The Negative Experience Cycle (race feedback)

So some of you may know me from streaming and racing. Over the last few seasons my interest in racing has dropped quite significantly and I wanted to touch on some of the main points of why that is.

1. Monster Density inconsistency

2. 2h vs Cleave weapons( IPD vs FLAT rolls )

3. Class differentiation ( Class Ladders )

1.
So first off after implementing Decent (which is a great idea(poorly executed)) it highlighted a lot of the problems that the new monster density has caused.
So in decent getting a good gear set going is overall not to bad. Some of the chest rewards could definitely be improved (granite flask, lol lvl 26 ?) BUT the bigger problem is that EVERYTHING comes down to monster density there is a problem when you consistently do NOT get enough XP entering desecrated shrine.
My experience after 3 back to back races would be good start -> gearing up well -> nearly full clear or sweeping it in a very effeicient manner in the highest XP zones 7-8-9-10-11-12 only to reach zone 13 @ lvl 19.5 at this point with how XP progression works you are done for there is nothing you can ever do to catch up to the XP penalty.

So what this amounts to is you hoping for enough monsters even though you full clear just to find very empty zones.

So why is this a bad thing? Well everytime you find yourself struggling finding enough monsters it just gives you a feeling of frustration. Why not increased density making it YOUR choice when you had to move on. Then if done right there would be enough 9/10 times and not 3/10 (these are just numbers for the sake of argument)

This is something that is also apparent in normal races. What we have are zones just are just the best to do because every other place is just terrible. We have way more fun when we can progress but atm since docks is king we cant justify progressing through the rest of A3 since the XP is awful outside of sarn / docks. So many times you end up struggling for the last bit of XP again getting frustrated doing x/y zones while progressing having to backtrack instead of having a feeling of joy becuase of an abundance of monsters where you have to just go on and not linger. (important thing to note is that it should become your choise to go on not something that you are forced to do)

2.
So before anyone thinks this is a "lol nerf cleave QQ point" it is not.

My beef is with 2h weapons being so inconsistent. Cleave is super good it scales great with early game flat rolls i.e iron rings +cold/light/phys/fire double dipping. 2h weapons are ALL about the %phys roll and hitting that prefix is so unreliable.

I don't want a cleave nerf I want a buff to everything else lets not make the mistake as with other nerfs to strong race specs. It just adds to the negative cycle that we are in atm.

Suggestion: vendor recipe x+y orb + weap = guaranteed %50 ipd on a weapon. Atm some specs dominate purely because it is statistically easier to get certain mods to the point where everyone only cleaves. (shadow/ranger/duelist/templar cleave)

Again make it LESS frustrating and more about a fun experience where amazing things can happen such as a limpslipt drop or a goldrim w/e.

3.

Can you just add class ladders already so players don't feel they are so far behind when they are in fact not. We have been wanting it for so long already and this clearly cannot be the hardest thing to implement.

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A few small things

"notifications" PLEASE move it. With guilds incoming this will just get even more out of hand say you need to invite someone and you get spammed with dumb notifications just another point of frustration.

Things I would like to see: Emphasis on the boss fights you have such cool and difficult boss fight so why not make these more significant say if hillock is a reward why isn't brutus? also shadow always wins hillock its just silly.
And a race to piety how cool would that be to people side by side fighting the end boss almost dying every 10 secs. Instead of a 1 hour XP race in docks.

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In essence racing should be about creating a fun experience we need more positive encounters vs negatives or it will be the only thing we remember. I've gone on so many bad streaks that were out of my control entirely to the point where I just gave up on races for a long period of time.

Very good read - I have not played enough of the game to comment on most of these issues but the small points at the end I can agree on Hillock reward especially is kinda silly and should have been removed, If not then the suggested class break down would solve such things.

Also the progression incentives would be so much more fun to take part in / watch rather than the docks/sarn/western farm.

The cleave issue is a difficult one but I agree I would rather see other skills brought up to its level rather than just nerfing it into the ground to the point where people will just use another skill.

I agree with all of your points.

I actually argued this several times in the past, but the mob density incosistency is really unfair at times. In the descent that just ended, I could have hit lvl 23, but my hall of heroes was totally empty, which is very frustrating, even more so than bad RNG, because bad RNG can somewhat be mitigated by skill, low mob density however cannot.

There should be a certain treshhold of blue and white mobs in every zone at the very least, a balanced minimum, ideally though I agree with your suggestion that there should be an excess amount of monsters in every zone, so it ultimately comes down to player choice if they want to progress or farm.

However, in descent if you have the first few zones fully packed with monsters I could see some problems for rangers and witches, because Split Arrow and Fireball are absolutely terrible when it comes down to clearing huge mob packs and it could give a huge advantage (even more so than it already is) to ice nova or cleave users. But there certainly is a balance we can find. As it is, it's simply not acceptable and at times unfair.

Descent had to few monsters per zone in general. We saw that in the 24 hour open Descent. You could kill every single monster in every single zone and still be underleveled.

It would be nice if all zones had the potential of high xp per hour so that progressing would usually be beneficial due to higher monster level = more xp. But remember, the best place to grind is a product of both accessibility, monster density and monster difficulty (no bears, discharges or rock giants please). If all zones should give good xp per hour, the ones with difficult monsters (= longer kill time) would need either more monster (= more difficult) or higher xp per monster. So give some zones more/less monsters, and use xp coefficients to balance out the rest.

I like the idea of vendor recipes that add moderate mods to items such as 20% IPD. And for ilvl 20+, another recipe adding 40% IPD, so you could at least be sure of some decent mods. Again, only moderate mods, not 100% IPD. And only one mod, either prefix or suffix. The recipe could for example include orbs of transmuatation and Blacksmith's Whetstones. The issue would then be to design the recipes and to decide which mods should be attainable this way and which should not. Movement speed was already added this way.

While I agree to a point (it is incredibly frustrating to lose a good run due to pack size rng),even if that were standardized, racers would just find the next rng element to pin their blames to. Map seed, pack sizes, pack positioning, loot... Where do you draw the line in what should be standardized for all players in a given race?
Even if everything were made equal across all players, we'd see people point out that they lost a record/race because their leapslam desynced once too many times, or the like.
While, again, I concede there is a lot of frustration when you lose a record/race due to some rng element, a race with no rng at all would be kind of a snoozefest.




as an aside, good to see you are back, even if it's for a little while. Always thought you were a very positive influence on the PoE community via your streaming.

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boof wrote:

While I agree to a point (it is incredibly frustrating to lose a good run due to pack size rng),even if that were standardized, racers would just find the next rng element to pin their blames to. Map seed, pack sizes, pack positioning, loot... Where do you draw the line in what should be standardized for all players in a given race?
Even if everything were made equal across all players, we'd see people point out that they lost a record/race because their leapslam desynced once too many times, or the like.
While, again, I concede there is a lot of frustration when you lose a record/race due to some rng element, a race with no rng at all would be kind of a snoozefest.




as an aside, good to see you are back, even if it's for a little while. Always thought you were a very positive influence on the PoE community via your streaming.

Well the thing is after they implemented the new monster density numbers it rendered a lot of zones very bad for XP, and also with min / max values so erratic say the difference on
lows = 30 mobs
highs = 200 mobs it makes it so you very often encounter these scenarios where you are fucked from the beginning. We now have western which is a wasteland around the WP you just run and run and run and nothing happens. These scenarios are now very common and my point is you should feel in control. I still want HUGE pack sizes every once and again but I don't wanna see a wasteland it's nothing but boring and frustrating.

I don't want it normalized so you always have the same density but I want to avoid the "wasteland" scenario.

Cool read, thanks Nugi.

I'd say (as someone who watches a lot of races but doesn't play too many) that your first and second points are not as relevant for at least one main reason, they are not easy fixes and most solutions will cause commotion in the leagues that the characters filter into. They are both fundamental issues with the concept of a levelling race, especially the idea that in a given time frame some zone will become optimal.

That being said, both are valid points, but I feel you would need to present a stronger solution to GGG to be able to declare them problems as such.

However, the second half of your post I find extremely interesting. These are ideas that excite me as a viewer, and would make me more likely to play races consistently in the future.

1) Boss oriented races
A race to kill a boss (normal piety onward anyway, so including normal piety and on to cruel brutus and cruel vaal) sounds absolutely amazing. Even having short sprint races to kill normal brutus or merveil could be fun, but at that point the class disparity is still really high. I would LOVE to watch and play some races of this format. The idea that it's not over till it's over, and seeing a bunch of rips right near the end would make it a fantastic experience.

2) Class ladders
The last idea filters into your idea of class ladders, which I agree are a necessity at this point. Especially in race events like descent having the players pooled together is really futile as your total ladder position has very little bearing on how skillfully you played.
And I agree, overall from a coding perspective this is not that difficult, just a minor restructuring of the way points are distributed and the ladder is viewed would fix this.

If a GGG employee is reading this, please note that I (as someone who watches but does not actually enjoy racing) would be far more inclined with these two features implemented. So it's a double whammy, get more players in and improve the top level competition. I really don't see how either of those suggestions are bad.

Thanks for the feedback in this thread, it is useful stuff.

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nugiyen wrote:

I don't want a cleave nerf I want a buff to everything else

This is fundamentally wrongheaded for reasons Qarl and Chris have explained many times before. Cleave's damage scaling is a bandaid fix (and a poor one) due to a limitation on the animation system. It absolutely has to be addressed if GGG ever wants the early levels, and dual wielding in general, to have some parity among skills.

I agree with nugis entire post. This is also feedback thats been given several times previously by multiple racers, btw. Hard to tell how many of the posts in this forum have been fully read by devs.

I also somewhat agree with boofs take on rng in races. Its a positive factor when it can make for amazing runs; its a negative factor when it outright wrecks your run. The problem is that the former are rare (which is good; we dont want everyone getting sadimas/wanderlust from hillock or one of the 2h beast weapons from merveil every race) but the latter is very common, in that if you dont get a few specific basic items (+1 elemental for casters, ipd for attackers, second quicksilver, moderate +life for anyone wanting to do an a3 solo run etc) then your chance of winning or placing in the signature ranks is next to zero. And its definitely frustrating to lose based on factors over which you had literally no control.

I think the best solution is to greatly increase the crafting recipe base, so that players can mitigate their own rng as they deem fit and reduce the number of dud runs to an insignificant amount. This would also increase the amount of potentially useful drops and raise the resource management skill ceiling, both of which can only be good for the game in general. Monster density and their experience:difficulty ratio could also use improvement.

An alternate solution for the signature event would be to leave it open for the duration of the season, which would allow players to overcome most of the negative effects of rng via brute force (and would probably also do a good job of giving players with limited time a better shot at competing).