POE: The Best of Games and the Worst of Games

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Garr0t wrote:

Oh. And I think a viable stop gap until there is a deterministic means of crafting would be to dramatically increase the drop rate of eternal orbs.

That's a good point. Why exactly are Eternals so rare? Given how dramatic a change can result from a Chaos, and how rare Exalts are, why do Eternals also need to be so rare?

And they floated a logic softball... who's gonna hit it?

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Kezz123 wrote:

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IlyaK1986 wrote:

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Runeword wrote:

disagree totally with the negative comments about crafting. yes it's hard to get the mods you want and yes it's expensive. it should stay this way too. do you really want every noob in the game running around with the godliest gear? the game rewards the people that put in the time playing and also learning all there is to know about it. the crafting is the most innovative system i've ever seen in a game.

There's a difference between "hard" as in "there is a massive amount of depth to the game and if you understand it to the very last detail you can get a piece of godly gear in a few days completely self-found through various vendor recipes" and "hard" as in "even if you're Kripparian, you're still at the mercy of the RNG just as much as someone playing their first maps".

Hard, to me, implies that player skill can overcome barriers in a very short amount of time. For instance, Justin Wong (champion fighting game player) would master a new fighting game much faster than someone who hasn't yet developed the mindgames or muscle memory to compete, even if they both got the game the same day.

In this case, getting a godly item isn't *hard*, but is simply directly proportional to the amount of time one spends grinding. That isn't hard. That is tedious.

Far different connotation.

On the flip side, whats the solution? Super hard unkillable yellows / bosses like d3 had for a while so that you have to Grind lower level zones for ages for upgrades until you can venture there to not get destroyed so badly and get upgrades that will only serve to kill the same content with more ease?

im not saying the crafting system is perfect or even sure i like it that much but i gotta say, what IS the non tedious way to play an AARPG like this for countless hours without having to repeat content?

In fact id dare say im more motivated to play this and farm tediously for the chance at decent rares to further improve my builds.
THEN
once I have a strong farm char, I can start a tons of other toons with different sets of abilities using some of the gear I accumulated to se how well they go and if they can be a more efficient / fun farmer.

This is a loot based game and as such farming tediously is a must....its why you like the game in the first place. Where d3 failed miserably is by having no customization...once you level the 5-6 classes, you have nomoe reasons to want to start a new toon and this is a huge time sink killer for me anyways.

anyways, I propose people take the future of the game into account and propose constructive change ideas instead of keeping it to the Scrap the crafting and rebuild it from ground up! its not realistic.

What's the alternative? Well, why not start off by throwing out the notion of finding loot in the first place? No, not for the game, but for this mental exercise.

Let's just boil the game down to its most basic tenet:

One of you, lots of mobs, blow up mobs in interesting ways.

Such games have been around since the regular nintendo. Going by the definition I just gave, your avatar is mario, your equipment is a turtle shell and your shoes of stomping, and your loots are coins, one-ups, and more powerful power-ups, such as fire flowers, stars, and capes.

Super Mario is one of the most successful franchises of all time. But it's definitely not an ARPG. So, let's try and narrow things down.

Now, instead of having any random perspective, we have a sort of top-down, mobs all around you scenario, but still your loot is deterministic and comes from quests. Now we have the Legend of Zelda--also one of the most successful game franchises of all time.

But, well, not enough mobs, right? And perhaps too childish as well. We want to kill demons, we want to kill GIANT monsters, with all manner of marvelous spells and swords, such as broadswords, katanas, guns, and even demon powers!

Devil May Cry, anyone?

See what I'm getting at?

You can have a very entertaining experience without needing to artificially draw out the process with gear-check gates. Honestly, I think that while finding loot should be icing on the cake, or seasoning on the pizza, it seems that at some point, game development companies put the cart before the horse and thought that ARPGs should be about "OMFG FIND LEWTZ" rather than "one of you, a zillion mobs, go blast mobs", a theme which has been created with amazing success in many different genres, from platformers (Mario, Mega Man) to RPGs (Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy) to shooters (Touhou) to ARPGs (Diablo, PoE).

Why not refocus the game on something more players can do, which is to blow up lots of mobs in more interesting ways, rather than simply spam one or two attacks, but with how OMFG GDLK your PHAT LEWTZ are making all the difference?

Maybe it's wishful thinking, but my suggestion would be for more varied types of mobs, better AI, and more interesting scenarios than "are there more than 5 mobs? SPAM LIGHTNING ARROW! Are there 5 or fewer mobs who are all individually threatening? Frenzy one of them down ASAP, repeat!"

One of Diablo 2's weaknesses after the synergy patch (and even before) with balancing around investing 25% of your skill points into one skill was that every character was one-dimensional. PoE has improved this slightly by giving us left click, right click, and qwert. But why not qwerasdfzxcv?

Why not refocus the game from "GET AWESOME LOOT (and killing mobs are a means to this end)" to "KILL MOBS IN AWESOME WAYS (and some nifty loot is just a means to this end)"?

Excellent post OP. Drops do need to be increased. You can keep gear drop same but orbs need to be increased. I had 2 exalts two weeks ago in about 5 hours of play. I thought this was due to being in a higher level area...i have not received anymore in over 50 hours. I have been playing for about 5 months now.

More orbs would definitely make things more fun as dreading to make an alchemy is just ...ZzzZzzz

Everybody's talking about how everyone wants godly gear or something. That's not what I'm looking for. I've played two characters into the 60s in Nemesis, completely self found, and have tried using currency items to get upgrades when I feel like my gear is too bad. The result? My gear is utterly laughable.

How the hell is it so hard to find gear that has a decent life roll and a couple decent resists? How the hell is it so rare in a game that demands you have these rolls on every piece of gear? How can the items be rolling the same stats in Merciless as I would find in Normal? This loot is garbage. By the time you find anything useful for your character you'll be so tired of how much grinding you did you'll never want to play that character again.

Saving up currencies so I can buy end-game gear is not my idea of fun. Every alch used on leveling gear feels like a waste, because I can get the exact stats that I want via trading, and websites like poe.xyz make this much more accesible.

I would love to see level appropirate currencies, like tiers If you may. You could have Tier 1-8 currencies, and each tier would be harder to get, and only affect items of equal itemlevel.

For instance;

Orb of Alchemy T1 would affect level 1-10 items
Orb of Alchemy T6 would affect level 60-69 items

Obviously Alch T1 would drop much more often than T6, and only in T1 zones (levels 1-10). You could apply all existing currencies (except mirrors and chance orbs maybe) to this tier method.

Got a level 18 rare ring with great stats, but you want to roll life leech? Just use one or two Exalted Orb T2.

You still get the RNG'ness of random stat rolling, but at least it would feel much more rewarding finding and using said currencies while leveling.

Have the current drop rate apply to highest tier of orbs and make previous tiers mergable via vendor recipe. 10 T6 exalted orbs = 1 T7 exalted orb, make drop rates so that you have a higher chance of obtaining the T7 exalted than 10 T6 exalteds, so people would not feel compelled to grind lower level zones for currency. This way you could use all the orbs you find, and merge the extra ones you find to the next tier and keep going.

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cutt wrote:

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Natharias wrote:

+1.

Exactly how I feel and exactly what I would say.

The rest of the game is not worthy of the wonderfully made skill tree, skill, and potion systems.

Why did you support multiple times a game that is not worthy, exactly?

Because I believe that the team that came up with such great ideas can come up with more to better compliment them. That's why.

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IlyaK1986 wrote:

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Peace_Frog wrote:

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ntall1 wrote:

By calling it "crafting" you lead one to believe that you can actually craft an item into something you want or into an upgrade. This is the wrong term. "Crafting" is not crafting at all. There is nothing you can do to increase the outcome of better random rolls. It is gambling and nothing more.

You have set yourself a set of expectations based on the terms you use. The current orb system works very well imo. Instead of having to go farm items over and over receiving types you don't want. You just pick up the type you do want and gamble roll it over and over until it has stats you want.

If you really think you are going to make that awesome piece of gear by alting -> augmenting -> blessing -> exalting -> eternal -> exalting, etc, etc, than you are dreaming. This is possible with great wealth but not practical and was never meant to be practical.

Gambing is Gambing, and RNG is RNG.

To call it crafting one would assume you could get better at it vie experience or build. There are no +% increase to gambling nodes.

Have you ever tried crafting something with a lot of IIR gear on? You never know what might work...

That makes no sense whatsoever. If the effectiveness of your crafting was proportional to the amount of IIR you had on, then the optimal playstyle would be to go balls-to-the-wall in killing power, have a whole set of uber iir in the stash (2 andvarius, aurseize, uber gold amulet, pandon's blazon (sp? That IIR belt), and any other IIR you can find), strap it on when you get to town, and start rolling, without taking any risks whatsoever for the additional IIR.

So either what you have to say is complete nonsense, or it simply stratifies the population into those who have vs. those who don't, in terms of IIR.

Not once did I speak about IIR.......... Not sure where both of you got that from.

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Natharias wrote:

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cutt wrote:

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Natharias wrote:

+1.

Exactly how I feel and exactly what I would say.

The rest of the game is not worthy of the wonderfully made skill tree, skill, and potion systems.

Why did you support multiple times a game that is not worthy, exactly?

Because I believe that the team that came up with such great ideas can come up with more to better compliment them. That's why.

Actually, I beg to differ. Note that the good parts about PoE are not PoE original ideas.

ARPG? Diablo.
Skill tree? Sphere grid from FFX.
Gem system? Materia from FFVII.

The adaption of the Final Fantasy mechanics to an ARPG was a most excellent innovation. However, it wasn't an invention, but that shouldn't take away from its impact.

Onto another thing, here's a thought that hit me:

The game is fun in normal. Why?

Because since you're low-leveled, your build doesn't matter, and since you haven't found gear yet, your gear doesn't matter. So, what matters is your tactics. Thus, the game is fun because it's a very fundamental "use your ARPG gaming tactics (aka how do you point and click, manage health and mana) to kill lots of mobs", and the loot casino hasn't become a factor yet.

In Cruel, you still may not have found the best items, but you've found some--but by now, you've gotten a good 40 or so levels. So now, the game tests you on the effectiveness of your build. Did you follow good character-building fundamentals--that is, did you take enough damage not to be swarmed, and also enough defense that you're not a glass cannon? If so, congratulations, you've met the build prerequisites and thus have reduced the game back down to ARPG fundamentals.

But starting at Cruel Scepter of God, the game quickly becomes less fun. Why? Because your leveling progression slows, thus the way to get the most progression from your build is no longer through tactics (if you've gotten to this point, your tactics are sound, and so is your skill tree build). So how does the game challenge you then?

Through the loot casino.

Except here's the problem:

Unlike ARPG tactics, which are fully in your control (desync aside), and character progression build (also fully in your control), the loot casino is very much out of your control. So while the game is manageable for those with amazing gear, for those who aren't as lucky (or simply haven't put in the obscene amount of hours to uncover the good loot through the tedium), they no longer meet the loot prerequisites, thus the game goes from appropriately challenging to frustratingly difficult, purely out of their control.

Thus, IMO, the loot system needs to be a lot more deterministic, in the same way that ARPG tactics and your character progression are fully in the player's control.

Yes, it may decrease the length of time people play, but if there isn't much content to begin with, why force them to go through an unpleasant experience? If you think about single player games (Devil May Cry, Final Fantasies, etc...), those games are designed to provide the best experience for each individual player, and thus have no unnecessary fluff. The one time a final fantasy game tried to pad its playable hours with empty sidequests (FF12), it caused a justified controversy (why are you putting in an MMO into my JRPG? Booo!).

I think we all realize that new content isn't trivial to come up with, but I'm sure as GGG releases more acts, some of us may decide to come back and pick up the game again. There's no harm in that.

But all of these Skinner Box mechanics around the loot system? That leaves a terrible taste in people's mouths to the point that some of them may turn away in disgust. And it's completely unnecessary IMO.

^^ Very much agree.. good post.

You've effectively laid out and described what I think many players run into.. some call it a "brick wall", others see it as more of a challenge to overcome, or at worst a hopeless break upon their character, which forces them to re-roll out of no will to try to fix a broken character.

One thing that is a constant though, is that eventually your build will suffer, not out of how you built it, but by what gear it has.

If you don't have lots of life, lots of resist, and a decent output of DPS, you're done. That's all fair and good.. what I think POE failed to realize though, is that in order to get those items you need to make it manageable for people.. you need to make it so that people have a chance to get those items, or craft them, or trade for them in a reasonable amount of time.. this is not the case in this game.

Will you find the items you need past Cruel? Maybe.. most likely not
Will you craft them? Perhaps if you get lucky or have a ton of currency, something that most players will not have. Maybe you'll get lucky with one piece of gear, but certainly not all of them.. so you will get stuck here.
Will you trade for your items? Again, maybe.. in some cases for sure, but this costs more and more currency every day.. for any really great items, you will simply never be able to afford them.

So where does that leave players? Grinding for weeks to months to get only marginal improvements if any on their characters. I don't know if that's considered hardcore necessarily.. sitting and grinding your character for a sniff at a better roll or better stat on a piece of gear.. the way it is now, finding it yourself is next to impossible. Fun quickly leaves after a certain point in this game.. which is a shame.