Help with combining accidentally split item

I pretty much agree with that. I think it would of made complete technical sense to the programmers, but they're maybe missing a step in their process for remembering it needs make sense to the user as well, of which many may not be programmers.

I don't think this is obviously foreseeable though. In hindsight it's easy to see it has caused confusion, but I can see how they might not of considered some people would interoperate it differently. For the most part I think the text in the game is pretty clean, I more think that the information is just a bit lacking sometimes, with it being largely on third party applications. I think in many cases they keep things vague in game, because the want it to feel like a game to learn by playing, and not a job to read and study everything. This isn't realistic anymore though I don't think. It might of made sense when game was launched and everything was new and untested. Not so much any more, when everything is being data mined, most people are using third party application, people are constantly providing videos and information of how things work. I think its great that people can experience the game without any of that if they want to, but PC games aren't really played like that anymore. It might be like that for poe2 for a very short time again until new tools are created. They seem to like that there is mystery left in the game, which I can understand why they want that, because it leave people things to explore, but it can also be frustrating when things like this are encountered.

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neohongkong wrote:

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Belegur85 wrote:

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@neohongkong
@Belegur85
and @others that are defending this as some kind of user side misunderstanding of the holy wording of PoE. The facts suggest lack of effort/care/precision/consistency.

The relevant facts are at least:
1. The Beast craft wording is better.
2. The Beast craft wording has an additional explanation as to what it does. It may have an issue with 'Magic Item Downgrading'. But in principle it says what it does and then does it.
3. There is no Alt text for "Creates a Split Copy" coffin. In contrast to many other Gravecraft lines.
4. GGG has received plenty of feedback about this but didnt even add an ingame explanation about it.
5. And this one: https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Fractured_Fossil Compare the texts:


The resonatored 'Fractured Fossil' however gives this:

So we got identical wording on the components, very different results. You would have to do a lot of "weaseling out" to explain this.

My random guess is that this could just be bug or a last minute change. Maybe they intended it to work like the 'Fractured Fossil' but noticed that it would be too similar to "additional craft" and last minute changed the behavior without changing the description.

unless you are day 1 to play this game


This game is horrible on consistency, they probably need to hire historian or people in linguistic


For example, established lore state Vaal Fallen are construct so that it can't be necro by necromancer (the monster, not the player character). But in this half baked league, the version found in Act 2 is stated as undead in the UI, but the version in map state "construct"

Also, the probably a gemling bird "Retch", it is called "Retch" in the Bestiary, but in the necro league UI, they are somehow called by its internal code name Kiweth





So that don't fucking believe any wording in any new mechanic and always read reddit PSA as well as bug report

I'm not "defending" the wording. I said it's misleading, and also that it confused me. I don't think I used this craft before I knew how it worked, but from memory, I used the "chance at mirror copy", which has this "copy" text, it worked differently than I thought based of the text (Edit: This is incorrect, I just made a mirrored item and it works as you would expect, one item with mirror tag, the copy, and other uncopied without. Bad recollection, it may of just been the split fossil that brought me to the forum, or I saw posts about it when trying to find out how it works. They both have "copy" wording though and seem to function differently. One creating one item with a tag one without. The other creating two items with tags). I haven't mirrored an item, so I don't know though. You can go and look at larger threads on the feedback forum, where I say it is confusing, and needs to be changed, particularly for the benefit of new players, who have no way of realistically knowing this, other than scouring online recourses, or trial and error on a very time consuming process, or getting help from someone who has tested it. Basically exactly what I've said here, so I'm not sure why you think I'm defending the wording, I said:

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If it was me, I would of just had the text "split item in two" or something similar, instead of "copy".

What I'm saying, and I think what neohongkong is pointing out, is that more experienced players have more idea of how things work. Players coming into the game recently, can not expect to have the same knowledge built up as players who have spent 1000's of hours and encountered all the league mechanics. I've probably played about half the leagues, there's mechanics from those leagues and other leagues that I didn't play, that I have no idea how they work. I also know from playing this game very early on, that the crafting and looting process can be very extreme. You vaal something, it might break. You drop something, it might never drop again. You do the league mechanic in an un-optimal way, it might go significantly slower than is possible. This goes for any game. If I go play league of legends, I don't know any of the characters, so I'm going to get smashed by experience players. I've played other moba's before, so maybe I'm ahead of some other players. I can't expect to know everything instantly. Fortunately enough, if I want to know things about this game, past players have created a wealth of resources, that is freely available for me to try and learn from. Or I can try to do the testing myself.

It's a bad design to have incoming players confused or misled, but with constantly added new content, this can happen. Games that don't have these in-depth mechanics don't have these problems. I don't know any game that does it better than GGG. If people are aware of games that are doing it better than GGG, I'm interested to see what they are doing, but I've never had anyone tell me, where they think it is being done better.

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So we got identical wording on the components, very different results. You would have to do a lot of "weaseling out" to explain this.

I'm not sure who you are referring to, maybe GGG. It's not my responsibility and I don't get any benefit from they game other than being able to play it, so I guess you are speaking of the programmers?

So regarding your example, which is a good and clear example, it seems to me that the wording of the coffin, is completely consistent with the wording of the delve fossil, and works exactly the same. The beast alter works the same way as well, but has different wording, that is more clear for the user. Is that correct?

Both of these mechanics are from previous leagues, so I would assume anyone who has used them before is less likely to have split the item when they didn't want to. Though as some people have pointed out, it is still confusing for experienced and intermediate players, including myself.

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My random guess is that this could just be bug or a last minute change. Maybe they intended it to work like the 'Fractured Fossil' but noticed that it would be too similar to "additional craft" and last minute changed the behavior without changing the description.

I think it is just an oversite. This is not obvious in my opinion. How much time do you think was spent in league development on this specific element? I would think not much. I think they probably thought of a range of cool things they could incorporate to grave crafting. Splitting is one. They probably pulled the text from the delve fossil you linked, that is an existing mechanic that they believe works, but didn't realise the text doesn't make sense in the context of grave crafts, and is particularly confusing for new players, of which a lot of people interacting with the league mechanic will be. Do you think crafting fracture on influenced items was intended? Or did they just put fractures and influence in the basket and that happened? I don't know, I have no real insight, just guessing. It might be exactly what you have guessed as well. It's a complex game, if it were simple and all completely preplanned by the developers, they leagues would probably be less interesting. Sometimes unintended things occur. I think it's clear by the patching this league they didn't intend for players to be dropping hundreds of divines in a single map. That's probably more foreseeable that this. Maybe they need to reign some things in a bit and simplify. I don't know if all players would agree. Most playing this game like the complexity. Some will even like bugs, or see mechanics as a challenge to break the game, or discover things that other players have not. The complexity of the game make it hard to predict. If it wasn't, this game probably would of had less replay-ability and might not of lasted 10 year, not many games do.

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@neohongkong
@Belegur85
and @others that are defending this as some kind of user side misunderstanding of the holy wording of PoE. The facts suggest lack of effort/care/precision/consistency.

I don't think neohongkong thinks this game has "holy wording" at all. I've read multiple posts where they say they think its bad and I think they have more knowledge of the history of this than me.

I personally think it's relatively good. It's maybe overly complicated, hard to learn and a bit too close to programing language. Though it basically all works, isn't buggy and is available information, albeit, not in game and a mission to find sometimes. There are some exceptions, like radial distance terminology, which they are aware of but say they can't improve because it is built on very old systems. That's going to happen, it's a 10 year foundation. I think they are hoping to fix some of these things on a new starting point for POE2. There will be things they miss there as well in hindsight. I would still like to know where it is being done better, even outside of the gaming industry? If they can improve it, great, but I don't think there's other example of a game doing this amount of updates and this complexity for a blue print. Does World of warcraft? I don't know, I don't play it, but it's an old game that's still going, do they do it better? I play hearthstone, they have a lot of updates. I think they do a pretty good as well, but I also think they implement things regularly without thought or more testing than GGG. They have to change the wording all the time, I would say the wording is less consistent in that game, but it's still pretty good considering the complexity. Things get complex season after season.

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Belegur85 wrote:

so I'm not sure why you think I'm defending the wording, I said:
<snip>

You also said:

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Belegur85 wrote:

I pretty much agree with that. I think it would of made complete technical sense to the programmers, but they're maybe missing a step in their process for remembering it needs make sense to the user as well, of which many may not be programmers.

I don't think this is obviously foreseeable though. In hindsight it's easy to see it has caused confusion, but I can see how they might not of considered some people would interoperate it differently.

Its not a hindsight problem, it does not seem to make "complete technical sense" in any form or manner. And if you think otherwise - did you read my post?
From my POV its simply a screwup by GGG. From a programmer POV and from a user POV.

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Belegur85 wrote:

<snip>

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So we got identical wording on the components, very different results. You would have to do a lot of "weaseling out" to explain this.

I'm not sure who you are referring to, maybe GGG. It's not my responsibility and I don't get any benefit from they game other than being able to play it, so I guess you are speaking of the programmers?

The 'you' here wasnt meant to address anyobdy in particular.

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Belegur85 wrote:

So regarding your example, which is a good and clear example, it seems to me that the wording of the coffin, is completely consistent with the wording of the delve fossil, and works exactly the same.

I see, you didnt understand my post somehow. Graveyard does not work the same way as the resonatored Fossil. The resonatored Fossil simply creates a copy (sort of after rolling the mods), just look at the boots which were created with the Fossil. In contrast Graveyard splits the (explicit) mods onto two items so that every mod is exactly on one item instead of every mod being on both items. Graveyard split example:

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Belegur85 wrote:

The beast alter works the same way as well, but has different wording, that is more clear for the user. Is that correct?

Beast works similar to Graveyard.

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Belegur85 wrote:

<snip parts probably based on misunderstanding above>

I don't think neohongkong thinks this game has "holy wording" at all. I've read multiple posts where they say they think its bad and I think they have more knowledge of the history of this than me.

Its quite possible I misunderstood 'neohongkong'. Most of the posts by 'neohongkong' are hard to understand for me. What I was referring to was the "the problem is they are programmer." comment which I thought implied that there is a user interpretation issue and it looks fine from programmer perspective. Which it doesnt seem to - see above.

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Belegur85 wrote:

I personally think it's relatively good.

Large parts of the wording in PoE are ok from my POV. However it has fails and this thread is about this one thing and not other parts of PoE wordings. (And if other large parts of PoE wordings wouldnt be at least ok it wouldnt even make sense to argue the way I did here as there would be no expectation of consistency anyway.)


Edit: fix quote

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Belegur85 wrote:

[...]
I think the main problem is 1. it's part of the current league mechanic, which means people are interacting with something early in the journey, which normally they probably wouldn't until further into the game.
[...]

I have two examples in mind of those :
- Delirium starts showing up from Act 5 on, and is missing a Help Panel page. It doesn't have a Master either. Worse, I don't think it says anywhere that it's called "Delirium" (maybe hovering over the mirror itself ??), so you can't even look it up !
- Forbidden Sanctum shows up in Act 10, and doesn't have a Help Panel page either. While it does have a Master, she barely tells you anything about how it works. (I did manage to deduce it had something with not getting hit, though it wasn't clear which hits mattered.) Also for some reason she keeps the quest warning sign even after you used up the quest tome.

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Perhaps there is another game that you know of that is more on top of this that I'm unfamiliar with?

Fair, PoE1 does have quite a lot of in-built help (even while it's sometimes wrong/confusing).
The only one that comes to mind right now would be Civilization's Civilopedia - especially the Civ4 one, also for the real world history part of it ! (and it has mods on the level of complexity of PoE1 which improve and make use of it further)

Also of course Diablo 4, but that would probably be unfair, since it's so recent, and Activision-Blizzard is so huge. Also, they might have an issue with middle school level math too, considering how they seem to imply only a single additive group exists ??

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neohongkong wrote:

unless you are day 1 to play this game


This game is horrible on consistency, they probably need to hire historian or people in linguistic


For example, established lore state Vaal Fallen are construct so that it can't be necro by necromancer (the monster, not the player character). But in this half baked league, the version found in Act 2 is stated as undead in the UI, but the version in map state "construct"

Also, the probably a gemling bird "Retch", it is called "Retch" in the Bestiary, but in the necro league UI, they are somehow called by its internal code name Kiweth





So that don't fucking believe any wording in any new mechanic and always read reddit PSA as well as bug report

I'm not sure why you bring worldbuilding consistency issues into this, that's a very different discussion.

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Belegur85 wrote:
So regarding your example, which is a good and clear example, it seems to me that the wording of the coffin, is completely consistent with the wording of the delve fossil, and works exactly the same.
I see, you didnt understand my post somehow. Graveyard does not work the same way as the resonatored Fossil. The resonatored Fossil simply creates a copy (sort of after rolling the mods), just look at the boots which were created with the Fossil. In contrast Graveyard splits the (explicit) mods onto two items so that every mod is exactly on one item instead of every mod being on both items. Graveyard split example:

Verified

Verified

You are right, same text and works differently, which is extremely confusing and probably wrong.

This is one of the threads on the feedback forum I was referring to from earlier in the league. It has petered out, but if you want to try and spark it up again, I think your example and pictures explain what the problem is. Maybe they will pay a bit more attention the the wording in the upcoming league.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3504184/page/2

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Civilization's Civilopedia - especially the Civ4 one, also for the real world history part of it !

Haven't played it, but I will keep it in mind to try out, thanks. From my very limited knowledge of Civ games, I know they do have a level of complexity, but I think they probably don't have the bulk incoming content updates being loaded on the foundation like POE. However if the wording is very clean and crisp, It might be something GGG can learn from. Sounds like a good game.

Not all content has a masters, this might be a source of confusion I see that. I was lucky enough to play Delerium, so I know how it works, though the first time I encountered betrayal in the campaign, I didn't know what the hell was going on, and got stuck thinking I needed to finish it, as it was a new part of the main campaign. The side area for Jun, like the sanctum one is also confusing. I can understand what you're saying about sanctum. Suddenly during the campaign your in Sanctum, there's no explanation of it being side content. It's confusing. The way this side content is introduced during the campaign is a mess and needs to be improved, I agree with you on that. I've made quite a few posts about it. It becomes particularly confusing for players when they shift to ruthless because the timing and spawns are all different. I've got my own ideas of how they could improve it, but they do need to make it easy to understand for people encountering all the content types in one sitting on a first run through of the campaign.

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Belegur85 wrote:

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3504184/page/2

Added new post there as this isnt (as you apparently imply) really the best forum for feedback I guess. New post is also likely better (easier to understand) than old posts here: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3504184/page/2#p25355053

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Belegur85 wrote:

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Civilization's Civilopedia - especially the Civ4 one, also for the real world history part of it !

Haven't played it, but I will keep it in mind to try out, thanks. From my very limited knowledge of Civ games, I know they do have a level of complexity, but I think they probably don't have the bulk incoming content updates being loaded on the foundation like POE.

Civ 4 has some of the best mods with many years of development by many people and also large amount of new content over the base game. I think Caveman 2 Cosmos & FFH2/MNAI are some of the most refined and/or popular ones. Whether their ingame help is complete & accurate I dont know though.

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Belegur85 wrote:

"

Civilization's Civilopedia - especially the Civ4 one, also for the real world history part of it !

Haven't played it, but I will keep it in mind to try out, thanks. From my very limited knowledge of Civ games, I know they do have a level of complexity, but I think they probably don't have the bulk incoming content updates being loaded on the foundation like POE. However if the wording is very clean and crisp, It might be something GGG can learn from. Sounds like a good game.

It's mostly that Civ 4's Civilopedia is a lot more detailed and powerful than PoE1's Help Panel : the hyperlinks alone ! (PoE1 does beat it in having animations and being able to place images anywhere.)

I guess wording is even more important when space is limited, like for Alt-text and especially modifier's basic description.
But then one can screw it up even with a lot of space : in comparison I remember the Civ5 Civilopedia being almost useless (because explaining mostly trivial things and nothing more !) - unless it has been improved since release ?

IC. Yeah the help menu's are no good, basically all information is outside of the game. It's not great.