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

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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.

The "buffs" had a homogenizing effect. ES is now similar to life, and having a life pool is distinctly better.

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Moosifer wrote:

LL builds basically didn't exist before shavs.

I disagree. You were around when Inva published his HC LL build. LL existed when GGG added chaos resist to the base item implicit/explicit affix paradigm; that "phase" just did not last long enough for players to gradually realize its potential and limitations before an obvious item was introduced--obvious, that is, as in its potential could be observed at a glance. Had GGG waited another year to introduce a Shav's-like mod, I am confident we would have seen a rather healthy niche for LL develop in the meantime.

Also, it's a few pages back but I wanted to address something I said...

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CanHasPants wrote:

The only thing on-topic I'll touch, is this...

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Which, all value judgments aside, is textbook selling out.

...I can agree with; however, they did their selling out with admirably minimal compromise

To be clear, I said can agree with, not do agree with. I try to be precise with my choice of words, and to that end, I also mistyped: I meant to say "with admirably few compromises," as these mean two different things.

But, on the topic of selling out, I can see an argument to be made (which I am not going to make, fully) and I cannot exactly disagree with that argument. It would, revolve, I think, around closed beta communication versus open beta communication and onward. The developers were very open and communicated a fairly clear sense of direction in the days of 0.9.xx, even if that direction was not exactly defined (emphasis, actively communicating a sense of...) The transition to 0.1.0 brought many changes which seemed like a complete 180 from what we were doing and where we were headed prior, and at the same time GGG had to take a step back from the public forum, as being open to the public meant we were less like a clubhouse and more like customers.

The latter point, is totally fine! That's the direction we would have to head eventually anyways. The issue would come from the former point--that 180 turn-about threw a lot of long established, long worked on balance on its head, with little reason or explanation (again, okay, but it does muddy the transition) and set the precedence for what would turn into a sense of "PoE always in beta," or, PoE always a game that seeks to emphasize imbalance over balance, and sometimes unpredictably so.

It was at this point that GGG made a lot of mistakes (imo) and chose to perpetuate them to where we are now. That is not to say we do not have an amazing and fun game now, but it is undeniably a very different game than if GGG had chosen to perpetuate the 0.9.xx trend instead of turning it on its head. And again, I'm not making an argument about "selling out," just posting, subjectively and unsubstantiated, my broad observations of PoE "then and now."

Edit: just to reiterate and to clarify, something Moos posted in another thread a week or so back that I never answered and is relevant here; paraphrased:
"Am I the only old timer who still enjoys PoE?"
No, you're not. I still very much enjoy what PoE has to offer, at least to the degree I'm currently able to engage it. I still don't have a PC able to play, but I'm still around and theory crafting builds (hoping I'll be able to run PoE on my Mac server once I'm done building our nursery and clean up my room...) That should say something about GGG's success ;) All this talk about mistakes and whatnot is not to come across as some reading deficit posters might suggest ^-^

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BerMalBerIst1 wrote:

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Wittgenstein wrote:

Agree with everything you said Scrotie. For me, PoE is dead. The game I thought it was going to be in CB - a game much like D2 without the gold sinks and an interesting/fun crafting system - never materialized. I still have NO idea why they got rid of gold for these orbs, orbs that are incredibly rare and are drowned in RNG, they could have just kept gold in and let us enchant things in town with RNG and the effect would have been the same, I really think they squandered an amazing idea.

Uniques got way out of hand, and became to much of a focus.

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.


All that said though, if GGG make a different game 10 years from now, I will surely give it a go and hope they have learned from their mistakes.

The "game is dead" and "economy is a joke" for YOU GUYS - you really should add that qualifier.

For everyone else still playing - Game is alive and well.

Le checkmate.

I did add that qualifier, on both accounts "For me, Poe is dead" and "if I were 15 I'd probably feel much different" and "that is not an insult to those who can/do enjoy the grind and investment of time".

I find your lack of reading comprehension alarming, your knowledge of chess lacking, and your use of French juvenile.

^ That could, theoretically, constitute a loss of time and/or a turn, as it was not an observation but enacted out of poor sportsmanship ;)

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Wittgenstein wrote:

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BerMalBerIst1 wrote:

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Wittgenstein wrote:

Agree with everything you said Scrotie. For me, PoE is dead. The game I thought it was going to be in CB - a game much like D2 without the gold sinks and an interesting/fun crafting system - never materialized. I still have NO idea why they got rid of gold for these orbs, orbs that are incredibly rare and are drowned in RNG, they could have just kept gold in and let us enchant things in town with RNG and the effect would have been the same, I really think they squandered an amazing idea.

Uniques got way out of hand, and became to much of a focus.

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.


All that said though, if GGG make a different game 10 years from now, I will surely give it a go and hope they have learned from their mistakes.

The "game is dead" and "economy is a joke" for YOU GUYS - you really should add that qualifier.

For everyone else still playing - Game is alive and well.

Le checkmate.

I did add that qualifier, on both accounts "For me, Poe is dead" and "if I were 15 I'd probably feel much different" and "that is not an insult to those who can/do enjoy the grind and investment of time".

I find your lack of reading comprehension alarming, your knowledge of chess lacking, and your use of French juvenile.

for me , fast food sucks. If I were a fat pig id probably feel much different, that is not to insult you fat pigs out there who can/do enjoy eating unhealthy food full of empty calories.

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CanHasPants wrote:

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Moosifer wrote:

LL builds basically didn't exist before shavs.

I disagree. You were around when Inva published his HC LL build. LL existed when GGG added chaos resist to the base item implicit/explicit affix paradigm; that "phase" just did not last long enough for players to gradually realize its potential and limitations before an obvious item was introduced--obvious, that is, as in its potential could be observed at a glance. Had GGG waited another year to introduce a Shav's-like mod, I am confident we would have seen a rather healthy niche for LL develop in the meantime.

I still have the character named Lowlife from before Inva made his famous LL caster (and before either of us got chaos resist as a stat or Shav's). It was risky as hell in areas with chaos damage, but I ran dual totem and just stayed out of the line of fire, and could always pot up and run away if chaos showed up.

It was scary to play like that, but it wasn't impossible and the rewards were awesome. Wondertrap MF, PA massive damage multiplier, free auras reserved on life, and a Redbeak to level with from 1-70.

I also was the most vocal person about how screwed up low life vision radius is (for builds that are permanently in low life status), and pushed for a change to the vision system for years (ultimately resulting in the incomplete "solution" Arcane Vision).

Shav's is a total design failure. Lorica is somewhat okay but still too good. You could put "chaos goes to ES" on a body armor with no other stats (Tabula-style) and it would still likely be too strong. ¯\(°_o)/¯

So far i have made roughly 6 low-life characters without lorica/shavs and i used all forms of style, ranged/melee/spell casters etc etc.

None of them where exceedingly strong and truly show that the low-life modifiers where actually implemented for a game that does not have the modifier lorica and shavs have.

The item cost (need for chaos resistance) is extremely high and a very limiting factor

The play-style is risky if you don't know what you are doing

The low-life buffs usually make your build "on-par" with most other regular builds, the only benefit is that you can provide a lot of aura's for a team setting.

The biggest factor why lorica and shavs are insane is because you nullify the entire item-cost accompanied with low-life builds.(getting 75% chaos and all other resistances while balancing a tree to sustain both life/es is no easy pick-nick)

And GGG can't touch the low-life modifiers now because it would screw over every hybrid build designed around it without lorica/shavs.

Peace,

-Boem-

I would have made Shav's a low-level item (28 or below) with much lower ES, mana, mana regen, and "Fire Damage bypasses your Energy Shield." Lorica would be an endgame item with much higher Armour, an additional Endurance charge, skill effect duration and "Physical Damage bypasses your Energy Shield." (Both would still have the Chaos mod.)

Even those designs could potentially bring trouble. If they ultimately felt just plain superior/equal to the max chaos res route, even on an unlimited budget, then they'd need further nerfing.

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MoonYu wrote:

Now that we are discussing Chaos damage, can any of you explain to me why it breaks the game to have 75% Chaos resistance, but doesn't break the game to have 75% cold, fire and lighting resistance?

I think a bit of context is in order for this statement to make any sense MoonYu.

I can make an assumption and say that you are referring to the claims of how chaos used to work.

In a sense, chaos was a unique element, powerful in it's own power-frame because of the absence of chaos resistances which could only be found on unique's items.(which added to there uniqueness value in a sense)

But since that changed, chaos is "just" another one of the elements with no unique factors aligned with it.
(as opposed to freeze/shock and burn are aligned with the other elemental forms)

This also served to diminish the strength of chaos inoculation, which used to be the only way to get a high chaos resistance cap, providing immunity to one of the strongest damage burst sources in the game at an opportunity cost.

Simply put, chaos was made less unique of an element and disturbed other balances based on it's original core concept.

Hope this helps somewhat, but you should specify or provide context if you are looking for a different answer :).

Peace,

-Boem-

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MoonYu wrote:

Now that we are discussing Chaos damage, can any of you explain to me why it breaks the game to have 75% Chaos resistance, but doesn't break the game to have 75% cold, fire and lighting resistance?

It's not "breaking the game" but it was certainly a bone-headed move.

Permanent 0% chaos resist was extremely good for the game, thematically and mechanically. GGG could have enemies that do 1000 chaos damage and know that it would turn into 1000 damage against the player. When making a build, everyone had to keep chaos damage in mind and it was a "floor" in the survivability equation. Glass cannons had to have enough life to survive chaos burst at minimum, then they would build up from there. Low life builds took a little life% on the tree, for example.

Thematically, chaos was not an element and it did its own thing. Similarly, if you built for chaos damage, you could be assured that enemies couldn't mitigate it. It would do less overall damage, but it would be consistent against everything.

Lastly, it made CI a really cool tradeoff (also this was in a world before "blue life" was a thing). Chaos immunity was an honest exchange between being able to ignore certain enemies but being much more afraid of others (specifically ones that could ignite, freeze, or puncture you).

In the new world, chaos is just Yet Another Element that you mitigate in the same way as the rest and deal damage in the same way as the rest. It made the game a simpler and less interesting one (and also led directly to "blue life" alongside the horrible mistake named Ghost Reaver).