Warning for Ultra widescreen Mod after I disabled it

Fog of war is fine but unnecessary as it's not a significant competitive advantage.

Skill and time investment are the biggest factors. UW support is very far down the list. Even eating blueberries on a daily basis would be a bigger advantage.

This topic being 13 pages long and affecting a good amount of players. Why have we no official statement?

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KONGTERTON#0435 wrote:

This topic being 13 pages long and affecting a good amount of players. Why have we no official statement?

Idk... probably because GGG already made their official statements about it 3 years ago.

Things CHANGE in 3 years. Want more players and more $ to pay the company bills etc...? Get more players that help do that, stop ticking them off, get up to date in the gaming industry, make games fun and not a complete chore, understand your player base, give thought unto what solidly affects the game and what does not, listen to your players (yeah tough to do, but that's the job!).

The MOST important thing to do with a game. Listen to this all those who make them...Make games FUN! I cannot express that enough. Games are meant to entertain. This is the top priority on my list and most likely everyone else who buys and plays a game. To take away that 1 simple thing, is your downfall.

So again, does taking away 32:9 add fun to the game or take it away? Does it take fun away from others? If so, what's the impact? Is it great enough an impact that it must be taken away from those who have it? How does it affect the game and the company overall?

I've noticed a large drop in players playing the game. Not exactly when this 32:9 was taken away, but close. And then you can see player count in the game do nothing but drop. So the question comes up seriously. Was adding to the drop player list by taking 32:9 away worth it?

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Legend#8685 wrote:

Things CHANGE in 3 years. Want more players and more $ to pay the company bills etc...? Get more players that help do that, stop ticking them off, get up to date in the gaming industry, make games fun and not a complete chore, understand your player base, give thought unto what solidly affects the game and what does not, listen to your players (yeah tough to do, but that's the job!).

The MOST important thing to do with a game. Listen to this all those who make them...Make games FUN! I cannot express that enough. Games are meant to entertain. This is the top priority on my list and most likely everyone else who buys and plays a game. To take away that 1 simple thing, is your downfall.

So again, does taking away 32:9 add fun to the game or take it away? Does it take fun away from others? If so, what's the impact? Is it great enough an impact that it must be taken away from those who have it? How does it affect the game and the company overall?

I've noticed a large drop in players playing the game. Not exactly when this 32:9 was taken away, but close. And then you can see player count in the game do nothing but drop. So the question comes up seriously. Was adding to the drop player list by taking 32:9 away worth it?

Would you be ok if they implement "32:9 with fog of war"?
And, what player drop are you talking about? There was so drop when the 32:9 change happened.

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JakkerONAIR#4902 wrote:

Would you be ok if they implement "32:9 with fog of war"?
And, what player drop are you talking about? There was so drop when the 32:9 change happened.

That is a loaded question as it implies there is a significant advantage to playing on a widescreen. However the advantage is NOT significant. Notice I'm not saying an advantage doesn't exist, it does, but it is so small that it is irrelevant.

I'll answer your question regardless though. I'm fine with fog of war being a thing if it makes the game better in general. Could make some dungeons feel more intense which could be interesting. And it could make "light radius" as an affix matter more.

I encourage GGG to make an analysis of what the actual advantage constitutes. They could analyze the data from the recent race events for example. Or they could try to interview some of the competitive players and see what they think. Angormus would be a good person to ask I would imagine as he has played on all three aspect ratios (32:9, 21:9 and 16:9) and gotten first place every single time (before the events he had both speedrun WR's for warrior on 32:9 aspect ratio. The events forced him to play increasingly reduced aspect ratios).

I have personally been competitive my entire life. And I have noticed that the better you are at something the more levels you realize there is to skill. When I was playing certain games professionally it was not uncommon for me to get challenged by much lower rated players that thought they could beat me only for me to beat them 20-0.
Back when I played Starcraft 2 (which I played casually not professionally by the way), I was in the highest rank outside of Grandmaster. One of my friends was top 15 Grandmaster on both NA and EU servers simultaneously at the time, and for some reason he enjoyed practicing against me. But against that guy my score was something like 1-200.

When talking about PoE 2 specifically I think 2 things are important to be aware of:

#1. It is not a competitive game (outside of specifically speed running).
#2. It should be designed as if it is competitive.

Or said in other words: PoE 2 is competitive but only in the sense that players compete against THEMSELVES. They do not compete against each other (unless you are going for a speed run or trying to get a high ladder placement, in that case you are competing against 0.0001% of the playerbase).

Since gaining an advantage over yourself can never be "unfair", whether you have ultra widescreen support or not should never be a factor to begin with. It should just be in the game.

Especially considering the reason people want it in the game to begin with. It's purely because the game looks infinitely better that way. NOT because they want an advantage. It looks better and is more enjoyable to play.

Lets look at what actually constitutes a significant advantage in this game however:

#1. Player Skill.

This is by far the most important. And that's great, that's one of the reasons PoE 2 is designed correct, because this SHOULD be the most important factor and it absolutely is.

#2. Time Invested.

As the game is currently, if you are a skilled player, you could be farming T15 maps 12 hours into the game on Softcore SSF on a fresh League Start. Hardcore would be a bit slower, but you will probably be in maps as well.
If you are NOT a skilled player, you are probably still somewhere in act 1 or 2 at that point.

#3 Class Imbalance.
In the 3rd race event, ALL finishes in the top 5 was warrior. Every single one. In the endgame probably Invoker is the strongest right now though.

#4. RNG.

You could find a Pillars of the Caged God or Foxshade early on to really speed up how fast you move through the game. And RNG in general can make a pretty big difference in terms of advantage. That's just part of the game though, finding that piece of gear that allows you to progress further is part of the fun.

#x. Ultra Widescreen.

I put "x" here because it's arbitrarily far down the list. Yes there is some advantage to seeing further on the sides. But it can in no way shape or form make up for a lack in #1 or #2 on this list.

It is so completely dwarfed by these two factors that it's pretty ridiculous to consider "balancing" it when it negatively affects players to the point where they quit the game over it (I have personally quit the game currently for this reason alone, as have others who responded in this thread).


So I say just put it in the game asap. No one will be negatively affected by it being in the game, so its a pure net positive to have it supported as an option.

And saying that implementing it is tricky or that it negatively affects players because it changes how the game works in some way is incredibly disingenuous. It already was in the game before a certain mod became a ban-able offence.

It's simply not fair to those that are affected by this to the point where they literally quit the game over it, when the advantage is so minuscule that you could make up for it by simply eating a handful of blueberries and get slightly elevated reaction speed. It's honestly ridiculous. Just put it in the game.

Feels like we're trailing back to something that was alredy discussed in length. I'll not waste my time re-discussing this, so instead, only point this out:

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Community_Team wrote:

Previously it was possible to manually set the aspect ratio of the Path of Exile client to be very short and wide, allowing you to see an unintended amount of the level at once. A limit needed to be set. Because of server serialisation distances, this maximum aspect ratio is currently set to 21:9. This is the widest that we can currently go before we start hitting the cutoff where entities and effects vanish. We are looking at being able to increase this in the future.

This note was accidentally missed from the patch notes. We're very sorry for that oversight.

As the post implies, they will change it at some time. However, no other excuses or downplaying it's advantages to reintroduce UW without the fix are valid. Period.

To answer in small, I don't feel like posting much anymore on this, as I feel this topic is now well discussed and up to them to either allow or disallow. And Chacruna#2474 accurately stating how much it affects gameplay and that he and others have left the game over this simple thing as I have for now.

I don't know if fog of war will work? I don't want a picture or some solid image on the sides of my screen that will burn the edges? If it was a fog of war that was like unto a moving screen saver on the sides? lol (Don't know how to describe it) Then yes, sure that should work. It has to look nice, go well with the game and be like it's meant to be there in some way.

However, I've noticed while on widescreen, that the "range" on some characters or skills, will only go "said far" Although I could see enemies farther on the edge of the screen, I could not shoot at them, why isn't this something that can satisfy this silly issue?

I have played on both widescreen and not. So I myself can factually say differences.
So on another note that I think many may have not said yet? When I played on the none widescreen monitor, I could see ALOT more top and bottom (This I say because they now have an advantage over me in this way when I went wide). It was a squarish monitor 37"ish I think? I gave it away lol. When I went widescreen, it's like I traded the top and bottom for the sides. I can get attacked (hammered) quickly, sometimes not even know it from top and bottom. (Also got this monitor curved) Many mentioned it's more immersive. And I very much in my opinion agree! And I won't go back. Then to be hammered with this silly issue that I can't use this monitor in game is just a horrible direction for them to choose to go. Thus, I don't feel like playing their game. It's the ONLY, I state that again quite SOLIDLY, the ONLY game I have out of over 500+ games that has a problem with widescreen and will ban me for it. So it's simple, I'm more on the side of, get the heck outta here with that none-sense, I won't play this. There's SO much else to play that I can actually enjoy rather than seeing silly black bars.

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Legend#8685 wrote:

When I played on the none widescreen monitor, I could see ALOT more top and bottom (This I say because they now have an advantage over me in this way when I went wide)..

Except you can not? That is not how aspect ratios work. Why are you lying? To prove your "point"?

Screenshot taken from the starting zone without moving the character - everyone can replicate this and confirm this for themselves.

16:9


21:9


Go on, show me on those screenshots where you can see ALOT more "top and bottom". Or better yet, provide your own. I'll wait.

Simple, I didn't use either of those aspects^ I figured someone like you would respond. I don't care to argue with you.