I couldn’t get my POE clan to play because there’s no clan/guild system here. They picked D4 as a secondary game because there’s at least a chat room for them and they can hang out. Most ppl won’t run discord or teamspeak or whatever the kids use today instead 
LE saw a big drop with D4’s latest season so timing is certainly part of it. And yeah many others probably returned to POE2 after getting their fill of LE. Another case of bad timing as people only had two weeks of POE2 latest season when LE launched.
I think the gearing up process is too fast, especially for those who don’t care about alts. The Bazaar is super clunky and needs a price checker ASAP.
Uber Aberroth doesn’t really make sense for this game as it caters to far too few people and too few builds. And I don’t see pushing corruption as a viable endgame for most people.
I like the game and will return when I get the stupid cat pet in the new D4 season. They just need to keep building on what they have,
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I still think it’s stupid that you rely on RNG currency drops to unlock the end of your skill’s build. It also means once you have it there are no more trade-offs, as there are in other games where getting +skills on gear means you’re trading other stats to pump your skill points over cap.
Yeah, see Grim Dawn again here, lots of affixes/suffixes and builds hardly ever change power substantially just because you find a weapon with better flat damage. Power is pretty well spread across gear. PoE2 really should have re-worked the itemisation system, adding in more of those other defensive things (e.g. flask effects) into the affix pool. Maybe some ‘+dex skills’ type effects too, but eh, they pretty much left it as-is.
I really have to laugh at how much they can’t seem to figure out Melee. I thought the Fortification idea was pretty good, you just make it only work for strikes/melee hits and it’s good… but it scales off stupid things and so doesn’t work when you need it. Or just introduce ‘life-saver’ mechanics/skills kinda like Steel Skin but more universal for melee. Or a ‘on strike’ support gem that procs things on hit with a melee weapon. So many ideas and they went with ‘let’s slow it down.’
I dunno, the ‘majority’ roll off in the first two weeks anyway, you might keep more people around if the ‘top 5 cycle builds’ becomes the ‘top 20 cycle builds’ or more. Allows a lot of experimentation (again, Grim Dawn with GDStash has the theorycrafters throwing out new builds all the time because they’re unlimited in respec/gear and people like finding guides for their favourite skill/class). The downside is of course that then cycles have to change enough or introduce new things so that it’s not all just done and covered in one season and not worth revisiting.
Following from above, yes. I think maybe LE needs an extra class or two and a few more skills (and more content/farming areas) before this gives longevity to the broader audience.
Again, Grim Dawn pops its head up. Lots of sets, but they provide specific builds or general buffs and make an interesting mix. There’s enough of them that they provide variety, and some are late end-game chase items that allow for interesting meme builds. But, it heavily relies on the fact Crate have done a lot of work balancing their itemisation for end-game balance and they constantly tune it to keep a fairly level playing field. But they work, they’re fun to find and they do interesting things (e.g provide a auto-attack chaos skill with conversion to that damage type).
They don’t need to be ‘the best,’ they just need to enable interesting things that you can’t get otherwise: different, not better. The trick is still covering generic stats at the same time to not just feel too underpowered. No need for them all to push c1000 though.
If it’s going to stay, I just think LP is too common. Boosting your uniques should be a rare thing to finish off a build and only available at end-game, not just run-of-the-mill upgrade. But this pushes back to reworking crafting for T6/7 affixes, adding more affixes, reducing power spread, etc so that LP feels like a proper upgrade when you drop one, you can have some determinism in what it adds and it feels good. I think T7 affixes should also be rarer and hold more of the ‘dual affix’ affixes so you get more than just ‘higher number.’
If the uniques aren’t worth equipping without LP, or don’t compete with standard high tier gear… fix them! Maybe add some level variants to uniques, so I can drop a L25+ one, then a L50+ one, then L75+, then L90, or something like that. Making them one-and-done makes them only usable (aside LP/Weaver’s will) at a point of the levelling process, which is often skipped past. Especially if you’re going to start making things target farmable, they need to scale for the level you’ll be doing it at.
Then you can move things to target farmable areas/monsters/monos and give a higher chance LP drop to bosses.
It’s a weird thing with seasonal content. It actually doesn’t need to be long term, it just needs to change (D3 for instance). I don’t think the devs necessarily care how many people stick around after week two of the season, so long as lots of people buy the game and/or login and buy supported packs and cosmetics in the first week or two. Hence PoE1’s numbers consistently drop to ~5000-10000 users at the end of league, regardless of what new record they set at the start of it.
I hope EHG keep the team relatively small where they don’t need to depend on mass microtransactions and cosmetic purchases to keep going, with heaps of pressure on cycles being big and expansive. There’s a reason you can’t transmog in PoE and it’s grown bloated with new, sprawling content.
I would bet money that PoE2’s roadmap of drip feeding classes and weapons is specifically designed to get people buying cosmetics and supporter packs with each ‘release.’ There’s no way after all these years that they’ve only got a few classes ready. Or they’re winging it, that’s possible going on recent performance…
Yes, as stupid as it was to hope for a 6 Link to drop or procure hundreds of pre 6-socketed items to get currency to then click over 1000 times on a single item commonly (1500 times median amount with 20% quality to be exact if I remember right).
They changed bad design with another one.
It’s the same issue with MG and exalted affixes though. It’s stupid to rely on the right exalted affix on the right base to drop randomly to have even a chance at upgrading your build with no alternative being present.
This could be all alleviated by introducing alternative methods. In LE it’s deterministic progression methods through crafting and target-farming to reduce RNG.
In PoE it’s exchanging other currency to guarantee the return of a 5L or 6L jeweller’s orb.
Actually Grim Dawn as the least amount of affixes of any game of the genre.
1 Prefix
1 Suffix
1 Implicit
They just bundle the effects into a single one at once, making it look like there’s a large variety there.
If it actually had a higher affix count then Grim Dawn would’ve needed to introduce a system which allows changing the individual affixes on their items, but by wanting to forego that they had to reduce the variance which is possible, hence allowing ‘drop only’ to feel good. The only way to mitigate RNG is the gambling crafting of item bases, which is their counter to the leftover outliers happening. A very well thought out system working smoothly together.
As for further crafting you have methods to adjust the shortcomings of your builds by adding fixed extra effects on those items, overall allowing a high amount of adjustment for items to ensure you’re not underpowered while still keeping drops directly important and valuable.
Yes, that should’ve been the case.
Plainly spoken with the complexity of the whole system they’ve introduced in PoE 1 over the time it would’ve been absolutely viable to increase Affixes to 8 from 6 and introduce those ‘interesting’ affixes in the 2 new slots hence.
This would’ve caused crafting to become significantly weaker (as it has more RNG to counter) and hence allow them to give lots more power in the hands of players through that without having issues, but overall leading to a better chance in total to receive a ‘median outcome’ which gets you through progression and doesn’t easily stop afterwards either with higher and higher investment personally.
Yes, they’re called ‘tourists’ commonly. Swiftly in, swiftly out. They’re not affected majorly for top-end changes anyway, but in 0.1 the lower end game was in a fantastic state outside of drops already, so they wouldn’t have felt that anyway.
The long-term players though provide a vastly higher amount of revenue (people paying thousands for the game compared to maybe a supporter pack every 5 leagues with the tourists, or a once only influx for basic tabs) and also ensure that the game stays with a respectively high number of playercount, keeping it on the radar as it’s talked about. Influencers are generally in that category, exceptions apply.
Yes, which is a severe amount of workload, which EHG already can’t handle with the ‘classic’ style that’s actively avoiding that for a reason.
Which leads again back to the mastery respec being a mistake, it’s one of the mechanics actively reducing the timeframe. Not good.
3-4 months is a neck-breaking pace of releases at the best of days, not being able to keep up is not surprising. But… they’ve positioned themselves as a live-service game and not something else, so it’s their own fault. Otherwise they could’ve just implemented CoF, kept it solo and co-op with servers supporting solely that aspect (like D2 battle.net online ladder did) and be done with it. A fully functional system working well without all those pitfalls and not enforcing 3-4 month updates.
But that’s not where we are, hence they are forced to keep up with the extremely unhealthy and competitive environment they knowingly positioned themselves in and simply have to deal with it.
Yep, agree, which comes down to time. Substantial amounts of time likely. I would say 2 years earliest.
Yes, which with a steadily shifting meta enforced by the environment LE is in doesn’t work. It needs heavy balance and hence can’t be kept in a ‘proper’ state. Grim Dawn is for a reason basically ‘the same but better’ since release.
Baseline they’re already really rare. If you don’t play CoF which raises item drop-rate by… 400% or so in pure exalted quantity + improving the overall quality with how well they do drop they’re absolutely not ‘common’ still 
You gotta keep in mind that EHG set themselves up - willingly and personally mind you - to balance 2 inherently opposite systems at the same time, hence not allowing any to be left behind. Which is already failing since 1.0 and likely won’t get better over time… but that’s another topic.
Yep, baffles me why they weren’t… or more alternative things like ‘the fang’ and ‘the claw’ being introduced. Instead LP was clearly the ‘lazy route’ in comparison. Much easier then designing more items, right?
Yes, meta changes suffice… but then you need franchise power. D3/D4 have franchise power (for now still) and hence can do that. Both D3 and D4 got ripped apart review wise though with severe shortcomings front to back… nonetheless successful. Why? Because of broad availability, you get every average joe into the game easily, they don’t care about depth, they just wanna blast, enjoy it a week or 2 and then be gone to come again ‘sometime else when in the mood’.
The more complex systems get the more niche they become, and hence the more the need for retention creeps up. LE is clearly more complex in mind (but not execution partially) then D3/D4, obviously they don’t want to compete with Blizzard, good choice.
But that also enforces the need for the retention mechanics to start existing.
On the other side of the spectrum we have PoE 1, which is all about retention time and so much stuff that you basically can’t see through it without actively studying the systems. But… it always offers something more ‘to go for’, which the complexity demands to have.
Yes, but that’s fairly obvious and actually a good choice from their side. What I detest in their system is functional buys (tabs), loot boxes and season passes. Those are disgusting and predatory mechanics. One because success is based on having them, one because they’re leaning into gambling issues and one because it leans into the detrimental parts of FOMO.
And yes… winging might be entirely possible and them simply having picked a fitting way by mistake Wouldn’t put it behind them.
Oh yes that was terrible. Not to mention you get a 6L all set up nicely… and then find a better armour/weapon and have to start again. Funny story, the first time in PoE I dropped a useful 6 socket armour, I got the 6L on my second fusing! Then wondered the next time why after a couple of hundred it wasn’t hitting 
Actually I don’t mind it in principle, but for it to feel good you need to be able to target farm the bases to improve those odds. And not just with ‘influencers,’ but through content.
And also, they should remain nice upgrades, but not such a jump in power that the build depends on them.
Which heavily favours market play, but that’s a whole other issue.
Oh yeah of course, forgot that even after enough time spent in GrimTools to learn a bunch of them. I think maybe LE could borrow this ‘affix bundle’ more. It’s nice to get a rare prefix which you know gives power or defense in multiple ways. Just doing block + block eff. is really just one stat broken up (same hybrid health etc), where if the affixes were bundled a bit more farming would be easier and you can deal with less than ideal affixes if they’re just ‘part of the package.’
And it took a little time to smooth out, so hopefully LE will tune things towards a nice progression and meaningful upgrades as they go.
I think the behaviour is pretty similar though. Long term players also just come into the league to smash out a few builds, see what’s changed and go do something else. They’re certainly not spending money after the first couple of weeks. It would interesting to see the revenue breakdowns over time, but I imagine most sales after the first few weeks are new players for the most part.
I think this is a concern. EHG hopefully made a good amount of up-front profit and can focus on the game being in the middle, 6 monthly cycles with an aim to design for longevity (so compete somewhat with PoE and somewhat with GD/Titan Quest 2 (?)). 3-4 months per cycle will, to me, lead to players feeling like they’re beta testers every league and mechanics will get rushed in without proper review and tuning. We’ll see…
Yep, but harder to balance in the end when the LP affixes can be ‘anything.’
Yes absolutely. Tencent I’m sure are asking how they can increase these ideas. The really shouldn’t need make stash tabs a real money thing for PoE2, but here we are.
Bots.
POE2 has a huge RMT economy. LE doesn’t.
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I hate to be that guy to say it, but… bots.
The care LE has put into making this a good experience for people that actually play the game has been detrimental to people looking to exploit systems for profit, therefore there aren’t as many bots floating “player” count.
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It is very simple. You get to end game way faster then PoE I (or II) and then you gain very little gear progress with extreme time consuming farm. So you either go to play alt or give up. In PoE it takes some time to get mage blood, farm T17 and other stuff… at least for me this is the case (even tho i still rocking LE right now and im not going to stop anytime soon 
Without the trade system PoE is pretty much the same. Being able to trade so easily trivializes the endgame in PoE much faster than in LE. Mageblood, headhunter, etc, can be considered luxury farm, but endgame progresses very quickly once you can farm currency for trades for items that you cba to craft, lol
I always found it being an issue and wanting a large variety of content to exist a conundrum which can’t be solved… and will lead to CoF issues in the future for sure.
Because for a long-term experience you need to diversify gameplay styles. Not every style fits every person, so people tend to like some stuff and hate others. But for those mechanics to have value and stay relevant even with new additions the design is enforced to provide unique outcomes from them which can generally only acquired there… otherwise they fall out of usage since ‘more optimal’ routes exist.
A market is a tool created to reduce the need to engage in this variety, allowing a player to circumvent engaging with content they dislike - and hence actively reduce their enjoyment overall - and acquire things through that way while engaging in the content they actually do enjoy. Optimally at least.
Because imagine LE in 5 years, with 20 extra mechanics, each one providing ‘something important’… and playing CoF. It’s the SSF issue in PoE ‘the game is made for trade in mind!’. Actually no… no it’s not, SSF is in a better state then 10 years ago nowadays but you’re nonetheless forced to engage in everything since simply stuff got added over time and you can’t circumvent that.
Imagine wanting to craft a great item and you have to first farm Betrayal for hours on end to unlock a specific craft needed on that item, then having to go to Delve because it’s a fossil-based crafting method for the first part, then having to play 15 hours of Harvest to acquire enough juice to craft the second bit and then having to go run Influenced bosses until a orb drops for enforce influence on the item base which you need.
One item mind you.
But for the others you might need Essences, another has such a rare affix that you need to fracture it, you need to influence your boots/gloves/helmet with eater/exarch, farm Blight for annoints, run labs for a alternate skill-gem… it gets kinda much, but that’s what starts to exist over time simply, no good way around it without forcing content into oblivion.
So yes, a deep game enforces the existence of a market by design to alleviate the branching out into a too high amount of choices causing mental fatigue.
Yes, that’s the general way in how it’s handled when you want your game to branch out a bit better into variety. Hybrid mods are a powerful tool to increase perceived variance despite having a lower amount of total affixes available per item. Generally well received.
They’re vastly more prevalent in ‘opening their wallets’.
There’s been studies around payment behaviour of customers (cause… of course, incentive behind such a study) and it’s been found out that the initial first payment (out of shelf-price) is the hardest to achieve mentally. Afterwards it’s like a barrier coming down. Someone having already paid once is likely to pay twice, also the amounts being spent are higher commonly then a fresh customer. And with more time the barrier to spend money into the game is generally lower.
I can beat Abberroth with my mediocre skills and nigh no possible upgrades for my character after playing 7 days intensely in LE.
Despite having 8000 hours of experience, in-depth market knowledge and crafting knowledge I still need roughly a month to get to the end of the majority of provided systems. Maven is only a starting point in PoE after all and you can clearly see options to go a step further in plenty of ways itemization wise. Those don’t exist in LE at all.
21/23 gems are a massive power boost and very expensive. Timeless jewels, Watcher’s Eye, Cluster Jewels and corruptions on items lead to a highly varied option of high-end items to beat demanding content.
In LE you either get your core items done and your idols or you have no chance at Uber-Abberroth, which is extremely hard content wise. And if you didn’t choose a very powerful build directly you have basically no chance of beating him at all, no matter the investment, hence it’s not something to actively reach towards in the first place in such a position.
There’s very glaring, large and distinctive differences.
Clearing peak content in PoE also requires picking the optimal, en vogue builds, but allows you the shortcut of trading for the gear you want, including the crafting bases you need. Regardless of how you slice it, 7 days of intense playing is all anyone of the calibre of what you seem to represent yourself as will require to complete any content, LE or PoE. Some clear it much, much faster.
Not even remotely… not even remotely.
Uber elder is being cleared with my tornado shot speedfarmer char. Same going for the searing exarch or the eater of worlds, both killed by that character. Maven as well.
Other content (like Simulacrum) are a different situation, which I agree with, but for bossing even a non-bossing build suffices. And my speed farming builds has shitty defenses and shitty single-target DPS… after all it’s built for maximum amounts of enemies cleared in a single map, hence wearing a Headhunter and having Inspired learnings… which are ‘empty’ items for a boss as you can’t scale since you don’t kill rares.
Last season i ended up with 5 mirror build and I felt every upgrage was a decent step. Sry i am not able to farm this within 2 weeks
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Sorry, you don’t think that PoE is made with trade in mind in terms of shitty drops? I know I’ve been skimming this thread (& that’sbeing generous), but this comment stood out. I know GGG have added mechanics on top of mechanics on top of mechanics to help SSF feel less abusive, but surely that’s because the game is balanced around trade?
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My point here is that they do that within the first two weeks of a league, just like the tourists. The rest of the league is mostly irrelevant to the devs, so long as they get out of that first two weeks with a good rep.
Are you talking SSF here? Because with the market that’s surely not true for someone with such experience?
PoE trade helps ensure people don’t worry about how much of a shitshow balance is in the game because they buy their way past it. PoE2 made it obvious, now they’re trying to work back from it and people rejoice at more drops.
But because people can just buy their way around it, GGG doesn’t have to stop fucking people over so the game is effectively balanced around trade.
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The fact that MG is ruined again and ppl trade at gold cap doesn’t help the average joe that see the prices on items and just quits.
And EHG didn’t do nothing about MG prices. what good is gold cap where i can’t pick gold anymore( i can’t hoard like i hoard mirrors in poe)
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Yes, because the functionality to divert those exists nowadays.
Which shitty drops? You mean chase uniques? Even they can be force-farmed by rushing normal T16 maps with the sightless seer by now. A headhunter can be achieved surprisingly easily, a mageblood is in real reach for a normal player too this way.
Currency drops? You get showered in them nowadays, the uppermost crafting personally done primarily is 'perfected prefixes or suffixes + multimod meta-craft), with a few tricks beyond. That’s sufficient for all content outside of pinnacle content.
And pinnacle content is repetition of target farmed specific content, usually harvest or fossil crafts to create things like ‘pseudo 6-linked’ helmets or enforced specific very rare affixes.
Depends on what your end-goal is. If it’s achieving the absolute top-end then creating a system to allow that without trade is related to extreme target farming options in a long-lasting game like PoE, it can’t be achieved as it would mandate the ability to funnel all outcomes nigh perfectly into specific avenues, hence… converting drops overall to example into only base currency to enforce a high rate of divine orbs. Or removing base currency to enforce only fossils in delve. Otherwise the variance of consumables themselves which are meant to provide a large variety of different possible crafts acts counter to the wanted outcome.
That’ the route CoF is supposed to go, but it takes away a large amount of the core-drop enjoyment of it being spread out if that happens, since nothing besides the wanted outcome has any relevance and can be removed from the filter hence.
SSF has always mandated very simplistic core itemization system (Grim Dawn’s 1/1 affix split, content based highly limited drop-rate of specific items) or a targetfarmable deterministic system which takes over a massive amount of power from the core-drop mechanic (D2’s rune system is one of those) to make it happen.
If a game doesn’t have that then over time with introduced extra content and hence added unavoidable complexity SSF becomes a less and less enjoyable experience as the base variance of drops works counter to success in a ever stronger way.
That’s why trade is usually used, it’s the mechanic to counter this downfall which automatically happens.
How many mirror-tier builds have you created? In general?
Because that’s a benchmark in PoE, either by having mirror-tier item itself or by surpassing the value which a mirror has in comparison in your total build setup.
LE has no benchmark for comparison, which is a perception issue and causes so many problem… which lines are we supposed to target?
Which is where target farming should come in again, not upping drop rates and then filtering/influencing.
I find this to be going too far in the ‘target farming’ direction. Part of what’s overwhelming for new players; you don’t just hit the crafting bench and learn that, you use X for Y, T for Z, W for V, etc, to do very slightly different things, all gamba to an extent. These are definitely systems designed for profit, not respecting the player. Make good streamer ‘OMG got it!’ moments. You can’t ‘drop’ anything top tier in the game, you can only craft (on ‘bases’)/buy it, both made immensely easier with the market.
This is probably where I guess I don’t gel with PoE (a bit irrationally), because farming ‘currency’ for me is not at all exciting, Which is odd, because it’s not really much different to collecting ‘crafting materials’ but it just rubs me the wrong way. The whole premise of currency is for purchase and gamble, so it indicates a design decision I don’t like (and they’ve introduced gold after all anyway).
To be fair CoF is a good idea in countering this, it just needs the content to work better for it and not just be ‘anything could be anywhere.’
Benchmark? I’d think it’s more the aspirational target for streamers and min-maxers? Doesn’t ‘mirror-tier’ really just mean "I won at crafting gamba’ most of the time?
I’ve never got to a mirror-tier build, because I only play SSF and get bored with a build well before having something worth a mirror. Too much friction facing rolling currency (on flasks for instance and trying for 6Ls) and doing content I don’t like to drop crafting currency to maybe get the right outcome. I’d rather start a new build and see how far it goes again. I’m one of the weirdos that likes actually playing through the campaign at a comfortable pace to see how the build feels along the way.
Definitely, that’s why I think corruption needs to jump in clear lines (c100 → 200 → 300, etc) and have a max for loot drops. Go higher for bragging, but the ceiling is set for balance. Then you balance bosses in other areas against that, with some extra hard stuff that will require dedicated build setups to take on. LE also needs to up the danger to different resistances in different places, so you learn which content is easier to take on. The only places in the campaign I’ve ever had to check defenses was Majasa (phys) and before 1.0 those void slam guys (void). Why have I never had to check necrotic res in maps surrounded by necrotic enemies?
Yes, target farming is a method of reducing that… but as said, takes away the variety despite that variety existing. D3 is a prime example with the item drops being catered to your class, you don’t see the potential for other classes along your journey which makes the game feel more ‘narrow’.
It inevitable by design. Our brain likes variety… but our brain also is overwhelmed with variety, variety is a stress factor, a ‘obstacle to overcome’, optimizing it until it’s solved, then getting into routine.
So if you present people with too much variety then they tend to freeze and become demotivated. With choices it’s directly explained by the term ‘choice paralysis’ but it’s also in effect with generally existing variety, just not as pronounced as factors can be more easily ignored.
So to reduce RNG through target farming means ultimately you see less variety.
Less variety can lead easily to a stale gameplay loop.
To have more variety means you need a market to counteract the mass.
A market means choice paralysis can happen.
It’s a very finnicky thing to dial in properly.
The main issue is that several game system - hence breadth of content - does cause the same thing, initially you’re easily overwhelmed as it’s just ‘so many choices, where to start?’ and handling that is the most taxing aspect for humans.
That’s what all those mechanics try to alleviate, keeping the system existing but without the player perceiving it in said way. For example target farming is actively filtering it out, which isn’t perceiving it as less… but it’s actually actively ‘less’ meaningful options for us. Good on one hand, bad on another, but the only option we got.
Exactly, which would be solved through mentioned unified crafting system, hence a singular screen.
The thought process of ‘which thing to I need to use next?’ and ‘What item types are in this crafting mechanic and not the others?’ falls away, opening up mental resources for other parts.
That’s what’s called a ‘learning curve’. The knowledge base is a part of the game’s experience, but the focus has drifted away from it since the conception and is nowadays unfitting since we got other flavors of difficulty implemented.
Games like ‘Blue Prince’ for example function solely on creating difficulty on a knowledge base, it’s a puzzle game after all, knowing the outcome of a puzzle provides no enjoyment, only the process of solving it does since it’s a type of challenge.
PoE has had that as a large portion early on already, but over time so much content got added that it has put the focus into that instead, which is overcoming active gameplay progression. Something which LE direly lacks still (and pronounces shortcomings in other aspects hence). But that also means the former knowledge based challenges are now ‘a step too far’, they add to the difficulty of the game, even if mechanically it isn’t overwhelming, it’s only mentally. But… we only got a limited total capacity of what we can deal with at any time.
You can! Really amazing items that are absolutely end-game viable do drop in PoE, surprisingly regularly even!
Just not for your specific build.
And also not on the massive top-end, extremely rare to have that with the high variance of the base drop system with the immense amounts of affixes and bases added over time.
The same issue exists with LE actually, Exalted Affixes are a prime showcase of that. You barely ever drop one which fits you, but unlike in PoE you got no alternative route available. That’s all the difference there is… hence the perception is that vastly before the end-point of the best possible items in the game the progression already ends.
Currently that state in MG is 1 T7 and 1T6 for exalteds. For CoF I don’t know it exactly, but I think it was 2 T7 or even 2T7 and 1 T6 of realistic potential drops or acquisition overall.
The highest possible drop instead would be a 4 T7 and sealed T7 item.
That’s what’s described as ‘dead design space’, you got a lot of potential upgrades available but nobody ever is able to see them realistically. Overall that’s a negative thing psychologically since people want the potential to reach the absolute top. It can be extremely rare to happen with vast investment of time and effort… but doable.
For example in PoE it’s very hard to reach that point but they have no ‘dead design space’. Chronicon was overeager and it’s basically a 100% guarantee to reach the top-end in less then 24 hours of play-time. Which is obviously also negative, less retention for a looter ARPG means it’s easily forgetable, it’s purely mechanical as a basis after all, story, graphics, music and so on used to enhance the core experience there. Usually RPGs tend to be a hybrid between story and gameplay, looter ARPGs aren’t so much.
The gambling crafting aspect is what’s off-putting there. Deterministic crafting is the bit which is different… and I agree with to be the most optimal for enjoyment as well. Much harder to balance properly though and it can ruin a lot.
Which is a part of the downside, isn’t it. If things are gated behind mechanics then if you don’t enjoy the mechanic… what do you do? That’s the downfall of CoF.
Because the alternative is to let everything drop everywhere… and then only a single mechanic at any time will be ‘viable’ and people will do content they don’t enjoy over content they enjoy based on the rewards simply being higher. Prime way to loose retention and get negative reviews.
People tend to compare themselves to others if they can perceive them. It’s a natural thing to do and not doing so is more an exception then the norm. An aspired exception… but exception nonetheless.
It’s a psychological mechanic to determine our status in a society compared to others, and higher status provides usually more security, hence it’s a sort of survival strategy giving us a good feeling.
Which makes it so important to lean into this aspect as soon as you’re in a online environment, as that behaviour will be respectively expedited… online means social environment, hence you’re more prone to interact socially, hence your chance to showcase this behaviour type is substantially higher.
Not really, it means your gear’s value is a combined amount of roughly 1200 divines. That’s a mirror-tier build. A mirror-tier item is worth that much.
The acquisition of 1200 divines a league isn’t that hard plainly spoken. Mind you, talking about trade, you can’t as easily discern value in SSF after all Trade narrows the above mentioned status perception.
And 1200 divines are pure farming time of roughly 120 hours without a single lucky drop happening nowadays.
100% agreed there. As well as the follow ups with ceiling, boss-balance and the ability to ‘push beyond’ but a clear-cut and set in stone expected end-line as a basis.