PoE: The big picture. Something for everyone (to complain about?)

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vio wrote:

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raics wrote:

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Bars wrote:

Funny, I thought I was being extremely patronizing with this thread by explaining the obvious to the blind :P

Ah, you big softie, you :)

yep, hopeless case with bars. as a idealist he want's to make the blind see again...

Truly, I'll at least allow myself a degree of overt philanthropism but Bars is...

Great, a man attempts to write a serious thread and by page three it's already turned to anime memes.


*grumbles*

Don't take it to heart, anime memes are a sign of love and respect, well not really but it helps if you think that way.

Anyway, it's your fault for doing such a good job on the opening post, nothing an honest PoE fan can do but read and agree, and you were offered a chance a while ago to turn it into a lab thread, that would likely see some discussion. Actually, you haven't left any room for someone to pull a wrong conclusion or two and get insulted either, the worst misunderstanding we can take with us is that you hate the lab, somehow.

I like anime :_;;;;;;;;;;

~cries

let's derail a thread! wait ...

what's missing on first sight is ggg's more or less successful practice of "community driven development".

has it only upsides to outsource essential game functionality?

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raics wrote:

Don't take it to heart, anime memes are a sign of love and respect, well not really but it helps if you think that way.

You rat bastard :D

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raics wrote:

Anyway, it's your fault for doing such a good job on the opening post, nothing an honest PoE fan can do but read and agree, and you were offered a chance a while ago to turn it into a lab thread, that would likely see some discussion. Actually, you haven't left any room for someone to pull a wrong conclusion or two and get insulted either, the worst misunderstanding we can take with us is that you hate the lab, somehow.

True enough, the thread wasn't really meant to incite a lively discussion, perhaps even the opposite. I don't know what made you think that about the lab though.

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I_NO wrote:

I like anime :_;;;;;;;;;;

~cries

There, there *pats back*

I've watched my fair share when I was younger :P

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vio wrote:

what's missing on first sight is ggg's more or less successful practice of "community driven development".

has it only upsides to outsource essential game functionality?

IMO it's a choice of necessity. They seem to be quite overwhelmed with work, especially since they switched to a three-month cycle, so they are probably happy to let the community do some of their work - with all the pros and cons it entails.

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Bars wrote:

You rat bastard :D

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vio wrote:

what's missing on first sight is ggg's more or less successful practice of "community driven development".

has it only upsides to outsource essential game functionality?

Well, Bethesda does it too, hell if they don't count on modding community to fix at least some of their broken crap and hell if buyers don't expect free high quality additional content to go with the game. Mind you, it's often the kind of content you pay good money for in other games, if they said 'we won't be implementing any modding support in our next game' I expect their sales would feel it.

Sure, it has downsides, you don't have any control over quality, some players aren't comfortable with using third party tools or doing anything that requires more than two clicks and if the community abandones the project you're left with pants around your ankles.

Pretty well put I'd say, you hit it spot on. However just because they have a plan, it does not mean that the current system does not have any very obvious flaws they might be struggling with.
In fact, due to their announcement of 3.0.0 being the biggest yet, I'd expect some paradigm changing introduction which might deal with some of the issues PoE has.

Power creep is becoming more of an issue as time goes by, as well as drop table dilution. With the release of new acts and content, this is going to become more and more evident, they seem to be aware, but I'm skeptical of the eventual solution. This is a big one and is only going to get worse.

Power creep was one of the major issues they have somewhat successfully addressed in MtG. They combat it by basically making old cards illegal, effectively making it so you can't use new/old card interactions to break the game, or to outlaw an old card which was deemed unbalanced. In PoE this is basically legacy items, which means Standard league is inherently unbalanced, which anyone observant enough already knew.
Power creep is inevitable by design, but in PoE it's getting to a point where it's making a lot of skills, uniques, and even rares with the introduction of essence T0 mods, obsolete to the point that they don't hold any value. The problem is this number will keep increasing, diluting the pool, and exacerbating the issue constantly.

Immunities and other similar design decisions are blocking a lot of endgame build diversity regardless of costs. Regardless of playstyle, there's not much reason to block a large portion of mechanics from doing these bosses unless you specifically want to shoehorn players into a specific handful of build. This might be their plan, and if it is I would argue it is a bad one.

Technical difficulties and design issues (disconnects, unprecise hitboxes, bad pathfinding) plague the labyrinth. But most of the problem with lab is it's interaction with PoE itself - both designs are incompatible.

Again, more technical difficulties (fps and frame time instability, infrastructure, old, unoptimized engine, AMD which accounts for sensibly 30% of the market has even worse issues) make HC and high level SC a chore. Upcoming engine tweaks might be their plan to fix this, fingers crossed.

What I mean is just because GGG has a plan, does not mean the game hasn't got issues, maybe even at a fundamental level, which they need to address in some way. Regardless of their long term plan, it's perfectly normal for them to struggle with finding solutions for hard problems. By offering constructive criticism, even harsh criticism, we can help, if anything, put things into perspective.

@Syde: of course, there are many legitimate concerns which must be discussed - especially since the devs seem to have a general plan but also seem to be a bit fuzzy on the details. I wrote this post because there are a lot of complaints which simply miss the big picture and might look perfectly valid to the guy who's complaining while they actually aren't.