Chris: ALT-F4 LEGIT STRAT

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PolarisOrbit wrote:

Although it failed many things, one thing Diablo 3 succeeded was it provided a template for how to make fights intense without instant drops.

LoL what, have you ever played diablo 3? you life spends more time bouncing up and down from 5% to 100% than a guy on a bungee jump, if you don't have 100000000000% life steal you cant survive shit end game.

If there if one thing diablo 3 did NOT succeed at, it was balancing mob/boss damage to player hp ratios.

"

Noctis256 wrote:

Jackel,

"There are other mechanics to use then both spikey, and long winded fights. Giving the boss spell block, for instance could be interesting. A boss that can remove buffs, or disable auras by making you recast them. There is alot that can be done in this game."

Agreed - and I'd be willing to bet they'll use those mechanics too...just give it time - they've got plans for several more entire acts...

I, for one, am excited to see what they do.

High blocking, spell block, based act boss. Make those sword nodes worth it!

Also, can't wait to see what people come up with for guild pvp.

"

PolarisOrbit wrote:

Although it failed many things, one thing Diablo 3 succeeded was it provided a template for how to make fights intense without instant drops.

Every single Act Boss in that game was an area zoner. Every. Single. One. Butcher had fire grates, Baal had the telegraph AoE, Azmodan had the dark ground, Diablo had the fire DoT and lightning breath.

The one boss fight which was genuinely good in that game was Belial. I still remember the first time I fought it, and holy shit was that shit epic. It actually is a very good example of how to do a boss fight. But notice: Belial also has stupid-strong one-hit potential. It's part of what makes him a good fight.

If PoE really adhered to the Diablo 3 formula, every single boss would be a clone of Fire Fury except also with Fire Trap, except Vaal Oversoul, who would have multiple forms and be even more of an intense fight and stupidly awesome, causing the battle with Piety/Dominus to feel completely lame in comparison.

That said, a little more in the area denial department would be a good thing, providing it wasn't so overdone that every boss had it. Things like Vaal's chilled ground are sufficient, it doesn't have to be DoT. For example, Piety leaving a trail of burning ground where she's been when she moves in her fire form would be a nice addition.

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bluesqq wrote:

From my many years of gaming experience, if you have to alt-f4 your either; bad, or rage-quit.
Because like someone else said, real pro's esc>exit. Esc>Exit .. how could that possibly be an exploit?
Its mind boggling how a hot-key allowed creates so much fuss. It only becomes an exploit when everyone abuses it. I don't see to much fun in Alt-F4'ing over and over because you cant kill something.
I wouldn't really want to continue playing any game that encouraged that sort of game play.

I write "alt-f4" when I mean "the instant exit mechanic." It's a convenient abbreviation.

"

Oh wait, theirs hardcore. Shoot. Must of slipped my mind there for a second. Let me start over....
from my many years of gaming experience, alt f4 is an acceptable play-style for hardcore, because its never fun getting 95+ and then being dead from some stupid shit. If you cant accept that sort of play-style don't bother with it, and anyways there are other-ways going about it then alt-f4'ing to avoid death. But what can you do its h/c gotta love it :D I do.

I'm fine with there being a separate HC league. That said, I don't understand playing in HC, that so severely punishes deaths, while also using a mechanic that lets you cheat death. Of course, you might not consider alt-f4 a cheat. I do; it feels cheap to me. I'm not going to force that opinion on others, but I'll be less inclined to keep playing a game that actively encourages it.

But I don't play HC outside of races, so I don't really care about that. I do care about whether or not alt-f4 is considered an exploit (it would appear it is not), and whether or not the game was balanced around players using it or not.

I'd like PoE to grow to be a game that I continue playing. If it won't, I'd like to know as soon as possible so that I can find something else more worth my time. I'm not screaming for changes; after all, PoE is not my game, and GGG can do what they want with their product. On the other hand, my time and any money I'd put to microtransactions is mine; I decide what to do with it and I'd like to make an informed decision.

I like to have the rules for the game I'm playing laid out clearly. I don't like sandboxes or user mods or make-up-your-own-game-then-play-it. That isn't satisfying to me. I want to be able to figure out and take advantage of (sadly, a synonym: exploit) the mechanics of the game without cheating or playing unfairly. It's an adversarial relationship: player vs game. I don't enjoy playing both sides of that by making up my own rules.

"

On a side note, You shouldn't let a Developers Philosophy about their own game affect your experience. From knowing game developers personally I've found, they can become very frustrated when the players do things differently :) Also I've found, they can become quite annoyed having to think of ways to stop you from thinking of ways of doing things in ways they didn't think of ^-^ Another man's philosophy is never heavily tailored towards your own wants and needs, but they can certainly smack down a heavily built foundation ready to blossom into your philosophy heavily desirable for your satisfaction.

The dev philosophy informs my expectations of where the game will be in a few months or a year. That helps me decide if it's worth it to put my time into this game, or if I should find another game to look at.

If PoE is built around things that I consider exploit-heavy (and therefore un-fun), I'm not going to play it anymore. Alt-f4 isn't going to be the deciding factor, but it would pull me towards not playing more than continuing to play. It would certainly affect whether or not I recommend this game to friends.

"

Stop thinking to much into things people, Enjoy the damn game.

I enjoy thinking. Don't encourage apathy and ignorance. :D

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Qarl wrote:

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Jackel6672 wrote:

So it seems we might be misinterpreting what was written then? It came off as boss fights were balanced knowing that we may AltF4 out of there. So it allowed the use of spike damage in a more liberal way. Turning it into a game mechanic more so than a way for some easy cheese.

If this is not the case, I take back all of my posts lol.

Of course we balance knowing players will Alt-F4 out of there.

We also balance knowing players will never Alt-F4, or portal out, and want to be able to win that fight fairly.

We balance knowing that players will play solo.

We balance knowing they'll only ever do that fight rushed.

We balance knowing that players are only there for the loot.

We balance knowing that players are only there for a good challenge.

Just some thoughts of mine and couple of questions.
I personally dont like alt f4 because people abuse it to much. On the other hand sometimes it saves people from deaths that they dont deserve (desync, some strange bugs that community encountered in past...). So my logic goes like some old saying (or call it however you want): better to leave 10 guilty killers free than to charge one inocent person for murder.

About abusing:
- some people that I wont name (basicly alot of top onslaught sporkers and such) <40% or so ES alt f4
- alot of these alt f4 are DONE AFTER REALLY BAD PLAYER MISTAKES that deserved death (people not reading map modes, leading the party as magic finders, dps curse on reflect maps....)
......
- i personally hated this but after i saw everyone is using it i abused it myself... it gave me 2x clearspeed i didnt even slow on lightning thorns (someone who played much faster and apm intensive games i was able to log out very very fast in just a small part of second)
- i did crematorium boss alot of times in onslaught - never died once to her (and should have atleast ~5 times... fast alt f4 counters even the deadliest firestorms) - at the end came to the point i didnt even skip - max just because i knew when excatly to log out if shit gone the wrong way and i knew i could do it in time

And the point of this wanna be wall of text:
Do you plan to make some punishment for people alt f4? (only thing that comes in to mind is like in wow if you leave bg you get that timer 15 min where you cant join again)
I really dont see a problem in such approach, if you "pussy out" take a cold shower with something like cant enter maps or whatever.

Do you plan to rewards players that dont skip sick bosses even with sick modes?
I personally think its sad to see some top ladder players that never did a Vaal Magaera or Piety on maps.
My last RIP was vs Vaal (melee char) smashed and i knew i couldnt take smash (lvl 89 ons). I dpsed in mele range like 10 min dodged so many smashed THE GAME FELT ALIVE FOR ME EXCITING... something that i could play all day long.. after i got smashed (my mistake) i didnt regret it even i knew i made a mistake so what.. make new char go play again atleast it was fun
(before the fight 4 people left from party).

last question
Is it your plan from start to not reward players that can react fast and do risky fights?
Reasoning for this question: i saw chris mentioning in his gamespot interview something about starcraft players and their apm and how he cant handle so much action... so i guess if you cant handle certain stuff you think it is ok not to give others a chance to do so? (this stuff can be done by anyone on this planet by enough practice...)
Yes i can do now these fights and I will always do them because thery are the only reason why i play this game anymore. ( I usually dont care about other opinions but when from 6 man party 5 leave piety on shrine with temp chains and you stay there solo her and whole party congrats you on that, well for me that is an achivment idd, something that if you do you would get my respect atleast, which is not easy to get). (If you plan to answer you can do those fights now anyways... Do you think it is ok to get paid the same as you coworker if you get the company 5xmore profits than him and take 100x more risk?)

Hope Chris (or better Quarl) gives me his thoughts atleast on this to see where this game is going on that front.

Best regards

"

Noctis256 wrote:

because syrio, if you just played SC, would YOU delete your char when you died? I think human nature makes playing in HC better because there's actual finality to it

I play SC in PoE because I don't want to delete my character on death. Doing so would be too large a time sink for me.

If I wanted to play an HC-type character for the challenge alone, I would do it in SC and delete the thing when I felt I'd died fairly. I've done that in other games (that take significantly less time than leveling to 60+ in PoE).

"

I don't recall this ever being a huge debate in the glory days of D2 - everyone just loved the crazy choice-filled madness, and played as is - and that game had alt F4 same as like EVERY OTHER windows program EVER

D2 had single player and hacks everywhere. If you wanted a custom experience or ez-mode you could have it without issue. Modern games, especially online-only ones like PoE, are far more authoritarian about what they let the player get away with.

People aren't arguing against having a hotkey that closes the PoE client. I think (hope) most people get that alt-f4 is a windows hotkey, and not a PoE-specific hotkey. The feature of alt-f4 (or esc->logout) being discussed is that you aren't penalized for doing so to avoid a death mechanic, and that GGG may or may not have increased the difficulty of the game to account for players doing this, thereby punishing players who do not.

While I enjoyed not being able to flee in Diablo 3 it does come with some drawbacks as well. Everytime that you were disconnected or had an unstable connection you ran a great risk of dying. I managed to survive with my hardcore character though, but some were not so lucky.

I like how Path of Exile is more free, you are in control of your character at all times. No interruptions, no dialogues, no cinematics, if you desync really bad you can exit the game.

I never use alt+f4 to survive a situation I put myself into. I have used it a few times however when the game desynced and I teleported into something nasty which was beyond my own control.



Relying on alt+f4 to survive, is more likely to kill you than anything else.

GOD DAMNIT LEAVE THAT LOGOUT OPTION BE U STANDARD PLAYERS !!! (no offense:)
Chris, dont listen to them.

Regarding the actual topic:

Let's say you're playing Hardcore and you're in "semi-combat," by which I mean you're not in a fight just yet but there are monsters on the screen and they're bound to start attacking in a second or two. And then... power outage. All of a sudden you're sitting in a dark, lightless room.

What should happen to your character? If you think the answer is "stand still for 30 seconds taking damage and almost certainly RIP," your answer sucks. Power outages and other minor disasters do happen, and it seems to me that a lot of people are so blinded by hatred that they can't think about the innocent victims of long delays. No innocent should ever lose their entire Hardcore character, hours or even days of work, due to misguided attempts to punish others.

Here's what should happen: the server should, as usual, try to communicate with your client, and after realizing your client isn't there anymore, it should log you out. This process isn't quite instantaneous, but computers are fast, so we're talking 1 to 5 seconds here. This would give you the maximum reasonable chance of keeping your Hardcore character despite a power outage.

Now what if you pull your computer's power plug out of the socket deliberately? Same answer. Which means, of course, that you could pull your own cord to get yourself out of a Hardcore death. So be it.

If you Alt+F4? Same answer; GGG can incorporate message-sending into the client's shutdown routine, but they shouldn't. Alt+F4 and a power outage should look exactly the same to the server.

If you logout using the menu? Pretty much the same answer; GGG should figure out what the average "power outage delay" looks like, and incorporate a similar delay into the logout feature. Not quite instantaneous, but we're only talking a number of seconds you can count on one hand. In the specific case of desync, perhaps this delay penalty could be waived. The idea here would be making logout no better at death-dodging than Alt+F4, but not making it any worse, either; if it was made worse, dodgers would just Alt+F4 instead.

Quite frankly, this is the only sensible view on the topic, and if you believe otherwise you are wrong.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Regarding the actual topic:

Let's say you're playing Hardcore and you're in "semi-combat," by which I mean you're not in a fight just yet but there are monsters on the screen and they're bound to start attacking in a second or two. And then... power outage. All of a sudden you're sitting in a dark, lightless room.

What should happen to your character? If you think the answer is "stand still for 30 seconds taking damage and almost certainly RIP," your answer sucks. Power outages and other minor disasters do happen, and it seems to me that a lot of people are so blinded by hatred that they can't think about the innocent victims of long delays. No innocent should ever lose their entire Hardcore character, hours or even days of work, due to misguided attempts to punish others.

Here's what should happen: the server should, as usual, try to communicate with your client, and after realizing your client isn't there anymore, it should log you out. This process isn't quite instantaneous, but computers are fast, so we're talking 1 to 5 seconds here. This would give you the maximum reasonable chance of keeping your Hardcore character despite a power outage.

Now what if you pull your computer's power plug out of the socket deliberately? Same answer. Which means, of course, that you could pull your own cord to get yourself out of a Hardcore death. So be it.

If you Alt+F4? Same answer; GGG can incorporate message-sending into the client's shutdown routine, but they shouldn't. Alt+F4 and a power outage should look exactly the same to the server.

If you logout using the menu? Pretty much the same answer; GGG should figure out what the average "power outage delay" looks like, and incorporate a similar delay into the logout feature. Not quite instantaneous, but we're only talking a number of seconds you can count on one hand. In the specific case of desync, perhaps this delay penalty could be waived. The idea here would be making logout no better at death-dodging than Alt+F4, but not making it any worse, either; if it was made worse, dodgers would just do that instead.

Quite frankly, this is the only sensible view on the topic, and if you believe otherwise you are wrong.

I think a small delay (a couple of seconds) would be reasonable; at least it would be harder to abuse.

Though this whole argument is predicated on power outages or internet outages at home being relatively common. I've gotten more close calls from GGG's servers having a bit of a hiccup than anything local to me. Unfortunately, a consequence of not trusting the client (or having some way to trust the client) is having to treat all disconnects as plausibly being power outages.

Though, if you're going to pull a cord, please pull your ethernet cable. And do it gently. Apply pressure to the clip so it pulls out smoothly. Pulling your power cord is bad for your computer. :D

EDIT: I stick by my opinion that the game should not be made harder to compensate alt-f4 being in there. It's a necessary evil for the reasons you outline, Scrotie, but don't make me use it, or even set things up in a way that encourages me to use it.