What not to do: Lessons from PoE from a 1400 hours PoE ex-player (part 1)

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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.

I couldnt agree with you more @ShadyTricycle

In the near decade I have been playing Path of Exile I have literally never interacted with a single trade partner more than completing the trade. Ever.

What brings a community together is consistent, regular, meaningful interaction. Quake, Half-life, and Counter-Strike all had real communities because they were based on dedicated servers. People consistently and regularly interacted with the same groups of other players. MMORPGs build communities by requiring players group up to complete content and providing systems allowing players to organize who they do that with on a consistent and regular basis, beginning with friends lists and escalating to clans and guilds.

“Matchmaker” based games on the other hand are the disastrous opposite of this. They force players together… but not consistently, not voluntarily, and not regularly. Which means every round people believe their success or failure was determined by random people they didn’t choose to play with and will never see again. You couldn’t design a more perfect recipe for toxicity if you tried to on purpose. This is why everything from League to Fortnight to CS:GO is an absolute cesspit of rage, abuse, and trolling compared to older games that used dedicated servers.

Path of Exile’s deliberately awful trading system is as relevant to the community as Amazon Marketplace is to Portland’s community.

If you want to make Last Epoch a community based game the only way that’s going to happen is by incentivizing or outright requiring players actually play together rather than solo and providing them with the appropriate tools to self-organize.

That’s how Warframe did it and it’s why they have one of the best communities of any game I’ve played.

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Or to put it in another way, if you want to make a community based game it should be designed from the start to be a community based game rather than making a (mainly) solo game and tacking on community features half heartedly.

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Word.

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One more thought on the very idea of an EXP penalty.

  • I play this video game. It is, quite literally speaking, a “pass time”. Something to enjoy and pass the time. That is what games are.
  • To make it fun, they add the idea of “progression”. Progression can take a lot of forms - character power (aka Level), gear potency (including uniques), and more powerful bosses and challenging fights.

Now, character level progression WILL, at some point, end (at level 100), and then the player would need to engage in the other forms of progression (gear, new bosses/boss mechanics, new modes (like Monolith vs Arena vs some new idea). If there isn’t enough progression alternative to Leveling (to 100), then hitting 100 means a “dead end”. i.e. Roll a new character, try a new build.

So, in the end, if the Devs of this game want to sustain players for longer, they need to design more progression (aka “end game”) instead of slapping on an EXP penalty as a “forced delay mechanism”. That is both lazy and ultimately self-defeating. Developers have limited time & deadlines to meet. If they are going to spend time, it should be spent on End Game and not things that don’t help retain players and in fact, just turn them off of the game.

One thing I’ve learned about games is that different people enjoy different things, but ultimately, it boils down to what someone thinks its fun. Since you can’t standardize that, let the players have the leeway to have fun their way, and don’t penalize people for things either out of their control (glitches, random one-shots, ISP connection issues) or for just not being “elite” gamers. Games like this should be forgiving to allow all sorts of players to enjoy them, and an EXP penalty does not fall into that category at all.

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Well, thought I’d share some thoughts in this megathread :slight_smile: I’ve a little over 7k hours in PoE and that doesn’t mean much.

The XP penalty, or any strong penalty, does not go well in combination with unfairness. A crash, a bug, (offscreen) oneshots and important targets that are impossible to see because of screen clutter come to mind.

Penalty * level of skill to succeed * 10 = amount of feeling of accomplishment
Penalty * level of unfairness to failure * 100 = amount of frustration

GGG also ‘let go’ of their control. There is no finetuning and balance has been long called a clown fiesta (and other terms). Millions or billions of dps, whatever. Groups impacting the economy of everyone, whatever. It is quite a volatile stack of RNG. GGG through time has learned about some benefits of this. It is good for emotional reactions, for one. Those emotional reactions yield results through videos, streams and chat. They even openly said in an interview they actively pursue these reactions. It has also put them in a momentum that is very hard to get out of, as in it is very hard to reverse.

A total reset would come to mind, but how would they validate that against the investment of players in MTX and existing expectations? And so they ended up testing various impactful things. One of those was Harvest - aka deterministic crafting. The result being that the playerbase got split up in basically 2 camps. One that loves it and one that hates it. With all the strong emotional reactions still in tact, mind. And boy did they get some. Wow.

They tried many things that made a lot of players wonder why the hell GGG would do such a thing. It often seemingly did not make sense. The core of this is lack of control. They have issues steering their game according to well defined strategic concepts and the more they enjoyed the benefits of this emotional momentum the more it started working against them. They have a large playerbase, but there is also a lot of unhappiness. In that sense they still enjoy the ARPG market situation and I think I’m not alone when I say it would be nice for them to have stronger competition (go go LE!).

While I applaud them for making such a successful game, I’ve so often facepalmed over their decisions. Delivering content is surely their strength, but only so much strength can be applied before something breaks. One better be on top of the cost of repairing whatever that is or suffer escalating problems of technical and gaming debt.

So I’d advice 11th to take it one step at a time and to stay in control. It’s all about the long game. Easier said than done. GGG has learned how far it can push things while still enjoying revenue which allows them to focus on counters to possible competitors in the mid term. PoE2 will be an example of this.

They are now strictly a business, their playerbase is for them to experiment with at will. They know and utilize the power of addiction and gambling quite well. But a casino is a different thing than an arpg. In which one would a world with lore better fit? Which of the two urges most for stories and heroes? PoE has long been more about currency drops than it has been about character development and roleplaying context (yes, the RP in ARPG still stands for roleplaying).

So my advice there to 11th is to focus on the world first and on the gambling and RNG second. It is flawed in PoE. This is a vulnerability Diablo 4 is going to enjoy maximally.

And well, recently, GGG took a ‘big pile’ (their own words!) of money given by the playerbase of PoE and used it to hire streamers that were innately not so interested in PoE and gave those (among some other well known streamers) priority in the recent league, aka a race event to those who go for the ladder. A strong manifest of greed followed by a ‘sorry’ that has now basically turned into a sorry-meme. This wouldn’t have been as big of an issue as it is now had they not burned through so much goodwill of their playerbase.

Well, I don’t need to advise what to do there. It’s just another facet of the cost of loss of control.

Anyway those are some thoughts, I tend to rant on when writing :slight_smile: thanks

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This is quite true and something I feel I have confirmation thanks to the PoE2 reveal and the following league with Metamorph. Metamorph was them implementing the shapeshift tech in early for us to beta test it in the form of a league. Blight felt like an Alpha test for followers pathing algorithms and interactions. Delirium was new fog tech. Etc. Etc. The new skill additions don’t seem to work well with the current gem system, but would be more interesting with PoE2’s. I could go on and on.

What was it now two(?) years ago with the “Salvage Box” fiasco, the recent league stash tab cash grab and now the streamer priority situation should just show you what GGG are after now. Someone said recently, “If EA or ActiBlizzard would have done what GGG has done since Exilecon. Everyone would have torched them and walked away.” Probably true, aside from the FIFA Ultimate Team addicts that fuel EA’s profits. But that’s what GGG has done, built up a cult of personality still promoting the ‘small scrappy indie dev that solely continues to exist thanks to you! Our loyal supporters!’ As @EHG_Mike has said on a dev stream, LE having a sticker price/box cost is pretty important for a number of reasons and one I fully endorse as f2p gaming keeps going the way it’s going. But enough dumping on that PoE has become.

For death penalty, perhaps a gold penalty ala durability loss but not durability loss could work. It’s still a hinderance on a form of progression, effects all modes of gameplay including SSF (remember gambling and rerolling monoliths is a thing), limits your trading options and would add more importance to gold. Just a gold subtraction algorithm for when death occurs I guess, just spit balling.

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An item “Damage + Repair” feature would be actually kinda nice. I mean, we already have item damage. Just add in the “Repair” part, and then have a chance (not 100%) that an item (or more than one) can get damaged on a death. It shouldn’t get exorbitant but should add up if you are dying over and over to a hard boss, for example.

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I want to put my few words on this topic
I can’t play POE anymore…I personally HATE 1 thing - ORBS
Tell me please…what items do you have in your inventory after clearing maps?
Let me say - shards, div cards, maps, orbs, silver coins, perandus coins… some 6- socket items … holy shit!
I’m tired of it! No one wants to pick up items… all of it now are useless!
All the people need “influenced items” …
I want the game where i will pick up Boots, Gloves, Chests, rings… instead of coins and shards

And the second point - Leagues… all these mechanics/Unique items (1000 or more?)…well… it’s useless! Who needs this?
Every time when I find “Unique” items … this isn’t event…it isn’t surprise me. This moment is stupid
Every league you must do the same things… it’s irritating moment
I love POE before Atlas…it was really good for me, but after (

Sorry if I made mistakes, I’m not a native speaker

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What…? Items useless ? What the hell ? You do pick up orbs to craft the bases you pick up… On the ground. That sentence of yours… Doesn’t make any sense. Even influenced items are “picked up on the ground”, be serious please, if you’re not really understanding something, try to avoid giving such definitive looking advices.

I won’t even talk about the things like “Leagues mechanics are useless, who needs this ?” – “Every time when i find Unique items, this isn’t event… It isn’t surprise me, This moment is stupid”, one more time, what the hell ? Uniques useless/not rewarding ?

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ok, let me explain…
we have Items (swords/rings/amulets) that drops after we kill mobs, yes?
and we have Orbs for crafting items, yes?
And…we have Harvest/Essences/Div Cards/Delve fossils/ Bestiary… for? for what?
well…then tell me plz what’s wrong with Orbs and core mechanics of crafting in POE if you need use ALL of these leagues (and even more items like essences/beasts/fossils e.t.c) for another craft possibilities?

I just want to say that I want completely working(correct) mechanics in the game (craft/ loot) . in POE the craft mechanics are absurd
Your chances to find some good items on the ground = almost 0% , it’s absurd!

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On the pickup bases thing - no. Unless its ilvl86+ or ilvl85+ influenced item, you do not bother to pick it up, unless its day 1 of the new league. League mechanics - the only uses for Bestiary were duping items (basically mirror craft) and Bestiary bosses farming (for either Farruls fur and similarly good items,which are like 2-3 iirc, then the recipe for the Aspect crafts), Temple has been so bad since Incursion ended that they fully reworked it in 3.14 (after 2 years!),etc.

Uniques - there are like 60-70 useful uniques (most of them are either build enabling or corpse removal uniques), then like 50 uniques with above average stats, others go to vendor (still over like 500 that i can put on paper without much thought) - no stop on the way to see the roll, straight to the “Sell items” window and “Accept” button.

For the crafting - Harvest nerfed to the ground, other methods except Essences (buffed) and fossils are garbage (RNG shitfest at its worst) and Maven orbing is out of control on the crusader ilvl86+ chests, because it can roll the proper explo chests.

So, what are you talking about, Sir/Madam?

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Before I toss in my 2cp I want to point any late joiners who may have missed it to SayyadinaAtreides’ previous post on this thread. It does an excellent job of teasing apart design from implementation and how implementations that were once good may collapse as a game grows and evolves, but shouldn’t necessarily condemn the underlying design. Great read.

Regarding death penalty/xp loss: I think it’s vital for incentivizing more thoughtful builds and more thoughtful playstyles, but I agree with @Heavy that it shouldn’t gate content. Scaling this penalty out at the very late endgame ensures that it doesn’t prevent access to content while simultaneously encouraging more thoughtful builds precisely when you have the largest return on investment for thinking about your build carefully! What value would there be in reaching max level if you didn’t have to think about it to achieve it?

I’ll leave an open ended question in that regard:

If every time you died in LE, you knew for sure it was due to your own mistakes or misplay, would you be upset about an xp penalty?

I’m genuinely curious for others thoughts. (Whether this is achievable from a game design perspective is a whole other valuable discussion, but for the sake of this question let’s assume it can be done).

Regarding trading interactions: my first thought is “Convenience is oft the enemy of community”. At least for me personally I felt this in a number of ways over the past ~25 odd years of my online gaming: Halo introducing matchmaking as a departure from previous lobby-based systems (e.g SOCOM, CoD1), WoW introducing the dungeon finder removing any need to interact with the people you’re playing with, even EQ trading EC tunnel chatter for characters-as-npc merchants in the Bazaar.

Of course trade doesn’t need to be the driving force behind community, but it is something that fundamentally requires an interaction of different people, even if you decouple that entirely with an automated broker (e.g. Auction House). ARPGs, in my limited experience, don’t have too many inherent community-interactive systems but of course it doesn’t have to be that way, perhaps EHG has some other means in mind for fostering community engagement in-game? Ultimately that would be my only concern, and I’m actually excited at the possibilities.

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I think I could be, yes. I don’t want to receive a penaly for trying something new. My mistake could be changing a setting in a skill, but after changing it I must test it. It could work perfectly for a while, then fail when difficulty increases. I would be punished for experimenting.
I see what you mean and you’re probably right, but this situation also exists.

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Complaining about exp loss after death.

Speaking like a true Softcore player.

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We really don’t need to go there.

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That’s a good point, I hadn’t considered experimentation which LE definitely supports with the ease of re-spec. But I also wonder if that is exactly the right thing that should happen? Experimentation needs negative feedback (EDIT: To be fair, this discussion is more about how that negative feedback is implemented, so this point isn’t particularly pertinent, sorry abou that), otherwise everything would work and there wouldn’t be a point of experimenting in the first place. But I actually think MoF is designed precisely for this, as it lets you re-climb the difficulty in a very controlled way which arguably provides for relatively safe experimentation. But hey, just my thoughts :smiley:

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Because people keep making a big fuss about this.

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You understand that your contribution provides nothing to this discussion right? Posting to stroke your own ego makes you look like a donkey. This thread is explicitly for discussing this and similar topics. If you don’t like that, you do not have to read it.

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Wow, you’ve never seen my experimentations! :smiley:

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Death penalty/XP loss
I think EHG’s current implementation is really good because there’s enough incentive to not die without “taking away your stuff.”

In the arena, your run is flat out ended. If you’re an arena-pusher, it means you have to go through all the trash waves to get to the waves that have any meaning. Having to endure mindnumbingly easy content is punishment enough if you ask me. And if you’re trying to climb up the ladder, not making it to the next wave can be the difference between ranking up and not ranking up.

In monos, you lose mono progress and have to go through praying to RNGesus to hurry up and give your boss again. When you’re trying to complete as many runs as possible in the shortest time possible, anything that sets you back’ll be annoying as hell and make an already repetitive activity feel even more repetitive.

Trade interactions
Based on my limited online experience with games that don’t have a marketplace, I don’t think trade would promote community or meaningful interactions. Convos in trade chat (and often other chats) is usually just wtb/wts spam. The person to person interaction is just opening a trade window and trying to finish the trade as quickly as possible.

Even group content doesn’t really foster community anymore if you ask me. If there’s no finder, you get “LF (insert whatever is the meta spec) tank/healer GS X+, experienced only” and “LFP big dick DPS, GS X, experienced” spam. You enter a dungeon, maybe there’ll be a “hi” at the start of the run, maybe not. You get to the end, there’s maybe a “thanks” or “good run.”