Zoom is not fun. It's loot FOMO

"

WhisperSlade#0532 wrote:

The top meta builds are the most used because they are the funnest play styles.
The top meta builds are virtually all efficient loot farming / clear builds.
Therefore, efficient loot farming / clear builds are the funnest play style.

You are simply wrong with this statement. As I already mentioned 100 times in this thread, in poe1 slow builds with 0 clear doing some content or bossers can easily make x10 div/h of what people with zoomie builds can make, especially during week 1 when economy is the most vibrant and if league is overall good and presents some new content.

You say that zooming is always the most efficient. It is NOT true for every league. It is partially true for poe2 because of dull endgame content. Now pinnacle content is alch and go and nothing else, you have neither juice nor meaningful league mechanics outside of slaying screens of natural and breach monsters. Ask them to add challenging content like 16.5 and people gonna stop playing deadeye with every single MS on tree taken and wearing viper hat. Not it is simply not reasonable. We dont want to kill non-juiced mobs 1 by 1 without clear to get loot, bc loot is poor even for mentioned LA deadeye.

Even in affliction, literally the most MF-oriented and the most rewarding league in the history of ARPG, zooming was not a thing, as maps required giga gear and giga survivability and dps. Most popular builds for wisped abyss farm were CWS and poison caustic, and they were slow as hell. And Tornado Shot only farmed legions + boxes.

In poe1 you can play Chains of Command build which costs like 0 because so few people use it. It's VERY SLOW though good in, for instance, blight-ravaged and ultimatum. Both mechanics give nice div/h and you also get mega expensive luckydrops. Ravaged cathedral can drop apothecary, divines, expensive oils, stranglegrasp, fractured bases (because of 3.27 league mechanics fractured bases are not even worth picking, but during previous leagues they were expensive). Same with CWS setups for ultimatum (slow builds who only damage mobs when they hit you lol).

People tend to hype content makers' builds and start with them. Especially true for, for example, Fubgun, Jungroan, Pathofexilebota among the most popular in global community. Fubgun's common playstyle which I believe he enjoys the most is zooming, and he usually leaguestart with legion farm. So people who want to play his build go this way too. And I won't say that his way of progression is x1000 times better than other ways. Its efficient, hard to argue with it, though slow playstyles exist too.

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SoColdO_O#1989 wrote:

"

WhisperSlade#0532 wrote:

The top meta builds are the most used because they are the funnest play styles.
The top meta builds are virtually all efficient loot farming / clear builds.
Therefore, efficient loot farming / clear builds are the funnest play style.

You are simply wrong with this statement. As I already mentioned 100 times in this thread, in poe1 slow builds with 0 clear doing some content or bossers can easily make x10 div/h of what people with zoomie builds can make, especially during week 1 when economy is the most vibrant and if league is overall good and presents some new content.

You say that zooming is always the most efficient. It is NOT true for every single poe1 league. It is partially true for poe2 because of dull endgame content. Now pinnacle content is alch and go and nothing else, you have neither juice nor meaningful league mechanics outside of slaying screens of natural and breach monsters. Ask them to add challenging content like 16.5 and people gonna stop playing deadeye with every single MS on tree taken and wearing viper hat. Not it is simply not reasonable. We dont want to kill non-juiced mobs 1 by 1 without clear to get loot, bc loot is poor even for mentioned LA deadeye.

Even in affliction, literally the most MF-oriented and the most rewarding league in the history of ARPG, zooming was not a thing, as maps required giga gear and giga survivability and dps. Most popular builds for wisped abyss farm were CWS and poison caustic, and they were slow as hell. And Tornado Shot only farmed legions + boxes.

In poe1 you can play Chains of Command build which costs like 0 because so few people use it. It's VERY SLOW though good in, for instance, blight-ravaged and ultimatum. Both mechanics give nice div/h and you also get mega expensive luckydrops. Ravaged cathedral can drop apothecary, divines, expensive oils, stranglegrasp, fractured bases (because of 3.27 league mechanics fractured bases are not even worth picking, but during previous leagues they were expensive). Same with CWS setups for ultimatum (slow builds who only damage mobs when they hit you lol).

People tend to hype content makers' builds and start with them. Especially true for, for example, Fubgun, Jungroan, Pathofexilebota among the most popular in global community. Fubgun's common playstyle which I believe he enjoys the most is zooming, and he usually leaguestart with legion farm. So people who want to play his build go this way too. And I won't say that his way of progression is x1000 times better than other ways. Its efficient, hard to argue with it, though slow playstyles exist too.

"

WhisperSlade#0532 wrote:

I've made a lot of edits to the original post so that people entering the conversation will have more context and less ambiguity. I'll continue adding more to it, in the hopes that this discussion will continue.

excellent edit! thank you for putting in the time with this thread. i believe the gameplay aspect of poe2 is the number one "problem" they need to solve before 1.0 to set the correct tone for the game going forward and my cope is that all the negative elements that have emerged during EA where all accidental and/or the result of time constraints, not intentionally designed.

source of hope: the game-director (Jonathan Rogers) has mention several times in interviews that he doesn't play poe1 anymore because he dislikes the way poe1 plays and that his goal with poe2 is to make the greatest arpg ever made (in his mind poe1 is not that).

source of doubt: the game-director has also stated that they will keep changing the game until the community is "happy" and oh boy is this a problem for "our camp", why? (trigger warning, not fact, my pov) because the player base consists mainly of lazy, dumb and mechanically unskilled players (including streamers, excluding speed runners and hardcore players).

potential solution: what i've been able to piece together from SoColdO_O#1989's rants is that a system for all kinds of players kinda' exists in poe1 in the form of map tiers and scarabs so why not just work with that until they come up with something better (if there even is something).

let's say mr/mrs streamer x and the accompanying community wants to play the stereotypical zoom, well that is done in:

tier 6-10 maps, juiced with:
monster / boss action/movement speed: |---------x|
monster / boss less damage taken/more hp: |x---------|
pack size: |---------x|
mechanics to play around/dodge: |x---------|

me personally would go with something like:

tier 15-16, juiced with:
monster / boss action/movement speed: |---------x|
monster / boss less damage taken/more hp: |----x-----|
pack size: |x---------|
mechanics to play around/dodge: |---------x|

seems pretty fair to me, but i might cooked (-‿-")

What a wall of text to miss a critically important issue:

ERGONOMICS.

Simply, we only have so many keybinds we can comfortably use, and taking different actions may also be gated by our character's attributes.

For instance, I played Corrupting Fever Elementalist as a league starter, a choice which I will never make again. And chief among them is ergonomics. Why?

Because I have so many buttons to press.

I have:

Corrupting Fever
Shield Charge
Frostblink
Exsanguinite
Reap
Vaal Reap
Manual-cast vulnerability
Frost bomb
Flasks (two for recovery, an onslaught, a quicksilver--though I should probably instilling them).

And if I ever screw up or unsocket my golems b/c I'm changing equipment, suddenly, I need to press my golems again in just the right order.

Something that "zoom zoom" builds are very good at is: trying to reduce the burden of all the different button presses.

What this post doesn't touch on is that even a "zoom zoom" build can easily ramp up in the number of buttons it needs to press depending on how much of a tradeoff someone wants to make for power.

For instance, remember lightning strike? Consider a warden with avatar of the wilds and 2 tinctures. Right away, you have:

Whirling blades
Frostblink/flamedash
Lightning Strike
Vaal Lightning Strike
Unbound avatar
Two manually-activated tinctures
Potentially frost bomb (kind of a must where Maven is involved, or in this league, activating the exposure-based graft skill if you want to roll pierce on gloves)

Maybe a manual curse?

And a lightning strike character is kind of the definition of "zoom zoom".

In short, when people say "omg PoE too one-button", they really minimize just how many buttons even simple-seeming builds may want to press to really min-max on power.

I.E. if your character doesn't have a single vaal skill? You're probably doing it wrong by leaving power on the table. If your character doesn't have a single blink skill? You're also probably doing it wrong.

That is, to just reduce builds to "zoom zoom" implies that there's no choice in trading ergonomics for power in the case of difficult enemies.

Furthermore, a game would be exhausting to play if at every single pack, we had to go through an entire rotation.

Being able to blow away white packs with one button, and a blue pack in 2-3 buttons is fine. It's the rares and uniques for which we should have more buttons to press, but even then, the way PoE is set up, we don't have that many keybinds to comfortably press.

Right now, we have the three mouse buttons, then QWER and space. ASDF and ZXCV are bound to other things, and T is kind of uncomfortable given the way that QWER keeps our top four fingers.

IMO, it's not a great design choice, but that's the paradigm GGG chose.

So it isn't just about loot. It's also about ergonomics.

To boot, I recently tried a game I can describe as "Diablo May Cry" using WASD controls for movement and IJKL for the attack bindings. It felt horrible.

Ergonomics matter. A lot. What so many call "zoom zoom" is basically a way of trying to maximize comfort. And that shouldn't be ignored.

I do agree that zoom is a boring game mechanic. Most of the people who enjoy it build some Fubgun builds to play for 1-2 weeks [Removed by Support]

"

IlyaK1986#4225 wrote:

What a wall of text to miss a critically important issue:
ERGONOMICS.

Ah yes, the issue of, "but I don't want to press more buttons".
A critical oversight.

Well, you've introduced a perspective which I don't believe has been brought up here yet. And it has now been added to the wall of text. So let's take a look.

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IlyaK1986#4225 wrote:

Simply, we only have so many keybinds we can comfortably use, and taking different actions may also be gated by our character's attributes.

For instance, I played Corrupting Fever Elementalist as a league starter, a choice which I will never make again. And chief among them is ergonomics. Why?

Because I have so many buttons to press.

---

What this post doesn't touch on is that even a "zoom zoom" build can easily ramp up in the number of buttons it needs to press depending on how much of a tradeoff someone wants to make for power.

So what it sounds like to me, is that you aren't taking issue with the broader topic, which is about AoE clear speeds. But with the percieved lack of concern for having to use more buttons.

The issue raised in the OP is not with the number of button presses specifically, although having one primary skill which does your clear is a pretty common and ubiquitously accepted theme of zoom play-style.

Rather, it's about the speed that monsters are deleted off the screen. I believe that having a diverse range of skills is something that is complementary to attrition/engaging combat, but not necessitated by it.

So in principle, using whatever number of buttons you are accustomed to and prefer is not being contested, nor is it particularly relevant.

You take issue with 'zoom' being equated to single button presses, that's alright. Even if, I think there is a very strong relationship there. There is no call for a mandate here to increase button usage.

Looking at this from a different vector, it is a peculiar argument due to its implications. "The fewer buttons I have to press, the better the game". I am imagining now, someone who plays Mortal Kombat arguing for the use of a single button to achieve optimal game-play. Peculiar.

But "PoE isn't Mortal Kombat". And the history of Arpgs have never implemented a utilization a selection of skills before.

Sorry but, while this topic is, sort of, important? I don't think it's super relevant. If you already use a lot of buttons in your zoom build, this isn't a call to increase them. It's espousing a game-play style which would complement diverse skill usage.

It's hard to imagine a life without "zoom" and what that repetition does to our wrists. I suggest good wrist support.

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etc418#2590 wrote:

Written with rare clarity and eloquence. I agree with everything said, and I do not intend to play PoE2 if zooming is the most efficient way to play.

As soon as my build got to a point where the whole screen was getting cleared at a push of a button, I got bored and stopped playing the beta. I refuse to play a game with no gameplay substance, just for the dopamine spikes. I prefer to get my dopamine spikes while I'm also being meaningfully challenged.

I'm hanging around only because of the super high production values of this game, hoping that late game gameplay eventually becomes fun.

If I were GGG I'd look into hiring this guy.

Thank you I appreciate that <3

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IonSugeRau1#1069 wrote:

You brought up some great points in your last post.
Thanks for sharing your perspective. I'd like to hear more of it, because it sounds like we're on the same page, and it's rare to get into the 'minutia' of something like this.

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Saraneth#7424 wrote:

Totally agree with you here. I'd like to see a lot more build be viable end game in terms of loot progression. Should not have to worry about loot fomo because I am playing a different build.

Yep absolutely. And thanks for your input.
The "fomo" part of the post, is just simply to subvert the "popularity argument" of zoom builds. The pursuit of loot will always be part of the game, and we shouldn't want that to change.

But you're right. If you're referring to the power curve of players being more linear to eliminate the wild degree of variance we see now, then monsters can be balanced accordingly, and that should make many more builds on the lower end viable. So it would allow more 'sub-optimal' creativity.

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Evergrey#7535 wrote:

Players are the issue.

Not playing for fun, but making a job out of the game instead.
GGG needs to work with that.

GGG is the issue, not the players

When you turn every skill into a screen filling monstrosity, you don't create choice, you create a zoom zoom arms race

When you reward chain explosion mechanics that trivialize positioning, you don't enable creative builds, you enforce a single optimal playstyle

When you give enemies the tactiacal depth of a training dummy, you don't respect player time, you reduce combat to a loot slot machine

Players turn the game into a job **because** you've designed systems that reward automation over engagement, combat isn't ignored, it was designed out

GGG has a hiring problem, the combat team doesn't understand how to take advantage of the new systems they have crafted for PoE 2, eg: Animations

When you intentionally design a skill to feel terrible by itself (Reap), then lock its only viable version behind boots that chain clear the screen with explosions instead of chain combos with ANIMATIONS, you're not giving players a choice, y ou are enforcing the zoom zoom meta by DESIGN