Bonus Stability makes the "zoomy" problem worse! Here's why, and how EHG could potentially fix this

General
32

Sure… any ideas will have issues if you look hard enough… us humans like to cheese everything as much as possible…

thats why I indicated a bell curve mono run average duration… no matter what you made the calc time based on, someone would find that optimal 2.2345678 minutes completion time target… but lets face it, youd be an absolute moron to run in place for a minute to get better XP… if thats a players attitude then nothing anyone could ever do would work and quite honestly those people will, one would hope, go do something more productive with their leisure time… :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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The purpose of these changes was specifically to narrow the gap between rushing to the objective without killing enemies and taking a possibly less direct route while killing enemies on the way. Most importantly it’s meant to avoid a situation where killing enemies feeling like a waste of time in echoes.

The intention is not to encourage full clearing echoes as this would likely get frustrating if you missed pockets of enemies in a more linear zone and needed to backtrack through areas that you’d already cleared.

In terms of the remaining gap between farming on the way to the objective and just rushing to it, that can definitely be narrowed further or even flipped in favour of farming by just reducing the base stability gain from echoes and increasing the bonus. The reason why the ratio’s currently the way it is is that we did not want to reduce the base stability in the initial hotfix, but this is a change that we’re definitely prepared to make in future.

I agree that it’s a problem that the bonus stability particularly rewards the playstyle of balling up a large group of enemies and killing them all at once. Changing how de-aggroing works so that it scales with the distance from where the enemy spawned or was originally aggroed is probably the right solution to this. However, this style of de-aggroing introduces the danger of players cheesing enemies by attacking them at the very edge of their aggro range, so it’s something we need to be careful to implement in the right way.

9 Likes
34

Altering base stability and increasing bonus stability does nothing for the problem you yourself mentioned - missing things and having to backtrack. It might even make it worse.

Maybe you can alter the bonus mechanics. The skill tree has the concept of a bonus you only get if you spend X points in the skill. You can take that concept, and apply a bonus to monos that you only get if you get X% of the total available bonus (and nothing if you fall short of that). That could be enough incentive to clear “a bit extra” but not be saddled with trying to vaccuum the entire mono clean.

  • 25% monster clear: 25% bonus
  • 50% monster clear: 50% bonus
  • 75% monster clear: 75% bonus
  • 95% monster clear: 100% bonus

You get a tier bonus only if you reach it. i.e. 20% clear is no bonus, 39% clear is a 25% bonus, 88% clear is a 75% bonus, etc.

Instead of displaying “12/20” in the quest tracker, you’d display “Tier 1: 25% bonus”, “Tier 2: 50% bonus” so the player knows when they hit each tier.

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35

I didn’t read every single post ITT (but most of them) and I thought I’d share my take on the “zommy” discussion and probably hurt someones feelings lol.

Reading the mono changes makes me think that this is actually a good way to solve the “zoomy problem” even tho I don’t think this game really had a problem in the first place.
I can understand the people that said grinding for blessing is too grindy because it is.

I can’t however understand the people that cry about “zoomy” characters having an advantage when it comes to clearing monos and farming items. Yes, they do have an advantage (in a way) because they are faster… that’s the whole point! They don’t get more drops than slower build, at least not in the strict sense of “more”! How? Pretty simple: Imagine having two characters in exactly the same echo (this is theoretical obviously) that are exactly the same, except one has more movespeed and attack/cast speed. The layout of the echo is the same, enemies are exactly the same at exactly the same position and drop exactly the same items (again, this is theoretical!) and both characters use exactly the same route (basically like a tas run).

Who will get “more” items from the mono?
Nobody! Obviously. They both get the same items.
It’s just that the “zoomy” character gets them faster.
But again, that’s the whole point of the character!
So this isn’t like in Delirium where you had a timer and “zoomy” characters had a HUGE advantage regarding item drops.

If you play a slow character you have no right to bitch about getting “less” items than a “zoomy” character! If you really enjoy the slower playstyle and playing a slow character like you claim, then why would you cry about “zoomy” characters? Maybe you don’t enjoy the slow playstyle as much as you say?

Again, this is just about people saying they get “less” items than “zoomy” characters, because of course you do - over the same amount of time! That’s the important part!!! - because the other character was designed to be fast! If this game had a mechanic like Delirium I would totally agree that slower characters get penalized too hard, but it hasn’t.

Sure, even with the changes the faster characters will still clear monos faster and progress faster, but again, that’s the whole point of a fast character! Just ask yourself, do you really ENJOY playing a slower character or are you just salty because your character isn’t better in every way than the other character? Because if you truly enjoy it then people playing faster characters shouldn’t bother you. If you really enjoy it you wouldn’t mind making slower progress because you would actually enjoy the time you spent playing, regardless of the speed you progress through monos!

That’s just my opinion. People really need to check if they actually enjoy the game and the character they play. They should also understand that faster characters will (usually) always be faster, I mean that’s why they are fast lol. They are designed that way. That’s kind of like saying a character with very high magic find has an unfair advantage because they find more magic items…

So basically I agree that mono progression was slow and grinding blessings/bosses/corruption was unpleasant. I do not however think this game has a “zoomy problem” at this stage.

4 Likes
36

To clarify, the purpose of reducing base stability and increasing bonus stability would not be to avoid having to backtrack. That is already avoided by being able to reach maximum bonus stability without having to clear the whole zone.

The point of reducing base stability and increasing bonus stability would just be to more strongly incentivise killing enemies rather than ignoring them on the way to the objective.

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37

Sorry, my response was not meant to invalidate your original post, or imply that it’s a non-issue.

I think your post was well researched and generated good discussion. As a pierce of feedback, it was particularly useful for highlighting the issue that the bonus stability system currently rewards rounding up large groups of enemies while rushing through a zone and only killing them once you reach the boss. That will likely have an effect on what changes we prioritise for subsequent patches to refine the system.

The data comparing stability gain over time for rushing compared to killing enemies on the way to the boss was also helpful as it shows that we probably need to shift more of the total stability reward towards bonus stability rather than base stability if we want clearing enemies to consistently be the optimal strategy.

Feedback is always appreciated, regardless of whether other players disagree with it, and regardless of how much experience the person giving the feedback has. We’re not making the game only for people who have spent 100s of hours in endgame.

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38

No, players will do anything no matter how unfun if it is optimal strategy. And your solution is to a problem where players are doing something unfun because it is optimal strategy.

The solution to this is to make the optimal strategy something fun, such as bonus objectives in maps, full clears and rewards of varying types so that the player must make a choice of what reward they want(or even to skip a bonus objective because it rewards uniques when you are idol farming).

Time based bonuses don’t encourage anything except waiting(if extra for each minute) or rushing(if extra for fast clear).

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39

And you did it again. You deleted your whole OP just because… I don’t know… Are you that thin skinned that you can’t live with somebody not agreeing with you? I don’t get it.

This was a good post. A lot of people agreed with you.

I really don’t like that and since you aren’t able to stand by anything you say (or write), responding to any of your posts is just a waste of time.

That’s sad.

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40

Yep :+1: What a weak-willed little bitch I am

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Or, we could think outside the box…

  • ALWAYS spawn just next to the objective.
  • BUT the objective just gives a small amount of stability, and NO ITEMS WHATSOEVER (including reward chest).
  • You want loot? Go chase some monsters. You just want to go to boss? You can do it fast, but no items in the process. None at all (including the boss himself while we are at it).
  • All sorted.

Everybody would hate this solution, both zoomers and non-zoomers, but that would amuse me. A lot. :innocent:

Anyway, I don’t think there is really an issue. Or if there is, it isn’t one that can be solved.
A lot of people will always want to play (if you can call that play) as fast as possible, and then a bit faster still, with the bestest of all the bestest builds. No matter what you implement, a huge amount of players will want to skip the story, skip the monos, skip the monsters, basically, skip the game.
I don’t get it, but I say, let them do that if that’s what they they enjoy. shrugs.

This is why we have the long-lived legend about PoE only being “playable” with one specific build per season. This is, and has always been, entirely untrue, but it is still being repeated all the time.
If one solution is 0.01% better than another one at min-max level, it becomes the “only viable way”.

That said, lots of really good ideas in this thread (and a really good opening post for those lucky enough to have read it before it vanished). Hopefully can inspire the devs.

42

Sorry but that kind of approach to what is actually a leisure activity for 99% of gamers is just utterly moronic.

Dont agree there… I have been playing computer games for over 30 years and I play games for fun… If a game has an “unfun” mechanism to achieve optimal strategy, I stop playing uninstall and never look back… and I would do it with a smile on my face…

If my time based idea isnt good - and I did say it would piss people off - thats totally ok by me…

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That’s not what I wanted to say. I’m sorry if my response was not toned well.

I just wanted to Express my level of frustration with you deleting your posts. Because they are a very good contribution to the community.

And even if not, you should not feel as if you have to delete your posts.

For sure you can do whatever you want on the internet and you don’t need a guy like me to approve your behaviour. I’m sorry for that.

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44

And yet that is how some people (not you, evidently) approach things PoE is a good example of this.

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:wink: If you mean PoE then you are 100% correct… I stopped playing it in 2016 specifically because of coming to this kind of realisation… I am a little slow sometimes but eventually I do get to a point where the penny drops and I realise progression is no longer fun and its time to move on…

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46

I feel exactly the same.
And even if you happen to be wrong, it can be useful for others to read about it and how.

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Couldn’t have said it better myself. Even worse still that they’ve doubled down on that mentality time and time and time and time again.

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Doesn’t change that players WILL use optimal strats.

These players are playing a stat based ARPG, they are HERE for optimisation.

It doesn’t matter if this is for leisure, they will do it even if it isn’t fun - even if it is stupid.

Again, the rush-to-objective playstyle is an example of people playing the optimal playstyle at the expence of fun.

Your solution just changes the optimal playstyle to something even less fun. Players will go for that playstyle even if it is a bad idea.

1 Like
49

This quote will get deleted once you delete your post.

queermathsgirl
Yep :+1: What a weak-willed little bitch I am

This on the other hand won’t!

I don’t understand why you keep deleting your posts and I have already reported that like 2 weeks ago, hoping that would change. Of course this is not against TOS and frankly you can do whatever you want, but it makes no sense and is frustrating to a lot of people here!

Don’t know if you are just young and/or have a serious problem with your (lack of) self-confidence. Maybe you just want the attention? Maybe you’re a troll? Doesn’t matter to me at all. Just know that you’re not going to make a lot of friends by deleting all your post, especially when they are of higher quality than most of the other stuff you see in here. Even if you feel like your opinion is “wrong” (which is impossible) or your facts/math is wrong (which is very possible), why delete it? Do you not want others to engage in the conversation or, god forbid, learn something from your mistakes? Whatever the case, you can keep doing whatever you want.

If you want some advice from an old sh!t who used to be kind of similar to you: Stop giving so many f*cks! Especially about random people on a videogame forum.

By the way, I’m loving the mono changes, even if I didn’t get to play as much as I’d like to since the patch. And I’m still salty about the Flurry changes :wink:

1 Like
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I’ve seen a few of these kinds of complaints in the past, and I thought this would be as good a time as any just to make a quick comment regarding this. This is not directed towards anyone in particular, or in regards to anyone in particular. I’m only replying as a point of reference. The internet can frankly be a fairly spooky place sometimes. Many people may want to try to get involved with a community, try to share their ideas, and immediately get feedback concerning their ideas that may be a bit rough.

Generally, I personally find it’s the first few responses that have the hardest responses, and you’ll find later on that more people may come by that agree. However, it’s still quite easy to have social anxiety in such an environment and want to pull back when you receive some of these earlier responses. And while we certainly understand that that can cause frustration for some people to lose that information on what the topic was, we believe it’s important for people to be able to make the decision to rescind (delete) previous comments or topics. Perhaps because they’re no longer confident in them, or perhaps because they’ve changed their mind. For whatever reason it may be, It is not against the code of conduct or other rules to delete your own posts or replies . If anyone believes this is causing a serious issue, they’re free to reach out to us through a support ticket, and we would be happy to discuss it. We would however ask that players do not harass other community members if they are removing their posts for whatever reason, and instead bring any problems to us.

Lastly, Our forums also provide a great place for us to gauge what’s going on in the community, and see what people’s responses are. With this, while detailed feedback is always great, even things like “I think X sucks” is still important feedback, as while it may not clarify what the problem is, it lets us know that there may be a problem. We’ll then see if it’s a common source of complaints, and if so then work to gauge why the complaint exists. Even with detailed feedback, we may find that there’s a more “core” reason for something and try to work around that. So we do encourage players to leave their feedback on the forums whenever they’re confident doing so, because it may allude to something else, or provide part of a much bigger picture of something going on.

4 Likes
51

This is at the crux of the issue for me.

Some of my favorite builds and the ones ive played into high corruption have been MA/Bear/Abomination because its basically Herald of agony from PoE, which is also one of my favorite builds in that game. I love pet builds, and I love the feeling of pets being like an army you lead that slowly makes ground in a battle, you are pushing back the enemy line, this usually is slow going. Minion builds, especially solo minion builds clear like booty.

But I end up spending the most time on them because they are the most interesting to tinker with and play for me. Ive tried playing some of the “faster” builds like VK autobomber and they felt clunky and not fun to me. So I end up taking them much less far corruption/playtime wise.

I think people dont actually know if they like slow or fast builds, its just a bit of a sour grapes situation in terms of someone else getting what they feel is more for less. If you want to play fast, play a fast build. if you enjoy the build you are playing, why are you even upset?

I think the current change is good because it rewards players for playing whatever way they want. There is clear trade offs or gains by doing one or the other, and I think EHG can see that and will adjust accordingly.

For example some builds are really good at bursting down objectives or bosses, like look at the new static, it can do tremendous damage, or a channeled lightning blast build etc. These builds clear really badly with target limits, and high investment costs. So rushing to the objective is better for them even if its less stability per mono, because its more stability per unit of time. So even if EHG nerfs base stability and rewards killing monsters more, those builds still might opt for a rushing playstyle as its gonna be better for them either way.

Where as builds that might have poor single target can instead opt to pull and nuke as many monsters as possible as that offers them the best stability per hour reward.

And I think the key take away is that no matter what you do, players are going to find the option thats best for them and their build. So its best to offer many ways to play.