PoE leaving its hardcore niche and turning generic

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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.

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Casual_Ascent написал:

@ derivi8

True HC league here http://ssf.poeladder.com

Hope you're playing. It's where all of the people craving a more difficult experience are. Can you show us your SSF account please?

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Dos_Fafner написал:

Скрытый текст

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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Ceri написал:

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Dos_Fafner написал:

Скрытый текст

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.

Excellent points, I agree with you completely. Except that D3 is easier, I don't think it is. GR progression is way more challenging than anything I've done in PoE. Nowhere near as fun though. =)

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derivi8 написал:

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).

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Char1983 написал:

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derivi8 написал:

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).

Well, then you should advocate

a) Harder mobs, i.e. more HP, potentially more damage, and better / more interesting mechanics
b) Better access to challenging content (T14+ maps, Uber Atziri)
c) Relatively easy / easier access to good equipment, such that the general balance can be done under the assumption that the average player has good equipment


... all of which I can agree with.

The key thing is: The more OP you are compared to the average player, the more likely it is that you trivialize content. Thus, you either need to become less OP or the average player needs to become better. Easier gear acquisition helps make the average player better.


On top of that, I would personally like

1) Less, but tougher mobs (reducing the need for AOE clear and boosting single target skills)
2) Reduced overall clear speed for everyone
3) Generally lower scaling of everything, to make balancing different builds easier


That does have problems, like for example the fact that Flicker Strike absolutely has to generate charges, and thus on average kill 1-2 mobs per 3 hits, but yeah, those problems could probably be solved somehow.

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goetzjam написал:

D3 is easier

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derivi8 написал:

Hi, I recently got in to beta and as someone who mainly plays bow builds I decided to roll a bow Ranger with the hope that they'd made them more fun to play in the earlier levels compared to before when they've always been inferior to other builds.

Well, I quickly realised it wasn't much better than before. Its still the slowest and least fun way of playing through normal. Not only are your abilities very simple and feel weak (a fiery arrow or a few normal arrows aren't very impressive compared to balls of fire for example), but they're also much more difficult to scale compared.

Some of you might argue that the game should be difficult, and I definitely agree. Its not a problem of difficulty, its just that its much less fun and takes so much more effort to get through even the first act of the game. On my ranger I tried my best to make my character as strong as possible. I equipped all the damage boosting items I could, iron rings, a quiver with physical damage, life and evasion on the other pieces and used everything I found to try to get a bow with the most damage on it.

Despite all of this, killing packs of white mobs took three times as long as ANY other class I tried, including melee (which is supposed to be the same right, scales off of weapon damage a lot too).

I even made a new character, a Witch, to get a very easy comparison. I leveled throughout all of act 1 without allocating a single point on my passive tree, and barely giving any attention to the items I was wearing and I never once had a problem. It felt fast, fun and it kept me interested. I wasn't dreading every single boss.

This is what I want the bow/ranger experience to be early on.

Everyone knows that playing a caster is much easier and faster while leveling, since their damage is increased just by leveling up your gems. I think that this is fine, and I'm not suggesting any nerfs to other classes, I just want bow characters atleast up to the same speed as melee.

If someone like me who has played the game since early 2012 is struggling to be even close as effective with this character as with any other type of character then just imagine a brand new player. Someone who doesn't have any clue what vendor recipes are, what passives in the passive tree to use, how to use transmutation orbs, etc.

If my first experience with Path of Exile was this dull, boring and slow I would uninstall the game and play something else. First impressions are very important, especially in free games like PoE, where a lot of new players can easily pick up the game.

Overall im very pleased with the changes to the game in the early stages, but I feel that bow builds were overlooked and needs further improvement. The leveling experience for every other class from what I've played and heard from others is better than ever before.

Thanks for reading and I really hope GGG considers puts a little bit more work in to balancing out the leveling experience for these kind of characters and makes the game a lot more fun to play for everyone who wants to try them.

I'd love to hear other people's opinions of leveling as a ranger in beta.

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mark1030 написал:

This is a quote from the recent beta (as opposed to the original beta) feedback forum. To be fair I quoted it in it's entirety so that context wouldn't be lost.

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derivi8 написал:

Hi, I recently got in to beta and as someone who mainly plays bow builds I decided to roll a bow Ranger with the hope that they'd made them more fun to play in the earlier levels compared to before when they've always been inferior to other builds.

Well, I quickly realised it wasn't much better than before. Its still the slowest and least fun way of playing through normal. Not only are your abilities very simple and feel weak (a fiery arrow or a few normal arrows aren't very impressive compared to balls of fire for example), but they're also much more difficult to scale compared.

Some of you might argue that the game should be difficult, and I definitely agree. Its not a problem of difficulty, its just that its much less fun and takes so much more effort to get through even the first act of the game. On my ranger I tried my best to make my character as strong as possible. I equipped all the damage boosting items I could, iron rings, a quiver with physical damage, life and evasion on the other pieces and used everything I found to try to get a bow with the most damage on it.

Despite all of this, killing packs of white mobs took three times as long as ANY other class I tried, including melee (which is supposed to be the same right, scales off of weapon damage a lot too).

I even made a new character, a Witch, to get a very easy comparison. I leveled throughout all of act 1 without allocating a single point on my passive tree, and barely giving any attention to the items I was wearing and I never once had a problem. It felt fast, fun and it kept me interested. I wasn't dreading every single boss.

This is what I want the bow/ranger experience to be early on.

Everyone knows that playing a caster is much easier and faster while leveling, since their damage is increased just by leveling up your gems. I think that this is fine, and I'm not suggesting any nerfs to other classes, I just want bow characters atleast up to the same speed as melee.

If someone like me who has played the game since early 2012 is struggling to be even close as effective with this character as with any other type of character then just imagine a brand new player. Someone who doesn't have any clue what vendor recipes are, what passives in the passive tree to use, how to use transmutation orbs, etc.

If my first experience with Path of Exile was this dull, boring and slow I would uninstall the game and play something else. First impressions are very important, especially in free games like PoE, where a lot of new players can easily pick up the game.

Overall im very pleased with the changes to the game in the early stages, but I feel that bow builds were overlooked and needs further improvement. The leveling experience for every other class from what I've played and heard from others is better than ever before.

Thanks for reading and I really hope GGG considers puts a little bit more work in to balancing out the leveling experience for these kind of characters and makes the game a lot more fun to play for everyone who wants to try them.

I'd love to hear other people's opinions of leveling as a ranger in beta.

So, my my question is this. Where do you draw this arbitrary line between what you consider "hardcore" grinding and "so much effort to get through"? You don't seem to like that it took a lot more effort to get through early levels as a ranger, yet you seem to want the whole game to be like that. What's the difference between grinding and effort?

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Ceri написал:

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goetzjam написал:

D3 is easier

You replied to things I didn't talk about though. Yeah, everything except high-level greater rifts is way easier in D3 - agreed. More tedious as well. Pushing high GRs is a lot more challenging than PoE, however. When every mob will instantly kill you if they hit, you're gonna need Mathil-level skills to dodge everything. Not that I find it that entertaining, but it's clearly harder (and for emphasis: in a bad way).