Yay, finally! Mastery respec. You brought me back!

[DJSamhein]

@Macknum

If there is someone who can’t hit an elephant with a shotgun a point blank range said person can still love FPS games. Just having little time isn’t changeing what someone likes. Telling ppl to play candy crush if they have no time is like telling ppl to drop what they like if they aren’t 100% fit to do whatever they like. With this mindset there would be no change and only stagnation. That’s why I think it’s narrowminded.

I don’t quite agree with you. Players are free to play whatever game they want, as long as they understand what the game mechanics are.

Dark Souls games are brutally hard. If you have very low skill, then the game might not be for you. Sure, you have to option to try and play it, but you will be killed hundreds of times by lowly mobs and will never manage to kill the boss because it’s too hard for you. Should FS make the game easier for you so it’s more accesible?

Horror games are supposed to be frightening. Some people are too afraid to play games like that. Should the developers make the games less frightening so everyone can play?

Lots of strategy games require you to be smart. Should they be dumbed down so everyone can play?

ARPGs, at their core, require time investment. You won’t advance much if you don’t play too much. The game shouldn’t be made easier because you can only play 1h per month, because that would make it so that everyone that plays 20h per month will be done with it in 2 days. That is already what D3/D4 is for.
Besides, in LE (and other ARPGs) you already have legacy/standard/eternal/whatever. That is precisely so you can play at your own time.

It doesn’t mean that a game can’t cater to more players (although D4 has shown that this doesn’t actually work). But there is nothing wrong with saying “This isn’t a game for you” when you don’t fulfill the target requirements for said game.
Souls games are definitely not for me. And I see nothing wrong with that, nor do I wish FS changed them to please me.

@Macknum

For example I’m fat and I change my eating habbits bit by bit and I start to lose weight. If I take your aproach I only should eat unhealthy stuff because it’s hard for me to lose weight.

That’s a flawed metaphor. The more appropriate metaphor would be “If you only like to eat unhealthy food and can’t stop doing so, then being thin (and probably healthier) isn’t for you”.
Although this is a reductive example, since weight isn’t simply tied to eating habits but a lot more factors.

@hawkkiwi

If people don’t use it nothing will change for them they can carry on playing as they do now.

I think you just don’t want to understand, really.
But since you don’t seem to want to understand that adding a difficulty slider would make Souls players stop playing their game, I’ll try one more example:

If LE adds a bunch of options that turn the game into a D4 copy, they’re all options but the game will turn into D4. I don’t like D4. I would stop playing LE. This is because LE would stop being LE and would instead be another D4 with some options.
Adding a free mastery respec option would make LE closer to D4, thus I would like LE less. Most likely less enough to stop playing. Even if there was an option, because the game would not be the same game.

If you don’t understand after that, then it’s because you either refuse to, or because you have an inability to empathize.

[Kulze]

@Macknum

Just having little time isn’t changeing what someone likes.

Yes, that’s true, and nobody argued about that.

The contention is ‘I don’t have the time so make it to cater to my available timeframe’.

I can enjoy a short term game as much as a long term game. No matter if I put 100 hours into the short one - if I like replaying it - or 20 hours into the long one without ever reaching the end. The process is to be enjoyed after all, not solely the outcome. The perceived goal-line only defines if you can enjoy the process towards it in the first place.

@Macknum

Telling ppl to play candy crush if they have no time is like telling ppl to drop what they like if they aren’t 100% fit to do whatever they like. With this mindset there would be no change and only stagnation. That’s why I think it’s narrowminded.

Which is grossly misrepresenting the argument though.

Nobody tells people to go play another genre. But the issue is that people come here… see ‘I’ll need ~50 hour per character several times to get at least ‘somewhere’’ and then go in here and tell EHG ‘Hey yo! I don’t have the time for that crap, give me the ability to do it in 10 instead of 50 hours or I can’t have fun!’
And that’s the point.

If someone can’t enjoy the game because of the needed investment (be it effort, time or something else outside money) then ‘That game is not for them’, simply as that. They already don’t enjoy it after all, it’s why the change is needed to even start making them enjoy it. But that comes at the cost of others.

So no, that shouldn’t be defended at all. If it’s a large group then a game-dev can definitely make compromises, but there’s a reason why games are different to each other even in the same genre, because they cater to different people.

@Macknum

For example I’m fat and I change my eating habbits bit by bit and I start to lose weight.

Yeah, the comparison here is more leaning into ‘I’m short so if I stretch daily then I’ll start to become bigger’ type of direction.

It’s not something which can be actively influenced by yourself.

@hawkkiwi

If people don’t use it nothing will change for them they can carry on playing as they do now.

Are you a broken record now? You already said that, hence I’ll just tell you to read above what people answered you for it.

There’s been very clear-cut and detailed examples of a large variety above already.
Failing to even start grasping an understanding is not really a good sign for you personally I gotta say, they are quite easily formulated as well.

[DJSamhein]

@hawkkiwi

If people don’t use it nothing will change for them they can carry on playing as they do now.

And I’ll give it one final go:
I like it when games have meaningful choices. D4 doesn’t have meaningful choices. I can play D4 in a way that I force myself to have those meaningful choices (meaning I don’t respec, I play the campaign, etc). But why would I force myself to play the game inefficiently just to fit my playstyle, when LE and PoE already exist that give me those meaningful choices as part of their base game?

There are thousands and thousands of games out there. So why would I force myself to play that doesn’t fit my playstyle just because it has an option, rather than play one that does fit my playstyle?
Does that make sense to you, finally?

It’s great that you will enjoy respec. No one is disputing that there are a bunch of people that will enjoy it. But you seem to fail to understand that people might leave a game even if it’s an option, so I hope that finally got through.

[Llama8]

@Kulze

Huh? The whole argument is the timeframe needed to grind it up, and how much time it takes for a CoF player. So wouldn’t you need the comparison for a MG player time-wise?

Yeah, I misread the earlier comment.

[peinshakoff]

At some point readtime of forum threads about mastery respec overlaped time required to lvl up new 0-100 character

[Macknum]

@Scipo0419

I get your point. But what I believe Llama was getting at is that you’d never tell FromSoft to make Souls-games easier for people who struggle with them.

dafuq? A random dude wanted to sue FromSoft because their addon was to difficult. There are all kind of people who critique a lot of things.

All I said that it is narrowminded to tell people what they should play. people like what they like and it’s fair game if people want what they like to be more approachable. That’s common sense to me. Don’t get me wrong though this wouldn’t be a totaly good thing to do more of because replayability in retention is important.

@Scipo0419

For example, a theme park MMO like WoW or FFXIV has a completely different target audience to the hardcore grinders that play games like Black Desert Online.

I played all three of these as a theme park MMO. I played BDO back in the day because it was fun and different untill I couldn’t be assed to build failstacks anymore. I was never a big enough fan of BDO to voice this and simply dropped it because it turned from intresting to fun to complete shit for my personal taste. People aren’t that indifferent about LE hopefully.

@DJSamhein

If you have very low skill, then the game might not be for you.

I have low skill what made souslikes even more fun to play as well as equaly frustrating but then again more fun again when obstacles are overcome. I choose to play that game and I knew what I had to expect.

For H&S games there is stuff like D3/D4 or TLI so it depends highly where you are coming from. If you played PoE you would most likely guess to get a zoom zoom walking simulator that is stupidly time consuming with frustrating mechanics and if you are from D3 you await a game where you are max level in an hour and decked out in gear in one day. So if we compare the same genre of games most compairsons fall flat because there is a big pool to choose from.

@DJSamhein

That’s a flawed metaphor.

If you think so. I took just the if you have no time then don’t game into a if you are fat don’t even try loosing weight format. To me that’s the same and not flawed at all. That’s what I said first and what was quoted you can reread it above.

@Kulze

The contention is ‘I don’t have the time so make it to cater to my available timeframe’.

And that’s fair game as stated above. Depending what people played before it’s a understandable complaint. If people played D3 and want LE to work in an equal timeframe this feedback is totaly fine.

@Kulze

Nobody tells people to go play another genre.

I don’t want to go through all the replys i got in the past about this topic but this was mentioned and told so you are wrong here.

@Kulze

Yeah, the comparison here is more leaning into ‘I’m short so if I stretch daily then I’ll start to become bigger’ type of direction.

No because people have made choices to have no time and don’t work about genetics they can do nothing about.

[DJSamhein]

@Macknum

I have low skill what made souslikes even more fun to play as well as equaly frustrating but then again more fun again when obstacles are overcome. I choose to play that game and I knew what I had to expect.

Yes, but that is what people are referring to. You choose to play that game and you know what to expect. That’s fine.

What’s not fine is people going for a game with low skill (or little time) and then demand that the game be brought down to their level. This is what people refer to when they make that statement.

[Scipo0419]

@Macknum

dafuq? A random dude wanted to sue FromSoft because their addon was to difficult. There are all kind of people who critique a lot of things.

All I said that it is narrowminded to tell people what they should play. people like what they like and it’s fair game if people want what they like to be more approachable. That’s common sense to me. Don’t get me wrong though this wouldn’t be a totaly good thing to do more of because replayability in retention is important.

And that person is an idiot.

Yes, people like what they like and Llama was not telling people “you aren’t allowed to play this game.” he was saying “changing the game to cater to people it’s not targeting so they can have an easier time with it is a bad idea.” by pointing out that if you don’t have the time investment to play an ARPG then perhaps it’s not the game for you. I used to be able to play games for 10+ hours a day, so ARPG’s and MMOs were my focus. I maybe get 3-4 hours now, usually less, so I can still enjoy ARPG’s and MMOs, but not in the same way I used to and it would be wrong of me to ask developers of the games I love (GD and FFXIV, for example) to change core design philosophies to make those games more accessible to me as a lower playtime player.

@Macknum

I played all three of these as a theme park MMO. I played BDO back in the day because it was fun and different untill I couldn’t be assed to build failstacks anymore. I was never a big enough fan of BDO to voice this and simply dropped it because it turned from intresting to fun to complete shit for my personal taste. People aren’t that indifferent about LE hopefully.

You’re actually proving Llama’s point. You ran into a core design feature of a game and said “this isn’t for me” and stopped playing instead of trying to force the game developers to cater to you. BDO is a heavily grind focused game and while I enjoyed playing it I didn’t care for the PvP (not a PvP fan in general) nor the failstacks, so I stopped playing because the game wasn’t for me. It’s not that I didn’t find the game fun, but I just wasn’t the target audience and so aspects of the game didn’t click for me and that’s OK.

[Kulze]

@Macknum

people like what they like and it’s fair game if people want what they like to be more approachable.

Has never been ‘fair game’. And the argument is rather flawed there.

Yes, they like the premise of what they’re presented, but not how approachable it is. That means… they don’t like the game ‘as is’… it stops them from playing. So to remedy that they want the needed effort (because that’s what ‘approachable’ in most cases means) to become less.

That goes actively counter to those which want to invest effort into the game though. It’s a non-solvable equation to please both. The best you can do is approaching it with a compromise… and even then people will be miffed. The question is only how many.
And also how the game was overall presented from the start.

If people want the genre and less effort to invest then there’s already 2 franchises out there doing exactly that. They’re Diablo and Torchlight.
We only got a single franchise though which needs a bit more effort currently (like D2 initially needed, given the time back then at least) and that’s Path of Exile. A second to compete would do the whole segment well.

Instead positioning closer to Diablo and Torchlight is - in my opinion - a prime fail to set yourself up to fail, because then you need to compete with the quantity of content rather then solely with where in the market you’re actually standing.

@Macknum

People aren’t that indifferent about LE hopefully.

What you describe is the norm.
People interacting on any medium outside the game are the grand exception. You also got a community in BDO… and they talked since years against a good chunk of the changes there.

We can see the outcome, BDO has waned substantially rather then gaining further traction after being incredibly well received for the core gameplay at first. Their core audience there from the start were the ones asking to keep catering to them… and BDO failed to do that. Hence they started to stagnate.

@Macknum

I choose to play that game and I knew what I had to expect.

Exactly, and when you choose a ‘slightly’ more complex Hack’N’Slash then you have to expect to invest a large amount of time. So why rip that away?
That’s the whole point there. You’re even reinforcing it with your own example.

Because as you mentioned already, there’s alternatives there, they already exist… so why make every single game ‘uniform’ rather then diverse to engage different players with each? It’s nonsensical to cause direct competition when you can instead grab the market share which already had an inclination to like your product more.

@Macknum

If people played D3 and want LE to work in an equal timeframe this feedback is totaly fine.

No… the point is… it is not.
If you come from the rogue-like sector (the actual rogue-likes, not what’s nowadays often called such) then you’ve even gotten massive differences there right away.

The initial ‘Rogue’ was short (gamejam product after all), as are several others of the genre. Desktop Dungeon for example.
On the other spectrum we got games like ToME, Caves of Qud and ADOM which are absolutely monolithic in size.
By your argument people which come from Rogue hence should have a viable argument to reduce those other games to barely a fraction of their complexity and size since that’s needed to reduce said play-time from dozens or hundreds of hours into the single-digit expected amount.

That’s just not how it works.

@Macknum

No because people have made choices to have no time and don’t work about genetics they can do nothing about.

You also can’t choose your attention span, which it boils down to basically.

Someone with a high attention span but little time will play Path of Exile. But someone with a lower attention span will prefer the Diablo genre.

Both are not compatible and you can’t make those with a high attention span enjoy the things which are high-cadence in dishing out rewards as that makes them feel ‘lackluster’ while those with a low attention span will feel ‘fun starved’ instead.

And the topic is about that aspect here.

@DJSamhein

Yes, but that is what people are referring to. You choose to play that game and you know what to expect. That’s fine.

Exactly that.
You take the game as is in the core aspects and enjoy it this way. You don’t go and try to adjust them to cater to yourself. Details… sure! They devil’s always in the details and can cause a large swath of players to enjoy the game vastly more without any meantionable negatives.
But core aspects? Plainly spoken if that’s tried then leave rather, other games provide those things already, and if not I recommend pitching game ideas in dev spaces, they tend to get picked up if interesting.

@Scipo0419

And that person is an idiot.

Thanks, wanted to write that but you were quicker

[DongleBert]

Oh no! They’re making the game appealing to someone who isn’t me!!! This must stop now.

[Kulze]

After buying into the game because it was made the way it is the changes indeed must stop to make it appealing to someone else then those which it was designed for.

I agree 100%!

Yes I know it was sarcasm… but that’s a great example of how sarcasm backfires because someone failed to understood the message behind it and thought they’re witty while making an ass out of themselves

[Macknum]

@Kulze

Has never been ‘fair game’. And the argument is rather flawed there.

Why? People always want improvements for stuff to suit their taste better. That’s as old as humanity.

@Kulze

Exactly, and when you choose a ‘slightly’ more complex Hack’N’Slash then you have to expect to invest a large amount of time.

I guess first of all a lot of people are impulse buyers. They see a genre and a nice trailer and they go for it. as far as I know the least ammount of people dig deep to know what they get into for real. As I said people coming from D3 who are used to D3 will have a different oppinion on the game then people who come from PoE. Both sides are capable of giving feedback from their viewpoint and at the end of the day it’s up to EHG on what topic they cave in next.

@Kulze

No… the point is… it is not.

It is . Sure it’s an easy example, a low hanging fruit so to speak but it is. Next sentence you talk about rogue likes when I compare an isometric H&S with an isometriv H&S game.

so let’s compare other games. The first shooter I played was Doom and then I played Doom2 then there was Quake and all i had to say as a first impression was “I need a mouse to aim wtf?”. While my first impression wasn’t a good one because I wasn’t used to aim with a mouse I changed my mind pretty fast and had tons of fun and still some friends didn’t play it because it was bad to play with Keyboard only and they complained about it nonstop.

Again it’s fair game to do so. Is it worthwhile? Nah but it’s okay to mention you dislike xyz.

@Kulze

thought they’re witty while making an ass out of themselves

That’s why I don’t even awnser that stuff ^^.

@DJSamhein

Yes, but that is what people are referring to.

Yeah as I reffer to D3 players everyone is ignoring majesticly . If someone played D3 only said player would have a rough waking up because the H&S experince made aren’t the H&S in other games. Still D3 is a valid H&S game… sure it got old and there is newer stuff people gravitate to but non the less it was a fun little game.

People can pick and choose what they reffer to for sure but then they miss the point and don’t even try to understand.

To be clear again… I don’t care how long it takes because I have a lot of time but I surely understand the average player has only some hours now and then and therefor it’s not bad to have, for example, seasonal content that is achiveable without putting in 100h first untill you get there. No matter the game or genre.

[DJSamhein]

@Macknum

Yeah as I reffer to D3 players everyone is ignoring majesticly . If someone played D3 only said player would have a rough waking up because the H&S experince made aren’t the H&S in other games. Still D3 is a valid H&S game… sure it got old and there is newer stuff people gravitate to but non the less it was a fun little game.

Sure, but D3 players have games that suit their playstyle and/or time availability, which is D4 or TLI. If they don’t like the more hardcore playstyle and higher time requirements they should just play those, rather than trying to transform PoE into D4/TLI. Likewise for LE, even if LE isn’t as time consuming as PoE.

Otherwise the opposite is also true. I hate the casual approach that D4 has. So do lots of other people. Should we all band together and try to get D4 closer to PoE? Make it require a lot more skill and lot more time investment?
Or should each player know which games fit their playstyle better and go play those rather than try to change games that aren’t aimed at them?

[Scipo0419]

@DJSamhein

Should we all band together and try to get D4 closer to PoE? Make it require a lot more skill and lot more time investment?

No, you’re forgetting the importance of having every game copy every other game so they’re all carbon copies of each other. Who needs diversity in their video games? I want Last Epoch, Kingdom Hearts, Monster Hunter, and Dark Souls to have all of the same traits because they’re all action RPGs and I need them all to have the things I like from each game.

Edit: I know this post was sarcastic. But I’m genuinely sick of seeing the “PoE 1/2 did it!” arguments on the Titan Quest 2 forums. Like ffs, they’re different games and can target different audiences, even if there’s overlap!

[DJSamhein]

Sure, but my point was more along the lines of “should PoE be more like D4 or should D4 be more like PoE?”. Because the same argument that is valid for one is also valid for the other.

[Scipo0419]

I completely agree that it goes both ways. Which is why I was being sarcastic about making everything the same. Too many people argue that “X does a thing I like. Why doesn’t Y???” well… It’s targeting a different audience?

[TyphonBaan]

@Kulze

I gladly re-play the PoE 2 campaign because it challenges you every time again…

How many times have you replayed the PoE 2 campaign? I’ve done it six times now. It fucking sucks. LIke, ‘wow, I don’t know how I’m going to do other classes… I already want to put my head in the oven’. Just like replaying EVERY campaign past 5-6 times sucks. Adventure mode doesn’t have to be faster/more efficient than the campaign. More like D3, go to these zones, do these quests, not D4, go to helltides, never leave.

[DJSamhein]

@TyphonBaan

Just like replaying EVERY campaign past 5-6 times sucks.

That is a player preference. I keep enjoying playing campaigns, even after dozens of runs. Be it D2, GD, LE or PoE, I still like running the campaign. It’s often even my favorite part, since that’s when I can see my power grow and my build come online. Everything past that is just trying to make Number Go Up.

@TyphonBaan

Adventure mode doesn’t have to be faster/more efficient than the campaign. More like D3, go to these zones, do these quests, not D4, go to helltides, never leave.

Adventure mode in D3 was very VERY faster and more efficient than campaign. You got to level 70 in 1-2h tops rather than 10h+. Which was the issue I had with it. I wouldn’t mind running campaign if adventure mode required something like 5-8h to reach the same result. I don’t mind being a little inefficient. I just hate feeling very inefficient and like I’m playing the way the game doesn’t want me to.

[TyphonBaan]

@DJSamhein

Adventure mode in D3 was very VERY faster and more efficient than campaign. You got to level 70 in 1-2h tops rather than 10h+

But it doesn’t have to be. And, more to your point, it shouldn’t be. I’ll be the fist to stand in solidarity with you and say, “I want Adventure mode, but I do not want a more efficient Adventure mode”.

I said it, I stand by it. #efficiencyparityadventures

[DJSamhein]

Yeah, I have no issue with that. As long as the campaign alternatives aren’t so much more efficient that you feel like you have to use them and ignore the campaign, I’m all for having more than 1 way to start a new character. Even several.