Game Balance in Path of Exile: Expedition

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phlaistar wrote:

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koopadoop wrote:

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nehio wrote:

I'm the casual everyone speaks about ... and i won't have time to play this anymore

You are wrong while u r right. ... He (the casual) has 3 months to do anything he wants instead of the otherwise 48h he needed before 3.15. That's what u said and I bet it is wrong.

Also it is wrong because I bet he already needed 3 month to not reach everything he wanted. Now he needs 3 month + ~40% (DMG Nerf) + Act 1 Power Buff to not reach his goals.

The drop in player numbers shows pretty significantly that most players do not use 3 months of time to reach whatever they want. I'd guess (without seeing the statistics right now) that most players quit the league after a max of 1 month.

True. IMHO - I don't think this happens because everyone reached their goals or completed every aspect of the game. I think most people quit bc they are bored and don't really see a point in completing anything/everything or level alts bc all this they already done several times in many leagues every 3 month.

I bet GGG knows the average player quits early and they think: "Let's make the game harder and slower so the average player takes longer to reach his/her goals and will spend more time in the game" ... I think the average player will just quit earlier with these changes.

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hatefield wrote:

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jackdeth101 wrote:

My thoughts on the major nerf bat swing... I wasn't there when POE first started, I've only played for about 1.5 years now. I don't remember "the good old days" they're trying to get back to, where simply running through the acts of the game were considered dangerous in and of themselves. I'm also not 12 any longer (actually over 4 times that), so I'm not gifted with amazing reaction time and incredible hand/eye coordination, so even though I've been at it in Standard for quite some time now, I'm not able to even get to the point I think I could fight the end bosses and have a chance to actually WIN... All this before the nerfs.

Draw your conclusions on how I feel.

Perhaps you should consider having some "legacy" servers or the like, that let you play the patches in the state of the game that you DO want to play. Feel like loading up Harvest? Great, enjoy! Is the Delirium patch the thing? Go for it! People who want to go all the way back to the Breach league? By all means, port your way back in time. Play the way you want! THAT would be much more palatable to me... I could go back to Metamorph, where *I* started and where *I* fell in love with the game, not this upcoming Expedition patch that almost certainly will not only prevent me from EVER experiencing the end game, but will probably even prevent me from being able to run T14+ alch-and-go maps...

Again do you think the game should be balanced around you?

And about boss difficulty, nobody was born good at it now matter how young or old (I'm getting close to 40 myself). You just have to go in there and give it a go. You may fall flat on your ass, but as long as you're not in hardcore you get up and try again. That's how things usually go. If you like the game, have a half decent build and can invest 10 hours a week you should be able to do fine in a new league. The only problem is focusing on what you want, disregarding the content bloat that crept up over the years. You don't have to do everything in game (except maps :P). The problem most players struggle with (including me :) ) is being efficient with your time.

If you want pm me and I'll help you gear your char in standard to a decent enough (or more than decent point if you feel the need) so you feel more confident in yourself and try some bosses if you want :)

Ha! The answer to your question is more complex than yes or no! :) The part of me that is all about me, myself & I say "yes, absolutely!" However, the part of me that understands how GGG has worked in the past knows that this is far from a realistic expectation, and probably should have anything related to hoping it will be so should be squashed like a bug!

That being said, you're not wrong about boss difficulty... I should eventually be able to get it done, eventually. Still, I don't want to waste the pitifully small resources I have on doomed failure. If I can't beat Sirus A8, with my absolute best character, I feel strongly that I'll fall on my face and kiss my resources goodbye. If I can beat Sirus A8 even once, I'll be happy to fall flat on my face, as I'll have hope that I'll get back up stronger the next time.

As for my build, I think it's just on the edge of being good enough, and I need only a tiny push to get over the line. PoB says my golems do just shy of 1 mil dps each, and with 4 of them, that sounds not too bad, right around 3.6 mil dps. I know it can get quite a bit higher as of right now with the right gear, but it's pretty good. Here's my POB: https://pastebin.com/4JFWffR4

Suggestions are welcome, and I'd be happy to trade for gear, if I have something you desire. :) I'll see if I can't find you online sometime in the near future!

Since GGG buffed monster/boss HP and resists and introduced awakaning levels they opened widely one HUGE problem. The gap between 95% of crappy skills and small 5% or less of top tier. I have tried so many times to play bow or just some mediocre or old school skills and every time when I reached t16 I just gave up and go back to my boss killer which I played for 3,4 years, same build.
Now with this huge brutal nerf to dmg im afraid they will open the gap even further.
This is not a Wow we dont need such balance where all are doing exact same dmg, but with these nerfs which they are doing last few years they just destroying good skills. So many examples like Molten Strike, Blade Vortex, Winter Orb even Cyclone when they nerfed 1st hit to do half dmg. So less and less options to play instead going opposite way and buffing the crappy skills so to close the gap between. So we can have more options.

Now, after I stopped few months im coming back. I waited many years to have hammerdin and gonna try it. But im afraid that after I reach red tier maps ill be super disappointed by the skill or survivability and will stop playing POE for very very long period and go back to wow. I really HOPE to be wrong. But with this maniacal focus on making the content uber hard we have with GGG totally opposite perspective or a view what is fun. And again it feels like they balancing around 1% or even less, ppl with insane gear that deleting bosses in second. Most ppl can make dmg only builds but whats the point. Im playing SC but i always focus even more on defenses coz dont want to die every hour or every boss. Btw they doing NOTHING to the one shot mechanics they have. If you are 6k life even full block and u farm t16 hard mods maps u get randomly one shotted every map. Is this hard and fun u think GGG? No ty i wont play this. I play only 10k+ES and love to facetank.

I bought up to Orion pack during harvest and up to harvest tier pack during ritual cuz i liked those leagues so much...i quit ritual immediately after harvest manifesto cuz i saw no point in continuing playing a league where a huge mechanic gonna get gutted right after ... gave ultimatum a try and it was disappointing to say the least , basically ritual 2.0 with worse reward , more rippy stuff and well...overpriced chase uniques one from a boss that most players wont ever see.New league is looking to be ritual 3.0,but with 4 new splinters you need to pick up , the BUILDING MECHANIC that made people quit at the start of harvest in the first place and you need to build even more often in this !?!?!?!?!, so i guess they are just running this game on a skeleton screw while working on POE2 now...
So i stopped after like a week of ultimatum...
Reading this i think i just wont play the next league or 2 , 3 leagues after this.
Good thing FF14 is popping along with the upcoming lost ark. Guess i will just vote with my wallet.

This entire thread can be summarized in 5 seconds:
https://youtu.be/xzpndHtdl9A

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lllBossnectar wrote:

Never had a game play with my emotions like this before. They give us harvest (gets excited) they gut harvest (gets sad) they give Aisling bench (gets excited) they gut Aisling bench (gets sad). Also just a thought from me a nobody... Path of exile doesn't "start" until the campaign ends. Players don't really even start playing their builds until lvl 70. I understand you want players to care about the campaign you worked so hard on. But I don't think your gonna make fetch happen on that one. People just wanna blow through it so they can start the endgame which is the best part of the game. Stop giving players power then ripping it away next season. Plz stop.

I feel u. Harvest League was the most fun for me. By far most fun. Ritual was a well balanced Harvest 2.0 and was fun too.

About campaign. This content is kinda old and outdated. Everyone has seen this and played this more than enough. No one needs a harder campaign which alters or benefits/rewards nothing different than in its current iteration besides harder monster and in GGG Fashion - more off screen one shots. No one needs this, no one wants this except GGG who doesn't want his child to get older... Time moves on and GGG says: "Let's go backwards..."

Instead of nerfing everything and making the game harder in campaign or something they just should add content which makes the game harder. Exalted Maps for example which are like T20+ ?!

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Anngrat wrote:

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Pat0k wrote:

How exactly are you going to play so dedicated without being jobless or taken cared of by someone else? You're talking on the behalf of 10-15 year olds or perhaps even younger. The vast majority of people who pay game creator salaries are grown up people with decent income. Your DESIRE for harder game only kills the game. It's not about the difficulty but about enjoyable variety which doesn't overfill your cup.

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KicsiSVK wrote:

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DeathfulDan wrote:

Playing slower, and continuing to die randomly without knowing what caused it and without being able to clear the screen before the screen clears you, monsters and mechanics out of proportion (made to counter the previous supposedly OP "meta"), and continuing to drop slow currency (99.999% of everything that drops is not even worth looking at).....

GGG, we play fast, we zoom through maps, because that's where the reward is and because if we don't kill first we get killed first. You have to understand slowing us down without bringing the rest of it down is just lame. I'm happy to spend 30 minutes on Sirus if it drops anything interesting and it doesnt DIE BEAM from off-screen! I'm happy to spend 10 minutes clearing carefully and then another 5 minutes on a map boss, as long as it is worth it by being rewarding and being fun and not killing a decent build randomly with zero room for reacting. I'm happy to spend 30 minutes on Maven if she was worth doing and her auto-attack didn't hit for 4k with several projectiles in sequence (kills build with 8k ehp in one cast in melee range with zero room for getting out of it).

GGG, you made it so that we NEED to play glass cannon super fast builds or super expensive tanky HC builds that are very limited and slow. Wanna slow it down you need to fix the stuff that makes us speed it up.

100% agreed. I was hoping and looking forward for GGG to give us a good incentive to play slow but I already had issue with the limited drops last league when the game was fast due to the reduced drop rates of maps. Now this is doubling down on making me grind with no rewards.

While they think this will make me want to play more unfortunately it wont. This is breaking my heart to have to move away from a game that I played and spent money on religiously for about a year and a half.

Sad momnets for casual 2 to 3 hour a day gamers.

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Rekill wrote:

Exactly this!

+1, i was hoping for loot/monster changes in manifesto, but nothing...

I like poe(or used to like it), but I WONT MAKE IT SECOND JOB AND I WONT LIKE YOUR GARBAGE RNG CASINO you called crafting

If you want to develop your game in that way - fine, good luck in your search of players willing to play it

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chinsuko wrote:

Let's play more

Not gonna happen, we have jobs and lifes, we could play LESS or QUIT, we cant play MOAR

+1 the +1 replies

I fanally decied to do a COC build! why misfortune haunts me? =(

Many of those nerfs were needed. That said they probably shouldn't have done them all at once but then again sometimes it is best to just yank the bandaid off hard and fast.

As for the new game mechanic I think it is going to be meh early on but late game the ability to create custom maps where you can choose what to spawn will give the player a ton of agency in the game and allow them to choose exactly how challenging they want to make it.

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luckyfeel0w wrote:

I want to play PoE. PoE, guys. Not diablo, not LE and other slow games. I want to play the most dynamic and most diverse ARPG which is difficult only in understanding the game, and not in dull difficulty at the level of "beat one mob". DYNAMICS, SPEED is a feature of your game. Don't lose it. For fans of slow gameplay, there is an SSF.

THIS. There are great slow games to choose from. For me the fun is to craft a build, figure out a farming strategy, play trade, trade services. And that is NOT easy or too fast! If I wanna be involved in the fight itself and not kill 100 monsters per second, there are a ton of other options. Poe is about understanding the game, not having fixed meta builds everyone copies, not about combat skills. Nerfing everything just forces us to seek out and copy streamer builds. I personally don't care if streamers are getting 1 mirror per week or more and it's all too easy for them. NOBODY plays 16+ hours everyday. These people will always crush everything, no matter what. Casuals will always not get too far. The people in the middle, playing decent amount of hours and who understand the game, don't get anything from any patch... We wanna explore new builds for fun not because we are forced to not play the build we liked again. Stop balancing for the 0.01%. Balance for the 3% at least, I don't know man. Several leagues in a row with "It's all nerfs" patches and ZERO improvement to looting and drops.