals like me who only want to have fun in this game.

Third: Fun, in this case, means that you actually find useful things in an amount that responds to the time spent.

Fourth: Most of the Casuals will never get to a level higher than 60-70 so the game should have more interesting nodes and keystones to make this people feel like they are really making progress in the game, for example double and or triple the amount of Str Dex Int and the related abilities in the nodes and keystones near the starting point.

It´s not only maximizing drops, its maximizing the chances in any case, to have fun in the beginning AND in further proceeding in the game.

At the moment it´s some kind of wow in the beginning, about the setting and a small improvement of your characters progress, but the further you get, the less rewarding it becomes.

I just did Temple Map Piety, with over 100 IIQ and IIR, not a great amount by MFing standards, but this is THE toughest boss in game.

She didn't even drop a rare or a currency/mat, there were a few useless blues and 2 scrolls.
The entire map gave me a total of 2 vendor rares and a chance orb.

The comparisons with D2 are nonsense (big claims and nostalgia apart, which are just subjective impression), but not only they are non sense, they are wrong. Good luck self-founding best in slot gear.

As for completing the game with self-found gear, is perfectly reasonable, for most characters in a single run and some farming, and in other cases with feeding gear from previous characters. In that regard is slightly more difficult than other ARPG's or requires more slightly more time sink (depending on what level of risk are you willing to accept, I mean, people is reaching lvl50 solo within 8 hours without feed gear, but there is certain risk to it, same applies to endgame stage).

Now, if what you want is to be able to create the most retarded and gear dependant build and make it work without "work", it's not gonna happen. This is by design and nothing wrong with it, but what GGG has to decide is the what amount of "work" is reasonable and tune drops around that as well as curve the RNG aspect with certain mechanics or changes in the code. I've the suspicion some people believe that for the simple reason something "can" be done it should be able to be done easily (for example, like if rushing to CI was a good idea, and easily doable), but that's nonsense (and has never ever be that way in any game, even for D2, nostalgic crew).

There is a reason some builds are easier than others, and that some of these other builds shine and are OP as fuck with crazy gear. They make you play the game with different builds, gather gear and experiment with combinations of gear+skills+passives, that IS the game. If it was possible to lvl to 99 and get all the gear you want (to cater to impatient people or casuals who will dump the game in 2 months anyway) fast the game would die and GGG would have to close the shop, and again: there are no resets in this game. I believe Torchlight 2 has been made with this playerbase in mind, and D3 has slowly moved towards that after release, but they are also based on an other totally different financial model.

That said, I believe GGG should add a solo league, where trading is disable, and loot is based around solo playing, maybe entirely dumping the concept of IIQ/IIR; to cater to that audience. Alternatively (or in conjunction) they should run month/multi-month long leagues were the the drop ratio is again increased, and when it resets, the characters are moved to a legacy league (not hardcore or default), or the league described before (solo based drop-rate). i think the beauty of this game, specially compared to others, is the flexibility it has and the flexibility GGG has shown, so various playing styles can be catered.

I really wonder why Iso often see comments like casuals want it all at once they want to be through the whole game in just two months they want to become BiS-gear for nothing.

That all is definitely wrong and whoever played a mod for example in D2 who maximized the drop rates and loot tables knows that this is a short fun. But mods of this kind showed you what chances xyou had to find with the proper MF.

So returning to PoE, for someone who hasn´t so much time to spend in a game, Poe becomes less rewarding the further you progress in the game and that exactly is the way D3 lost a lot of gamers. I think this game needs a much better way of rewarding the gamers on their way to the end content therefor making them stay interested in the game thinking about what they could get further on.

And comparing PoE with other arpgs you played is the best way to show the devs what will work and what will cause people to abandon the game.

I spent billions of gold in D2 to Gheed and his foul companions to get this shiny black crown set item for my Barb at least I got it then LoD came out and made it nearly worthless because of so many other great stuff. But the point is I knew I had the chance to get it.

At the moment I don´t see that chance high enough, since mid act 3 normal I don´t see much progress haven´t found a single unique and the drops of rare and unique monsters and currencie at all is quite ridiculous and that is not the way to bind a substantial mass of players to this game.

This open Beta is a chance as well as a grave danger to Triple G, a chance for advertising the Indie game and a danger in disappointing the Majority of the gamers who don´t have that lot of time to spend.

A general characteristic of leveling in POE, unfortunately, seems to be the law of diminishing returns. Leveling becomes less and less worth it, it seems to me. The Median XL mod for D2 (which I haven't played) apparently doesn't have this problem: you can very clearly see your character progress from one level to the next. The difference between level 60 and level 65 is enormous, your character becomes more and more superpowered the higher level he gets.

Again, I haven't played it, but if that's correct, GGG should maybe look into this kind of rewarding play, where all time spent in game gets rewarded by moreand more powerful skills and great items which make you the Lord of Wrath :)

Thanks to GGG for a fantastic game, may it become even better :)

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Odoakar wrote:

Another problem are the drop only skill gems. I think PoE is one of the few games that actually prevents you taking part in the core game system. Take for example recently added Multistrike - it's great, gives the players the incentive to try melee, to return to game, but the fact is you probably won't have it drop and if you can't afford it, tough luck, you will not be able to experience this new skill. And it's actually demoralizing to know that you probably won't be able to be a part of the group that is trying out the new aspects of the game.

...I think someone said this on page 1. I think it was the second post.

I think it was me.

The more I think about it, the more good I see in a separate league with no trading and better tuned drops of both gear and orbs. Or hell, even just orbs, really bring crafting into the light.

People keep mentioning this as a solo only league, I'm not sure why this would need to be solo only (I do solo almost exclusively), I can't see reason why wanting to find/craft your own items without trading needs to be an exclusively solo thing, maybe I'm missing something /shrug.

As I've said earlier, a lot of people are very protective about free trading in RPGs, bound=swear word, etc. None more than developers themselves who see trading as a great community plus, even though it brings about, imho, more bad for the players than good.

So,
-a separate league, in a game which is all about leagues.
-actually finding loot in a loot-find genre.
-crafting worth doing (crafting would actually become really meaningful) in a game which has a great crafting system which up to yet fails only because of trading (and orb drops which is a byproduct of trading, them being currencies).
-advocates of trading are unaffected as they remain in the trading league.

This has so much win about it, it really does.
Not least because it would be great research of a kind not yet seen, giving real statistics to the gaming industry just how valued trading is and how successful loot-find games can be when the onus is on loot-find and crafting.

Do it, GGG, you can pioneer here.

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Singulon wrote:

I think this game needs a much better way of rewarding the gamers on their way to the end content therefor making them stay interested in the game thinking about what they could get further on.

The problem is at the levelling game, because the map drop system is 'broken'. GGG has acknowledged this in the manifesto and they are looking at ways to fix it.

When you can actually level your character (even if slowly) withotu massive currency/time sinks you feel rewarded because your character progress. Most complains are regarding this, the map drop system, and not so much about loot, because people feels is hitting a wall when it comes to levelling high characters.

Once that's fixed big part of the problem will be gone for the majority of the people.

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I spent billions of gold in D2 to Gheed and his foul companions to get this shiny black crown set item for my Barb at least I got it then LoD came out and made it nearly worthless because of so many other great stuff. But the point is I knew I had the chance to get it.

And you hit a big point why the drop chances are not going to be massively changed for the current existing leagues. GGG does not want to introduce item devaluation in any significant way, thankfully I must say. In a permanent league, even without efficient trading, is already hard enough to acquire valuable gear and the game has been out barely two months (open beta), this game is meant to last for a decade FFS. Without league resets any major change in the loot system would inflict permanent damage, and the economy of the game, like it or not, for most people sets expectations about their loot.

That's why some of the suggestions to increase loot etc. are pretty bad and short-sighted. The same people will be asking in two months again why they can't get the best gear in game after playing XXX hours and everything is worthless, that the loot is not rewarding enough etc.

So you don't want to base loot around 4-5h of playing time (because that's what takes to beat normal difficulty even if you are slow). And even more so when in ARPG's due to how combat works, gear sets difficulty in a great degree. You can beat the game with mediocre gear, if you want to faceroll or access really endgame content (easy 66-70 maps don't require even extremely good gear neither) you are going to have to grind a bit (not even that much).

Even for extreme casual players (the game was never meant for them, but still), let's say you play 3h a week, on average you would require 5 months, to reach map stage and that being slow, and have sufficient gear to complete the easiest endgame content. You simply can't balance around that when your game is going to last for years and you can't reset anything, when the average time played is way higher, and the loot generated over time is going to be huge, flooding the economy with good items and rising the floor of expectations when it comes to loot.

At some point, in an ONLINE game, with permanent leagues, 99.99% of the stuff would be worthless requiring you to flood the player with loot so they can get stuff they perceive as 'non worthless' (it's a feedback loop), and eliminating in essence any form of item progression (due to how fast it would be to acquire such gear). It simply does not work without any sort of resetting without destroying the game. That's why people has to stop comparing to D2, is pure non-sense and would be a financial catastrophe for GGG to do this unless they are going to change the way leagues work (which they have said a lot of times they won't, as they value the time people invest in building their characters).

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TheAnuhart wrote:

People keep mentioning this as a solo only league, I'm not sure why this would need to be solo only

Would only work in groups if loot is instanced, otherwise you can still trade (the outrage for scamming and robbery would be hilarious though for a while, but people complaining about it would force GGG to change it I'm certain, just like they are going to change FFA looting). this could be an other added option, and funny enough probably go well together because the playing styles of people demanding this kind of changes are pretty similar. So maybe instanced loot & no-trading with party enabled to help socialization and player retention. I certainly can see GGG implementing a league like that.

Well then knac84 do you really believe that people go on playing a game which is unrewarding--you think the majority of players wants to grind endlessly in hope to reach a point where they then can get it all.

Just look at the experience gamers made with D3 playing through normal was kind of fun because you saw all of the game for the first time. But just from the beginning on my friend, with whom I played Koop, and I asked nearly permanently where is the loot?
And sorry pal but this diddn´t work in D3 and it won´t work in Poe either.

We are not in the 80. nor in the 90. of the last yearhundred where good games and extraordinary games were few we are in 2013 and there´s a mass of acceptable games and you won´t keep players in a game by telling them that the game will be rewarding somehow some where sometimes in the near or far future and thats a fact.

I was born in 1962 started playing with the first prince of persia and have played quite a lot of games and everybody who plays a game has a personal timeframe in which things have to get better and if not you just quit.

Making a game unrewarding like PoE does at the moment and because of the beta state and the game not finished yet people are more forgiving because they see that something is going on.

But focusing on a working "in game economy" and turning players into "Jacks of all trades" will result in the same perverted economy spiral that ruined D3.

How pervert is ist to play an economic simulation to trade your gear so that you can farm in an area where you can find the gear you just bought!

Then to save the economy items will always increase in rarity which means the casual will never see the good stuff nor will he be able to buy it with the poor currency he found.

I guess you see the result will nearly be the same as in D3, when items become more worthy to trade than to use for your character then this game is broken and will be abandoned like D3.