The Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Harmful Content

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Softspoken wrote:

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pneuma wrote:

Back to the main post, a huge number of the suggestions here were implemented in 1.0.

I've quite happy about that and excited to see where they take the game. I'm confident it's for the best and that the growing pains will wear off. Lots more things still need to be fixed, both content-wise and otherwise.

Would you consider updating the main post in a few days (when all the 1.0.0 changes are more final and unambiguous) with respect to the changes implemented? I'd find it helpful, if nothing else.

Sounds like a plan. :)
It could use a pretty serious revamp anyway since it was not complete on first writing.

After re-reading this thread, it looks like GGG did indeed act on several of these issues, and for that I am very thankful. Of course, they also repeated several of these mistakes some more, so...

Let's see how this stood the test of time. :)

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It's been a few hours, so I've gotta stop here. There's really so much to talk about (and wraeclast knows we have been, all of us, all over this forum on each of these topics individually, and I know I'm skipping other big content areas); it's almost impossible to get it all into your head at once.

I'm really not sure if GGG's content control is getting better or worse. They have the numbers, so I feel compelled to ask some questions. Are we seeing more or less content utilization than we did in the past? Are there more or less viable builds (skill setups, trees)? More or less homogenization of gear?

The goal should be to keep striving toward better, meaningful decisions for the player. Making tricky decisions between an array of options during the character building process is essential to having great gameplay. Knowing your entire skill+supports setup, 90% of your tree, and 4+ of your 10 gear slots from the second you decide "this is the kind of character I want to play" is cutting out too much.

I really look forward to the big 1.2 patch with claims that it'll focus on the "early/midgame" instead of how SotV focused so heavily on the "endgame". We're quite a ways out of beta, so my hope that many of these things will be addressed has waned considerably, but it's not zero hope.

Nice original post and cool revisit, it's fun to see some people take there time to give this feedback based on such a large scope of time.

I think this will be very valuable for GGG in the long run, depending on direction they want to head in obviously.

my main gripes and they are in your list atm.

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pneuma wrote:

New supports? A few, mixed bag here too. Empower/Enhance are really cool, but their experience requirement is bonkers. Spell Echo is a mandatory gem if you hardcast. Want to make an FP hard caster with a 4L? FP + GMP + Echo + Cold Pen or gtfo. No variety until 5/6L, yikes.

The new skills are pretty cool due to interesting new mechanics. The only ones broken out of the gate seem to be Flameblast due to its pretty crazy damage (and getting even more damage shortly thereafter) and the disaster that goes by the name ST. Releasing one attack that makes nearly every other attack irrelevant is... well, it's a bit like releasing a fighting game character that makes all the other ones irrelevant. So much wasted content and opportunity.

this is just crying for a nerf in the future or obliterate "player choice" by the lack of a nerf.

Nothing justify's the introduction of echo in the current state. It's a poor way to buff self-casters and it's a poor way to handle the "mana" issue imo.
And like you mention, support choice's only start at a 6-link now (you forgot life leach in 5th link slot) which is unreasonable at best given the rarity of such an item.

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Pneuma wrote:

- Quest rewards: Still pretty crappy. Still overly trade and drop dependent, despite being required to make basic builds. Golden Page quest reward helped out a lot here, fwiw.

This is another gripe i have with the game, some gems are lvl 31 to utilize and can only be gained from a lvl 68 area, what is up with that '-.-, for a player to have to wait so long just to see his build "come together" is a bad experience all together. Gems should be more readily available and so should the choices of gems. Economic prices and Fotm should be irrelevant for this since they lie at the core of the content/gameplay experience.

Very cool read pneuma, enjoyed your sentiments towards ES and unique's etc.

Just wanted to reinforce those two issue's, but i agree with most of what you said.

peace,

-Boem-

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Boem wrote:

This is another gripe i have with the game, some gems are lvl 31 to utilize and can only be gained from a lvl 68 area, what is up with that '-.-, for a player to have to wait so long just to see his build "come together" is a bad experience all together. Gems should be more readily available and so should the choices of gems. Economic prices and Fotm should be irrelevant for this since they lie at the core of the content/gameplay experience.

Yeah, this one has always baffled me a bit too. In a game so focused on build freedom, the constrictions on skill selection make little sense. Perhaps a very weak argument for encouraging the sale of char slots, but so antithetical to the rest of the design.

Anyhoo, awesome feedback, pneuma. Especially would like to see more of the clever notables, with lesser focus on aura nodes + life. Preferably through other keystone/passive buffs, as the power of auras just totally outclass what we can get from the tree for the most part. Especially summoner. The summoner nodes just suck compared to a few auras (and uniques, summoners only useful gear). Would love to see this in the form of summoner specific keystones similar to necro aegis, where your gear stats provide a direct buff to minions, to give them better scaling (Necromantic Touch, half your gloves bonus apply to minions, or something like that). Also a potential way to give rares more of a place in a summoners loadout.

pneuma you put so much into this thread, and its really good feedback, good job sir.

A very well thought out post.

Some snippage:

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pneuma wrote:

...There appears to be a strong trend toward more and more uniques filling item slots on the majority of builds. Something definitely changed from the days of "rares should be in every item slot, maybe a unique or two are used only after lots of thought and trepidation".

IMO - Unique items are not as rare and difficult to acquire as an Artifact or Relic would be and they should not be treated the same way in terms or power or drawbacks.

I don't think choosing a unique should require any trepidation, nor should they automatically include a downside. If they have too much upside, their should be some balancing factors. Yes, there are some definite cases of too much power, but in the main, I think uniques are a much easier choice for many item slots because they are consistent.

The drawbacks are known and can be built around, just like a keystone. The upsides are consistent and can be built around. Rares are too iffy to be relied on as often.

IMO- It's not just the slight chance of getting a few good mods on a rare- you can get something very useabloe. It is the worthless mods that accompany them that prevent you from pushing your character to another level.

Let's say you find a rare armor with 1300 defense, 25% fire resistance, 22% lightning resists and +14 life. What are the odds you will use that item? If the life were higher it might be very nice, but that one "bogus" mod will prevent many players from equipping it.

I think a way to remove (say an Extracting Orb?) that one annoying affix would make rares far more attractive. The +20 accuracy boondoggle items ight be fixable. You could make the Extracting orb semi-difficult to acquire (rarer drop than Chaos, less rare than Divine). The orb might reroll the numbers on the remaining affixes, but it wouldn't be something you could use on an Eternaled item or a unique.

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pneuma wrote:

....The goal should be to keep striving toward better, meaningful decisions for the player. Making tricky decisions between an array of options during the character building process is essential to having great gameplay. Knowing your entire skill+supports setup, 90% of your tree, and 4+ of your 10 gear slots from the second you decide "this is the kind of character I want to play" is cutting out too much.

I think choices should matter on the skill tree and it shouldn't just be a couple of clear paths.

I STRONGLY disagree (not with you or your post) with the concept of only making gimmicky builds end game viable. Players should be able to build up a satisfying character using a supporting skill tree of defenses, offense, and some specialization. They might not get the highest possible DPS or killing speed, but if every character must use some combination of blood magic, CI, or Critical stacking then we might as well let GGG pick our skill tree for us.

Auras are still abused and overpriced for the non-abusers and elemental damage multipliers and attack speed seriously need to be reigned in. Movement speed skills are de rigueur with no real cost or drawback to using them, and little alternative to not using them. I'd much rather see a return of a phase run gem with a timeout period and some sort of small charge up cost like souls on vaal gems.

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Boem wrote:

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Pneuma wrote:

- Quest rewards: Still pretty crappy. Still overly trade and drop dependent, despite being required to make basic builds.

This is another gripe i have with the game, some gems are lvl 31 to utilize and can only be gained from a lvl 68 area, what is up with that '-.-, for a player to have to wait so long just to see his build "come together" is a bad experience all together. Gems should be more readily available and so should the choices of gems.

exactly, +1 and wtf to 'Echo' (as actual example) as a end-A3-M reward

I normally hate necroposts, but this is a perfect example of a case where it is appropriate. It's a good chance to look back and see how much the game HAS changed and to show just how clueless the people who post things like "GGG doesn't listen to feedback and only replies to mtx question posts!" are.

Many of the issues originally raised have been fixed, others they have at least attempted to fix but still aren't quite there yet, still others haven't really been addressed at all, and a few new problems have been added since then. Overall, I think they've done well, but still a long ways to go. At some point(probably fairly soon) they need to stop adding new skills for a bit and really focus on balancing what they have.

The two biggest issues I still have with the game though are:

1. Auras: I've said all along that these are WAY too powerful. The last major patch was at least a good attempt to fix this, but in the end, unsuccessful. Even with the greatly increased cost and the need to take for more passive nodes in order to do so, it is still the case that not only is using auras REQUIRED, but most of the top builds will rely on getting as many of them as possible. When a single aura can provide as much defense as all of your actual armor combined or even a significant fraction of that, it becomes a no-brainer. When they add 50% or more to your damage, again there's not much choice.

To make matters worse, you end up reserving nearly all of your mana in order to be able to use them, devote a large number of passive points to aura nodes, and dedicate as many as half of your gem slots to them. The overall effect is that they still severely limit how many other skills you can use, often limiting a build to one primary attack, a curse or two, a cwdt setup, and a bunch of auras. I would much rather be able to see multiple active skills, allowing you to choose the one most appropriate for each encounter.

2. Life: The base value is still way too low. In order to be viable, you still need to take nearly every life node you can reach AND get high + life rolls on every gear slot not being taken up by a unique item which is required for you build. Most people seem to consider +200% life from the skill tree to be the absolute MINIMUM needed for a good build. Again, some progress has been made here with a lot of the life nodes at least being combined with other stats, but it still has the effect of limiting your choices far too much.

The base amount of life a character gets should be significantly increased, to the point where at least some builds will be viable just with that(or at most, with a minimal further investment in points/gear). Then someone who wants an especially tanky build could still need to spend a lot of points and get added life from gear, but at least it becomes a CHOICE to do so. Right now, the only choice is which life nodes to grab and even then, it's not much of a choice because the answer is nearly always "All of them."

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Hodari wrote:

The two biggest issues I still have with the game though are:

1. Auras: [...]

I really feel the same although there are diferrent thoughts of what are the reasons for the Aura problem and a lot of players would agree that the combination of:
-the significant U in the skilltree (grab all aura nodes)
-combined with build enabling shavrones (auras on life)
- mixed with a crown of eyes causes the real problem

As Auras themselves are pretty fine, stacking to much of them with above mentioned setup becomes a problem. Especially compared to Lifebuilds which can not afford to put so many Auras on Life.

Possible Solutions
From Hardline to soft nerf:

- Shavrones increses Aura reserved by 80% only for Auras casted on Life(!)
- Reduce the Aura Nodes on the tree to remove the Significant U shape on the skiltree and
provide free choice and not just logical choice
- Crown of Eyes: prevent Energyshield from Regenrating

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Hodari wrote:

2. Life: The base value is still way too low. In order to be viable, you still need to take nearly every life node you can reach AND get high + life rolls on every gear slot not being taken up by a unique item which is required for you build. Most people seem to consider +200% life from the skill tree to be the absolute MINIMUM needed for a good build. Again, some progress has been made here with a lot of the life nodes at least being combined with other stats, but it still has the effect of limiting your choices far too much.

Again agree here but with different reasoning for the cause of the problem

When people with FoTm low life shavs,CoE,ect... Build or generally expressed as Min/Maxers
are asked why they wouldnt do a life build over a ES low life build the answer is almost always the same and pretty simple. Why should they gimp themselves with less efficiency a lower eHP pool and less skill nodes available less damage and therefore less killspeed and therefore less effectivity.

As lifenodes still take a too large amount of skillnodes on the tree best solution is mix them up combined with offensive or other defensive stats By The Blade is one of the best examples here and more examples like this are needed.

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zzang wrote:

I really feel the same although there are diferrent thoughts of what are the reasons for the Aura problem and a lot of players would agree that the combination of:
-the significant U in the skilltree (grab all aura nodes)
-combined with build enabling shavrones (auras on life)
- mixed with a crown of eyes causes the real problem

As Auras themselves are pretty fine, stacking to much of them with above mentioned setup becomes a problem. Especially compared to Lifebuilds which can not afford to put so many Auras on Life.

My issue with that is that auras were this strong even before either of those uniques existed and before the tree was redesigned. Even now, builds that don't use those items are vastly superior with auras than without. It's not just the build-enabling uniques that are the problem. Auras are NOT pretty fine. I'm not sure what the best solution would be, but just nerfing a few items won't fix the real problem.

Limiting how many auras can be run at one time might be a better solution, but it's also an arbitrary restriction on player choice. Still better than the current "gotta take them all" illusion of choice, but I doubt it would be a popular move to say the least.