Path of Exile is in a bad spot where there are no more iconic items... again... at least until PoE 2

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

theres loads of people out there who want magebloods to be easier to find but dont appreciate that their rarity is an essential part of what has made them want the item so badly in the first place. these people should just be ignored honestly. these are the people who were imploding with desire to have shavs be more common and are now not using a shavs and not even showing them on their item filter. they dont understand the game and they dont understand themselves. its still an insanely powerful item, no one cares, its sense of value is gone. a quicksilver flask is an insanely powerful item and no one has ever cared about it once theyve completely medicine chest on their first char. no one logs on and plays hoping to find a quicksilver flask. there should always be something you want, a lot, and dont have.

This a good representation of my personal experiences with the game. First time I got a headhunter I was awestruck, Then a few days later I was like what else could possibly drop for me that mattered anymore and why should I even keep playing at this point. Making another character without using it would be silly and would always end up being "just put that belt on and any damage problems would go away". It was a really exciting moment for it to drop but also game breaking at the same time. The same realization happens when you realize you have enough currency buy anything you want. That feeling that you have won the game and its time to put it away.

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sevens67 wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

theres loads of people out there who want magebloods to be easier to find but dont appreciate that their rarity is an essential part of what has made them want the item so badly in the first place. these people should just be ignored honestly. these are the people who were imploding with desire to have shavs be more common and are now not using a shavs and not even showing them on their item filter. they dont understand the game and they dont understand themselves. its still an insanely powerful item, no one cares, its sense of value is gone. a quicksilver flask is an insanely powerful item and no one has ever cared about it once theyve completely medicine chest on their first char. no one logs on and plays hoping to find a quicksilver flask. there should always be something you want, a lot, and dont have.

This a good representation of my personal experiences with the game. First time I got a headhunter I was awestruck, Then a few days later I was like what else could possibly drop for me that mattered anymore and why should I even keep playing at this point. Making another character without using it would be silly and would always end up being "just put that belt on and any damage problems would go away". It was a really exciting moment for it to drop but also game breaking at the same time. The same realization happens when you realize you have enough currency buy anything you want. That feeling that you have won the game and its time to put it away.

Agree with both of these sentiments. I have played games so long (Atari 2600, Odyssey really but I want to mention something a non 50 year old might have heard of) that I understand pretty much every reason for why every game works the way it works.

I have had endless arguments with people who don't understand. "they do this to manipulate you into playing their game" (aka make their game replayable for people who continue to want to play it) "they do this to take advantage of gamblers" (AKA give unpredictable results which become reasons to keep playing to people who enjoy the game and want more reasons). "they hate fun" (AKA they want more than a tiny subset of meta builds to be worth playing so they nerf the most busted stuff).

it never ends.

I remember when I would finish a 2600 game in 10m after I bought it and wish it had something no one ever heard of at the time "an end game" I remember a couple of the very first Boss fights in Videogames (Yar's revenge, a couple arcade games of the day as well such as Starcastles).

The thing is though being real here: there's a degree of diminishing returns of yanking the carrot further down the road or making it a really long road in the first place. Eventually you tune the game to be so replayable that the moment to moment enjoyment is worsened in the name of replay-ability. And it gets all distorted and deformed by the meta (clear speed meta) so they make it even more distorted and deformed to keep CuteDog from finishing too fast, giving everyone else who's normal or not clear speed a case of blue balls.

Still I don't think either MB or HH meet that definition because they aren't ACTUALLY a build or an archetype, just chase items you can pretty much fit into any decent build.

I really have had enough of GGG catering the game to that player, and really hope that POE2 is actually fun to play moment to moment regardless of how fast .001% of players manage to play it. But i'd be lying if I said I was confident this will be the case.

get iconic item -> more power creep -> need more iconic items -> more power creep -> need more iconic item.....

So, what's the point to chase iconic items?

The real iconic item is the 40-challenges totem piece in hcssf.

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alhazred70 wrote:

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sevens67 wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

theres loads of people out there who want magebloods to be easier to find but dont appreciate that their rarity is an essential part of what has made them want the item so badly in the first place. these people should just be ignored honestly. these are the people who were imploding with desire to have shavs be more common and are now not using a shavs and not even showing them on their item filter. they dont understand the game and they dont understand themselves. its still an insanely powerful item, no one cares, its sense of value is gone. a quicksilver flask is an insanely powerful item and no one has ever cared about it once theyve completely medicine chest on their first char. no one logs on and plays hoping to find a quicksilver flask. there should always be something you want, a lot, and dont have.

This a good representation of my personal experiences with the game. First time I got a headhunter I was awestruck, Then a few days later I was like what else could possibly drop for me that mattered anymore and why should I even keep playing at this point. Making another character without using it would be silly and would always end up being "just put that belt on and any damage problems would go away". It was a really exciting moment for it to drop but also game breaking at the same time. The same realization happens when you realize you have enough currency buy anything you want. That feeling that you have won the game and its time to put it away.

Agree with both of these sentiments. I have played games so long (Atari 2600, Odyssey really but I want to mention something a non 50 year old might have heard of) that I understand pretty much every reason for why every game works the way it works.

I have had endless arguments with people who don't understand. "they do this to manipulate you into playing their game" (aka make their game replayable for people who continue to want to play it) "they do this to take advantage of gamblers" (AKA give unpredictable results which become reasons to keep playing to people who enjoy the game and want more reasons). "they hate fun" (AKA they want more than a tiny subset of meta builds to be worth playing so they nerf the most busted stuff).

it never ends.

I remember when I would finish a 2600 game in 10m after I bought it and wish it had something no one ever heard of at the time "an end game" I remember a couple of the very first Boss fights in Videogames (Yar's revenge, a couple arcade games of the day as well such as Starcastles).

The thing is though being real here: there's a degree of diminishing returns of yanking the carrot further down the road or making it a really long road in the first place. Eventually you tune the game to be so replayable that the moment to moment enjoyment is worsened in the name of replay-ability. And it gets all distorted and deformed by the meta (clear speed meta) so they make it even more distorted and deformed to keep CuteDog from finishing too fast, giving everyone else who's normal or not clear speed a case of blue balls.

Still I don't think either MB or HH meet that definition because they aren't ACTUALLY a build or an archetype, just chase items you can pretty much fit into any decent build.

I really have had enough of GGG catering the game to that player, and really hope that POE2 is actually fun to play moment to moment regardless of how fast .001% of players manage to play it. But i'd be lying if I said I was confident this will be the case.

I would expect a different perspective from someone who's been around video games for that long. As have I, and I disagree.

They need to keep the Cutedogs of the world from finishing too fast.
I wonder why you cannot understand that if they didn't, the game's replayability and longevity would suffer greatly.

Fact is games of this type need ''the carrot and the stick'' or people would stop playing pretty fast. Things/items/content needs to be gated.

And no-life players should definitely be able to obtain more things and access more content the more hours they sink into the game.

If everyone could buy a rolex, they wouldn't be worth anything. Same goes for any desirable or luxury product really. Softcore trade league is a capitalistic ecosystem.

The only thing I would suggest in order to satisfy the portion of the playerbase complaining the game is either too hard or too grindy; would be to create an alternative game mode with higher droprates resembling Affliction.
All the noobs and casuals can go there, call it: ''The 3 wives, 15 children and fulltime job league'' ; and leave the normal base game and its core philosophies for us to enjoy.

(ps: I'm joking about the alternative game mode's name, but it could still be a serious option)

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Senju_Hyoketsu wrote:

They need to keep the Cutedogs of the world from finishing too fast.
I wonder why you cannot understand that if they didn't, the game's replayability and longevity would suffer greatly.

Fact is games of this type need ''the carrot and the stick'' or people would stop playing pretty fast. Things/items/content needs to be gated.

And no-life players should definitely be able to obtain more things and access more content the more hours they sink into the game.

If everyone could buy a rolex, they wouldn't be worth anything. Same goes for any desirable or luxury product really. Softcore trade league is a capitalistic ecosystem.

The only thing I would suggest in order to satisfy the portion of the playerbase complaining the game is either too hard or too grindy; would be to create an alternative game mode with higher droprates resembling Affliction.
All the noobs and casuals can go there, call it: ''The 3 wives, 15 children and fulltime job league'' ; and leave the normal base game and its core philosophies for us to enjoy.

(ps: I'm joking about the alternative game mode's name, but it could still be a serious option)

You basically glossed over the point which is that replay-ability/grind eventually reaches diminishing returns where the actual gameplay suffers in the name of making it take longer. Like there IS sucha thing as stretching something good out too far to the point where it becomes less good.

Have you never chewed a delicious bite of food for too long?

Making the game take longer for the .00001% of players like Grimro or Empy may get you day 7 MB instead of day 5 MB

But it turns the game for everyone else into an ungodly slog that something like 70-80% of "returning invested POE players" get bored of in yellow maps. This is a fact BTW, Chris has talked about metrics like this openly in the past, I can admit I forget the exact numbers though.

So the trick is how much focus on replayability grind slot machine (and thus keeping player agency and important decisions to a minimum) is too much and how much is not enough?

200 game developers making content for 50-150 streamers and letting everyone get bored is the sweet spot?

Grimro already quit POE after years of playing for about 2 weeks a league, this focus doesn't even keep that kind of player around reliably. His playstyle the one you think GGG needs to cater to is called "content locusts" by MMO devs and smarter MMO's have given up trying to cater to those "rush the end game by any means necessary" type meta game players.

Successful MMO's have actually largely gone casual, WoW, GW2, ESO, FF14 and several others increasingly cater to "story driven" content in addition to or even instead of the old way of trying to almost entirely focus on more elaborate end game hamsterwheels into the game for the .001% of players who will just ignore the previous hamsterwheel and rush the new one.

And now POE has a real competitor... A less thirsty ARPG one that has already broken POE's best Steam concurrency despite having maybe 1/10th the content. Its done it by appealing to people who want to get off the "we've tuned the entire game to try and slow down Emperion and CuteDog and 1500 other players most of whom make a living streaming our game, you can play our game too if you want to be bored to tears by yellow maps" train ride.

Right now POE has a ludicrously trivial (SC Trade) "creative mode" where if you follow a meta you will 100% GUARANTEED shit on the game and then multiple other thirsty modes which are essentially polar opposites of SC trade. There's nothing in the middle, the galaxy wide super massive black hole thats in the middle.

A mode thats actually balanced to be an enjoyable experience with or without very limited trade (to make it harder than SC trade's complete triviality) without meta herd following or quitting your job (so with low and mid investment power bumps for the 70-80% of the games bad skills) would probably be in GGG's best interest if you ask me.

I was hoping that Ruthless trade would be the middle ground, but they scorched the earth and salted the fields; left it a barren lifeless hellscape... oh and they fixed loot... so there's that... the loot actually does feel good... its all the utterly failed execution of sterilizing the atlas and cauterizing the fun out that sours it.

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alhazred70 wrote:

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Senju_Hyoketsu wrote:

200 game developers making content for 50-150 streamers and letting everyone get bored is the sweet spot?

Couldn't agree more. SSF is just miserable since the atlas passive rework and lowering the floor for rewards without being hard spec'd into that mechanic. Although I wish we still had 200 devs working on PoE1. Maybe every performance patch wouldn't render the game almost unplayable. As the most recent one did, again.