Addressing Act 1 accessibility/resistances for new ARPG players

Hello,

After 10 years of killing Murveil with Sapphire rings, I think it is important to show new ARPG players the importance of resistances in Act 1.

Its obvious several bosses in Act 1 do cold damage, but it is not implicit in the way its presented to new players that this is an important distinction to make, and that gearing for this will make the boss more accessible.

I believe very little encouragement would need to take place to address this, whether its a guaranteed sapphire ring drop, or cold rune/artificer, or some other method via the tutorial popup window with a brief explanation that one roll of resists helps vs an elemental attack will help, or that "gear is important, this Witch has cold attacks, press "C" to see your cold resistances," etc.

I'm aware the witch boss gives cold resist, but after a PS5 CO-OP party on Saturday and watching them die to for (this is not hypberolic) 4 hours, I had to intervene, help with dps, life, and we squeezed out one or two cold resist magic items for them to beat him in a two more tries.

This is merely an observation. I watched these gamers die to a boss for hours without changing a single thing about their build or skills; which, to be fair is par for course in 99% of games they have played.

Qualifier: By new, I mean, they have never played an ARPG in their lives, nonetheless have a working concept of what gear means in the ARPG space.

PS: Everyone I showed the game to, bought it; in spite of ripping to the boss for 4 hours, well done!

I observe that there is a complete lack of resists or sustain on the passive tree. This essentially means that players are relying ENTIRELY on gear for their regen(and the gear regen is really small).

Damage is also poorly arranged on the tree, in that there are almost zero specialised damage nodes on the tree - essentially negating one of the biggest reasons for picking a class, you will not be gaining melee damage nodes for going warrior and almost none of the weapon specific mechanics are actually supported. This harms class identity and invalidates weapon swap passive trees(why have a different setup on the second weapon if every node is generic? You just use the same exact tree for both weapon sets)

Agree, good game back in the day like to add hidden guide to help player without pointing it outright. If player observed it, they will notice the little detail Dev gave to them.

For EX:
Megaman have introduce room with timer block to get to the next zone safety, before slowly move up to dead pit.
Monster Hunter World introduce gear that have advantage to the next encounter like elemental weapon from previous hunt. You can skip to hunt pink rathian right away or slowly build high rank gear and gain the progressing while doing so...

I think the best one should be reward the Renny quest with Glacier Rune and a artificer orb. While introduce player to try it. May be in the Geonor room's chest will always drop sapphire ring to reward exploration and add little lore that he plan to gave it to Oriona or something.

PoE 2 lack of rewarding exploration and this can add a bit more reward and hidden clever detail.

It isn't just resistances either. There's very little flex in the first 2 acts at all for build adjustments if you're hitting a wall.

Seeing as good rare bases for your build don't necessarily drop all the time AND crafting is limited by the number of Alcs, Regals, Exalts, Runes, and socketed items you can salvage I think there is a fairly easy solution for this:

Reintroduce low levels of guaranteed power back into the game.

For example how many times [vs. Mervail lets say] was it a life saver that you could do a vendor recipe to create sapphire rings [for cold res]??

How often did you need an upgraded weapon but nothing was on the ground or at vendors [phy damage to weapon recipe]??

How about needing move speed boots to help avoid heavy AoE attacks?? ... there was a recipe for that too.

Lets not forget heading to the crafting bench before "act end" fights to make sure you had enough resists, armour, damage, etc.??

All of those recipes & crafts were not particularly powerful BUT they absolutely helped you fill in those "RNG holes" where your drops / vendor inventory wasn't particularly good.

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nnilfoest#6766 wrote:

If player observed it, they will notice the little detail Dev gave to them.

Indeed, Dark Souls does this by giving you some poison resistance items, typically before a poison-y area.

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KingAlamar#4071 wrote:

Seeing as good rare bases for your build don't necessarily drop all the time AND crafting is limited by the number of Alcs, Regals, Exalts, Runes, and socketed items you can salvage I think there is a fairly easy solution for this:

Reintroduce low levels of guaranteed power back into the game.

I agree with this in the EA state, but I think they have some iterations left before having to patch such hand-holdy stuff. Perhaps much more transmutes/augs dropping, or artificers to patch holes in your gear as you level up. The problem with those systems is there are people who didn't know they existed. And alt tabbing out is immersion breaking and lame. I think taking them out is a net positive, but its alternative needs a bit of improvement in some ways like I mentioned in the original post.

Its certainly a difficult job to balance between just giving you everything you need, like diablo, and trying to create a early progression system that rewards ingenuity and observation.