[April 12] Initial Development Manifesto Feedback

chris this sounds amazing i love you <3

Nice to read your thoughts on desync, which is honestly the only thing I am looking forward to. A lot of my current characters are melee and they are just frustrating to play compared to my ranged which desync far less.

You guys REALLY should unlock each of the development manifesto threads for replies so that all replies in that thread can be directed directly at that subject instead of a collage of replies all in a single topic, such as this one.


All of my replies refer to the "Parties, Maps, Item Quantities and Loot Allocation" thread.

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Currently, party play is objectively far easier than solo play. Even for groups without top-tier characters, the monster die far too quickly and struggle to do damage to multiple players at once. While we cannot increase damage for party play (this fails due to our Armour system), we will probably increase the monster life bonus for parties to a larger level than we currently do. It might not be commonly known, but we already have a lot of bonus life on monsters that are magic (60% per player rather than 50%), rare (80%) and unique (100%).

As a long-term change, we will be making sure that many monsters have the ability to deal area of effect damage so that they're more challenging to parties and summoners.

There are a few ways to deal with this, but it really boils down to either increasing their offense or defense.

-Defense: The percentage of monster health bonus per party member should be increased regardless. Nothing major that going to double health for a current 6 player party in merciless, but something that will amount to at least a 25% total bonus for a full party. Resists or armor type shouldn't be changed much for the time being, take babysteps on increasing their defense.

-Offense: As for offense, there has to be a balance as to what is modified. Increase damage, and the end result is likely to be that whatever melee player goes in for the kill is just going to get killed himself. Give them AoE, and players like summoners can be at a disadvantage, although this is a much better trade-off than increasing damage. I think each monsters attack should be augmented with an effect. For example, archers and spell casters gain the ability to pierce. This won't effect solo players much and won't increase the amount of damage they take. Parties will have more trouble with this one. Melee monsters can gain Melee Splash with a radius small enough to only hit a target directly adjacent from their current target at 50% damage.

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With more difficulty should come more rewards. While we want to keep the rewards for solo play competitive, it is difficult to deal with strangers or to arrange and keep the commitments required to play with a consistent group. If we make party play more challenging, we'll probably also incentivise it slightly more also. Solo players are already at a big advantage from an item drop point of view (they get more items per player and have no loot tension), so small increases to the party rewards are not deemed to be unfair.

I very strongly disagree with this. The quantity and quality of drops are so abysmal for solo play that it almost completely discourages a player from playing alone, forcing them to join a party. Party play is a major problem for certain builds, such as my Flicker Strike build. In order to sustain a constant flicker strike chain with Blood rage, I need to be able to do maximum damage per target instead of damage per second in order to achieve a kill and regain a frenzy charge. In party play, the health bonus monsters receive make Flicker Strike, my main ability, almost completely useless as even with a very high damage weapon its not strong enough to combo the required number of kills to maintain a constant Flicker. On top of this, desync when playing solo is bad enough, but playing in parties is absolutely absurd with this build. Solo, I can chain 15+ flickers together with Multistrike before I start to experience desync. In a party, I'm lucky to chain 5 flickers together before desyncing and getting killed. Item quantity and item quality playing solo is so horrible that unless I stack these modifiers on my items, I end up really only playing for experience. The only thing that seems to drop as often in Solo as in parties are orbs.

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Our largest problem with the Map system is that high-level experience gain is gated by a system that was designed for gating high-level item acquisition. We are 100% happy with how maps work as far as the item system goes (and are amazed by how much even white items from the highest maps are worth), but we're not happy with how it affects players who are trying to grind for the highest spots on the ladder. We are considering some potential solutions (experience equation changes, ways to access maps for experience gain rather than items, etc).

Experience equation changes can only be met with problems later in the game's development cycle, such as adding later acts. I'm sure another act added to the end of merciless would increase the average level of a player by the time they even start maps. Having the experience equation changed just to suit these end game experience farmers would conflict with any end-game additions you may make later, especially those pertaining to this group.


This whole thing could be very easily solved with a simple solution: An experience affix for map items. Something simple enough as a 1-25% additional experience gain modifier would greatly boost experience gain for end-game levelers, while giving an affix that would set itself apart from increased item quantity in maps. It'll also provide additional late-game item sinks for items used to reroll map stats. There are additional ways to alter this particular affix for greater separation between experience gained and items found. The higher the experience bonus, the lower the change to roll a modifier that increases item quantity on the map. A very high experience bonus affix could also be coupled with another modifier that nullifies item quantity item rarity items that the player may have equipped. You could even set it linear so that each percentage of bonus experience also yields .5% reduced item quantity.

Examples of modifiers that could be coupled together in a single affix:

1. 12% Bonus Experience Gained.
2. 22% Bonus Experience Gained, Item Rarity on Equipment Has No Effect.
3. 26% Bonus Experience Gained, Item Rarity and Item Quantity on Equipment Have No Effect.
4. 36% Bonus Experience Gained, -18% Item Quantity. Item Quantity on Equipment Has No Effect.

Another quick way to solve this problem, increase map sizes. Mods like "Area is Larger" or "Area is a Maze" are almost a necessity sometimes. What should be done, is a 25+% increase in general map size, and at least that much of a reduction across the board to item quantity modifiers on maps. This would result in larger maps with more monsters and more of a challenge, with less item rewards. The current problem is small maps with high item quantity modifiers providing a greater concentration of item drops and less potential for experience gain. Increase the size of the maps, lower the item quantity modifiers on future maps. The same number of items will still be found on a 'per map' basis, but with a greater experience gain.

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Players are not picking challenging enough map mods. There are several that make the map "harder" in a way that just means they find more maps without any additional difficulty. We will probably change these so that they actually make the level harder. Ideally players will roll maps to find mods that hit the sweet spot in the "how many extra maps/items do I get" vs "how badly am I going to die" tradeoff. We also feel that the item quantity rates on maps are potentially a little too high and affect the problem described previously where too many white items drop. It may be appropriate for there to be a rarity tradeoff there too.

Some affixes should have opposing modifiers to accompany them that are NOT item quantity. One that would be a big hit with most players would be a modifier that accompanies some of the more difficult affixes that increases the quantity of map drops. The idea of struggling through a harder map for the possibility of finding additional maps is a favorable one, and would force players to pull these very difficult maps out of the stash for use far more often.

Example:

1. 25% increased Monster Life, 15% increased map quantity.
2. Monsters deal 80% extra Damage as Lightning, 25% increased map quantity.
3. Players cannot regenerate Life or Mana, 40% increased map quantity.

This modifier really isn't that overpowering, as most players average around 1 map drop or less per map run. Stacking even up to 100% increased map quantity would, on average, only guarantee 1 map drop with a high likelyhood of 2 map drops and a smaller chance for 3. Balance here is key, as it would be a very favorable modifier for end-game players, and the new modifier may even play well into a new unique item or two that would allow players to trade off something like resists or max life for the additional chance to find maps.

That's so awesome, thanks for all the info :D

thank you for the detailed information on everything, cant wait for the PvP Ladders and anything to do with PvP! :D

I think, instead of cutting quantity of white items (that what rarity will do), cut base lvl of items (ex: in lvl 66 maps - base item lvl higher than 40, in lvl 67 maps - 45, etc.) this bring more "valuable" whites (which you migh want to craft or chance) and lower total amount. Same for blues, but not for rares and uniques.

there is many important and useful tips and advices regarding gameplay in here, but the most important issue is desync at the moment.
period.
people dieing for not being able to play "properly" needs fixing the most urgent.
about balancing, class- or whatever problems people do know about, and are able to deal with. not with desync.

for the players (the ones who have been playing in CB already know already) its important to understand the devs philosophy in general about this game:
its not supposed to give you anything for free (apart from an insight at normal difficulty)
it is meant to be challenging!!! many people forget or dont know, its created by hardcore D2 players, in order to preserve the thrill it gave for years.

unfortunately, being still a beta, its lacking content. that is why new people, if at all, stop playing after running maps, or trying things for a while.

the game is not designed to give anything for free. sure, you have all the choices to do whatever kind of build with whatever kind of skill gem combinations, using and combining all kind of items.
but at some point, the game doesnt permit "errors" any longer, consisting of bad equipment, builds going only life all the way, or full damage only, or other extreme specializations whatsoever without knowing exactly what you are doing...

i myself tried a few things, like group playing (apart from people ninja looting, 2-3 second lags were a big issue, finally stopping me from group play in general), trying races (2 times, dieing very early due to lag/desync), doing maps to gain like 2% exp a map with the constant risk of losing 15% each time you die, or trying different (selfmade) builds.

i am very sorry to say that all of this got boring for me after some time, i really like this game, and also the idea of having the freedom to combine literally everything, yet having to fight for everything, using, transforming and crafting what is there, but it was created by hardcore gamers for hardcore gamers, not for a big mass of people.
i cannot call myself one of these, neither will many of the OB players, thats why so many people are getting really frustrated in the late content after a while.

i love the effort of the devs and also the support of players to make their gaming fantasies come true, the frequent patches, item- and skill-updates, theorycraft, forum discussions, etc etc
but there is lots of major problems that need to be solved.

i am amazed of the progress, knowing how few people are involved in all of the "basic" work, but many people cannot see that, coming from games run by huge companies, comparing them with what has been created here so far.
still i have to say, my motivation to play poe fell down just as fast as it skyrocketed in the first place, and i see how this happens to many players trying it.

i hope at least a few people were willing to read through all this text, and it helped to understand the opposite side of players, be it hardcorers or casuals at least a bit.

finally, i want to say: please keep up the good work, stay on the path you had taken, and dont get misled by any short term changes happening at the moment. but please stay concious of the players needs and wishes, and try to find the compromise of that and the basic idea of the game.

ps: sorry for my english, i gave my best to be understandable ;)

Great writing Chris, but as always my fave one shall be AI topic, hope to see it soon!; as its the mother of evil that causes the imbalance between melee and ranged even many people living struggle to see as being one so, yet still.

Not to mention I loved the optional loot system; I always will be playing Full-FFA; which arpgs are supposed to be !

Excellent news for handling to make syncing better, also.

All I have to say is this:
If you try to please everyone you will end up pleasing noone.
A clear vision and following it through may alienate some players but give you a more consitent and loyal fanbase in the long run.
Even if I can see myself not liking some changes I would still respect them if they follow a certain mindset. This manifesto is an excellent way to communicate this.

So....don't let yourself get talked down.
I HATE ninja-looting but as you stated in the manifesto you want to create a certain kind of tension/atmosphere in the game and most of your colleagues seem to love it.
I can respect that and I am free to play the game alone or with a group of friends, having our own "gentlemen agreement".

Most of the time genius game design is about giving players what they do NOT know they want.

Are we going to get something for the CI builds? As it stands right now if you're CI, you get perma stunlocked by rangers. HP builds have so much more survivability because they have potions to fall back on even if they do get temp locked somehow. Ci just dies instantly.