Chris: ALT-F4 LEGIT STRAT

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johnKeys wrote:
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Xavderion wrote:
Okay, to solve the problem GGG should just make portals instantly port you to town as soon as you open them. Wouldn't break the immersion and would be pretty much the same as esc->logout.


to what town?

right now, the instanced "towns" take longer to load than almost any other area in the game, for me at least.
the client even crashes a few times while loading town, which rarely happens when solo entering a battle area.

unless the game or some parts of it will be run locally, there isn't anything better to do than ALT+F4.
and GGG will never make the client more than just a client.

as a player who never uses ALT F4 - despite many situations where I clearly should have, and many dead HC/Ons chars as a result - it puts me in a disadvantage compared to those who do.
and there is nothing GGG can do about it.


Loading screens shouldn't be an issue, GGG could make it so that as soon as you use the instant portal, your character becomes invulnerable or whatever. If the game really crashes in loading screen, well then it's the same effect as alt+f4ing :D
GGG banning all political discussion shortly after getting acquired by China is a weird coincidence.
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Qarl wrote:
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syrioforel wrote:


Qarl, I can't reconcile your post with Chris's immediately followup. These two posts are at odds. If I don't use alt-f4, I'm playing a version of PoE that has alt-f4 disabled, so I'm playing a game that Chris says is unimaginable.


Why should it have to reconcile? We are a diverse bunch at GGG, and have diverse opinions about how things should be. This can lead to some spirited design discussions in the office. This improves the game greatly.


I'm not trying to nitpick, but I asked if Chris was saying (some particular thing).

Your post was that it was "not was he was saying, at all."

Then he followed up with a post reaffirming something that I read as close to (the particular thing I was asking about.)

He's either saying something close to what I asked, or he isn't. There's not much room for a middle ground there.

At some point you guys had to decide if alt-f4 should be kept in the game, if it should be considered an exploit, and so on. Judging by what I've read, it's in the game and not discouraged. A game with alt-f4 in it is, all other things being equal, (weakly) easier than one without. So you've had to compensate; knowing that alt-f4 is in the game lets you make the boss fights more difficult without making things too hard on the player. Once you balance around some feature getting used, meaning that difficulty has been increased based on its presence, it punishes players that don't use it.

I was curious whether or not this was the case -- whether or not the game was made harder, at some point, because of alt-f4. I want to know if I'm playing the game that your team has designed by not using alt-f4 -- as a player, I want to feel free to get every edge that the game will give me, and so to feel like I'm not cheating I want to know, firmly, what is or is not an exploit.

I expect the answer to that question to be a binary one. Then there's details as to how much harder, or whether or not an individual dev or member of your design team agrees with the feature. I expect those responses would differ from person to person. Those are matters of perspective and opinion. Whether or not alt-f4 was discussed in relation to difficulty or balance, and if decisions were made based on including this feature, is a matter of fact.

Your opinions on the issue certainly don't have to reconcile; I don't expect them to and I respect (and like hearing that there are) having different design ideas on your team.

(I apologize if my tone comes off as hostile; I don't mean to be. I'm concerned, though, and if the design philosophy behind PoE differs heavily from what I want out of a game, I'd like to know.)
IGN: SplitEpimorphism
I think this is the first time I've been surprised by Chris' stance on something. From my point of view, Alt-F4 is on par with using RMT to excel in the game. Both are outside of the game rules (Alt-F4 is a Windows Operating System feature, not a game feature) but allow you to impact the game to your benefit.

I had thought Alt-F4 was simply not preventable and so was tolerated. Frankly, I'm of the opinion that using Alt-F4 is the same as the character dying. You didn't succeed in keeping the character alive. You used an outside force to 'game' the rules.
I don't understand ppls issue(s) with this at all....

If you use or don't use alt-f4, it doesn't change anyone else's game/character/life etc at all.

So if you don't like alt-f4 don't use it!

Please explain to me how "in any way" that someone else using alt-f4 screws up your gaming experience etc?

I'd love to know the answer...the real answer...there's nothing in this game that affects another user, other than the one who uses alt-f4, ever.
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syrioforel wrote:


Especially coming from the recent (?) D3 release, where there's a logout timer to stop this kind of behavior, alt-f4 feels like an exploit rather than a feature. If it is considered key to gameplay or to the balancing of content, then maybe at least a loading screen tooltip is warranted, right now it comes off like a guilty secret ;).

(I think a medium/long-term famine league would be fun.)


I think if your game is 100% perfect, then sure have a log out timer. If there is no way anything can happen that wouldn't be the players fault, again sure.

But D3's HC player base was tiny at release and I'm sure considerably smaller by now. D3 had insane server lag and completely random disconnects that killed tons of HC characters. There were weekly threads about some massive DC wave killing hundreds of characters.

I can say, that NOT losing a character every time there is a bit of server lag or every time my own internet decides to have a shit fit is miles and miles better than having a log out timer and trying to keep whatever little bit of "immersion" that being able to instantly leave the game takes away.



I don't claim that a logout timer is necessary. I'm saying that the following things do not make sense:

1) Having a death penalty.
2) Not having a logout timer.
3) Balancing around the ability to circumvent the death penalty.

Things that would make sense:

* Having a game that's 100% perfect (as you say), and having a log out timer. Have a death penalty, knowing that when it is applied the player deserved it. (At least, most of the time).

* Acknowledging that your game is susceptible to intermittent crashes or network issues (not 100% perfect as per your language), and not having a death penalty, noting that player death is often not the fault of the player.

* Informing the player directly, in game, that alt-f4 will save your skin if you're about to die, letting you get around the death penalty (maybe).

I don't see why this third tidbit isn't in game, if alt-f4 is considered a feature rather than a bug. At least tell the player that it's an option, and that it won't get them banned ;).
IGN: SplitEpimorphism
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Josephoenix wrote:
I don't understand ppls issue(s) with this at all....

If you use or don't use alt-f4, it doesn't change anyone else's game/character/life etc at all.

So if you don't like alt-f4 don't use it!

Please explain to me how "in any way" that someone else using alt-f4 screws up your gaming experience etc?

I'd love to know the answer...the real answer...there's nothing in this game that affects another user, other than the one who uses alt-f4, ever.


The problem stems from the Dev's saying they took it into consideration when they balanced boss fights.

Only game mechanics should be taken into consideration when balancing. Like I said, I can't agree with it. It is their game though, and I am fully looking forward to starting a new character in the upcoming hardcore league. Onslaught didn't interest me much.

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otinanai2 wrote:
It's hilarious that the only people who complain about ALT-F4 are softcore players.


This is more of a balance issue, as this affects both leagues. It saddens me that you probably checked most of the people posting here to see if they had hardcore characters.
"Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right!" Henry Ford
Last edited by Jackel6672 on Oct 10, 2013, 1:39:22 AM
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Xavderion wrote:
There's a reason why hardcore in D3 is dead.
It should be noted that the guys who actually do the balance (Carl, Rory, Mark2) don't necessarily play the same way I do. It's just that when the founders were deciding whether we should allow instant exit, we decided for it because we think it leads to a better game.
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syrioforel wrote:
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Qarl wrote:
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syrioforel wrote:


Qarl, I can't reconcile your post with Chris's immediately followup. These two posts are at odds. If I don't use alt-f4, I'm playing a version of PoE that has alt-f4 disabled, so I'm playing a game that Chris says is unimaginable.


Why should it have to reconcile? We are a diverse bunch at GGG, and have diverse opinions about how things should be. This can lead to some spirited design discussions in the office. This improves the game greatly.


I'm not trying to nitpick, but I asked if Chris was saying (some particular thing).

Your post was that it was "not was he was saying, at all."

Then he followed up with a post reaffirming something that I read as close to (the particular thing I was asking about.)


I think you are reading things into Chris' comments that aren't there. And I don't think his post immediately followed mine contradicted it. (I mean, we were discussing this very thread before I posted my comment, and he read it before it was posted.)

We certainly don't make any fight such that we expect a well prepared player to leave to be able to finish the fight. On the other hand we know that players can and will exit fights in some circumstances, and like to pick much bigger fights than they can handle.

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Josephoenix wrote:
I don't understand ppls issue(s) with this at all....

If you use or don't use alt-f4, it doesn't change anyone else's game/character/life etc at all.

So if you don't like alt-f4 don't use it!

Please explain to me how "in any way" that someone else using alt-f4 screws up your gaming experience etc?

I'd love to know the answer...the real answer...there's nothing in this game that affects another user, other than the one who uses alt-f4, ever.


If I don't use alt-f4, it affects no one else. If I do use alt-f4, it affects no one else.

If GGG made the game harder to account for people using alt-f4, then it affects all players.

Suppose by some elaborate ploy GGG hypothetically made a boss that was impossible to beat without using alt-f4; this would be something to be concerned about if you don't use it. :) A non-user would be unable to complete the game, and user of it might not even notice the difference.

That's an extreme hypothetical example, but it's a matter of degrees. How much, if at all, is the game difficulty tuned around alt-f4 being in the game? That's a fair question to ask.

Also "if you don't like *** don't use it" is a trash argument. If I don't like PoE, I don't have to play it. That's the ultimate "if you don't like it" argument, and a great way to shrink a player base :). Many people that voice concerns on the forum like PoE and want to continue enjoying it; they don't want to see the game drift towards a version of PoE that they don't want to play.

Playing a game like PoE is an investment of time, I have no issues finding something else to do if I see that this is going down the wrong track (from my perspective), though I'd prefer that it didn't.
IGN: SplitEpimorphism
Last edited by syrioforel on Oct 10, 2013, 1:45:37 AM

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