Difficulty and Punishment

I am ok with the difficulty (except Ultimatum, some of that stuff is insane). It is well tuned for the most part, at least for bosses. That is less true for rare and unique monsters (some combinations are just way too hard).

So the actual difficulty is not the issue here, but the punishment is. This first comes to light with the trials and extends to all of endgame.

One chance, and on chance only.

PoE1 did this well with using up your portals on failure. But here, where one miss-timed dodge (of which you have to do a shit-ton of) ends you brutally, this just dosent feel right - at least for me. And not only do you have to start all over again, you lose your map/token aswell. For making one mistake. You have to be laser focused for 15, 30 or more minutes on basically all but the campaign.

I really like the game, but the punishment is too harsh for my ability to handle frustration and motivation. So one might reply with: well then the game is not for you. And that might be true. But i find that to be sad and unecessary.

I get it, it makes the game exiting and daring - but i dont think it has to be that unforgiving to achieve it.

Well this is what i learned over the years , POE in general is made by people with great lives for people with great lives , who are happy all the time irl.

and they need to be constantly punished and challenged in the game .

For people who already get that irl , and come to games to escape life
and have fun , this is not the place .

and this is the problem i had with GGG since forever.

I played PoE at its launch and 4 leagues or so several years later. And while i like a lot about PoE and PoE 2, the frustration always overshadowed the enjoyment in the end.

In PoE1 it was the clusterfuck on screen and just dieing instantly out of "nowhere" deleting hours of xp gained. You can facetank t16 maps and yet that one rare/unique mob combo pack just insta deletes you.

And now even though they made it less clusterfucky and give more telegraph and clarity (mostly), they doubled down on the punishment: no loot, no stone/token no boss/mechanic and ofc xp penalty ... why?

What is the philosophy here: fun is the absence of frustration? So you will have "fun" if you can manage to not getting punished?!

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damir21#1543 wrote:

Well this is what i learned over the years , POE in general is made by people with great lives for people with great lives , who are happy all the time irl.

and they need to be constantly punished and challenged in the game .

For people who already get that irl , and come to games to escape life
and have fun , this is not the place .

Interesting point of view, I didn't think about it this way. I think you're right, easily zooming through maps is kind of light form of alcohol — the way to escape from the life for a while. I like my life and I would never spend so many time for such mindless gameplay. I play games because they are interesting, and in order to be interesting for me they have to be engaging and require to constantly analyze what is going on, make meaningful decisions during fights. But if I would want to just forget anything, I wouldn't like it, I would ask for the things whoch most PoE veterans are asking for — to make gameplay easier and less engaging. They call it "gameplay is too repitative", because they are constantly required to do something they don't want, they don't want to think hard during fights.

Yeah maybe people who dont have enough challange and difficulty to overcome in their daily life need to make and/or play punishing difficult games.

But what is actually gained by making the punishment for failing so severe? The harsh paunishment itself dosent make it difficult, other than the difficulty in progressing your characters.
But i dont think that is what people refer to when they advocate for difficult games. What is meant by difficult or hard is the thing that you actually do, and that is combat (and i can see why it may be more engaging if it isnt just mindless slaughter).
Beating difficult fights might be "rewarding" enough, i dont see how taking shit away (from XP to loot and stones) from people improves on this. If you consider slowing ones progression down (by denying opportunity or reversing your XP) more difficult, then sure - it would be harder. Although i dont agree with this, it just means that it takes longer.

As you can see, i dont really understand such a mindset (and yes, i would be in camp of people not having it all dandy in life).

I've had this discussion on more than a couple boards for games in development.

Punishment != Challenge.

Challenge is what you face before you die. Punishment is what happens after.

Why do we punish children? So they stop the behaviors we don't want. Punishment in games leads to players refusing to take risks and funneling into the meta.


Edit: And here's a crazy thought: If the maps aren't as punishing when you lose, you can make them MORE challenging, since players won't mind hopping back in to try again.

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damir21#1543 wrote:

Well this is what i learned over the years , POE in general is made by people with great lives for people with great lives , who are happy all the time irl.

and they need to be constantly punished and challenged in the game .

For people who already get that irl , and come to games to escape life
and have fun , this is not the place .

and this is the problem i had with GGG since forever.

This is a fascinating perspective on the kind of animosity I tend to feel towards myself as a player from the side of the devs and the elitist part of this community. I am fully cognizant that the product, despite me being a hardcore supporter and player of the ARPG genre, is not designed with me in mind and your idea puts that feeling into words. I think you are right indeed that this game is designed for people who through various circumstances in life, find themselves so unchallenged in their daily routine and have such a void of feeling genuine accomplishment, that they need this very abrasive and punishing space to feel like they got somewhere, like they conquered something that others could not. Its a similar mindset to the extremely toxic eastern European way of life where people find extreme pride in suffering through adversity while refusing to do anything to improve their circumstances. Some of the people I've encountered on this forum treat the very possibility that this space can change as an existential crisis and a direct attack on who they are as a person. If I view this frankly toxic design philosophy as a vital source from which they derive their self worth, that they lack elsewhere, it becomes easier for me to see why their defense is so blind and frantic. However, this is horridly unhealthy for all parties involved and this game being a leader in this specific genre ends up holding back the evolution of it towards something better than a coping mechanism for a tiny percentage of its participants.

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Ageless_Emperion#2844 wrote:

I think you are right indeed that this game is designed for people who through various circumstances in life, find themselves so unchallenged in their daily routine and have such a void of feeling genuine accomplishment, that they need this very abrasive and punishing space to feel like they got somewhere, like they conquered something that others could not. Its a similar mindset to the extremely toxic eastern European way of life where people find extreme pride in suffering through adversity while refusing to do anything to improve their circumstances. Some of the people I've encountered on this forum treat the very possibility that this space can change as an existential crisis and a direct attack on who they are as a person.

Beautiful.

And yes, the response from some people on criticising things of that nature is very much like: dont take away my means to prove me better than you whiny plebs.

And this lets me conclude: if this has such a existential meaning at its foundation, then there is probably no course correction in sight - working as intended.

Yet theres also another breed of people out there, who enjoy/thrive on challenges in the daily/real life, and who also get bored if their escapism is anything less challenging... Food for thought

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Alopex81#5818 wrote:

Yeah maybe people who dont have enough challange and difficulty to overcome in their daily life need to make and/or play punishing difficult games.

No, I think people who is enjoying challenges in daily life, will enjoy challenges in games too. Those who don't enjoy overcoming challenges in real life, don't want it in games either.