Originally i wanted to post an in depth review as i saw someone posting their take, but i realized it doesnt do much for me personally. and i have, in a matter of fact gone back to POE. i m enjoying poe now.
So anyway. heres my wishlist.
CoF lets players target item bases/drops as a passive, similar to blessings.
Weaver tree should be changed to be more akin poe2’s atlas where the tree is split into “general atlas” tree and “league specific” tree. this way you can fine tune all content without feeling like you’re forced to spend valuable points on them. also similar to poe2, the league specific tree points are only obtainable by doing that league specific content.
Allow players to block content for some other benefit. for example i dont like the trapped mages. they dont give me anything that i look for so i rather have them removed but if i need to spend a valuable point to allocate a passive to block them, then it also needs to come with a reward, similar to poe1.
One thing i love is how opposed LE is to POE loot/crafting wise. where its easy to craft and VERY generous. you can get all your crafted gears at a very good point with all t5s. but all of this fun is hampered when at the end game you want to look for specific item bases with at least 1 t7 mod before you start crafting it. and in most cases you wont end up with what you want. forcing you to go hunting again. in this regard, poe’s end game item acquisition suddenly becomes easier than poe. damn bloody ironic. one idea is to buff drops. but i have another idea. 2 ideas in fact. the biggest problem is not that the items are rare. i LIKE that they are rare. their rarity makes them valuable. we always want to feel happy from a rare drop. the real issue is when we FAIL and brick the item. thus there are 2 things that can be changed to prevent this. the first is remove crafting potential entirely. let me craft ONE SINGLE ITEM indefinitely. i m hoarding a ton of crafting materials but i will not use them. i CANNOT use them as i dont have anything i want to use them on. the one item i wanted to use them on no longer has CP. thus removing the entire notion of CP can increase player enjoyment by a huge amount. the other suggestion is to simply make it so that we can revert a unique item’s LP at the cost of losing the mods that it previously had from the previous item. getting certain items with 3 or 4 LP can be VERY difficult. getting them with 3-4 LP AND high roll is even more difficult. if we can just revert the LP, the grind wont be so bad. a huge part of the feels bad moment is similar to POE’s heist. where you can get a valuable item in the heist but if you die you lose it. LOSING an item has a greater impact than gaining one. if i get a 2LP item and RNG blessed me with 1 shitty mod. it feels bad. it will feel less bad if i can retry.
gender options for all classes
no class locked gear
hardest content in the game is balanced around corruption 200. a lower ceiling can allow the devs an excuse to rebalance their game and players will feel less inclined to use a build guide.
GRAPHICS. god dammit. d4/poe1/poe2/tq2 all have better graphics. tho subjective. all my friends say the same thing. LE is ugly.
ensure that we will always get to access league content on permanent.
curb player power. the jump from t5 to t7 gives such a huge boost. no wonder the games not balanced.
thats all i care to think of for now. i m not here to debate. LE has some fierce competition. and this is my personal wishlist. i WILL come back to LE if these get implemented.
currently LE and POE are too similar. and if i m going to be playing zoom zoom and need to hyper optimize, POE wins hands down.
It is, isn’t it? I’m talking about this since 1.0 in the Forum and people close their ears and go ‘lalala’ like 5 year olds.
Exactly, that’s a good option after all.
Sure, the 5 people which dislike crafting itself and don’t understand that a system which loads of options can only function if you get a reliable amount of the results in some way… either direct drops or via crafting resolutions.
And currently the crafting mechanic is really good early game but absolutely atrocious end-game.
This is a unsolvable situation as well without a fundamental rework of the drop-mechanic… since if you empower the crafting substantially at the top-end it won’t resemble the system from the beginning, which is grating. Hence it gotta be the drops.
Exactly.
Who’s buying for it when the studio’s already broke? That’s a ton of effort needed and entirely worthless comparated to the 100 other things needed.
Let’s say 500, then it makes sense. For basically every build with the exceptions of a few atrocious ones.
Yes, that’s because EHG thought it would be very smart to create a exponential curve of power related to tiers of Affixes.
The higher the tier the more power it gives comparatively to before.
This is reverse from what a good system provides. Early tiers easy to access with major effect and the higher up you go the more min-max it is with a tighter and tigher balancing and properly handled scaling methods so despite small numbers the impact is big enough to warrant effort.
No, please no. I don’t want this entire “blank canvas” type of crafting that PoE1 has. I absolutely despise it and items that drop on the floor will not be considered for their stats but for their base. This would also make no sense in the current system without majorly rebalancing the entire crafting system.
I really like the Forging Potential (FP) system and what you are describing never happened to me. Of course over the course of multiple crafts you always have some bad attempts, but that is how the loot and Crafting is designed and balanced. It is essentially a lottery of finding items with desired affixes multiple times and always attempt to craft them. Some will fail, some will succeed. And while there is always some rng involved the system still let’s you apply certain crafting methods really cleverly to make the odds much more in your favor.
While T6 and T7 have huge leaps in individual power (up to 100% compared to T5) they are not that much of a power boost. Virtually all stats in the game run into diminishing return because they are are additive with other affixes. So while the power of a T7 affix can be up to 100% more compared to T5, the power the character gains from that is much much less.
Generally all kinds of systems and stats in these kind of games become less and less impactful the later you get into character progression.
With how Exalted Affixes are balanced numbers wise it kinda counteract that by making them incredibly potent. So you do feel a lot of progress even this late into character progression.
If it’s not this way I would be personally much much less inclined to even try bring my character up to this level of gearing.
Have to completely disagree on this one. LE graphics are way better than the games you named. The games you named have the color pallets of a dreary mud pit; primarily made of brown, black, grey, occasionally there may be some green or red … I can’t stand it. They use the 2005-2008 color themes that were left behind in that era because they were bland, drab, boring and made games less interesting via “gritty realism” I fall asleep playing those games because everything blends together into muck.
LE has color, contrast, it’s beautiful to look at and engaging. LE graphics are definitely better, even if some of those games have some higher res textures. I’ll choose LE graphics any day.
As for the other wishlist items … It sounds like you just want to remove most of the balance from the game, while also complaining that the game’s not balanced … weird suggestions
Name a alternative option without severe reduction of variety from drops.
The more varied the drops - hence number of Affixes, Amounts of Tiers and different Affixes applicable for each respective slot - the bigger the mandatory power of the crafting system.
You can either raise the drop-rate up until stuff is provided right away from simply picking it up (which is flooding the screen completely and dropping FPS into oblivion)
You can ‘cull’ the things which get dropped, hence targeted loot (which imprinting basically is a form of, but it needs to happen in general hence in a very severe form)
Or you can give extreme power to the crafting system to make up for it.
Those are the 3 options. Which do you want most?
Flooding the screen until nothing can be seen.
Reducing the drops to personally catered ones and hence all death of drop-variety.
Or crafting being a blank-slate form.
Pick your poison.
Nonsensical otherwise. What you’re arguing for is ‘I want to sell a cake but eat it anyway’. This is not how it works. You can either do one or the other.
Because the whole darn system is a shit-show since drop-only tiers were included and it has never changed.
So: Obviously it needs a complete rework, it needs one since years.
You never had a item which is the perfect base for a upgrade but you ran out of FP?
Really?
If it would be properly balanced then we wouldn’t have this conversation.
And a lottery in a game is to be stacked in favor of the player, since you’re not playing into the min-max territory it doesn’t apply to you, for everyone going there it absolutely does.
The turnover point is harsh, grating and unfitting for the game.
How do you wanna remove that turnover point? Tell me the solution. The existence is a factual thing and can be mathematically proven. The only changing factor is the personal limit for the perception of when loss versus reward isn’t applying anymore. That it goes beyond the threshold for the vast majority of players is a given though, it’s not without reason one of the most controversal topics regularly spoken about, and if you actively ask people which quite for the reason it’s surprisingly often included in the reasoning.
Loss weights vastly harder then success.
The brain generally leans negative effects 10 times stronger then when you get a relevant form of success. It’s a defensive mechanism to avoid detrimental situations which can be overriden through a myriad of ways which nigh universally lead to having a miserable time despite engagement.
Really?
You wanna tell me that the difference between 15% cast Speed (T5) and 30% Cast Speed (T7) is not a big difference?
100 friggin percent is not ‘a big difference’?
What is then? Hrmm?
1000% 10000%?
That’s a complete ‘nothing burger’ argument you’re providing.
Let’s compare it to the 2 other ‘big’ games with a similar Affix system on the market.
We got PoE and TL:I here for that.
Why not D3/D4? Because their Affix system substantially differs in setup because they are not tiered and hence functional for their simple setup. They only got a roll-range.
We take ‘Life’ as the example of all 3 games here. Chest-Piece since those have the highest rolls commonly.
TL:I
12 tiers (13 with T0, which is a special craft like T8 for LE and hence excluded), only max rolls and the percentile increase are taken for ease of overview.
See how the percentiles are all over the place? That’s why their system isn’t working well. But the numbers towards the end are small and hence it upholds still despite being clearly faulty designed.
Now… the last result provides a damn 38% increase compared to the former Tier. That’s massive and a very awful design.
Earlier Tiers need a ridiculous increase in power and later tiers a ridiculous reduced amount of power. The numbers are staying high throughout the bank.
It’s one of the most foundational principles to be followed and only PoE 1 got it down properly. Base damn math, base damn psychological perception.
Now think for a moment why those large percentiles cause issues. We’re talking about a single Affix by itself after all here, and not the multiplicative layers applying to it further on.
PoE’s 8%? Well, it’s not all too important when you got only that, but if you got another layer (%life) applying to it and are able to invest higher into it as you progress then suddenly those 1000 base life with a modifier of 1 don’t become your 1080 Life simply… they have a modifier of 108% behind it along the line as example.
So now you have the difference between 1000 life and 1166 Life, which is suddenly a 16,6% change. And that makes a really huge difference suddenly, doesn’t it?
But since we’re talking about LE and those modifiers both have high scaling what happens?
Instead of 1000 life you get baseline 1380 life already without multiplication. But since you also now have a 138% multiplier you get 1904,4 Life. And that’s over damn 90% with a single tier total upgrade.
That’s a massive issue. Whoever in EHG designed this is a really bad game designer.
Yep, just in LE they don’t really become substantially less impactful compared to competition. Not even remotely.
Yes, you have 3 layers.
Acquisition difficulty.
Potency of Affix Tiers
Potency of crafting.
And EHG counteracts the potency of Affixes by Acquisition difficulty and Potency of Crafting. Just that it’s a net-negative outcome since both layer multiplicatively reduce the likelyhood of success at multiples. They act like it’s acting additively… but it’s a multiplicative impact and it has never been properly accounted for.
And takes substantial impact away from MTX, which is why it’s so badly received.
You gotta go ‘beyond’ for effects when your base game already provides such distinct visual displays. Your MTX doesn’t ‘shine in the darkness’, they’re just a turned on flashlight in the middle of the day.
And that’s how you get your product to fail despite the distinct MTX not looking bad actually… just where they’re put in they cannot shine in comparison Because everything is a comparison.
Which balance?
You cannot remove things which don’t exist in the first place.
The second one, obviously. Especially because, unlike what you state, it’s not the “death of drop-variety”. You still get drops that you don’t want, of several different types, you just don’t get as many.
So instead of having 1000 items drop and only 1 is interesting to you, you get 1000 items drop and 25 are interesting to you.
You still have variety, you just get less trash.
Kinda like the genesis tree (which is pretty much what I suggested before for CoF, except it would be passive) (also except that it would have minion stuff as well, because GGG hates minions for some reason).
You still get lots of charsi food from the genesis tree, you just get plenty of useful items as well.
It could have been perfectly balanced and we still would have this conversation. No matter how you balance it, there will always be players that will complain that it’s too easy and others that complain that it’s too hard.
I mean, D4 at launch had the most basic crafting system and players still complained that it was too hard.
This is true. The gap between decent endgame gear and great endgame gear is enormous in terms of grinding.
But they have been addressing it by introducing tools for it. So that the turnover point (where it becomes super frustrating) is now closer to the top than it was at launch.
You don’t really need to scrape everything and start everything from scratchand waste months or more of development time (which I know is something you love to do when you’re not pleased with something). You just need to start filling the gaps.
I think you missed his point. Obviously only looking at a single affix in a void it seems like a big boost. But you generally have multiple other sources of that same affix.
So let’s say you have a total of 50% cast speed from passive tree, skill tree and unique affixes. This is a very lowball number, since you can get much more. Adding a T5 15% cast speed you now have 65%.
The difference between having a T5 or a T7 is simply from 65% to 80%. That is less than a 20% increase.
Why ‘obviously’?
Targeted loot has been shown to be rather… lackluster in feeling.
There is no excitement about either the progress or the acquisition, you get it catered to your needs and just have to wait specifically for the drop to happen.
Sure, you can make it class-specific… but that hinders cross-class drops and hence the altaholic aspect, which is literally LE’s last dredges of existence. Prime way to kill it in the current state off completely as every new character would hence be demanded to have a nigh full playthrough happen from scratch and going through the motions of all the individual item acquisition without any progress at all happening… at least the little happening potentially still beyond the absolute initial setup.
Which yeah if properly balanced that works, true.
Do you trust EHG still with balance related issues? I don’t. I provide things which need barely any thoughts invested since I don’t trust this company to go through those notions anymore.
That’s why I suggest the crafting aspect to be changed. Or the drop aspect. No more ‘drop only’ tiers would go a looong way already, then they can mess around with fixing issues from the crafting system after they’ve screwed it up with ‘drop only’ implementation in the first place.
Not with that prevalence.
Not with it leading always to the exact same points.
Not with the exact same people waving it off while the product is literally dieing in front of their eyes and still inaction seems to be the primary modus operandi.
And they’ve basically addressed a good 5% of the issue and at the same time invalidated 20% of overall stuff before that for a net-negative of 15% total
I mean… it’s clearly not the functional direction for EHG with their abilities.
Wouldn’t need to mention it if it were, and I wish it were as much as anyone else.
EHG has done nigh nothing but bandaids since pre-release even. They haven’t even been able to fix basic crap which is problematic since years. They’ve stubbornly defended their systems while leaving them in the base implementation despite clear signs being there of them failing in several areas.
I know long-standing problematic systems exist in nigh every game… but damn… most companies at least address and tinker with those which are a crap-show to stay relevant, don’t have to get it right, just show things are done, that’s a start at least.
The majority of games not addressing their problematic systems at all and ignoring them are commonly failing.
Ah… whoops, kinda a reason as to why EHG sold out, because they’re failing.
And if you universally rise them up by a single tier then the outcome is the same.
Which is still vastly different in scale compared to competition.
Which is the reason why D3/D4 don’t use this system as they didn’t want to mess around with those issues and provide a simplistic system instead.
LE doesn’t provide a simplistic system though but they can’t get their shit together to at least properly implement the one they have.
Because both me and Heavy have said several times in the past that we prefer drop based to craft based.
So given the choice between them, we’d rather have drop based.
Not really. You’re just adjusting the RNG to what you want, you’re not getting rid of it.
The genesis tree doesn’t give you what you want. It just has a better chance of giving you what you want. You’ll still get lots of trash.
So the excitment is still the same, since what you want will still only drop every now and then, you just get less frustration because it never drops.
Why is this relevant? We’re discussing what would be an appropriate system. The way it eventually might get implemented is irrelevant for it.
Otherwise, all your suggestions regarding drops, crafting, MG/CoF are all useless because EHG might not implement them properly.
We’re talking about a way to make the current system work. This suggestion would make the current system work. Whether EHG implements it properly or not (or even at all) is irrelevant for this argument.
And you would trust them to get that balance right when you don’t trust them to get anything else right?
With the same prevalence. As I said, D4 had the same complaints and they were as prevalent, despite the crafting system being as basic as it can be at launch.
It also would, again, like it did in D4.
And, again like in D4, it definitely would. And did.
So yes, no matter what the system used, players would complain to death about it. All it would change is what type of player would complain, since some would be pleased with the change.
It doesn’t matter if it’s PoE1, PoE2, LE, D4, TLI, there are lots of players complaining about the crafting system always.
That will never change unless you remove crafting entirely from the game, in which case players will complain that there is no crafting.
You can now get much better items than you could with 1.0. You can get them much more easily. Which means you’re currently closer to the min-max BiS item than you were before.
Therefore it wasn’t a net negative, it was a net positive.
If it were a net negative then items would be harder to get than in 1.0, which simply isn’t true. Havocs alone made getting your min-maxxed items much easier than they used to be, especially for rare suffixes where it was basically impossible to get before.
Nemesis, imprints, the crafting woven echoes, all those have increased your changes of getting a better item.
Which is why it’s not uncommon to get a great 2xT7 when in 1.0 it was basically impossible.
That’s what PoE did as well until it coalesced into a more robust system.
You keep losing your affix when crafting? Let’s add fractured.
You want to only roll a prefix/sufix? Let’s add that it can’t be changed.
You want a guaranteed affix? Let’s add essences.
Each league they would add a new functionality to crafting to basically bandaid an issue players had with crafting.
Didn’t you read what I wrote? You would get most of your cast speed from passive tree, skill tree or unique affixes. Those can’t be altered.
So no, the outcome isn’t the same. You get a bunch of bonuses from those 3 sources, meaning that your gear affix is already way less than 100% total. So increasing your affixes by 100% wouldn’t increase your stat by 100% because affixes aren’t 100% in the first place.
And as usual: Not talking about personal preferences, I’m talking about ease of implementation, impact and overall effect on the playerbase as a whole.
If you and Heavy are gone nobody gives a shit.
If the game is gone loads of people do.
Simple as that.
Means other stuff for other characters is significantly reduced. That leads to a solo-character gameplay style outside of uniques.
And that kinda goes against the current setup.
Sure, if there would be any proper stable fotting for the game to bridge over this as a alternative then ok… but the major issue is that very very vast changes need to happen (which needs extreme implementations for anything exalted and beyond already in this case) and hence a universally effective things which doesn’t hinder that is simply - for the moment - the better option.
Because I take into consideration the capability of the company behind those implementations rather then pitching lofty dreams. Which is fine from time to time… but this is a fundamental immediate issue which needs to be solved yesterday already.
Capability plays a role. It’s not about them ‘potentially implementing them’ or not… it’s about them not fucking it up in such a grandiose way that it makes the situation even worse then it already is.
Yeah? Because that’s really a no-brainer.
Numerical changes for Affixes.
No drop-only.
Removal of any items affecting drop-only aspects.
Numerical change of acquisition rate in total.
Reduces the evenue to adjust and hence to screw up. More turning parts more breaking parts.
Absolutely!
Which is simply a increase in drop-rate for CoF, or acquisition through the market for MG.
It does nothing for the fundamental system.
Then we got 1.1 Nemesis, which absolutely fucked up the campaign beyond end, and destroyed a good chunk of the 1 LP crafting to boot with any non-rare uniques because fishing for a rare Affix there is easier then acquisition through a drop rather often.
Then 1.2 implemented the weaver system… and that introduced so so many new bandaids for the long-standing problems which liiiightly nudge along the issues without solving a single one of that.
Could’ve used the time to fix the fundamental issues instead of wasting time. Because no drop-rate change will change the disparity of acquisition, you need to address each area where it happens individually then.
So currently we need to address early exalted items without trivializing them. EHG trivialized legendary acquisition with 1 LP though, so that makes exalted acquisition in comparison more important, which screws over the 2 LP and 3 LP range since there it shifts back.
So that needs to be addressed without affecting the 1 LP area.
Then we need to address acqusition of higher exalted items without the early exalted item acquisition being affected somehow, how? No clue, would need a ‘T7 only’ thing to exist for example.
Then we need to get the whooole range up with that.
Then we also need to take into consideration the severe power disparity compared to other games when progressing individual affixes. They’re 3-5 times stronger per item in relation to total player power comparatively. This creates a steep curve for progression. And hence creates a very harsh turnover point. So that needs to be addressed.
And so on and so forth.
I simply think ‘remove drop-only’ would be better since hence all the mess related to LP items can be backpedaled… if you can craft up to T7 simply and T8 is a ‘special’ Tier (which gets adjusted when new tiers get implemented in the future) and the percentiles for rising the power get adjusted properly once… then all those bandaid things are not necessary suddenly… you don’t need to implement solutions for problems you’ve thrown overboard after all.
Streamlined, no distinct loss in complexity, adherance to the target audience, smoother progression curve overall. Vastly reduced power ceiling. Scaling options for the future still available as well.
It’s really really easy to start there. But really hard with proper targeting comparatively.
All their systems affect a single aspect, outside of the newer ones, which design-wise are actually worse hence since they ignore parts of the itemization.
For example bestiary was too targeted and too powerful, hence it got bashed into the ground. Bad initial design simply, worse that people feel they missed out on getting to mess with the power when it was available.
Essences provides a single Affix, yes. Which are the fundamental ones, which was implemented after increasing base-types since now RNG increases (more base types is a direct multiplier to acquisition time of a specific item after all) and hence they reduced the RNG for that by sidestepping it. LE has nothing similar since we have FP. You need the base rolls already present or you’ll loose with nigh guarantee. This is the problem. Essences simply are a RNG reduced solution, affecting only chaos orbs which became less valued hence which was a problem anyway because of the crafting bench needing chaos and hence allowed broader access to people, which is actually a net positive.
Delve with the fossils did the same, more targeted even.
Then we got Synthesized items, which flopped for good reason.
Then we got Harvest, another target crafting mechanic, this one was a mess. Nowadays decent as it goes with the most common tags simply. Also it re-implemented synthesized bases, in a more streamlined and proper way of acquisition by allowing any item to be turned into a synth base.
Up to this point there existed only a single major issue. That was influenced items, which were a mess to work with, increasing RNG substantially because of new Affixes. And the diverse ‘special’ drops like Delve Affixes and Incursion Affixes, as minor ones.
Then the fracturing orb came, which is a risky RNG mechanic but at the beginning of a craft. Get good mod, try to fixate it, at the downside of never being able to influence it. Powerful stuff with downside, works.
And then GGG realized that the increasing influence types went out of hand (they did always, but even more so by then) and with the implementation of the recombinator all major issues were solved. Double influenced item? No issue anymore if it breaks, you can re-try with another broken outcome and get a good one nonetheless. Wanting a 3 T1 prefix/suffix item? No issue either, take item and have a decent chance to get a result up to that stage. Sidesteps all the major crafting mechanics but is costly in itself, hence opportunistic only. And the currency for that is not tradeable, hence SSF style even in trade.
And now we got LE which had the ability to see all the issues GGG struggled with as trailblazers. And what did they do?
They did the same exact shit instead of learning. So nah… ‘but GGG had the same issues!’ is the most nonsensical argument one can bring. Obviously they did. They had nobody doing it before them. They paved the way. And EHG? They head-dive into the underbrush instead of using the damn road! They got no excuse for it! Unlike a trailblazer for follow-ups there is no excuse. You can excuse failure only when you’re a trailblazer, as otherwise you’re simply lacking preparation.
Does it universally uphold?
What about res?
What about health?
What about armor?
What about inc damage?
Is it universally the same?
Also there is a reason why PoE is so highly praised in regards to Affixes. The passive tree provides the direction of the build in PoE, but the scaling happens on gear. Unlike in LE where gear plays a secondary role… unless it’s specific Affixes, which are core needed ones… so that’s not well upholding. And some are in the middle, needing high scaling from gear but having also some on the tree. It’s all over the place.
Use solely the passive tree in poE and your character is crap. Only through drops (jewels, gear, gems) it becomes outstanding. Gear is king, it’s a loot based game after all, it caters to loot acquisition and adjustment. LE… is something, a loot based game where the passives are not solely defining the build direction but make or break viability entirely. That’s not good design direction. The power disparity there is huge.
Depends on the class.
Depends on the build.
Depends on the Affix.
Because in LE everything is relative and a mess, there is no ‘universal guidelines’ there. Need far less defenses outside of DR with a VK or pally since those classes get defenses shoved up their ass for example.
Meteorite builds for example are extremely scaled through massive ‘more’ multipliers in the skill tree itself, hence your ‘increased’ damage on gear is ridiculously powerful and since accessible on several parts of gear it makes up a difference of several hundred percent as a outcome. 10k meteorites or 5 mil ones? Both exist side by side.
You presented us with 3 options and literally asked which one we want the most. That is personal preference. It will always be personal preference.
Ease of implementation is the same for both if you’re doing it from scratch. With the systems already in place in LE, it’s much easier to fix the drop based than to scrap everything and do a completely new system which then also has to be balanced from scratch and worked out all the kinks.
Effect on playerbase is the same either way. Some players prefer drop based, some prefer craft based. That’s just a matter of who EHG wants to target as their playerbase.
Neither is inherently better or wose, it just can be implemented better or worse and different players will like each differently.
You seem to be under the impression that a target farming system will mean only stuff you want will drop. It won’t. Most drops will still be stuff you don’t want for your character (and thus potentially want for another character). You just reduce the amount of trash.
So the stuff for other characters isn’t significantly reduced. It’s just slightly reduced in exchange for a significant boost in your useful drops.
Like I said, if 1 out of 1000 drops aren’t useful to you and you increase that to 25 in 1000, then you have 25x better gear and the chance of stuff dropping for other characters is virtually the same.
The game could simply tweak the drops to make overall quality better, but it’s very hard to know what someone will want in any given build, so a system that let’s you target, like the genesis tree, is ideal.
They don’t. A simple genesis tree (which I again point out should have already been in the game as what CoF should have been, but can also work for both) will go an extremely long way into making most issues go away.
You suggest changes all the time without considering how well EHG would implement them. Huge changes to MG that you always discuss from a “this is how it has to be implemented” point of view.
Huge changes to crafting with the same point of view.
You always discuss changes with “This would be better if it were this way”. Which is what we’re doing here.
If you actually took into account your assessment of EHG’s capabilities, you wouldn’t always be asking for a complete scrap and rework of complex systems, you would be suggesting simple to implement solutions to the problems the current systems have.
Because if you have doubts about EHG’s ability to implement a simple genesis tree, then I’m sure you definitely don’t believe they could ever pull off your MG changes. So why suggest them, if that’s your stance?
So changing stuff from drop to craft only, which will require changing all tier ranges, allowing you to craft up to T7, changing the drop rate of both items and crafting materials is easy to balance, but adding something that literally changes nothing else except the drop quality is hard?
I think it’s much easier to adjust the system you already have and fill in the gaps of the drop only issue than it is to change 3-4 systems in unpredictable ways and then try to balance that.
No it isn’t. You got extra options to craft the item you want. Like Havocs allowing you to finally get that exalted rare affix which was almost impossible to get. Or the woven crafts which let you change attributes, reroll items, etc. Or the glyph (which should be a rune) that lets you change bases.
Those aren’t increases in drops. Those are effectively making previously trash drops into something potentially great.
Sure. But that is something that the crafters will like and will play the game for, and it’s something that the players that like drop based progression will dislike and leave the game for.
Changing from drop based to craft based means that items are no longer exciting because the item that drops is never the item you’ll use. You just want a base and then you work on it until you get what you need. The other drops of the same base are now pure trash. You just need 1.
So while that might get rid of a bunch of problems, it also turns the game into a distinctly different one. One where drops aren’t really important anymore. At which point, why would you even have CoF anymore?
Sure, if you want to get rid of CoF and the players that like drops. And if you want to turn LE into PoE.
No you don’t. Not with the additions that were made. Again, Havocs and Insights allow you to pick a good base with a crappy exalted or a bad base with a good exalted, respectively, and turn it into good base with a good exalt.
Don’t have anything to do with your 1LPs? Reroll them for a chance of improving or, if it fails, for a chance to reroll on the Nemesis.
Unique with bad rolls? You can reroll it now as well.
They have been answering the issues the playerbase has presented to them. Can’t get the affix you want? Havocs. Can’t get the base you want? Insights (though, again, it should be a rune to be effective). Etc.
Also, I find it funny that you keep throwing shade on EHG’s capabilities of implementing things properly when GGG is constantly doing utterly broken stuff all the time, like nemesis, harvest, bestiary, etc.
You mean like GGG did with PoE2? Strange that they’re such trailblazers and did everything so right, but then couldn’t do the same thing for PoE2.
It’s almost like creating a full system like PoE’s from scratch would take a few years to implement and would actually be easier to implement if, like you did in PoE1, you just implemented the basis of it and then, like in PoE1, you incremented it gradually.
Pretty much, yes. It’s very rare to have an affix where the single source is your gear. So having a case where an affix accounts for 100% is so rare that it can simply count as an anomaly.
Sure, but that also means that your build can’t be good unless you have good gear. If you have mediocre gear, your build is mediocre.
In LE, since the scaling is shared between skill tree, passive tree and gear, even with mediocre gear you can have a good build.
In fact, you can’t do anything with just white gear in PoE. More likely you can’t even finish the campaign. But you can in LE. Because a lot of power comes from the skill tree.
Both end up in the same place (you need extremely good gear for your build to be extremely good) but the progression is easier in LE where mediocre gear gets you further in the game.
I mean, the drop-pool would still be screwed, it’s open if the variance in drops could be fixed with a targeted drop-system added to it, that needs loads of fine-tuning, hence… more places to break and EHG.
But yeah, fine, the argument about personal preference there, definitely good, worded it badly from my side.
That I disagree with. Variance of drops reduced substantially for cross-class drops (or you need to raise quality of drops significantly to a ridiculous degree, which would be pure power creep and invalidate former stages of the game). That’s a big big thing.
Substantially more of that drops.
If you remove cross-class drops (which is one of the biggest reductors in acquisition rate for the stuff your character needs) or do a quality increase is one and the same.
The magnitude of it would need to be significant though to make a impact. And it’s a endless catchup game, just what EHG did all the time up to now. Worked marvelously, didn’t it?
So the alternative is only the cross-class removal to a major degree, which would’ve the same effect in perception. For the simple options.
Then we got the next option, and that one is complex as heck. It is a system based on your personal progression through gearing and the game, adjusting loot drops accordingly to fit for you personally relative to that.
Now we got 2 problems. If it’s personally catered to equipment stage then that would screw over MG entirely, hence it’s already a goner, entirely. Cannot be implemented, breaks market principles and snowballs good players beyond any reasoning.
So we only got the scaling of gear leftover. And then that demands a extremely tight balancing of progression in power between characters. Because now someone reaching 1000c will get a ridiculous amount of better stuff compared to someone in 300c. So any class not able to reach those stages is immediately not viable anymore based on progression perception. Then all of Abombs arguments about ‘1000c is the only starting line’ actually become true.
We’re not talking a ‘measly’ 2500% drop-rate change at the top-end.
Depending on stage it needs a shift of friggin 10000% or more even, that’s how awful the current state of the progression is And it can’t just start high into corruption either, it needs to start the moment exalted items begin to drop, hence level 90 monoliths.
It trivializes content nigh entirely since EHG based all their stuff beyond 150c according to the absolutely messed up situation they created. All hinges in the exalted mess, entirely.
That’s why I state ‘remove the exalted mess itself’. easiest solution. Highest impact, least work, least balancing needs actually even.
Yeah, it’s nice, isn’t it? EHG screwed up even that. Imprinted exalted items - which are the major reason progression wise to use it - drop at a trickle comparatively to uniques. Since several aspects are influenced… like item base, keeping the individual affixes and even needing distinct Affix spreading for a proper result this leads to basically nobody outside of in-depth knowledgeable people having a singular chance. Who the heck knows you need 7701 items to imprint with the best results possible for example? And not by 1 or 2%… nah… it’s a good 40-50% higher reward chance comparatively, I think it was even more.
I mean… it’s good such a system exists… but heck… the system is a mess.
Yeah, we could need more of that, but first the existing thing should be fixed properly… so another construction site, right?
When will that happen? 2030? Maybe?
Mhmm, sure.
Will it be as ‘proficiently’ implemented as the supposed to be rather simplistic imprint system which is anything but?
Yep, I do!
And I stated ‘here I don’t’.
So?
MG is not a ‘this game breaks overnight’ situation. Market can be shit but the core gameplay still works after all. Also you can avoid it at least by going CoF. So there’s avenues.
Which avenue is left when the core itemization is a mess?
What alternative?
Only one: Another game
Yep, welcome to here!
My solution for EHG: Throw basically all you did overboard, it’s shit. Use 5% of the work for a simple system from scratch without all the detailed stuff along the line where exceptions from exceptions and those exceptionals exceptions for those happen until they become common.
Hence a universal simplistic system.
That’s how a drop-system is supposed to work. Allowing universal scaling which is easy to adjust and not hinging on 20 different aspects where not getting the ratio right messes all up at once.
Then add the complex stuff on top, like a trade system fitting accordingly which doesn’t trivialize content like Lightless Arbour entirely and double-dips with the other faction. But that’s kinda a massive step ‘above’ compared to the friggin fundamental game system of a loot-based game, isn’t it?
Yep.
Because having drop-rate, numerical range and less crafting materials is definitely easier then the at least 10 avenues which interact with each other at once in a balanced state through a singular system which is supposed to magically fix that… based on which values?
The current system has fundamentally failed. No talking around that.
Which is a reduction of drop-variance by foregoing the repetition of it. And it still is not even enough despite that
I mean… you mentioned before ‘it’s all fine’. Then Havoc came along, the savior!
And it’s still not even remotely fine and easily visible. So how bad had it be to be before when you said ‘all’s fine!’?
What else then ‘cope’ is it?
Ok… lemme get this straight.
Up until monolith level 90, the last normal timeline monolith which isn’t empowered… it’s fine to have exactly that happening.
But when exalted items are starting to drop it’s not?
So… a pre-existing premise which already caused you to invest 10+ hours into the game (likely 30+ as a new player rather) is suddenly not good enough and we need to throw it completely upside down where the common progression for your item isn’t upheld anymore?
Mhmm…
I’ll leave it at that. Because exactly that is a implementation of ‘drop only’. It cannot be adjusted like you adjusted all your items for the whole game and reduces options simply. Hence it takes your formerly used tools away to a hefty degree and introduces new ones.
Why?
Scaling too bad? Maybe should’ve handled that then!
Was it always planned to be that way? Then why introduce the player to a alternative progression system before throwing it into the bin?
It’s nothing besides grating and misleading.
The damn game has always been primarily craft-based until exalted items came, for years. It only changed with that out of the blue and has caused nothing but troubles since, up to the game starting to completely fail by now.
So yeah, sure. Broken game clearly better then coherrent experience from start to end. Could just start with the system from the get-go with drop-only rising accordingly… but nah, instead it’s this absolutely half-assed system which has no fundamental scaling mechanics applied to it as it was solely tacked on top without rhyme or reason.
Sure, TL:I is just a PoE clone clearly as well, right?
And it’s all just Pong+!
Leave the nonsense out the door, your argument has no basis. It doesn’t become PoE because the game follows coherrent design aspects. All you argue for is ‘let broken design aspects stay not because they function but because they’re solely unique’. Not even form over function… that’s ‘loving shit because it’s different’ already.
Really? So you have a reasonable chance simply when you drop a random 2 T7 item which has all Affix slots filled and the wrong Affixes for both T7 ones as well?
Mhmm…
Yeah…
Please provide a math example and tell me the percentile chance here. If you can prove that I’ll say immediately ‘kudos’ to you and leave it at that. You’ve then at a second’s notice converted me to your ways so to speak.
But let’s be real here, the second you start the actual math example where anything else but 2 common T7 Affixes are on that item as a end-result you won’t even get over a 0,5% chance of a crafting success.
And dropping 200 of the same base with 2 T7 on it? Yeah, good luck getting that in any reasonable timeframe Hence the game is ‘over’ when you reach that stage.
Yeah, and the acquisition rate of those things all don’t properly uphold decently as you progress.
Havocs work really well on the lower ranges, on anything more then a single exalted Affix it becomes very troublesome, but by then it doesn’t matter since you cannot use em anyway as you get no items to use em on commonly.
Insights don’t exist anymore, you mean Demise?
Same issue.
Also both use FP, nothing counteracts the usage-need for the pure RNG rolls you have to go through, either by re-crafting the free Affixes for Havoc or by hail-mary rolling with Demise, doesn’t allow more then to create a potential imprint base… which then has the imprint issues following and people even thinking the system doesn’t even work as stuff neither drops with the same Affixes nor the same base fairly often. Not that it doesn’t get upgraded… it looks like a random item at times which has nothing to do with the imprint.
Then we got the LP re-roll, which shouldn’t even be in need of a thing. Why? Because it’s a singular system without effects on it. If the LP acquisition rate is too low then those numbers need to be directly tweaked, having a pure RNG reducer which only affects a single avenue which has no cross-interactions anyway is one absolute nonsensical design. Complexity for complexity sake, busywork simply, and not even with a good UI. Since it’s endlessly usable why not friggin provide a single UI where you can throw in as much as you want and get the respective results returned after? Nah… you gotta re-fill the small window over and over and pick up those items individually. Why drop em in the first place? It’s not like it’s a sudden ‘Euraka, a Kestrel dropped!’ moment… you give one in… you get one back, simply display the damn LP and the shard you get, that’s it.
Then we have unique rerolls, which are so damn rare they don’t have any meaning early on anyway… where you would reasonably need them.
And by the time you get a top-tier unique you’ll have acquired a good chunk of em instead as it simply wasn’t worth wasting those because of the rarity… and then you need a second item of the same type, which is fine… but kinda fails to fulfill the purpose of re-rolling rare uniques well if you gotta acquisition now both the unique and the re-roll option. Why have it be so rare if you already got a cost applied? Which is the copy of the unique. Makes zero sense.
They have not even fixed the core issues the game has. Really? I’m not usually throwing those terms out, but in that case it’s either simply copium or white-knighting. Pick your poison there.
The game really does well with listening to the playerbase so much!
Don’t joke around… if they had properly listened to what people have actually said, not steered blindly into a iceberg ahead by being stubborn and properly doing their research we wouldn’t have the situation we have.
But we have it.
Actually they implemented completely new problems! And yep, remove lead dev, get weird defensive delusional new lead dev… voila, repeated problems.
They got it forced back - a bit - into position, not perfectly and not a good look for em… but comparatively?
I mean come on… you cannot compare a ferrari with a friggin lader and say ‘but ferrari has issues too!’ That’s what it feels like.
**That’s the damn issue **
But the second problem following that is that nigh universally some aspects actually do have this problem.
Void Melee damage.
Without it’s trash. Hence Apathy’s Maw + the LP roll is basically the whole damage of this build. We’re talking solely from the weapon it being a difference of 16700% difference in power for Void Cleave as there isn’t a single flat taken otherwise, we only have a miniscule amount on the belt. If we take Warpath itself in then it’s ‘only’ a difference of a measly 654% difference, true true!
Attack speed, 60% difference alone on the gloves, total of the build.
But then we have stuff like Armor, 155 flat on the damn tree. That’s basically what the helmet and armor together provide. But since - for some reason - the Sentinel is just nonsensically tanky with armor (and that applies to everything outsides DoT’s after all) we get so so much solely from the helmet that it’s bonkers, the base… not any Affixes. That’s shit design when your Affix becomes entirely worthless because a single base item overrules it by such a hefty degree. No clue what EHG thought there plainly spoken in comparison to other classes.
It’s absolutely bonkers how awful the math is handled in this game.
Loot based ARPG.
Get the fuck out if you’re not playing for loot, wrong genre, screw off.
happens in every forum. in POE, many trumelee enjoyers like myself keep complaining melee is bad, citing strike skills. trumelee enjoyers see skills like lightning strike more as projectiles, and slam skills as basically aoe spells using a melee weapon instead of a wand.
for YEARS many staunch defenders would defiantly say melee is fine and downplaying all the feedback. POE2 was supposed to improve/fix melee and was supposed to be an expansion to the game giving us more classes and ascendancies on top of what we already had. ggg realized that trumelee in poe1 is so royally fucked, that they needed to redesign boss encounters to cater to melee specifically as part of fixing melee. which they realized was so much work, they should just make a new game. hence they made the decision to split the game which caused many players to get pissed off (not enough players to cause an outrage as many more didnt care). GGG was humble and in many podcasts they revealed that a huge reason why they split the game was they needed to design the game around melee and poe1 had too many things to rework if they were to make both compatible. they also admitted that melee was “not good”.
after all that. and even when i point that out, some idiots would still say “but actually melee is fine”.
so yeah. its frustrating but i learned that not everyone online are smart people. i myself am very biased with my opinions.
its a huge shame really, as a player i have tons of crafting materials. i have a plan in my head. first i ll do this, then when i get to this point i do that. then when thats done i can refine and to this perhaps try and seal an affix or mirror it etc. I WANT TO DO THAT. but the reality is i manage to do many things but then suddenly realize i have very little FP left or just hit 0. all my excitement just left my body. farming that ONE item was already hugely difficult. its akin to winning the lottery. not completing your craft is like downgrading the lottery winnings into a 5th place prize. its still really good but its a huge downgrade that makes you feel salty.
lmao true. id put it on very low priority. in fact i m actually of the opinion that i prefer games where you have one base character model for male and female regardless of class. but most modern d-likes love to lean into class fantasy.
49% players playing sentinel. its reflected in uber abberoth clear data back then. with only ONE person clearing using an acolyte class (i cant recall) but the number was small.
also like what you have elaborated on. T7’s increase of stats is stupid huge. if EHG was to bring it down to a more proper level, it would take a way a huge amount of player power. hence it would also make sense for them to drop the difficulty of the content.
this bundled with the fact that some classes simply have a huge advantage over others, debating what corruption level is kinda pointless. if it does get rebalanced, who knows. even c200 can feel like c500 after the nerfs/reworks.
the reason why i would lower the ceiling is so players dont need to fully min max the build. some room of error and fun should be allowed. i havent cleared uber abby but i m pretty sure if i followed a meta build i could just face tank him.
i will admit, some of the locations in LE looks beautiful AND interesting. and if i m being honest, it is quite good compared to many indie games. but that said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. you may not like poe/d4 etc’s art direction. and yeah i will agree that in comparison most areas of those games are dull. but to me it works better. many different colours can be distracting. it can become harder to see spell effects when everything is visually screaming for your attention. theres a reason why in design a flat and dull canvas is sometimes used, as they want to carefully direct your eyes to specific parts of the design.
a painting is nice to admire and look at over a long period of time. but in an action packed game where tons of visual affects are happening at once, i really prefer the ability to quickly differentiate and tell what is important.
all that aside. i have many friends who tried LE. they all did not like how LE looks. and many simply label it as ugly. look at this
this is POE’s FREE armorset challenge reward. are you honestly telling me that ANY armourset in LE paid or otherwise looks better than this? if you say yes then i would simply say you have a very niche appreciation of art. i would be willing to bet most people would agree with me. all the armoursets in LE including the most expensive paid ones cant even hold a candle against poe’s FREE mtx.
so is s2 50% players were using sentinel. right… thats balanced.
Because that’s what the game is positioning itself as, no need to go ‘the extra mile’ but being able to… but not being forced to.
Currently you can’t even deal with stuff when you got the extra mile sadly
Don’t worry, as a MG player you’ll wish you went CoF… because the end-line is actually earlier since you cannot get any proper exalteds to slap on those lovely uniques.
What usage is 3 LP if your core Affixes you need cannot be at the best tiers on it since nothing exists in the whole community which is for sale?
And that’s a major problem with the difference between PoE/TL:I and LE as well.
All 3 use the same Affix system, but only in LE you cannot endlessly craft on your base until your resources are used up for it. This is a mechanic which is supposed to sidestep the issues regarding RNG, to allow ‘proper tries’ to get a good result in the end. The sole game with this itemization setup in the whole genre which does provide you with repeated and substantially overwhelmingly often happening permanent failures is LE.
PoE and TL:I both acknowledge that the chance of failure can give value in a risk/reward based situation… but they both put those options beyond high-end gambling mechanics to optimize gear, not to create - even overwhelmingly powerful - base gear items.
The top-end where this applies is really really small actually, in LE it’s the vast majority of the gameplay sadly. That’s too much simply, by far.
lmao, yeah i can honestly admit that my build struggles to even do c250. but the caveat is it is MY build. i made it. and i m honestly happy i got it up that high. back when the game released i was struggling at c100. being able to clear c200 is quite a personal achievement to me. so when abby was released it felt like all my hours were not enough. all my effort and gearing was not enough. my build that i was proud to make was not enough.
and some random friend of mine who barely played the game can just follow a build guide and put moderate amount of time farming for gear can clear uber abby while facetanking him.
lol damned if i do, damned if i dont. since that is the case, it really makes cof/mg seem like a weird feature that didnt really fix anything.
this is also in line to why i prefer things to have a lower ceiling. min maxing would be more of a desire than a requirement. i like the idea of decent players being able to clear the toughest content but may face difficulties. players who min max should have less difficulties or even a faster clear time. currently that is not the case. min maxers usually either have defences that match or cannot be overcome by the boss’s damage, or they have so much damage the boss melts in a short amount of time.
the way i see things is we should not be proud that a player can hit c1000. we should be concerned that the player can hit c1000. its shows that the particular player is performing way beyond the majority of players. this should be looked into. but modern d-like game developers tend to make tougher content instead rather than figure out if anything is overperforming.
similarly whenever i see players saying they enjoy the game but lament that there should be harder content. i feel that most gamers have forgotten the notion of balance. players should not want the game to be harder. if the game was balanced, end tier content would be hard even with optimized gear.
This reminds me of the furore about D3’s colour pallete & the massive bitching it caused, which is likely why D4 doesn’t look like it was designed by Fisher Price.
And you are being disingenuous since you know the incremental benefit of that t7 cast speed in an actual build isn’t anywhere close to 100%. You know the adage that “statistics don’t lie but liars use statistics”?
Only for the t5, if that were dropped down to 85 then it’d be a 13% increase which would be broadly in line with everything else from t7 given their apparent preference for multiples of 5. T8 is clearly the cut off point where the impact of upgrading is reduced. I’m surprised you didn’t notice that, but it would be clearer on a graph.
Yes, which is smaller than all of the preceeding ones. You can quite clearly see that all 3 games have smaller incremental increases as you get to better tiers, it’s just that the impact of that is less in LE.
Yes, flat melee damage (& flat crit) are the exceptions to that rule since the other sources are so limited. Doesn’t mean the rule is invalid.
People can be smart without agreeing with you. Just because they believe that “melee is fine” in PoE doesn’t mean they’re stupid, it just means that they don’t restrict melee to anything within a foot or two of the character. I agree with you on that, but I get where they’re coming from, they are just ok with using “” around melee in a discussion.
If you change it to craft based and have to change all the tier values, that also requires lots of fine tuning. No difference there. Lots of places to break as well.
Hard disagree. You don’t need to remove class drops nor do you need to significantly reduce drops for other characters or other uses.
You don’t need that much. But even if you did, that’s only 4x more my value. You still get a significant increase while not getting a significant decrease in the rest of the loot.
You go from 1/1000 useful items to 100/1000 useful items.
However, the rest of the pool doesn’t have a significant decrease. You get a 10% reduction shared across multiple item types and potential drop uses.
So you get 100x better items and the items for rogue will drop 2% less, the items for sentinel will drop 2% less, etc.
That’s not a significant drop. You’ll still have lots of variety.
Removing exalts also means removing legendaries. That’s just a big nerf across the board.
Also, removing exalts would require changing Nemesis, TS, primordial affixes and overall drops. That’s not the least work you seem to think it is.
It’s always easier to avoid changes that affect multiple systems at once and instead introduce a new one to fill the gaps.
That’s not a good argument though. That’s just following the PoE route you always say EHG should follow. They added a mechanic that lets you get the stuff you want, you just need to know how it works.
Basically the same as PoE. They added fractured, essences, orbs, recombinator, and yet 90% of the playerbase has no idea how to use them and will instead buy the item someone else crafted.
But yes, imprints could be a lot better. Or, preferably, a genesis tree system. Which, again, is what I have suggested in the past for CoF instead of prophecies. Getting a passive influence on drops where you have a bit of control over item type, affixes, etc.
But hopefully with minion affix choices as well, since it’s baffling why GGG excluded that from theirs.
That’s irrelevant for this discussion, as I said before. We’re discussing what is required to fix the current state of the game. This is a solution that would fix it. If EHG botches the execution, then we will discuss what is required to fix that at that point.
Much like we need some control over idols and the solution they implemented this season wasn’t good. They just need to change letting us lock an affix in the idol reroll in tombs and we’re golden.
The solution wasn’t a good one because it’s basically just another drop every few minutes, but it did open the way to a simple solution which is locking the affix you want and reroll the other one.
So we discuss what the best solution for the current problem is. When/if EHG does implement it, if it has issues, then we’ll discuss what the best solution for those is.
That is not a simple solution, definitely. And if you doubt they have the ability to apply a system to fill in the gaps, I don’t know how you have any confidence in them implementing a new system from scratch.
Not to mention doing that would delay development for half a year, at least.
It really hasn’t. You’re just hyperbolizing because of your distaste of it, mostly because it’s not PoE.
The current system works perfectly fine until you hit the min-max wall. That’s when you have issues, mostly due to scarcity of desired exalted gear. If you provide a way to reduce that scarcity at that point, then you solve the issues.
Until you hit the wall, everything works perfectly.
It actually isn’t. That’s the issue. You still get the same drop-variance. The drops didn’t change because of Havocs. You just increased the pool of useful items.
An exalted with a T7 “cast speed for totems”, which previously was mostly useless unless you were doing a totem build, now is suddenly useful.
You don’t lose the drops for other classes, because the cast speed for totems affix drops as much as before, now you just have the option to either use it for another build or to simply change the affix into one your build can use.
So the drop pool remains exactly the same as before, but havocs increase your useful drops pool instead.
Not sure what you mean by that. I rarely use crafting until I’m in empowered monos trying for good exalted gear. Until then drops are enough.
This might surprise you, but not all players like PoE’s craft/trade based gameplay. I certainly don’t. I very rarely craft in PoE and when I do it’s almost always just using the bench to fill in resistances or other needs.
Which means that in PoE, if I want good gear, my only option is trade. Because crafting isn’t an option for me.
This is mainly the reason why I burned out on PoE and stopped playing for a few years and why I still can’t play for more than a week or so each season.
This season I might play a bit more because of the genesis tree, since that does allow me to get better items.
I play D2 more than I play PoE. And D2 is very heavily drop based. And it has atrocious RNG. And yet, I have a lot more fun playing D2 than I do playing PoE.
Yes, it is. I have more fun with the broken mess of drop only LE currently has than I do with PoE with its perfect crafting system.
And that is because I don’t like crafting unless it’s a very simple system.
LE is one of the few games that is actually drop based. If it changes to craft based I’ll likely simply stop playing it and go back to D2/GD/TQ2.
Because not everyone likes the same thing. You like craft based and that’s fine. I like drop based and that’s fine. You have games that are already craft based. So stop trying to change drop based ones into craft based ones and instead focus on fixing the issues LE has with the current system.
Like I said, you don’t need to completely change the systems. Filling in the gaps is enough.
That’s not a good example, because obviously it is. TLI is basically “Let’s make a P2W PoE lite”. Almost all its systems are copied from PoE only and very little from other games.
But my point is that all your suggestions are doing what PoE does.
Fixing MG? Look at PoE and do what GGG does.
Fixing crafting? Look at PoE and do what GGG does.
Fixing progression? Look at PoE and do what GGG does.
All your suggestions always boil down to this. And not even GGG wants to do what GGG did in PoE1, as we see on PoE2.
Firstly, the premise wasn’t “You can’t do anything with an exalted which has everything wrong”. Your premise was “You need the base rolls already present”. Which is not the same thing.
Secondly, that will depend on what you consider reasonable, which is not the same thing I consider reasonable. In a drop based game, if you fail 10 items in a row that’s acceptable to me.
And yes, the higher in progression you are, the more you will fail and the less useful drops you’ll get.
That’s very reasonable to me, since what you’re describing is a BiS item. And a 3xT7 should have an even lower chance.
Yes. That’s the current ceiling in LE. Also, you don’t need the same base. You have insights.
Not to mention that 95% of the time, the exalted base is irrelevant, because most of the time you want it to slam on uniques, so only the item type matters.
They haven’t fixed them, but they have improved them.
MG is better now than it was in 1.0.
Crafting is better now than it was in 1.0.
Target farming is better now than it was in 1.0.
Is it perfect yet? No. But it’s definitely better.
So yes, they have been listening and they have been trying to adress the issues. Only partially and slowly, but they have.
Or maybe it’s not that, it’s just that when devs want to make a new game they don’t want to just copy the previous one. They want to make something else that feels original.
Or maybe it’s that even re-creating the current crafting system PoE already has, even without adding/changing things, would require a couple of years to implement, at least,
Just because someone else already did it doesn’t mean you can just copy paste the stuff and be done in a week.
PoE isn’t loot based. That’s the whole point of this discussion.
PoE is craft based. This means that loot isn’t really relevant other than a source of crafting or trade. You’ll get nowhere in PoE with just drops without crafting on it. You won’t even finish the campaign.
LE is drop based. This means that loot is actually relevant for its own sake. You can get to empowered monos without crafting on a single item.
Also as I showcased with the random build I snatched from LETools it absolutely can be a very defining factor. Like… for example… making up 60% of the total increase in Attack speed.
Is that ‘disingenious’ too?
The mention of the 100% was related to the upgrade of crafting range versus drop-only range, which is simply too high in power total.
Still wouldn’t make a very smooth curve, it’s more of a flat end with a bump
Yeah, but compare it to the percentile increase of the other example games.
Even TL:I has a 57% start and ends with 11%, which means it’s a 518% difference from tier-to-tier power at that stage.
PoE provides a even more massive one, with a difference of 166% down to 8%. 2075% tier-to-tier difference.
LE comparativel has a 189% tier-to-tier difference from bottom to top.
We can argue if the PoE percentiles are too high at the beginning. Maybe it is. But it’s rather hard to say anything else then the total percentile shift being too low for LE. The lower the percentile the less it aligns with a overall difficulty curve. Means you got a really really easy time early on to gain power but it feels like a slog as you move along.
In TL:I it feels middling, it kinda feels that you slap into a sort of plateau with gear progression. Why? Because the power difference is high enough to make it feel like the lower tiers don’t have any value at all.
In LE it’s far far worse comparatively.
In PoE that doesn’t happen that much. A T2? Pfff… who cares! More then great! T3? T4? Depending on setup they can all be fine to have on a good item!
Why? Because the power difference at the top isn’t massive, hence it does matter… but it doesn’t feel mandatory.
Then that means you need to purely increase quality of drops, which is pure power creep… which has already been a serious issue. You cannot creep along endlessly without causing your system to fail, and EHG is kinda getting close to the perception area for the brain where increments don’t feel valuable anymore. The concept being understood but the impact not being as hefty.
You realize that anything close to even ‘a magnitude of 2’ not to speak of ‘beyond’ is a very very very bad state to have any sort of balancing happening already? 4 times would be horrendous. And we’re here talking about the difference between a 25 times and a 100 times increase… which is even more so hence
Actually not.
Just allow any item to be slapped on, it’s a arbitrary limitation anyway.
A LP 1 with a T3 slapped on isn’t great… but it can be a incremental progression.
Unlike now where every slam kinda has to be impactful, which reduces the amount of time things will be redone and reduces the success-rate perceived.
How would it change Nemesis? Nemesis upgrades item tiers… it doesn’t care about it being T1 or T6, the function is the same.
‘TS’? Missing the meaning og the abbreviation.
Primordial Affixes aren’t affected.
Overall drops are affected, a given, but you cannot solve a damn friggin huge issue without putting at least some work into it. This is no happy wonderland after all where problems solve themselves without effort.
We can only try to keep the effort to a minimum and the solution as impactful as possible for that little effort.
That’s actually a wrong statement.
There’s tons of situation where it doesn’t uphold… and it’s not even a ‘exception to the rule’, it’s a slight deviation from a general guideline as it leans still a little bit into the direction you wanna state. Which I agree… it’s regularly more likely that a solution to fill the gaps will be easier.
But trusting in that to be the norm will cause you to fail.
Function-wise, yep.
UI-wise, nope. You might remember that the UI-aspect of information provision is the biggest gripe I have with PoE, isn’t it?
And people don’t want a second PoE since that’s the make-or-break thing which pushes them away from there. So you cannot simply copy the mistakes together with the solutions… otherwise you simply reach the same position… and then we know who wins as it’s ‘the same’ anyway.
The second GGG gets their ass up and managed to make a unified crafting UI with relatively modern functionality like ‘stop my wrist from breaking by having to click 1000 times, instead give me a option to pick stop-conditions for repeated use’ and similar things… and the second that happens LE is simply dead, forever, unrevivable.
You never wanna have your survival based upon failures of the competition. You want your survival based on the successes of your own deeds.
Kinda wanna take the reason for continued existence in your own hands rather then be relying on someone else not getting their stuff fixed, because sooner or later… someone comes by and does get their shit together.
Likely oversight, there’s a few things to be worked on with the genesis tree, but the overall direction is a good one. It’s worthwhile with a few adjustments to be a core implementation for the future. Still hope mercs come back in a weakened form, was fun outfitting them and working on getting a good synergy going.
We had this song and dance several times before already.
In terms of complexity let’s look at the most impactful mechanics that aren’t screwed left-right and center in LE since release.
1.0? Factions, complex, big, half is a total mess, other half needs some adjustments which never came or were even tackled. The broken half gets handled by throwing unessential breadcrumbs which make it better but will need 20 years at that pace to get into a ‘decently good’ state.
1.1? It was simple, the Nemesis mechanic is a piss-easy one functionality wise. The biggest hurdle was likely the new item bases… which nobody uses as the chance to get a decent one outside of a random lucky event once in a full moon is simply not happening. And even that was mildly screwed up by positioning it in the campaign and messing that part of the game up because of it.
Lizards… great addition. Simple, cannot fuck it up, works.
1.2 Weaver is a decently made system actually! Close to quality of a single league of PoE in execution. Thought out system, several issues along the side… just needed 3 times as long as GGG does to implement one that’s perceived similar in setup, and it has nonsensical fluff attached better used to improve the core functionality of the system itself.
Instead it feels like EHG kinda lost the way half-way and just slapped all the stuff they could think about on it without rhyme or reason to increase the pool of options.
Which… was mentioned by people and simply not done?
So kinda ignored despite being mentioned?
We need loads of those directions. Not re-rolls but actually gradual progression systems. Because that would be a gradual progression system. It’s identical to locking a Affix and re-rolling the others, one thing is fixed after managing it… the others adjustable until a good outcome happens.
Wha?
Mostly because it doesn’t function.
I’m not friggin playing ‘Arc Raiders’ and still can say ‘Yeah, their systems are well made’. Just not my cup of tea.
Same in the loot-based ARPG genre. I can say that Titan Quest is a well designed game… but simply not my cup of tea style-wise.
The major issue here is… LE is designed to be ‘my cup of tea’. They just went ahead and prepared it amateurish.
My focus is on cohesive experiences, not difficulty. I play PoE, I play Chronicon, I play GD, I play TL:I, all decent games for what they wanna provide.
I actually don’t play LE for the moment even when in the mood for playing a ARPG. Why? Not cohesive as an experience.
Which really is not a long journey. It already feels grating the second exalted items even get introduced in the game. First time it feels exciting… until you realize the effects it has properly. Then it becomes a slog immediately.
Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about, it’s a pure reduction in RNG, just as any crafting mechanic is.
To get your wanted outcome you use a method to reduce the repetition of drops needed to achieve it.
The method there is of no matter itself, it’s about the totality of item count dropped needed to achieve it.
In that case we say we need 200 (arbitrary number) of that base to drop until it gets a ‘T7 Health’ Affix. Since you can potentially use all T7’s now it means you only need to drop 10 of that base to reach your end-goal → reduction of RNG, indirect. It doesn’t affect the drop but it does affect the spread.
Yep, which also means that you achieve the ‘decent’ stage of progression respectively faster as it affects percentile wise the same amount of items.
In such a case we have the turnover point by rarity of consumable versus rarity of base handled, which means another point to ‘get right’ individually. I just wanna provide systems which have as few of those balancing points as possible… EHG is prone to get every single one wrong in another direction, it all feeling ‘odd’ at the end but somewhat functioning somehow. And that’s definitely not a good state
Which was why EHG implemented the exalted system as their setup was too limited.
Instead of a drop-only thing they could’ve adjusted the numbers at that time and added a few extra tiers so earlier drops would be nigh impossible to raise to max, hence keeping value of drops applied and allowing a smoother overall progression.
Instead exalteds came which are drop-only as they couldn’t handle setting up a proper smooth scaling curve.
This hence changes the whole acquisition premise from ‘drops have value but can be improved’ to a ‘drops either have massive value or none’ rather severely. Sure, extreme end cases, but the middle-line is substantially reduced. And that’s not individually as well depending on progress or build… that’s universally happening.
If you provide your players with 10-30 hours of ‘this is the core progression system’ and then throw it all into the bin… the players generally don’t feel very enjoyed about that. It changes the base premise, it’s a different feeling system entirely. This is grating and hence simply bad design. You commonly try to keep that feeling as miniscule as possible, not make it as big as possible.
Sure, but as EHG stated, they wanna become the leading factor in the industry. This demands a ridiculously high playerbase and hence action based on the likes of the majority.
You don’t matter in that case hence. I neither.
Crafting - in a streamlines simple form without the PoE mess - is what people not only are used to but what the majority enjoys to do along the way. Pure dopamine from drops is not cutting it, never was the case.
You can make a point as much as you want about your own enjoyment, and agreed… there’s quite a few people which do find the direction of craftless playing nigh mandatory. But they’re a vast minority.
EHG went all-in, they went basically bancrupt and had to sell their company as despite being Nr. 2 on Steam in the sector they made a loss by overextending.
Sure, dumbest thing ever… but since their goal is beyond… that mandates actions aligned with that goal.
You’re not aligned with it, hence ‘game not for you’. Plainly spoken also likely not for me, but a decent thing to play from time to time should EHG actually provide what they state.
You mean a premium currency?
You mean taxation?
You mean upholding basic market principles?
What the actual fuck are you talking about?
You mean targeted crafting which PoE doesn’t have, solely RNG reducers by providing crafts related to their tag-system which LE doesn’t use anyway?
You mean having your consumables retain any form of usage and value over time rather then becoming dead weight you ignore entirely?
Once more… what the fuck are you talking about?
You mean smoothening the progressio curve like every damn fucking game is supposed to do?
You mean fixed steps of progression which also nigh every damn game does for a goddamn reason?
Your vendetta against anything mentioning ‘GGG’ or ‘PoE’ is just utterly baffling, you’re far far off the rails there.
Mabye because they actually do things right and are the damn leading game of the sector?
Dunno… if you wanna do something right look at the people which have success and pick out the bits that do well there?
The ongoing story of how success happens as long as the situation is replicable?
What do you think EHG should do? be cavemans and re-invent the wheel from scratch? Obviously not, they’re supposed to take the examples on the market which align with their ideas and iterate on them to make them something new optimally.
Yeah, because otherwise the likelyhood of success drops into the pit of doom basically.
Obviously you got to have as much of the end-result available as possible, exceptions applying for exchanging Affixes obviously.
Not going into provided progression range in the game versus existing progression peak reachable once again.
This is not a endless progression system, it has a ceiling, it’s just badly designed. Always was since the second exalted items came.
So a total of 20 hours of time investment for a reasonably fast player per character.
With 5 classes available.
Which each have 3 masteries.
Hence 15 times.
Which makes it 300 hours of gameplay in total.
For a live-service game to be ‘through’ and basically get no results anymore.
Mhmm… guess why the game looses tens of thousands of players peak each Cycle.
Sure, I’ll improve a house as well! Every year I’ll lay a single brick. It’s still not livable… but it’s better then before, isn’t it?
I mean… it’s not perfect, but it’s better, right?
I love looking at dev streams, not game-streams… interviews, designs, that stuff. Which Jonathan provided a ton.
It was 100% the issue of the lead dev.
Also you got the premise of PoE 2 wrong.
Their goal was to fix melee (done rather well actually, not perfect but a better foundation), and handle the socket issue for progression of PoE 1. Which they also did, and the system has a better foundation.
That’s it, everything else is alternative issues, like forgetting what makes their end-game progression smooth and not ‘boring and tedious’, which they re-learned with their tower mechanic for example.
As well as crafting, which they still desperately try to handle without realizing why it doesn’t work and people depict it as ‘the biggest problem of the game’. Kinda obvious if you remove the most powerful item against repetition, hence the alteration orb.
But sure, it’s them simply doing ‘something new’. 100% obvious, right? Not that it’s a mixed bag of failures combined with tries for systems not yet available in that form and far less so combination with others. Nono… clearly the new aspect, despite it being a basically copy-cat at core mechanics for the first game, simply advancing specific aspects while forgetting to uphold design principles followed a decade ago.
Not?
Hrmm… I guess early-game the socket setup of items is not the primary decider for usage rather then the Affixes then? Which is focused on loot-based acquisition rather then adjusting it yourself?
I also guess the base items themselves don’t have a extremely strong standing in PoE then? Like a top-tier base being hence vastly superior and unable to be changed reliably through any crafting system?
Oh, or wanna talk about the quality drops of items? Which cannot be increased above 20% without corrupting it but can drop up to 30% as a basis? Which is the clear-cut focus on loot-acquisition itself?
Or do you wanna talk about the uniques drops which have basically only a drop-aspect to it outside of corruption and fixing rolls (rarely viable)?
You don’t go around to create items from scratch, which would be actually craft-centric. Like many survival games are, and many sandbox games. You creating your own reward through purely collecting the base materials which are the same.
It’s relying heavily on crafting since the variety of drops is so overwhelming that you can only either cater the quality of drops to the player (which would reduce variety perceived and also engagement time substantially) or you gotta counteract it with a secondary system on top - hence crafting, as you adjust pre-existing things you got and aren’t by themselves unusable consumables - to make it work.
Nonsensical to think anything else.
As for the D2 aspect: Yeah, it’s heavily loot focused. And variance of gear is miniscule compared to LE, to PoE, to TL:I. It’s at the edge of what is doable without adding mechanics to counter it.
You have an annual salary of 100k & (normally) a bonus of 10k. Your boss says that this year they’re doubling your bonus to 20k! Great! Has your total remuneration (bonus+salary) doubled? No. Hence, saying that “massive doubling” isn’t necessarily as big a deal in the grand scheme of things as you’re making out.
I refer you to my previous comment about there being some exceptions to the rule.
It’s a hockey stick.
I refer you to my previous comment about statistics not lieing…
Using your figures, TLI increases by 1,174% from lowest tier to max tier (14->150) PoE increases by 1,866% (9->159) & LE by 1,327% (22->270), so LE’s is broadly in the middle of the other two.
True, but it depends on the avenue of which you look at it. And I try to make it clear - and sometimes failing - which avenue I’m looking at it from.
So in your example I could also go ahead and look at the remaining money after outgoing payments of all kinds and find out that my annual potential savings are normally 13k… but with the new bonus it turns into 23k… which means I got nearly double the amount I can freely use for whatever.
So it always kinda depends
Yeah, but every build has some exceptions of the rule in some form, which means items have a distinct value… it’s just not consistent of being the same at even the same archetype of build at times. Makes things a bit odd to handle in LE. Would simply like to see a bit of a streamlining for that… but that’s not a major issue at least.
You forgot the little bump there though! Gotta smack it over the head of someone nice and hard first
Sure, but that alone does state nothing viable in itself.
The step-to-step between Affix Tiers showcases ‘this is the next improvement point’ at least. But total range says nothing unless we add a second metric.
In our case we could for example add expected playtime to achieve getting close to the top-end of progression, and hence the top-end of that percentile.
In TL:I it’s 100 hours
In PoE it’s 200 hours
In LE it’s 40 hours
So suddenly in conjunction this doesn’t look quite as good anymore. LE is in above the percentile of TL:I but vastly below both TL:I and PoE.
I’m talking about this since 1.0 in the Forum and people close their ears and go ‘lalala’ like 5 year olds.
Because everything is a comparison.