Can't find motivation to play leagues, what do ?

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vio wrote:

last words on PoB: i'm still convinced that if a game presents you 5 options to play it and there is a tool which says: "those 4 are crap", there is no choice anymore.

And the fault of those 4 being crap, is PoB and not game balance? I have to disagree. As I said, PoB only shows you HOW bad the balance really is.

But I wouldn't mind if skills X was crap versus skill Y, as long as skill X would perform OK versus the environment. I would still play skill X if I found it fun. Sadly, there are lots of skills that do not perform particularly OK versus the environment.

Would removing PoB make more people choose skill X? Sure. Would that help the game? That even more people would be frustrated by the performance of their chosen skill? Don't think so.

Again: PoE is - and will always be a game centered around numbers. Those numbers being available to us, is a positive thing. Those numbers being imbalanced, is not. And it's ONLY on GGG to fix that.

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Phrazz wrote:

And the fault of those 4 being crap, is PoB and not game balance? I have to disagree. As I said, PoB only shows you HOW bad the balance really is.

ok, the hard cap on damage output is the solution then.
perfect balance if you don't want any subpar skills.

you don't really suggest them balance all the options you have to boost damage, do you?

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vio wrote:

ok, the hard cap on damage output is the solution then.
perfect balance if you don't want any subpar skills.

you don't really suggest them balance all the options you have to boost damage, do you?

I've explained before why I think a hard cap on damage is a bad idea.

And no, I want them to actually balance skills. At least try. At least show us that they want certain skills to be MORE balanced, as equilibrium is a pipe dream.

So yes, an investigation as to WHY the worst 100 skills aren't being played, an investigation as to WHY they are bad - and a continued effort - every single league to keep MORE skills up to date. Numbers will ALWAYS help - a great deal, even if the mechanics are bad. How often do we REALLY see an honest EFFORT from GGG to do anything close to this? Not very often.

As long as they don't give a rats ass, nothing will help. Doing the CIA move, and just HIDE their shitty balance, well...

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vio wrote:

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Phrazz wrote:

And the fault of those 4 being crap, is PoB and not game balance? I have to disagree. As I said, PoB only shows you HOW bad the balance really is.

ok, the hard cap on damage output is the solution then.
perfect balance if you don't want any subpar skills.

you don't really suggest them balance all the options you have to boost damage, do you?

A hard cap is pretty antithetical to what the game tries to achieve in my opinion. Part of the fun is finding the things that are broken or borderline; and will inevitably be balanced. Homogenizing everything to be the same sounds good, but in practice I think it would take away from the potential of the game and somehow feel like it takes away from diversity of thought and ingenuity.

On a similar but not quite the same topic, I played a game that did a very good job of making sure there was a hard counter to ever character type. It was a very paper/rock/scissors type of game: Warhammer Age of Reckoning if anyone is familiar. I didn't particularly like the game because open world running simulators never seem to click for me, but my friends played it and we enjoyed the PVP elements. But the fights always boiled down to who you were against. If you ran into the hard counter, the outcome was predetermined. If you ran into someone as the hard counter, you always won. The game did a great job with the paper/rock/scissors approach -- too good. The predictable outcomes took away any joy I could have had in my opinion. I mention that because they achieved balance in PVP. It sucked.

there is alot of small things that could be improved in poe but tbh those things aren't whats killing my motivation. the big problems i see is the buff/nerf cycle is based around forced metashifts instead of balance and that alot of skills got ignored by that cycle leading to skill gems that just cannot keep up without investing alot of time and currency into it.

the dude who said he took alot of off-meta builds to red maps in 9 hours as practice isn't getting my point either. the endgame isn't just being able to open a red map and to be able to clear it, the endgame is grinding such maps and farming bosses at a reasonable pace that feels good.

the flask nerf is one thing that contributed to leagues feeling bad for me since the movement speed modifier from flasks got nerfed by over 60% and the monster health got buffed way too much by AN imho.

so yeah, i could theoretically clear a map on an off-meta character but it will still feel bad because i'm used to a way more rewarding gameplay loop and faster gameplay in general

Damage caps would allow them to make a much fairer and robust content system, but as others have mentioned its almost the exact opposite of the player freedom I think many of us love about ARPGs in general.

Its also a cop out in this regard, Damage caps in many ways are a motion of surrender, you can't/won't take the time to balance better so instead just fix everything with a lid.

It isn't necessary, they could do substantially better for very little effort if they make it a priority.

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Phrazz wrote:

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vio wrote:

And no, I want them to actually balance skills. At least try. At least show us that they want certain skills to be MORE balanced, as equilibrium is a pipe dream.

you don't want them all to have the same damage but averagely the same damage with all those options there are to boost damage.

ok, i give up.

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vio wrote:

you don't want them all to have the same damage but averagely the same damage with all those options there are to boost damage.

ok, i give up.

I don't want the game to CAP them, forcing every skill to be equal, removing A LOT of the game that is min/maxing and pushing your build as far as you're willing to go. But I want them to be closer to each other, especially in terms of scaling. Scaling a weapon scaling skill these days, is WAY harder than scaling a gem scaling skill.

But I couldn't care less about Righteous fire having slightly better numbers than Cleave (example). What I care about, is that Cleave CLEARLY isn't balanced around the current game. The current monsters. And the current environment. So if I say that I think Cleave should be "more balanced", I'm not comparing it to Righteous Fire or other skills, I'm comparing it to the game. The monsters. The bosses. The juiced maps.

The "same damage" also means that an AoE skill does the same damage as a skill designed for single target, which is bad. There needs to be room for difference and uniqueness, even though working towards balance.

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Phrazz wrote:

I don't want the game to CAP them, forcing every skill to be equal, removing A LOT of the game that is min/maxing and pushing your build as far as you're willing to go. But I want them to be closer to each other, especially in terms of scaling. Scaling a weapon scaling skill these days, is WAY harder than scaling a gem scaling skill.

what about having some skills be endgame viable and some not?

if all skills are good for killing endgame bosses (which would be the case if they were closer to each other):
* there would be no choice anymore which skill you have to take
* streamers couldn't tell their folks which skills are "meta" cause all skills are meta
* choosing a skill would be a matter of your prefered playstyle, not "doing reseach to make something work", this would be totally gone from the game

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i know the solution would be to have no skill be endgame viable from the get go but it should require player skill and experience to beat endgame bosses.

but ggg slammed this door shut by supporting consoles and killing point and click skills already, needlessly limiting their design space for some extra bucks from "ancient hardware"-users with crippled input methods, making the game have a fugly blur to simulate difficulty.