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

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tackle70 wrote:

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

What is gone is the incentive to challenge yourself.

So GGG is responsible for players choosing to take the easy way out of any given situation? Huh?

There are plenty of ways to challenge yourself in this game.

Gonna go on a stretch here and assume that's why he used the word incentive.

Peace,

-Boem-

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Boem wrote:

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tackle70 wrote:

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

What is gone is the incentive to challenge yourself.

So GGG is responsible for players choosing to take the easy way out of any given situation? Huh?

There are plenty of ways to challenge yourself in this game.

Gonna go on a stretch here and assume that's why he used the word incentive.

Peace,

-Boem-

Which is why I used the word "responsible"... because it's ultimately up to you to decide how you want to play this game and what rewards you care about trying to work for. The incentives ARE there... level 100, mirror gear, super rare uniques, solo self-found hardcore dominus kill, PVP, atziri/uber atziri kill, races, temp league challenges, etc...

If you find no way to challenge yourself in this game, the fault lies with you, not the game. Because GGG has put plenty of incentives to do different difficult things in this game.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Despite things like EB+CI vs Atziri; although that's a perfect example of things going right, not enough of the game is like that.

but what about that is remotely fun? Setting personal handicaps then accomplishing goals is something currently in the game and I don't think the game would be much fun if these hard situations were enforced rather than optional.

I think the game is fairly difficult, it's just more top heavy difficult. The hard shit comes at a point where you're already geared to beat it easily. It's also hard to accidentally go into extremely difficult content. You aren't opening up atziri by mistake at lvl 40. You can't get a 78 maps from a 66.

But if you ever try to do this stuff without being prepared you understand completely how difficult it really can be.

I really wish there was a less text-wally way to reply to points. Sorry in advance.

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- Difficult, strategic gameplay at all levels.

grepman says, "was bullshit from the start"
tackle says, "look at hardcore ladder"
scrotie says, "challenge is gone"
moos says, "there's still challenges"
charan says, "no incentive to self-challenge"
moos says, "not possible to accidentally hit hard content"*

I should have bolded or something, because I meant to strongly emphasize the at all levels part. The early section of the game (read: before level 60ish) has been turned into a teddy bear. You can easily roll through Normal with no skill points spent, and through Cruel with a few choice "leveling uniques".

There is still some challenge and strategy at the highest areas of the game, but the whole game was supposed to be challenging and require more thought.

Overall, my primary complaint is for sub-mapping difficulty being far too low and progression being far too fast. You can blitz through the entire storyline in a matter of two hours or less. The actual lore and setting is a blur. They stated for years that LW+RD *cough* I mean D2 teleport would never be a part of this game because it removes too much of the game, for instance.

Self-challenges are great, but GGG does not cater one whit to the non-competitive audience, nor have they ever implied that they would. The game should be designed so that any build has challenge, not just non-powerhouse builds are challenged.

This is a game we're all playing, and games are at their heart puzzles. If GGG cares about keeping their setting or their niche mechanics or the mountains of "slightly suboptimal content" they've created, then they need to constantly be vigilant about game difficulty. It's up to GGG to make challenge, and it's up to us to overcome what we can.

What that implies is, ostensibly, better enemy design and less orders of magnitude (less stacking multipliers) between good builds and okay builds. tl;dr: nerf the strong stuff, buff the weak stuff, make sure enemies don't become power creeped out of existence.

(While I was writing this, * point came up.)
Very wonderful point. There should be doors that the player shouldn't open, there should be enemies that the player has to run from. There should be more thought required of the player -- it makes for a better game (and more on topic, it makes more of what GGG promised).

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- Virtually impossible to hit max level.

tackle says, "it is still"

The whole system is far too fast compared to what it used to be. The fact that anyone can hit max level in two weeks is suspect. Chris even refers to that in the recent Q&A and says things will be changing.

Whether it's a good or bad thing, it's an obvious change in the game.

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- Cutthroat environment, including loot tension.

grepman says, "fair enough" [they reneged]
tackle says, "it was bad design in the first place/nobody wanted it"
scrotie says, "I miss it"
moos says, "I miss it"

For one, we used to have cutthroat events. When was the last time we even had one?

For two, whether the change was good or bad, it was a (public, to GGG's credit) shift from their original goal and what they 'sold' to the early backers. Loot tension was put on a podium and shot in the head for everyone to see. This is the most obvious renege on a promise to date.

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- Meaningful player choice in build and limited or non-existent respecs.

grepman says (w.r.t. choice), "it's still there"
tackle says (w.r.t. choice), "it's still there"
tackle says (w.r.t. respecs), "you mean intra-league respecs?"

I'll admit, I could have separated these two (though they're very related in my eyes). Player choice is about making non-reversible, exclusionary decisions. A choice that you can change your mind about later is not an actual choice.

Respecs are a very public shift from their original sale. There originally were none. Then there were 8. Then 12. Then 12 + regret orbs. Then 16. Then they got into the habit of handing out full respecs on every intra-league change.

There is a chasm between playing mortal and immortal characters. Mortal characters get hurt. They make bad choices. They have to live with those choices, and those scars from the past give meaning to the present. Characters that can undo their mistakes are immortal, always just shifting into the next best thing, always growing and progressing and never under any real pressure.

It's an extremely meaningful shift in their game design, and I feel like my words are falling on deaf ears if people are not familiar with games that don't have "undo" buttons.

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- No legacy items unless completely unavoidable, and uniques were never BiS.

grepman says (w.r.t. legacy), "fair enough" [they reneged]
tackle says (w.r.t. legacy), "legacy was a mistake"
tackle says (w.r.t. uniques), "GGG says it's fine"
scrotie says (w.r.t. uniques), "overly unique-centric itemization"
moos says (w.r.t. uniques), "best unique itemization to date"

Their shift on their stance toward legacies cannot be more obvious than league-specific legacies. They went from saying that legacies will only ever be for emergency use only to having planned and designed legacies enter the system after every league.

Luckily, they reneged on their renege by allowing access to those uniques via Zana (thank God) and by making it clear that they don't care about Standard w.r.t. game balance.

The unique shift is that "chase" uniques were never supposed to exist. The ultimate plan was for rares to always have the upper-hand at the very end of itemization, and that uniques would exist to do fun, interesting things.

Virtually every single ilvl65+ unique introduced nowadays is a bastardization of the original design. Raid boss drops from Atziri are even more exemplary of this shift in design. The QQ about Shav's isn't QQ -- it was already nerfed once and could stand to be nerfed again (or removed outright now that Solaris exists to take its place as a "unique that enables interesting things but is ultimately outdone by a rare").

In essence: "Balanced by rarity" is a phrase that should never have entered the GGG design lexicon. I do overall agree with Moos: after a few rounds of nerfing, they're getting back on track and that uniques are getting reined in (and I'll add, there's still more to go).

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- No power treadmill on new itemization (new items roughly equal to old, not >> old).

(Roughly covered by the above.)

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- Using currency orbs before the endgame would never be strictly suboptimal.

grepman says, "kinda? also racing uses"
tackle says, "agreed kinda, masters made it better"
scrotie has said before, "dust system"*

To be clear, the main game (ladder leagues) and racing are supposed to be disjoint, similar to how PvE and PvP are disjoint. If currency is only really great in races, that's still damning on the main game.

The best suggestion I've heard of was scrotie's old dust/shard currency system, where lower level items used up progressively less and less currency resources. It gave an actual incentive to use the currency that you find as you level without completely destroying what you gained as you were leveling.

This goes hand-in-hand with 'game is too fast now' complaints. If you don't need to struggle early, there's no reason not to hoard. Currency was a great idea because it was a fun alternative to the hoard+buy mentality.

I've seen wonderful Descent-esque league suggestions such as "IIR completely removed, only white items drop, increase orb drop-rate by an order of magnitude" that GGG could experiment with. There's no reason that GGG had to stop all work in this design-space, nor that the current situation is ideal.

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- "Dark" and/or serious art style, including ruined or desolate imagery.

grepman says, "more or less kept"
tackle says, "optional"

Yes, optional like punching someone in the face and saying that their acceptance of your fist is optional.

The gaudy microtransactions are not avoidable if you do anything other than play by yourself and log in to your hideout. This game is supposedly still a multiplayer game, and while it is optional for the person using the MTX, it is non-optional for anyone they encounter.

This is a blatant shift in their art design. I have no other way to say that.

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Meta: tackle, please cut out the attempts to discredit others. We're not at war here. This is a feedback forum, and GGG has every right to read our replies and discard them at their leisure. They certainly don't need defenders.

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pneuma wrote:

Virtually every single ilvl65+ unique introduced nowadays is a bastardization of the original design. Raid boss drops from Atziri are even more exemplary of this shift in design. The QQ about Shav's isn't QQ -- it was already nerfed once and could stand to be nerfed again (or removed outright now that Solaris exists to take its place as a "unique that enables interesting things but is ultimately outdone by a rare").

I don't really follow this. How is a build enabling mod ever outdone by a rare that can never access said mod? I'd like to see something like a "10-30% (arbitrary, would depend on what gear it can roll on) chaos damage does not bypass energy shield" rare affix, but without those, it's either you have the shitty version, or the good version, and nothing in between.

Anyway, great post. I'd just love to see more of the Unique only mods make their way into Keystones or tamed down but stackable rare affixes.

wow, what a post pneuma ! props, I would run out of patience writing a post like that lol

anyway Ill address main points Im passionate and biased about, and ironically enough they share same origin: GGG listening to the player base, in which, the 'casuals' overwhelm the 'nolifers'

1. legacy.

legacy gear was one of the things that made me literally say 'what the FUCK are they thinking ?'

it was a result of GGG afraid to alienate the OB casual playerbase that would quit if their shavs/aegis/whatevs was nerfed to shreds. They basically justified it like this: casuals get to keep their opie stuff in stf, and nolifers will get up-to-date gear in temp leagues. after all, game is balanced around temp leagues.

it wasnt a terrible short-term solution. however, anyone could see how this decision would be a problem long-term

2. reaching cap too soon

Im a big opponent of making high level content more accessible for this reason. however, again, forums were filled with people complaining about gated content.

thing is what GGG promised conflicted with what the majority of casual fanbase wanted. they had two choices, to say 'fuck you we are sticking to our guns' or say 'ok lets create a compromise and see how it works out'. they chose the second one, because from business sense it makes more sense. well the end result is obvious- you cant balance casuals and nolifers. nolifers now reach the cap extremely fast. zana, cartos, all the things that made a casuals 'life' easier, made nolifers life 10x as easier.


both of these are a direct result of player base complaining, especially with #2- I cant emphasize how many 'cannot sustain maps' topics there were. even at TORMENT start there were bunch of threads screaming 'maps were nerfed OMG', Im not kidding.

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b15h09 wrote:

Anyway, great post. I'd just love to see more of the Unique only mods make their way into Keystones or tamed down but stackable rare affixes.

Not a bad suggestion at all. If we had a mod that says '% of chaos damage doesn't bypass energy shield' we could simulate shav with rares. Of course, it would need to be a prefix and roll up to 25% so you'd need four or five items to get your ES to fully stop chaos :)

Yeah, I know it would be a 'junk mod' for every non-LL build out there but, seriously, is it worse than light radius, lowered requirements or flat life regen?

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raics wrote:

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b15h09 wrote:

Anyway, great post. I'd just love to see more of the Unique only mods make their way into Keystones or tamed down but stackable rare affixes.

Not a bad suggestion at all. If we had a mod that says '% of chaos damage doesn't bypass energy shield' we could simulate shav with rares. Of course, it would need to be a prefix and roll up to 25% so you'd need four or five items to get your ES to fully stop chaos :)

Yeah, I know it would be a 'junk mod' for every non-LL build out there but, seriously, is it worse than light radius, lowered requirements or flat life regen?

Exactly. I think it would do a lot for itemization diversity. Too many of the same affixes are desirable for everyone, and if it's not one of a handful, it's a garbage affix to everyone.

I was going to respond to most of your post Pneuma but really it all boils down to the same thing, where were you voicing protest against these changes?

All of these things you're complaining about are partial solutions to problems that have plagued the forums. Getting to 100 is easier because higher maps are easier to get to. Legacy uniques exist because people want strong uniques instead of vendor trash. PA is in the game because people refused to play in parties because loot tension was too high. I mean shit, I personally prefer SA but I never played in public parties, and I usually never play with more than 2 people at one time, very close and trusted friends at that. It's the main reason I never stood up in PA threads, my opinion doesn't matter as the change doesn't affect my play. If it did for you, then did you fight hard to keep it the way it was?

All of you. If all of these things mean so much to keep in the game did you fight hard to keep them and did you raise hell when they were changed for the worse in your opinion? Fighting changes to the exp penalty will make getting to 100 more difficult but I don't see you in that thread pneuma fighting the changes.

What's also funny is many of these things you've listed from GGG's perspective are things added to make supporters happy. All this thread is doing is showing GGG is doomed regardless of what they do, they'll never be HC or casual enough. Both sides think they're fucking up. In my eyes I think both sides are pretty unreasonable as the game is the best it's ever been.

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CharanJaydemyr wrote:

I'm not going to say it's a bad idea, but it's not going to happen so you should stop even speculating about it. Uniques are not defined by their rarity but by their function. If a unique's unique properties become 'rare', then in GGG's eyes that unique is probably not worthy of being a unique anymore. Uniques can share unique properties (Lorica and Wrappings, easy example) but there's no way that defining property would become rare UNLESS GGG changes their stance of uniques vs rares as 'does unique things' vs 'numerically superior in potential'. I covered all this in my counseling thread.

And given we have so many customer-designed uniques, they'd almost certainly see the concept of a unique being distinct from a rare as sacrosanct.

Meh, nothing I've speculated about has come to fruition, so no skin off my pecker. But, this philosophy is a large reason why rare itemization is stale and boring. You can't have "Rares better than Uniques" when they serve 2 entirely different functions. I know, won't change. Still, would be cool.