Devs: A lengthy discussion on combat mechanics, POE vs D3

Hi guys

I haven't logged into POE since D3 came out, I just sidelined the game by checking the forums and reading the patch updates. Thus, please forgive me if I'm not up to speed on everything.

Now, you may be wondering what I am doing here, since obviously not playing this game since D3 came out must mean that I am a Blizzard fanboi right? Well no, I am not.

Anyone who has been following the reaction of D3 knows that reviews have been mixed at best, and the core community is tearing the game apart. The Blizzard general forum is a toxic mess.

By all means I agree, D3 is a game in dire need of attention, and on many levels POE is a much more interesting game that has captured the mechanics that made D2 so addicting to play. The social aspect, trading, leveling, passive tree, itemization and customization are all superior, imho, to that of D3. With the abysmal storyline and cheesy dialogue, I feel confident that GGG is less restrictive of imagination than blizzard are. Atleast their creative talent in every other area seems to indicate so.

But there is one major deciding factor that makes D3 interesting to me, and the reason I eventually got bored of POE after about 2 months of playing it:

Combat mechanics

Back to D3, combat fluidity is the most well designed system. The distinctive ressource system that weaves spenders, generators and cooldowns into a web of awesomeness is the main reason I still play it, despite it's horrible flaws - And more on point, the lack of it in POE why it eventually bored me out.

I'll use my monk as example: (If you haven't played D3, you might not be familiar with my train of thought, but I'll try to explain what I mean)

My monk uses a combination of high life per spirit, crit chance, non-cooldown spirit spenders, and spirit generator that generates more spirit on crit. Meanwhile she has spirit regen and health regen as well.

The result is a well-oiled machine that generates spirit quickly, spends it quickly and is healed while doing so. Also works outside of combat due to the passive regens.

She throws out lashing tail kicks, exploding palm, lightning fists, blinds and much more. It is fun, and microintensive. Your build has to be designed carefully, with balancing generators, spenders and cooldowns to achieve maximum efficiency.

While playing POE I came across the exact opposite. The combat mechanics were much more akin to that of D2 (which I played almost exclusively for 7 years for the PVP while PVM was a chore). To be specific, my witch linked her main damage skill (fireball) to a 6L armor containing as much damage as possible with faster cast, multi projectile, mana leech etc). Other skills seemed limited to auras (a one-time-click investment) and persistent effect curses.

Ultimately the repetitive curse+fireball spam killed it for me, as the depth of combat seemed much too shallow to enjoy for extended periods of time. The lack of cooldowns, lack of support gems for support skills, and no real need to pack more than a single offensive spell resulted in what felt like a flat, two dimensional gameplay.

a) No reason to use more than one offensive spell, since you can't cast them simultaneously, no cooldowns are present and resists can be overcome.
b) Ressource (mana) becomes obsolete once you link it to mana leech
c) Support skills like curses and auras have very limited support gems (no real reason to 6L anything but your armor or 2H)

So, instead of generating ressources to spend on more powerful spenders (often with a cooldown) that were more powerful, I end up activating my aura, lay down my curse and just hold down my mousebutton killing enemies with the same skill over and over again.

I want POE to succeed, and I want it to be fun for years to come. And like I wrote earlier, I think that every single aspect of the game blows D3 out of the water - except the most important part (yes, I think it is more important than the lewt - agree to disagree *shrug*)

I suggest that the devs take a closer look at the skills, and will consider a minor revamp of how it works. I do not suggest giving the ranger hatred/dicipline, the templar spirit and the marauder fury, but I do believe that a modified paradigme can be successfully implemented in POE with a bit of work.

I suggest that skills are categorized into 3 groups:

- Basic skills. These skills have moderate impact, but are always spamable. Their ressource cost is low.

Example: deal damage with fireball

- Advanced skills. These skills have a high impact, and have a low cooldown of 3-10 seconds. Their ressource cost is moderate.

Example: Freeze a pack with coldsnap

- Ultimate skills. These skills have a very high impact, a long cooldown of 15-30 seconds. Their ressource cost is high.

Example: Clear the screen with Discharge

Why the cooldown fetish? Simply put, as explained above, the reason to pack more than one offensive skill is almost non-present, resulting in repetitive combat. Cooldowns, plus the added power when available, would give incentive to the player to add more offensive skills to his/her arsenal, resulting in less fire-and-forget support auras/curses, but more interactive gameplay via damaging abilities and more ways to dispose of your enemies. The resent change in .11 to flicker strike and coldsnap was a step in the right direction.

I've heard the counterarguments for cooldowns before. "I want to play my way", "I don't want this game to restrict me" and so on. But I must point out, that when some doors are closed, others open up. Not all restrictions are bad, some are healthy for the game in general. Much like a parent restricting the intake of candy of their child (because otherwise they would eat nothing else), a more healthy diet would make the candy taste sweeter when occasionally available. (I hope you understand my silly analogy here)

The result should be, if done right:

a) Players will use more than one offensive spell for more interesting combat experiences
b) Players would have to experiment, tweak and balance basic, advanced and ultimate skills
c) Players now have a much better reason to achieve max links outside of just their armor or 2H.
d) Players now have to think about whether to 6-link their spammable skill, or their ultimate skills, and what works best for them.

Until something is done, I can't see myself choosing POE over D3, I'd rather wait until the end of the year until the glaring issues with D3 have been somewhat smoothed out.

Well, that is all from me.

Discuss.
Last edited by cavemandiary2 on Jul 24, 2012, 11:51:02 AM
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They're already fully aware that combat is too cumbersome and they've said that they want to improve the fluidity. It's not on purpose.
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Herborist wrote:
They're already fully aware that combat is too cumbersome and they've said that they want to improve the fluidity. It's not on purpose.


So I've read, but what does that mean? Cumbersome can mean many things.

For all I know, they could be talking about clunky animations when swinging a sword on a templar, rather than what I am pointing out here.
I don't mind the combat in this game at all

And I use lots of skills

My main guy has a 3 way split arrow / nomral attack / frenzy attack on the mouse alone and I use them all in conjecture with speed running and curses. its fun . i like ti.
When I heard about cutthroat league I had a vision of a place, and in that place I saw a man, and in that man I saw my sword, and in my inventory I saw his loot
Please no long cooldowns. I lost count how many times I just stand around waiting until my big cooldowns are over before I engage a rare pack. It is just a really bad system to be implemented in an "Action" RPG. Leave cooldowns to the MMO please.
Cooldowns are big letdown in D3. Also skill sysstem in D3 is far from good suited for aRPG.

So my answer is NO.

Sadly GGG start putting soem CD's in game. maybe wuththe opposition from the community thet will remove it. CD's does not belong to aRPGs.
"
cavemandiary2 wrote:
I suggest that skills are categorized into 3 groups:

- Basic skills. These skills have moderate impact, but are always spamable. Their ressource cost is low.

Example: deal damage with fireball

- Advanced skills. These skills have a high impact, and have a low cooldown of 3-10 seconds. Their ressource cost is moderate.

Example: Freeze a pack with coldsnap

- Ultimate skills. These skills have a very high impact, a long cooldown of 15-30 seconds. Their ressource cost is high.

Example: Clear the screen with Discharge


Uhh...isn't it already like this? There are spamming basic skills like fireball, then there are more powerful skills like flicker strike that have a small cool down to prevent spamming, then there are higher damage skills like traps that do a lot of damage but have longer cool downs and limited number of simultaneous traps. I can only imagine that once the skill system is filled out there will be an abundance of this sort of thing.

As another note, just because you CAN buff a single skill and spam it, doesn't mean you HAVE to or that it is the most effective way to create a character. Many chars depend on a plethora of different attacks for different situations.
"I would have listened... I would have understood!" - Scion

Have you removed Asus ROG/GameFirst yet?
When I learned that seven sided strike had a cooldown in d3, I was extremely letdown. Maybe a 5 or 10 second cooldown is okay, but anymore is pointless to me.
"
MaxTheLimit wrote:


Uhh...isn't it already like this? There are spamming basic skills like fireball, then there are more powerful skills like flicker strike that have a small cool down to prevent spamming, then there are higher damage skills like traps that do a lot of damage but have longer cool downs and limited number of simultaneous traps. I can only imagine that once the skill system is filled out there will be an abundance of this sort of thing.

As another note, just because you CAN buff a single skill and spam it, doesn't mean you HAVE to or that it is the most effective way to create a character. Many chars depend on a plethora of different attacks for different situations.


Nope it isnt, everyone know that there are no perfect things in world, with means that there is no perfect balance in game skill system.
There will be ALWAYS one skill that outperform all others, so just pick it, support it to max and you end up with just one skill.

I played this game few times creating ranger from strach like 4 times, all of the results were ending up with just one attack skill that was oliberating everyhing, didnt need more.

Last person who said thing to me like you had 1/5 of my DPS having higher lvl character than me. So personaly i lol each time someone say that argument, since its superb invalid one.

I totally agree with OP, POE got LOAD of cool mechanics in game that outclass other games, but i also agree that combat is most important part of the game. As a gameer you came here to pwn some monsters as a main reason.

I was here since pretty long time now and i was always repeating the same thing to GGG, but they semed to ingore me. I see that they lately understood that having cooldown is a MUST to make a good battle system.
Whoever dont agree with that statement please make a viable argument, because till now i hear only something without any logical feedback like "because i think so", "because i dont wanna be limited". Thats not argument at all people, you are not 5 year old you should be able to state your reasoning to other people.

I know i am aggressive in my talking way, i am just simply bored of same failures in game industries and their gamers.
Last edited by herflik on Jul 24, 2012, 1:00:57 PM
"
herflik wrote:
Nope it isnt, everyone know that there are no perfect things in world, with means that there is no perfect balance in game skill system.
There will be ALWAYS one skill that outperform all others, so just pick it, support it to max and you end up with just one skill.


I didn't mention anything about perfection. What you are saying has nothing to do with what I said. I said that you CAN make a build that uses one skill, but it isn't required. Many high level builds DON'T use one attack because many attacks are either single target and thus not focused, or single target and not good for groups. Sure you CAN modify many skills to be useful for both single targets and groups, but you can also segregate into separate skills for this.

"
herflik wrote:
I played this game few times creating ranger from strach like 4 times, all of the results were ending up with just one attack skill that was oliberating everyhing, didnt need more.


And? Like I said you definitely CAN create effective characters that way. You don't HAVE to though.

"
herflik wrote:
I was here since pretty long time now and i was always repeating the same thing to GGG, but they semed to ingore me. I see that they lately understood that having cooldown is a MUST to make a good battle system.
Whoever dont agree with that statement please make a viable argument, because till now i hear only something without any logical feedback like "because i think so", "because i dont wanna be limited". Thats not argument at all people, you are not 5 year old you should be able to state your reasoning to other people.


You seem to be stuck on the idea that your way is the only effective way to create a character. It's not all about DPS, it is also about survivability. Just because your DPS is higher than another character doesn't necessarily mean that you would defeat them in a one on one fight. Perhaps they have a more defensive or evasive build.
"I would have listened... I would have understood!" - Scion

Have you removed Asus ROG/GameFirst yet?

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