Dear GGG: You brought over a MASSIVE mistake from PoE1 to PoE2 and it hurts everyone! Resistance?!

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MantisCore#7954 wrote:

Agreed.

One thing I never liked in PoE 1 was how you maxed out your resistances pretty much whatever build you were using, and the game was clearly balanced around this. It's the illusion of choice, and a trap for new players not aware that they are expected to max out these stats.

Increasing your resistance never really felt like powering up your character, just something you had to do to be playing at baseline difficulty.

Agree 100%, glad we are raising awareness of this.

Games don't have to have their arbitrary, stale gear checks, they can simply scale in difficulty in other ways and allow us to create our builds around REWARDING and FUN mechanics instead.

This feels like another case of indulging in a Trope simply because older games did it.

No one gets excited about resists unless it's some shield with strong global resists that allows them to ignore this mechanic entirely.

We know gear checks are important, we know this serves to prolong the item grind and give the game extended life. But this could all be achieved in better ways through more nuanced and fun survival mechanics that don't revolve around arbitrary resist numbers.

I MASSIVELY agree with overhauling how resistance works. The way it is right now is a dinosaur of a system from poe 1 that deserves to die in its transition to this game.

Obligatory stats shouldn't exist, besides maybe max hp. I should almost NEVER have to refuse an item upgrade that otherwise has very exciting, fun looking stats simply just because I lose 20% resists.

Also, it isn't clear enough when you lose resists as you progress the game. I didn't even know it was happening until I looked at my stats and noticed I had negative resists.

But with that said, I do not think that resists should ever arbitrarily be lowered. It is not fun to create arbitrary difficulty by forcing your resists down. If, for example, you have no items equipped except one item that gives you 20% fire resist, that should be what your fire resist is. 20%. No negative values just from progressing the game.

poe 2 is the perfect chance to escape this regressive, degenerate oldschool design. poe 2 is a game about advancing the genre and being something new, something better. Disregard the opinions of anyone that just wants the game to be more like poe 1. poe 1 exists for that reason, and will continue to be supported for those people. They can enjoy their resists getting shredded just for finishing acts.

Poe 2 deserves to break free from these frustrating, opaque, anti-build-variety designs.

+1

Make resistance work like armor.

agree

I think resistance is just a kinda old antiquated system, its just "force" you to have weaker character just to have some +resist stat on your gear, its not really interesting mechanic, because it is "forced", it is very hard to survive even act 3 with barely any resist in addition to needing 80-90%+ to have a good protection

Partially agree. I do think balancing resistances on gear is inherently kinda fun. If trading was better integrated with the game, it would also be less of an issue, as you would often be able to trade a good item for a similar one with different resists.

What I agree with is that the system of capped resistance stats paired with valuable "+x to max resistance" stat that AGAIN has a cap on it is ridiculously clunky.
I don’t know if a diminishing returns formula is the solution – I think those formulae are kinda clunky as well.

Agree that resistance reduction also feels arbitrary now that it is no longer conveyed by the lore.
Maybe it’s time to let go of this as well as the tiered resistance affixes. I.e. endgame items don’t give much more resistance than early game ones, but in return you no longer accumulate resistance penalty throughout the campaign.
For all I care, if this doesn’t give exciting enough item progression, there can be lategame affixes that give a resistance + a primary stat, or so?

Resistances are annoying because they play to poor game design (cast on death, lack of spell indicators, spells from off screen, etc). Oh you dont want to die to that? max your resist...

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949f45ac#3941 wrote:

Partially agree. I do think balancing resistances on gear is inherently kinda fun. If trading was better integrated with the game, it would also be less of an issue, as you would often be able to trade a good item for a similar one with different resists.

What I agree with is that the system of capped resistance stats paired with valuable "+x to max resistance" stat that AGAIN has a cap on it is ridiculously clunky.
I don’t know if a diminishing returns formula is the solution – I think those formulae are kinda clunky as well.

Agree that resistance reduction also feels arbitrary now that it is no longer conveyed by the lore.
Maybe it’s time to let go of this as well as the tiered resistance affixes. I.e. endgame items don’t give much more resistance than early game ones, but in return you no longer accumulate resistance penalty throughout the campaign.
For all I care, if this doesn’t give exciting enough item progression, there can be lategame affixes that give a resistance + a primary stat, or so?

I think the reason why I don't see it the way you do is that I dislike trading being anything but a niche, possible but not even remotely necessary option. I want the game to FEEL GOOD without trading even being in the picture. It's why I propose a Last Epoch style system where if you opt into trading, you get that chance, but if you don't, you get a magic find bonus or something to balance it out.

As it is now, trading feels like the only way to manage my resists well because my luck with gear (drops, vendors, gambles, and regals/alchs) is extremely bad.
It's a system that is only rewarding under subjective circumstances.

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I don’t know if a diminishing returns formula is the solution – I think those formulae are kinda clunky as well.

That's just the thing though. A formula is only as smooth or clunky as it's mathematically designed. A well thought out formula can add a lot of nuance to game balance.

Formula based systems also allow for very easily implemented balance adjustments too. Take Helldivers 2 as an example. They kept re-balancing their armour formula for months in a row with minor adjustments until they were happy with the different values of the Light, Medium and Heavy armour types.