[April 12] Initial Development Manifesto Feedback

Some more melee love? Hmm. Me like.

Not so sure about desync though. We've been "soonished" far to long already with desync.
The rest looks great, but desync is kinda one of those "pics or it didn't happen".
We just have to whait and see i quess. :)

And really love that you will add something like catch the flag to a action RPG. Heh, many lols will be shared. And many flicker strikers with multistrike will rub their hands. Meheh.

"

Ikariusrb wrote:

As far as desync goes, all ARPGs may do the prediction as you state, but for all it's other design flaws, Diablo 3 managed to resolve desync without any visible effects 99.999% of the time. Claiming working well in 99% of the cases means jack when there are 200 interactions/second. Generally playing solo, I cannot play for more than about 2 minutes without seeing BIG desync effects- such as firing at an enemy for several seconds before it turns out the enemy wasn't there at all. And that's playing solo. And it only gets worse playing with a party. And- my hat is off to anyone who actually plays a melee, because it's absolutely devastating for melee characters. I played several characters in Diablo 3, and I would once in a few days see serious spikes of rubber banding due to major server latency spikes, but normal day to day play never let us see a HINT of desync. A decade before, Diablo II did it as well. My friends who've played torchlight 2 report it suffers no such effects for online play. I don't know what you're doing differently, but your claim that this is darn near impossible to solve cannot be true- it has been visibly solved in other games which have been here before you.

I'm giving up on PoE unless you *really* fix desync. You claim you want a challenging game, and in higher level play, a single death will wipe out hours or even days of effort, yet desync singlehandedly ensures that you must play very low-risk and/or be substantially overgeared if you want to make levelling progress. Your skill as a player is < desync.


I hope you figure out what needs to be done to fix it, as otherwise I really like the game. With desync the way it is, the frustration factor outweighs the fun. I don't want to be angry when I die because the client lied to me.

As i understand what Chris/GGG said: most problems regarding to desync are related to there idea of hardcore, So in my opinion its not something that will be fixed. Maybe if they start to look at there attitude towards good game play and change what 'hardcore' should be..

"

DreamLAB wrote:

cant wait for more survivability gems, immortal call is too much fun!

I actually really do like Immortal Call, and I think it is silly that people want to be able to tank without actually DOING anything.

"

Mithsploit wrote:

"

riptid3 wrote:

"

Mithsploit wrote:

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.

In (1) you can stop being a facemasher and take two steps to your right.

In (2) you have demonstrated several fundamental misunderstandings of how the game works.

And furthermore, if 30 mobs turns out to be a problem for you, maybe fight fewer mobs.

Guess you missed the MELEE part in addition to the entire point. God.... the I don't even.
I'm also quite certain I have a better understanding of the game than you. Also of how the changes of more frequent aoe from mobs are going to impact it.

BTW 2 steps to the right in scenario 1 would line me up to be shotgunned by lightning strike. I just wanted to let you know you were wrong in what to do in a well laid out static situation. Now make it dynamic.

"

Patsboem wrote:

As i understand what Chris/GGG said: most problems regarding to desync are related to there idea of hardcore, So in my opinion its not something that will be fixed. Maybe if they start to look at there attitude towards good game play and change what 'hardcore' should be..

I'd love some further illumination and/or confirmation of that. What exactly does that mean? I mean, *my* idea of hardcore is that you can actually, you know, survive based on your skills, not that you're at the mercy of random disagreements between your client and the server. What differing ideal of 'hardcore' would lead to a substantially different interpretation?

For PVP, also look into PvE vs. PvE.

"

Ikariusrb wrote:

As far as desync goes, all ARPGs may do the prediction as you state, but for all it's other design flaws, Diablo 3 managed to resolve desync without any visible effects 99.999% of the time. Claiming working well in 99% of the cases means jack when there are 200 interactions/second. Generally playing solo, I cannot play for more than about 2 minutes without seeing BIG desync effects- such as firing at an enemy for several seconds before it turns out the enemy wasn't there at all. And that's playing solo. And it only gets worse playing with a party. And- my hat is off to anyone who actually plays a melee, because it's absolutely devastating for melee characters. I played several characters in Diablo 3, and I would once in a few days see serious spikes of rubber banding due to major server latency spikes, but normal day to day play never let us see a HINT of desync. A decade before, Diablo II did it as well. My friends who've played torchlight 2 report it suffers no such effects for online play. I don't know what you're doing differently, but your claim that this is darn near impossible to solve cannot be true- it has been visibly solved in other games which have been here before you.

I'm giving up on PoE unless you *really* fix desync. You claim you want a challenging game, and in higher level play, a single death will wipe out hours or even days of effort, yet desync singlehandedly ensures that you must play very low-risk and/or be substantially overgeared if you want to make levelling progress. Your skill as a player is < desync.


I hope you figure out what needs to be done to fix it, as otherwise I really like the game. With desync the way it is, the frustration factor outweighs the fun. I don't want to be angry when I die because the client lied to me.

One of the ways D3 handles desync is that if the enemies begin their swing with you in range, you will always get hit, even if you are well out of range by the time the swing ends. Now whether that tradeoff is better or worse than POE's sync flaws, I can't say. I do think one thing that also really helps D3 is that attacks (especially Melee) feel much more impactful. I do think getting rid of the melee accuracy stat really helps D3.

All of that was awesome. Even though I've essentially beaten the game in my eyes I am pretty loyal just to watch the game development.


A few hot topics that should probably have a manifesto:

1. The RNG in crafting
2. The death penalty
3. Trading

I would like to hear Chris's thoughts on these topics.

I had mixed feelings reading the manifesto regarding melee balance. Some of the changes sound good, others either don't make senses, or seem like bad/ineffectual ideas.

"

We get asked every day when the "melee patch" is. The short answer is that we're not addressing all these different topics in the same patch. We're going to make incremental improvements starting soon and probably progressing over several patches as we iterate on the different areas.

OK. But as times goes on, this game becomes more complex, and thus harder to fix. If you could try to make a major change in the next few patches that helped melee, rather than just adding new skill gems that often don't impact the game, we'd appreciate it.

"

We will add more survivability options so that characters who get close to monsters have active ways to stay safe. We are investigating ways to add survivability specifically to melee characters in ways that don't also benefit ranged characters.

The word "active," in the first sentence, concerns me. The current "active" way to prevent damage is endurance charges, and they're not very good. There's no efficient way to get them currently -- you either have to spam enduring cry every 10 seconds or you have to use warlord's mark, which is a less-than-ideal curse and completely impossible to use in groups (unless you're all melee). And when your charges time out, unlike frenzy/power charges where your dps drops, you start taking more damage, which is significantly more dangerous. As this makes gameplay much more difficult, because forgetting to spam enduring cry is yet another thing you can do to get yourself killed, a lot of players avoid relying on those "active" methods of survival.

And if melee can only survive combat by carrying out an operation that ranged doesn't need to bother with, then you haven't addressed the problem, as being melee is still a straight disadvantage. To be clear, I have no problem with additional skill gems. I just doubt they will solve the problem. On the other hand, to the extent the second sentence means you're thinking of adding options for passive damage reduction, or creating supports that help melee, I'm on board.

"

We will evaluate the merits of Armour, Evasion and Energy Shield so that the defensive properties allow better damage mitigation.

This sounds like it will help all characters, so I'm not clear how this would help melee relative to ranged. If you're just going to make the game easier (which is what increasing everybody's defense amounts to) then you're going down the D3 road rather than fixing the problem you have in front of you.

"

We will improve combat synchronisation so that melee feels better to use.

Can't wait.

"

Rather than nerfing powerful ranged builds to reduce the disparity, we will make sure that melee builds can be built to be powerful enough to compete. It will be very interesting looking at the data we're gathering about the impact of Multistrike and Melee Splash.

I'd actually prefer nerfing ranged and leaving melee where it is as it produces a more challenging game, and addresses the balance issue. I understand, however, why you won't do this, as gamers take it personally when you make their builds weaker through nerfs, and don't get as annoyed when you make other builds stronger.

On the subject of gems, I'll be interested to see what multistrike and melee splash do, but I'm not optimistic. These gems support elemental damage, and not physical damage, as they emphasize more numerous but less damaging hits over a single powerful hit. Added to that, it seems that lightning strike got the biggest overall boost because it's projectiles aren't affected by the 40% less melee. If I have that right, then the latest patch is more a slap in the face than anything, as you're buffing an ability that shouldn't even be classed as melee, while emphasizing non-physical damage.

"

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 don't get why you think this is important. Most melee builds, at higher levels and in hard core especially, rely on resolute technique to maintain constant stun/life leach. You have stats I don't, but I would anticipate this change having little-to-no effect. You aren't going to hurt melee by doing this, but I worry that you think this is an important-enough change to talk about, when in fact it's a footnote (at least based on what I know).

"

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.

I'm glad offensive passives will be improved, and I get why you can't just buff defensive passives. But I don't understand what the last sentence means. If you're saying that you cannot have a keystone that restricts players to only melee damage as it would be mandatory, although that doesn't bother me, it doesn't hurt that much either. But, I hasten to add, resolute technique is close to mandatory for most melee builds as it is, and a host of other passives are regarded as "necessary" by players using every competitive spec. Moreover, melee still uses bear traps, molten shell, and totems, all of which involve non-melee damage, so such a keystone is not without drawbacks. Nevertheless, you can feel free to keep your conceit as it doesn't hurt melee directly.

But if you're saying you are unwilling to produce passive abilities with drawbacks that only melee can cope with, then we have much larger problems. There are a lot of good ideas for melee-specific defensive passives out there (including, among my faves, abilities that restrict your capacity to attack when no mobs are within your melee radius in exchange for a survivability benefit). I hope you will think them through.

I've been pretty impressed with you, GGG, with the exception of how you've handled melee. I will continue to play POE regardless of what you do here, but I'd be more enthusiastic if there were more (thoughtful) love for Conan.

Adding some innate block chance to some melee weapons seems realistic. I've had an amateur (1 year) training in fencing, and parry+riposte was the first thing we were taught.

Adding some % to block for all swords might be decent.

You'll probably need to scale both melee survivability and melee damage output and adjust the risk/reward of these playstyles.