PoE leaving its hardcore niche and turning generic

I always enjoy a good "Game is easy" thread being carried by people who play primarily Standard Leagues. Players who don't predominantly play Hardcore shouldn't even be allowed to post about game difficulty or casualization. The game is so many times easier on standard leagues it is like a totally different game altogether. The huge difference in what items are valued (stuff like Abyssus, etc) shows how different the leagues really are.

One 86 on a Hardcore league tells me the game is still plenty challenging for you, OP.

I will say that gear acquisition is easier than ever... but I also like to play a ton of different builds so stockpiling items like Voltaxic that historically used to cost more than 10x what it does now is something some people may hate.

Honestly though... if you think the game is easy now, you never played a really good build years ago. I remember everyone I knew hated Beyond because it was so hard for them, I totally breezed the whole league with a block Incinerate tank with the old Arctic Armor and block nodes. Game was way easier back then if you ask me.

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ggnorekthx написал:

I always enjoy a good "Game is easy" thread being carried by people who play primarily Standard Leagues. Players who don't predominantly play Hardcore shouldn't even be allowed to post about game difficulty or casualization. The game is so many times easier on standard leagues it is like a totally different game altogether.

One 86 on a Hardcore league tells me the game is still plenty challenging for you, OP.

That's an ad-hominem argument, the arguments of the OP may be faulty or not, but he has not fallen into stupid ad-hominem arguments, so he deserves decent responses at least.

I think what some people miss is 'the struggle' back then which the average player had, precisely making hard even reach that level, making a character etc.

That's why they say it's "too easy". But a game can be "hard" in many different ways.

Have you reached level 100 in Hardcore and killed Uber Atziri 100% self found yet?

If not, and if you really think massively increased time investment should be required, give it a shot!

Definitely feels like trading makes the game a million times easier nowadays. But strongboxes, ascendancy classes, silly gem scaling balance, etc, only make the game 1.2 to 2 times easier. So tacking on self found should provide appropriate level of challenge for those that find time investment challenging.

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knac84 написал:

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ggnorekthx написал:

I always enjoy a good "Game is easy" thread being carried by people who play primarily Standard Leagues. Players who don't predominantly play Hardcore shouldn't even be allowed to post about game difficulty or casualization. The game is so many times easier on standard leagues it is like a totally different game altogether.

One 86 on a Hardcore league tells me the game is still plenty challenging for you, OP.

That's an ad-hominem argument, the arguments of the OP may be faulty or not, but he has not fallen into stupid ad-hominem arguments, so he deserves decent responses at least.

I think what some people miss is 'the struggle' back then which the average player had, precisely making hard even reach that level, making a character etc.

That's why they say it's "too easy". But a game can be "hard" in many different ways.

His entire argument is that the game is getting too easy for him... yet he plays on the easiest possible version of the game. If I play any other video game on the easiest difficulty and then cry about it being easy, what would you say to me?

The only challenge I had years ago was not getting bored to tears running level 70 maps at 90 and watching my experience slowly creep up because I wasn't finding better maps. It wasn't actually harder.

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mynameisonlyforthegods написал:

I don't understand why people are so hung up on the fact that spending more time on a game should be giving advantage over others is a bad thing. It's not.

They still have an advantage. For example, I don't have a 6l yet (other than Tabula), you probably do. While I could have a 6l if I wanted to, I could not afford one of the best 6l on the server, while you probably can.

Honestly, if you are really looking for difficult content, you should be advocating easier gear acquisition. Because then the content can be balanced for the average gear status of the players, which will be higher. And the game balance team doesn't have to worry about the fact that most players will be very far away from the optimal gear setup.

If your main worry is that you want to feel better than the casual player for investing more time, then yeah, you should not be advocating easier gear acquisition. And I have the lingering feeling that that is the main issue here.

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ggnorekthx написал:

I always enjoy a good "Game is easy" thread being carried by people who play primarily Standard Leagues. Players who don't predominantly play Hardcore shouldn't even be allowed to post about game difficulty or casualization. The game is so many times easier on standard leagues it is like a totally different game altogether. The huge difference in what items are valued (stuff like Abyssus, etc) shows how different the leagues really are.

One 86 on a Hardcore league tells me the game is still plenty challenging for you, OP.

I will say that gear acquisition is easier than ever... but I also like to play a ton of different builds so stockpiling items like Voltaxic that historically used to cost more than 10x what it does now is something some people may hate.

Honestly though... if you think the game is easy now, you never played a really good build years ago. I remember everyone I knew hated Beyond because it was so hard for them, I totally breezed the whole league with a block Incinerate tank with the old Arctic Armor and block nodes. Game was way easier back then if you ask me.

Just because I don't have high level HC chars in this league doesn't mean I don't play HC. I played ONLY hardcore from march 2012 to mid-2014. I have been competitive in hundreds of month/week/hour races that have been all been hardcore. I've finished top 10 in hardcore week/month/day/hours races to get demigod's plenty of times. Just because I happened to want to play SC this time around doesn't mean I don't have experience. How many original demigod necklaces from beta do you have under your belt?

These "op builds" that trivializes content didn't exist back in beta and the first couple of leagues. In beyond they did, for sure, but not much before that.. There were no nigh-on invincible builds back then, it was tough for everyone.

The reason I didn't enjoy HC in this league is because it didn't feel hardcore. That level 86 character took me a day or two to get to that level and breezing through maps like that isn't especially satisfying if it was easily accomplished.

Besides Labyrinth, there's not much content that can kill you if you don't intentionally challenge yourself. Playing a perma-fortify build in t9-t11 maps is very easy and can be done while being half-asleep. Again, I don't want to have to play a terrible build to find a challenge in the game, there should be challenge even in the "op" builds (as I found there to be in older leagues).

I like the Ascendancies and Perandus stuff. The game has gotten way better for me. I create my own builds and both give me tools to make more viable builds. With the release of act 4 there were a handful of powerful builds and the rest was so bad in comparison that I'd call them unviable for HC. Now I have more build ideas than time to try them.

I can see why nolifers* complain though. This game has been the ARPG that caters to them. All other good ARPGs nowadays took a casual* approach. So we casuals have alternatives, nolifers don't. They cannot just move on to another ARPG.

Ascs and Perandus make the game easier ofc. But imo the problem (as many others already pointed out) is that most enemies are just cannon fodder. I'm one of those players who thinks that pre-nerf devourers were awesome. As soon as they appeared in a map it broke the mindless grinding. Playing more carefully and using totems to lure them was the way to go there. After the nerf it's "devourers? mkay whatever, I'll just keep holding RMB." There are many similar examples, e.g. rogue exiles.

That opinion seems to be the minority though. All the whining has probably influenced GGG: Just look at the act 4 birds: They all charge you quickly but don't attack immediately. We just have to stand still, let them charge and hold RMB to kill them without problems. They can only be dangerous if your damage is really low.

But I also want to point out a well-done nerf: Dropbears. Instead of nerfing their initial attack into oblivion a few of the group are already on the ground so that the player knows that it gets dangerous if she approaches them.


*Please don't take nolifers and casuals too seriously in this context. I just mean players who invest more time than others.

e:

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derivi8 написал:

These "op builds" that trivializes content didn't exist back in beta and the first couple of leagues. In beyond they did, for sure, but not much before that.. There were no nigh-on invincible builds back then, it was tough for everyone.

What? Spork, LA, ...
There were always OP builds.

1) Most people play in parties. There's nothing wrong with that but it definitely streamlines the leveling process and, currently, trivializes the game content a lot. I think they should be looking at monster and map tweaks for parties at this point; not to promote elitism just to keep content meaningful. Scaling monster life is insufficient for how high the new damage curve is with curse and support characters in most groups.

2) Most people do not play hardcore currently. SC and League SC always have higher player populations than HC and League HC. Based on numbers alone, the community is not looking for a more "hardcore" experience or they would probably play on hardcore already. Most players enjoy an easier experience so making the game appeal to the minority (people looking for a harder experience) will actually alienate more players. Alienating the player base will ultimately end the game we all love so while I like the game hard I'm not sure development should focus on making the game more "hardcore".

3) Part of what makes the game a lot easier is the size of the trading community. More players means more drops. More drops means a fuller trade market. If the developers do an amazing job and more people play the game because of that then the game will in turn be easier because the trade market will be better. This will always impact the game difficulty because an increase in item availability correlates to a decrease in game difficulty. It is a slippery slope though because lowering drops too far can hurt player retention so there will be less players leading to even more market scarcity and causing an overall increase in game difficulty greater than what was intended. It's simply not as easy as saying "we need more/less drops" and GGG is notoriously bad at balancing so I'm not sure this will ever be perfected.

4) This game is nowhere near as easy as D3. I hope it never is.

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Dos_Fafner написал:

2) Most people do not play hardcore currently. SC and League SC always have higher player populations than HC and League HC. Based on numbers alone, the community is not looking for a more "hardcore" experience or they would probably play on hardcore already. Most players enjoy an easier experience so making the game appeal to the minority (people looking for a harder experience) will actually alienate more players. Alienating the player base will ultimately end the game we all love so while I like the game hard I'm not sure development should focus on making the game more "hardcore".

This is why I don't see the reason why they wouldn't make HC and SC have different leagues, and make the HC one have extra difficulty. The people have an easy choice. I think a lot of people that like super punishing content don't care about the current league as it is even more rewarding and easier than the base game.

Just give us a hard HC league next time and make 95-100 take 10x more time/exp and i think those people would be happy. They stated around act 4 launch that they wanted level 100 to take longer, instead the new maps made it way faster.