They could, but players would see that as a nerf, most likely. “Stuff used to do 10k corruption now we can only do 500, massive nerf!!!1111oneone11lolzpwn!!”.
It’s more likely they’ll keep adding more stuff to the ceiling. Maybe even start adding torment difficulty levels for the static stuff. Which is what D3 did (except for adding more stuff) and how we ended up with trillions of silly damage.
Unfortunately, this happens in PoE2, and we only don’t see it in D4 because they limit high item level equipment before level 50.
This happens because:
1 - ALL current games follow the P2W formula of a Tencent game, in fact almost all belong to them. So skill or strategy doesn’t matter, what matters is having ridiculously strong items that carry you. Not that this is necessarily a problem, the problem is the FACT that these companies SELL these items for real money in secret and that in the game you are trapped in algorithmic walls that dramatically limit the chance of you seeing a single one of these PoE items. Today, T0 items are blocked by a minimum wall of GS and MF and there is a time limit for drops. So you can be killing Uber Ubers and NEVER see a Magblood drop in your league.
2 - Current developers don’t understand what an RPG is, especially a role-playing game. Most of them don’t even understand what a game is; they think much more about how to develop stores or monetization systems than how to run the game coherently, giving players a story worth playing again, with classes different enough to encourage you to try them because you know they change the perspective of what you played. That’s what we saw with BG3, and that’s why BG3, without ANY DLC since its release, is still in the top 20 or top 30 on Steam today, 3 years after its release.
3 - And finally, we have the ARROGANCE of the leaders of these teams who adopt the premise that ALL criticism must be confronted and that if you are not a player who just says yes to everything, you are “toxic”.
The exaggerated and ARTIFICIAL positivity typical of streamers who MAKE A LIVING AND WHOSE MONEY COMES FROM GAMES is much more toxic because it does not represent the REAL audience. Most people don’t make a living from games, they don’t want to have to spend 10 hours a day, 7 days a week to have the chance to see ONE uber item drop, which is MANDATORY for you to overcome the artificial progress barriers that these games have. For the streamer, these barriers are good because when the player hits them, they go to YouTube to watch videos and tutorials, but for the player, this becomes tiresome if with each new league you have to spend more time looking for tutorials and ready-made builds than SIMPLY sitting down and playing the game.
Well, I’ve gone on too long. I’m sad about the game’s failure, but it wasn’t for lack of warning. Please forgive any errors in the text, as English is not my native language. Best regards and good luck with the loot!
Я порвался и буду писать по-русски. BG3 выстрелила, лицемер на Винке выступил с поучениями для разработчиков, и теперь каждый дурак носится с этим по всему интернету. По секрету скажу BG3 относится к жанру CRPG, а LE относится к ARPG и не просто ARPG, а ещё более специализированному поджанру Диаблоидов. Это конкретная такая разница. Это все равно, что поиграть в БатлФилд и говорить что CS или TF не правильные шутеры, даже не так - RE не правильный шутер.
TBF, LE isn’t an RPG, it’s an ARPG, that A makes it a very different beast. The story is secondary to the action & the loot and I don’t think the game is monetised as egregiously as it could be, nor is the store anything excessive/unusual. If you’re playing LE hoping that it’ll be a story-driven role play game then you’re playing the wrong genre.
I think LE does mostly have that, arguably a lot more than PoE does, on account of the skills in LE not being available to every character, but I get where you’re coming from.
That’s definitely not the case. I don’t agree with EHG on everything, but that’s ridiculously hyperbolic.
That’s kinda fair, though all barriers to progression are artificial.
Not quite sure what you mean here. I may be taking things too literally, but LE doesn’t have any P2W (yet, no idea what the new class will look like, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was OP on launch, which would make it P2W). PoE, while having hideous drop rates (because trading), doesn’t sell (/RMT) gear.
You’re the second person who basically ignored the fact that this is happening this season because they lost control of their new skills and decided to also buff an existing one which already did 100m hits with single slammed items. They have a broken interaction called flow doing 100% MORE dmg to skills that are doing far to much damage already enabling things to be 1 shot. They have bonkers shadows running around generating probably 10x too much ward per shadow giving our rogue classes 10-12k ward, bazillions of damage, insane armor, capped dodge, capped glancing blow etc. They basically broke the game.
I won’t mention they nerfed acid flask and imprints though 
Have they? I didn’t realise, nobody’s talking about that… 
Hahah I’m still so confused by the sprinkler nerf it makes no sense!
I didn’t understand why they threw H&S games into the rpg genre to beginn with. 70% of the game is hacking and slashing mobs while 29% and 1% is putting some points here and there. This isn’t qualifing for an rpg in my book. I thought H&S was well put and rpg or arpg is rather missleading because there is not much rp in H&S games ^^.
Because it grew out of the rpg genre.
Mostly for the same reason why games like Deus Ex or Borderlands or even the Tomb Raider reboots get tagged with the RPG genre as well. Because they have part of the mechanics based on RPGs, even if it’s not the main focus of the game itself.
Basically, if you have some sort of skill system that unlocks depending on your choices (even if you eventually unlock all of them in the end), then it gets tagged with the RPG genre as well.
With 1.000.000.000 dmg number LE if officially a “D4-like” game. And I don’t like to support D4-like poorly balanced (and/or QA tested) product
If most builds were doing that I’d definitely agree with you. I think all of D3’s builds were in that vein.
Ah. D3 D4 no big difference after all, we have a billion issue here
Theres like 3 or 4 builds now that can 1 shot him for 100s of millions - its the most wild season I’ve seen since I started playing with the other very quick kills using the new ammy + frenzy belt as well on multiple builds with budget gear lol
Defining what is a RPG is actually hard, IMO.
It’s a “role playing game”; but that’s way too vague. One could argue that, in Half Life, we play the “role” of Gordon Freeman, but that game is not really seen as a RPG.
So far, the most accepted definition I have seen - and to be honest it’s one I hate - is that, if it has a levelling up mechanic, it’s a RPG.
But I still can’t find one that fits everything we currently call RPGs and that makes sense.
Not really. You don’t have choices that shape that experience. Without choices you’re not actually playing a role, you’re just along for the ride.
An important aspect to remember is that games can have RPG aspects without being actual RPGs. Deus Ex, for example, uses an RPG-like mechanic for the upgrades (where you don’t actually level up, you just farm resources). It gets tagged with the genre even though it’s mainly an FPS because those choices have an impact on your gameplay (do you develop hacking or stealth or combat, etc).
So the main aspect I’ve found that a game needs to be tagged with it (outside of the actual genre) is having choices (builds), usually exclusive ones (either because one blocks another, like class choice, or because you don’t have enough points for everything), that have an impact on how you actually play the game.
This is not the same as unlocks, where you reach a part of the game and now you get something that unlocks a previous part of it, or that gives you a new power that you can now use on enemies.
Nor is it the same as having choices that change the story, because the gameplay remains the same.
That’s the main aspect I’ve seen that’s consistent across the board: having choices that lead to different gameplay experiences.
Time to nerf Focus and Glacier.
This is an interesting definition, better than “if the game has levels, it’s a RPG”. I’m not sure it holds for everything (for example, I think in the current generation first person shooters the playable characters don’t actually get to keep all guns, they have space for like two or three weapons and have then to choose which weapons they will use; and I think some of the Xcom-like tactics simulators have things similar to a skill tree in which people are not expected to unlock everything), but it’s better than everything else I have read.
yes it is, no way you can do that with gear found while leving, this is an obvious twink build
Yes and no. I come from a table top backround and even Baldurs gate 3 leaves me unimpressed as an RPG while it’s most likely the best RPG up to date. H&S is to RPG’s what looter shooters are to the shooter genre. That’s why I always call H&S games H&S games because there is to little RP in it. Look at Diablo and Loki that made the genre what it is. There was no role playing. Now look at LE or D4 or PoE and there is still as litttle RP in those game as it was in the 90s.
Just increasing stats and gobble up loot mirrors the behaviour of the worst roleplayers you can encounter in a tabletop session. That’s absolutely fine for PC games but has little to nothing to do with all that is RP in my book. Yeah but whatever ^^.