My last 2 cents on settlers
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It's way past mid league i guess and with POE2 open beta coming in a month or so, its likely the league might end in a few weeks time.
Thus, I'm gonna vomit out my words of feedback to GGG. I'll be upfront and just say that I dont really care if any forummer agree/disagrees with my take because this feedback is based on my experience and opinions. For starters TLDR summary: Love it but needs tweaking. TL Version ahead. you may stop reading if you're lazy. GOLD
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I play Last epoch a lot when i'm in the mood. one thing LE does well is keep gold valuable. one reason why GGG went away from gold was because they came from d2 and they saw how gold eventually became useless. people were bartering using runes instead of gold. hence our entire economy is based on consumable currency.
what LE did was make reasons to use up gold. large quantities in fact. i constantly ran out of gold and always needed to farm em back up again. this keeps gold feeling impactful and valuable. GGG did this brilliantly. everything in settlers introduces ways to reduce gold. i would argue GGG did this TOO effectively for average players to enjoy. personally i've voiced out my gold concerns before and people tell me its not a big issue if you just alc and run and use scarabs etc. i was weaker before this so i couldnt exactly alc and run. but now i actually can, so i have a more "complete" experience of gold income. i alc and run but i do chaos em if some maps appears to have mods that i dont like. i chuck in some "cheap" scarabs in once in a while to spice things up. last night i was tired. i only played 1 hour or so. i barely got 50k-100k gold last night. on the weekends i usually farm up 400-600k gold. my daily usage is around 200k gold? so that means my weekend farming only amounts to covering my town until tuesday or wednesday. usually playing off and on during the week day i get to cover maybe an extra day or two. it is very likely my town runs out of gold somewhere on wednesday or thursday. from my point of view. gold consumption is way too high compared to gold generation. ggg has the right idea of making gold being consumed to give value but ends up lopsided. in my opinion the consumption is simply too overtuned. good hires costing more makes sense. but the big issue is it is multiplied. i dont have "all 10s". even my farmers is mostly 8. i actively avoid the workers who have mapping capabilities as their cost increases too much. and speaking of multiplied costs. i ll remind everyone. the goal is to have everyone at level 10. some may argue, oh but you dont need everything at 10. to me thats partially true. but if the intention was not to get everything at 10. the devs would have made it so. the devs made t10s exists therefore they are desirable. i wont argue this case too much suffice to say that t10s are desirable. we always strive to get the best. in arpgs bigger numbers almost always equate to better things. despite it being logical where higher tiers are more expensive. it becomes a huge pain to upkeep. farms can house 3x6 workers. 18 workers draining gold. everything is multiplied this way. in fact i've entirely neglected to do the mappers entirely. i simply can NEVER get myself into a comfortable position to run them. theres a huge lot of "FEELSBAD" moments in settlers. despite it being the league i currently like the most in my entire POE "career" it also did introduce a lot of feel bad. Punishing Player Progress
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one of which i will highlight with a concept that i ll put out. "punishing player progress".
i feel this sentiment greatly while playing settlers. when i first started the league i had a lot of hype as i saw a huge amount of potential. theres 1001 things that i can do to keep me invested. but the harsh reality is that the more i progress, the more i m "punished". i know the amount of time i can spend playing settlers. so i know that gold drain would be a huge deal in the future, so i saved up a huge amount of gold. maxed out the town, farming and mining first. then i maxed out smelting. followed by shipping and disenchanting. i maxed out the rest last just to make sure i didnt need to worry about them in the future. there are obvious benefits of maxing out the town. but there are also unforseen detriments. for starters, shipment. one of the upgrades gives more shipment rewards but at the cost of higher amount of shipment required. which on surface level is good BUT on the flipside it made me struggle a huge lot to actually fulfill shipments as the requirements have gone up so high up. if not mistaken this impacts my progress in 2 ways. one is the hidden "fulfilment" counter. which players theorize would improve rewards for always fulfilling shipments towards a certain port. its much harder to increase this number as i simply do not have enough material to ship out. the 2nd is the actual achievement requirement of fulfilling 30 shipments. i am still at 20 something out of the 30 shipments required. other players have actually resorted to creating alts on SSF to quickly finish up this requirement WITHOUT upgrading the relevant shipping upgrade on SSF to bypass this issue. punished by progress. perhaps an unforeseen consequence? yeah we it does have a benefit, but it does punish players somewhat. then we have the rerolling of hires. going into the game blind. my idea was "i m gonna reroll to get better hires". the problem with this is THE COSTS INCREASE everytime i reroll. what the fuck. i wasted so much gold rerolling while my town was at such a low level. the costs DO NOT GO DOWN. it only GOES UP. there is NO WAY TO REVERSE this. i have to just deal with it. i really hate that GGG decided that this is a good idea as all it does is discourage players from rerolling. for sure it makes us make important choices. punished by progress. due to this, it was also one reason which pushed me towards implementing my "upgrade everything" strategy. if rerolling would constantly cost more, then i need my rerolls to matter. to make it matter more. i should max out my town before rerolling. then we have the mine upgrade. one of the best upgrades is making rarer resources more common while the common resources appearing less. on surface its an upgrade that everyone should want. but the unintended consequence is that players may have neglected upgrading some other part of their town, and now that "common" material is now "rare" and now they're stuck trying hard to farm the resource that is now rarer. this actually happened to me, and to my friends and i m pretty sure happened to others. punished by progress. the very concept of hirelings having increased costs. despite being logical, plays the BIGGEST factor of why players feel bad in this league. the better hires you get, the bigger your gold drain. your upkeep becomes higher. for sure you get things done faster and get more resources your shipment is more safer and your mappers can do more difficult maps, but the goldsink is feels more of a gold blackhole for a regular player. its is not enough. it is never enough. the better stuff i get, the more i "lose". punished by progress. Rewarding player progress
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On the total opposite side of the coin. I LOVE the rewards we get from settlers. players from many different levels of experience and playstyles can actually get valuable rewards from the content.
i really love that it gives an avenue to WEAKER PLAYERS to gain more currency and more GEAR without having to be meta and without having to heavily rely on MF gear. tho this is actually somewhat debatable as MF in maps give more gold, but i ll leave that as part of a gold issue, not a reward issue. Praise Faustus/automated trade
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FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. everyone loves faustus. can we just make him go core please. do i need to elaborate? i managed to trade for tattoos from a few different players for cheap using faustus in LITERAL SECONDS. using traditional methods, i would reckon each trade would roughly take ONE MINUTE. GGG please. i would imagine GGG being against automated trade for the following reasons: People wont visit each other's hideouts so people dont buy decos etc. - counterpoint: people still do as people still do map together The funky trade complete mtx wont be seen anymore. - rework it/refund players who own it. i legit felt disappointed when i saw the mtx's released because it was cementing ggg's decision to keep trade the way it is. keep up with the times - counterpoint: we can have both trade systems exist at the same time right? Less player interaction. - counterpoint: hey ggg, let me remind you guys, that scams exist because you allow it. you're putting so much hard effort into making poe2 more accessible yet you want to keep a "quit moment" in your game for .... WHAT? wheres the positive? anyone who defends scammers/victim blames the victim of such scams are just grumpy people who lived through a bad time in gaming where game devs didnt provide a better way to trade (which allowed scams to happen) and want newer players to experience the same amount of hardships because theyre grumpy. GGG are you grumpy people too? - global chat exists. BUT THE ECONOMY- - counterpoint: settlers has already proven that economy is not affected. ggg's implementation of gold sinks is VERY effective. GGG own trade manifesto - part of the manifesto is "we want players to spend more time playing the game rather than trading" - counterpoint: with automated trade, we spend MINIMAL time trading and spend MORE time playing. every second wasted looking for trades, bartering, traveling to players hideouts etc is a second i could have been mapping. by making trade more convenient and faster, we actually have more time to game. GGG PLS. Suggestions to improve settlers GOLD rebalance
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Seriously. GGG look at your numbers. and for the forummers. ask yourself. how many of you actually run 3 mapping devices all at once all the time?
i'm pretty sure not everyone can afford it. thus my suggestions would simply be to balance between reducing costs OR improving base gold. i think base gold drops is the biggest offender. GGG is afraid to increase base gold drop rate because of MF. everything multiplies. even if theres a cap, player will try to always hit the cap because the cap exists. i theorize the greatest imbalance of settlers all boils down to MF. i think settlers is balanced with top percenters in mind. players running t16/t17 fully juiced out. they can earn a huge amount of gold in a short amount of time. when i was weaker, i ran magic t16s, carefully choosing to run only certain mods. i noticed a huge disparity between running magic maps vs alc and go. this effect does not simply trickle down. most of the player base are not the top percenters. hence most players are severely affected by this gold drought. and of course the top percenters would say shit like "you dont NEED to run everything all the time". its also the same people who would say "you dont NEED 4 void stones". its also the same people who would say "you dont need ALL atlas passives". honestly, they're right. we dont NEED all that. but if we CAN have it, it would be MUCH MORE FUN. an extra 1-3 points in the altas tree can give a lot of value. having 4 voidstones gives us more t17 map drops. its a lot of downplaying because they dont want the game to be so easy that everyone gets to enjoy what theyre enjoying. i m quite sick and tired of GGG seemingly only catering to the top at the expense of everyone else. intentional or not. everything that is balanced topwise has a huge effect to the ones lower down the ladder. to me i dont consider myself too low. i've already completed over 99% of the game, but yet i'm affected by such things. increasing the base gold drop SIGNIFICANTLY on higher tier maps can help a huge lot. perhaps make it NOT AFFECTED by MF to balance. then again, why does GGG need to worry about gold too much? gold is account bound. theres SO MANY AVENUES to spend gold. heck, players could just choose to gamble their gold away on the gambler. to me the gamble option DOESNT EXIST. as i never have enough gold to begin with. Disenchanter improvements
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We have a neat option to manage and deposit gold via HO. let us extend it to the enchanter.
The argument against this would likely be "why stop there, why not have everything be tied to hideout", "heist isnt like that, why does settlers have to be like that". My counterargument would be we only check in kingsmarch to maybe once every 40 minutes for "most activities", but for disenchanter we have NO NOTIFICATION that they're done. also the items disenchanted could take a variable amount of time thats not immediately clear to the player. Alternatively, have the disenchanter remain in kingsmarch BUT allow him to have more stashes for disenchanting. maybe an extra 3-5 stashes more? overkill sure but it would justify us coming into kingsmarch "just to disenchant stuff". more. anything that has been inside the disenchant stash for more than 1 minute are marked for disenchanting. can be taken out but cannot be changed/used or traded. One big QoL would be SHOW DISENCHANT VALUE of all equipment. its 2024. come on. we have so many games to play. dont waste our time with this. you want us to play your game more right? dont waste our time. Introduce resource exchange
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Kingsmarch IS a port. but why are we only trading for what other ports want? when we're low on one particular resource why not have ports "sell resource" too?
This helps players who lack a certain resource and could become a new metagame in itself. i remember playing a game selling erm... pharmaceuticals. prices change from time to time and you can gain profit, from simply buying low and selling high. which in turn could allow players to fulfill more shipment demands. Introduce Efficient VS Maximum Output options for all settler activity
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How does it work? for each activity such as mining or farming, theres a button which players can toggle between efficient vs maximum output. maximum output is what we have currently. while efficient makes things take longer but the gold cost is much lower to compensate, the total cost over time is also calculated so that despite taking longer, it still takes much lesser gold.
this can help players who DONT NEED their resources mined/smelted/disenchanted ASAP and are conscious of their gold upkeep. this can also help players with lower gold income to run more activities but over a long period of time. Implementation to core
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For starters, please do NOT make us rely on the atlas tree to buff up settlers. settlers is ALMOST perfect as is. if you nerf it and require us to "make settlers great again", what you've done is actually made an atlas passive tax which players may feel forced to invest in.
Next REMOVE resource nodes. very spicy. imho we already have so many extra mechanics in game that we dont really need these in. instead INCORPORATE the rewards into the core game, where you can find these resources as content rewards or random drops. have them available in other content. for example you can get them as rewards from doing heist content. but in any case we should get a somewhat steady supply from doing regular content. resources should be available thru out the player's experience, and kingsmarch should exist to allow the player to utilize those resources they've gathered. Upgrades probably should be reworked in a way that everything is fully or almost fully upgraded from the start. the final bits to upgrade maybe can be tied towards campaign or atlas progression. Also allow the runecrafting bench to accept runes for storage and allow affinities for it too. Other notes FOMO
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I'm pretty sure some people will say "you dont NEED..." i tune out. FOMO is REAL. i used to play undecember. they have daily bonuses, consecutive login bonuses and a butt ton of bonuses.
initially i LOVED all of em. but one side effect of dailies is expectations. when dailies become the norm, instead of GAINING. you LOSE for not doing dailies. it becomes an all or nothing thing. gamers are starting to wise up. some people are choosing NOT to buy battle passes UNTIL they've completed the track. we play games for fun. not to run as a second job. when you keep "losing out" enough. one day you will just quit. this is what exactly happened to me in undecember. i used to play daily then i had IRL stuff i needed to do. could barely play during the time. i felt the sense of loss. my consecutive bonuses lost. the daily bonuses lost. fuck this shit i m out. i quit the game. FOMO in settlers is something VERY NEW to POE as TIME is resource. unlike any other in game mechanic, you DONT NEED to keep playing religiously. you can just stop. if you keep playing, you feel happy. you get progress, you get rewarded. but once you stop. you feel like you might have missed out so much. might as well not play at all. all or nothing. settlers as is requires a lot of dedication TO GET STARTED. this causes them to be in a tight spot where they feel like if they stop they're gonna lose all the hard work and effort they've already spent. sunken cost fallacy in a sense. i personally AM affected greatly by this. i can admit. i actually prefer to skip out of my regular weekend outings this entire league because i want to farm more gold. i love it i hate it. on one hand i am rewarded greatly. on another i hate that i m "forced" to continue until the end of the league as its just too profitable. for sure this is "on me" as i got addicted to it. but i guess IF gold was more accessible, i wouldnt feel the need to grind like a madman just to keep the lights on and not even running other activities. i got no numbers but i m pretty sure i m not alone on this. in comparison, my other "previous" fav league, sanctum. i dont feel this compulsion. i could quit cold turkey midleague and come back later without feeling any sense of loss. now that i've experienced this FOMO. one thing i've learned is, if POE has any similar mechanic, i kinda have to identify it quickly and quit early or avoid entirely. i cant put my life on hold just for a game. and for sure thats on me. but if thats the direction that GGG chooses to make the game where FOMO is strong, adopting a mobile game feature like this. i will have to consider quitting the game for my own personal benefit. tough right? found a really good way to make players enjoy so much they get too addicted, but if its too addictive, players actively choose to avoid the game entirely. lol. Closing Settlers is a fun theme park with tons to do but most players can only afford a few rides. i'll not be posting any further feedback on settlers as everything i want to say is already said here. [Removed by Support] Last bumped on Oct 17, 2024, 3:09:13 AM
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I think what I like most about settlers is that it takes a mechanic I find repetitive and boring, mapping (yes, I said it), and gives me a meaningful reason to connect with it. No, not just farming Gold and ores, but by doing so, I have the means to grow Kingsmarch, and to keep it operational. I'm the one bringing home the bacon for those people, and as the town develops, they even comment on it (and it gets nicer looking, to boot!) Kingsmarch is more "alive" for me that way than any of the Act towns. Yes, I know, eventually the progress ends, and the feedback ceases, but while it's happening, it's as nice a form of reward for an old roleplayer like me as any item drop.
I hear a lot of posters saying that they don't see how Settlers can go core, or how it can't and stay the same, but I'll miss it if it doesn't ='[.]'= =^[.]^= basic (happy/amused) cheetahmoticon: Whiskers/eye/tear-streak/nose/tear-streak/eye/
whiskers =@[.]@= boggled / =>[.]<= annoyed or angry / ='[.]'= concerned / =0[.]o= confuzzled / =-[.]-= sad or sleepy / =*[.]*= dazzled / =^[.]~= wink / =~[.]^= naughty wink / =9[.]9= rolleyes #FourYearLie |
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+1 i really like that efficiency mode as a QOL, Imagine if that had made it into this release.
Innocence forgives you Last edited by SilentSymphony#3358 on Oct 15, 2024, 6:25:31 AM
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First off, I appreciate that you put a lot of time into this post, and gave a pretty fair accounting.
However, I would point out that a lot of your core/balance suggestions are based around the experience of a very casual / low time investment player. For those of us that play a bit more, many of the suggestions would be negative. For example, the resource nodes in maps being removed. They are great! They add extra monsters into the map for free, making more drops, and bismuth adds a loot bonus to whole map. I won't discount the FOMO, but it is important to recognize that GGG has to try and balance content for both ends of the time investment spectrum. You says gold generation is an issue, but a juiced T17 can yield 300k+ gold per map. I'm not saying you should expect to be able to run those, but something to keep in mind when saying not enough gold drops. I would argue that a bit of FOMO is what keeps the game engaging, something to chase after. “Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.”
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" We already have this, you just unassign some workers/assign lower tier ones. I ran level 3 miners and smelters for the first 2 months of settlers to save gold. “Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.”
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" so players are supposed to know to keep low tier workers? punishing player progress. going back to lower tier as a solution is pretty much showing how progress is detrimental. some of my friends myself included switched to the highest tier workers whenever possible. only to purposely reroll to get lower ones. much regression. also to micromanage your workers like that. its add up. i want to play poe, not poSimportsimulator. to digress a little. sure we have that in game already. my question to you, would it be better or more user friendly if we had a toggle button as per my suggestion instead? [Removed by Support]
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" Get what you are saying, offer two counter points. 1. League mechanic progression is no different than any other part of the game. As you move towards the upper levels of the content, there are going to be hurdles to overcome. Regressing to lower tier workers is no different than realizing you die every time you run a T16 or every time you alch/corrupt your maps, and taking a step back down in tiers until you have better gear or your build is figured out. 2. While GGG has expressed the desire to make tool tips and in-game information more player friendly, POE is still at it's core a very knowledge dependent game that requires players to do alot of experimenting (or research into others experiments) in order to uncover how alot of things work or how to achieve optimal results. We are always learning and optimizing in POE (at least I am, I'm sure someone has played long enough/is smart enough to know it all). For example, it was intuitive to me to save money with lower level guys, but it took me awhile to realize idle workers didn't cost money, so i kept my miners and smithers are a lower tier alot longer than I needed to. “Freedom is what we do with what is done to us.”
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" for your first point it is a fair point on face value. we slowly progress thru the atlas and we gain access to harder maps and harder content. if we cant handle it we remain running lower tier content. for myself, i can run most t16 maps alc and go. its one step behind the hurdle of doing t17s alc/chaos and go. isnt that already at a very end level of the games progression? what content do i need to do in order to keep my gold level at a level which i can feel comfortable spending it? my upkeep is roughly 200k gold per day. rerolling hires for good hires is roughly 2 hours worth of gold. when do i finally get to enjoy the league content. i see myself as very strong already, i blast maps and delete most enemies easily. yet i cant even maintain my passive gold upkeep. as opposed to other league content. you only ever progress. the "regression" you mentioned i actually think its slightly inaccurate. its more of hitting a brick wall for you to overcome. when you get strong enough, you suddenly burst open the flood gates and you suddenly can enjoy all the end game content that you previously could not. if you can do ubers, you can keep doing ubers. if you can do ravaged blight maps. if you can do simulacrum, you can keep doing simulacrum. its a pretty binary Yes/No. if you can, you progress and theres no real regression. if you can do t16s. you simply will continue doing t16s. this is not happening for me and for many others in this league. this league's mechanic is very unique in that sense so its not exactly comparable to other leagues. there is NO point that you suddenly manage to consistently farm gold that can allow you to idle a few days. can i do settler activity? yes. but i need to farm for gold like a madman in order to do it. theres no point that i can say "i have enough gold". this is a vast contrast against other league content where once you say "i m strong enough", its a done deal. you have to constantly play or you just dont get anything. the sad fact is that there actually is an ingame solution to "minimum level hires". which is simply running out of gold. you generate more gold when you're not spending any. we simply never get to the point that we can be comfortable with our gold generation. do you know anyone who runs triple map runners? do you run triple map runners? as it currently is even if regression is the solution, that is just a band aid to the symptom, not the cause of the problem. the cause of the problem is we simply do not get enough gold. as for the second point. i agree halfway only. i agree that some level of experimenting can be fun. but on the other hand theres something what josh strife hayes coined up. which is "quit moment". hiding info can cause mistakes. sometimes it even screams "this was unintended". a big example is the shipping upgrade which buffs your rewards but makes fulfilling shipment cost so bloody damn much that players like myself unknowingly made the game a whole lot harder. i ll be real for a second too. all this experimenting in the end amounts to nothing. most players will end up waiting for a streamer or redditor to tell us whats the best way to do something and how things work. theres no WAY i m going to spend the little time i have to game on experimenting. i m no longer "hardcore". i m a filthy casual who wants to have a life outside of gaming. in fact, i didnt start shipping until ziggy's vid was released. we're in a new age of gaming, and poe is a 10 year old game. everything is minmaxed and solved quickly. players can reach level 100 in 1-2 days. oh it reminds me of something. sometimes experimentation means very little. i played crucible. MANY of my creations failed. i spend maybe 200 divs buying crucibles from people. at the end of the league i just bought the weapon with the "best tree" i could find and called it quits. even with guides, experimentation can be for naught as everything is RNG reliant. anyway, if settlers goes core as is.... how i'd put it.... maybe i ll not play poe. FOMO is all or nothing. and really you can never get enough gold. i think my town has gone many weeks without gold (cumulative). it feels real bad. i consider myself as someone who blast thru maps and at times even juiced up with full scarabs. yet with settlers. its never enough. tonight i havent ran a single map. i m tired. i spent my time watching anime and replying to you (thank you for responding and not being condescending in your response, really appreciate it). to be honest, the current solution you gave that we already have (regression) feels really bad, that i d rather let my town run out of gold. the suggestion i have goes beyond simply "reducing the hireling level lower". because i realized theres a correlation between tier and their output. a higher tier worker either produces more or does their work much faster. the keyword would be speed. in real world comparison. low tier hirelings are like cheap ass manufacturers, they use crappy materials but they get the job done. higher tier hirelings are expensive manufacturers who can get the job done with good materials/output AND on top of that at a MUCH accelerated speed. its almost like paying extra for the fast service. as i know some manufacturers actually give an option to pay more to get things done faster. what if, instead. we tell the manufacturer. i like your goods and the quality of your products, can you give me a cheaper rate but you get to take longer time to complete it? this is what i m asking for. you can see this with disenchanting/smelting/mining. high level hirelings SHRED everything to bits in a super short time. the logical reasoning is so that you can feed them more material to shred constantly. but what if you have NO MATERIALS left? thus the idea of getting efficient output option is so that instead of our hirelings shredding everything super fast. they do it slowly over a long period of time. but to make it fair the total amount spent normally vs this method should not be the same, else theres no reason for it to exist. [Removed by Support]
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" i just saw this, probably missed it on my first read thru. 300k for one t17 juiced? damn! i probably can run that but i m trying to level to 99 now. risk of dying could be simply too high. tho i would say for players to get all the way up there to "finally enjoy the league" is a pretty tall order. as for removal of the nodes, you mentioned things that i didnt realize. such as getting bonus to the map from a node. i dont know if this is still the case but i remember last time people saying something like theres a max cap of different extra content maps can have. so anytime you see one content, it likely has taken another content's bonuses/mobs away. so my idea is that by removing the nodes, settlers can exist without competing against other content, so whatever you lose out from not having access to the resource nodes, you gain access to other map content instead. [Removed by Support] Last edited by exsea#1724 on Oct 15, 2024, 2:19:19 PM
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" dayum. due to my strategy of farming up resource and upgrading them "one shot/asap" i think i may have missed out on a lot of conversation. but i do like how our town grows. what you mentioned is a double edged sword. i have many map strategies and my favourite is actually doing abyss with abyss scarabs. i have TONS of monsters to kill, get a ton of xp doing so. doing harvest is lucrative too. but for the sake of gaining as much gold as possible, the best way for normal players to gain gold is to run AS MANY MAPS ASAP. so i remove tons of map mechanics and keep things lean. the more maps i run, the more resource nodes i get. also the more chance i bump into the dark night. still havent seen sansan tho. like wtf. [Removed by Support]
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