[April 12] Initial Development Manifesto Feedback

"

Mithsploit wrote:

"

artemis42 wrote:

This manifesto worries me deeply. These points are particularly worrying:

1. adding more AoE attacks to monsters in order to challenge groups. This is BAD design. Not only will this exacerbate melee builds' survivability issues (I'll explain why shortly), but it further removes from the player the power to actively avoid damage. I'm reminded of Torchlight 2 which, even solo, has so much magic and shit flying all over the screen that one quickly gives up trying to dodge any of it and instead soaks it all up with potions (boring).

What you need to do is add dangerous attacks that have the potential to hit multiple players (I'm thinking of Piety's lightning ball), but can be actively avoided. You do NOT want to, say, have trash mobs casting Fireballs with a large AoE, or Lightning Strike because 1) melee can get hit by the splash of a spell aimed at a ranged player, 2) the game's difficulty becomes even more married to one's passive defenses, amplifying balance problems and forcing players down the same, most effective path, and 3) higher chance of multiple AoE spells hitting the same player with their splash damage (sure, you can minimize this by spreading out, but what about tight maps such as Spider Lair?), which leads us into a particular case of 2), that of path of life nodes.

Eh? Melee getting hit by the splash targetting a ranged player? That's either (a) too large of a splash or (b) bad player positioning (players clumped, ranged in on melee, etc).

The mechanics of this game heavily encourage and favor player skill, particularly in regards to positioning. For example, as readily evident if you do race parties, watch players who successfully spread out around, say, Brutus, to mitigate his ground slam damage. Try not being a face masher and actually pay attention to your positioning and I'm sure you'll not worry about getting hit with AoEs, even if melee heavy parties. Just because you can stack on top of other players doesn't mean you should.

If I am player A and you're player B and a friend is player C and boss is X


------------------B-----------
---------A--------------------
-------X----------------------
----------------------C-------


You just got me hit with lightning strike if he turns to you and does it.

------------------------------
----------------B-------------
---A--X----C-----------------
------------------------------

I've just aggro'd mobs on the opposite of the boss by making sure you guys don't get me killed. Not to mention, now I'm in RoA targeted on player C.

Now make it so there's 30 mobs with their new aoe abilities on the screen that player A has to worry about. Not only are they trying to kill him, but they could be trying to kill you but hitting him too.

Think of it this way what if player B saw loot that player A was by in the first scenario, but the boss was fixated on player A. He tries to run away and is body blocked by the loot fanatic and dies. Grats on default. Your bro just got you killed and kind of rewarded for it!



Now do you get his point? It doesn't matter how good you are if your party members are hurr durring it up. To create a system that expects your party members to play perfectly accounting for your needs, as well as theirs, is a flawed system in an ARPG.

Besides, if they go with the above that you're suggesting is fine. The damage will have to be small enough to allow potion spam. Which is boring as was stated.

Hi Chris,

Great reading of the manifest forum, awesome stuff.

please don;t forget to think about filtering so players can choose what items to see on the ground :)

TMI!!! :D

Just rework the whole armour system. Make it flat reduction or something. It will solve most of the issues with melee characters and physical damage scaling.

Could we perhaps get another Manifesto topic on the issue of mana balance? That's probably the next-most important issue. As it stands, staying competitive with the content at endgame means that only the most extreme mana solutions are functional. It seems to me that the recent rebalance of aura costs did little to combat massive their massive overuse and only pushed players further into the bloodmagic/EB/Clarity solutions.

With respect to giving players options with regard to loot allocation -- remember that you can always give players a little incentive to play with more item tension, even if you give them choices here. ;)

Well, that was a good read! Keep 'em coming Chris.

About physical status ailment, please not stun on crit. If you crit you're already very likely to stun, except for bosses...it would be very limited on use and make stun reduction threshold less appealing. Maybe a bleeding effect (not like puncture) or armor penetration for a short duration... Whatever you do, the hardest part will surely be to balance this from the point of view of monsters doing this to the players.

Anyways, looking forward to the next walls of text!

I can't wait for the pvp ladders and tournaments!!!!
Thank you so much Chris & team! I love you all for making my life 100x more fun than when I didn't play poe.

Double post.

I haven't read this entire feedback thread, but I've read a decent chunk of it without seeing anyone really touch on the biggest problems with elemental/physical balance. I'm worried that GGG isn't really focusing on the primary issues, based on their statement:

"

Physical damage (closely associated with melee characters) is currently seen as inferior to elemental damage. One of the factors contributing to this is that it has no "on-critical" effect like the elemental damage types do.

...

The physical-elemental disparity will be addressed. There will probably be an on-critical effect introduced for physical damage (which may be as simple as a guaranteed stun, but the options are still being considered).

Offensive passive skills for melee builds (i.e. weapon specific ones) will probably be improved in some way. Note that we can't just add "melee defensive" passives, because there's nothing to stop ranged characters from picking them. We will not add a keystone that restricts you to only melee damage but provides a defensive boost, because that would be a mandatory pick for all melee characters and that's not how our keystones are meant to be designed.

Whereas I feel that all of these things are much bigger problems:

* The huge difference between armour/resist vs reflect mobs, especially in crit builds.
* The relative lack of flat +physical modifiers on gear and auras.
* The absence of physical % modifiers on anything but uniques.
* The inefficiency of physical damage passives compared to elemental passives (perhaps addressed in their quote, though since they specified they're addressing the weapon-specific passives they'll have to improve them dramatically to compete with the efficiency/flexibility of Catalyse and attack speed gouging).
* The imbalance between the melee physical support and the WED support.
* The imbalance between Elemental Weakness and Vulnerability for damage and party synergy.
* The lack of a physical damage support for ranged weapons.

Their proposed solution does exactly nothing for RT physical builds, which are the only currently viable physical builds (apart from perhaps CI/GR/VP) in Hardcore. And by "currently viable" I mean "playable without dying," since they're still far worse than elemental builds (for the other reasons I mention).

I understand their hesitancy to buff physical damage too much, since you get a lot of "free" bonus damage from Strength, and physical nodes are much more plentiful/accessible than elemental nodes. Unfortunately, no build in Hardcore can really afford to spend more than a handful of passive points on DPS, and even in Default defenses are heavily incentivized by the death penalty. I don't think they're ever going to be able to change this part of the game, staying alive is basically a core feature. So, some potential solutions (in addition to the bullet points above):

Remove +physical damage from Strength. Perhaps an armour bonus would be more appropriate and in-line with Int and Dex, or perhaps the life bonus is enough, or perhaps they can remove life from Strength as well (since everyone needs it). Remove accuracy from Dex to standardize the "stat = defense" notion, then make accuracy easier to obtain for all weapon users (to discourage RT necessity).

Remove all the shitty fluff passives for physical damage. Less passives that are either more interesting or more impactful would make for a better passive tree. Some of the passives should also be part of routes to other stuff, like the way Catalyse is set up. If I want Blade Master (a good passive, 15% physical and 8% attack speed with swords), I should be able to form a route that goes through it instead of dumping 4 points into a dead-end (I actually think this should be done for a lot more than physical passives, since the clusters with multiple entry points tend to allow for much more creative building than simply "take this 8/8/12 life cluster and move on").

The mini-keystone passives for physical damage also need a ton of balancing. Compare the following, which should in theory all be relatively equivalent:

Blade Master: 15% physical 8% attack speed with Swords
Hatchet Master: 12% physical 5% attack speed with Axes
Wandslinger's Prowess: 4% phsyical 8% attack speed with Wands

This just makes no sense.

"

MesostelZe wrote:

With respect to giving players options with regard to loot allocation -- remember that you can always give players a little incentive to play with more item tension, even if you give them choices here. ;)

I agree completely, and think it would be a fine thing.