A cool thread about Terminology, Expressions & Philosophy related to Path of Exile (:

I'm amazed I managed to say all that without even using the dictionary definition of tedium: the state or quality of being tedious. And what is tedious? Boring. I didn't use the word 'boring' once. Oddly enough, you did -- and not even in the entry for tedium!

I wasn't being condescending. I do applaud the effort. The self-appellation of 'cool thread' is a bit beyond the pale for my likes but hey, that's a me problem: self-promotion is far from my strong suit. I am much more apt to let others decide for themselves what to think of me and my work.

I took no real exception at all the other entries. Just tedium. Because I think it's disingenuous to call something traditionally considered bad or undesirable 'not bad' just because some folks might misuse it. This thread, I figure, is an attempt at correcting their misuse by clarifying what tedium actually is and why it actually is bad, rather than perpetuating of the misconception by saying that yes it is tedium but no tedium is not bad. If they're not genuinely bored, if it doesn't seem painfully monotonous, dull, tiresome, too long or slow (all dictionary definitions of 'tedious'), then it isn't actually tedium. Although that is discounting the fact that tedium can be a very temporary state of reduced intensity, a welcome downtime, and in that light pretty much everything has SOME measure of tedium, else we'd all die of heart attacks at quite a young age.

Personally I find our seeming inability to see eye-to-eye despite efforts of both sides tedious, so I'll leave it there. :)

PS the early PoE thing might seem like self-promotion to you but I wasn't involved with that level of testing. It was just a story I heard and I thought an appropriate example of what tedium in early PoE was like and why it was removed. Like I said, I suck at self-promotion, which is why I paid GGG silly money to get a pretty picture, a few items, a monster and a talking sword that does it for me. Although judging by most reactions to that last one, this probably backfired. ^_^

Tedium is always put into games as a means to an end. That end is more often than not centered around psychology. When doing "the tedious bits" pays off, it's all worth it and you're left with a sense of accomplishment or a sense of being lucky. The problem here, is when tedium is put in just for the sake of being tedious. Just as a hurdle to slow you down, with no real benefits to jumping those hurdles.

Anyhow, what is tedious is probably as subjective as "fun".

I was more surprised that your definition of "meta" was going unnoticed by the abbreviation squad, claiming "META" is an abbreviation of "most efficient tactic available", meaning EXACTLY the most powerful skills/builds. Seem to remember a rather lengthy debate regarding the definition of "meta" in here a while back.

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Phrazz wrote:

I was more surprised that your definition of "meta" was going unnoticed by the abbreviation squad, claiming "META" is an abbreviation of "most efficient tactic available", meaning EXACTLY the most powerful skills/builds. Seem to remember a rather lengthy debate regarding the definition of "meta" in here a while back.

That's fun but it actually comes from the word "metagame" as "meta" is used as a prefix to explain the same dynamic of which is being referenced but occurring on a higher level.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metagaming

When we talk about a metagame, we're talking about a game which is played about the game. The game being in this case, trying to find the strongest character combinations in the game Path of Exile.

So, when we make a statement that we are playing a "meta" build, we're stating that we're playing the most powerful version which we have figured out collectively in this (meta)game about building characters for Path of Exile.

I do agree though that it is a lot easier to use that abbreviation as a tool to skip this whole wall of text.

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Kiss_Me_Quick wrote:

That's fun but it actually comes from the word "metagame" as "meta" is used as a prefix to explain the same dynamic of which is being referenced but occurring on a higher level.

I know, I was actually agreeing with you. Just surprised that people weren't arguing with you about it.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

It's also subjective: I'm willing to bet most non-Exiles would look at the Mapping loop and call it 'tedious' because they're not engaging with it on the same level as a veteran Exile, who has found their flow in that so-called tedium. This is hardly unique to PoE; any hobby or interest, if taken to an extreme-enough level of engagement, will seem tedious to an outsider.

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But once a person who is actually engaged with a hobby on a level outsiders would consider 'extreme' starts to see the hobby as tedium rather than that zen or blissing out or flow or whatever else, that's bad. That's not 'nothing'. That's a problem. That's the beginning of the end of engagement. And while you may feel otherwise, I'd be willing to bet GGG agree with this stance. If a widely read review of PoE claimed it was 'tedious', that'd sting. They're not going to be popping champagne bottles over it. They're going to look at which part of the game struck the reviewer as tedious and wonder why. Ultimately they might disagree with the reviewer (likely), but there's no way they'd just ignore it.

It's very subjective and I'm seeing more and more players will call something 'tedious' as an epithet because they can't formulate a proper and more accurate objection to the system they're talking about at the time.

An easy past example (and testable future hypothesis!) is that whenever GGG add new 'pinnacle' content to the end game, the game takes longer to beat for the 2% of players who do that kind of thing. The thing is, and everyone agrees here, that technically makes the game take longer. It's a new boss, a new system, probably a new set of fragments to collect or other hoops to jump through to access that boss. And in classic PoE fashion that probably either takes time or exalted orbs to access (now divine orbs, yuck!).

You have in the past and always will in the future see complaints creep in after the new-car-smell wears off the content accusing GGG of 'artificially inflating the game length' and 'making us play more for their retention numbers/sales' which, if you've played WoW as much as I have, is a giant-fucking-red-alert-sirens-blaring signal that this player has or had a toxic relationship with WoW, seeing every change here through that prism. Sane exiles know that PoE sales are driven in the 3 weeks surrounding a league launch, super hype driven, and they don't really care if we play for 2 weeks or 2 months, so long as we're incentivized to look shiny while we do it and toss GGG our tip.

But many ex-WoW players can't imagine a gaming relationship less toxic than the one they left, so they carry that baggage with them and see every post, every new content addition, and every metric through that prism.

Anyone who has ever watched both a good and a bad 2.5 hour movie knows the difference between art and amateur hour. One is bliss, the other tedium. One too long, the other not long enough.

And so to finally get to the reason I quoted you, it's this: ironically it is new players and outsiders who tend to see PoE tedium as valid art. You'll see a new player post who finished the campaign and something you'll often see them give a (+) to is that they liked the lore. It's the jaded veterans who comment 'what lore? this game doesn't have any, and what it does have is confusing as hell'. Because to them clicking the interactable lore and talking to NPCs voluntarily is tedium.

Likewise, when it's your first time through the atlas, newer players (who didn't quit after finishing Act 10) are often thrilled to find 'deep' systems like Betrayal, Incursion, etc, even if they often get a (-) for having too many. They can't imagine being upset at all that content laid out before them (in a free game no less!), let alone thinking it could be tedious. Of course, let them do it all 8 times in 21 months and see just how much new-car smell is left.

GGG actually has agreed with players these past 5 cycles in this regard - they trimmed the atlas and made it so Betrayal took fewer unveils to unlock all recipes. I think you're right that GGG often disagrees with the players on what is tedium and what is valid, grindy gameplay, but they're still willing to move the target on that front.

Overall, because I've seen and been frustrated by ever more common misuses of tedium, I stand on OP's side of the fence on this one - its a section worthy of being in the post. I agree with you though, that when any player, new or veteran, focus more on the repetition than losing themselves in the gameplay, that's bad. The artifice has indeed taken over the art. But to me that's MORE often a function of us players opting into the 3 month league cycle over and over again. The tedium is almost always, purposeful gameplay that improves our characters.

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innervation wrote:

It's very subjective and I'm seeing more and more players will call something 'tedious' as an epithet because they can't formulate a proper and more accurate objection to the system they're talking about at the time.

You say this and then follow it up with:

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innervation wrote:

An easy past example (and testable future hypothesis!) is that whenever GGG add new 'pinnacle' content to the end game, the game takes longer to beat for the 2% of players who do that kind of thing. The thing is, and everyone agrees here, that technically makes the game take longer. It's a new boss, a new system, probably a new set of fragments to collect or other hoops to jump through to access that boss. And in classic PoE fashion that probably either takes time or exalted orbs to access (now divine orbs, yuck!).

You have in the past and always will in the future see complaints creep in after the new-car-smell wears off the content accusing GGG of 'artificially inflating the game length' and 'making us play more for their retention numbers/sales'

Let's just deconstruct it for a moment.

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the game takes longer to beat for the 2% of players who do that kind of thing.

Like with any and every online game because there is more content. This is a good thing, but you express it as if it's a bad thing.

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And in classic PoE fashion that probably either takes time or exalted orbs to access

Like in every game, the journey to the (new) boss is also important. This is a good thing, but you express it as if it's a bad thing.

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complaints creep in after the new-car-smell wears off

Like with any and every game, as people increase their expertise, they see flaws. This is inevitable and a good thing because it shows that players are playing for a long time.

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'artificially inflating the game length' and 'making us play more for their retention numbers/sales'

Like with any and every online game as that's their goal. If anything, this is actually a praise as they should be using every method possible to give us as long of a journey as possible without making us bored.
Too add on top of it "artificial" doesn't mean anything, because everything in a video game is artificial.

Although you agree with me and I'm not trying to dunk on you - this section is a perfect example why I made this thread in the first place. There is no clear message, things that you are saying are not inherently bad things, they might appear bad because you write a lot of bad-sounding-words-in-this-way, mix in a few "toxic" and "sales", and think it's a good post but it's not because if we think about what's being said, these seemingly harmful concepts are mostly thought of as good things.

This thread isn't about what the game is and what the game isn't, but how people express their opinions about the game and how once the feedback is deconstructed, there isn't anything constructive to follow up from it.

When party A does something with good intentions for party B, and party B says 'ow that hurts' - that is a bad thing. That is toxic.

That is what the state of GGG adding to their endgame has become for some folks. And the words of the few on reddit quickly become the words of the many. That is why I agree with you here. I don't like that people throw around the word 'tedium'. They could use much more accurate and constructive language.

Increasing retention is not, and should not be the goal of GGG, nor is it the goal of all game makers. This is what the director of Final Fantasy 14 said when a player asked about how he could keep motivation to play, despite feeling like he was burned out and had played through the content:

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"It's alright not to play it everyday. Since it's just a game, you can stop forcing yourself if it's hard on you to keep that up. Rather, it'll just pile up unnecessary stress if you limit yourself into playing just that one game since there are so many other games out there. So, do come back and play it to your heart's content when the major patch kicks in, then stop it to play other games before you got burnt out, and then come back for another major patch. This will actually make me happier, and in the end, I think this is the best solution I can answer for keeping your motivation up for the game."

I believe GGG feels the same, at least they should. They don't seem to be financially incentivized to feel differently.

The most upvoted reply in the top comment's chain on https://old.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/z6caov/320_balance_manifesto_curses/ is about Doom/Hexblast:

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It was just another unnecessarily tedious mechanic that required you to wait like a couple seconds after casting the curse to get the full effect. This was what made Hexblast feel really clunky last time I played it.

The devs literally can't even put a two button combo in the game without the one button speed clear people labeling it 'unnecessarily tedious'.

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innervation wrote:

Increasing retention is not, and should not be the goal of GGG, nor is it the goal of all game makers. This is what the director of Final Fantasy 14 said when a player asked about

I believe GGG feels the same, at least they should. They don't seem to be financially incentivized to feel differently.

Okay, let's do this deconstruction exercise again.

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Increasing retention is not, and should not be the goal of GGG, nor is it the goal of all game makers.

You are portraying this as a bad thing by claiming that they should not focus on retention, although it is a good thing.

1) Studios do want their players to play as much as possible, and so too want the players to play as much as possible because it shows that a game is good and it provides enough novel experiences to come back every day.

2) The more players play, the more they have an opportunity to make in-game purchases. Clearly it is something that online games and GGG want.

3) Retention is one of the few metrics which they can measure and make assessments from. So too does this forum, as it shows when people become bored of the game.

4) Why would it be a bad thing? Even your own example - Final Fantasy 14 is a game which has some of the highest played hours on Steam. Clearly it's designed to be played a lot, not a bad thing.

5) Let's try a counterfactual. Would it be good if GGG did not focus on retention at all, because it's a bad thing? No, because most players already play only 1-2 weeks, downgrading it to just a few days doesn't sound very exciting.

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Kiss_Me_Quick wrote:

1) Studios do want their players to play as much as possible, and so too want the players to play as much as possible because it shows that a game is good and it provides enough novel experiences to come back every day.

I don't see the point of carrying on with conjecture and counterfactuals when reality continues to invalidate your first premise.

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"It's alright not to play it everyday. Since it's just a game, you can stop forcing yourself if it's hard on you to keep that up. Rather, it'll just pile up unnecessary stress if you limit yourself into playing just that one game since there are so many other games out there. So, do come back and play it to your heart's content when the major patch kicks in, then stop it to play other games before you got burnt out, and then come back for another major patch. This will actually make me happier, and in the end, I think this is the best solution I can answer for keeping your motivation up for the game."