Bex: Rare monsters in past league content is something we'll review for 3.19.
they shit the bed like amber
POE2 should be the ruthless vision experience and POE1 should be the zoom power fantasy sandbox to capture both audiences.
I petition to return all the fun stuff that was removed or nerfed over the years back into POE1.
Is this serious / official news? Can I find it anywhere here on the forums?
Anyways, if it is true, then there goes the 'play what You want' with the atlas tree.
Currently most old content simply bricked by the archnemesis changes like blight, delve, etc.
All-time non-streamer luckless dropless rewardless tons-of-time-playing non-TFT-er 100% solo player.
So, it just turns out, we were lied to for years with the promises of a two-storied one PoE 4.0.
All these worse and worse beta leagues, all these braindead changes, all lead to this.
Is this serious / official news? Can I find it anywhere here on the forums?
Anyways, if it is true, then there goes the 'play what You want' with the atlas tree.
Currently most old content simply bricked by the archnemesis changes like blight, delve, etc.
You can't find it in the forums so I started a thread here. Bex commented on this thread on reddit:
Full Bex comment:
There's a good mix of feedback in this thread that's appreciated. It helps us get a well rounded picture of people's views about this. Rare monsters in past league content is something we'll review for 3.19. In the meantime, we'll continue to review the individual balance for Archnemesis modifiers.
Please review Mana Siphon for Doryanis Armour melee builds.
It could be x hits per second instead of a dot so that doryanis work as a build concept for melee. Currently that single mod completely ruins it and cannot be blocked/ignored because it happens to appear in all content.
Last edited by zzang#1847 on May 27, 2022, 6:14:13 AM
Interesting, very likely to be correct. But figuring out why its a shit doesn't make the fact that it is a shit easier to live with.
POE2 should be the ruthless vision experience and POE1 should be the zoom power fantasy sandbox to capture both audiences.
I petition to return all the fun stuff that was removed or nerfed over the years back into POE1.
Last edited by Bosscannon#3325 on May 27, 2022, 8:52:30 AM
My main point here is that the community may have a point on this particular issue, but we've cried wolf on everything that was slightly different or a shift from easy mode. GGG might be obstinate, and perhaps would have this policy no matter what, but we've lost all credibility.
Disclaimer: This doesn't apply to everyone obviously, but it doesn't matter. The worst of the community will dictate the terms on this particular issue.
You know I generally ignore this stuff -- league to league, roughly the same thing happens. I'm pretty philosophical about it, the way a deep-seated public servant might be about otherwise dramatic changes in regime. Same shit, different dictator, if you will. AN has been a huge blip that not even I could ignore, so I don't really know that much about the wolf-crying or the credibility of the community. I mean, you know how I feel about the community overall based on the last thing I *really* got up in arms about, right? I don't think there's any credibility to lose, because that's not really the community's role. Their role is to hold the credibility of GGG to account, and they fail to. Repeatedly. Hence that quote about 'normal players' being so inadequate compared to GGG's internal expectations not being the shock it should have been.
No, when I talk about this obstinacy as you put it, I'm looking MUCH further back, years and years. After all, that's the stuff I know because that's back when I was much more involved and concerned about the micro -- as were GGG, coincidentally enough. I hate to trot it out again, but for me their turning point was summoning snapshotting. To briefly recap: a league had dropped, players were enjoying it well enough, but there was a sort of exploit wherein you could equip very strong summoning gear, raise your army, and then switch that gear out for other stuff. Okay, I just quickly googled: this was mid 2015. Anyway, it was grossly overpowered AND boring and GGG nixed it fairly deep into that league. There was also aura snapshotting and whatnot, but as I recall it, summoning snapshotting was the moment they realised they had to control the meta, not simply throw all the lego pieces on the ground and let clever players put together builds that obliterated their content and essentially broke the game.
I'm sure this wasn't the only factor but if we assume something like this happened, then it explains at least in part what I saw not long after that: they fixed Arc (man testing that in alpha was a blast) and told the community they'd fixed it well before its triumphant ascension to meta. And I'm not saying they announced it once and moved on. It was heralded as the incoming skill to play, because at the time it was easily one of the most underused and yet desired. Chain lightning is just fucking cool, right?
Anyway, that all went according to keikaku. Arc's new potency was not THE meta but it was pretty much (somewhat appropriately) the path of least resistance as far as effective builds go.
And GGG saw how easy it was to prevent another 'snapshotting' incident: just tell players what to play. Hype up incoming new skills; announce the update of old ones. It happened not just with Arc but also traps, and then mines. For a while there, they treated each league as a chance to lay a road for players to follow. Again: not the most powerful choice (those would always be discovered by someone else) but the most obvious.
How does this relate to obstinacy? Simple: GGG had learned they didn't really need to listen to feedback because they'd found their formula. Now player dissent from league to league was a feature, not a bug. The increasing chasm between developers and players didn't really matter because the developers no longer felt beholden to the players as far as balance was concerned. After all, they provided fairly clear instructions before each league if you wanted to enjoy it. If you wanted to go beyond that or against it, well, that's on you. Good luck buddy, eager to hear your experience, hope it impresses lots of players and gets them to like/subscribe/support.
And honestly that's how it's remained, with one slight exception: they've eased off on the aggressive pre-league skill/item pushing because big streamers are doing that part for them. I figure this ties into the ever-increasingly alarming intimacy between developers and their most valuable streamers. Even as far back as Kripp in 2012/13, streamers have served as a sort of beacon for GGG, a lighthouse guiding them to the relatively safe waters of popular opinion. It's just smart for developers to recognise this and take advantage of it. BUT with GGG and PoE that's changed because streamers are no longer bright representations of the community at large -- they're more like floodlights 'controlled' by GGG showing the community where to go.
And then we have this other related issue where GGG now see streamers as their community (see official 'community reactions' posts; no, mate, they're just streamers doing their job hyping shit up for a buck). I don't think that it's as simple as I've illustrated it but I DO think if you unpick seemingly casual hints as that, you can see why GGG thought AN was internally fine and why Chris felt the need to put 'normal players' in inverted commas when describing that X factor they couldn't quite predict. People like to say that GGG are now balancing for the 1% or for the streamers or whatnot. That statement by Chris confirms this but I dislike both terms. 1% implies wealth which is why some people bitch that GGG are balancing for the whales (and I can't even begin to tell you how wrong THAT is), and 'streamers' is to me too generic a term. Anyone can stream, same way anyone can be a blogger or an influencer or whatever. What 'streamer' as a term fails to clarify is the *level of influence*.
So I choose to look at it slightly differently. GGG aren't balancing their game for the 1% or the streamers; they're balancing their game for the performers. For the contestants, if you will. Path of Exile is a show a lot of people watch, and it's got to be challenging for those relatively few individuals everyone else (tongue very much in cheek there) is watching. This is, to me, the gruesome terminus of PoE's long-running love affair with Twitch and GGG's all-too-happy greasing of the gears with streamers who showed clear influence and an ability to bring in supporters. So to me, ignoring Path of Exile as a 'game', what we have is a fairly simple and very recognisable business model: reality tv. Shit, I can even make a haiku about it:
GGG: produce
biggest streamers are the stars
Exiles? audience.
When you look at it that way, it makes complete sense that AN was 'internally fine' and that 'normal players' were the X factor from GGG's perspective. The priority, I think, is not in delivering a PoE that the 'normal players' can enjoy but in ensuring that the contestants are not bored and thus not boring to watch. I mean, if you're already off that train as I am they're always boring to watch, but I've never been a huge reality TV viewer anyway (Forged in Fire is about it, because, fuck, swords are also fucking cool). The whole time, GGG were thinking not about 'normal players' but about their stars.
It's all so horrifically counterintuitive though. Why would you alienate the majority of your playerbase to cater to the minority? Surely all those normal players are going to just stop supporting even if your elite (not elitists -- big difference) are 'okay' with the state of the game. Well, maybe. But clearly the metrics and data show otherwise, else they would never have made such a terrible misstep as AN, which again in the context of PoE-as-TVShow, is completely understandable a mistake. They didn't overestimate 'normal players'; they forget that their big stars have their limits too. Like everyone else, I was monitoring the steamcharts and did NOT see a dramatic drop in players, at least nothing that would cause GGG to panic. After all, it's not the dips they care about but the spikes. They don't really care about retention beyond the long game: who they retain for next league. Why? Because the sub model for this TV show isn't weekly or even monthly. It's pretty much a case of pay up front -- you can bet the bulk of their packs are sold in that hype period before a league drops. After that, who really cares what the audience does?
I strongly doubt they'd have changed a thing about AN had the outcry of difficulty been limited to the audience, to 'normal players'. Because, as you said, 'normal players' cry wolf and if a star can handle this content, you too can -- they're just players like you and me after all! Git gud, bro. But if the stars are also struggling as we saw with AN, well shit, GGGang, I think we might have overcooked this one a tad. Not a good look when your pros agree with the plebs.
But even those 'fixes' have been pretty conservative. Instead, and this brings us back to Bex's statement (which I've not bothered to source, so I'm taking OP's word for it), they're just going to be more careful next time. And by that I don't read 'we're going to be more mindful of normal players'; I see that more as 'fuck, we got caught tuning the game for our stars and clearly we overestimated them too'.
I hate that I can see it this way but it's hard not to when you connect certain dots. I've never seen a developer so precious about so obvious a small circle of well-known streamers. I've never seen a developer with either the audacity or ignorance to consider said circle 'the community'. And, until a few weeks ago, I'd never seen a developer refer to its supporters and players as 'normal' in inverted commas.
But from that perspective, 'credibility' isn't even a factor. An audience doesn't need credibility. It just needs to exist and pay to watch the show. Or, as with PoE, pay, maybe watch, but certainly play along at home.
Okay I've wiped myself out with this one. I'm probably not finished, but then again, will I ever be?
Spoiler
How to say you're gen X without saying it: I've basically compared PoE to a game show from the 80s, with a little Running Man thrown in.
I guess I didn't see the 'normal players' comment, which isn't shocking since I don't follow all the outlets they communicate through. If Chris said that, that's definitely a moment where they said the quiet part out loud. I don't think it's a secret that they've preferred to balance the game around players with a ton more time and/or skill. I've personally never taken issue with that part; on the contrary I rather enjoyed a game where I couldn't do everything because once you do it all, what else is there to do? The most recent years has trended toward an easier level where I could do everything. I still found ways to keep myself amused, but it wasn't quite the same as the early POE days where I strategized ways to beat Dominus; a freaking act boss.
The game needs to be balanced around some sort of central point. It could be balanced around the top shelf players, the bottom players, or the average players. None of those choices are wrong; at least not in a vacuum. You just have to pick one. Now if you're looking at it from a how do we make as much money as possible perspective, the choice does matter, though I don't personally know what would maximize revenue. Targeting streamers does provide a large audience, which in turn may play the game. Targeting the average to below average players opens up a larger pool of players, but might be entering an already saturated marketplace (Diablo 3, etc.).
I've always said that if I'm completing all the challenges, hitting level 100, and beating all the uber bosses then the game definitely got easier. And recently, that's exactly what has happened.
I've personally welcomed the 3.15+ shift toward trying to make things harder, even though I did not agree with their methods of doing so. The underlying reasons made sense to me.
My rambling mess may not respond to your entire message fully. The core of your message, I agree with. I also am not sure if it matters what GGG does. The game creates tension, and for some of us, that tension is what brings us back again and again. Games that resolve easily or give you what you want quickly become games you may enjoy briefly, but leave behind forever once done. The way they create tension is definitely divisive, but tension just the same.
Thanks for all the fish!
Last edited by Nubatron#4333 on May 27, 2022, 11:08:36 AM
My main point here is that the community may have a point on this particular issue, but we've cried wolf on everything that was slightly different or a shift from easy mode. GGG might be obstinate, and perhaps would have this policy no matter what, but we've lost all credibility.
Disclaimer: This doesn't apply to everyone obviously, but it doesn't matter. The worst of the community will dictate the terms on this particular issue.
You know I generally ignore this stuff -- league to league, roughly the same thing happens. I'm pretty philosophical about it, the way a deep-seated public servant might be about otherwise dramatic changes in regime. Same shit, different dictator, if you will. AN has been a huge blip that not even I could ignore, so I don't really know that much about the wolf-crying or the credibility of the community. I mean, you know how I feel about the community overall based on the last thing I *really* got up in arms about, right? I don't think there's any credibility to lose, because that's not really the community's role. Their role is to hold the credibility of GGG to account, and they fail to. Repeatedly. Hence that quote about 'normal players' being so inadequate compared to GGG's internal expectations not being the shock it should have been.
No, when I talk about this obstinacy as you put it, I'm looking MUCH further back, years and years. After all, that's the stuff I know because that's back when I was much more involved and concerned about the micro -- as were GGG, coincidentally enough. I hate to trot it out again, but for me their turning point was summoning snapshotting. To briefly recap: a league had dropped, players were enjoying it well enough, but there was a sort of exploit wherein you could equip very strong summoning gear, raise your army, and then switch that gear out for other stuff. Okay, I just quickly googled: this was mid 2015. Anyway, it was grossly overpowered AND boring and GGG nixed it fairly deep into that league. There was also aura snapshotting and whatnot, but as I recall it, summoning snapshotting was the moment they realised they had to control the meta, not simply throw all the lego pieces on the ground and let clever players put together builds that obliterated their content and essentially broke the game.
I'm sure this wasn't the only factor but if we assume something like this happened, then it explains at least in part what I saw not long after that: they fixed Arc (man testing that in alpha was a blast) and told the community they'd fixed it well before its triumphant ascension to meta. And I'm not saying they announced it once and moved on. It was heralded as the incoming skill to play, because at the time it was easily one of the most underused and yet desired. Chain lightning is just fucking cool, right?
Anyway, that all went according to keikaku. Arc's new potency was not THE meta but it was pretty much (somewhat appropriately) the path of least resistance as far as effective builds go.
And GGG saw how easy it was to prevent another 'snapshotting' incident: just tell players what to play. Hype up incoming new skills; announce the update of old ones. It happened not just with Arc but also traps, and then mines. For a while there, they treated each league as a chance to lay a road for players to follow. Again: not the most powerful choice (those would always be discovered by someone else) but the most obvious.
How does this relate to obstinacy? Simple: GGG had learned they didn't really need to listen to feedback because they'd found their formula. Now player dissent from league to league was a feature, not a bug. The increasing chasm between developers and players didn't really matter because the developers no longer felt beholden to the players as far as balance was concerned. After all, they provided fairly clear instructions before each league if you wanted to enjoy it. If you wanted to go beyond that or against it, well, that's on you. Good luck buddy, eager to hear your experience, hope it impresses lots of players and gets them to like/subscribe/support.
And honestly that's how it's remained, with one slight exception: they've eased off on the aggressive pre-league skill/item pushing because big streamers are doing that part for them. I figure this ties into the ever-increasingly alarming intimacy between developers and their most valuable streamers. Even as far back as Kripp in 2012/13, streamers have served as a sort of beacon for GGG, a lighthouse guiding them to the relatively safe waters of popular opinion. It's just smart for developers to recognise this and take advantage of it. BUT with GGG and PoE that's changed because streamers are no longer bright representations of the community at large -- they're more like floodlights 'controlled' by GGG showing the community where to go.
And then we have this other related issue where GGG now see streamers as their community (see official 'community reactions' posts; no, mate, they're just streamers doing their job hyping shit up for a buck). I don't think that it's as simple as I've illustrated it but I DO think if you unpick seemingly casual hints as that, you can see why GGG thought AN was internally fine and why Chris felt the need to put 'normal players' in inverted commas when describing that X factor they couldn't quite predict. People like to say that GGG are now balancing for the 1% or for the streamers or whatnot. That statement by Chris confirms this but I dislike both terms. 1% implies wealth which is why some people bitch that GGG are balancing for the whales (and I can't even begin to tell you how wrong THAT is), and 'streamers' is to me too generic a term. Anyone can stream, same way anyone can be a blogger or an influencer or whatever. What 'streamer' as a term fails to clarify is the *level of influence*.
So I choose to look at it slightly differently. GGG aren't balancing their game for the 1% or the streamers; they're balancing their game for the performers. For the contestants, if you will. Path of Exile is a show a lot of people watch, and it's got to be challenging for those relatively few individuals everyone else (tongue very much in cheek there) is watching. This is, to me, the gruesome terminus of PoE's long-running love affair with Twitch and GGG's all-too-happy greasing of the gears with streamers who showed clear influence and an ability to bring in supporters. So to me, ignoring Path of Exile as a 'game', what we have is a fairly simple and very recognisable business model: reality tv. Shit, I can even make a haiku about it:
GGG: produce
biggest streamers are the stars
Exiles? audience.
When you look at it that way, it makes complete sense that AN was 'internally fine' and that 'normal players' were the X factor from GGG's perspective. The priority, I think, is not in delivering a PoE that the 'normal players' can enjoy but in ensuring that the contestants are not bored and thus not boring to watch. I mean, if you're already off that train as I am they're always boring to watch, but I've never been a huge reality TV viewer anyway (Forged in Fire is about it, because, fuck, swords are also fucking cool). The whole time, GGG were thinking not about 'normal players' but about their stars.
It's all so horrifically counterintuitive though. Why would you alienate the majority of your playerbase to cater to the minority? Surely all those normal players are going to just stop supporting even if your elite (not elitists -- big difference) are 'okay' with the state of the game. Well, maybe. But clearly the metrics and data show otherwise, else they would never have made such a terrible misstep as AN, which again in the context of PoE-as-TVShow, is completely understandable a mistake. They didn't overestimate 'normal players'; they forget that their big stars have their limits too. Like everyone else, I was monitoring the steamcharts and did NOT see a dramatic drop in players, at least nothing that would cause GGG to panic. After all, it's not the dips they care about but the spikes. They don't really care about retention beyond the long game: who they retain for next league. Why? Because the sub model for this TV show isn't weekly or even monthly. It's pretty much a case of pay up front -- you can bet the bulk of their packs are sold in that hype period before a league drops. After that, who really cares what the audience does?
I strongly doubt they'd have changed a thing about AN had the outcry of difficulty been limited to the audience, to 'normal players'. Because, as you said, 'normal players' cry wolf and if a star can handle this content, you too can -- they're just players like you and me after all! Git gud, bro. But if the stars are also struggling as we saw with AN, well shit, GGGang, I think we might have overcooked this one a tad. Not a good look when your pros agree with the plebs.
But even those 'fixes' have been pretty conservative. Instead, and this brings us back to Bex's statement (which I've not bothered to source, so I'm taking OP's word for it), they're just going to be more careful next time. And by that I don't read 'we're going to be more mindful of normal players'; I see that more as 'fuck, we got caught tuning the game for our stars and clearly we overestimated them too'.
I hate that I can see it this way but it's hard not to when you connect certain dots. I've never seen a developer so precious about so obvious a small circle of well-known streamers. I've never seen a developer with either the audacity or ignorance to consider said circle 'the community'. And, until a few weeks ago, I'd never seen a developer refer to its supporters and players as 'normal' in inverted commas.
But from that perspective, 'credibility' isn't even a factor. An audience doesn't need credibility. It just needs to exist and pay to watch the show. Or, as with PoE, pay, maybe watch, but certainly play along at home.
Okay I've wiped myself out with this one. I'm probably not finished, but then again, will I ever be?
Spoiler
How to say you're gen X without saying it: I've basically compared PoE to a game show from the 80s, with a little Running Man thrown in.
I am glad the community is catching onto this. I'd call the stance GGG takes with its development as anti-consumer, but given the fact that they see their 'performers' as their only consumers it makes perfect sense.
I can not fathom the bottomless depths of arrogance one must posess to develop a product that rivals and overshadows a titan of the industry like Diablo, to then go on to ignore and actively neglect the audience that helped you build that dream in favor of a few mouthpieces you can directly assign a name and a face to. Who also lavish you with guarded praise regularly because their career is not insignificantly dependant on having direct access to you. It is...grotesque.
~ I am Wreaclast middle class and proud of it!
~ Poor investment =/= entitlement to compensation.
~ Build smart, build S-mart!
I guess I didn't see the 'normal players' comment, which isn't shocking since I don't follow all the outlets they communicate through.
Neither do I, friend. Just this one.
"
Transitioning from the old monster mod system to Archnemesis was meant to make rare and magic monster fights more challenging. And it certainly did. We tested it extensively, and were happy with the level of difficulty when we released it. In general, we feel that in Path of Exile it's better to introduce things slightly too challenging than slightly too easy, and so we awaited player feedback and death data to see if it was actually too hard for the average player.
Well, 12 hours of feedback and data is enough to know that we need to take the edge off the difficulty.
Sorry, 'average player' not 'normal player'. Also, not inverted commas...but there might as well be since, yknow, if they're balancing for anyone else, then they've already decided that 'average player' is not, in fact, who they're balancing for.
Look I may be reading into it -- he was clearly very tired when he wrote it (he signed off with 'I'm going to get some sleep now'). But even if so, there's a form of 'in vino veritas' to exhausted-posting, when you've had a rough day and the world seems against you and all that. The smile falters; the usual politesse is just not as attractive as saying it how it is.
As I said elsewhere, I think he was going for flippant and disarming with stuff like 'slightly' but it just comes across as a tiny bit annoyed that average players weren't up to the challenge.
Anyway, you're dead right when you say it's the tension that brings you back. That other games might resolve too easily. But we both know there is a fairly large spectrum here and PoE could easily still be loaded with that tension and not be quite so relentlessly punitive and self-sabotaging. I think you're edging towards apologism with that sentiment but you're an Exile who still plays and enjoys the game. I would expect nothing less. I'm an Exile who doesn't, so I'm figuring while we may not entirely agree on the finer points, we at least both know what to expect from each other and can proceed civilly and fruitfully. :)
So please take it with all respect when I say that 'tension' you're talking about, the thing that keeps you coming back, I think it's a bit of a cop-out. That's the 'but it's not always bad' strained whimper of the willing. Because if it weren't, and things really were 'good', it wouldn't be 'coming back again and again'. It'd just be...staying. Sure, there'd be breaks -- they're healthy in any relationship -- but you wouldn't see the end of those breaks as 'coming back and again', any more than we say 'I keep coming back to consciousness' when we wake up every morning.
Man I feel like a fuckhead for saying that because dude, if you enjoy the game, honestly, I can't and won't disparage that. It was just the wording there. Like what Chris said, something about it begged me to read into it. I suppose it's impossible to have a simple relationship with a complicated game, especially when part of that complication skews towards browbeating its players into giving it a lot of time and effort, and doesn't always justify that with what it gives back.
But then I'm like, projecting pretty hard because for me, that tension felt less like the pleasure of a thrilling ride and more like the breath-catching tightness of a minor panic attack. I remember one time I died at highish level, lost a bunch of experience about 80% into that level, and was a fucking mean, mean bastard for hours afterwards. I was that angry. That tense. I knew I'd snap at whoever was unfortunate to come near me, so I just took a few breaths (quite a few), and scrambled for distraction before heading downstairs to interact with my partner. So I have a little trouble empathising with the idea of 'pleasurable tension' when it comes to PoE. It's why I so infamously stuck to lower level; it's why my version of an endgame grind for a chase item is extremely low stakes.
But for you, that tension might be awesome. It might be like a high. I honestly don't know. All I know is, that was the first and last time I flirted with playing PoE seriously. I didn't play a great meta-level build, just an adequate one that was all my own, so getting that experience back would have taken ages, but the alternatives, all of them, were simply not my idea of fun.
And I try to keep my discussion of PoE limited to responses to people who seem to feel somewhat the same way as me. In this case it was more about pointing out that damage control is sort of a Community Manager's job (I've been one, albeit briefly because, surprise, I suck at damage control especially when my boss is a scummy fuckbag and his game is vaporware months after a hugely successful kickstarter) and that it can't be an easy job when you know your higher-ups have a vision that leaves a lot of players unhappy. 'We'll review' is, to me, on the same airy-fairy shelf as 'we'll look into that' and 'we plan to'. Proof, as they say, is in the pudding, not the empty bowl you 'plan to' make it in.
If I like a game, it'll either be amazing later or awful forever. There's no in-between.
