The Cardinal Sin of Game Design: Prioritizing Punishing the Player over FUN

This is why POE 2 is in trouble right now.

When you as a designer start to try to make sure every bit of difficulty shines, when you try to make sure all your planned difficulty curves matter, when you try to be the next dark souls, but your game is rooted in scaling power spikes...

You end up losing sight of what makes games successful at a fundamental level. You get so far lost in the woods you forget to view things from a player perspective and start to only see things from your own as a designer that lives and breathes your own game.

AT the VERY HEART of the ARPG is smashing open a skeletons skull, and pilfering that glowy red new epic item that has that cool new mod on it you've never seen before.

Nothing feels fresh and new in this game any more, nothing feels "FUN".

Because the moment you get something, the moment you unlock some new talent, or get some new minion, or whatever, you know in your mind that someone has ensured that new thing isn't powerful, someone has ensured that the new thing won't throw off the all important balance of what must be the next great souls like.

JUST SCALE UP THE DIFFICULTY OF THE END GAME FFS, ALL THIS BALANCE ALL THIS HAMSTRINGING, ALL THIS PUNISHMENT AND FOR WHAT?

To create a totally linear progression experience! No ebb and flow, NO STORY OF POWER!

Movies follow the heroes journey, the protagonists rises and falls in power, there are high points and low points.

Video games follow a similar story arc, of wild new drops, of crazy fun new zany mods.

Make unique items powerful and no drop. Allow the player to experience the thrill of finding items again FFS.

What on earth are you guys doing? This is fast turning into some kind of post modern art project with endless tinkerings and systems that don't amount to anything. Just this giant mass of logic that's huge and expansive... but puddle deep.

Nothing is special in this game any more, nothing is cool, nothing is thrilling.

Congrats GGG, you balanced your game.

Edit: When you got a unique item in Diablo 2, you got the feeling it was made by someone who wanted to get that item. When you get an item in POE 2, you get the feeling it was made by someone who didn't want it to be more powerful than rare items. Like what's even the point? You put these flavor waste of space items in the game, then inject a slog level grind that demands total min maxing. It's antithetical to the all these items even existing. It's like they're pouring salt in the wound instead of giving players what they actually want. Unique drops that totally invalidate all the boring crafting and crap.

WTF. It's like this dev team thinks they're smarter than the dopamine receptors in our brains.

agree completely, theres no excitement, just feels like work

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crazyfingers619#3901 wrote:

This is why POE 2 is in trouble right now.

When you as a designer start to try to make sure every bit of difficulty shines, when you try to make sure all your planned difficulty curves matter, when you try to be the next dark souls, but your game is rooted in scaling power spikes...

You end up losing sight of what makes games successful at a fundamental level. You get so far lost in the woods you forget to view things from a player perspective and start to only see things from your own as a designer that lives and breathes your own game.

AT the VERY HEART of the ARPG is smashing open a skeletons skull, and pilfering that glowy red new epic item that has that cool new mod on it you've never seen before.

Nothing feels fresh and new in this game any more, nothing feels "FUN".

Because the moment you get something, the moment you unlock some new talent, or get some new minion, or whatever, you know in your mind that someone has ensured that new thing isn't powerful, someone has ensured that the new thing won't throw off the all important balance of what must be the next great souls like.

JUST SCALE UP THE DIFFICULTY OF THE END GAME FFS, ALL THIS BALANCE ALL THIS HAMSTRINGING, ALL THIS PUNISHMENT AND FOR WHAT?

To create a totally linear progression experience! No ebb and flow, NO STORY OF POWER!

Movies follow the heroes journey, the protagonists rises and falls in power, there are high points and low points.

Video games follow a similar story arc, of wild new drops, of crazy fun new zany mods.

Make unique items powerful and no drop. Allow the player to experience the thrill of finding items again FFS.

What on earth are you guys doing? This is fast turning into some kind of post modern art project with endless tinkerings and systems that don't amount to anything. Just this giant mass of logic that's huge and expansive... but puddle deep.

Nothing is special in this game any more, nothing is cool, nothing is thrilling.

Congrats GGG, you balanced your game.

CArdinal sin of players.. thinking FUN is only what THEY see as fun.... and ignroe that millions of peopel wroldwide have different takes on what is fun

"

Urza_Mechwalker#7393 wrote:

CArdinal sin of players.. thinking FUN is only what THEY see as fun.... and ignroe that millions of peopel wroldwide have different takes on what is fun

1. at most we're talking about 250k players
2. His notion is, if we take forums and reddit, a farspread one.
3. Don't make the same mistake you accusing him of ;)

This post assumes you know what everyone wants as fun.

You don't. And clearly, the forums are full of people telling you this.

Time to stop ignoring it. Recognize there's differences, and that PoE 2.. might not fit your ideal game that you have in your mind.

"

Akedomo#3573 wrote:

This post assumes you know what everyone wants as fun.

You don't. And clearly, the forums are full of people telling you this.

Time to stop ignoring it. Recognize there's differences, and that PoE 2.. might not fit your ideal game that you have in your mind.

I don't have niche taste in gaming like you do. You are projecting. Most gamers can trust their own tastes as if a game is good, they will like it.

It's people who think GGG is making a game specifically for their small group of power players that are the ones who think it's subjective.

It isn't.

Diablo 2, Mario 64, Dota, these are all time greats. They are good games, and the systems and balance within them facilitate fun.

POE 2 in its current state is not on the path to becoming a truly great game, and the bulk of people not enjoying it is testament to that.

the bulk of people lmfao

Guy lives in the forum bubble.

Thinking a couple hundred people versus the several hundred thousand in game who dont have these issues.

Just know forums represent less than 1% of players for pretty much any game youll ever find.

To OP:

...did you play PoE1...
...if so, did you enjoy it or not....

"

chobo999#2010 wrote:

To OP:

...did you play PoE1...
...if so, did you enjoy it or not....

I thought it was pretty good, never got hardcore into it. It always fell short of the magic of diablo for me.

Diablo just had this really fun mix of getting attack speed, damage mods, life regen flowing into lifetap, and there was this wonderful, organic power growth as you specced your talent trees and amplified your abilities of choice.

POE just takes too much damn micromanaging and research to be able to play.

I want to smash mobs and find compelling mods and equip them because they are powerful, not stare over them for hours trying to ensure they have the combinations of resists I need.

And this is the main problem with POE2, instead of thinking over ways for our builds to come together to be fun and cool, we spend the entire experience minimnizing weaknesses. And that is inherently unfun.

I know people will equate this comment to me saying I'm a pleb who can't appreciate depth of mechanics, but that's really not true. Diablo had more compelling and interesting mechanics, they weren't gear checks, they actually were interesting and fun.

POE suffers from min maxing obsession, this notion that the player must be within a specific power range so that all play can be pre planned and all progression micro managed.

"

tsunamikun#0433 wrote:

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Urza_Mechwalker#7393 wrote:

CArdinal sin of players.. thinking FUN is only what THEY see as fun.... and ignroe that millions of peopel wroldwide have different takes on what is fun

1. at most we're talking about 250k players
2. His notion is, if we take forums and reddit, a farspread one.
3. Don't make the same mistake you accusing him of ;)

I am not talking about player numbers. I am saying that there are millions of people in the world that have DIFFERENT takes of what is fun than you or some other person simple as that. GGG is trying to explore other player demographics...a nd obviously will never get more than a small fraction of any given population