Dear GGG, please lower the overall difficulty of the game

I haven't played Seismic Trap in previous league where it was busted, but it is clear cut example how the skill scales itself to reach numbers which can then make the game "easy".

You can reach ridiculous numbers with other skills - ie. Winter Orb Omniscience is seems to be the ridiculous endgame build for 3.17. But as for "easiness" of reach the viable numbers, the outliers are usually quickly identified.

I played 4 builds this league
- RF Elementalist - no single target, got bored of the shiny circle in the middle of screen, not tanky enough compared to Inq (but fck tall neck)
- RoA raider - played this in PoB, gave up before I started :D
- Dancing Dervish - awesomely smooth mapper. Horrible bosser. Swapping to arakaali without changing anything gives about 4 times more dmg - I call that fail at balancing the game to be honest
- Seismic Trap - I gave up and rolled meta build. Started at about 3x more dmg than my Dervish at 50c budget, and moved from there to get some decent numbers out of it. Could do T16 guardians at lvl 70 :D Like WTF :D

Skill choice / Build choice made the game easy, without the rest of the game changing. I want more clear cut easy to use skills like Seismic Trap, without the need of some ridiculous double influenced 6L, +2 skill weapons etc.
(ie. some mod weights on clusters, jewels and weapons are just busted, GGG want some archetypes to suffer. Rolling +1 RF scepter was the most painful experience I had in PoE in last year.

"

Orbaal wrote:

Im afraid of an never ending cascade of requests to make the game easier.
It wouldnt stop where you think it stops just because your wants&needs have been met.

... which would not affect you, because it would be a separate and in-parallel game mode.

Besides, you realize that it is incredibly ignorant to think that just because GGG would realize complaints are for a good reason once, they'd lose all their self-control and just acknowledge all complaints and change their game completely, right?

"

Orbaal wrote:

People who dont like the game as is and are basically asking for a different game should move on and play a different game.

Yes, a separate and in-parallel game mode. Which would not affect your game mode, would it? They already introduce such a separate, in-parallel game mode with "hard mode".

"

Orbaal wrote:

Causals arent a monolithic block.
There is no such thing as "pls change the following x things" and all casuals will be happy. All this does is watering the game down and trigger the next cascade of requests for an even easier game.

... so it would be even better for you if this was a separate, in-parallel game mode because that is where all the complaints would be targeted towards. They would not affect you at all.

"

Char1983 wrote:

... which would not affect you, because it would be a separate and in-parallel game mode.

Repeating a phrase doesnt make it true.

If easymode existed, where would new players start?
In easymode obviously.
The more modified this mode is, the less likely it is they will be able to make the jump to normalmode successfully, because its a freaking different game.
Over time the now default mode of the game would cease to exist, because new players would be stuck in easymode.
That means over time the most money would be generated in easymode and this the dev-would would pivot towards that mode.
The more modified this mode is, the more dev-time it will take to create and maintain it.

All of this and more would affect everyone and wouldnt be good for the game longterm. Because it will still not be easy enough for casuals. They will still keep complaining and jump the ship the moment a true casual ARPG hits the market. Once PoE is in competion with that game on the casual market, its all about deep pockets and marketing campaigns.
GGG cant compete with companies like Blizz when it comes to this aspect.

Consequently a huge number of those casuals would jump ship, abandon the game and GGG would be left with the hallow husk of easymode and the current normalmode.

Catering to casuals has never lead to success for gaming companies.
Casuals will always ask for more and ruin those games. There are plenty examples of this happening in the past.

"

Char1983 wrote:

Besides, you realize that it is incredibly ignorant to think that just because GGG would realize complaints are for a good reason once, they'd lose all their self-control and just acknowledge all complaints and change their game completely, right?

Call me ignorant if that makes you feel better, it still doesnt make anything you said true.
None of the complaints casuals like to come up with are "for good reason". They simply refuse to put in the effort and still demand access to everything. Look at WoW if you need an example.

Casuals couldnt do mythic raids and instead of trying to get better at the game they complained endlessly, so those raids got dumbed down to the point where it was impossible to fail them with just one downside:
You would only receive slightly worse rewards for completing the casual version of the mythic raids. Did that make the casuals happy? No, they complained about not getting the exact same reward for completing an idiotproof version of mythic raids and the players putting in the effort to be able to do the real mythic raids were asking themselves why they did it, when they could get a slightly worse version of the reward for far less effort.

All the dev-time invested into pleasing casuals resulted in even more unhappy casuals and unhappy top players as well. A total waste of time and resources.

This is exactly what easymode would do to this game as well and thats why GGG should never listen to casuals.
There is no way of pleasing them. They will simply move the goalpost and ask for more and more and then some more for good measure.

You wouldnt just have easymode. Thats not easy enough.
So super easymode needs to be made and then giga easymode and then babymode.
Eventually the playerbase would be fractured across several gamemodes, none of them have enough players to provide a functioning market and everyone is unhappy.


Again - plenty examples of this happening in other games already exist.
Its not a slippery slope fallacy, this is whats going to happen if GGG starts listening to casuals.

It is quite amazing to see how stuck you are in your own world of thoughts. What you write tells a lot more about yourself than it does about the game. But whatever.

"

Orbaal wrote:

If easymode existed, where would new players start?

In the mode that GGG decides they start in by default. Just like new players start in SC (rather than HC), in trade league (rather than SSF) and in League (rather than Standard).


EDIT: BTW, most, if not all of your arguments could just as well be made to argue against "hard mode".

"

Char1983 wrote:

It is quite amazing to see how stuck you are in your own world of thoughts. What you write tells a lot more about yourself than it does about the game. But whatever.

Same applies to you ;)
You dont care about anything else but your own wants&needs and so do I.

"

Char1983 wrote:

EDIT: BTW, most, if not all of your arguments could just as well be made to argue against "hard mode".

If a good chunk of the playerbase would play hard mode - yes thats true.
I highly doubt that tho.

You dont get to read many "game is too easy, pls make it harder" threads.
If complaints are brought up, its usually the other way around with the good old "Us poor casuals are hurting" mantra attached to it.

"

Orbaal wrote:

You dont get to read many "game is too easy, pls make it harder" threads.
If complaints are brought up, its usually the other way around with the good old "Us poor casuals are hurting" mantra attached to it.

You only get some out of touch streamers who complain that their in-game achievements aren't exclusive enough to make them famous, to call for some "tougher" game or something people won't get access to :)
(ie. Grimro, Ghazzy and the third one I don't remember in Chris interview during the big apology tour of 2021)

At this point, I'd settle for an experience that was even remotely balanced. I mean, I see people saying that knowledge of the game is essential, and I agree, but the constantly shifting ruleset and scattershot changes make the game completely obtuse to anybody not immersed in build and farming guides.

It doesn't have to be this way, and in the early days of 3.X, I didn't have to invest time obsessively trawling POEwiki, Reddit, and Youtube just to stay afloat. Gods, I remember running RF on a 4-link with Item Rarity support on tier 10 maps. It was ugly, but it worked.

GGG could even implement the difficulty system in *Bastion* of all games - each challenging aspect (death penalty, higher enemy HP, etc.) raises item drop quality. Then I can RF my way to victory over endgame bosses in the hope of getting something out of them, and powergamers can ratchet up the difficulty and get their drops more reliably. I go from zero to a slight chance of seeing good gear, and people who really know what they're doing can farm gear more easily.

But I don't see how POE gets new players when they run into difficulty spikes earlier and earlier, and when the solution is to spend days studying every intricacy of the game.

How the game is now in 3.17 :

1/ Voidstones are locked behind bosses that not every build can do (specially Maven and Uber Elder).

2/ Sextants modifiers are locked behind voidstones

3/ All red maps Atlas is locked behind voidstones

4/ Influenced gear is partially locked behind being able to farm T16 maps

5/ DPS requirement to be able to do T16 maps smoothly need the player to gind red maps that you can't sustain without favoured maps even with 100% +1 tier upgrade.

6/ Favoured maps locked behing crazy boss kills

7/ Red maps should not drop low tier yellow or even white maps.

Even if i like the overall flavour of 3.17, i'm still upset that GGG still locks things that should not be locked.

They destroyed diablo. Now they want to destroy poe because it's easier to demand easier game instead play more and learn. Cringe and get lost fr.
If you ask casual "why are you casual? " He will respond "I have 5 wife's, 35 children's, and I have 2 jobs" You what I mean.. And just because you don't have time this game should be easier? No no no.

"

Azarhiel wrote:

How the game is now in 3.17 :

1/ Voidstones are locked behind bosses that not every build can do (specially Maven and Uber Elder).

2/ Sextants modifiers are locked behind voidstones

3/ All red maps Atlas is locked behind voidstones

4/ Influenced gear is partially locked behind being able to farm T16 maps

5/ DPS requirement to be able to do T16 maps smoothly need the player to gind red maps that you can't sustain without favoured maps even with 100% +1 tier upgrade.

6/ Favoured maps locked behing crazy boss kills

7/ Red maps should not drop low tier yellow or even white maps.

Even if i like the overall flavour of 3.17, i'm still upset that GGG still locks things that should not be locked.

- there are t16 maps without any voidstones

- influenced gear isnt needed and you can turn any good main armor
(body,boots,gloves,helmets) into very strong influenced items

the currency for this drops even in white maps and you cant "brick" your item
like this

- any reasonable build with reasonable gear can do
easily do all content except: maven,uber elder,special maven invitations

this is more than enough to unlock atleast 2 voidstones and nearly all atlas
passives

- favoured maps are a pure bonus and not needed and map sustain has never been
as good as it is now


if you cant even put in the minimal effort in to copy/use a reasonable build+gear, you simply dont deserve to do endgame content

3-4 good mods on every item (note that good doesnt mean tier 1-2 only,tier 3-4 is more than enough unless its your weapon on an attack build) without any kind of influence in trade league isnt a problem at all
none of these items cost you more than 50c each,this includes a 6link

the new stuff added this league might need a few balance changes,but everything else is fine