Stringing on the Kickstarter customer, or Why this game needs to die

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JohnNamikaze wrote:

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raics wrote:

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Moosifer wrote:

There was so little variety then.

Hell, at least it was real. I think of CB as "the time before time, when you played a caster on natural ES regen and chaos wasn't an element".

CB only had to deal with zombies, rhoas, bandits, and.....crabs. There was no mobs that went ballistic on you like these leaping frogs and devourers are today. Hell, act 3 mobs paved the trend for craziness.

Yeah, I made some posts over the years about 'non-numeric power creep'. Our builds became more powerful so the game became faster and enemies more ridiculous in order to pose at least some kind of a threat to shark builds out there, basically, we got enemies with attacks or effects that are very hard to avoid. Back then pretty much everything was avoidable by active playing.

It looks like a good thing at first glance, however it slowly eradicated some concepts, one of them is that ES should be played differently than life. I think there's also a very early build in build of the week series that features a low life char that survives chaos damage with a third of its life by playing a bit more careful game, can't really do that anymore. There's also RF, you weren't supposed to be able to regen while under it, the skill was supposed to put you in danger and grant you a huge damage bonus to compensate and look at the way it's being used because the original application would be just too dangerous now.

So, the thing that got devalued over the years is active defense, positioning, crowd control, proper timing and the like, putting the emphasis on raw stats and passive defense.

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raics wrote:

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JohnNamikaze wrote:

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raics wrote:

Hell, at least it was real. I think of CB as "the time before time, when you played a caster on natural ES regen and chaos wasn't an element".

CB only had to deal with zombies, rhoas, bandits, and.....crabs. There was no mobs that went ballistic on you like these leaping frogs and devourers are today. Hell, act 3 mobs paved the trend for craziness.

Yeah, I made some posts over the years about 'non-numeric power creep'. Our builds became more powerful so the game became faster and enemies more ridiculous in order to pose at least some kind of a threat to shark builds out there, basically, we got enemies with attacks or effects that are very hard to avoid. Back then pretty much everything was avoidable by active playing.

It looks like a good thing at first glance, however it slowly eradicated some concepts, one of them is that ES should be played differently than life. I think there's also a very early build in build of the week series that features a low life char that survives chaos damage with a third of its life by playing a bit more careful game, can't really do that anymore. And just take a look at RF, you weren't supposed to be able to regen while under it, the skill was supposed to put you in danger and grant you a huge damage bonus to compensate and look at the way it's being used.

So, the thing that got devalued over the years is active defense, positioning, crowd control, proper timing and the like, putting the emphasis on raw stats and passive defense.

Please take off the rose tinted spectacles! CB had rhoas that charged as a pack from offscreen stunlocking you as group, it had leap slam goats that also all jumped at you at the same time stunlocking you to rip. Don't act like leapers are a new thing that we didn't have before. Devos are the only new ones. GGG has toned down all of the charger/leaper mobs so that that they do those attacks less frequently and stagger them instead of the whole pack attacking on sight, the game is better and more balanced as a result.

What CB was in your heads & reality are apparently 2 different things.

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raics wrote:

never bet anything you can't afford to lose and never offer advice you aren't ready to see ignored.

exactly.
i always liked to read your posts, scrotie and i think they still have much value but not this one.

i don't see any reason on why arguments from old time supporters should have a bigger
weight than arguments from new players, if both contribute towards the game's meta.

raising hopes for poe2 is folly, it would take years and devour millions of $ in which time ggg had no income because a not supported poe would die fast.


regarding your problem with being named a supporter: imho "supporter" is more fitting for a free to play model. if there were a monthly subsription fee i would see myself as customer but that's not the case.

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lethal_papercut wrote:

Please take off the rose tinted spectacles! CB had rhoas that charged as a pack from offscreen stunlocking you as group, it had leap slam goats that also all jumped at you at the same time stunlocking you to rip. Don't act like leapers are a new thing that we didn't have before. Devos are the only new ones. GGG has toned down all of the charger/leaper mobs so that that they do those attacks less frequently and stagger them instead of the whole pack attacking on sight, the game is better and more balanced as a result.

What CB was in your heads & reality are apparently 2 different things.

You and Moose are talking about balance issues like reflect and evasion check on rhoas, all those are easily tweakable.

What's not easy to fix is the trend of piling up layers of stuff to ridiculous proportions just to give the poor critters a chance to actually kill something while at the same time allowing players to obliterate whole screens in a flash. Zooming enemies when under onslaught, auras and shrine effects, requiring a staunching flask to play the game, minions with instability, thorns on death, poison on death, lightning thorns (which got nerfed to zero damage because the idea behind it is plain ridiculous)...

More and more reactive abilities you can build against and eventually trivialize but not actively avoid. Was it too hard to give those thorn giants a nice swelling animation long enough to get out before they spray the spikes?

If we're going purely on monsters, ofc I liked CB better, the mobs were easy as hell. Defensive systems were easy, 3k life and a granite, sweet set for 99% of the content. Didn't even need max res in most non-map areas, shit could get away with bad res in maps as not much could really punish you.

Act 3x mobs are annoying as fuck but the game feels much faster now, which I really like. CB I tried my hardest to make builds that actually cleared quickly, just not killed quickly, which was actually difficult due to a weak market and lack of options. Now QS between every pack, 1-2 shot the pack, LW/leap/WB/blink/whatever over ledges and whatnot. The gave feels more fluid, smoother, faster. Mob interactions on whether you live or die happen in seconds. Yes, it's much more unforgiving, you have to make the build with these situations in mind and it's very hard to plan for it all.

But I genuinely like how far the game as come. There's a ton of build options, and even a build using similar skills can have radically different defensives options and/or gear.

I think the game is now about the at the best I've ever played it. Masters have been balanced better, torment is much better than rampage (didn't play other SC temp leagues), even though I'm not much of a HC player I might play bloodlines just because nemesis was my favorite HC league. While it could use some work, PVP is actually a thing (even though I'm not involved it's a new draw and way of retention).

I honestly don't see many flaws beyond the ones that have been driven home for years, like desync and performance issues in general. One large QoL/performance patch and this game is fucking amazing.

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Moosifer wrote:

Act 3x mobs are annoying as fuck but the game feels much faster now, which I really like. CB I tried my hardest to make builds that actually cleared quickly, just not killed quickly, which was actually difficult due to a weak market and lack of options. Now QS between every pack, 1-2 shot the pack, LW/leap/WB/blink/whatever over ledges and whatnot. The gave feels more fluid, smoother, faster. Mob interactions on whether you live or die happen in seconds. Yes, it's much more unforgiving, you have to make the build with these situations in mind and it's very hard to plan for it all.

You see, that s actually what a lot of people really hate.

The game is not strategic anymore. It is a shoot them up type, they are forcing you to play like you have ADD. Monsters also got ADD and run at you breathing blue fire or dealing insane amount of phy damages (devs), they are dealing so much damages that you need yourself to do 5 time more.

In the end it is a weapon race. You can t play slow paced builds anymore in parties because all the other are playing it safe, Aka 1 shot dragon ball z super attack styles.

I liked the first part of the game, the A1 with slow zombies and Roahs you can dodge when no desync or when you can see them. But the last part is just monsters popping at you from right under your feet or from off-screen, this last part force you to 1 shot monsters off-screen instead of using a strategic approach.

I also really hate that ranged deals 100% damages at close combat or off-screen. They should change that. Ranged should not be able to off-screen and their spells should not deal 100% damages when they can t see the monsters or are too close.

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Moosifer wrote:

I think the game is now about the at the best I've ever played it.

fully agree with all of your points. yep it is. for me the pace increased after giving up on trying to improve unpopular builds like fireball, etherealKnife, poison arrow or pure physical dmg builds.
having a blast with tornado shot at the moment, carpet bombed me into mercyless in no time and hope it doesn't spoil me too much.

on topic: i'm not wondering about all this dissapointment coming from the core of maybe 60-80 veterans and regular posters, who all had different ideas about directions the game has to go.


like in software or hardware development, every design decision has dire consequences on future implementations: for me the most design decision in poe was to implement streaming.

while on the positive side it's engaging the community for free advertisement and poe is gaining popularity among the streamer crowd, it had dire consequences like: giving popular streamers a huge impact over public opinion, popular builds, stratgies and, as a consequence, design and balance decisions.

a disappointed or cheating streamer can cause more havoc among it's fan crowd and far beyound than any kid could by going rampage on the poe forum and reddit. streamers are pandoras box, devs opened themselves to the new leaders of the community, are old time players just jealous about their forum opinion now being worth less?

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geradon wrote:

are old time players just jealous about their forum opinion now being worth less?

One would have to be nothing short of delusional to think his forum opinion was ever worth more than a worn dime.

However, a thousand forum opinions is worth something (a crumpled hundred dollar bill, to be exact), and that's why streamers can be dangerous, it's the echo effect. Nobody here on forum ever commanded such influence, must be the magic of moving pictures and sound.

@Pneuma
I'm using anger in a very broad sense. Angry does not mean raging fit. I am angry about child exploitation, but I am not steaming around all the time. Here I use the word angry to describe my position on the issue, not my emotional state. So it is a broad term, and disappointed probably more accurately describes some people. Disappointed is a form of angry.

Part of what you quoted was left out and that was the italics on the word "me" when referring to what I perceive as the state of build diversity. This is my perception, I do not claim it to be universal truth.

I certainly think there are many areas to improve this game, as I am in the same camp as those disagreeing with the current range/AoE/crit standard.

The point I want to get across is to be mindful of what we hope for from a second game if GGG decide to do one. We have the capacity to ruin it for ourselves. I personally think PoE has more "experimenting" to do before a truly great sequel has a chance of trumping its predecessor.