I'm sick of zoom meta. (Speed creep created bad combat and game balance)

Ruthless is like breaking your legs and ripping out an eye before taking a walk. Even if it's about the journey and not about the goal, ruthless doesn't make the journey more interesting or fun. The trip just takes longer and you get to see less.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

Ruthless is like breaking your legs and ripping out an eye before taking a walk. Even if it's about the journey and not about the goal, ruthless doesn't make the journey more interesting or fun. The trip just takes longer and you get to see less.

Pretty visceral description, but yea, does not affect some of the issues I have with the floor of the destination everyone reaches (as I describe in OP)

Which is why I said "no, just play ruthless is not a solution to the core issues"

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alhazred70 wrote:

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SilentSymphony wrote:

What?

well assuming that you're sincerely asking: I mean the moment to moment enjoyment of taking on and surmounting problems, dealing with obstacles etc. (aka gameplay) is the only "point" and not the illusory ones people sometimes like to pretend are important like being the first to 100, finishing the game, killing all bosses, etc.

GGG put all of their attention on the temp leagues especially Standard-Challenge-League and being only 3 months long of course this incentivized people to chase those things.

Now they've got Ruthless which imo shouldn't even exist, Should have just made an Easy-Mode instead of ruthless(literally what the masses were asking for) and reigned in hardcore/standard instead because if GGG cant stabilize that then the exact same thing will happen in Ruthless it will only take a bit longer for it to happen.

I was not among the easy-mode crowd btw, i wanted the core game to become a little harder but not globally.. just to apply more pressure in the right places and better divide game progression.

Edit: feel like im in some offshoot reality these days

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alhazred70 wrote:

[ I mean the moment to moment enjoyment of taking on and surmounting problems, dealing with obstacles etc. (aka gameplay) is the only "point" and not the illusory ones people sometimes like to pretend are important like being the first to 100, finishing the game, killing all bosses, etc.

I somewhat disagree with this "definition" of gameplay and enjoyment. I say somewhat because enjoyment is, by definition, subjective. Don't get me wrong, the journey and the obstacles are very fun for me and are PART of the gameplay in my opinion.

But, gameplay in-and-of itself can be fun without problems or major challenges. The simple act of sitting down and playing a game, even if you are OP to the point of playing with cheats, CAN be fun. I wouldn't say the lack of challenge = zero gameplay, which is what your statement implies. Hell, leveling with twink gear is one of the most fun experiences I have when I play PoE...

There are players that want to play HC/Ruthless and uber challenge modes and thats fine, those modes exist. But there are also players like me that sometimes enjoy the base game, but might also like an easier mode to casually stroll through and experience everything the game has to offer. It's equally fun for me to be challenged as it is for me to NOT be challenged sometimes. And then there's the time issue too. Ruthless mode is not "harder", it just takes longer. Conversely, an easy mode might not necessarily be "easier", but it can be designed to take less time on the grind (easier crafting, higher drop rates, etc.). Players still deal with the same challenges, the same gameplay, the same skills and character building, but on a more manageable time table for solo players. If I were to sit down and play SSF with a character from 0 - 100, 0d to full mirror gear, with my 10+ years of experience it would take me probably a year or likely longer for a SINGLE character. That goddamn sucks...and this is just playing for myself, not affecting or interacting with any kind of other player or market.

I was the kind of person that would always play games through a bunch of times normally, maybe try a challenge mode (never HC though), but then what really kept me on a game for the long haul were cheats, hacks, and mods. I LOVED the feeling of being OP at every step of the game, it was no less enjoyable and it enhanced the "gameplay" for me. I literally can't do that with PoE which is a real shame because there's so much that I WANT to do that I know I'll NEVER do...

Also, having goals like racing, finishing x content, etc. is ABSOLUTELY part of the gameplay fun for many many players. Might not be your thing, but the "illusory" things you mention are exactly the same in my eyes as the challenges you list as being core to "gameplay". Racing is not my thing, but I can see how it can be someone else's "enjoyment of taking on and surmounting problems, dealing with obstacles".

I could have said it more clearly: fun is the only point. Insomuch as you have fun playing a game because of tackling the obstacles the designers created. You can call some of the obstacles unimportant (leveling) but thats just a thing you're doing to yourself (I know because I've done that) not an objective fact.

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SilentSymphony wrote:

GGG put all of their attention on the temp leagues especially Standard-Challenge-League and being only 3 months long of course this incentivized people to chase those things.

Now they've got Ruthless which imo shouldn't even exist, Should have just made an Easy-Mode instead of ruthless(literally what the masses were asking for) and reigned in hardcore/standard instead because if GGG cant stabilize that then the exact same thing will happen in Ruthless it will only take a bit longer for it to happen.

I was not among the easy-mode crowd btw, i wanted the core game to become a little harder but not globally.. just to apply more pressure in the right places and better divide game progression.

Edit: feel like im in some offshoot reality these days

I could 100% have gotten behind making an "easy mode" and fix the ground loot in the normal mode. I suspect they might still do that. Ruthless does fix the entirely busted ground loot problem the game has (by removing crafting, meaning you can never get to the point where you ignore the rares on the ground AKA ignore the core gameplay loop of an ARPG). So it does do something good for an extreme niche of players like myself.

Don't get me wrong I think they massively overshot on Ruthless and almost no one wants to play it mostly because they rampped the tedium by 1000x and "lots more tedium" wasn't what "hard mode enjoyers" were really asking for. Quin69 for example is on record as wanting something BETWEEN ruthless and normal trade HC POE. At risk of sounding like a quin vegan I'd have to say I'd like Ruthless a whole lot more if it was closer to this "half way" myself.

At least IMO.

The horse is out of the barn so the only thing left to do is wait to see how in the world GGG manages to make POE2 actually feel like a good game while slowing everything down for "engaging combat" and also not send some chunk of their playerbase away because it no longer has the cookie clicker combat.

GGG might be thinking in terms of D4 = shallow end of the pool, why compete directly with D4 when they can double down on Hard/Deep/Core gamer smaller but more passionate playerbase. I honestly don't know. but it doesn't hurt them to have a wide spread of difficulty.

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alhazred70 wrote:

I could have said it more clearly: fun is the only point. Insomuch as you have fun playing a game because of tackling the obstacles the designers created. You can call some of the obstacles unimportant (leveling) but thats just a thing you're doing to yourself (I know because I've done that) not an objective fact.

Well this is the same point though....you are codifying someone else's "fun" to your own subjective idea of fun.

Leveling IS an obstacle the designers created, otherwise it wouldn't exist. So why is that an "unimportant" challenge? Also, ANY challenge you undertake is something you take on yourself, whether its tackling a boss, leveling to 100, finding that unique item, getting to x power, etc. Literally anything you do in a game is gameplay, and any goal you might have no matter how benign is created by the gameplay and therefore the designers. Except if you do something like a "nuzleaf challenge" and decide to play the game without equipping any jewelry or some self-inflicted solo challenge. But that still might be something someone else might fine fun.

At this point, I don't really even understand the point you are trying to make because it reads like: some ways people play to have fun are not correct and not supported by the game. But this is objectively not true and counter to your very first line.

"Fun is the only point". Exactly. People have fun with PoE in different ways. These things you deem "unimportant" might be the MOST important things to the next person over.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

"Fun is the only point". Exactly. People have fun with PoE in different ways. These things you deem "unimportant" might be the MOST important things to the next person over.

Yeah I covered what you're talking about by specifying: "Insomuch as you have fun playing a game because of tackling the obstacles the designers created".


If you enjoy racing a car around a track every weekend but then decide that the first 100 laps are unimportant because the cars not perfectly dialed in for the track conditions and is going a little slower than its potential, and then no longer have fun for those laps, you're doing that to yourself.

You seem to be thinking I'm trying to define what is or isn't fun. When what I'm commenting about is human nature and our tendency to get into our own heads. I'm relating my opinion because I've done the exact thing I'm talking about, realized I was going it and want to share that.

I'm not entirely sure your point came across that way at all in your previous posts :) Hence, both mine and @silentsymphony comfusion and disagreement...

I still don't totally get the overall point you're trying to make, because the way you are explaining it seems to describe two totally separate things.

On the one hand, "our tendency to get into our own heads" which I guess means that the lack of "fun" players feel is based on their own standards of what should be possible or their inability to reach their goals? I'm not really even sure how to use an in-game example to describe this: perhaps crafting might be the best example. A player wants to craft an item with specific mods, gets frustrated that they aren't achieving their goal, and lose the "fun" aspect because of that...but isn't that essentially the "challenge" part of trying to achieve the goal which you described as the essential element of "fun"?

On the other hand, your "pointless" comments earlier, as well as the judgment on "illusory" goals of OTHER players. This is a direct judgment on how other people play, and contrary to the previous point you were trying to make. Almost the exact opposite. You say fun is the point, but then describe everything else that creates the fun as pointless. I'm curious what would actually be "meaningful" to you beyond just "fun"? Fun doesn't exist on its own, fun is a feeling about something else. "Every mode of every game is pointless": this is again contrary to what I think you are trying to say. If the point is fun, and the mode creates the fun, then the mode can't be pointless.

I guess maybe what you are trying to say is that the player chooses a goal they want to achieve, a goal which is "fun" to strive for, and much of the rest of the game becomes superfluous "unfun" material. Ex: you want to beat uber bosses, but you hate leveling. But this doesn't exactly make sense because you also said its about the "journey" and the journey to your goal INCLUDES all the steps along the way. All those "obstacles" you are overcoming. It isn't fun in-and-of itself for me to grind currency to get the next gear upgrade, but the goal of getting that gear is what gives meaning to the grind. Remove that grind, and then the goal
loses its appeal. It's all interconnected and nothing is pointless or illusory.


Or perhaps you are going uber metaphysical and saying "all life is pointless", and our individual cares and desires and fun is irrelevant.

As for how all of that relates to the original topic: I agree that fun is the main point.

If you aren't having fun with the zoom zoom, then either don't play zoom zoom or give the game a break and find another game that provides the fun you want!