2.3.0 Changes to the High-level Experience Equation

"

You are saying it as if you believe they have such numbers. Not sure if serious or joking.

If you don't think the people with access to the entire back-end of the game, who've programmed it from the ground up, and run all the servers that every unique player to the game connects to on a daily basis, have access to meta-data about how many people per league reach level 100 and how soon they do so, you need to re-evaluate your understanding of information technology.

There is an in-game tracker for all players ranking in the leader board, so GGG has access to that data. There is a time stamp for all actions that happen within the game (Including level ups, item transitions, and login attempts) to ensure the client side and server side data syncs properly, so GGG has access to that data. There is an even more massive amount of data that you or I have no access to, that the lead programming team can access at the click of a button using developer and server administration tools to gather that source data, so rest assured, GGG has access to any and all information about the game necessary to make development decisions.

Now, the interpretation of that data, is a completely different matter. Depending on the data itself, the design philosophy the developers based the foundation of the game around, and the in the moment decisions that have to be made to resolve arising issues that negatively effect that philosophy, those interpretations can change. Regardless, it'd be enlightening to have a deeper look into the data those decisions are based off of, and the actual thought processes that push the game in one direction or another.

Right now death way to high punished players from playing the game, i mean let's be honest (just drop your funboyism at least for now) oneshot/onehit/multiple super fast hits become WAAAAAAAAY to common even in middle/low tier maps (i don't even talk about red maps... they was overtuned so high even before 2.1). Also we must agree that leveling become clearing maps on as fast as possible speed and developers agreed on it, so they balancing game on oneshot + clear speed mechanic, there two base works right now.

My question: Is it fine mechanic? Is it fun? No and no! Its not fine to play and not fun at all as it makes some builds absolute and other useless.
Many players want to try leveling past 90 and even 100, but what's point now? It literally takes x5 time more time and maps, one death make you back SO far that you must spend days to get back lost exp (not level), and when you level up you so tired and soul-drained that you better stop playing the game then try again.

Right now leveling only stop players from playing the game, it's not even fun or acceptable by logic, as one oneshot/onehit/multiplesuperfasthits mechanic gave us no way to survive or skip death. It's not even about skills or something.

I mean even before atlas leveling to 100 was REALLY hard, but now... i hope you understand that it's not antiGGG post, but PRO-GGG post as i'm fan and love PoE but right now something really wrong with mechanic and balance in PoE!

It's either oneshot/onehit/multiplesuperfasthits mechanic should leave or leveling should be x10 times faster for everyone.

Cheers

I think the idea of not being able to do any sort "progression" content while playing out of fear of dying, is a bigger problem than the time it takes to reach max level.
One reason why I don't play Hardcore for example, is that I love to do content that is actually too hard (sometimes way too hard) for my character. This style of play is heavily penalized.

I think the xp penalty for dying only serves its purpose at a few select levels in the game (pretty much between 70 and 90), and it should be rebalanced or changed entirely. I have no problem with the concept of a penalty for dying. The labyrinth for example, has an excellent penalty for dying. This can be frustrating at times, I'm sure, but it rewards you for doing something properly while carrying a heavy penalty (having to restart).

But, the xp penalty causes you to not want to do certain (challenging) maps or bosses when you are at certain points in your progression. It effectively prevents you from playing the game in certain ways (that granted, were only introduced with the Atlas), and that should not be the case.

There are plenty of solutions to this:
- A new orb that can be used on maps that causes it to not penalize you for death.
- Harder maps granting permanent xp.
- More xp save points between 95 and 100.
- In short, anything that makes you able to do things that are fun and risky and interesting while you are on the grind, without being condemned to run T8 map after T8 map.

so they nerfed exp because a few people were hitting 100 in like 2-3 days /played with VMS in perandus. they then proceed to nerf VMS to the point where it's not even a skill anymore, and then pile on extra exp nerfs on top of it along with nerfs to any other "fast" build that gets noticed by reddit since then. what's the point of even adding higher tier maps when the new exp formula makes it so the amount of EXP they give is the same as the old level 78 maps which used to be the highest tier? i cant be the only one that noticed that?

99-100 alone is like 800-1000 maps now, and t11-13 maps still give the best exp/hour since t15/16s are apparently balanced by having shitty layouts with half of the amount of mobs in them. no, apparently adding a higher tier of maps does not increase the speed at which people level to 100 when you put in half the amount of monsters and have boss fights that last longer than the map itself while giving meager exp. so there really was no need to double the amount of exp it takes to get from 95-100 after prophecy after all. who would have guessed.

it's okay because they'll pile more layers of nerfs on top of the fastest leveling builds (that reddit knows about) next league, and if we're lucky we'll get another nerf to 95+ exp because nerfing the builds obviously isnt enough. even though 99% of builds could never reach comparable leveling speed even with infinite currency investment.

and what even is this "We've found that players who aim for max level enjoy a harder grind to reach this goal" ? literally every player i've talked to that has hit 100 post nerfs thinks they make the game miserable. curious to know where you got that data from. or do you mean reddit?

"

Chris wrote:

We've found that players who aim for max level enjoy a harder grind to reach this goal.

Haha, fkin rubbish, you just made that up.

PS: Not all your customers are daft wee kids

stop being OCD and just raise the lvl cap. I know 100 is a nice round number, but if you simply set the xp back to what it originally was and added 10 levels, you wouldn't need to do anything else. lvl 101 is twice as hard to reach as lvl 100. lvl 102 is twice as hard to reach as lvl 101. etc. who would do that all the way to 120? given the exponential effect of such an implementation, no one would ever reach max lvl in a league. no one would have reason to ever stop playing, the competition would be fierce from beginning to end. and it would only affect the top players WITHOUT you guys screwing with the top tier maps like this.

yeah, 100 won't be so hard to reach, but who would care? it's such an easy fix but you're too OCD I think.

EDIT: actually, that grind sucks. endgame grind sucks. I see no reason why you can't just remove the lvl cap entirely and keep raising the monster lvls every time the game is beaten. their lvls could be raised to a lvl so high after merciless that you'd be forced to do maps or grind merciless until you could play the 4th difficulty if you really want ppl to go for maps after merciless. that's the fun sort of grind - I kept beating dark souls and bloodborne with the same character until the bosses stopped getting more difficult. once the grind becomes: just keep doing the same thing over and over to increase some silly number (lvl), it's no fun any more. I'd be on the 20th play through of dark souls if there were even minor buffs to boss health pools each game. but there isn't. they decided that after the 7th play through the game wouldn't get harder any more so it just gets easier as you lvl. yawn.

think about it though, if there was no lvl cap and a 4th difficulty was introduced that started with monster lvl 110, you'd have a real goal on your hands. you'd have a much better reason to grind maps until you could be one of the very few that crush the rare 4th difficulty. there could be another ceiling after the 4th difficulty, maybe another tier of maps after that that go up to monster lvl 180... with a 5th difficulty starting with monsters at lvl 200-210! (lvl 110-185 would go pretty fast b/c the monsters are that lvl but then you're grinding maps again...). the best of the best would really stand out.

So you balance your game entirely on people who don't have jobs and who only play the OP skills and meta builds?

As Project would say: Hurray! Fuck us.

So assuming GGG is ACTUALLY interested in feedback in this thread (they don't seem to be reading it), here's mine:

1750+ hours played according to Steam.
highest level character 91 (87% to 92)
Game no longer as much fun around ~ 88+ progress slows down makes the later levels feel chore-some. I have about a dozen characters most of them petered out around or shy of this area where low maps become very unrewarding and red maps become rippy AND you run out of them (this is a huge problem for me) and the -10% from deaths stalls all progress creating an enormously unfun equilibrium. Stuck af, if you will.

Apparently without indulging in "meta builds" my current level of game experience coupled with my stubborn defensive "janky"/"hipster" build inclination (defensive + melee) and player skill has me reach a sort of equilibrium around this point.

Parties offer better XP but they are eye cancer (massive particle spam from CoC/Discharge/Cospri's/Minion builds) which make the game no longer resemble an Action RPG in any way and for that reason not fun. Indeed I hold my nose and party because it might get me that 1 more passive I need in something like a semi-reasonable feeling timeframe. Also in these parties the game goes from completely trivial to insta-rip in completely unpredictable and indeed purely random ways. "Oh I died... no idea why all the screen spam made it impossible to tell" can't even learn a lesson "it was probably a volatile but it also could have been a reflect rare, DD, or some odd damage combo... no way to ever know... gee I hope the next map I can get back 2% of that 10% I lost to who knows what"


Designing the last 5-8 passive points as "only for the Parent's basement elite who ALSO play the most broken builds" seems (IMO) to be too much reward for something you guys are calling "bragging rights". In both of the last couple leagues someone reached level 100 within a few days.

Many of course did this by using bots in dried lakes to level 24 hours a day while they level gems to sell to the leagues earliest RMT purchasers. In other words many of the highest level "players" in temp leagues are 3rd world gold sellers botting XP as a side effect of farming currency and leveling gems to sell on player***tions.com. So the question becomes: why should anyone care about the "achievement" of reaching 100 when all it is, is a big shenanigans flag, at worst or an admonition of having no life and exploiting the latest super broken skills at best?

Why don't you just poll us for any major change to the game and anonymize the results? Why don't you balance everything so that it does a certain amount of average damage based on the level requirement of the gem/item? Why don't you ask the community to come up with ideas for gems and let us decide how useful or flashy the gem is? WHY IS THERE NO XP "BONUS" IF YOU ARE OFFLINE LONG ENOUGH?!?! Why don't you expand the level cap (and the passive tree in the process)? Why isn't monster strength loosely based on the character's level (so that you can't faceroll Mervell regardless of difficulty)?

"

Game no longer as much fun around ~ 88+ progress slows down makes the later levels feel chore-some.

This