Be careful what you ask for: Gear progression and power creep
Spoiler
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IlyaK1986 wrote:
This is completely beside the point IMO. I don't think anyone is asking for Voltaxic Glare to be dropping on the act 1 shore. However, in my own personal experience, I needed Death's Harp to beat normal Dominus, and it then carried me all the way through cruel (because I couldn't find a single better bow than a first-tier unique!) until I traded for my current one, which is a piece of junk.
Here it is:
Cost me around 5 chaos I think.
For merc dominus, I simply joined a party to get that piss-poor paced quest out of the way, and promptly failed the rare map Dialla gave me (6 deaths for nothing--freaking leapers+devourers+enfeeble).
Just for reference, here's the rest of my gear:
Rings I crafted, boots and gloves I traded for, quiver I traded for, chest, helmet, and belt self-found. With boots and gloves, I had to socket/fuse/recolor them myself.
Is this supposed to be "endgame" gear? Because my DPS is around 900 on lightning arrow with both auras going, and my frenzy is around 3k IIRC? For the record, here's my build:
Not sure if it's exactly optimized, but it's a phys/crit/LA build, pretty cookie cutter.
And I was able to clear normal and cruel without much issue until cruel scepter of god, at which point it was just more deaths than I had the entire rest of the game combined in one boss fight.
I'm not saying we need power creep, but IMO, the pace of the gear drops need to keep up with the pace of the difficulty, if the game decides to gear check you.
Or, put another way: anytime a game "gear checks" the player, it's also a reflection of the player "pace checking" the game. So if the player fails a gear check, that's the same exact thing as saying that the game fails a pace check.
No, this is not supposed to be endgame gear, it is gear that u should be able to upgrade quite easily yourself, especially if you trade for it, but even if you dont, it should be easy. But u could be currently stuck in your farming of better items, as your gear is not good enough to do this quickly.
LA is currently also slightly underpowered compared to split arrow so you may want to try that instead. It will ease your mana probs.
Not sure that this applies to you, but my friend was leveling an LA build, he was doing most of it in parties and made it well into the 70's. He then started to upgrade his items, but it was painfully slow farming Lunaris. He thought that since he was 70+, Lunaris should be easy, but in reality he had shit gear and only made it to 70+ because being carried all the way.
This is not about bad drops or drops not keeping up with difficulty, this is about farming efficient, something which a lot people dont do. Good gear, good enough to be used well into maps will drop in ledge for instance, and it is stupid easy to farm - both for currency and item upgrades, but people insist on farming docks or Lunaris, which is a bad idea as it takes them way way way too long to kill anything. I would rather have 3 drops in Ledge than 1 in Lunaris if I was trying to upgrade.
Having said that, Cruel Dominus is a bitch, but other than that, getting decent gear for progression is not so difficult in this game.
About power creep, Im with you OP and a lot of people dont seem to get it.
Yes, you are partially correct. This graph is a theoretical construct, as there are two more axes that need to be factored (# of players over time and player level), and the complexity of showing something like that would likely obfuscate what the message is attempting to convey.
Let's assume that for every player level at a particular point in time, one of these graphs exist. Assuming pseudo-random distribution of the relative usefulness of items throughout the population, you will get the curve shown.
The gist is that over time, each time you redraw the same population graph, the average player power at a particular level will creep to the right, due to better items always being added to the economy (be it through trade, craft, or self-found).
Knowing the monster power at each level, GGG can then control the 'average' player's experience by manipulating drop rates/orb rolls. What they can't control is an individual's experience. If for some reason RNGesus is really cruel to a player, they will end up on the left side of the curve throughout their play experience. This is bad, and this is likely why many people are asking for improvements to the itemization.
The point being made is that if obtaining better gear is made easier, players will complete the content more quickly, which leads to challenges in player retention.
Loot based ARPGs at their heart are nothing more than glorified slot machines. I understood this when I found the game, and I enjoy it for what it is. What I see happening when some people are asking for greater certainty in gear progression is like locking two of the reels on the slot machine to always roll a prize. If you keep rolling jackpot, you'll feel great at the start, but then you look around, and you notice everyone else is rolling jackpots too. I think this is bad for the casino, cause everyone will clean house after a few rolls and leave.
See, here's the message I don't think the "IT'S FINE AS IS" players are understanding, and this is coming from someone with an MS in statistics that reads the occasional machine learning book for fun:
Most people who have issues with the game aren't asking for an increase in mean.
They're asking for a decrease in variance.
Notably, the distribution is not a symmetrical, bell-shaped curve. In fact, if you look at the ratio of content to player power, I would argue that it is massively right skewed, with some unlucky (read: the more self-found you are, the unluckier you are) souls on the left end, those who engage in opportunistic trading somewhere in the middle, and then the hardcore grinders such as Kripparian and the guide-writers on the far end.
What I think is an absolutely reasonable request is to try and do something about that left tail without severely moving the mean forward--since in a right skewed distribution, the mean is most affected by the outliers.
The question is:
A) Does PoE's longevity come from endless endgame content
OR
B) Endlessly re-rolling characters and trying builds
People in camp A won't want drop rates to change because it destroys their idea of endgame. People in camp B don't like drop rates so low because it makes it incredibly difficult and time consuming to create multiple characters geared for endgame content.
I don't personally know which is better.
The 352nd character to hit Level 100 in Standard
The 82nd character to hit Delve 1000 in Standard
See, here's the message I don't think the "IT'S FINE AS IS" players are understanding, and this is coming from someone with an MS in statistics that reads the occasional machine learning book for fun:
Most people who have issues with the game aren't asking for an increase in mean.
They're asking for a decrease in variance.
Notably, the distribution is not a symmetrical, bell-shaped curve. In fact, if you look at the ratio of content to player power, I would argue that it is massively right skewed, with some unlucky (read: the more self-found you are, the unluckier you are) souls on the left end, those who engage in opportunistic trading somewhere in the middle, and then the hardcore grinders such as Kripparian and the guide-writers on the far end.
What I think is an absolutely reasonable request is to try and do something about that left tail without severely moving the mean forward--since in a right skewed distribution, the mean is most affected by the outliers.
Yep. I am in agreement. I think GGG understands this, hence the balance changes to links introduced at release. What I have a hard time understanding is some players, in essence, claiming that a 6-link 100% defensive bonus, all resist chest is mandatory in order for them to 'enjoy' the game...
"We were going to monitor the situation but it was in the wrong aspect ratio."
A) Does PoE's longevity come from endless endgame content
OR
B) Endlessly re-rolling characters and trying builds
Ha ha. I'm in the B camp and I'm actually fine the way the game is. However I do understand the desire of some players to have greater determinism when it comes to crafting. I think it would be a nice feature to help self-found/unlucky players get past the 'gear-checks' that serve to act as 'difficulty' in the game.
I'm all for rolling new builds, and I tend not to lack for gear because I use the gear I find to think up new ideas. It seems to me some players hear about a particularly powerful build (read: 'flavour of the month') and cry bloody murder because they don't have access to the BIS gear that the build poster uses to roflstomp with...
"We were going to monitor the situation but it was in the wrong aspect ratio."
Last edited by Garr0t#3474 on Dec 9, 2013, 10:58:07 PM
See, here's the message I don't think the "IT'S FINE AS IS" players are understanding, and this is coming from someone with an MS in statistics that reads the occasional machine learning book for fun:
Most people who have issues with the game aren't asking for an increase in mean.
They're asking for a decrease in variance.
Notably, the distribution is not a symmetrical, bell-shaped curve. In fact, if you look at the ratio of content to player power, I would argue that it is massively right skewed, with some unlucky (read: the more self-found you are, the unluckier you are) souls on the left end, those who engage in opportunistic trading somewhere in the middle, and then the hardcore grinders such as Kripparian and the guide-writers on the far end.
What I think is an absolutely reasonable request is to try and do something about that left tail without severely moving the mean forward--since in a right skewed distribution, the mean is most affected by the outliers.
Im a "its fine as it is" kind a player (to some extent at least).
I will agree to your point about moving the left tail without moving the mean, but if there are two points here I want to make.
a) Dont balance with regards to self-found. I dont think that is what you mean, but you hint that the more self-found you are the more you belong to the left tail. Point is, this game is not balanced around self-found and it shouldnt be.
b) Unless you freaking unlucky, you can progress through this game and get yourself out of the left tail relatively easy. There are people complaining about the drop rates all the time, but they are not efficient in their playstyle/farming. This is very different than drop rates being crap. And we are not talking about high-end gear here, but the left tail.
Power creep occurs no matter where you decide to start. Power creep is only a problem because items never leave the economy, only currency.
The issue isn't simply making it easier to get better gear. I don't think anyone wants insta-BIS. What I would like, and what I think others would like, is to find/craft one's own upgrades to progress through the content. Right now, trading is vastly superior to drops/crafting. I'm not just talking about availability. But getting the precise stats for one's build.
The best way to combat power creep isn't to throttle items entering the economy. After all, power creep happens no matter where you start and how much you throttle it. It's taking items out of the economy. BoA, salvaging gear, corpse/gear recovery, hardcore death, etc. My personal preference is BoA crafting because it's a very elegant method to allow a person who wants to invest the time and resources to make their own personal gear and solves the power creep issue.
BoA is anything but elegant. It's more along the lines of using a nuke for a pest problem.
