PoB Now Finds Your Build a Item DPS Upgrade within Your Budget
" Well that's the thing, isn't it? GGG don't WANT a tool like this in the game. So now what can/should they do? |
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" A few things. 1. Help support PoB with OAuth by approving them, and offering to facilitate the required server, with the tradeoff being no more item maximizer tools. 2. Implement their own planning tool that they are comfortable with feature wise. 3. Make the community afraid of using this feature in PoB indicating their accounts might be at risk. 4. ToS PoB totally. (Seems unlikely given the amount of users) 5. Buy PoB and then do whatever you want with it, including totally eliminating it, but with the understanding another might pop up "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln Last edited by DarthSki44#6905 on Dec 14, 2022, 12:59:05 PM
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After checking it out, very good.
You still have to make choices, make the trade happen, consider what other impacts it has on your build particularly defenses. It just speeds up the process of you trying to guess which of your search results is stronger. Is +20 flat fire damage to attacks or 32% increased elemental damage better? Is that really a skillful and important gameplay question you want to spend a ton of time on? |
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" That is not even getting to the server performance saved and time spend outside of game setting up filters. Before i had to open 80 searches for single jewel slot because of the combinations, now i use ONE. that is like 80 less people wasting live search performance. They even had to introduce cap of 20 searches or what is current number because it was shutting down trade server. I feel pretty, Oh, so pretty,
I feel pretty, and witty and gay, And I pity Any girl who isn’t me today! | |
" The green arrow/red arrow suggestion system you're deriding came in with Diablo 3, not Diablo Immortal, and yeah, I was happy to shit on it for years when I was...let's say a little less open-minded about the future of ARPGs. When of course shitting on D3 was what you did, although as I recall during closed beta we referred to it as TOG (That Other Game) so as not to incite irrelevant conflicts. But that was ten years ago, man. That was before I came to see that the itemisation complexity of PoE, which only kept growing and eating more of its own tail, was deliberately getting in the way of the gameplay...because the gameplay itself was nothing amazing. That was before D3 cleaned up its act pretty hard, scrapped the RMAH, introduced Adventure Mode and landed as a quite fun multiplayer lightweight brawler with RL friends who didn't have time or mental space for the likes of PoE. And fuck me dead if I didn't come to appreciate the green arrow/red arrow system because it meant I wasn't fucking about with gear analysis when I'd rather be out in the game proper killing shit with my friends. Here's the thing, Varana. Here's what I learned. My entire attitude towards QoL and the simplification of ARPGs before that was based on one simple factor: I was used to playing alone and in my own time. I could leave my Exile sitting in Sarn or my Hideout as I researched shit on the web about the game, or yes tapped poe.xyz for some 1c deals to play with. Or weigh up various options going forward. PoE is fucking awesome if you don't want to play with friends. And that's sad, because I played D1 with friends. I played D2 with friends. I played Wolcen with a friend. I play Grim Dawn with a friend (and with that one, the lack of at-a-glance upgrades really fucks with our sessions because we're both Exiles and we both can't resist fairly small upgrade choices when in town. We waste a lot of time fucking about with GD's dated item system). Hell, I even played Darkstone with friends. The ARPG is, traditionally speaking, a multiplayer game and is, I'd argue, at its peak when you've got a good rhythm going with friends. It is impossible to achieve that rhythm with PoE because it lacks any sort of green arrow/red arrow system. And that's fine -- as I said, it's made for people who play alone and only really interact to trade. But we've all gotten older, a bit slower, a bit more inundated with life. Mostly. And the younger generation, they never experienced the early ARPGs to begin with, so it's little wonder the ARPG genre is on life support compared to the truly popular games out there. I suspect by invoking the almost universally hated Diablo Immortal you wanted to initiate a slippery slope style argument, but I strongly doubt it was the red arrow/green arrow system that makes Diablo Immortal so universally hated. And ignoring even that example, getting back to the actual topic at hand, I maintain anything that streamlines the players' experience of PoE as a game where you kill monsters, get stronger, and then kill more monsters is a good thing. Regardless of the technical shitstorm it seems to have caused. PoE could be endowed with a LOT more such QoL and automation and still be the most complicated, convoluted ARPG to ever exist and it wouldn't even be close. Exiles fail to realise that because they just see red arrow/green arrow systems as anathema and leave it at that. They don't engage critically with anything BUT Path of Exile because frankly, Path of Exile is too consuming to allow or encourage that. And that's why the game is where it is. Because so often suggestions to drag PoE kicking and screaming out of 2012 are seen as personal attacks on the Exile's way of life. Green arrow good/red arrow bad would only work for a PoE that remembered that ARPGs were about more than painstakingly building a character by yourself and then throwing it into a simulation. See, that's where I really get confused. Exiles get up in arms at the mention of possible automation/simplification of the trading system, as though it's not the worst trading system in 'modern' gaming, but are content with ludicrously automated/simple gameplay. GGG keep trying to make PoE more tactical, starting with the Labyrinth, moving into more telegraphed boss move design and of course now with The Sanctum, but Exiles want none of it. Because they've spent so much time and effort strategising their character that there's really no reason why it shouldn't bulldoze through any tactical challenges. Meanwhile the very games Exiles mock because players can, at a glance, upgrade their gear effectively, have much more tactically involved encounters that require actual engagement in the moment regardless of gear. And to each their own. The more tactical ARPG/brawler that prioritises the action and encourages multiplayer involvement by minimising time-consuming gear deliberation is great for shenanigans with friends but *typically* kind of boring alone. And strategic games like PoE, those that prioritise the methodical construction and maintenance of the player's resources (be it a single character, a party, an army, a world, etc) are more like puzzles to be figured out, which are not exactly much fun with others. And if that is the model PoE is following, then I'd look at its godawful trade system like having to leave the house to get the necessary jigsaw pieces to finish a puzzle. Now and then it's fun to go on such a quest (collectors know this very well) but if you're forced to do that too much, it gets in the way of enjoying the puzzle solving. That's why PoE is seen as work to a lot of people who try it. I think they recognise early on that it's a puzzle-solving game at heart rather than an action game, but the combination of extremely unwieldy instructions and missing pieces in the box (well, not missing -- acquiring them is part of the game) is very off-putting. So again, I don't see how any sort of QoL that makes it easier or more convenient to acquire the desired pieces to the puzzle should detract from the game IF it's about solving that puzzle. But if it's deliberately about making acquiring the pieces difficult and tedious, then by all means keep it that way. This all accords with PoE's decaying identity. It doesn't know what it wants to be: a traditional hack and slasher; a puzzle to be solved; a trading simulator? PoE doesn't provide players enough built-in tools to be a great example of any of those. Combine that jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none approach with its terminal addiction to genre-sampling league gimmicks and the end result is pretty messy. Were it to commit to the action, red arrow down/green arrow up would be welcome. If it wants to be a puzzle that reconfigures itself every so often, then it needs to make the acquisition of the many possible pieces to solve that puzzle easier. And if it wants to be a trading simulator, then it needs Eve-like tools to encourage players to treat it that way. Ah, but that's why we have the third party tools, right? Because players decided for themselves what PoE was and how to approach it. How to streamline it. How to grant it the QoL GGG wouldn't. And GGG went along with that, because of course they did: players were modding their game experience and the devs were like, wow, they REALLY love our game to do that. And 'going along with it' became 'encouraging it' and is now 'relying on it'...which is fine until player-made tools reveal how exploitable they can be because they don't have the oversight of dev-made ones. And that's how we got to the point of GGG having to *make a news post* telling people not to use certain player-made tools. That's really embarrassing when you think about it. And if they'd embraced a mentality that maybe lies adjacent to 'green arrow good/red arrow bad' (i.e. built in QoL), maybe they wouldn't be in a position where they're having to tell players not to use certain player-made tools when they've been allowing, encouraging and relying on people to use them for years. " You would guess wrong. I want the best for PoE because I think it's hit a wall as a solo player game when the true beating heart of ARPGs was always in their multiplayer potential. So...QED. I AM experiencing some belated schadenfreude regarding GGG though. I have never hidden how I felt about some of their business decisions and how eventually, they would prove to be less than ideal. But since I don't consider the streamlining of the trade process in PoE detrimental and never have (the game's trading system isn't that much evolved from the drop trades of beta, to be honest -- it's barely at D2 level), because I've also played games like Eve, accusations of schadenfreude in this case are null and void. :) If I like a game, it'll either be amazing later or awful forever. There's no in-between. I am Path of Exile's biggest whale. Period. Last edited by Foreverhappychan#4626 on Dec 15, 2022, 3:12:16 AM
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this game needs players relying less on PoB not more.
Innocence forgives you
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" I don't keep up with the details but didn't GGG employ the creator of PoB at some point? I might be misremembering but I figured if so that should have signalled their plan to create an official version of it. If I like a game, it'll either be amazing later or awful forever. There's no in-between.
I am Path of Exile's biggest whale. Period. |
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" That is what i had heard as well and the hope was for some kind of integration with the official client, I use PoEPlanner to make rough drafts and iron them out ingame but i've used PoB a couple of times as it was the only way to check my dps for my spectres outside of literal feel of it. I remember most build guides even post PoB still included leveling trees and links to the default skill tree but now there's basically nothing but PoB links or make yer own :P Hoping that they take this trend seriously and are looking at a more permanent in-house solution. Innocence forgives you
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" It was related but also unrelated. Designing PoB provided the personal contact with GGG but he wasnt brought onboard to work on their inhouse planning tool. He is working on other things. That's said they do actually have some version of a GGG PoB. The thing is that the community PoB has scaled beyond their expectations. There are a number of features GGG wouldnt want in their version, and I think they are not super comfortable releasing a version that seems "inferior". But really its just a reflection of things they don't want the game to tell players so directly. The reality probably lies in the middle somewhere. I've always believed you shouldnt sacrifice the good, in hopes of the perfect. The current tooltip is bad. Actually a case can be made that some parts of it are detrimental or extremely misleading. Also you don't even have the most simple planning tools for the passive tree (you cannot even preview ascendency choices). GGG's version of PoB or PoB lite could exist along side with the community fork version. It's a win win for players imo. It's been many years now though (5 in fact for PoB), so idk if a GGG PoB will ever really release. That's sad tbh. "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln Last edited by DarthSki44#6905 on Dec 15, 2022, 9:54:37 AM
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Updated the OP with this info:
The manager of PoB (does it have a manager? it's open source) /u/LocalIdentity1 made a reddit post today in direct response to the GGG post. The crux of the counterpoint is (paraphrasing) " |
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