Dear GGG, please lower the overall difficulty of the game

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teodar1987 wrote:

Orbaal said it all.

If there was easy mode, where would most people be? Where would then most money be made? And finally, the devs' focus would naturally follow the money.

So he knows what most people want. And that many tolerate poe for lack of decent alternatives in the genre. And as long as there are none he and GGG can afford to tell people to get good or gtfo.

You got the first part right, but ignored what I said about the second part.

Yes most people want to go down the path of least resistence and if GGG was to implement easymode, then its common sense that most people would play this mode.

However, these people are also prone to jump ship the moment an even easier game with even less resistence hits the market.
There is a reason why "Game X is PoE killer" - threads are popping up all the time for years and years now and never come close to fruition.
I fully expect D4 to be one those games and I also fully expect GGG being unable to compete with Blizz when it comes to marketing budgets etc.
D4 will suck the air out the "least resistence" niche of the ARPG market.

So while easymode is likely going to be financially successful shortterm, I highly doubt its a viable strategy longterm.
Catering to people craving for the least resistence is equal to shallow gameplay and setting yourself up for failure. Thats my point.


As long as PoE remains a bastion in the more hardcore leaning niche of the ARPG market GGG will never face true competion. People enjoying the game for what it is cant jump ship. There is no game around or on the horizon catering to these players.

Thats why GGG shouldnt cater to players wanting to go down the path of least resistence.

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teodar1987 wrote:

Hard mode makes for good streaming. But then, to be a bit cheeky, if you imply that i am wrong and most people want the game harder, what threat is an easy mode to you? By all means, I hope they eventually implement both.

Hard mode is zero threat to me, I don't care. It is actually beneficial, because it takes those that want a harder game out of the equation. The fact that there will be another difficulty gives me hope.

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teodar1987 wrote:

If there was easy mode, where would most people be?

Probably where they want to be.

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Orbaal wrote:

Yes most people want to go down the path of least resistence and if GGG was to implement easymode, then its common sense that most people would play this mode.

If most players want the path of least resistance, then a lot more people (especially those with legacy gear) would play Standard. Which would, as I said before, make an ideal "easy mode", btw, you wouldn't even have to make a new game mode for that.

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Orbaal wrote:

However, these people are also prone to jump ship the moment an even easier game with even less resistence hits the market.
There is a reason why "Game X is PoE killer" - threads are popping up all the time for years and years now and never come close to fruition.
I fully expect D4 to be one those games and I also fully expect GGG being unable to compete with Blizz when it comes to marketing budgets etc.
D4 will suck the air out the "least resistence" niche of the ARPG market.

So while easymode is likely going to be financially successful shortterm, I highly doubt its a viable strategy longterm.

Your entire argument doesn't even make sense. Like, at all.

Assuming the base of players is split into easy-mode players (EM) and hard-mode-players (HM), then right now the HM players are happy, the EM players either play anyway, or play another game, or just don't play. Let's say half of them still play PoE.

Then your current playerbase is HM + 1/2*EM
With an easy mode it would be HM + EM (so, bigger).

Your argument is that we can't make easy mode because all the EM players would run away if something easier comes out (there are already lots of easier games, but let's ignore this gaping hole in your argument), which THEY WOULD DO JUST THE SAME without easy mode.

So with easy mode, in that competing-game future, you would have the HM players, and no EM players.
Guess what, without easy mode, you would have... the HM players. Which is exactly the same amount of players.

You can't lose players with an additional game mode UNLESS it reduces the viability of the standard game mode. Which I agree/argue it shouldn't. And I am pretty sure it wouldn't, given what CW has said about the topic.

Easy mode has the benefit of people not arguing to make your sacred hardcore game mode easier anymore. Win-win situation.

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Orbaal wrote:

Thats why GGG shouldnt cater to players wanting to go down the path of least resistence.

I never wanted least resistance, and I guess noone here argues for least resistance. If I wanted least resistance, I could watch streamers, no effort required at all. I could play another game. I could just not play.

I am looking for a version of PoE that values my time. It actually has existed before, in several leagues. It doesn't exist right now.

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Char1983 wrote:

I never wanted least resistance, and I guess noone here argues for least resistance.

Are you not the guy who refused to play for more than 1 hour a day because thats what the WHO recommends?

In what world could this game even pose remotely any sort of resistence if that allowed you to complete the campaign, lvl your build, gear your build, unlock the atlas and farm access to topend content in a league scenario?

Thats less than 80hrs total, if you played every day of the 77 days (give or take) any given league lasts. If you wanted to quit earlier or have a buffer just in case and still have a shot to complete everything we are talking about less than 60 hrs total playtime.
How is that not least resistence?

Are you not the guy whos consistently argueing to bring back the most broken mechanic this game has ever seen, just because it allowed you to get the best gear you ever had in the shortest time possible?
How is that not least resistence?


You want what you want and thats fine.
But please spare me this BS. You are begging for the lowest common denominator possible. It couldnt be much more easy or less time consuming - except if GGG just gave you a "Win" button to press and called it a day.

If your idea of a game was to be realized, there wouldnt be a game left to play.
And it doesnt stop there. New leagues couldnt introduce anything requiring more than a few minutes time investment, otherwise its going to ruin your 1hr per day schedule and you couldnt even hope to complete anything anymore.

Why even have a campaign or gear or stats or bosses or anything like that at this point?
Why not give you a fully geared lvl 100 build, so you get to instagib everything effortlessly. Thats what you really want. Lets be honest here.
You could have that just like everyone else, you just dont want to work towards this goal.

You want your cake and eat it too.
How can you not see this would completely ruin this game?

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Are you not the guy who refused to play for more than 1 hour a day because thats what the WHO recommends?

Why should people who have less time to play not be able to enjoy the full content of the game for the same hours played? Are their stash tabs cheaper? Are nolifers the big revenue stream of GGG?

I feel that the problem is not really between easy and hard but between people who have lots of time they can invest and people that have limited time and the way the current state of the game is heavily catering to one and gated to the other. The difficulty really is not in how hard the content is but in the cost of setbacks in the game and out of play game time required for progression.

There are several that I have found from starting to play leagues over the last few months that are very frustrating that gate progression depending on how much time you can play.

By far the most difficult thing I have dealt with on a time basis is being able to sell things to make currency. Purchasing is a pain that takes time away from playing but is still possible. Selling items when you have one to two hours a day is orders of magnitude more difficult than when you have 8 or more hours in game.

I had a week off at the start of Scourge league and decided to jump all into POE, this enabled me to purchase better equipment which in turn allowed me to get more things to sell getting all the way to Sirus but running out of time before getting the kill. That was playing probably about 10 hours average a day, during the rest of the year I am lucky to get 2 ½ to 3 hours average a day.

At the same character time played with one happening in a week and the other happening in a month the difference in relative power is astonishing, I have only got a single conquer kill so far this league, getting enough currency to equip a character is a real struggle and at this point with inflation a near impossibility.

I think you don’t understand that you are playing easy mode and all these posts are asking for is access to the same thing.

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Anthron wrote:

Why should people who have less time to play not be able to enjoy the full content of the game for the same hours played?

Stopped reading here because you clearly didnt read either.


If they were putting in the same effort, they should get roughly the same outcome. Thats not what this debate is about.

Whats being debated here is having easier access to everything, so they dont have to put in nearly the same effort and still get everything.
Essentially "cheat codes" to deal more dmg, take less dmg, access to better gear, faster leveling and so on.

Thats what they want.

"

Stopped reading here because you clearly didnt read either.

You should have kept reading cause it is explained further on how same effort does not equal same outcome and pretending it does is disingenuous.

Here so you dont have to actually read I will give you a TLDR;

'You are playing easy mode and gatekeeping everyone else.'

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Anthron wrote:

'You are playing easy mode and gatekeeping everyone else.'

Nope, nice try but nope.

This strawman has been debunked and buried here:
https://youtu.be/fUUZTl8GCUk?list=PLeWhxIBHLE7LnYokskYyyVuGH0J0xKRlX

The "Working class exile" is a series in which the player restricted himself to play no more than 90 mins per day, starting mid-league when the market is supposedly dead.

Defeated everything there is 30ish days.

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Orbaal wrote:

Stopped reading here because you clearly didnt read either.

That is quite hilarious, actually. In fact, your entire posts are quite hilarious. You defend a system because you think is good - which is fine - and you think it is good because it benefits you. So you ignore everything else.

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Orbaal wrote:

But please spare me this BS. You are begging for the lowest common denominator possible. It couldnt be much more easy or less time consuming - except if GGG just gave you a "Win" button to press and called it a day.

The last sentence is hilarious in its own right, but no, I am not begging for anything, least of all a lowest common denominator. That is exactly what I am NOT asking for - I am suggesting difficulty options. They already exist - upwards. You can make private leagues that are much more difficult. You can play SSF. You can play HC. I would be totally fine if the "easier" option was restricted to standard, or to private leagues, all fine.

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Orbaal wrote:

Why not give you a fully geared lvl 100 build, so you get to instagib everything effortlessly. Thats what you really want. Lets be honest here.

Cool story. But if that is what you understand from my posts, you should seriously, SERIOUSLY work on your reading comprehension.

Never had a lvl 100 character, don't care about it, don't want to instagib everything, but want to make progress. Harvest still took a lot of hours to "finish" a character.

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Orbaal wrote:

Are you not the guy whos consistently argueing to bring back the most broken mechanic this game has ever seen

Don't think so. But thinking about it, removing the most broken mechanic in the game would probably benefit it. We both know what that would be - trade. Trade is much, much more broken than Harvest ever was. But I guess you would not want to remove trade - because it is a mechanic that benefits you and lets you be a lot more powerful than others. Harvest was a mechanic that benefited me.

"

Orbaal wrote:

"

Anthron wrote:

'You are playing easy mode and gatekeeping everyone else.'

Nope, nice try but nope.

This strawman has been debunked and buried here:
https://youtu.be/fUUZTl8GCUk?list=PLeWhxIBHLE7LnYokskYyyVuGH0J0xKRlX

The "Working class exile" is a series in which the player restricted himself to play no more than 90 mins per day, starting mid-league when the market is supposedly dead.

Defeated everything there is 30ish days.

I don't think you know what a strawman is cause you just made a classic example of one. You are trying frame my argument into something that you can actually argue against instead addressing what I actually said.

I said you are playing easy mode because it is easier to play the game in large chunks and from the beginning, your reply does not say that it is the same difficulty but that someone that literally does it for a living can finish specific goals.

You want to show that they are the same difficulty then show a point in time of a character that plays in large chunks from league start vs some one that plays in small chucks and show that in comparison to the same amount of time played they are at the same power level. Which do you think is easier?

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Anthron wrote:

Why should people who have less time to play not be able to enjoy the full content of the game for the same hours played?

Imagine wanting to finish game that recommends 70 hours to finish but you want to finish it in 10 because REASONS ...

No, you can't expect the game to be same for you at half of the time investment than others. You should be expecting that if you spend 10 hours within a week to get you to the same spot as spending 10 hours within a day, but that would mean you are comparing your time spent with somebody at the same knowledge / skill level, which I assume is not true, because usually the "visible examples" are those at significantly higher experience / knowledge and skill levels