[April 12] Initial Development Manifesto Feedback

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Sire84 wrote:

Good stuff in the manifesto overall, however this caught my eye:

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Chris wrote:

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.

Is this really needed? Balancing party play is propably needed, but this change could potentially make summoners pretty much unplayable, given how slow they are (albeit safe).

I have played the game solo & selffound so far, now leveling up a summoner witch. AoE spam, especially the beginning of act 3, annihilates summons in seconds. If I hadn't picked minion instability keystone early, I would have abandoned my summons altogether when I got to act 3 normal - my skeletons and zombies blowed up faster than I could summon them. Progress was really slow and painful, even though the playstyle is relatively safe. Now at lvl 58 things are better, but I can still feel noticeable spike in difficulty once AoE mobs appear.

Ya I had this issue with my summoner too. The poison/fire bomber guys would just wipe my summons out in seconds. Nothing was more fun than seeing peity just clear the room in one lightning ball either. I cringed when I read that too, but then again, I hated playing a summoner I just was experimenting with different MFing options.

Firstly, awesome Chris.

Secondly, I believe, if loot options are added, that they should be separated by league. I.e. Hardcore FFA, Hardcore Allocation, etc etc. It just doesn't seem fair to allow players who play by different rules to be in the same ladder to me. Just my 2 cents.

Lastly, I want to address this: "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)."

I have an idea. Make the "on-critical" for Physical damage be a multiplicative reduction to overall damage, both elemental and physical.

Here's how it would work:

All numbers are arbitrary only to show concept.

If you get a critical with physical damage, the monster you hit will do X% less damage for the duration of the "effect". Said duration is based on percent of total damage dealt versus monster health. The same way elemental effects work, basically.

The formula would look like this: (Total damage that would be done without the critical effect) * [1.00 - (percent reduction)]

The effect stacks to a certain number of times (within reason, so it isn't OP). It would be the opposite of Shock Stacks, essentially, minus the stun (but adding stun would be cool too).

The actual percentage of damage reduced could also be decided within a range based on the same way the duration is found (i.e. if you do 1% total damage to HP, 1% damage is reduced for 1 second, versus 10% total damage to HP for 10% damage reduced for 10 seconds)

The simple logic behind it would be that monsters who are physically hurt wouldn't be able to put out as much damage as normal monsters. Physically hurt being different than having low HP. Sort of like breaking an arm, versus losing blood.

Certain mobs types could be immune or resistant to said critical, such as mobs that are dead and don't feel pain (resistant), or mobs that are essentially ethereal like the ghosts in Ship Graveyard (immune).

Bam. Fixed physical damage AND melee at the same time. :D

This thread is a mess, it's so hard to follow anything that remotely starts being a conversation. Can you just make threads underneath the main ones? When you revise them just delete the feedback thread and make a new one.

I'm greatly disappointed with the initial development manifesto, its content and most importantly about directions that GGG want to go in the future.

I will be addressing only Melee vs Ranged and Parties, Maps, Item Quantities and Loot Allocation parts because other two are not relevant to me (PVP) or I come into terms with the other (desync).

Melee vs Ranged:
First thing first, this section was utterly boring and vague.
1. No mention of incoming damage reduction despite this being at the heart of pretty much any feedback related to melee. Active survival skill mentioned in the post is not the same as reduction of way too high damage output monster can do. It just further penalizes melee because it will be just another required skill on your bar. The same way HP nodes are now required.
2. On the positive side, GGG does not want to nerf strong builds but rather buff the rest. I can relate to this philosophy, unfortunately it is one of the few directions I share with them.

Parties, Maps, Item Quantities and Loot Allocation
This was the biggest let down of the whole manifesto. Reasons are stated below.
Positive changes:
1. One positive thing is decision to add various loot-distribution modes. I recognize this as a great step forward despite me being solo player, occasionally running in duo with RL friend.
2. Additional AOE skills for bosses and rares is good way to go. It should make party-play more interesting.
3. Notion of changes to experience formula or potentially maps for experience only. These 2 changes has potential but I'm also worried that it might mean GGG is not ready to release new content and rather provides band-aid solution. Time will tell.

Now the bad and smelly things:
1. Adding more HP to increase difficulty is the most boring way to achieve it. Increasing HP across the board will also further increase disparity between enemies where most will not pose much threat anyway but selected few will be far more deadlier--think about Burning Miscreation, Fire Sentinels, Queen-types in Act3, Voidbearers or Alchemysts, who will become major pain if their health is scaled up too much.
2. The fact that GGG recognizes party-play being too easy and at the same time want to reward party-play more is mind boggling. More risk, More reward is certainly not applicable here because the risk part is only addressed to actually bring party play to same level as solo. GGG does not mention anything about rewarding solo play more due to being more difficult.
5. ONE SINGLE SENTENCE in the whole post about solo play risk vs reward. ONE SENTENCE acknowledging that solo players must bear 6 times more costs in terms of currency to run end-game. Nothing more...GGG is telling me, a solo player, they do not give a shit about my issues.
6. Addressing availability of low level maps when those are not the issue at all. Solo or party, skilled or newbie, lucky or unlucky, everybody is already able to run entry level maps. The main issue is that the real end-game, maps where $$$ are made, is only accessible to selected few players that run maps in organized groups that can pool together ridiculous amounts of currency required to sustain maps above lvl70.
7. Quantity mods on maps...I'm not sure I did not misunderstood GGG intention but it seems to me they have completely different view than their players. There are countless feedback threads where it is stated that quantity associated with "difficult" map mods is just meaningless and it is much better to run map size and amount of monster increasing mods. GGG want to reduce the usefulness of the later yet they also think quantity granted by difficult mods is too high. I'm baffled.

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Moosifer wrote:

This thread is a mess, it's so hard to follow anything that remotely starts being a conversation. Can you just make threads underneath the main ones? When you revise them just delete the feedback thread and make a new one.

Double post for justice.

There was even topic in Feedback section asking for this but some mod locked it because he/she failed to properly read the request. Instead he added a message to OP stating that Chris justified creating separate thread.

Newsflash, we are not asking for posting feedback directly in manifesto sections. We want each manifesto section, for example Melee vs Ranged disparity, have its own dedicated feedback section.

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im not rich, im gearing up with a full tank set, im not saving orb for market either, im crafter, spent like 35ex+ a bunch of chaos and ton of fusing (just fail when tried 1200+ fusing to 6L my current chest)

So you are "not rich" but spent 1200 fusings and 35 exalts? Really enlighten me where did you get thisif "you not rich". I have a lot characters , 3 lvl 60+,1 lvl 70 , lvl81 and a dozen 10-30 lvls the total wealth combined for all of them I have amassed from drops would be roughly equivalent to 6-8 exalts (that includes QL gems, uniques, rares and orbs)

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And what will ppl do when they reach their point? They will feel bored when undeathable, one hit kill'em all... etc... they still quit soon.

Ehh maybe Id actually play my characters you know? Make new builds? - right now there is no incentive to make any new build for me as I have dozen leveled characters without gear. Havent touched this game for months now .

From the explanation Chris gave, ie latency/predictive algorithms, I don't understand why /oos actually works.

I haven't seen any threads about what /oos does in technical terms, but it seems that the server sends the client (user) location information for the players/creeps, and updates to that.

The point I'm getting at is the mechanic of /oos should be intrinsic, ie the server continuously telling the client where players/mobs are.

About the Melee Physical on Crit effect...

I'd rethink making it stun. Simply put, it wont bridge the gap. Stun does give some potential defense which would help melee but seeing as though its on crit it can't be relied on and therefore not something a HC character would value.

You want to entice people to start picking physical over elemental than I'd say it needs to add damage, simple as that. Make it a puncture/bleed effect.. It can put a bleed on mobs similar to that of burning or you could make it so mobs are more susceptible to physical damage while effect is on (my preference personally).

As a working family father, no matter how much i love playing games it dont always fit into my time schedule. It is kind of annoying that a three hour race starts one hour before i have an opening to attend. I dont expect every race to run at times that fit me. But i would love a race type that could be completed within a given timeframe. Like a 3 hour race, you can decide the start time and you have too complete within three hours of starting your character. But it has too be completed within a 24 hour or a one week timeframe.

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Moosifer wrote:

This thread is a mess, it's so hard to follow anything that remotely starts being a conversation. Can you just make threads underneath the main ones? When you revise them just delete the feedback thread and make a new one.

Yeah, there desperately needs to be separate discussion threads. I want to discuss the melee balances and have brought up some ideas for on hit effects... that are now buried 10 pages back under a mass of other issues. These topics are too broad to expect us to have any potentially important discussions on otherwise meaningful feedback in the thread's current state.