Harvest had 50% more players at same point, Ritual had 90% more

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TheFazzos wrote:

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feike wrote:

Reading some of the posts, i have to ask... Am i the only one who think its OBVIOUS when Chris mentioned he dont take retention as the only metric, he meant just that: He cares about it but dont think it should be the only and true absolute gospel behind wich he should dictate the direction of the game? And when he said that he rather have 10k players than diablo-esque numbers, he meant he rather have a game thats actually loved, even if its niche and indie, than a game thats super mainstream, but its more a money-making shovelware than a game that people actually enjoy?

Really, reading the comments you would think people took those words and seriously interpreted that chris plain dont give a damn about player retention or how the playerbase would be affected on each decision



As for the player-power vs monster-power, i think you guys are missreading things, i dont think its a matter of how much power the players have vs monsters, even AN mods werent problematic at all on their original league back when those mods were even more opressive

I would say the problem is more about control: The AN introduction really takes away control from the players on the dificulty on normal mapping, you have no way to prevent or predict the diff spike that happens when a yellow with mods that counters you shows up. The loot goblin is similar: Its not a matter of the spike itself, its rather how umpredictable and unreliable it is while still being the most efficient way to get currency. Harvest? Same deal: It takes away what little control we were granted to craft stuff and forces us to either settle for "can have 3 crafted mods" and go for 2 weaker crafted mods or take a very high risk to try to get the other half of the item with T2-1 affixes

I think "power" itself is kinda irrelevant, the problem is how they are culling the way we can control how to play the game or get certain outcomes, wich i find kinda baffling: Almost every new mechanic since blight was all about letting the players decide how much challenge vs reward we want. Surely they know its good design to let the players decide how to play the game? Freedom was supposed to be one of the game main selling point

Please allow me to show you how I think it works using a Magic: the Gathering example, which I know Chris Wilson plays.

In MTG you can have a deck with a very high winrate and still lose to a single card designed specifically to break that deck. Such cards are called "silver bullets" in MTG jargon.

Archnemesis mods are silver bullets to most builds. It means that no matter how you build your character, somewhere there is something that potentially can ruin your day.

For the game, this means that it is very unlikely that somebody will abuse a mechanic to make a character that trivializes a content, because somewhere in the game there will always be a combination of mods that simply ignores that.

I remember the days of aura stackers where A8 Sirus was the most difficult content in the game (also due to some flawed encounter design but let us not indulge) and these builds could literally tank Sirus' storms. These days are finally over not only because of balance changes but also because Archnemesis makes it very unlikely to have a build that can trivialize everything in the game. At least this is how I think it is. It would be nice to hear Chris Wilson commenting on this.