Early Access Feedback - The Cardinal Sin of Game Design: Prioritizing Punishing the Player over FUN - Forum

" crazyfingers619#3901 wrote: [ No, there are objectively bad games. And there are objectively good games. What movies are good? Movies people enjoy. Movies, Games. Rely on enjoyment to measure whether they're good or not. You're right. If you enjoy a movie. It's good. But that makes it subjectively good. A personal preference. A taste. That doesn't mean the movie is objectively good. Others might like it too. That still doesn't make it objectively good. That makes it popular. Or well liked. You are mistaking a movie that is popular, and well liked. To be a good movie. A good movie is simply a movie that you like. Even if the entire world hates that movie, except you. To you, it's still a good movie. Subjective. There is literally no such thing as an objectively good, or bad movie, or game, or food. These are all preferences of yours. Objectivity is by definition - without preference attached. I know why you might think this way too. People often just use the word 'good' to refer to things like saying 'Lots of people like this movie, it's popular' They'll just say "it's a good movie" but this is not the actual correct use of the word. Everyone has a different 'good' or 'bad' preference/taste towards something, and it is NEVER wrong. Last edited by Akedomo#3573 on Apr 7, 2025, 9:05:33 AM	Posted by Akedomo#3573 on Apr 7, 2025, 9:01:28 AM Quote this Post
" crazyfingers619#3901 wrote: Quick summation of bad game design in POE vs Diablo. Diablo had gold and it had vendors, but they weren't that fun to most. Most people enjoy pinata item drops and getting their loot from their kills. So in diablo if you ever needed gold, you could sell a few wands, which were TERRIBLY balanced and sold for WAY too much gold. But that "bad" design didn't ruin the fun of the game, because the power of loot shops were relatively small. Which works because spending money in a shop isn't fun. Fun is killing enemies and finding fat loots. GGG is coming from a different angle, they're thinking, how do we make all our systems relevant? How do we balance the game so that if the player perfectly utilizes shops, and perfectly itemizes, they can barely push forward? And that's just not fun for most players, because it's not human nature to want to lord over spreadsheets. Most people don't play ARGPs to deal with spreadsheets. And tuning your game to force players to do so is really bad design. Bad design to stifle uniques, bad design to gimp abilities and try to stiff arm a specific difficulty curve. The ETIRE POINT of ARPG's is to find broken items from slain monsters. I actually applaud them for trying to find an exacting diffuculty so they can give the progression meaning, but forcing it into act 1 is dumb beyond measure. End of act 2 spiking a bit would be great, they pile it on at tier 10+ maps. Let players enjoy the game, and give that meaningful grind at the high end. This was basic game design knowledge, end game is harder and early game was easy so you could slog through it enjoying a different power level mowing things down. Somehow GGG forgot that. That is a valid critic.. GGG is using an approach for loot that is VERY VERY hard to balance. They might need to do some heavy adjustments on that. Even somethign simple as dropping Exalted FRAGMENTS.. woudl help as peopel would see some stuff they want more frequently...	Posted by Urza_Mechwalker#7393 on Apr 7, 2025, 9:03:12 AM Quote this Post
So is this another thread made just because monsters had too much HP in the campaign in 0.2? all that jaz because of that? And I absolutely don't get the "ARPG are like this and that" what? they never were like you pretend to, ARPG were never about finding exploits, abuse stuff and zooming through maps, it was never the goal...things that are OP are often so because of byproducts of balancing the game, they are rarely done on purpose. If people think players are supposed to become gods and clear maps in no time, they are very wrong, that kind of gameplay never belonged in ARPG. Tech guy Last edited by Warrax#2850 on Apr 7, 2025, 9:05:13 AM	Posted by Warrax#2850 on Apr 7, 2025, 9:04:19 AM Quote this Post
After decades of playing ARPGs, this 0.2 patch/league is by far the worst ARPG experience I've ever had. Every single aspect of the game feels infinitely worse.	Posted by Renegade_Archer#1313 on Apr 7, 2025, 9:16:51 AM Quote this Post
" Gorbarr#2442 wrote: Most of these complaints are arguments from genre baggage. Always "but ARPG's are supposed to do this but PoE2 does something different". You figured out that PoE2 is not a clone of other current or previous games and that is frustrating. The solution? Accept that this game is doing a different spin in the genre. You're not going to convince anybody in the dev team to fundamentally change that. If you have real balance feedback, you could have been specific or posted your current build to get advice in how to improve it. You don't speak for the dev team. I'm telling them that just because they made systems and unique difficulty points like specific resists and stun locks and such, doesn't mean they need to gatekeep all players by forcing them to invest all their builds and times micromanaging their weaknesses. A recurring problem in POE 2 is everything always feels nerfed. Run speed, waiting for early skills to just friggin' trigger as they take 3 seconds for those spikes to finally shoot from the ground. This is planely bad design. You can make a challenging and fun game without making the player constantly feel like a gimp. No one is arguing for this game to be easy, we just don't want this game to be such a damned drag. Less life, less gear checks, let us put our points into shit that is exciting, if you have to nerf survivability aspects to make that work do that, don't nerf what's actually fun. As it stands all characters are slow and fragile. And it's a slog just to become default. Diablo 2 had a stamina system, and they found it to be horribly boring so they made it irrelevant once you got further into the game. POE doesn't do that, it just adds more and more gear checks and item overhead you need to meet to just survive. That's not challenging play, that's now exciting, it's like forcing the player to inflict pain on themselves just to survive when they'd rather be stacking attack speed and crit rate. It's a perversion of what make this genre fun and it has wholly reduced all builds into chasing resists and run speed and survivability.	Posted by crazyfingers619#3901 on Apr 7, 2025, 9:41:34 AM Quote this Post
" Akedomo#3573 wrote: " crazyfingers619#3901 wrote: [ No, there are objectively bad games. And there are objectively good games. What movies are good? Movies people enjoy. Movies, Games. Rely on enjoyment to measure whether they're good or not. You're right. If you enjoy a movie. It's good. But that makes it subjectively good. A personal preference. A taste. That doesn't mean the movie is objectively good. Others might like it too. That still doesn't make it objectively good. That makes it popular. Or well liked. You are mistaking a movie that is popular, and well liked. To be a good movie. A good movie is simply a movie that you like. Even if the entire world hates that movie, except you. To you, it's still a good movie. Subjective. There is literally no such thing as an objectively good, or bad movie, or game, or food. These are all preferences of yours. Objectivity is by definition - without preference attached. I know why you might think this way too. People often just use the word 'good' to refer to things like saying 'Lots of people like this movie, it's popular' They'll just say "it's a good movie" but this is not the actual correct use of the word. Everyone has a different 'good' or 'bad' preference/taste towards something, and it is NEVER wrong. Terminator 2 was a great action movie and it's sequels were abject ass and everyone knows it. What makes a good action movie are great action, thrilling adventure, well written scripts, well made bad guys, and experiencing a properly throttled progression curve of story. POE 2 is a 10 hour long version of Terminator Salvation. If they wanted longevity there were so many ways they could have done it without making this game a tedious slog.	Posted by crazyfingers619#3901 on Apr 7, 2025, 9:50:30 AM Quote this Post
" crazyfingers619#3901 wrote: Terminator 2 was a great action movie and it's sequels were abject ass and everyone knows it. What makes a good action movie are great action, thrilling adventure, well written scripts, well made bad guys, and experiencing a properly throttled progression curve of story. POE 2 is a 10 hour long version of Terminator Salvation. If they wanted longevity there were so many ways they could have done it without making this game a tedious slog. And none of this matters with what's being discussed. Yes, they choose to use some 'unpopular' design decisions that you, and others don't agree with. The game is in a 'unfun, and less enjoyable state' right now for you. And to you that feels like it's a 'bad' game because you're not enjoying it. But that doesn't mean that others feel the same way. And that doesn't mean the entire game is bad. or dying, or about to fail. Last edited by Akedomo#3573 on Apr 7, 2025, 2:57:55 PM	Posted by Akedomo#3573 on Apr 7, 2025, 2:56:46 PM Quote this Post