Feedback from a PoE player who started playing D3 again

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UnderOmerta написал:

It's funny that you mention this. Because if you poll people from games with big competitive scenes (e.g. League/Dota, the CS series, SC/SC2, even the D2 PvP scene), and the one thing that will constantly be mentioned is that those games are competitive because of the large amount of player-based skill that goes into the game at the highest level. That is, the game is fundamentally designed to be that the player with the better input skill is going to be the player that wins or succeeds more often than the player with lower input skill.

PoE is clearly NOT that model. Look at D2. Most of the best builds for PvP relied almost exclusively on BiS gear, of which there was very little variation. Almost everybody used the same few helms, shields, chests, belts, etc. Thus, in high level D2 PvP the result almost entirely came down to who was able to better position and maneuver their character offensively and defensively. THAT is the kind of game that "hardcore" and "competitive" players like.

People brandy the term "hardcore" in PoE all the time and I fail to see how it applies. The PvP scene in PoE is pretty much nonexistent and poorly balanced (and it's already released, so saying that more will be added and that balance will come 'later' is a poor excuse), and you'd be hard pressed to argue that endgame PvE is balanced around 'hardcore' and 'competitive' player skill. More likely it's balanced around people who spend the most time trading and grinding and those we get very lucky.

Do you think D2 was just released and everyone had BIS gear for PVP? It's an unfair comparision and I don't know why you'd even make it. Years down the line PVP in standard league will be similar for POE as there's allowed duping going on. Just rather than seeing the exact same builds with the exact same gear you'll have more variety. The skill goes beyond actual combat and how you set your stuff up. One or two passives, the use of a couple different support gems or even a different supporting skill might make a large difference in a close fight.

I have no defense for PVP, they said they had the PVP season coming with release, I spent 2 months farming and trading for it to see there's still nothing and barely any word of when it will be happening.

As for the "hardcore" label you're pigeonholing it to fit your argument better. Here's what Rhys considers "hardcore."

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Rhys написал:

A game that is "hardcore" is one that "rewards investment"; this is a level of depth, and one that has multiple facets. Right now, I can think of four main aspects to it: time, knowledge, skill, and emotion.

~Investment of Time~

This is shallowest form of depth. Of hardcoreness, if that's a word? Players become invested by the sheer amount of time they have spent. They are rewarded for spending lots and lots of time playing the game. Often, their progress (whatever it is) is directly or indirectly a measure of hours played. Kill X goblins. Collect Y rocks. Accumulate Z experience points. If these tasks require "mindless grinding", then you are investing time when you complete them.

Many MMOs exploit this, of course, requiring huge amounts of time investment in order to reach (and explore) the endgame. Some people love this; some people don't. Some people are proud of their progress, and boast to friends or fellow forum-goers of their time well-spent attaining virtual glory. They're flagrantly hardcore. Others view their progress as a thinly-veiled representation of all the time they've wasted on that stupid game. And some people do both.

Path of Exile rewards time investment, as you've probably noticed. Of course it does. In fact, there are multiple ways in which it does. The most basic being is the XP/level grind. Just by looking at a character's level/XP, a savvy player can estimate the amount of time spent on it. But... even that most basic grind isn't so simple. When someone at the top of the ladder in Hardcore dies, they have to start again from scratch. Yet, the very same person who died at level 90 can come racing back to the top of the ladder (or near the top) again on a new character quite quickly. Clearly, they didn't spend the same amount of time grinding as before. There must be something more to it.

Note that RNG-based systems fall into this category, because players must invest enough time to ride out streaks of bad luck in order find good luck. The randomness simply obscures the correlation to time spent and makes it more fun.

~Investment of Knowledge~

Another way to achieve depth and make a game hardcore is reward knowledge. This where players can progress, or progress much faster than normal, by acquiring knowledge about the game and its systems. Discovering shortcuts, synergies, combos, secret levels, etc. Whereas investment of time most often yields more progress and content, investment of knowledge often results in increased speed of progress.

Another form of this is complexity. By offering up complex systems, players can invest knowledge and learn the optimal paths, the most efficient combinations of moves, etc. that may not be obvious at first glance, even if all the information is there.

In Path of Exile, we have several such systems. The most immediate is the passive skill tree, which is notoriously overwhelming at first glance. It often takes people several characters before they learn how to build effectively for endgame. But we have other, more subtle systems in place, as well. The vendor recipes are a prime example. You can generate a great deal of currency by simply knowing about the GBR 3-link recipe that yields a Chromatic Orb, and regularly checking the shops for cheap equipment. Even subtler, is knowing the best places to grind EXP during a ladder rush. By investing in knowledge, by learning about the game, you can make more efficient progress and gain wealth.

As another example, in a fighting game, you can look at the combo list, but you'll need to learn those combos off by heart if you want to become good at it. Or if you can't (or don't know to) look at the combo list, you'll be at a severe disadvantage compared someone who does know all the moves.

Of course, simply knowing what the moves are isn't nearly enough. You need to be able to actually pull them off. You need skill.

~Investment of Skill~

Some games allow - or require! - an investment of skill. Fighting games, for example, require players to learn and master a variety of moves for every character, if they want to beat the game, or beat other players. This is closely tied to investment of knowledge, but is quite distinct because it is about learning not what to do, but how to do it. This often involves acquiring the muscle-memory to perform a quick sequence of actions, but it can also involve puzzle-solving techniques.

Some puzzles are solved through knowledge, but some are solved through skill. Any puzzle that involves a random initial state will necessitate learning not the solution, but the method by which the solution is obtained. You may know how to solve Sudoku puzzles in general, but you may still struggle with a particularly difficult one. This is something of a grey area, I will admit, between knowledge and skill.

Path of Exile rewards investment of skill. Some bosses require quick reflexes, or careful usage of projectiles or curses. Any monster with energy shield requires some skill, to not let it regenerate. Monsters with reflect auras often require a far more careful playstyle, and reward players (by not killing them) who carefully manage their damage output and healing. Using granite and ruby flasks at the right times is another example.

And, of course, there are races. When players are competing with each other, skill is absolutely vital. Knowledge is, too, but skill is very important. Yes, there is randomness of drops, which are also vital, but that just means skill and knowledge are be-all and end-all. It gives those aren't the best of the best a fighting chance.

~Investment of Emotion~

So the last point I want to cover is regarding the investment of emotion. This one isn't exclusive to games; TV, movies, books, theatre, even music, they also take advantage of this. By having compelling characters and plotlines, interesting stories and worlds can draw in the audience - or the player, in the case of a game - and get them emotionally invested. This isn't necessarily hardcore, in and of itself, but it can be. Ohhhhh, it can be.

Consider Trekkies, Bronies, Whovians, all the die-hard fans of Naruto, Spiderman, Batman, Lord of the Rings, Jane Austen, the Beatles, Justin Bieber, Halo, Call of Duty, Diablo, etc. etc. Are they not hardcore? They're totally into their respective fandoms/cultures/cults, some beyond reason, even. They are all emotionally invested, and woe betide anyone who disagrees with them over the internet.

Much more so than the others, emotional investment is its own reward. Some people like to mindless grind, to kill time. Some people love to learn about new things or master new skills. But everyone loves a good story. It's a great money-earner, too. By getting people emotionally invested in the story, it makes them want to finish the movie/book/game, and it makes them want to buy/play the (inevitable?) sequel.

So with all that in mind, how could a game be hardcore because of emotional investment? Is it even possible to NOT reward emotional investment? You might cite Mass Effect 3, but even so, most people thought that game was great up until the ending. But therein lies the answer.

Games that require emotional investment to the story are hardcore. What kind of game is that? Well, the immediate genre that springs to mind are Visual Novels. They're all about the story, the characters, the plot... literally! If you hate the story, you're not going to finish one of these games. Unless you're masochistically trying to prove something, I guess. The same goes for "movie games" such as Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls. It isn't the tangible gameplay that makes you want to progress, is the story. If you love the story, you'll love the game and finish it. If not... you probably won't do either.

Path of Exile is not terrible hardcore about the story. It is very easy to skip virtually all the NPC dialogue, and there are no cutscenes. There is actually quite a lot of backstory and so on scattered around, if you choose to look for it. Environmental lore, optional NPC dialogue, unique and quest item flavourtext. But this is something we are not "hardcore" about.

So, that's four ways I can think of through which games can be hardcore. There may even be others. I think most hardcore games use a mixture of them, though. I know we do.

The game is HC in most sense of the word. Hell even in your definition you're just brushing off the hardcore-ness because those are things you don't enjoy doing as I assume you consider yourself hardcore, but don't enjoy the hardcore nature POE has to offer. Competing on the temp league ladders and in races has much more to do than trading. Luck is a factor you can't brush off many of these people who are on the top of the race ladders season after season as a factor of luck. Also, I don't get why people play ARGPs and complain about grinding, it's the nature of the entire genre. I have yet to play any game that has RPG attached to it that didn't require SOME if not a shit load of grinding.

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Veta321 написал:

Player's want the capacity to acquire those top end items within some reasonable time frame of playing the game, not the trading game. Dupes or not it was possible to farm your own Windforce in Diablo 2 with some persistence and time, or to trade for it with currency accumulated during typical play.

whats a reasonable time frame for you ?
is it 20 hours or 2000 hours ? with or without mf ?

just trying to establish some criteria before we go any further with this

This just in, D2 nostalgia goggles still op.

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Veta321 написал:

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ScrotieMcB написал:

In other words, you don't see it as the same thing as D2's "legacy" because you're jealous other people have shiny things you don't.

Seriously. That's the only reason for you to think that way.

You admit that getting very, very good gear for trade in Standard is very, very easy. You acknowledge this makes it a testing ground for new builds. But there's no instant-gratification duping cheat button, so now you have a problem.

Zero sympathy from me.

So it comes full circle. The crux of my now quote-slain original comment was that D2 standard allowed the economic mobility necessary to gear your player out in (near) BIS. POE standard affords no such mobility and as such it frustrates players who have the heart but not the wherewithal.

And PoE's Standard League also allows you to rather easily gear your character in near BIS. It's not as near, but it's very good stuff... assuming you're building with rares, anyway.

The same thing was, and most likely still is (since the AHs haven't been shut down yet), true regarding Diablo 3. By the time the economy had been flooded enough, getting very playable gear over through the Auction Houses cost essentially nothing. Getting the gear to make your character playable was pathetically easy, and you go just blitz through the content turning your gold into wearables.

However

There are a certain class of gamers who feel the need to continually upgrade their character. It doesn't matter if the character can handle the content well enough, given the slightest modicum of player skill — they want to be able to autopilot through it. For them, the goal is not just victory over the content, but utter domination. Nothing short of steamrolling will do. For this kind of player, it doesn't matter how good their character is; what matters is that the character is continuously getting better.

I personally believe this kind of desire borders on irrational. Frankly, if I'm playing the game, and I notice that I'm genuinely steamrolling content, I have to ask myself "how did this happen?," and unless there is an exceptional reason why it was so easy, I want my strategy to be nerfed so that it can't happen in the future. (Side note: GGG, you need to nerf Searing Bond. Yes, again.) However, I simultaneously acknowledge that, I seem to be in a very small minority when it comes to this sentiment; apparently, the vast majority of ARPG players are the "certain class" mentioned in the previous paragraph. So instead of fighting it, I'll just accept that your character's continuous improvement is something which is important to you.

The importance you put on this sentiment does not change the fact that it's utterly impossible in a permanent economy (hence its irrationality). Hell, I can't even really fault Diablo 3 that much, without a wipe every 4 months or so it doesn't matter how fast the economy gets all superinflated due to "silly" economic decisions by the devs, it will still inevitably superinflate, even if it takes a year. When it does, well... that's precisely the situation we're talking about, no-duping flavor.

See, as the gear economy inflates, the previous "great" gear gradually becomes "good," and the previous "good" gear becomes "meh." By "meh" I mean just one step up from trash, which gets vendored rather than traded.

For those trying to break into a new league, this is great. You can get gear which was previously "good" at those low "meh" prices. By those point in Standard's life, some gear which was downright GG at the outset of Open Beta is now available at such low prices... wait, didn't I already cover this?

Point is, that benefit isn't without consequences. The devs aren't changing the drop rate tables as this is happening, so gear that was "great" according to the original, fresh-league standard is now a bland "meh" — which means, the progression you make farming actually goes down over time. It also means the standard for "godly" gear in a very mature league is so unreasonably improbably, and the odds are stacked so heavily against it being crafted or dropped, that it pretty much never is crafted or dropped. At this apex, the prices just keep climbing, and climbing, and climbing.

The end result is that is very easy to get great gear, gear which would be considered great in Ambush right now... but almost impossible to actually farm your way towards progress, or to actually farm upgrades for your character.

Which is that thing you guys care about; I'm a little more concerned about almost dying, but then killing the monsters and not dying and feeling like I'm good at clicking my mouse. Pat myself on the back; good job, self.

The hard truth of the matter is: once you get close enough to perfect, the more nit-picky minor nonentity bullshit your progression becomes — whether "you" is your specific character or "you" is the league as a whole. Thus, if what's really important to you is continually improving your character, do yourself a favor and start over. Going from level 1 with nothing to something low-map-viable is the fastest, best balanced sense of real progression you can get. After all, we've already covered that what's important to you isn't whether your character is good, but whether they're getting better. So if they're not getting better, go bipolar for a few seconds, worsen them down to level 1 with a quick delete, then you can go right back on to getting better, which is what you allegedly enjoy.

TL;DR: I probably shouldn't have had so much to drink, because that was one hell of a ramble. If you didn't read it, don't worry; you probably didn't miss much.

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ScrotieMcB написал:

There are a certain class of gamers who feel the need to continually upgrade their character. It doesn't matter if the character can handle the content well enough, given the slightest modicum of player skill — they want to be able to autopilot through it. For them, the goal is not just victory over the content, but utter domination. Nothing short of steamrolling will do. For this kind of player, it doesn't matter how good their character is; what matters is that the character is continuously getting better

I can share that sentiment, a game where I steamroll content can be even more boring than a game in which you teamroll it. If you don't trade and blatantly ignore little tricks that scream "c'mon, use me and screw the game over", it can be very, very challenging, but if you do it's on the level of 'my little pony - friendship is tragic', which I don't consider a good thing as not a lot of people have my iron self-control :)

About market saturation, inflation, and boredom...
I think developers are expecting too much here, playing a single char for a year in WoW is all well and good as only part of the enjoyment actually comes from game content, main part is interaction with other players which is the purpose of a good MMO. However, in ARPGs it's pretty much wishful thinking, chances are you will get bored long before you outfit your char in ultimate gear. So people generally do reroll a lot, it's an ARPG thing, so what I think is the best way to ensure longevity is diversity. If you make a piece of gear great for one build type and 'meh' for 90% of the others you did a good job, people will go item hunting again instead of twinking the new char with old one's gear. And that's where PoE falls a bit short 90% of the builds want the same things, and mechanics like iron reflexes make the situation even worse.

P.S.
Don't drink and write.

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raics написал:

P.S.
Don't drink and write.

Never give advice again!

If build diversity in D3 wasn't such a joke I would probably be interested in trying it again. However no amount of good changes is going to make me want to yet again make the exact same wizard as every other wizard in the game. D3 simply isn't deep enough, its an action game with a very thin layer of RPG on top to make people believe its an ARPG when its really not.

Edit: I thought I recognized your name. You were on here talking about D3 for a long time like some kind of missionary.

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/509971/page/44

What exactly did PoE do to you?

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Moosifer написал:

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raics написал:

P.S.
Don't drink and write.

Never give advice again!

Don't read in toilet? :)

That's quite nicely put by Rhys, overall agree with it.
Many people on this forum should review their definition of hardcore ( using what made another game hardcore for example ) before blaming PoE of not being hardcore to them.

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iamstryker написал:

However no amount of good changes is going to make me want to yet again make the exact same wizard as every other wizard in the game.

If any playstyle/build suits my needs and tasting, why should I care, if there are others who share the same feelings?

(and BTW wizz in D3 2.0 is much more diversified that in past, it's really nice to not be forced to be CM or archon to play through torment)