Open Beta - design changes

Great post and explanation!

Are you really only lvl 66 Qarl wtf?!?!?

Im gonna out level you lolz :)

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Siveria wrote:

I have to say its very rare to find a game devoloper that will explain in so much depth why certan things were changed. I've played alot of games but the PoE dev team has honestly impressed me, not that I matter but lets just say This rarely happens.

Agreed 100%

Sadly, it's abundantly obvious that it doesn't prevent the QQ. Any developer could point directly to this forum and justifiably say they don't offer in depth insight to the development process because people just complain and question every decision they make.

I personally am glad GGG takes the approach they do.. but based on what I've seen recently, I wouldn't do it if I were a developer.

Great job !

The only thing set in stone is that there is now chaos resist gear in the game. If CI is to weak now they can easily balance it out again. Give the guys some credit, it's still a work in progress.

WTF, not even a single person is talking about elemental equilibrium?


Why did you guys make this change to elemental equilibrium?

It now seems pretty useless in almost any scenario aside from teams (in which case it's just as overpowered and broken as ever). While it was quite rarely used and not very useful before, if you deal any combination of 2 elements randomly now, you gain little to no advantage at all. This means you can't use any gear or skill gems that give added elemental damage aside from the same element that's primarily dealing the damage. You can't only spam a single element either, so unless you're in a team, you'd have to manually swap any gear (rings, gloves, etc.) between each and every attack you make if you're attacking with any bonus elemental damage on either attack. If you're casting spells, you'll still probably want to swap wands/focus.

The only situation where elemental equilibrium seems beneficial now outside of forced team use (abuse) is alternating between two single-element damages, each which have little-to-no added elemental damage on them. While it does give a reasonable bonus this way, it's almost certainly not worth the more reasonable bonus of having extra damage from added elemental damage equipment.

In essence, it's making elemental equilibrium useless for all abilities/builds that use melee/ranged attacks, and also disallows the use of adding any bonus elements to spells aside from the primary spell's damage; pretty lame if you ask me.

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your established characters may need tweaking to deal with changes to their skills.

What they'll need is respecs. It's not fair to plan out a build that gets creamed in 6 months and there's little you can do about outside of just starting over because GGG decided to change your character.

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Eleveneleven wrote:

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your established characters may need tweaking to deal with changes to their skills.

What they'll need is respecs. It's not fair to plan out a build that gets creamed in 6 months and there's little you can do about outside of just starting over because GGG decided to change your character.

Well when they change the skill tree you usually get full respec.

Otherwise, there's items that drop occasionally that let you respec a point. When you accumulate enough of them you can respec most-of-or all-of your build. They're not a fan of being able to change classes entirely easily though, they want it to be a challenge, because it adds the dynamic like in diablo where you can sacrifice time and effort early on to get a better build in the end.

Thoughtful and in-depth intelligent design to make the game complex and interesting.

This is why I switched over from Diablo III. These devs aren't afraid to mold the game with a clear objective, instead of just pandering to the masses.

This thought process makes me believe I will be playing this game for years, especially when they say things like they never feel the game is finished. I've already given them my dollar.

I am so impressed so far and please keep up the great work. This is finally the mature action-rpg I've been waiting for and I think it has the potential to be the best.

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Skavin wrote:

Thoughtful and in-depth intelligent design to make the game complex and interesting.

This is why I switched over from Diablo III. These devs aren't afraid to mold the game with a clear objective, instead of just pandering to the masses.

This thought process makes me believe I will be playing this game for years, especially when they say things like they never feel the game is finished. I've already given them my dollar.

I am so impressed so far and please keep up the great work. This is finally the mature action-rpg I've been waiting for and I think it has the potential to be the best.

Actually these changes and design goals simply remind me of how Diablo 3 started out, and how it caused its demise. A year ago this game felt perfect in terms of how powerful your character felt. People found what works and the gear had chances to be powerful and interesting. Now everything is homogenized and the more they"balance" the more frustrated the community will get when their hard work is ruined by a nerf.

I won't be spending more money on this game like I did back when it showed promise. I'm half through normal act 3 and already wanting to rage quit. I'm still pissed they made recipes useless. CI nerf is also gay as hell. Buff health instead of ruining one of the most interesting skills in action mmo history.

[mod edit: off topic]