Given GD has 36 different mastery combinations, 25 odd competitive endgame builds is quite low IMO, that means that ~11 (likely more assuming there’s at least 1 combination with more than 1 “viable” build) that aren’t viable which is almost 1/3 of all possible combinations! So more skills being available clearly isn’t necessarily a good thing.
That’s not what the numbers support. There will be a happy medium, certainly.
They kinda can’t, there aren’t any skills that can be converted to any damage element. Nor are there any masteries which have all elements covered over the skills they have access to. Poison & Void are usually the ones left out (but not always, especially with uniques). But having flat damage on a skill (from weapons/passives/etc) doesn’t make that skill that element.
Not even remotely as bad as ABomb describes it… but also not even remotely as good as you do.
Skill-spec trees are simply what other games do repurposed into a new system, and while ‘decent’ it’s not a overly great mechanic yet. The majority of effects are very generic and pathing often seems a bit forced. But overall a good system.
Crafting is sub-par currently. Yes, a fun mechanic, but not fitting to the game’s current content, something I pointed out back when it was introduced actually that it’ll happen. The system hasn’t been created with longevity in mind, it can’t uphold. But the core idea is nice.
Ingame loot filter… same as third party, just made in-game. It’s not innovative, it’s just less lazyness, kudos to EHG there, but there’s no innovation there.
Factions though! That’s agreed, that’s the biggest innovation LE provided to the genre. Not because of the factions themself (they’re actually in a really bad state) but because of the way they handle the split between trade and non-trade. That’s another kudos.
LP system is… unfinished. Good basis.
Set crafting… given that sets have showcased to only fall into 2 categories in games - either useless or otherwise the only thing to look for - I don’t think this antiquated idea game-devs can’t get out of their head for some reason will get a renaissance with the crafting… as it will just shift the goalpost for the position of sets.
In the MMO style you either limit it through said resource as you mention… or through cooldowns.
For example Grim Dawn managed it via cooldowns very well, but it makes the direct gameplay vastly more complex. The difference between a low-skilled player and a high-skilled player is massive this way. If you know the rotation and what the skills actually cause in tandem then you’ll cause a magnitude more damage then otherwise.
This is how MMO’s which have been hindered by precision issues related to network coding have done historically. Unlike FPS where only a few people need to be kept track of in a MMO the precision-work based on movement, positioning and fast reactions take a secondary position compared to the mastery of your skill rotation.
In LE this problem isn’t as strong, hence the focus is sitting more on maneuvering accordingly. A large portion of the skill-based aspect is positioning in LE rather then the mastery of your skill rotation.
If you use a leather shoe, will you have to ‘walk that in’ too?
Yeah, then you need to give the credit to D3 though, since Blizzard implemented the Runes adjusting your existing skill first. Or PoE 1 with the gem system which works in a similar (and more in-depth) method then the current skill-tree in LE.
As said, it’s not ‘bad’ but simply very very underdeveloped to count as ‘innovative’. Because besides a few distinct specific ones (Which are the only ones which you’re generally excited for as they provide the variety) they tend to be generic increases.
It’s not like the majority of points go into things like ‘Now fireball circles your character like an orb for ‘x’ seconds’ as an example. Yes… they exist… like complete conversions for Mana Strike as an example by making it a ranged skill, or switching skills to high-cooldown skills with extra mechanics… but overall it’s mostly adjustment of values or exchange of types. You don’t get many ‘Now it feels like something entirely different’ moments which this system would be very prone to allow.
To be fair, one option to deepen the system would be to allow a single ‘auto-cast’ slot for players, with the classes providing a few choices to pick from. Similar to enchanted weapon for the Mage.
More of that would be kinda nice, situational triggered or on/off state mechanics which can adapt your playstyle because of their timing or situational usage.
Yes, they started off a bit too… ‘timid’? with it. More of those ‘bold’ decisions would definitely be good to see. Variety is the spice of life.
That’s a core concept which provides a specific limitation… which is good. It shifts the focus on other aspects which would otherwise be underdeveloped.
As mentioned, like allowing the game to focus on positional gameplay rather then the rotary skill mastery as several other games already do (and are more prevalent). Focusing on both would be fairly overwhelming for the majority of players and instead provide an adverse effect to how well the game is received.
Generally systems need to be ‘easy to learn, hard to master’ to uphold interest. When you use the ‘hard to learn, harder to master’ approach then you’ll only pull in a distinct few people… and that’s not boding well for a live-service game. Even being risky as a single-player game.
Huh?
The newest showcase - which is for the 0.2 update - showed… well… really nothing new that wasn’t already there?
They took the already used mechanics from PoE 1 and implemented them in PoE 2, that’s it. Some support gems are interesting (and like underutilized like usual) and the adjustment for towers is nice… but they provided a solid ‘core improvement’ rather then any sort of innovation there.
It’s just… a lot.
No chance in innovating player agency with EHG… they don’t know the meaning behind it and showcased dropping the ball regularly in that aspect. That’s not their forte.
Though they have something which they can absolutely innovate on… and that’s the dual-split between traders and non-traders. Making their fairly broken and wonky system into a solid one and expanding on it will allow them the time to reach respective content depth like the competition and also to solidify the other aspects of their game with less backlash (since they’re then not as mandatory to uphold a baseline enjoyable feeling).
Yes, and in GD you also generally run up to a group of enemies and then start spamming your skills. You don’t focus on traversal anymore.
COmparing it to LE your character is nigh always in motion. While also to a degree true in GD for some effects it’s solely used to ‘step out of ring’ and then return to dishing out damage.
In LE you actively avoid different attacks from enemy types in different manners. Wengari for example enforce you to reposition steadily while skeletons on the other hand do generally need you to just remove their quantity. It feels different there hence.
Or FP on items which is enough or doesn’t even warrant further attempts Yeah, very limiting in feel and scope.
But!
Nice on paper at least. They show promise, potential… not something which is often seen nowadays. Which baffles me why EHG doesn’t lean more into it and rather treats them like a side note.
Not even needed. You don’t need to re-invent a wheel when you can polish the function.
We get so few overall ‘polished’ products nowadays that that aspect alone will make something successful by now.
It’s why FromSoftware games are such a massive hit. They give you mechanics… they work together fluently in a closed environment, each interacting well with the other one… none of them is ‘new’ or ‘innovative’… but the combination of how well polished they each are respectively for their task makes it into one of the biggest franchises of this decade still.
If you look for innovation for the time the Diablo series is a masterpiece with 1 and 2. It was a time when Blizzard was seen as the savior of gaming basically… unlike today where they’re seen as sleezy disgusting… yeah, let’s stop with that, would be against ToS to speak more, you get the gist
Even if it was before your time solely for seeing game-dev progression it’s a worthwhile pick, showcases how changes happened over time very well… and how it got lost to a degree as well with studios nowadays.
Rather that innovations others hold dear only hold value if they are living up to the prospective potential.
If the next ARPG comes out and makes a dual-system with trade and non-trade… but doesn’t stumble into every single self-made pitfall caused by a lack of knowledge… which would you like more?
The inventor had every chance to make it ‘right’, but leaning back and simply executed it half-baked is no way to progress overall quality of products.
The majority of games out there don’t focus on bringing mechanics to their respective ‘peak’ anymore, very rarely they do. ‘Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past’ for example brought adventuring with a story back in those times to the peak. It told a extremely immersive story for the time, had gorgeous pixelated art-style and… is actually still a good game even to modern standards (outside of the controls, but even they are ‘fine’). And then we instead get games like ‘Anthem’ which just throw everything in half-baked and unfinished.
It’s obvious which one wins out. A few solid aspects win over an amalgamation of nothingness after all.
Most of those still work fine in the endgame. Some need some small adjustments but you will get the gist.
A rough estimate on my side based on ~3k hours played there are on average at least 5 competitive endgame builds for every combination. Some combinations have more some have less. It also depends on what you define as endgame in GD (to me it means old SR65+ and having a shot at superbosses). This number will probably vary if you are a crucible farmer and need sub 5min builds or so. Don’t know since I don’t play that mode much.
Even with the numbers provided above? Sorry for not being more clear in my initial post. I tried to keep the GD fanboy in me in check while on the LE forum.
True. And I like that.
Also true. With the addition of the dodge button and sunder this changed a bit. Dodging and positioning is still not nearly as important as in LE but it certainly plays a role in the gameplay. Though you can still “outbuild” that need to move through sheer defenses.
Aaand the GD engine is old. This plays a role as well. At least for the feel of movement.
Thanks, you put it better than I did. I would like something like this.
While I don’t agree that they are as broken as you like to claim they are I agree that they need to build upon them/fix them/improve them (however you wanna call it).
The split is great and I really hope they will use it to further allow us to customize our play experience.
An innovation needs to stand what it was intented to deliver. So no matter how good an innovation is in theory if it is bad in practice the innovation is rather useless if it isn’t salvagable or a catalyst that leads to new innovation or an innovation that makes the old principle work.
In short: I’m not impressed by innovations that aren’t working or are that flawed that other stuff works better. Yet I’m still for innovation even if it leads to less the optimal outcomes ^^. Without innovation the world would be bland.
The job of a gamer is to break the rules and the game. That’s what is fun. Good Devs understand that is the job of the player. This is why Jonathan at GGG says can’t wait to see how you guys break the game. It’s expected.
Let talk about D2 for a moment since that game innovated tremendously in LOD with the arrival of runewords giving players nearly infinite options and solidified D2 as thee ARPG.
In D2 you can play a melee sorc using pally auras, barbarian battle shouts, a pally zeal attack or druid form and turn into a Bear. D2’s base game (skill system) is very very boring and it didn’t get interesting until runewords when it opened up the game (skills) and endless options.
Everyone in D2 can teleport, everyone can selfbuff themselves, you can cross use so many other classes abilities and skills. It was LOD’s innovation that made D2 what it is.
So where is LE’s innovation? What will put LE on the map and how can they expand their core game (which is good but somewhat boring) and make it into something that attracts ARPG players and builds excitement about Class design.
At some point LE has to expand, take risk and open up the game. Allow for crazy skill combinations between classes or extra skill slots. All great games do it eventually. D2 did, PoE did as the sequel too D2. LE will have to innovate eventually with some significant changes expanding the game. If it wants to be a big player in the ARPG genre.
LE draws a lot of it’s design inspiration from D2 and PoE just hoping they get into innovating design changes after Season 2. It would be cool if LE is a big ARPG some day but they gotta innovate to get there.
It is. From all the games I’ve played GD has the highest amount of viable builds. Sure, this could be due to a combination of personal bias and knowledge about the game, but I honestly believe that the balance in GD is one of the best.
Not so much in any competitive game, things like that tent to get patched very fast. But I get what you mean. I think you are not talking about finding glitches, game breaking bugs and abusing those for optimal gameplay. Instead you are talking about building stuff ingame with clever combinations that should not work according to the expectations the game set beforehand. And I agree that this is somewhat true for the ARPG genre. It’s very true for roguelike games like The Binding of Isaac (that game does one hell of a job with this).
There are caveats however. First the game needs to establish a foundation - a ruleset. Why? Because players (and devs) need to have a baseline expectation and understanding of what the core of the game is going to be, how stuff is working and how the systems are working together at the baseline. Then they can start introducing tools for players to break these established expectations, rules and mechanical interactions thus “breaking” the game.
Without this solid foundation stuff that “is breaking the rules” does not really exist because the rules that should prevent the player from breaking the game did not really exist in the first place.
LE is still in the foundation lying phase. It’s sad for a full release, but it is what it is. They need to get in a lot more stuff (missing skills, full campaign, more crafting options, decent baseline balance) before the game can afford to go crazy.
Please don’t get me wrong, I also want the crazy options. I really like making builds work that should not work or at least sound so crazy that they should not work. That is something PoE1 does very well in my opinion.
Sadly it’s still too early for LE to really go that route. Though I think they are moving in the right direction.
I disagree with this. Even with third party tools, making a filter in PoE from scratch is a very daunting task. It’s very complex and, even worse, very confusing.
On GD, you only have a basic functionality.
EHG managed to make a filter that is actually quite dynamic, letting you do most of the things that PoE does and made it in a way that is very simple to create by anyone and, more importantly, easy to understand.
I also disagree on this. Their solution to the set problem is actually quite ingenious. The problems with sets have always been, as you point out, that they are either useless or mandatory.
But the solution they came up with makes it so that they have their place and are neither. They will simply compete with other item types, like uniques and exalts already do.
Their final goal is for you to have a mish mash of item rarities for your gear. Meaning you end up with uniques, exalts, sets and now champion items. From all that’s been leaked so far, I’d say they will achieve that.
That seems very innovative to me.
I believe they took heavy inspiration from TQ, though. But why wouldn’t we give them credit anyway? Just because D3 wasn’t a good game for more “serious” players doesn’t mean they didn’t do plenty of things right. For example, the loot goblins were a fun and innovative idea. Adventure mode was also an innovative idea, even if it was pretty unbalanced.
The main flaw of the rune system was that it was too simplistic (much like D4’s).
Again, why wouldn’t we give credit to PoE for the gem system? Obviously it was an innovative thing to do. One among plenty innovative things they did over the years.
I do disagree that it’s more in-depth than LE skill trees, though. Especially when you look at the actual builds and see that there isn’t that much variance of support skills for any given skill.
There are plenty of nodes that do that, though. Just look at Hammer Throw. If you look at the existing builds you have several different ways in how it was built and how it behaves. As opposed to, for example, Lightning Strike in PoE1 (the current meta), where almost all the top builds use the same support gems and the skill behaves in the exact same way for all of them.
with ‘filterblade’ it’s as straight-forward as one could expect it to be. The game’s just massively large in content and hence much to adjust. Which is also eased further by complete pre-sets that function amazingly well.
Yes, all third party… but available and well known. Job of GGG… sucks they didn’t do it.
Ehh… they have some stuff PoE’s system can’t handle (affix search since unidentified items don’t display them) but otherwise nothing’s special… it’s actually harder to handle given you have to take care of more aspects compared to PoE’s system which primarily focuses on rarity, ilcl and base, not really anything else… besides exception-cases.
You mean like with LP where people suddenly wear items utterly unfitting for their build usually since they hence act as a sort of ‘stat stick’?
I don’t think it to be a good direction for those systems to go. I prefer heavily solid foundations for the systems which can be expanded on rather then causing tons of fringe-case issues of all sorts.
Because their implementation was fairly awful
An idea only gets value when it also shows results commonly. Otherwise we would’ve tons more ideas floating around that get credit. Actually how it should be… but isn’t the case since people don’t want to put the effort into making things happen since it’s hard to see which ones would pay off for the effort invested.
We do, that’s why we don’t give it to LE which is just an adaptation but doesn’t really expand on the concept. It uses another iterration simply which is not as in-depth as the one from PoE.
And yet, no build uses all legendaries. And that is because a good exalt is better than a legendary stat stick in most cases.
So? Just because your implementation wasn’t good doesn’t mean you didn’t innovate. You still did something innovative and it will likely then be refined in the future by other people. You still deserve the credit for the idea, even if you didn’t implement it.
Otherwise theoretical physics/mathematics would never get any credit, just because it’s not applied. When this clearly isn’t the case.
In most things (especially related to technology) the person that creates the innovative thingamajig isn’t the one that had the idea. But the one that had the idea still gets credit for it.
Again, I disagree heavily with this. Like I mentioned (and you skipped over), for any given skill, pretty much all builds in PoE use the same support gems. The skill works in the exact same way in all those builds, other than some exceptions like making them into totems.
Whereas on LE most skills have several different implementations where they feel different and behave differently.
We can argue about LE not being innovative or not.
But calling PoE’s gem system in-depth is beyond me. PoE2 improved a lot, but is missing more support gems(which will come).
But this system is not really in-depth and artificially bloated with hundreds of gems that are either not compatible with many skills or have little to no effect. Meaning that on each given skill you will only have a couple of support gem that actually make sense. Sometimes a skill has more than 5 support gems that are good and that is where some customization and deeper strategy comes in, but those cases are pretty rare.
So the hundreds of support gem make it seem like there is alot, but inreality there is not.
LE’s Skill Spec Tree is nothing alike PoE, it is on the complete other side of the spectrum, because its hand-crafted for each skill, while PoE is very generic, because they have to be compatible with many more skills.
The closest PoE 1 came to a Skill Tree from LE would be Transfigred Gems, those would be the equivalent of a Keynode in LE changing how a skill fundamentally works.
Or there simply doesn’t exist any working unique for the build which isn’t even with LP acceptable With more variety of uniques over the course of time this’ll simply become a thing… which is not a good direction in my eyes as exalted items will become less and less valuable.
Because they’re done in a visible space + provide proof and hence the effect of it.
If my neighbour gets a great idea that guy needs to somehow make it seen and accepted.
Games have the same situation, there’s tons of great ideas out there, showcased even… but they don’t love up to their potential and hence are ignored.
Or traps… or combining them, or triggering them through diverse methods… or altering them via corruption (vaaling some).
Also take into consideration that the system doesn’t need to heavily adjust them when there’s far over 100 active skills which can be used as a main damage skill available, with unique mechanics on their own. And nonetheless you can adjust them into different playstyles.
I actually don’t know many support gems which aren’t used at all. Sure, a few exist, older ones mostly… but besides that some simply are more prevalent then others.
They are generally minimal changes, besides a few exceptions. But yes, some change the gameplay feel quite a bit.
I was talking regarding any given build, not in totallity.
If you have Skill A and there are 300 support gems, only 30 are comaptible with Skill A and only 10 are actually useful. 7 of them are just giving the skill numerical changes while 3 mechanically change the skill slightly.
Any given build or any given skill never can utilize that many support gems, so it is not that “in-depths”
Yeah, I could accept filterblade being innovative, but that’s not in-game. So if filterblade was innovative in making it easier to create filters, can’t LE be innovative by doing that in-game?
Again, disagree. For example, Trespasser was an awful awful game. But they did have an innovative idea: hudless display. It wasn’t particularly well done, but it was a design idea that influenced future iterations of it, most notably in the Farcry games that heavily borrowed for it.
So hudless displays in games are still credited to Trespasser, even though it wasn’t a particularly good implementation.
RE4’s 4 player co-op wasn’t particularly well done, but it definitely was the inspiration for the Left 4 Dead games and the following clones. It’s still credited for the innovation.
And many other similar examples exist. The credit is still given, even when the implementation wasn’t particularly well done.
And yet, if you look at Lightning Strike builds, which are the current meta, pretty much all the support gems are the same. There is no real diversity. Just the impression of one.
Also, in the vast, vast majority of builds in PoE, you get at most one transformative support gem. The others are all basically a variant of +damage.
Their system was innovative, certainly. But to say that it’s more in-depth than LE’s when all evidence points to the contrary is just wrong.
According to poe.ninja about 2/3 of the total gems (both skill and support) are used by 1% or less players. And they don’t even list the ones that aren’t used by anyone.
About half of them are used by 0.4% or less. More than one third are used by 0.1% or less.
About 1/5th fall into the 0.0% or less (they don’t have higher precision).
Obviously you don’t make every support gem available for every ability.
Not only would that limit the design options but also be one utter balancing nightmare.
The depth comes from the combination of available options.
Yes, your basic melee skill of some sorts obviously can’t equip a ‘channeling’ support. Because it’s not channeling. They are fairly straight forward (mostly, some exceptions). But… you can use a melee channeling skill to then trigger a spell totem which has a freely chosen spell in it that then trigger another skill on crit. Convoluted beyond end… but doable, and likely a crap outcome. Still, a viable option that could actually get you through the whole game if you know what you do.
In LE the options are fixed. ‘This skill can trigger that’… the end.
This reduces options for combinations massively. Hence depth is achieved by the PoE system through that alone in quite the massive way.
As said, the system of LE isn’t bad, but it inherently lacks the variety of build options which for example Grim Dawn or Path of Exile provide. Their systems are set up to focus on that heavily. LE simply has no supporting mechanics - yet - to allow that. Hence more ‘shallow’.
Filterblade was designed by a person, such a system wasn’t done before. It doesn’t matter of in-game or out of game for innovation.
The innovation happened with that person.
GGG was just not caring enough to give a shit plainly spoken. That’s a failure from their side.
Hence why I said ‘kudos’ to EHG there since they actually implemented it. But… it’s been done, no innovation anymore after all.
A really well done game many people enjoy can be utterly lacking in innovation, it just is… well done.
While a game which is badly received can be extremely innovative, just badly executed.
Yes, but that’s the exception, not the norm.
For example one of the first games implementing a ‘heavily immersive UI’ is ‘Surpreme Commander’. But it was done extremely subtle. You have a main unit there, the ‘Commander’, which when you loose it… you’ve lost. The UI is the cockpit of said Commander unit as you as the player are the pilot and are on the front of the battlefield.
Instead the innovative aspect nowadays is given ‘HighFleet’ instead for executing this concept ‘right’. You’re not only the captain of your fleet but your UI is designed like a steampunk-designed control-area with all you need information wise.
Same as Starfield not being innovative with piecing together parts to make your own space-ship… or general vehicle. That would probably be ‘Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead’ as one of the earliest creating that… or another game earlier on even.
Innovation is a very unfair thing… because the one credited sadly is often not the one actually thinking it up. If it were then I would say the world would be a vastly better place.
Ignore meta.
The meta is also defined by how easy a build is to handle. Heck… I remember back in Abyss League when one of the meta builds was ‘Dual Poet’s Pen Detonate Corpse’. Not because it was overly strong (it was nice, but not broken) but rather because you only needed to left-click and off you went, clearing everything gradually… or dieing to try! Flicker strike in more refined.
Overall viable builds is where you need to get your benchmark from, not those some random streamer found and the community hence follows like lemmings
Yeah, very limiting in feel and scope.