The other loot goblin

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Nubatron wrote:

As for player numbers and satisfaction, it's not so black and white -- especially when the lead has a vision of the game that he stubbornly sticks to. And I'm personally thankful for that stubbornness

Well then you get what you get, is what I'm saying.

There is a long list of games that failed because the developers had an idea of what they thought players should be doing or considered fun. Marvel Heroes is a recent example in the same genre. Just a big misstep and lack of understanding of your customers, especially as the game evolves over a decade.

It's a dangerous game they are dancing with right now. If you want your game to be "successful" but generally speaking you take player feedback with a grain of salt because in your hubris you think you know better than them, then at the very minimum you cant put on a surprised front when shit like 3.19 or 3.14 happens.

Again GGG can do whatever they want, but history shows they have made a number of mistakes. I know you are personally not saying they are perfect, but the general notion that you are leaning into is that larger feedback shouldnt be considered because of some fear of "mob rule". The data is telling them something, Its just I dont know what it means to GGG right now.

In general, many folks are not feeling the game at the moment. From casual to no-life, and I dont see the benefit in dismissing that?

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Nubatron wrote:

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Ok, sure, but the direction the game is going now, intentionally I might add, is pushing more randomness, and player frustrating mechanical interactions. You dont think GGG considers the current player reception as "disastrous"?

I mean maybe I'm wrong, and they don't really mind the number of dissatisfied players there are. I guess it's hard to say because they are being quite stubborn.

At the very least, CW and Team need to stop acting surprised, or feign understanding on why many people are unhappy. Its obvious imo. While they cant please everyone surely they can do better than this? No?

The direction of the game including the current release directly informs my opinion on the matter.

As for player numbers and satisfaction, it's not so black and white -- especially when the lead has a vision of the game that he stubbornly sticks to. And I'm personally thankful for that stubbornness. I don't always agree with the direction, but god help this game if it ever becomes some sort of mob rule democracy based on online community temperature.

Popularity and highest monetary benefit can't always be the motive, because that's the compass every other shitty company takes. Else they would all move toward mobile gaming platforms and Candy Crush or Minecraft would be the goal. Nothing against either of those games; they just have massive appeal that POE in any form will never compete with. Having a backbone and stubbornly sticking to something different is the only way you get something different. The ARPG world already has an easier game that appeases that crowd. There is no reason to copy that formula, because they'll lose. It makes more sense to carve out your niche and win there. The D3 refugees will leave when D4 comes; at least those that have not left already. Winning them over temporarily at the expense of the niche community foundation they've built for the last decade to try to create a Diablo 3 replica won't work out. They'll lose to the bigger company with a ton more experience catering to that casual crowd.

This sounded a lot better before the Lake.

The latest patch hit that very niche community foundation. It's the hardcore niche crowd who farms super-juiced maps, who spends thousands of exalts to craft truly endgame items via tft + harvest, who rolled unique jewels with divines, who spends most of the league crafting, and who has thousands of exalts on standard.

And that's who got clubbed with the latest patch.

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Xyel wrote:

On a note of old harvest, one memorable quote I have from the time is from Raiz.

He showcased one item he made, and argued that this is too good, that one shouldn't be able to make an item like this, calling harvest an item editor.

A viewer asked how long it took him to make it.

Two weeks.

Sounds like a reasonable time frame for someone who plays the game full time. Since everyone and their mom plays league anyway which is over after a few months why shouldn't it be in the game? It's gone next league anyway.

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loardpcm wrote:

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Xyel wrote:

On a note of old harvest, one memorable quote I have from the time is from Raiz.

He showcased one item he made, and argued that this is too good, that one shouldn't be able to make an item like this, calling harvest an item editor.

A viewer asked how long it took him to make it.

Two weeks.

Sounds like a reasonable time frame for someone who plays the game full time. Since everyone and their mom plays league anyway which is over after a few months why shouldn't it be in the game? It's gone next league anyway.

That's exatly my point - the 'item editor' meant 'spend over a hundred hours of very hardcore, very efficient play at an endgame character to make 1 item.'

There's nothing wrong with that, especially since the typical league play time is 3 - 6 weeks, so working 2 weeks for an item means spending 30 - 50 % of the league's playtime on making that one item.

How that is supposed to be a problem is beyond me.

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Xyel wrote:

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loardpcm wrote:

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Xyel wrote:

On a note of old harvest, one memorable quote I have from the time is from Raiz.

He showcased one item he made, and argued that this is too good, that one shouldn't be able to make an item like this, calling harvest an item editor.

A viewer asked how long it took him to make it.

Two weeks.

Sounds like a reasonable time frame for someone who plays the game full time. Since everyone and their mom plays league anyway which is over after a few months why shouldn't it be in the game? It's gone next league anyway.

That's exatly my point - the 'item editor' meant 'spend over a hundred hours of very hardcore, very efficient play at an endgame character to make 1 item.'

There's nothing wrong with that, especially since the typical league play time is 3 - 6 weeks, so working 2 weeks for an item means spending 30 - 50 % of the league's playtime on making that one item.

How that is supposed to be a problem is beyond me.

Same. It is safe to say that the actual majority does not care about standard and neither does GGG. How us getting good items in a league that resets every 3 months is problematic is beyond me.

To me it seems like GGG are locked in a loot mindset failure. GGG want dropped items to be 'good'. This is why GGG didn't think the loot was nerfed at the start of the league, because GGG don't look at the loot filters that players run. The amount of rares dropped actually increased. Anyone doing chaos recipe knows this. But most players don't care about rares and wont have any* on loot filter after day 1-2. If you look at an actual players loot filter, then loot at the start of the league was definitely nerfed. So both ggg and and the player base were correct. Loot was nerfed (in ways players care about) and loot was buffed (in number of rares dropped for non-juiced scenarios).

GGG keeps wanting rares to be worth picking up, but this is a flawed logic because:
1) Too many rare items drop (if lots of things of a type drop you only want to pick up the best of those)
2) Items drop unidentified (you can't use a loot filter to tell which rare to pick up)
3) Higher item level doesn't mean better item (you can't use loot filter to tell which item to pick up)
4) The game has crafting (what is the point of all crafting currency if rares drop that are worth using as-is?)

As far as I can see you will never get players to turn on rares on their loot filter in a game with the above four issues. Some of these are easily solved, but point 4 would be the hardest to solve (I don't think it is possible without Last Epoch style attribute sharding))

*Players will have some rares on filter that are *crafting* bases. They don't have these rares on the filter because they think they have a reasonable chance to be usable as-is.

Rares would offer something valuable if they had a chance to be a deterministic crafting component. Suppose, you could combine a better roll modifier onto an existing one for a chance to improve your existing item's modifier by one point. You could impose whatever balance restrictions necessary, but it would provide a means for steady item progression and give rares meaning. You'd identify relevant rares searching for better mods.

One balance restriction could be that an item is locked for further improvement of this kind until you've defeated one or however many map bosses necessary (maybe based off modifier tier, e.g. a top tier improvement could require 500 zone level completions = 5 x level 80 maps). This would encourage players to play the game and prevent players from buying all of the improvements via trade and just sit in the hideout crafting perfect items.

You can add some RNG for failure, but players should have a way to overcome failures by grinding something.

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TheFazzos wrote:

If you can have everything you wanr every time you want it what is the point?

Thats called trade league