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

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Moosifer wrote:

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

"I think there is a general consensus among us older types that ES in general has been mismanaged as a game mechanic"

To anyone who played CI in CB, and remembers it's unique and OP playstyle, I can't believe they're happy with it's virtually useless and redundant feel now-a-days.

its not redundant at all, its extremely powerful and niche, as it should be. All the changes were things like adding leech to es, why would that make it redundant? Its all been buffs to ci but despite the buffs its now redundant.... sry no I dont agree.

Whether you agree or not doesn't matter. Like I said, go check the class forums and see how few people are doing CI builds. It's obviously out of favor, and has been for a long time now.

As long as LL builds aren't much more expensive than CI, CI can't compete. It got even worse with the introduction of solaris lorica. You give up some EHP going LL over CI but not that much, can still be slightly above what an average life build would be while having much higher DPS.

CI is in a great place if LL builds weren't driving the prices of all ES gear up. Once you assemble everything you'll wonder why you didn't just get a solaris or save for shavs.

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Moosifer wrote:

Whether you agree or not doesn't matter. Like I said, go check the class forums and see how few people are doing CI builds. It's obviously out of favor, and has been for a long time now.

As long as LL builds aren't much more expensive than CI, CI can't compete. It got even worse with the introduction of solaris lorica. You give up some EHP going LL over CI but not that much, can still be slightly above what an average life build would be while having much higher DPS.

CI is in a great place if LL builds weren't driving the prices of all ES gear up. Once you assemble everything you'll wonder why you didn't just get a solaris or save for shavs.

Id like to see a solaris melee build that will match a ci melee build, even a shavs melee build. Trends are trends, they are not always representative of the actual possibilities in the game mechanics.


I play ci builds, absolutely no way Id play a joke solaris build, shavs maybe. Low Life has issues in power terms, the low life bloodrage bonus is highly questionable for example. But might as well get lorica or shavs? My ci chest is worth more than a 6 link shavs, I sold my shavs, I still have my ci chest and still play ci, a shavs equiv build would not be able to survive the content my ci can.

There was a problem when everyone and their dog was going ci, it should be niche not the go to over life, imo its in a better place than it ever has been. The life per level buff helps ci with stun and ele ailments, the flask changes, vaal pact changes and the buff of infused shield have made life and ci more distinctly different than they have been since the start of open beta. No leech for energy shield would destroy the majority of es builds that currently exist and would render it truly redundant. You think its already redundant, but the other half of this 'consensus' wants it nerfed into the ground, wants leech removed or mana leech applies to es instead of life leech etc, how would that help it be less redundant?

Do you leech ES?

You're misusing my interpretation of redundant. I'm saying it's redundant because LL builds exist and while they won't have the same EHP, CI can't match their DPS. As long as you have acceptable EHP, DPS is almost more desired in late end game builds. As LL builds can do uber atziri, I fail to see where CI is better off? They're better on the 150% IIQ maps no one does I guess? Or can be done cheaper using a life build.

It's niche just like armor/evasion builds are niche. They can work, they can be great with incredible gear, but so can any other build. You can make frost wall a viable skill with enough mirrored items. There's a reason the community has mostly abandoned CI. It's why GGG has been slowing buffing CI since all the OB nerfs as well. I remember testing for 1.2 in alpha, one of the first questions I got from Qarl was "how does CI and life/es builds feel now with the recent changes." My first answer was "still pretty shitty."

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Moosifer wrote:

You're misusing my interpretation of redundant. I'm saying it's redundant because LL builds exist and while they won't have the same EHP, CI can't match their DPS. As long as you have acceptable EHP, DPS is almost more desired in late end game builds. As LL builds can do uber atziri, I fail to see where CI is better off? They're better on the 150% IIQ maps no one does I guess? Or can be done cheaper using a life build.

Ive never seen a shavs melee build that didnt die, a lot. Cost is irrelevant, thats dictated by the players selling gear. What happened when unhost switched from ci to low life ek totems? He said it was shit and he should never have given up ci and sold his chest, because he was squishy as fuck by comparison. That shavs died to a vaal orb in standard, it didnt stay with him to his second hardcore lvl100.

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Moosifer wrote:

It's niche just like armor/evasion builds are niche. They can work, they can be great with incredible gear, but so can any other build.

ar/ev hybrid builds are significantly stronger defensively than equiv pure ev or pure armour builds, theyre niche because the majority of the player base has a very limited understanding of the game thats mostly based on forum gossip posted by equally ignorant players rather than actually trying stuff out. Theres plenty of ci builds in the forums, more than hybrid armour + evasion builds oddly, well, oddly when you look at the actual game rather than the fotm opinions of the community.


ci isnt favoured, sure, by the same community who said armour was way too op and we needed to remove iron reflexes, the same community who is now saying we need an armour buff despite armour being stronger now than it was back when they were crying for ggg to remove iron reflexes because it was a must have node for every build. People are clueless, I dont care that people are clueless, I dont care what people charge for items, I look at the actual game and from what I can see in game ci and hybrid life + es are both fine, low life needs a few nerfs.

Storm in a teacup, this entire thread.

Are we arguing generalization or specific? Of course certain builds will be better CI over LL, that's not the point. While I can't speak for how often they died but petrov and ventor both had LL reave builds around the time reave was introduced that were extremely powerful.

I also feel we are talking on completely different wave length here as I'm talking general average, what normal players can achieve. There's no way that armor/evasion is as easy to get up and functioning as one or the other, especially if you don't want to give up offense. I also don't think a CI build based around a chest that is more expensive than shavs is remotely comparable.

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ci isnt favoured, sure, by the same community who said armour was way too op and we needed to remove iron reflexes, the same community who is now saying we need an armour buff despite armour being stronger now than it was back when they were crying for ggg to remove iron reflexes because it was a must have node for every build. People are clueless, I dont care that people are clueless, I dont care what people charge for items, I look at the actual game and from what I can see in game ci and hybrid life + es are both fine, low life needs a few nerfs.

Well this just isn't following what's happened. Evasions has been routinely buffed since OB because everyone said it was useless. Now many people are using it and armor looks pretty weak in comparison. Also you're comparing armor now to a time where we didn't have every build easily putting up IC w/o the need of self cast. Which this change has made it so we really only need that set up and a way to avoid being one shot, which evasion is much better at than armor. This is why armor is seen as weak, because everything around it got much better while it's stayed the same.

You can dismiss the community but if you check the threads at the top of every class forum you'll see many builds listed, not just FotM builds. While you think CI is fine, I know GGG doesn't feel that way nor does the rest of the community which is why it's so uncommon to see lately.

This also doesn't change the fact that how CI function in CB compared to now is radically different. Life and CI then there were few comparison is how each stayed alive. Now they aren't too different. To argue otherwise is just trying to be a contrarian or you never saw/played old CI. CI went from a pure DPS build, I remember having 10k ES w/ 3 %ES passives, to now it's more of an EHP build.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

I play ci builds, absolutely no way Id play a joke solaris build

Ah, that's exactly the problem, Lorica is what Shav should have been. It bends one of the most basic game rules and opens up a relatively safe way to play an otherwise extremely risky build - which means the item should be absolutely worthless aside from its special property, yeah, just like Lorica.

I had a post about successful and unsuccessful 'keystone uniques' recently. In a nutshell it says that a unique that gives you a keystone should offer some bonuses that synergize with the type of build that typically uses the item. That's why cloak of defiance is popular and hyrri, crown of thorns and simula aren't.

However, keystone uniques are there to give you the keystone that's perfectly possible to obtain, they just save you the trip. Uniques like Shav and Soul Taker are special because they bend game rules, they give you properties you can't obtain any other way, which means they should be much more heavily penalized stat-wise.

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Moosifer wrote:

Also you're comparing armor now to a time where we didn't have every build easily putting up IC w/o the need of self cast.

I've been playing some armor/endurance stacking builds recently and they've been pretty sturdy. Now that armor nodes got better and mixed with other useful bonuses it's pretty easy to get a meaningful amount of armor and top it off with endurance charges. A big thumbs up there.

IC became a lazy man's defense, whenever you got no clue how to stay alive you go 'ah, heck, I'll just make an IC setup and that's it'. If GGG does something drastic to it, I can see primary defenses getting into the spotlight again. Incidentally, they will need to do it if they want us to use other warcry-type skills besides enduring cry.

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Moosifer wrote:

I also feel we are talking on completely different wave length here as I'm talking general average, what normal players can achieve. There's no way that armor/evasion is as easy to get up and functioning as one or the other, especially if you don't want to give up offense.

I have ev ar hybrid builds, main one atm uses a 1400 armour chest and a devotos hat, thats all you n eed and its defensively more powerful thaqn any evasion coil setup, certainly more so than a pure armour build. You can get a 2k armour chest for 3 alterations atm and a devotos for 1 chaos, so how hard is it to run that setup for an average player? Might take you like 3 minutes farming to afford the gear u need.

ci might hve changed, but thers a few people saying its been buffed way to much and needs nerfed down and a few saying its nerfed too much and need buffed, and apparently thats a consensus amouing older players that es has been badly handled or whatever. Thats not a consensus on anything, you dont even agree with each other and dont make up any meaningful amount of older players, thats what i disagreed with. Most of what you say is true, but i dont see that it = a problem with es, at all, or a problem with ci.


Im going to stop posting in this thread now, its a vile, disgusting thread and should be shunned from these forums imo, i posted in it because it was already at the top of the list but im not going to continue to keep it there. No harm intended to yourself moosifer or anyone else having a decent conversation but the message of this threads op that this game should die and no one should support ggg is just obscene and something we all should turn our backs.

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Wittgenstein wrote:

I still have NO idea why they got rid of gold for these orbs, orbs that are incredibly rare and are drowned in RNG ... The 'economy' is a joke (assuming you're an adult with a full time job and interests outside of grinding in 1 video game) - that is not an insult at those who can/do enjoy the grind and investment of time, if I were 15 I'd probably feel much different.

Very cool username there Witty! (I'm a philosophy major so...)

So, aside from my vociferous complaints about desync, which I still think is the "#1 Biggest Problem That Needs To Be Fixed™", this is probably my second biggest complaint. I'm sure there are lots of people who have played a lot more hours than me. And I'm sure there are a lot of people who are much better traders, much better players in general and who are able to acquire GG gear in a much shorter span of time than I've been able to. I'm sure those people like the totally ridiculous cost/time investment of getting truly GG gear.

But for me, and for most players like me, I think, I've played for probably more than 1300 hours in this game and while I've managed to grind up and spend probably in the range of 50 - 60 exalts worth of currency. Perhaps it's important to note here that I probably have a lot more than 50 - 60 exalts worth of items. But I hate Hate HATE trading.

Trading sucks balls, and I would much rather play self found and craft my own gear. Trading just makes me worry about whether or not I'm getting a good deal, and whether or not I'm being ripped off. It makes me worry about whether or not I'm a sucker and whether or not the other player I'm trading with is an asshole. Spending ages in a party in Sarn waiting for someone to join and buy what I'm selling, or posting and managing a shop on the forums just feels like a huge waste of time that would be better spent actually playing the game. But you HAVE to do it if you want to access endgame content and not die. The gear that just drops as you play is okay up to a point, but it's never enough to completely kit out a build with gear that's good enough to access endgame content and not die without trading for at least some items. And most likely the gear you buy through trade hasn't been crafted either, aside from sockets and/or links in some cases; the GG stuff people are selling was probably just a lucky drop.

This brings me to the next point, very little of the 50 - 60 exalts I've ground up has actually been spent on attempting to craft my own gear. Like, as a proportion of the total currency I've ground out, I've maybe spent less than 1% on trying to craft stuff. I've used a very small amount of it to craft some levelling gear while going through normal and cruel difficulty. But this isn't really satisfying crafting. It's crafting as a means to an end. It's not crafting as an end in itself. It's not crafting that I finish doing and then say "Behold my masterpiece! Here is an item on this toon that I will never need to replace!", rather it's crafting about which I think "Well, that item will do for the next ten levels or until a slightly better one happens to drop, and then it will be so much garbage again."

This is all basically because of the fact that the currency cost of trying to craft anything GG myself would be just too stupid to even attempt it, relative to how long it takes to grind the orbs up. 50 - 60 exalts worth of currency is not enough to craft even 1 GG item, and that was more than 1300 hours worth of play. It makes me feel like the whole crafting system is kinda silly.

I think that the crafting and trading system could be made pretty fun pretty easily, without destroying the economy, though. First, no longer allow the trading of items. If you want a GG item, you MUST craft it yourself (or get lucky with a drop, in the case of uniques like AA). Second, massively increase the drop rates of orbs. A sensible drop rate of orbs would be such that the average player acquired enough orbs to, on average, craft, maybe 60% plus or minus 20%, of their gear to GG level within the duration of the temporary league. Third, continue to allow trading of orbs.

This would have several positive effects for very little cost. First (and most obviously) players would spend a lot more time crafting. They'd actually get familiar with and used to using the orbs. Second, players would spend more time playing the game and less time spamming trade chat, or waiting for someone to join their trading party, or waiting for a reply to a message so that they can get that piece of gear they need in order to progress. Third, the parties page on the social tab would actually be mainly composed of parties of people who were playing the game, instead of wanting to trade. Fourth, because trading would be entirely based on orbs and their relative usefulness and drop rates, values of traded commodities would be much more transparent, and players would spend less energy worrying about whether they were being ripped off/getting a good deal. Fifth, all players, if they invested enough time, would have the possibility of crafting at least one piece of GG gear by the end of the league; I'm betting that almost everyone would find that feeling immensely satisfying. It's a tangible return for your time investment. Sixth, being able to craft at least some GG gear would mean that levelling up to 100 would actually be a much more reasonable goal for most players. Seventh, because of the fifth and sixth points players who, like me, are total OCD completionists would probably finish their characters/builds in standard not too long after a league ended, and maybe even before the new season of temporary leagues had begun; this would be an incentive to actually play in the new temporary leagues, and experiment with new builds, rather than just continuing to grind away on a build in standard that I started 3 seasons ago.

The previous seven considerations lead to the point that right now I hate playing in the new leagues. Not because I'm not interested in the new game mechanics, but rather because I still haven't finished most of my old builds in standard from 3 seasons ago.

Starting fresh in a new league means that I am making a commitment to spending 20 hours or so of playtime during which I can't even make use of the chaos recipe. How do I justify that shitty 20 hours when I haven't even managed to farm enough currency to finish off a single one of my old builds? One of them is getting close, I'll grant, but the gap between close and done is unimaginably large.

If I could finish my builds within just a little bit more time than the span of a temporary league, that might mean more income for GGG as well, since I might start new characters in the new leagues and be willing to pay money for more character slots as I filled the existing ones up. Paying for that after I'd completed enough characters to fill the slots that are for free would actually even be satisfying, I think.

Now, to the subject of the relatively small downsides which go along with these changes. First, probably, less people would play in the standard league for long periods of time. But that might not be such a bad thing if those players were playing in the temporary leagues because their characters in standard were finished.

Second, it might be suggested that these changes would make the end game content too 'easy' since it would be possible for everyone to get OP gear in relatively short time. But that's not really a big issue if GGG are actually releasing new major content for every temporary league and people are starting new toons anyway. Another point is that simply because crafting is a more viable activity doesn't necessarily mean that the game gets easier. The power of skills could be scaled back a bit to account for the fact that people would by default have at least some GG gear by the end of the league. Moreover, if people failed to make proper use of the crafting system, and were running round with sub-par gear, they would almost certainly die. So player death would probably still be pretty common. Lots of people would probably not bother to fully understand the crafting system, and screw all sorts of stuff up. So player death would probably still be pretty common. Endgame content is still deadly, even when you've got GG gear. If you ignore the mechanics in fights, it's pretty likely you'll die, even with near perfect gear. And to the extent that point is false because of how OP perfect gear could be, I'm sure that nerfs to affixes or buffs to bosses could be appropriately applied. So player death will still be pretty common. The major difference is that the progression through the content will rely much more on good decisions in the passives tree and crafting/gear planning abilities, and much less on trading ability, forum posts, and obscene RNG luck. The main point here is that there isn't necessarily any reason that this change means that players won't need the same degree of mechanical skill at the game as they do now.

Third, this approach will obviously completely kill the trading economy in standard. But then a lot of people seem to think the economy in standard is totally boned anyway. It will also, to a very large extent, de-emphasise trading economy in the game as a whole. But how important a feature is the trading economy anyway? I mean, the expectation is that the majority of players are playing in the temporary leagues. This just gives good reasons for players to actually do that by ceasing to pit economic advantages against the attraction of new content. As for the de-emphasis of trading economy in the temporary leagues, well, people could still trade orbs I suppose. But actually, I think it might be reasonable to suggest that the economy does not actually inhere in trading. Rather, it inheres in the relation between the acquisition of orbs (drop rate) and how many orbs are required to craft good gear, and thus the time investment required to craft gear. That's the true economy of the game. When the primary intended model for players is continuously refreshing temporary leagues which keep adding new content, then the best model for the economy is an average necessary per player time investment to acquire the necesary crafting materials for GG gear, which has some reasonable relationship with the length of the league. Trading is the least satisfying method of time investment to achieve that GG gear goal.