Alright, Resolve is not as bad...Update 2

Update 2.

Update near the end of week 2. Sanctum is much better than expected and I experienced originally. It's all about your build, relics and knowledge.

As for Resolve I still have some minor issues with it.

Update.

When they said "telegraphed attacks damage Resolve" I thought of your Shaper Slams or Die beams or something similar. Something that doesn't appear often, something meaningful, something with clues, something you can reliably dodge, but it seems like EVERY SINGLE move unique mobs do hurts Resolve, every single move. You have to be dodging EVERYTHING they do. So you have to dodge AT ALL times! What the...

And then multiple of them spawn at once with some sort of environmental hazard on top...in first room on first floor. ._.

Originally I thought only unique monsters take away Resolve - nope some attacks from random monsters take it out too.

This is one of these moments where I hate to be proven right. Resolve feels absolutely awful. Sanctum in general is just awful - rewards, constant afflictions, resolve. They get "Rogue-like" completely wrong. You are supposed to get random buffs throught your fight and get stronger against monsters who also get stronger, not just debuffs and get weaker like in Sanctum.

...

Why is Sanctum basically Lab? Because of "Resolve" mechanic. It depletes everytime you get hit by anything in the Sanctum and did you seen how many traps and environmental effects there are? They are everywhere! Even when you fight monsters there are environmental effects going off. ._. And how do we run Lab? We pray, sip on Quicksilver flask, close our eyes (or not) and run through asap. Well, can't even do that in Sanctum, because Resolve bar goess brr.

Basically you need to dodge everything, even if your character completely overpowers content you still need to dodge everything. Git gud or die lose resolve and fail Sanctum.

Seems like Resolve is gonna be pretty annoying mechanic. I hope one will be able to basically ignore it later on.

You hope... we can ignore the largest mechanic of the league?

I'm so confused at the mindset some on these forums have.

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SunL4D2 wrote:

I hope one will be able to basically ignore it later on.

I am 100% convinced a lot of people will cry like you do in the first week (as usual), ggg will cave in again (as usual), and in the end sanctum will be a braindead walk in the park (as usual)...

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Clownkrieger wrote:

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SunL4D2 wrote:

I hope one will be able to basically ignore it later on.

I am 100% convinced a lot of people will cry like you do in the first week (as usual), ggg will cave in again (as usual), and in the end sanctum will be a braindead walk in the park (as usual)...

It's kinda sad that at this point we expect that League will take weeks to become good. And we don't even see an issue here.

What you mean is it will become proper ARPG mechanic.

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Bleu42 wrote:

You hope... we can ignore the largest mechanic of the league?

I'm so confused at the mindset some on these forums have.

No, resolve is just unnecessary layer of annoyance. Rogue-like never have anything like that. They are always about RNG, buffs, learning boss mechanics and surviving. Problem is death is meaningful part of gameplay in Rogue-likes, you are meant to die over and over again. Having to balance it for HC Leagues serves as huge detriment here.

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SunL4D2 wrote:

It's kinda sad that at this point we expect that League will take weeks to become good. And we don't even see an issue here.

What you mean is it will become proper ARPG mechanic.

Well definitions of "good" and "proper ARPG mechanics" might differ.

I know by now that most poe players hate to be challenged in any way though, so im not surprised anymore by your take *shrug*

Lab is an issue because it takes a while if you aren't speed running it, you can't take breaks, most people doing it just want their ascendancy, and if they die or get disconnected they have to start over. Detach ascendancy from lab and everything is fine. Lab and the roguelike buffs in there are a lot of fun when your objective is to just play lab. This league sounds like it is very much like lab, but without the forced pressure and requirement to do it. You go in there because you want to, you can pick the "give reward now" option so even if you don't make it to the end you don't feel like your time was wasted, this is all fine.

What people will complain about, is the league mechanic doesn't take place on maps and doesn't further juice maps, so everyone is going to say it's garbage and not worth running compared to just doing more maps.

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SunL4D2 wrote:

Problem is death is meaningful part of gameplay in Rogue-likes, you are meant to die over and over again. Having to balance it for HC Leagues serves as huge detriment here.

It's not just about balancing it for HC leagues, it's about balancing it for how recovery works in PoE in general.

Health is a vital resource in rogue-likes, and it is something that holds you back when it is getting low. Even if you have a mechanic that makes you stronger with less health remaining, you still have to play around the fact that having less health means you can make fewer mistakes.

Health in PoE allows too many avenues of recovery for it to fulfill that role. Weaken/remove those avenues of recovery, and you're preventing a lot of builds from even participating in the Sanctum.

Resolve was pitched as functioning like health does in rogue-likes, so you can have your rogue-like "deaths with meaning" without having to rebuild/restructure PoE itself.

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SunL4D2 wrote:

No, resolve is just unnecessary layer of annoyance. Rogue-like never have anything like that. They are always about RNG, buffs, learning boss mechanics and surviving. Problem is death is meaningful part of gameplay in Rogue-likes, you are meant to die over and over again. Having to balance it for HC Leagues serves as huge detriment here.

It's actually a great thing because people won't be able to simply cheese the entire mode with their boring hyper regen zdps builds like RF and so on early on.
Means a proper balanced build and knowledge about the mode is required to succeed in the long run.

I like lab, but this isn't lab.

Resolve is just another timer, honestly. It's not intended to recover, it's there to reward speedrunners in a "challenge is its own reward" sort of way.

If you don't believe me, try the Bad Argus test.

First big sanctum, take a break to go to the washroom. Find a corner that looks deserted, wall up behind some zombies or wep swap to tempest shield + vitality, then come back in 5 minutes.

If you're still alive and your resolve hasn't budged, congrats, it's lab. You can go and have a life, a family, kids, kidneys, bladder, colon, etc. and still enjoy the league mechanic.

If you're facedown in a closed instance, well you've learned something.

edit: because I talk too much, I never shut up.

Roguelikes sometimes had timed segments, or race events, but racing against the clock wasn't the central feature for most. Adding a simple timer like Resolve that can be accelerated by interacting with content, is a shorthand for "this isn't really a roguelike, it's a timed gauntlet". Whereas in a classic roguelike, you may spend HOURS limping through levels saddled with curses, bad omens, debilitating wounds, heavy gear, the body of your comrade, or gnawing hunger.

The rewards have to be absolutely ridiculously insane or the mechanic has to be easily cheeseable or everyone will quit the league immediately.

There have been no special rewards from the sanctum revealed so far, and the special relics are confirmed not going core so there's no point in farming it unless the return is 1.5x that of mapping or better.

GGG says league mechanics can be 2x as rewarding as mapping and that's ok but they don't really know how to calculate that correctly. Lakes in Kalandra were ~0.5-0.75x as rewarding as mapping and that was after all the buffs. If Sanctum is the same *and* it's obnoxious --> lowest retention league of all time.