Jerle PoE Refugees? You make us sound like a disease. My suggestion to PoE back in the days of closed alpha (2013) was instead of loss of XP. Freeze XP gain for the next 10% of that level. Same penalty but without the regressive nature of ending up at level 99 - 0%.
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That is the term people are using and often in self-reference. Don’t blame it on me 
I did not know it was a crime to like and/or support more than one game. When I was working for WOTC, I was paid to go play games from other companies (i.e. WoW, Diablo series, and 1000’s other failed attempts). This was a way we could stay current with the Neverwinter content and not step on anyone’s toes legally.
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I’ve been playing PoE since early open beta, probably like a lot of people here, but I’ve also never been a particularly high level or hardcore player. I’ve barely if ever traded, never came up with my own kickass build, never topped a league or race, and mostly just slogged my way through with suboptimal builds I found “fun” through sheer stubbornness.
– Trading
Trading as a concept is a great way to remove frustration with drop rates, make multiplayer feel like more than just a chatroom, and add another dimension to a game. The problem is execution. We all know the reason’s PoE’s system is just painful to use, and even if it weren’t so utterly dependent on outside tools it would still be obnoxious to deal with PM spam, scammers, and flakes on all sides.
An Auction House isn’t necessarily the solution you want here. Any fully automated system is going to completely cut out a lot of the player interaction and be perpetually subject to botting. If the game ever gets popular it’s just not a winnable arm’s race, there’s always going to be more people putting more time into coming up with bots than there are devs to fight back.
Plus there’s the economy issue. You can’t have an exchange of goods without some kind of system of value. People who’ve been playing longer will simply always have “more” of whatever that store of value is. I’m not even going to pretend I’m an economist, so I’ll just leave it at saying that you don’t want newer players permanently locked out of the economy, but you also don’t want people to have no faith in anything having or holding value.
– BS One-shotting
This is kind of low hanging fruit. I don’t think anyone out there is seriously arguing that a zero-warning instant death for a properly leveled and geared player is legitimate, the real argument is where the line between fair and BS is drawn. I like that LE makes an effort to telegraph things, but it almost feels like it’s gone too far in the other direction and I feel more like I’m playing Mario Party than an ARPG.
In LE’s defense I think a lot of that comes from being early access. Better animations that don’t obviously look like the boss mechanically auto-tracking my character and replacing the circles/lines with in-universe effects could go a long way to eliminating that.
– Exp Loss On Death
I can see both sides here. On the one hand if there’s no fear or consequences for death then you trivialize the entire game, there’s no “cost” to bad decisions or lack of investment in gear and levelling and no benefit in the other direction. You can just keep suicide-running mobs and bosses until you get through. Likewise on the dev side there’s no need to consider if something is underpowered, excessively situational, or too rippy.
On the other hand death penalties can also have negative effects. When dying means losing hours of their life people get a lot more invested in survival and feel a lot worse about dying. Usually that results in three things: Slow and stale gameplay from “playing it safe”, a lot less diversity in builds and gear, and skewing of the economy as people chase the meta.
Personally I do think death needs to have a penalty associated with it otherwise there’s no challenge or thrill. But I also think that penalty needs to have some hard backstops in order to avoid skewing gameplay negatively. For example in PoE when people get past a certain point on the way to the next levelup many go sealclubbing in lower level content rather than risk losing that progress. That’s an unhealthy dynamic.
One idea might be some kind of milestone system so you can only lose so much progress. Backsliding to the start of the most recent 1/4 of the bar and getting stuck there is frustrating but not ragequit inducing. Alterantively losing only the experience you’ve gained from the “map” that killed you seems outright fair. You won’t make any forward progress, but you aren’t outright punished for trying. If you exempt under-levelled skills from this it’ll even encourage people to experiment with respeccing while staying at-level for their character instead of going sealclubbing just to grind up a new skillset.
– Lab Mechanics
Again I’m a bit on the fence here. Manual dexterity has its place in an ARPG, we’re not playing a turn based game for a reason after all, but when people are more afraid of a misclick or character pathing issue than real gameplay that’s just broken design. Especially when you get booted from the entire multi-instance labyrinth and lose exp as punishment. If your content’s so annoying and opaque people make entire third party utilities for it, and a whole economy springs up around carries, it’s time to rethink the design.
Personally I just don’t see this being a thing in LE as it’s currently built. Mobility skills are basically mandatory for lab style gameplay and PoE’s skill system let’s that work. You can keep a levelled gem on hand and swap it in temporarily, there’s no equivalent in LE. Likewise you can rebind a hotkey without unsummoning minions or losing an aura. Without those things getting changed I don’t see them making a PoE style lab, it would force people to respec an entire skill just for that.
But they do to a degree, if your build revolves around not getting/avoiding dex which results in very low accuracy then one option would be getting resolute technique which means you don’t ever have to worry about accuracy but you can’t crit. Similarly if you are playing a mobile/dodging character the revolves around using ES as a buffer and staying on full health for certain items you would get ghost reaver (these keystone passives are the ones that tend to be at the edge of the tree).
As Deteego explained at length a lot of that “diversity” is only skin deep. You’ve got maybe a handful of skills and potential builds for each class that are viable for all content, and that gets narrowed down even further if you either aren’t already rich or don’t want to grind and suffer through trading.
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To be honest, it kind of sounds like you’re one of those “5000 hours in, just killed my first Sirus!” guys.
“only the cookie-cutter builds that everyone netdecks are builds that happen to be designed around how the passive tree works”
Idk what “netdeck” is but I’ll assume it means something like use or copy. You’re saying this as though it’s remotely possible to create a build that isn’t designed around how the passive tree works. What does that even look like? The passive tree is the most fundamentally important mechanic when it comes to build identity. It isn’t just cookie-cutter builds that take advantage of good pathing… It’s literally the goal of creating a build to take certain notables and keystones optimally with good pathing, that’s the entire point of the passive tree. I’ll give you that there are far fewer “viable” builds than people seem to think when it comes to doing actual end game, but it has nothing to do with passive shortages or the location of certain passives on the tree, or even the death XP penalty. Doing something unique isn’t restricted to people who path to the opposite end of the tree. There are enough unique affixes and influenced mods to create a ton of different builds without having to.
You can create meaningful interactions with single keystones and a few unique items in PoE, it isn’t like you need some level 100 character to create an interesting build. There are a lot of good synergies on the tree that take very few points to achieve… You could do a totem build using elemental overload, MoM, Avatar of fire, Ancestral Bond, and elemental equilibrium and that would all cost you around 20 passive points if you’re in the area, that’s 5 keystones that interact really well with each other, are build-defining, and can be used at an early level.
Build experimentation in PoE is NOT gated by the XP penalty, and build identity doesn’t just magically start happening at level 90. There are very, very, few builds that require a high level to function, and they’re mostly the insanely expensive non-entry builds anyways. Most builds can start using gear between 68-75, and unless you’re using leveled awakened gems, level 20 gems can be used at 70. This is when build identity starts, not level 90.
Coloring / socketing gear is a part of the core game, and unless you’re running around with trash rares you won’t be picking up upgrades too often, definitely not often enough to be running out of the currencies that allow you to recolor/socket items (outside of having to 6l something). You play PoE knowing that part of upgrading your gear is recoloring, whether it be from an item you bought off of trade or something you crafted. I’d venture to say that for anyone who isn’t ultra-casual, this isn’t any sort of time sink, because changing that stuff is so incredibly easy and fast. The only time this is an actual pain is on your first character, when you do have to make meaningful decisions on item upgrades and pray for good RNG when it comes to linking and coloring as you’re working through the acts. That being said you can generally pick up a couple dozen of these currencies while doing the story.
Anyways we aren’t even arguing about LE anymore. I think your feedback is just based on some weird ideas of what you think PoE is. Regardless of however much arguing, XP penalty will either happen or it won’t, up to the devs.
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To be honest I stopped playing before then because the game devolved to a point when it was boring for me, you can just check the PoE reddit so I am just preaching to the choir here
Its a term that came from MTG, its basically the process of rather than creating your own deck (or in this context build) you have people that just copy the most successful build from the net hence the term netdeck. Like most things, this initself isnt a problem and can’t be eliminated since you will always have people that do this, it ends up becoming problematic when for whatever its difficult and/or unapproachable for new players to create their own builds. Netdecking became a common term in MTG because it has its own gating mechanic for builds (or decks) which is value of cards, i.e. you need a lot of cards to be able to experiment with different types of decks and since this can be quite expensive its obviously more practical for new players in MTG to just pick a good deck and go with it since its cheaper. Main point here is that the mechanics and design in play for a game that heavily encourage just copying successful builds/decks rather than allowing players (typically but not always news ones) to experiment and build/find decks of their own which is how netdecking got its negative connotations.
That and your skill gems is what identifies your build, thats correct
Fundamentally the point is not about what is theoretically possible but what happens in reality and what the experience is for a lot of players and to put it bluntly the depth of the PoE skill tree is skin deep (which is common criticism). What this means is that on the surface it looks like PoE has this incredibly complex and dynamic system for creating many possible builds but in practicality it doesn’t really work out this way and in my view there are a number of reasons why
- exp death mechanic which hinders progress at roughly the same time when experimenting/changing your build is critical (typically when you start mapping)
- skills being tied to items (skill gems) and the sockets/links acting as another barrier/sink. For example if you want to change skills around (because you are experimenting with your build), this is a lot more expensive/difficult in PoE due to the way color/link combinations work. Similarly when new items drop its incredibly rare that you can quickly equip the item to experiment with it because its high unlikely that it will have the same link/socket combination you currently have. This was somewhat improved with the addition of being able to craft links/sockets (i.e. you can how pay 1500 fusings to get a guaranteed 6L) but in the old days not even this existed
- Difficulty being made by just ever increasing number of mobs and their damage/health values ends up highly favouring whack a mole builds that have very high defenses. No one is arguing for glass cannons (which by definition have zero defenses) but ideally builds that have some amount of defense but a lot of offense should be viable. Note that in the really old days (talking about just after open beta iirc) there were a lot less mobs (i.e. mob density was lower) which meant that AoE builds were not that mandatory and it was more realistic to have mobility as a form of defense, then the GGG devs literally doubled mob density in one patch and of course when you do this it just gets to a point that there are so many mobs on the screen the only way to deal with this is by stacking a lot of defenses and having AoE clear (it also created other issues like making desync more common). The death penalty makes this even worse since such builds clear content faster but are more likely to die to keep this in check however at a certain point in PoE dying even a couple of times means hours lost so such builds have issues even progressing at a certain point.
So when you say
I am not saying that build experimentation is ONLY gated by exp death, but it is one of the factors. More unique builds usually (but not always) often ends up having higher travelling requirements on the tree and unless you are netdecking you often end up needing to experiment a lot more to get such a build to work just by the nature of the build. On the assumption that you die more often when attempting such unique builds (which in reality is what does happen) you are going to have less EXP (and hence less points on the tree) which means less possibility to experiment with (its of course easier to experiment if you have more passive points to experiment with).
The best way to explain this is that PoE tempts players with what looks like a build system that has incredible depth but because of a lot of other factors in the game (some of which I mentioned before) in practicality for most of players the systems ends up being shallow (you can still do this kind of experimentation but it requires excessive amounts of time/currency).
I posted this elsewhere, but if you have a scale where one is having a system with the maximum amount of theoretical builds and the other end is the number of builds that are viable, PoE would be one one end and a game like D3 would be on the other. Ideally you would want to be somewhere in the middle, i.e. you don’t want to make every single theoretical possible build to be viable because then things get kinda boring (D3 problem) but at the same time having a system where you can theoretically do any type of build you can imagine but only having a vast minority as being viable (for w/e reason) is just as problematic for reasons stated earlier. Games like GD are aRPGs that sit roughly in the middle, they give you enough freedom to come up with more unique builds but at the same time not every build is successful so you get some psychological reward/gratification when you come up with a successful build after doing experimentation.
Ironically in my view if PoE didn’t have the exp death penalty and other fundamental design aspects of the game where different it would actually massively increase the amount of depth in regards to build diversity. I get the impression that Chris and the original devs of the game are trying to accomplish too many things in the game (i.e. trading) while also having very fundamental views on what should be done.
I can see how that is, I guess I can say that I have been playing PoE from the start (although I stopped playing like 5 years ago iirc) and it has gone through many changes. Ontop of this at the start the devs have sold PoE as a type game that in reality its not, i.e. the current trade mechanics are there because originally Chris wanted to emphasize pure bartering (that is trading one item i.e. some boots for another item i.e. a 2H) but of course because of how economics works, bartering is incredibly rare and everyone just treats orbs as currency (i.e. chaos/exalteds), so everyone just trades items for orbs where orbs act as defacto gold (just a more annoying version of it). Another thing in the early days which the devs wanted was to make PoE a rogue like game, which if you play actual rogue like games (i.e. slay the spire, loop hero etc etc) they have nothing in common and that is because for rogue like games you cant allow mechanics that trivialize the game content because it completely kills the “rogue” like aspect of it, this also isn’t the case in PoE because generally throughout its history you can just netdeck highly successful builds which do trivialize the content.
So yes you can say that I have some weird ideas on what PoE is, but those weird ideas where actually what the devs were originally selling the game as and obviously the game evolved into something else.
To end the convo about GGG and its trading site, its brilliant and its the most smartest moves any ARPG game studios came out with. Its here and its not going anywhere. Many people praise that move GGG did and so do I. Of course this IS both opinion and fact. I hope LE will continue to follow the path that GGG has sought out, however I think that the Devs here took good notes.
Hence, this is why we are getting the bazar, I am tuned in to find out how it will be done though.
The smartest move GGG did was removing Gold from their game and making all items have value in situations, I think thats the best thing and imo should of revolutionized aRPG’s
Ive been playing Valheim a survival game with skill gain on use ie swing a Sword at something you get exp towards level ups starting from 0 to 100, you get approx 60-100% bonus at 100 so they are worth leveling plus incremental gains are still good
If you die in Valheim you drop all your gear on the floor and lose -5% current xp to all your skills so if you die at 90 skill you lose 4.5, but you lose running, woodchopping, swords - its quite brutal and I dont really enjoy the loss; there is a cooldown on death of skill drain effect if you die again but it means you have to be pretty careful, not run into silly situations, make sure you have good gear and are prepared
You dont even need high skills in Valheim to beat the game, you can easily do it at 50 skills. Translating to an aRPG - you lose more the higher you go ie xp loss at 90+ but you also dont need to be 100 but its there if you want the challenge plus simply put putting a penalty makes the game more exciting, otherwise its just dull overall
What do you care about other people’s skill level? Is that a kind of e-peen thing for you, this gatekeeping?
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A game that cannot separate the good from the bad is a game without depth.
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There’s already a penalty for death. If you die you lose time and progress. It’s trivial while leveling and going through the story but punishing in echoes. Why do people feel a need to make it more severe unless it’s solely to punish the more casual players and discourage them from playing?
LE seems designed to appeal to a broad range of players and is one of the easiest ARPG’s I’ve seen to experiment with builds in without being too shallow. I’ve never played POE so I can’t speak to that but one of the major downsides to Grim Dawn was how complex character building was and the constant need to either use a guide or spend hours on a build tool and constantly refer to it. Whereas in LE it’s pretty easy to experiment and respec. I think that, combined with the current loss of progress for death and the ease of the crafting system is a huge part of the game’s appeal.
I personally dread the introduction of xp penalties, the trading system and necessity of balancing loot around trading that comes along with it. Depending on how that works out I might step away from the game at that point.
Just to extremely clear, I started playing LE a while back and had to quit due to personal issues. But I plan to come back as soon as I can to soak in all this new content. I try to keep up on reading with the updates and reading the forums. I don’t post much, however.
With that said. I agree with you on a couple points (I only read the initial post and a few comments after). But, that doesn’t mean you don’t have valid points and you most assuredly are entitled to your own opinions, no need for anyone to flame you for having them. Having a courteous discussion with well thought out ideas is ideal in this situation.
Mainly I agree with you on:
EXP Loss - I agree with this 100%. My game playing path started with an old Korean grind fest MMORPG called Knight Online. That game exacts heavy exp penalties on those that die in the course of grinding exp. I hate it. In Knight Online you could spend 10 hours (yes, 10 hours) grinding mobs only to take a sip of water, miss using a health potion, dyeing and losing half the exp. It was horrendous. I also played POE and experienced the same. So, I do think their are many ways to avoid the EXP Loss penalty in favor of other more reasonable penalties. But, LE seems to have death penalties done well already.
Off Screen OneShots/Attacks - Putting it simply, being one shot by something you cannot see is incredibly frustrating and seems rather pointless in terms of a skill based ARPG. How do you expect someone to dodge/pre-pot/escape something they cannot see? Just my opinion, obviously.
I disagree with you, though, on the Trading and Boss Mechanics issues.
Trading - I come from the point of view that having to meet up with people and trade, even though outside resources like trade/buy/sell websites are tedious, is necessary to bring a community together. These extra steps I think make a community stronger. The downside is obviously those pesky butt nuggets that take advantage of new players and rip them off, etc.
Boss Mechanics - Boss Mechanics that can one shot you are fine by me. However, they most definitely need to be telegraphed somehow. Some text that flashes on the screen or some visual indicator that some shi* is about to go down are a must to even the playing field. But again, bosses are bosses, they are meant to be difficult.
Just my thoughts. Cheers.
Personally I take the big glowy circle on the ground as the thing to see & not be in.
My experience of PoE’s trading is quite different. It would be 10-20 mins of PMing people who have put stuff up for trade & usually not getting a response. I don’t mind if they say that they’re busy or in a map that they don’t want to leave for a trade, I’m fine with that & either happy to wait or move on to someone else, but the vast majority of my attempts to trade for consumables (currency or maps) was akin to shouting into the wind, not exactly a cuddly community-afirming experience.
I get GGG not wanting to encourage people to trade for gear too much since it takes them away from killing stuff in the game & getting upgrades that way but consumables such as maps & currency?
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I’d hate to see this form of trading implemented. I’m mostly a solo player and don’t want to spend half my game time pm’ing people trying to find gear. This isn’t a concern if they don’t rebalance loot drops around trading but at the same time how could they not if they want trading to be heavily utilized. An auction house type of trading might be ok but again, only if they don’t rebalance loot around it.
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Dude, could you please quote the whole section of my post and not just the part that you somehow consider “gatekeeping”.
Throughout the entire thread, when i posted my opinion i always,… always emphasized that i don’t want any major progression or content gated behind the last few levels.
This is the exact opposite of gatekeeping.
Thank you, have a good day sir.
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I was thinking the same thing as you are. No one likes gated content but there has to be a way to let the best prove themselves. If not, we all end at the same spot with the blue participation ribbon.
Isn’t the ladder already how the best prove themselves?
No, that does not take any skill. All you have to do is find the one busted build and make a run for it. This is not the time to determine the best as the game has to at least get out of beta.
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If it takes no skill then what’s the point of it (and way to insult everyone at the top of the ladder)? No matter what form the leaderboard takes, there are going to be people who use a build they got from a guide to compete. Skill certainly comes into play because you need to be able to successfully pilot and use the build, farm the gear for the build, etc.
Skill is in the Solo and Masochist difficulties. Even there there is still a debate on what is better Arena level defeated based on level of character or just arena level? So you are saying that a level 92 defeating a 331 is better than a level 86 beating a 323 using different build, I would disagree with that.
Skill and proving ones worth is all subjective and with an incomplete game it is nothing but a futile effort at filling the forum with text.