[April 12] Initial Development Manifesto Feedback

Chris & GGG,

I read your plans and changes quite thoroughly and my feedback is based off playing on/off since April 2012. My highest character is 72.

The few things that deterred me from continuing my level 72 would have to be the progression in maps. I simply can't play them solo enough because there aren't enough of them that drop, and also the maps are usually a place I end up dying once or twice negating any experience gain I happen to have for that level. So, I've made it a habit to only play maps right after I level as I know that I'll be dying here and there without painful loss of time and effort.

The XP loss is also a cause for disenchanting me from continuing the higher level characters. The percentage lost between levels 40 and 65 or so are perfectly fine. However, losing 15% or whatever it is in Merciless at level 70+ is a HUGE, HUGE difference from losing that same amount at level 50 or even 60. The xp loss at that high level should be halved in my opinion. It simply takes far too much time to regain what you've lost and hinders character progression too much.

"

Jaerin wrote:

Actually you are far underestimating the abilities of hackers.

There are third party software that can defend the client. A lot of MMO games use them.... and it have been that way since the dawn of online gaming.

Hacking does not matter for PVE, it is only affecting PVP which can be on a separate league with a lot of syncing. Maybe we could go even further -> one CLient for PVE and a different one for PVP.
I prefer to play solo and I suffer because someone, somewhere may/might/probably hack the client....

"

Jaerin wrote:

Actually you are far underestimating the abilities of hackers. WoW has been out for nearly a decade and still has teleport, fly, and speed hacks, all because they trust the client. Once you give them an inch they will find a way to exploit it to take a mile. Trust me, hackers are geniuses and have LOTS of time on their hands. It's a never ending losing battle and in most cases you cause far more harm to legit customers than you do to punish the few bad ones. Plus in a F2P game its as simple as make another account.

Bro, taking WoW as an example is probably the worst thing you could do, a game that was by far the most succefull moba for at least 10 years.
Sacrificing some security to hold up game quality was the right step, i have no clue while the PoE dev team thinks that desync= no hackers is a good trade, it isnt like wow showed.

...hmmm, one simple question:

if the damage of mobs would be put to 50% of what it is now, and the attackspeed doubled, that wold result in same dps, wouldnt it ? (apart from armor)

so, this would be a possible way to reduce the damage taken for people stacking armor, right?
at least as far as i´ve understood how armor works...

just my2cent

my biggest problem right now is that the only character that I have made that I did not get bored with very quickly is my melee witch who uses energy shield and ghost revere. I started making her because in my time on D2 a zealing paladin was the best thing ever to me.

I saw multistrike and started theory crafting a zealer, but I didn't want to make a normal I have a shield and hit really fast kinda guy, because basically I've done that enough. I decided on dual strike which is the fastest high physical damage skill right now and started leveling, but what I've found so far is that without %life steal and + physical damage on all my gear (which still being rather new I just can not do) I can't stay alive long enough to kill more than a few packs.

I like the idea of ES because you can get into the thick of battle, run out and 2 seconds latter you are at full "health" with no need for health pots or life regen. this way I can pick up blood rage (does chaos damage of 4% of your health to give frenzy charges on kills and life steal) with chaos inoculation for free life steal and a way to generate frenzy charges.

As an idea, this build is my whole goal for this game, I think it is a top notch idea, but in the current state of the game it is crazy hard to level, mostly because of how you get ES on gear, getting the same level of ES as health below level 40 is crazy hard and requires all of your passive points work toward it. health nodes are everywhere, but ES alone is only in a few spots, and usually you have to take nodes that give you other stats you may not even need.

The problem for the supremacy of elemental damage is the other problem, I would love to just take all the +% ele weapon damage nodes and multistrike like mad, would be killer DPS and a lot of fun, not taking anything away from the fun of dual strike with multistrike at all for me. Though the whole point of my build is to convert physical damage into ES with life steal, so if I am basing all my gear and nodes on elemental damage, trying to pick up the ES nodes which are frankly a little overly hard to pick up in a meaningful way it hurts.

you seem to think that the power of critical strikes is what makes elemental damage so good and I have to disagree, there are a lot of factors for this, but the ones I find most alarming is that you can roll a weapon and it can have I x-y physical and +s% physical which most of the time the base damage is so bad it is not even that great with two good rolls, but you can also roll a weapon with +fire damage, +lightning damage, AND +cold damage which is rare, but the chance of rolling something that adds elemental damage is much higher, so the gear has a much better chance of dropping, and if you are spending the time to craft it just has more possible mods that can make a bit of armor or a weapon awesome. you can get +fire, +lightning, +cold, added weapon damage. those four are awesome, physical only +base, +% and one that is +% and +accuracy, which do stack, but still...

finally the main problem is that there are element penetration support gems, but if you are fighting a boss that has high armor, your attacks do less damage, but if you have lets say multistrike you attack faster, but end up doing far less DPS because the way armor works in this game is such that having no attack speed, but hitting for a billion damage means armor does nothing at all, but attacking swiftly for little damage, means your attacks do nothing at all...

in such a hard game I would rather run in and attack 30 times in a few seconds and run out again so I can regen to do it again, but unless you run in and attack once really slowly for far more damage you really did nothing at all.


I know this turned into a wall of text that I doubt anyone will see, I had to say something just to give this witch I am trying to make a fighting chance.

good luck and I really love this game, just hope it will continue to improve!

Chris,

This junk heap needs to GO. I'm interested in the melee discussion but how do I FIND it in 50+ pages of posts and follow what is being said and how it is evolving? How does your staff isolate important discussions on individual topics?

It's just awful and it will get worse as more topics are added to the manifesto. Right now I'm looking for one topic, but eventually there may be several completely different conversations I want to be involved in or simply keep updated about.

For melee ranged issue. It has happened the same way in most MMOs. It is just plainly lot more simply to make the game hard for melee characters. Even the most successful W.O.W. MMO started with AoE effects which could instant kill melee ranged characters, that made most fight tank,spank with pewpew and spamheal. Giving them superior cc, aoe and damage made melee far inferior.

To resolve the issue simply even magic mobs has to be given ranged abilites like there are few in game now, like flicker strike, lightning warp (a powered up one preferably), the hook from Cole monster in Act3 etc. And make moves really fast mod on them lot more common.

Please consider the following changes for better melee/ranged balance:

0. HP pots - they work over time not instant > Ranged have time because of being far from dmg source > melee has no time and is forced to go in melee ranged to be able to kill.
Especially bad for energy shield mobs, where a ranged has to shoot 1-2 spells/arrows to remove the shield, while a melee has to risk death without even touching the mobs hp, just hitting his always regenerating shield.

1. Give monsters a lot gap close, cc abilites (more slows for example) which can affect ranged chars. Vaal with melee or with ranged is like two totally different boss fights hard mode vs easy mode.
Give endbosses more supreme ranged attacks (faster skills etc.) Curerntly ther eis just way lot time to avoid ranged skills and not much to see the incoming special melee strike.
(in Tera its solved by a glowing red eye on monster before powerful attack to warn to player to actviely defend agaisnt it)
I think voices, shouts should warn for some upcoming special attacks to help melee players and increase the immersion, epicness of fights.


2. I know it hurts but simply you have to limit the ranged dmg skills via obtainable item stat possibilites on ranged weapons/ranged spells. You get lot more survival, basically lot more living space so you should lack in something. There is no balance if one type of character (ranged) is good in everything.
I know you are saying that you dont want make ranged worse, but its absolutely sure without nerfing it, it remains superior, due to the fact that there is like 1000times more chance to survive while doing dmg than in melee as AI of mobs is really not advanced.

3. There should be an advantage figthing in the death "melee range" over ranged- usually this is solved by melee only debuff skills reducing enemies defenses, resistances significantly.
Currently ranged curses are way overpowered, while i cannot see the power in melee debuff skills.

4. Change the current scaling of armour/evasion, it is really becoming useless very early even with passives on them. Maybe make armour aura cost less mana.

5. Simply nerf HP nodes in a clever way - For example: +8% Hp & -3% all resi, other hp node +4% hp & +3% all resi. , distributing them wisely at different tree parts.

6. Consider implementing skills, which do more damage on targets with more hp, like some health bomb. This way people have to consider other builds than stack hp, stay ranged ->easy mode profit. (I suck at ranged chars but playing terminator style with a ranger got me killed only once yet in "desync", and using pots seems to be a luxury)

"

bodoka wrote:

For melee ranged issue. It has happened the same way in most MMOs. It is just plainly lot more simply to make the game hard for melee characters. Even the most successful W.O.W. MMO started with AoE effects which could instant kill melee ranged characters, that made most fight tank,spank with pewpew and spamheal. Giving them superior cc, aoe and damage made melee far inferior.

To resolve the issue simply even magic mobs has to be given ranged abilites like there are few in game now, like flicker strike, lightning warp (a powered up one preferably), the hook from Cole monster in Act3 etc. And make moves really fast mod on them lot more common.

Please consider the following changes for better melee/ranged balance:

0. HP pots - they work over time not instant > Ranged have time because of being far from dmg source > melee has no time and is forced to go in melee ranged to be able to kill.
Especially bad for energy shield mobs, where a ranged has to shoot 1-2 spells/arrows to remove the shield, while a melee has to risk death without even touching the mobs hp, just hitting his always regenerating shield.

1. Give monsters a lot gap close, cc abilites (more slows for example) which can affect ranged chars. Vaal with melee or with ranged is like two totally different boss fights hard mode vs easy mode.
Give endbosses more supreme ranged attacks (faster skills etc.) Curerntly ther eis just way lot time to avoid ranged skills and not much to see the incoming special melee strike.
(in Tera its solved by a glowing red eye on monster before powerful attack to warn to player to actviely defend agaisnt it)
I think voices, shouts should warn for some upcoming special attacks to help melee players and increase the immersion, epicness of fights.


2. I know it hurts but simply you have to limit the ranged dmg skills via obtainable item stat possibilites on ranged weapons/ranged spells. You get lot more survival, basically lot more living space so you should lack in something. There is no balance if one type of character (ranged) is good in everything.
I know you are saying that you dont want make ranged worse, but its absolutely sure without nerfing it, it remains superior, due to the fact that there is like 1000times more chance to survive while doing dmg than in melee as AI of mobs is really not advanced.

3. There should be an advantage figthing in the death "melee range" over ranged- usually this is solved by melee only debuff skills reducing enemies defenses, resistances significantly.
Currently ranged curses are way overpowered, while i cannot see the power in melee debuff skills.

4. Change the current scaling of armour/evasion, it is really becoming useless very early even with passives on them. Maybe make armour aura cost less mana.

5. Simply nerf HP nodes in a clever way - For example: +8% Hp & -3% all resi, other hp node +4% hp & +3% all resi. , distributing them wisely at different tree parts.

6. Consider implementing skills, which do more damage on targets with more hp, like some health bomb. This way people have to consider other builds than stack hp, stay ranged ->easy mode profit. (I suck at ranged chars but playing terminator style with a ranger got me killed only once yet in "desync", and using pots seems to be a luxury)

I agree, everything that melee can do, ranged does much better.

Re: Desync

I noticed that for me, desync issues generally only present themself on act bosses, and while I'm gaming on HC during league events.

The way I'd solve Physical vs Elemental damage disparity:
Critical Strike with Phys damage ignores (% Crit Damage Multiplier)*0.1 of victim's Armor (the number can be slightly different).
This way you'll have both crit stats involved (crit dmg mult affects duration of elemental status, so it should do something beside more damage to Phys too). Also, you'll buff skills with low damage effectiveness (like Cyclone) which are underwhelming as pure Physical due to armor system.



The way I'd try to solve Melee vs Ranged disparity:
Big Weapon/Melee nods should give something like +1,5% (only Physical?) Damage Reduction. I mean, you're playing tough-as-nails warrior, fought countless battles, have more scars than skin. Guess that kind of character doesn't give a shit about much deeper cuts than typical archer or mage does.



The way I'd solve Pure Evasion problem ('cause I heard Acrobatics sucks pretty bad):
You recieve (% Chance to Evade)*0.2 less damage
Enemy's Critical Strike Multiplier is reduced by (% Chance to Evade)*0.4 (ofc. both numbers can be adjusted)
I just don't get Evasion in most games. It is 0% or 100% and it always cause troubles that way. Like you character didn't even try to dodge those 100-(% Chance to Evade) blows. And yes, firebolts can be dodged too. Now, due to PoE's Armor system such mitigation will not be the same as Armor's. Due to diminishing of % at higher values of Evasion Rating, hybrid Ar/Eva characters should be able to benefit from that too.


Unfortunately, I have no ideas how to fix the worst problem - desync....

Thanks for reading.