GGG PLEASE stick to your guns!

"

NebulousFury wrote:

When I first got into D3 closed beta... it was a game of epic proportions.

Blizzard was very interactive with the beta testers and listened to our suggestions... but how they resolved and handled those suggestion was so backwards. Some people said the skills needed to be balanced a lot more.... so what does blizzard do? Remove the top 3 features of the game to avoid having to deal with the complaints about a skill system that was so diverse it would be impossible to balance, or even try to.

A lot of people were saying that nobody would use RMAH and that it's a waste of blizzard's money to work on it... at the time item drops were plentiful and high quality so we saw no reason to even use normal auction house at the time. So what does blizzard do? They nerf item drops to the highest of extremes to force people to use auctio house.

Act II had 5 more zones than Act I or III so we were trying to push blizzard into adding more zones to Act I and III.... but instead they simply deleted the zones from Act II to make it level.


3 prime examples of how dumb Blizzard really is. That was the saddest closed beta I have ever been a part of. Never before have I seen a game so epic at the beginning of beta become a game so mediocre as time went on. Seriously.... it's scarred me for life.

And I was seriously paranoid of it happening to POE too... but thankfully POE is our savior! haha

I wasn't in D3 closed beta, so I didn't know all that stuff, but as I read it I realized:
Every single thing you mentioned can be boiled down to one basic concept: Blizzard just wants more money.

I'm sure Chris and the rest of the GGG crew enjoy being able to pay rent and buy toilet paper, but obviously they are more abou tmaking a game that makes players (and themselves) happy to play it. Blizzard is about making a game that makes more money.

I'm gonna stick with the company that focuses on making good content for the sake of having good content.

"

Delmas wrote:

This forum gets a little more carebear(for lack of a better word) every day it seems.

For the love of god GGG please stick to with what has gotten you here. You have made a game as you stated "for the hardcore gamers" "lovers of d2" etc etc.

Well they can't 'stick to their guns' and produce a game for hardcore gamers.
Because their model actively prevents hardcore gameplay, it prevents challenge, it promotes carebear and faceroll.

The problem is the misplaced currency sink, which is a gate to challenging content.

To access challenging content, one needs to invest a lot of currency, not doing so will massively reduce the chance that you get access to that content. The amount of currency involved per x time per 1 man in challenging content is several times more than that 1 man would find per x time in any content. We are talking 50 fold here, at least.

Let's look at the 3 ways in which one opens these gates and accesses the challenging content.

1) By heavy trading.
Trading will get the currency, but it will by default also trivialise the gated content because the trader will also be gearing themselves. The challenging content, as in most cases, is largely a gear check.

2) By grouping.
Grouping will slash the currency cost to roll maps by up to 6. Grouping in PoE trivialises challenge compared to solo, massively.

3) By massive time investment in lower content.
If one doesn't trade, or group, the game is, at first, challenging. Levelling through the acts presents the player with gear checks, the gear can be obtained from easy content, from medium content or from harder content. The player can push the challenge and have a better chance at gear, or choose to do easier content with a lesser chance of gear required to advance.

This is good challenging game play. Always pushing at the challenge, always progressing from challenge.

But once at maps, it all goes tits up.

The one play style that could be challenged, is locked out, because of the misplaced currency sink. The player can still unlock these gates, but it takes a long time. The problem is, it takes a long time faceroll farming easy content, the content which isn't gated, to get enough currency to attempt to open the gate.

What happens is, the player, while gated from the challenge, actually outgears the challenge without even seeing it, or at the very most, only getting bites of it. It takes so long to open the gates without trading and/or grouping that really good rares and uniques from the easy content are good enough to trivialise what would be a challenge if not for the currency sink gates.

So, really, if you want this game to be a game "for the hardcore gamers", then GGG sticking to their guns is not what you should want.

The model, as it is, prevents PoE from being a hordcore, challenging game.

"

Delmas wrote:

This forum gets a little more carebear(for lack of a better word) every day it seems.

For the love of god GGG please stick to with what has gotten you here. You have made a game as you stated "for the hardcore gamers" "lovers of d2" etc etc.

Now everyday I see a "add an ah" or "make crafting cheaper/easier" or "It is too hard to get good loot"

All I can say is please do not break or even bend your mindset to the people who will likely be gone in a month/week regardless of what you do.

TLDR: This game drew a crowd for a reason. Lets not forget what that reason was.

If you support this message please let your voice be heard, if not there are lots of other threads going you may like.

PS: this is not a loot discussion

You would be suprised what money can do.

"

narg62 wrote:

You would be suprised what money can do.

As long as it can make a PoE 2 someday or keep adding to this one for 10 years i'll forgive it of previous transgressions.

Agree with most things said about D3, the skill system was interesting but lacked more than a few viable options of each class, the item system was the most boring I have ever seen and completely bland.

One thing no has mentioned here is how broken the inferno difficulty was and it wasn't because it was hard it was because Blizzard had just turned up the damage and hp a lot. Unless you were playing a tank you couldn't take more than 2-3 hits from normal mobs and barely 1 from rares. Some rare combinations were completely insane as well on some mobs. Like how you could be one-shotted instantly because they put the arcane laser on top of you or when they lasers where invisible.... My favorite was probably extra fast+extra minions+invulnerability or something like that on fast mobs. Invulnerability also added extra mobs and hp i think. The result anyway was that you had a ton of minions that couldn't be killed and running all over the place while trying to kill the rare mob hiding behind them. And ofc any hit from the minions was pretty much a one shot. And ofc there was a lot of other completely insane combos.

D3 just turned into 100% kiting at inferno(played a DH) and stupid tactics like picking a corner of the map and pulling all the unkillable shit there because there usually were 2-3 of those spawns each time.

There was one very good thing with D3 though, the combat was smooth and nice. It's the only point where D3>PoE, they really need to fix the desync problems.

Best D3 feature: Mercenary chatter. That's the only thing I actually miss.

"

CharanJaydemyr wrote:

Pretty much. Each core skill could be modified dramatically with a dropped rune (just like support gems). Thus each class could have, say, 30 basic skills, but with 5-7 rune types that could drop, that naturally becomes more like 150-200. Which isn't THAT ridiculous to me, if we think about games like Guild Wars 1.

Blizzard's promise for literally billions of builds was well on the way to a reality, at least conceptually. If they'd pulled it off, I'd still be playing it. I had so many awesome plans for that level of customisation.

It was an incredible idea, but unfeasible for a Diablo game aimed at WoW players.

So when I found this indie ARPG was actually doing it, it was a done deal. Time to beg for a key.

Mechanically speaking the runes still exist and still provide for something like 120 skills per class. The changes just aren't as dramatic (which resulted in disappointment) across the board, though many of the original changes were things like "change damage type" and "cheaper".

With RoS they're diversifying skill runes s bit more, and also adding "skill gear" with dramatic changes to how skills behave. Hoping that makes it through personally.

The problem with the skill system is that what a player considers a "build". I personally see plenty of builds, other people see "free respec" (no matter how unfeasible it is in combat and farming sessions) as no builds. There's something like 5000 unique combinations of skills on the skillbar without elective mode, without using a modifying rune. Whether that's unique builds is heavily subjective.

I can tell you that I've never seen another wizard with my preferred skillset in D3. Ever. In fact it doesn't even get discussed. Probably in part because skills need a little tuning, but it'll get there. Took like 5 years to tune D2. Not that anyone remembers that.

Hi

When it comes to d3 comparisons and something GGG could use from them is the AH. I really liked how a player could post some items,set a time limit, starting bid, etc.. streamlined the game and allowed players to focus on killing stuff. I don't get the animosity towards a AH.

This constant spam/lottery channel is crap.Maybe add a cooldown on people msging in trade or add a board like for parties but for items. Also GGG do something about WWW.ILOVEPOE.COM they spam me everyday repeatedly and I hit ignore and then they use diff name what happened to the easy report button?

I get the feeling that if GGG doesn't add a AH or something like it soon we will only get more troublesome pop up msgs from these websites, the same goes for orb costs, GGG needs to wake up and grab the reins and control the prices of orbs instead of letting third rate sites tell us whats what because meanwhile these websites are filling a niche that GGG should be occupying.

cheers

"

Delmas wrote:

Now everyday I see a "add an ah" or "make crafting cheaper/easier" or "It is too hard to get good loot"

So you want outdated mechanics from D2? AH didn't exist in D2 time because it couldn't exist. If it could, it would have existed (99% sure of it)

Also, I never had a problem playing self-found in D2 and finishing all content. Also there was a unid gamble trader, you could get good gear from him, unlike vendor in PoE. Just giving an example.

"

TLDR: This game drew a crowd for a reason. Lets not forget what that reason was.

yea, the (main) reason is: free to play. Van Helsing on hard difficulty is way harder than PoE merciless. Want hardcore? Try it. :)

Personally, I don't support either side of the argument. Game shouldn't be too catering or too hard. It should be balanced and should fit F2P mentality as well because GGG needs money, they didn't create this game "for fun" but for profit.