Developer Q&A - Answers Part 2

No Trading Improvements and No Ascendancy Point Without Lab.

It couldn't have gone worse.

C'mon' guys, Give Peace a Chance!

"

Astealoth wrote:

Ascendancy classes should not be tied to the labyrinth. This content is really unfun and uninteresting. Locking core progression in there is asinine at best. I am extremely disappointed that this is not being addressed. I would rather see ascendancy class progress integrated into the core game than new acts or anything else. The current setup with the labyrinth would be like making it so you could only earn XP for a certain range in vaal side areas. Frankly I think even that would be better since that content is comparatively much more interesting.

There is no slippery slope to worry about here, how often do you plan to hide skill tree nodes in horrible side content? Asking GGG to not do that and to rectify the one time it was done in the past is not a slippery slope to fall down, but a mountain of stubbornness you've asked us to climb.

+1
I'm adding my superfluous agreement.

It should've been obvious that the moment you frame Ascendencies as permanent passive skills your character gets that they come across as mandatory. It's not a piece of gear that can be traded like enchants can. Something really rubs me the wrong way if I have to pay somebody to run the lab for me if I rolled an evasion toon or something similar.

I have a friend who utterly despises traps and I attribute that as one of the many straws that broke the camel's back in his case. I personally don't mind them that much, but I'd only rather have to deal with them if I intended to farm Izaro all along.

Oh my god, do NOT put item durability in this game. Please.

"

pathfinding wrote:

"

Some things like mercenaries and durability might make a showing if we can work out a good way in the future.

Oh dear, pleaaase that would be awesome! I know this is unlikely to happen anytime soon, but it would be GREAT!!

"

We plan to post a minion life/damage/armour spreadsheet and small manifesto about 3.0.0 minion balance improvements next week.

Thank you! Really looking forward to summoner QoL changes, especially spectre improvements. Also curious about new act(s) spectre candidates.

"

Given that we want trade, the next question is how easy the trade should be. It seems obvious to jump to the answer of "as easy as possible, of course!" but more care needs to be taken. The easier that trade is, the more trades that traders can perform, increasing the utility that items provide to them. This has a few consequences:

The gap between traders and non-traders widens. This gap is apparent when you see feedback that the game is too hard for some people and too easy for others. Most of the time, that is proportionate to how much they have traded.
Item pricing becomes more skewed towards only very-cheap and very-expensive. Items either become trivially cheap or unaffordable. If you have ever felt that it's going to take too many 1-alch sales to finally save up for that 80 exalt item you want, then this is the reason.
Progression is trivialised. While trading for an item to get a leg up on difficult content is of course fine, being able to trivially and cheaply quadruple your clear speed on a whim isn't something that should be expected on your first character in a league. In addition, the fewer item upgrades you make on a character before capping out your items, the lower chance you have of sticking around for a decent portion of the league. Upgrading items more times (in smaller steps) is more fun than jumping right to the perfect gear.


The existing community tools (combined with our public stash tab API) already put us pretty far down this spectrum, compared to the old days of trade chat. We already view this as a crisis. That is why we are hesitant to add more convenience features.

As much as I have objections to the current trading system, this is actually a very solid explanation in my opinion. I really like the old PoE vibe, when the game used to be slower and harder (including trading, which, apparently, can be easily perceived as a negative), and you needed to pay more attention. I prefer your conservatism to any rapidly implemented steps that would have bad impact on the game. On the other hand, I think you don't need to be bound between radical steps and maintaining the "trading status quo" - even smaller and not very controversial changes could make the trading experience so much better, for example making sure that poe.trade is not flooded with items whose owners are not willing to switch to a different league, or permanently afk... Anyway, as I've said, I get your point. I kind of hope you tend to think the same when it comes to gameplay, because the clear speed meta has also put us "pretty far down" a certain spectrum...

That explanation isn't intuitively satisfactory to me and I'm not sure it's fair to lay that entirely at the feet of the trading. Slower trading is just a stopgap measure that fixes what is inherently flawed with itemization to begin with.
The reason a lot of gear is worthless is because most are just designed to be worthless on assumption.

A large gripe with combined defenses such as ES/AR, EV/AR, EV/ES and the like is they way they roll. There's no incentive to stack both of both worlds because you don't roll flat amounts of both on gear and percentile increases can tilt in one direction or the other rather than reaching a high happy medium of both. A lot of keystones don't encourage stacking both either. CI, Acrobatics and End Charges strongly encourage you to just stack one defense type and forget the rest.

The same goes with uniques. A lot are just literal newbie traps and only a very small percentage of them are useful for leveling or endgame. Most fill no purpose but to be thrown at a vendor. Tabula Rasa is a fantastic example of a unique that isn't strictly the best thing to get, but which still commands good prices every league. Same goes with Lifesprig.

For the vast majority of normal and cruel, conventionally rolled yellows and blues are utterly pointless. Unique bows prove this case. You have a bow for nearly every stage of the game for nearly any build you can conceive of.

If you're a physical build then your progression is probably going to look like:
Storm Cloud -> Death's Harp -> Infractem -> Lioneye's Glare.
You have Silverbough for CA and Quill Rain for EA.

Hammers are the same. Most people just aim for a Marohi Erqi as their middle-end game for a 2h melee weapon.

Rares just don't scale in an even progression alongside the player and are largely ignorable. The chances that you will be able to meaningfully stack armor or ES from gear is infinitesimal and largely unneeded anyway when you have a solid and reliable source of alternatives. Masters and benchcrafting also don't alleviate this problem either since you need to level them and only serve to enhance already good items to make them better. But I can't just take a blank chest and have it spit back out a competitive replacement to Queen of the Forest or Lioneye's Remorse at even ten times the market rate.

This is the main reason SSF suffers immensely. It's pretty unlikely you'll find a realistic replacement for a Death's Harp in a quick solo run through. And by the nature of the playstyle, they've opted out from using the reliable tried-and-true unique options given above.

I thought cards was going to help alleviate this. Except cards were implemented poorly. What's the point of a Carrion Crow card unless I'm finding these all over a1n? If Hermits dropped in most zones early on, you can bet people would immediately start trading those around at the start of the league.

Another thing that bothers me is dead affixes. Flat life regeneration and physical damage reflect has no business being on the affix table. Don't tell me that they're there to create losing conditions, because that's bullshit. If I aim for 40% cold resistance but get 15% cold resistance or 6% fire resistance, it's still a losing condition. The difference is that the latter conditions are decent consolation prizes in the leveling phase and potentially a useful sell for the crafter that doesn't want it anymore because he "bricked" it.

You can't have smooth and gradual gear progression if you can leave every yellow on the ground and assume you're not missing much.

I wish I can give a cleaner diagnosis of this, but frankly, the problems are endemic with the starting assumptions of the game itself. Trade isn't the whole of it.

"

DeviantLightning wrote:

I have a friend who utterly despises traps and I attribute that as one of the many straws that broke the camel's back in his case.

those who despise everything in a game that requires skill and can't be trivialised by stacking time investment and clicking "teh skill button", they exist!!

should arpg's adapt to their needs and remove all skill requirements? nope!!

"

LoloTwingo wrote:

Just thinking about something i would like to have for every league i played : have a button to force a league character to go standard (or HC league to standard HC) before the end of the league.
Starting a new character in a league with an empty stash is a challenge and finally fun. But when you reach 70+, you still have "nothing" really good in your stash, and would like to go standard to access your treasury. One could say "trade", but when you play SSF, it will never be an option.

For example i started a tornado shot ranger, having in mind the use of my standard death's opus and cospri's will. Now i'm reaching 70, and i must wait the end of the league, this is not fun anymore. I wish to go standard, finish building the character to 80-90, then eventually start a new one back to the league.

the way to do that is patently obvious. RIP the character to Standard.

"

cronus wrote:

"

DeviantLightning wrote:

I have a friend who utterly despises traps and I attribute that as one of the many straws that broke the camel's back in his case.

those who despise everything in a game that requires skill and can't be trivialised by stacking time investment and clicking "teh skill button", they exist!!

should arpg's adapt to their needs and remove all skill requirements? nope!!

Git gud scrub is a nonstarter argument.
Most skill arguments in games tend to piss me off with their subjectivity and erroneous nature anyway.

I get why traps alienate people because they tend to circumvent careful planning for some people and don't operate like any other damage source in the game (hitting you for a percentage of life). PoE is not mechanically intense honestly and is largely more a knowledge game. People don't outmechanic Shaper, they cheese him with leech.

And outscaling content is the assumption of the ARPG. That's the point. Skilled players don't need to and that's what separates Etup from the rest of us. But I can eventually access the same content he does, I just wouldn't farm it as often or quickly as he does.

I can run traps just fine, except I often feel the controls were not built for that kind of precise movement. I'd kill for a "brake" or "force stop" button for labs, probably bound to Shift. And sometimes camera angles block your vision of traps or what lies behind the gauntlet.

None of this would be a dealbreaker except that Ascendencies are viewed as mandatory. So it isn't an extra fun aside that rewards you. It's something you have to do to participate in one of the main draws of the game, which is to customize a character build.

"

DeviantLightning wrote:

Spoiler

That explanation isn't intuitively satisfactory to me and I'm not sure it's fair to lay that entirely at the feet of the trading. Slower trading is just a stopgap measure that fixes what is inherently flawed with itemization to begin with.
The reason a lot of gear is worthless is because most are just designed to be worthless on assumption.

A large gripe with combined defenses such as ES/AR, EV/AR, EV/ES and the like is they way they roll. There's no incentive to stack both of both worlds because you don't roll flat amounts of both on gear and percentile increases can tilt in one direction or the other rather than reaching a high happy medium of both. A lot of keystones don't encourage stacking both either. CI, Acrobatics and End Charges strongly encourage you to just stack one defense type and forget the rest.

The same goes with uniques. A lot are just literal newbie traps and only a very small percentage of them are useful for leveling or endgame. Most fill no purpose but to be thrown at a vendor. Tabula Rasa is a fantastic example of a unique that isn't strictly the best thing to get, but which still commands good prices every league. Same goes with Lifesprig.

For the vast majority of normal and cruel, conventionally rolled yellows and blues are utterly pointless. Unique bows prove this case. You have a bow for nearly every stage of the game for nearly any build you can conceive of.

If you're a physical build then your progression is probably going to look like:
Storm Cloud -> Death's Harp -> Infractem -> Lioneye's Glare.
You have Silverbough for CA and Quill Rain for EA.

Hammers are the same. Most people just aim for a Marohi Erqi as their middle-end game for a 2h melee weapon.

Rares just don't scale in an even progression alongside the player and are largely ignorable. The chances that you will be able to meaningfully stack armor or ES from gear is infinitesimal and largely unneeded anyway when you have a solid and reliable source of alternatives. Masters and benchcrafting also don't alleviate this problem either since you need to level them and only serve to enhance already good items to make them better. But I can't just take a blank chest and have it spit back out a competitive replacement to Queen of the Forest or Lioneye's Remorse at even ten times the market rate.

This is the main reason SSF suffers immensely. It's pretty unlikely you'll find a realistic replacement for a Death's Harp in a quick solo run through. And by the nature of the playstyle, they've opted out from using the reliable tried-and-true unique options given above.

I thought cards was going to help alleviate this. Except cards were implemented poorly. What's the point of a Carrion Crow card unless I'm finding these all over a1n? If Hermits dropped in most zones early on, you can bet people would immediately start trading those around at the start of the league.

Another thing that bothers me is dead affixes. Flat life regeneration and physical damage reflect has no business being on the affix table. Don't tell me that they're there to create losing conditions, because that's bullshit. If I aim for 40% cold resistance but get 15% cold resistance or 6% fire resistance, it's still a losing condition. The difference is that the latter conditions are decent consolation prizes in the leveling phase and potentially a useful sell for the crafter that doesn't want it anymore because he "bricked" it.

You can't have smooth and gradual gear progression if you can leave every yellow on the ground and assume you're not missing much.

I wish I can give a cleaner diagnosis of this, but frankly, the problems are endemic with the starting assumptions of the game itself. Trade isn't the whole of it.

pretty good sum up, uniques are too often "best in slot" and it's really not worth looking for rare items to replace them.

would trade restrictions especially for uniques help?

"

DeviantLightning wrote:

I get why traps alienate people because they tend to circumvent careful planning for some people and don't operate like any other damage source in the game (hitting you for a percentage of life). PoE is not mechanically intense honestly and is largely more a knowledge game. People don't outmechanic Shaper, they cheese him with leech.

And outscaling content is the assumption of the ARPG. That's the point. Skilled players don't need to and that's what separates Etup from the rest of us. But I can eventually access the same content he does, I just wouldn't farm it as often or quickly as he does.

I can run traps just fine, except I often feel the controls were not built for that kind of precise movement. I'd kill for a "brake" or "force stop" button for labs, probably bound to Shift. And sometimes camera angles block your vision of traps or what lies behind the gauntlet.

None of this would be a dealbreaker except that Ascendencies are viewed as mandatory. So it isn't an extra fun aside that rewards you. It's something you have to do to participate in one of the main draws of the game, which is to customize a character build.

again, good argumenting.
the point here is players not seeing lab as regular game content for which it's worth considering it in their build. a design flaw indeed.

solutions? more lab elements in the regular game (okok, i find my way out here myself)

So much nonsense about simplifiying trading.

"

The gap between traders and non-traders widens. This gap is apparent when you see feedback that the game is too hard for some people and too easy for others. Most of the time, that is proportionate to how much they have traded.

No, it widens now, when trading is too difficult for casual players. With accessible trading via Auction House everyone will become a trader and will benefit from it.

"

Item pricing becomes more skewed towards only very-cheap and very-expensive. Items either become trivially cheap or unaffordable. If you have ever felt that it's going to take too many 1-alch sales to finally save up for that 80 exalt item you want, then this is the reason.

I don't get it. How is it different from what we have now?
And rather otherwise, with open market we will have free leveling items circulation on it. With current system it's almost impossible to buy and sell leveling gear.

"

Progression is trivialised. While trading for an item to get a leg up on difficult content is of course fine, being able to trivially and cheaply quadruple your clear speed on a whim isn't something that should be expected on your first character in a league. In addition, the fewer item upgrades you make on a character before capping out your items, the lower chance you have of sticking around for a decent portion of the league. Upgrading items more times (in smaller steps) is more fun than jumping right to the perfect gear.

First, again, what's the difference with current system? Second, there are no 'perfect gear', there are always place for better affixes/rolls. Even mirrored-quality items have flaws, and it's almost impossible to get even one with such quality.