Thoughts from a game dev in the industry ...

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scale_e wrote:

And right at the end Piety helps you. It's a final attempt at redemption, despite her maintaining that she gave into that corruption willingly. Very majin Vegeta. Powerful stuff. The contrast between her and Malachi is what makes the final battle so engaging. Piety was greedy and prideful, but Malachi was that turned up to eleven. He was a purely evil man with aspirations of God-hood.

The build up to piety is obvious.
The build up to Malachi is hidden in lore.

Act 4 has some issues, it does feel a little rushed with regards to Kaom and Daresso, but overall I think it's great.

I think you misinterpreted Piety, and probably Malachai. They both were amoral rather than evil, just trying to improve humanity or to gain knowledge. The hints in game and Dialla's dialog make harder to think that the point of Malachai was destruction, I think he was corrupted by the Nightmare's influence like Kaom was. Piety redemption at the end was after getting to know her predecessors personally (kinky torturers are nice people to chat with), and it hardly felt like she was feeling guilt for her past actions (she even said so). She went with a bang, though.

Do you know what famous character had lore build up? Diablo himself. I think is the expectative of more active villains what makes it hard to stomach this days. Azmodan and Belial should have taught what happens when an amateur does active villains.

I think present day villains should be more active, while supernatural entities, gemlings, the undead and historical figures should be shrouded in mystery. If anything, Dominus should be more active (he could observe you from afar most of the game creeping you out or something).

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NeroNoah wrote:

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scale_e wrote:

And right at the end Piety helps you. It's a final attempt at redemption, despite her maintaining that she gave into that corruption willingly. Very majin Vegeta. Powerful stuff. The contrast between her and Malachi is what makes the final battle so engaging. Piety was greedy and prideful, but Malachi was that turned up to eleven. He was a purely evil man with aspirations of God-hood.

The build up to piety is obvious.
The build up to Malachi is hidden in lore.

Act 4 has some issues, it does feel a little rushed with regards to Kaom and Daresso, but overall I think it's great.

I think you misinterpreted Piety, and probably Malachai. They both were amoral rather than evil, just trying to improve humanity or to gain knowledge. The hints in game and Dialla's dialog make harder to think that the point of Malachai was destruction, I think he was corrupted by the Nightmare's influence like Kaom was. Piety redemption at the end was after getting to know her predecessors personally (kinky torturers are nice people to chat with), and it hardly felt like she was feeling guilt for her past actions (she even said so). She went with a bang, though.

Do you know what famous character had lore build up? Diablo himself. I think is the expectative of more active villains what makes it hard to stomach this days. Azmodan and Belial should have taught what happens when an amateur does active villains.

I think present day villains should be more active, while supernatural entities, gemlings, the undead and historical figures should be shrouded in mystery. If anything, Dominus should be more active (he could observe you from afar most of the game creeping you out or something).

I disagree, I don't think Piety and (especially) Malachi were simply amoral. They were definitely evil, and evil before they were corrupted. Piety had her taste of power, and made the decision to climb the political ladder, before she even set foot on Wraeclasts corrupted shores. Climbing that ladder would've meant stepping on other peoples necks. Pride, greed, vanity. She was evil already.
As for after she got to Wraeclast? There is no question about her being evil. One look at the lunaris temple and you can see that.

As for Malachi? I'd have to just assume he was always evil based on how much his negative traits ramped up post-corruption. If he's this evil now, I'd have to assume he was at least as evil as piety was post-corruption. This is just a gut feeling though. I realize the absurdity of trying to quantify the very nature of evil. I'm also throwing in a lot of assumptions from various flavor texts in the game. Especially the voiced ones. Goddamn. He just sounds so damn evil.

As for the Diablo example, shit gets really complicated with Diablo lore. The Sin war, leading up to Diablo I, was basically a false flag operation. The three primes and the four lessers, were working together all along. Just so that the player can foolishly face-plant an evil rock in the final cutscene. So in playing Diablo II, going through the lesser evils, finding out how wrong the protagonist from Diablo I had the whole situation, makes a lot of sense. What felt like a let down to me was killing Bhall at the end of LoD. The dude was a chump! Where Diablo was, quite appropriately, terrifying... Bhall was just boring.


And the soundtrack from Gurran Lagann sucks big donkey balls. That's right. I said it. Come at me bro. *Flexes*

Saying Piety is amoral and not evil is like saying the Nazis who conducted experiments on unwilling Jewish test subjects were amoral, not evil. Now if what you're trying to say is that they saw some Good in what they were working towards, then yeah, okay.

I actually agree that the build-up to Malachai is insufficiently clear. In particular, as soon as we defeat Dominus, I feel there should immediately be some good reason given to press onwards.

Instead, this is everything Dialla says: I feel this is a huge missed opportunity. We have just slain the big bad, and just as one would think the fight is over the bastard foreshadows "This world is an illusion, Exile" and transforms into a fucking rabbit blood demon.

This should raise questions. Questions Dialla should feel obliged to answer.

What Dialla should do, in her own rambling way, is do what Grigor does for us after Piety's death: congratulate us for offing one big bad, and point out the connection between the old big bad and the new one.

"So this is the Dominus you spoke of. You sure have carved him up nicely. Who knew you were such a gourmet, Not-a-Cockroach? Ah, just looking at this fine dish brings back fond memories. Memories of me and my beloved Malachai, fishing on a river of earth and shadow, baiting our hooks with madness and casting long, long, long. The great fish's work, this is. Go north, my lovely Unbug. Go to Highgate, to the beginning of the end. Dive headlong into the nightmare sea. Catch and roast yourself a nice, big fishy."

Would that be so hard?

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scale_e wrote:

I disagree, I don't think Piety and (especially) Malachi were simply amoral. They were definitely evil, and evil before they were corrupted. Piety had her taste of power, and made the decision to climb the political ladder, before she even set foot on Wraeclasts corrupted shores. Climbing that ladder would've meant stepping on other peoples necks. Pride, greed, vanity. She was evil already.
As for after she got to Wraeclast? There is no question about her being evil. One look at the lunaris temple and you can see that.

As for Malachi? I'd have to just assume he was always evil based on how much his negative traits ramped up post-corruption. If he's this evil now, I'd have to assume he was at least as evil as piety was post-corruption. This is just a gut feeling though. I realize the absurdity of trying to quantify the very nature of evil. I'm also throwing in a lot of assumptions from various flavor texts in the game. Especially the voiced ones. Goddamn. He just sounds so damn evil.

As for the Diablo example, shit gets really complicated with Diablo lore. The Sin war, leading up to Diablo I, was basically a false flag operation. The three primes and the four lessers, were working together all along. Just so that the player can foolishly face-plant an evil rock in the final cutscene. So in playing Diablo II, going through the lesser evils, finding out how wrong the protagonist from Diablo I had the whole situation, makes a lot of sense. What felt like a let down to me was killing Bhall at the end of LoD. The dude was a chump! Where Diablo was, quite appropriately, terrifying... Bhall was just boring.

First thing: it's Malachai. And Baal. For fuck's sake. I hope you don't write Koam and Domino too.

Piety has explicitly said her motivations, so there is not a lot of doubt about it. She made horrific experiments in the hope of evolving humanity (the whole gemling stuff). No pride, greed or vanity, just wanting to rise up from the mud of mortality. It's a question of deontology vs. consequentialism (people can correct me here, I have little to no background in Philosophy).

I agree present day Malachai was evil, but past Malachai was more grey. Read this:



I can't tell if he was evil or not, but his story is fairly confusing to anyone reading carefully. He was trying to achieve the same thing the Vaal searched. Some kind of salvation.

PoE's story is sometimes confusing, it's hard to read what's the endgame on all this.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Saying Piety is amoral and not evil is like saying the Nazis who conducted experiments on unwilling Jewish test subjects were amoral, not evil. Now if what you're trying to say is that they saw some Good in what they were working towards, then yeah, okay.

It's a question of intention vs. methods. Thing is, at the end she does the right thing, and that's more compatible with my interpretation. She did horrible stuff for (what she thought) were really good reasons, but it wasn't for pleasure, else she wouldn't have given a fuck at the end. She could have survived as Malachai's minion.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I actually agree that the build-up to Malachai is insufficiently clear. In particular, as soon as we defeat Dominus, I feel there should immediately be some good reason given to press onwards.

I think that more relevant than Malachai was the Beast. The game is fairly clear about having to kill that darkness in the mountain. You actually destroy its three hearts. Humans are not that relevant in a cosmic sense.

Jesus, Nero. So my autocorrect changed a few things. No need to be a dick about it.

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scale_e wrote:

Jesus, Nero. So my autocorrect changed a few things. No need to be a dick about it.

Your autocorrect is evil, XD

Also, internet sucks transmiting intention. Sorry for that. My fault for not compensating.

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Further, blizzard's loot drop is 85% smart. Meaning you get an 85% chance of getting an item that is geared toward your class/build. Your loot vomit would not need to be so prolific and noisy if you made it even a 50% smart drop rate.

As has been covered, this is a feature that is necessary in D3, and not so helpful in PoE. To add to the earlier sentiments (unless this has been covered), D3 featured (hopefully changed?) some of the worst stat-building mechanics I have ever seen. Items were plagued with +gold dropped, +loot radius, +Exp, and I believe a few other completely useless stats on top of the useless Intel/Dex stats if you were a Strength hero. If they didn't at least skim on the off-stats that weren't for your class... well, you'd get release D3, which was abhorrent in a number of ways, one being solo gearing. Truth be told, I haven't heard them fix that mess, and don't really plan to return until they make Dex/Intel valuable on Strength heroes like a normal hack and slash, and I'd hope a game designer can see the flaw on showcasing such useless stats, and then "Oops" those mistakes out by simply making your hero not obtain them.

Also, last I saw, D3 was 100% behind primary stat grind. Yeah, there are such things as attack speed and critical chance, but with the stat bonuses in the game, that simply opened a few niche-ish builds with procs on crits and such; most of your damage still came from Dex/Str/Int (plus base weapon damage). Heck, they didn't even separate caster/skirmisher builds effectively with both of them centered on main weapon damage, no matter which weapon. Why are you dissing PoE while praising D3, anyway?

"Smart Loot" is no feature in D3; It's downright critical. I'd say it's hardly a problem in PoE, particularly because building outside the box is encouraged. There was a Strength Wander (Marauder?) showcased a while back. Imagine fitting one of those with "Smart Drops" enabled... Meanwhile, I try to play outside the box in D3, and I get a "Kick of Ytar" (I think?) ranged sniper Monk with basically the exact same stats as any other Monk. What is there to play with, exactly? Where is the fulfillment? Well, let's just say, I hardly care if they found something anymore, as PoE found every bit of flavor they were missing, and more. I wouldn't say it's perfect, by any means (especially for my current system), but it's found a real system that doesn't leave me the room to be disappointed, as I'll just hop off my current build and find more to explore within the game. I did not find that in D3.

The only point I agree upon is that the arenas of the Act 4 boss fights need to be bigger. The size of Izaro's room is perfectly adequate.

Daresso's room is the one big enough,and that's more to do with the nature of his fight, since he's only one enemy.

Doedre's arena is appropriately small, though, because her mechanics rely on being able to move between areas quickly.

There's a post (second from bottom on first page, I think) that sums up my own thoughts well: Devs like you are why every other ARPG sucks and PoE is awesome, because you're too focused on making it "accessible" and "rewarding" instead of just making it fun

Doedre's chamber is too small, so is Kaoms!

Daresso's Arena is perfect, it has decent enough room.

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NeroNoah wrote:

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scale_e wrote:

Jesus, Nero. So my autocorrect changed a few things. No need to be a dick about it.

Your autocorrect is evil, XD

Also, internet sucks transmiting intention. Sorry for that. My fault for not compensating.

All good, brother.

To your actual points though, I'd agree with you if the "greater good" that Piety and (to a lesser extent) Malachai sought was undeniably good. But is it? I mean, if there was some kind of existential threat to Wraeclast (Black plauge, Giant meteor, supernova, etc etc) then sure, "whatever it takes" becomes reasonable. But everyone was doing OK without meddling from Piety or Malachai.
Piety and Dominus, Malachai and Chitus, Doryani and Atziri. They all justified their actions differently, but the root cause was always the same: Pride. The most venomous of all the deadly sins. Dante describes pride as "The love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbor." That's Malachai in a nutshell. He is so obsessed with becoming a god that he deliberately caused the cataclysm. The capital of an empire, gone. The wildlife of an entire continent, twisted and warped into monsters. All so mad little Malachai can play in his world building sandbox undisturbed. I cannot see that as anything but evil.