Im not sure why you keep bringing the notion of Op when it has nothing to do about my critic. In the past you could charge in bear form and when you stopped proc the earthquake and repeat at your will with any movement skill you want , this is when it was introduced. Then they added a cd that make it so you have to rely on other skill also , its not ''a build anymore ‘’ but its ''part of A build ‘’ see the difference ? If it was stupid op then just fix the dps but dont erase the build entirely. As for autobomber, it would piss you off that on the 300 skills you have at least 1 autobomber ? I think it would be pretty cool to have one and it fact it was very cool , people loved it some because it was op but alot because it was simply an autobomber build. As for the auradin , it would be cool to have an auradin simply . Its not like it would destroy your entire world, dont play it if you dont like it ( the builds im mentionning ).
2 out of 4 builds you mentioned were objectively some of the strongest builds in the game, so much so, that it made more sense nerfing them, then bringing all other builds on the same levle as them.
The overall vibe of you post really came across as “Why they nerf all the strong builds”, because it really seemed that your udnerstanding of “fun” is having really strong builds, so strong that these are generally considered OP
my point is they should of fixed the dps or make it so the build is adjusted and not just dosent exist anymore , become part of a build instead of being a build itself or dosent play the same. I understand that it could be interpreted as nerf/op topic, but really im just sad about the essence of the builds not the digits.
There are dozens and dozens of builds out there that will plow through content. I was grouped up with a buddy couple of days ago who’s got a spellblade with max block and is taking like 1-10 damage from boss hits and is basically unkillable. I think he’ll be able to push 1000+ corruption with legendaries once he gets his DPS up enough.
Part of every game, aRPG or not, is deliberately trying to break the math to give yourself a competitive advantage. Everyone finds different things that make the game fun for them.
TLDR: The more OP Builds there are the better.
While you only read certain parts of my posts I make it short:
Automated builds need to do so little damage they are not possible to play because of the ease of usage and staying true to balancing. EHG demands active gameplay and button presses and want no automation or passive skills while we still have some.
So leaving out OP builds if you want to balance automated skills to skills that require constant inpout autmated skills won’t make it through the story if they balance them fairly. As EHG told in the past they are against automated and passive play and feel like they made something wrong if a skill is better on autocast then casting it manualy. I don’t think they go against their design philosophy when it comes to this topic.
Builds that are OP compared to the content offered simply need to be gutted so we only have worthwhile builds instead of having builds that are madatory to play to be #1 in the leaderboard. OP Builds are just proof of bad balancing.
Couldn’t disagree more. Balancing everything is ridiculously tricky, and my general opinion is to:
A> Buff the mobs so OP builds have a tougher time with the content combined with;
B> Buffing lower tier builds/skills/nodes to be more competitive
While this creates a direct sense of Power Creep, I believe this a much better solution than breaking out the nerfbat.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inqui-nerfbat.
And nobody likes having their toon nerfed.
Would also affect other builds
Causes tremendous amounts of work, which is not feasible.
When from 200 builds 2 builds are massively strogner then the rest, buffing all other builds is just not sensible
Balancing is a constant ebb & flow, builds getting stronger either by direct or indirect buffs/new things or they get weaker by direct or indirect changes.
But this exact circumstance also gives games the longjevity, so they don’t become stale.
make it op, make it balanced, make it trash i dont care but Let it be. IF trashing an entire build / essence is the only solution they found, it is a dogwater solution in my opinion. Im confident they can figure out something without trashing it or make it clunky boring. ( fun or boring is subjective but on the massive skills avaible im pretty confident most of people would enjoy at least 1 autobomber , 1 true auradin or the bulwark the way it was regardless of digits ).
Yay for using the correct terminology!
Yeah I try adept to the third world countrys using these terms 
.
Since LE is a game, and all games have to be both fun and challenging, then there is, in fact, an impetus for the game designer to make sure the game isn’t “Press 1 button, win game, quit game” or else their sales will flop.
We did it boys
What is “fun” is subjective. Maybe people get bored playing the same build forever and they like when the masteries are rebalanced/changed so they can play something different.
Balance is good because it opens up build diversity. People want to play builds that are top tier. If only one build is far and beyond the rest, that is what will get played.
Oh, man. LE developers look on PoE and their way to just changing meta every league in order to make impression of something new. If I am right then it is way to nothing
There’s nothing to base that on. You may be right, but you’re probably more likely to be wrong since they’ve not historically “shuffled things around”.
The main reason powerful builds can still be fun even if they trivialize parts of the content is because they still require you to think / plan / make decisions a certain way, or there’s a certain amount of chaos to what happens while you’re playing. In the terms I put it in earlier, if what you’re doing is still interesting and engaging, then it’s fun. Mind you, plenty of those types of builds exist in this game and people enjoy playing them because they’re enjoyable.
Powerful builds also feel good in context because you feel like you’re getting away with not having to worry about certain things you had worry about earlier on before the build was complete.
Some builds also just need to be better than others by virtue of rewarding good planning. If you recognize certain skills and specs work well together, indeed, better than others do, what you’ve done is investigation and planning. That working out to be better in the end than had you not done that is part of the strategy aspect of playing a game, and something that can be fun. This is actually one of my favorite aspects of games, and why I play a lot of RPG’s and test out all kinds of different builds in LE.
Speaking to the idea of something being overpowered in a single player game, the reason nothing is actually overpowered is specifically because there is no actual reason every build has to do about the same amount of damage or have about the same survivability. Allowing a variety of builds, some that are easier and harder to play, adds to the variety of experiences the game offers. Again, if they’re all similar or indeed, identical, that is actually limiting what you’re allowing the player to do, not expanding it. Certain builds don’t feel powerful if they don’t get away with a little more or do a little more than they should. That’s just how it is with action games. If every class or spec does similar things similarly well, the illusion that they truly function differently can be broken.
Additionally, there is no limitation on the challenges you can present to the player. If builds are powerful, add more challenging content players can play to challenge themselves if they want to. Personally I think EHG has done a pretty good job of that with Empowered Monolith and Key dungeons. The amount of gear you have to get to trivialize those is absurd and not something people are going to do in normal play during their first thousand hours on any build. Personally very satisfied with that aspect.
I mean, if we’re talking pressing one button and everything on the screen dies instantly including bosses, sure, it’d be a little hard to design something challenging to do around that. But this isn’t what anyone is ever talking about when they refer to this. What people actually mean when they say something is “overpowered” is that it’s unfair that one build gets to do better than another build in many or most situations. There’s always a principle that this violates the desires of the devs or is inequitable in context of other builds they like more just not being as good, and therefore it’s unfair to them personally.
The problem I have with any of those principles or attitudes is that we’re not addressing what the player is actually doing and if it’s enjoyable or not. There’s lots of games with “overpowered” builds and characters people love and enjoy playing. Neither a dev’s vision for their game nor someone’s personal gripe with something in the game preclude those facts. If we’re not talking about what is fun and feels good to do in a videogame, then we’re not talking about the core aspect of what a game is supposed to produce, which is enjoyable and varied experiences.
Moreover, to that end, (most of the time) devs should trust that players who truly want a challenge can decide when to play the tougher builds on harder difficulties or bosses and challenge themselves. Sure, there are games like Geometry Dash or Super Meat Boy that are supposed to be literal grinders from the beginning. I’m not against devs having a vision like this for their game necessarily. But an action game for a general audience that might not want to play something that extremely difficult should offer various ways to be played, some harder than others, all of which are options left up to the player. We can make our own fun. We don’t need our hands to be held quite that tightly.
Case and point, the most popular PC game of all time by a lot of measures (except maybe League of Legends) is Minecraft. Minecraft is a game that you literally don’t have to face any challenge in if you don’t want to. The movement, planning and building in the game are satisfying all on their own. Everything you can do is “overpowered.” It’s a literal God Game. And people love it! They find their own jolly way and challenges to do, and some people even speedrun it on the hardest difficulty. Players will find the stuff they like to do and do it. A good vision for a game should usually include that assumption.
As I mentioned before - If you’re balancing almost any game, single player or otherwise, around the top 0.1% of players, you’re probably going to make the rest of the players miserable. They’re not there to compete on that level. This is something that has been a big issue on several MMO-type competitive games over the years, most notably League of Legends. What people find challenging and fun to do at that level probably isn’t the same and shouldn’t hurt what the general audience finds enjoyable about a game.
As I suggested before, Ladder should probably be its own thing with its own rules and mechanics. People who just play ARPG’s for fun and people who race Ladder aren’t even really playing the same game because their goals and what they’re doing are fundamentally different, and you need to entice and challenge each them in different ways.
Has 20 years of ARPG design taught us nothing?
Rule #1 of ARPG design #101: if you want to keep your players happy, never nerf OP things, buff everything else instead.
(And Rule #2 is test your patches before releasing them, but that’s another story :)).
The problem with this is twofold (at least).
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OP builds are a result of a mistake by the devs in their design/implementation/math. Its just exploited by the player and presents a real problem for the game. Just because they are fun to play doesnt mean they are “good” for the game in terms of longevity, balance and potentially reducing the game to a handful of builds everyone plays because, well, there is no point in anything else.
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Power creep is a serious issue - if everything just continually got more powerful to equalise OP builds then you end in a neverending loop of spiralling power and balance problems. And dealing with that sometimes requires a blunt instrument wielded with great vigour.
And in game development, there is a very fine line between what a player thinks will make them happy vs what will actually make them happy.
Yes, but there’s a difference between trivialising parts of the content & trivialising all of the content. If you can kill the hardest bosses in the game in a few seconds, that’s not the devs desired power level. I’m not saying that all of them do, nor am I saying that powerful builds can’t be fun (everybody, except @heavy) likes finding/creating powerful builds.
Indeed, buff the lower performing builds to a comparable level as the “OP” builds, then buff the mobs so you get back to the desired power level then renormalise the numbers so you aren’t in a D3 situation (where you have to truncate numbers with SI units to keep them readable).
They do, but programming is hard & they can’t catch & fix everything.