GGG please do not listen to these people

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DarkLordOdeo#6686 wrote:

I'm making this thread to both plead with the devs to not listen to streamers crying about a system that allows more casual players the choice to increase how much them make in maps without having to giga-ultra juice t658+++ waystones.

Streamers aren't scared of casual players getting anywhere close to their div income. Why would they be? Quite the opposite: streamers, group farmers, and botters benefit more from Magic Find because they invest more time into the game and thus get more returns on their investment. The gap between the rich and the rest will always exist. But MF widens the gulf, and that's why it's a problem. It's hard to believe, but streamers might be crying about MF because it's a real issue that's going to drive new players away. Less players means smaller audience, and smaller audience means sad streamers.

Class balance is also a problem tied directly into the MF issue. The best builds (Spark Sorc, etc.) screenclear so fast that they don't even care about optimizing their defenses. Sure, they'll get stunned and die to a white melee mob every now and then, but they'll be making so much currency that it's hardly a loss. Force those classes to care about their defenses by nerfing them, and MF might be less of an issue. Though it'll still be an issue; it does more to raise the ceiling for currency per hour than raise the floor like you're suggesting.

In addition to nerfing gross outlier builds, adding more item affixes might help solve the issue. We're missing a lot of defensive affixes from PoE1, like Fortify, phys-to-ele conversion, etc. Not all of these need to come back, but offering more survivability options might offer attractive alternatives to just blitzing through maps with uncapped resists.

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GODOFWARSANCHEZ#4574 wrote:

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Warrax#2850 wrote:

I often see people saying that rarity affects the drop of orbs, AFAIK it's not affecting orb drops, +quantity does but +quantity has been removed from gear a long time ago in PoE1. AFAIK rarity only increase the chance of an item to be magic/rare/unique.

You don't read do you? I have dropped 5 divine orbs in an hour after switching to rarity gear, nothing else changed.

You dont have to be rude, I do read and I think this is RNG. Rarity didn't increase drop rate of orbs in PoE1 and MF didn't increase drop rate of runes in Diablo 2 so to say that rarity affect orb drop rates please show us some proof, not just one situation where you suddently got 5 divine orbs.

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Necroton1994#4575 wrote:

First, praise - the author of the post knows how to do marketing and uses persuasive words, which he additionally bolds. Not bad.

All the content looks very nice and is divided into paragraphs. I see a content soul here.

And also - as content writers often do - the author writes complete nonsense that has no basis in reality. Conclusion: work in marketing, but don't comment on the game.

oh boy another "this is all nonsense, I wont explain why it just is :)" good post, really makes your side seem rational.

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Gwonam#5505 wrote:

Streamers aren't scared of casual players getting anywhere close to their div income. Why would they be? Quite the opposite: streamers, group farmers, and botters benefit more from Magic Find because they invest more time into the game and thus get more returns on their investment. The gap between the rich and the rest will always exist. But MF widens the gulf, and that's why it's a problem. It's hard to believe, but streamers might be crying about MF because it's a real issue that's going to drive new players away. Less players means smaller audience, and smaller audience means sad streamers.

Aside from there being evidence that came to light that MF doesnt have nearly as much as an impact as well-rolling/juice maps like its always been, that is not only not how MF should work but I even stated that it should have less effect if used in party play, where that gap is created. Streamers are a special case.
Magic find isnt going to drive away new players, streamers lying about their builds being "budget" when they know its not will.

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Gwonam#5505 wrote:

Class balance is also a problem tied directly into the MF issue. The best builds (Spark Sorc, etc.) screenclear so fast that they don't even care about optimizing their defenses. Sure, they'll get stunned and die to a white melee mob every now and then, but they'll be making so much currency that it's hardly a loss. Force those classes to care about their defenses by nerfing them, and MF might be less of an issue. Though it'll still be an issue; it does more to raise the ceiling for currency per hour than raise the floor like you're suggesting.

Even in that, I dont see how that is a magic find issue. They dont need the defenses, you remove magic find they still wont need them, nerf their defenses.
But I think its better to buff underperforming classes instead of making every class the same bland flavour of bad.

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Gwonam#5505 wrote:

In addition to nerfing gross outlier builds, adding more item affixes might help solve the issue. We're missing a lot of defensive affixes from PoE1, like Fortify, phys-to-ele conversion, etc. Not all of these need to come back, but offering more survivability options might offer attractive alternatives to just blitzing through maps with uncapped resists.

Its early access. Those might be back, why shouldnt melee get fortify? They need it.

Remove rarity mods on gear it's unfun and makes all gear choices feel bad. HCSSF btw.

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Kashou#2868 wrote:

Remove rarity mods on gear it's unfun and makes all gear choices feel bad. HCSSF btw.

How does this affect you?

Every positive thing that magic find adds to the game can be matched by the game's loot and progression systems being more cleanly balanced without it.

Everything negative that magic find adds to the game can be solved by removing it.

Rather than from a standard player perspective I tend to look at in game systems and mechanics from a developmental lens. I think keeping magic find gear in a game like PoE2 is irresponsible by the developers since they have to take up the task of maintaining and repairing every loot system in the game while simultaneously throwing a hand grenade named Item Rarity in the hatch.

Magic Find is a textbook 1 step forward 2 steps back system.

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DarkLordOdeo#6686 wrote:

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Kashou#2868 wrote:

Remove rarity mods on gear it's unfun and makes all gear choices feel bad. HCSSF btw.

How does this affect you?

Drops are balanced around MF, he cant trade so he is hindered by drops balanced by MF.

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LVSviral#3689 wrote:

Every positive thing that magic find adds to the game can be matched by the game's loot and progression systems being more cleanly balanced without it.

Everything negative that magic find adds to the game can be solved by removing it.

Rather than from a standard player perspective I tend to look at in game systems and mechanics from a developmental lens. I think keeping magic find gear in a game like PoE2 is irresponsible by the developers since they have to take up the task of maintaining and repairing every loot system in the game while simultaneously throwing a hand grenade named Item Rarity in the hatch.

Magic Find is a textbook 1 step forward 2 steps back system.

It was in Poe1 for 10+ years and it was fine until affliction. Its fine in PoE2 because its been blown way out of proportion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-w6b85afLA&t=768s
But again, all I see are wholesale claims that magic find is the cause of every ill in history. I mean hell people are blaming the hacking epidemic on fuckin magic find. Yall need to take a step back and explain why instead of just creating a lynch mob over a stat that doesnt have half the impact as juiced t15 breaches

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Karishin#7986 wrote:

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DarkLordOdeo#6686 wrote:

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Kashou#2868 wrote:

Remove rarity mods on gear it's unfun and makes all gear choices feel bad. HCSSF btw.

How does this affect you?

Drops are balanced around MF, he cant trade so he is hindered by drops balanced by MF.

HC = Hard core
SSF = Solo self found
I hate to say it but PoE was never balanced around either of those.
All damage being spike damage/degen floors is antithetical to hardcore, making PoE hardcore an even more masochistic endvour
and Solo self found has always been a gimmick that the devs dont care to balance. Without MF his drops wont be better because the avenues that PoE1 had to make SSF less of a slog arent in this game yet.

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Point 1:Magic find causes massive inflation
This point is just flat out wrong. Party farming is a much worse offender in "inflation" since the gains from that far out way the gains from a solo player with even the same MF percentage solely from the speed in which a group of 6 can clear maps and from inbuilt multipliers from grouping as a whole. If anything MF should be shared in groups and split between its members, ending the "500% MF cull" meta, while making MF being more solo friendly. And I will agree, the soulcore/shield interaction should be looked at.
Removing MF for this reason will not suddenly lower the price of 4-5 GG affix items for the broader playerbasae, it actually worsen it if currency as a whole becomes more scare. Kinda like how real life economics works.

MF is broken because it is a stat on gear and if you don't have it you are missing out (This is not FOMO it is literally a statistic that makes more gear drop so ya know, getting less items if you don't have it). The MF gear price has already inflated to beyong reasonable means, making it even more difficult to achieve. The stat is boring and entices you to play an "Efficient" MF toon to get the best results. There is no reward vs cost because the reward far outways the cost that it becomes a null point.

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Point 2: "Rarity should be tied to content difficulty"
This point is asinine due to point 1. PoE1 has only ever rewarded ultra-juicing content, which is a fair point, if the content is harder you should be rewarded accordingly, but PoE's idea of hard content can not and will not be accessible to a wide enough population to ever make the disparity between the top and the middle/bottom equal.
From a build standpoint (and we are in EA with half the classes and ascendicies and skills not in mind you), only a few builds can even touch that sort of content comfortably and if/when it does the cost of entry for that build will ALWAYS be at a premium doubly if its a streamer approved build. Removing rarity would only further incentivize people rushing to the meta-zoom clear builds like it is in PoE1. Rarity SHOULD allow for slower builds to get equal rewards for killing less packs per hour then stormweaver/deadeye blow the entire map up builds.
This can be fixed by..

You make it sound like you only get an increase in rarity if you are doing 8 affix corrupted t18 maps, and until that point your drop rate stays the same.

Rarity based on content difficulty is a scale, it will increase slightly each time you go up a tier of difficulty. This is how it should be done. As you get are able to clear harder content your drop rates increase to allow you to purchase/create the more expensive gear.

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Point 3: "It's too hard to gear for it/It's to easy for x build"
Buffing life/armor as a whole. Warriors have ALOT of socket pressure especially since the removed life from the passive tree (something I am in favor of cause playing hopscotch on life clusters was boring imo) but non-es builds are punished quite a bit in maps where monsters hit hard and fast and you dont have alot in the ways of recouping (heh) that damage, mace skills having setup/long widnups leaves you open to being slapped over, or stuck in one of this games millions of overtuned damage puddles, I can see the envy. But removing magic find for this reason wont suddenly make these builds viable or competitive, if anything it will only make those other builds more popular from the safty and clearspeed and even harder to gear from high cost of entry.

I agree life builds are in a terrible spot at the moment. Partly because ES is far too strong and partly because the intention of the devs was to have a slower more deliberate play style which fell flat on its face once you hit high end maps and everything reverted back to super speed.

I would like to see them tone the gameplay down and for it to be the way it was INTENDED from the beginning. And then possibly nerf ES a little bit. ES needs to get more actually numbers than life as it is harder to layer a defensive stat behind it.

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Point 4(sorta): "This is the biggest problem in PoE2"
This is less of a point and more of a personal gripe, but MF IS NOT THE BIGGEST ISSUE WITH THE EA, ATM, and anyone who thinks that is missing the forest for the trees.
1)The fact that endgame has QUICKLY devolved into the same "kill it before it breathes on you" from PoE1 has been a big disappointment for me personally, all my hype for this game was that it was slower and more methodical but it seems in the rush to make sure we had endgame they just fell back on the same old trope of spike damage being our lords and masters, which is another reason why life(without the nodes)/armor has fallen behind, it was never good against spike damage.

Removing the MF comment this is correct and was addressed in my response to #3

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2)The trial system needs to be reworked from the ground up. I liked sanctum, but not enough to HAVE TO do a full run to get at times important power spikes to you builds, and I cant imagine the pain of trying to do floors 3/4 with a underperforming build on one that needs those points to function. I like the idea, lab was a slog, but this has somehow made it more of a chore, especially since one death means starting from square 1.

So I sorta agree with you. Sekhemas is not so bad once you use the honor resistence relics and you are appropriately geared for the level of content.

Remember in PoE 1 Uber lab was actually HARD and it took FOREVER to uncover it the first time. It is not that difficult to get the first 6 ascendancy points, similar to PoE 1 and the last 2 are difficult. The last 2 ascendancy points are arguably more accessable than PoE 1 was.

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3)One death per map is ultra-punishing for no discernible reason. We still have 6 portals, I chose softcore, you got to corpse rush campaign bosses (technically); but a chaos archer from offscreen, a patch of burning ground, or random exploding whateverthefrick is enough to just lock the player out of a map permanently? Being oneshot clearing a node completely, even of tower rewards is just plain antagonistic and AGAIN leads to the problem of overperforming builds skyrocketing cause now you cant risk a build with less then perfected defenses lest you end up losing currency and time on something that deletes your hp while trying to set up for that "big slam". It feels like this was thought up to encourage party play, since each player gets one portal but if your solo it just feels annoying and tedious to lose a map because something got froggy and crit you for your entire life bar from multiple feet away. And to tie this to an earlier point, wont make money if your build cant do juiced t15+ without being blown away now can you?

So the 1 death per map thing IS annoying but I would like to see it changed like this.

1 death for non boss maps - the main issue here is fixing the of screen 1 shots from corpse exploders and "Slowing the game down" like they intended.

3 Deaths per boss map/pinnacle/citadel - Activated for the BOSS ONLY. So change the way boss maps work. You cannot engage the boss until all the rares are dead, once rares are dead boss room opens and you have 3 attempts at it.

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4)Crafting is 100% rng, even with omens. I know GGG hated deterministic crafting, I saw how they massacred my boy(harvest), but this is not it. There are far to many affixs on items to just "slam it" on gear, theyve made a slot machine within a slot machine and it does not respect your time and agency. If people want magic find to go, let the players have more control on how they refine the gear they find, because if not it will again only benefit the team crafters/mirror crafters (and remember, dont about the rampant rmt abuse those people do :) ).

I hope this post is seen by the Devs after their deserved holiday, and I truly hope they dont listen to the top-meta chasing streamers yet again. Magic Find is not the biggest problem in PoE2, its imo more balanced here then it ever was in PoE1.

I agree I like determinastic crafting also and I miss being able to fill holes with the workbench.