widescreen resolution removed from the game.
"https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/i7qq7n/ventrua_exploiting_ultrawide_in_china_race/ 5 years ago. Already debunked. Stopped reading there. |
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" [Removed by Support] " It's almost like... " Thanks for continuing to prove my points. The 352nd character to hit Level 100 in Standard The 82nd character to hit Delve 1000 in Standard Last edited by Vash_GGG#0000 on Mar 12, 2025, 5:29:31 PM
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" There were no valid points from your side to begin with. Simply saying "Fix it" or "Black bars are not acceptable or defensible" is neither a proper argument nor a reason why GGG should revert a change and fix they made long ago. It's just a demand for something that GGG clearly won’t bring back, as they removed it for obvious reasons. Too bad you fail to see those reasons. I wonder if you would even tell a GGG dev that they’re wrong if one waa to put down the reasons for the removal in this topic. In the end, it’s gone, and no struggling will bring it back. Your best option is to move on or fix your own hardware. Luckily, GGG is also starting to rightfully take action against all the third-party junk plaguing the game. So even the third party 32:9 "fix" will be gone for good in a matter of time, just like the official client support for that aspect ratio. :) Flames and madness. I'm so glad I didn't miss the fun. Last edited by Pashid#4643 on Mar 12, 2025, 4:18:11 PM
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" [Removed by Support] " My daily bump is short and sweet because the substantive arguments are so overwhelmingly against black bars that nobody in over 2.5 years has come up with any coherent rebuttal of the above. The two most recent attempts both just pretend my post either doesn't exist or doesn't exist past a certain point. The 352nd character to hit Level 100 in Standard The 82nd character to hit Delve 1000 in Standard Last edited by Vash_GGG#0000 on Mar 12, 2025, 8:14:15 PM
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*Clears throat*
1. This is misleading. While PoE is not an esport in the traditional sense, it does have competitive aspects — such as races, league starts, ladder rankings, speedruns, and boss kill contests. In all of these, a wider field of view (FoV) is a non-trivial advantage, allowing players to see and react to enemies before others can. That’s not a “slight” hardware advantage; it's an in-game informational advantage that affects gameplay, which GGG has a right to standardize. 2. No system is perfectly balanced, but that doesn't mean developers shouldn't address glaring inconsistencies. Just because other imbalances exist (like better PCs or macros) doesn’t mean this one should be ignored. 32:9 gives a literal extra 50%+ screen width beyond 21:9, which creates a major gameplay difference — particularly in mapping, PvP, and encounter control. Addressing one clear imbalance doesn't require addressing all of them at once to be valid. 3. This is a strawman and ignores how dev feedback loops work. GGG likely didn’t base the decision on community complaints, but on internal data — metrics, QA insights, race analytics, and balance philosophy. Also, just because the community at large didn’t raise the issue doesn't mean it wasn’t a known internal problem. Game developers routinely adjust features based on long-term design goals and competitive integrity, not just Reddit upvotes. 4. That's technically possible, but technically messy. Implementing aspect ratio restrictions only in certain game modes is far more complex than enforcing one consistent visual standard across the board. It also leads to confusing user experiences and opens the door to bugs or unintended exploits. Standardizing the FoV ensures a unified and fair visual experience across all gameplay — casual and competitive alike. 5. Development resources are finite. Supporting ultra-ultra-wide formats like 32:9 requires UI scaling, ability targeting adjustments, and camera logic that must be maintained separately. If the player base using 32:9 is small, but the maintenance and balance cost is high, it makes sense to remove support rather than invest in niche upkeep — especially in a game already pushed to technical limits. 6. Yes, determined bad actors can bypass many things. But that doesn't mean devs should do nothing. That logic would suggest anti-cheat, bans, and TOS are pointless too. GGG is drawing a clear line of intended use. The fact that some people will try to bypass it doesn’t invalidate the legitimacy of the decision — it just reinforces the need to set clear, enforceable boundaries. 7. Fog of war systems are not a drop-in solution. They require engine changes, affect gameplay feel, can tank performance, and contradict PoE’s visual clarity — something GGG has historically prioritized. Black bars, while less elegant, are the simplest and most stable solution to normalize FoV without overhauling core systems. They ensure everyone sees the same playable space — a practical compromise. 8. That analogy doesn’t hold. Framerate impacts responsiveness and fluidity, which are core to gameplay on any screen. Black bars, by contrast, are a cosmetic limitation used to ensure fair visibility across aspect ratios. Also, framerate caps are sometimes applied (e.g., in online games to prevent physics abuse). In this case, the black bars maintain gameplay balance by keeping everyone within the same designed field of view — which does impact fairness. " That sentence is honestly kind of hilarious in how self-defeating it is. You claim "nobody in over 2.5 years has come up with any coherent rebuttal", but conveniently ignore the mountain of rebuttals that have been made — not just here, but across Reddit, forums, Discord, and even directly from GGG themselves. You’re not winning an argument just because you plug your ears and pretend counterpoints don’t exist. And calling your daily bump "short and sweet" because the “substantive arguments are overwhelmingly” in your favor? That’s not substance — that’s just repetition. What’s really happening here is you're dismissing every single reply that doesn't agree with you and then claiming victory because no one has, in your mind, “adequately” responded. That’s circular logic: "No one has refuted me, because I define any refutation as invalid." It’s wild to accuse others of pretending your post “doesn’t exist past a certain point” when your entire reply pretends the actual counterarguments people have posted in detail don’t exist at all. Maybe if you stopped brushing off every good-faith response as if it doesn’t count, you'd realize people have responded — you just don't like the answers. |
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The removal of 32:9 ultrawide and beyond support in Path of Exile was a necessary decision to maintain game balance, prevent abuse, and ensure a fair experience for all players. While some may argue for its return, the advantages it provided were simply too powerful, and its negative impact on game mechanics including AI behavior and server performance made it unsustainable.
And yes, this is coming from someone who uses not just one, but two 32:9 monitors, primarily for programming and coding rather than gaming. While I only play games occasionally due to a lack of time, Path of Exile felt completely wrong and almost like cheating with its enormous FOV and the game breaking issues that came with it, so I don’t feel bad for the made changes. 1. Competitive Fairness - Players with 32:9 could see enemies, loot, and mechanics far earlier than those on 16:9 or 21:9. - Ranged builds gained a massive advantage by attacking enemies before they even entered the screen for standard users. - Dodging projectiles and avoiding dangerous mechanics became significantly easier due to the increased visibility. 2. Preventing Abuse in Multiplayer and PvP - In PvP, 32:9 users could engage from distances where other players couldn't even react. - In multiplayer, party members with extreme FOVs could spot threats, loot, and intractable objects long before their teammates. While PvP is mostly dead these days, it did have its place years ago. But it's still a valid point, even if it’s nothing more than a niche mode now, as the competitive aspect is still a important key element in this case. 3. Maintaining Game Balance - Many boss mechanics rely on players having a limited view of their surroundings. Seeing too far ahead trivialized many encounters, or broke them entirely. - Surprise enemy spawns and environmental traps lost effectiveness because 32:9 players could detect them early. - The game's rendering engine had to load more assets at once for ultrawide users, leading to performance drops and potential instability. 4. Enemy AI and Server Load Issues One of the biggest hidden problems with 32:9 was how it broke Path of Exile's enemy AI and impacted server-side calculations, which was a major issue for GGG. They also mentioned that a limit was necessary to reduce these problems, as the game was never designed or balanced for 32:9 or wider. - Enemies Behaving Unnaturally as many enemies in Path of Exile have an "aggro range" designed for normal FOVs. With 32:9, players could see and attack them before they even "woke up," causing them to behave erratically, get stuck, or fail to react properly. - AI De-sync & Exploits caused enemies to get stuck in loops where they couldn’t engage properly or would stand still, allowing players to kill them with zero risk. – The game’s servers had to process enemy AI and path-finding even if the player isn’t fully engaged in combat. Since 32:9 allowed players to activate enemies from further away, this increased the number of simultaneous calculations, adding extra strain on the servers. - Certain ranged builds could exploit enemy aggro limits, attacking from extreme distances where monsters never reacted properly. If GGG were to bring back 32:9 support, it would reintroduce all the major issues once again. Unfair advantages for 32:9 users would come back, forcing hardcore players or even heavy race focused soft core players to upgrade monitors just to stay competitive. Boss fights and scripted encounters would become even trivial as they already are with the current level of player power, requiring GGG to re-balance many aspects of the game just with 32:9 in mind. The game would need to render far more assets, leading to FPS drops and potential crashes for some users. UI scaling, interface and skill effects would have to be redesigned to work properly in extreme aspect ratios. With 32:9, players could activate enemies before they were meant to, forcing the server to handle extra AI calculations and potentially causing lag or desync. AI bugs and enemy behavior issues would return, making some encounters exploitable. In the end it's nothing but a unnecessary development burden for GGG to 'fix' something so obsolete. It's also worth to mention that only a small percentage of players use 32:9 monitors, making it a low-priority feature, if not even something that's just plain cost ineffective for the company to begin with. While losing immersion for ultrawide users is unfortunate, maintaining a balanced and optimized game experience for the majorityof players takes priority. In the end, it's also good that GGG is investing their workforce and time into PoE2 and the core content of PoE1, something that benefits all players, rather than wasting resources on something that only affects a very small percentage of players. Last edited by VoidWhisperer42#5989 on Mar 13, 2025, 3:21:52 AM
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" 1. Path of Exile is not a competitive game This is by definition of how the game mechanics work. The only competitive aspect of the game is PvP and races. Nobody in this thread is arguing for the inclusion of 32:9 in competitive modes. Any talk of "advantage" is a non-sequitor relying on a false premise of what this game is. Furthermore, even if this were not the case, you are not making an argument for black bars. Fog of war or AI fixes or other mechanical adjustments would be acceptable solutions. Black bars are not. " Nobody in this thread is arguing for the inclusion of 32:9 in competitive modes. More non-sequitor. " Nobody ever complained about this or anything like this for 10 years with 32:9. This is just inventing problems for no reason. Some of this isn't even true - 32:9 was not unstable, and pretty much all bosses can be seen in their entirety within a 16:9 window. This is just word salad. " 1) It's absurd to suggest that 0.5% of players were causing meaningful server issues for GGG. 2) Server issues are GGG's problem, not the players. This is what they get paid to solve. 3) This is not an argument for black bars. GGG should fix the problems if there were server issues. 4) Fixing the AI is an OK solution. Black bars are not. GGG is not a small indie dev. For all the walls of text, none of y'all have any ability to deal with the reality, which is: " 2 years, 206 days There are no valid defenses for the inclusion of black bars in this game. Fix it. The 352nd character to hit Level 100 in Standard The 82nd character to hit Delve 1000 in Standard Last edited by tackle70#1293 on Mar 13, 2025, 6:17:02 AM
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" " " And this is precisely why you can't have a reasonable discussion about this topic. Both Z3RoNightMare and VoidWhisperer42 went out of their way and gave you a massive list of valid facts and opinions on that matter, as many others have previously during those two years of you pushing this thread. There are "no valid defenses for the inclusion of black bars" because you are blind or don't want to hear them and sadly that is all this topic has become. It might be time to let it go. Sometimes GGG really does know better. Last edited by Ulsarek#7159 on Mar 13, 2025, 6:51:46 AM
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" Correct. W Mods, finally. Mash the clean
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