Bad mechanics and player retention -core mechanics that need a major rework

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Lord_Tao написал:

Greetings everyone,

Path of Exile is just about to release patch 3.0, effectively finishing the game as a complete piece of work. However horrific game mechanics are still prevalent in some bizarre mindset that it adds to the game play experience.

Oh... Well, let's see if you actually spotted the real issues...

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Lord_Tao написал:

Here is a list of game breaking mechanics that put a halt to the smooth play experience of the game:

(in your opinion, mind you)

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Lord_Tao написал:

Life and CI/ES builds

I was not an experienced player before the 'nerf to life', but now I find it ridiculous that one must get all the life nodes that they can on the tree AND have added life on most of their gear.

Going CI/ES takes care of that problem, but trades it for more stuns. At first more stuns seems like a worthy trade off, but you are already trading evasion and armour, and thus take much more damage overall as every attack will probably hit you. Why must you take even more damage by being incapacitated by a stun? On top of that, avoiding one shots with a big ES pool is a bit of a myth since you can be stun locked and die as your ES pool gets whittled down to nothing while you can't move or react.


How are any of those good mechanics for game play? Sure have things like this as pitfalls to avoid when designing your character, but the above are near impossible to avoid. I hear you guys about to type about gear to combat this, so this leads me to my next point: trading.

Life sucks, we all know. If you get stunlocked with an ES based build you don't know how this game is played. I have NEVER had a single solitary league in which I didn't find dozens "eye of chayulas", now there's valyrium too. Yeah, sorry, but no, ES getting stunlocked is an issue only noobs have.

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Lord_Tao написал:

Trading

Currently in POE league play, trading is a foundation to the game. When designing a character you also pick the gear you will need to acquire. However GGG still considers trading as a minor part of game play. They don't want an emphasis on it. Mind-blowingly GGG doesn't have this aspect of game play within their realm of control when it has an enormous impact of the quality and enjoyability of game play.

GGG has balanced the game in relation to the performance of uber builds (which would not exist without being able to trade for exactly what they want), but don't feel that trading should be that large a part of game play.

Which is why they're working on that subject. Before laying down ciriticism you might as well educate yourself for a bit instead of rambling about things that are already being considered on GGG's end. And WTF is an "uber build"? Is "uber build" a new euphemism for "I have learned to use a skill-tree-planner"?

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Lord_Tao написал:

Think about it.

So far, you're in no position to tell anybody what to think about and what not to think about. Think about that for a second, would you?

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Lord_Tao написал:

Max resistances are a must, and elemental damage is dealt assuming you have max resistances.

Yeah... So? What's the problem? Max res is easy to get, even without trading. Another non-issue yet again.

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Lord_Tao написал:

Damage overall assumes that you have 6k life or more. Life and resistances aren't build choices, they are mandatory, and you won't be able to meet these criteria with self found gear.

Of course being able to take enough damage is mandatory, in path of builds/gear check. You're not telling anybody anything new here.

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Lord_Tao написал:

If trading is not supposed to be core to the game, then don't balance the game of off min maxed builds which wouldn't exist without hard trading. Having 75% resistance to an element should make that content more easy to complete, not be standard difficulty.

Getting 135% res (ignoring chaos) across the board is so easy there might as well only be chaos res to max, because of how easy it is. And yes, it's easy even without trading.

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Lord_Tao написал:

The Immortal Flesh is a perfect illustration of the disconnect between GGG philosophies. -5% to all maximum resistances is perfectly inline with GGG's view of gameplay, yet the community had to be vocal that that belt was nowhere near inline with actual gameplay, and completely unusable in end game.

The immortal flesh belt is aperfect example of an item that simply didn't age well, while the game developed to what it is nowadays, and believe it or not, some uniques are not meant to be end-game options, they're intended for levelling, if anything.

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Lord_Tao написал:

High cost crafting

Randomly rolling items with alts, alchs, and chaos is neat. However leaving RNG to getting even a playable group of colour slot on a 6 socket piece is ridiculous. Keep in mind that GGG doesn't consider trading as a large part of the game. Think about how long it would take to get a few thousand chromatic orbs, let alone find enough currency to 6 socket, let alone 6 link an item solo?

I usually ignore the current meta builds (i.e. poison), but I just designed a wand poison character to see what the rage is about. I decided to go with an Incandescent Heart chest piece for fun. Some big benefits but also big draw backs of low ES, and armour instead of evasion. Well barrage and most projectile gems are green. Well after rolling "3 green sockets" on the bench 5 times, I didn't get a usable result. I got 3 green 1 blue, 1 red once. The only usable red gem is iron grip. 3 green 2 blue, or 4+ green would have been usable. 3 green, 2 blue should be the most common, but never rolled. That was 50 chaos of chormes on poe.trade, and 2 months worth of farming solo self found (including hitting each vendor for free chormes every level gained). Also the RNG on the crafting bench is horrifically bugged. It would often keep the same colours, and just change one socket.

GGG claims that uniques are in the game as an alternative to standard gear to make more creative builds. Well here I am, and can't use the chest piece I have.

Yeah, if you pick the wrong base for the gems you want to use that is your fault. You didn't go with incandescent heart for fun, you went for it for lack of knowledge. You're too blame here, not GGG. The benches aren't bugged, the first sockets in line are always the ones you get coloured to your liking, the remaining ones get coloured according the base you're using. It is that simple. You are simply misinformed.

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Lord_Tao написал:

Hardcore mechanics in normal

The labyrinth brings in new passive skills that are essential for a build to progress, yet the mechanic excludes players on bad connections. Normally the answer to this, as any hardcore player does, is to be over leveled for the content to minimize accidental death. However the labyrinth deals damage as a percentage of your health pool. If you are level 60 doing normal lab, it is easy to die via desynch. You may think that trap is behind you, but in 'reality' (server side) you are walking side by side, holding hands with that saw blade. These traps will do more damage to you than Izaro will for over leveled characters. That alone speaks to how ridiculous this mechanic is implemented.

You love it, you hate it you love to hate it. But one thing you'r not gonna convince me of is that GGG needs to take shitty internet connections into account. This is an online only game.. You knew what you signed up for... Don't complain about an online game being tied to an online connection.

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Lord_Tao написал:

In summary

In summary I agree with nothing you wrote. And it's easy to see that you have no idea how this game works. Educate yourself, and make better choices in the future, or leave it behind and try your luck elsewhere. Your choice.

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Lord_Tao написал:

-Bringing in hardcore mechanics into normal: the labyrinth and loosing experience on death.

losing exp on death is a hardcore mechanics? what?

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silumit написал:

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Lord_Tao написал:

-Bringing in hardcore mechanics into normal: the labyrinth and loosing experience on death.

losing exp on death is a hardcore mechanics? what?

Every game i can think of, that ive ever played, punishes death even in non-hardcore settings lol. This isnt anything new and is pretty traditional as far as core design, its weird how someone can list exp loss as a "hardcore" feature.

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DoEFotGS написал:

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diablofdb написал:

Trading is ok, maybe some QOL improvment would be neat, but stop trying to make it change to an auction house, not gonna happen. And many people would leave the game.

People will leave the game if they can buy something without a lot of interactions with afk, busy or fake traders? Really?

Trade right now is the worst part of the game.

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diablofdb написал:

Lab is great and most player enjoy it. Just a minority that keep voicing their opinion over and over and over again. Not gonna change soon. Most people are good with it.

'Labyrint' is awful. First of all: it's not a labyrint, because after first run in the day - you exactly know that awaits you, because lab not change everytime. With poelab.com you do not even need to go there to understand how difficult it is today. Also helm enchant: almost 400 variations with full random proc per use the fucking device.

People say that 'lab is ok' only because chest in final room provide great benefit. Remove that and lab becomes the place to gain ascendancy points only.

Also don't mess 'good' with 'profit'. Lab is profit content, but don't good.

All your opinion..... but facts are game is getting more and more popular. And ascendancy was very succesful. Boom.... Fact vs emotions

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diablofdb написал:

All your opinion..... but facts are game is getting more and more popular. And ascendancy was very succesful.

Game gets popular for another reason. And ascendancy as game mechanic has nothing to do with the labyrinth, except one interior object in final room that give 2 points to your character ONE TIME PER LABYRINTH.

I repeat my words: don't mess up.

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diablofdb написал:

Boom.... Fact vs emotions

There was not a single counter-argument. Try again.

Yesterday, I was trying to buy Sulphur Wastes map. Evening, CET timezone. What can go wrong? Trivial thing, really.

I had to whisper 14 people before someone replied back and the trade took place. My -censored- nerves!

click on poe.trade => CTRL+V => Player is not online
click on poe.trade => CTRL+V => Player is not online
click on poe.trade => CTRL+V => Player is AFK
click on poe.trade => CTRL+V => no response (1 minute wasted extra)
click on poe.trade => CTRL+V => Player is not online

...

The same day, people kept whispering me for item I sold 45 minutes ago.


yeah, trading is fine. And to be precise, I do not blame the third party site (to be slow to update or whatnot), I blame GGG to let this happen in the first place.

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DoEFotGS написал:

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diablofdb написал:

All your opinion..... but facts are game is getting more and more popular. And ascendancy was very succesful.

Game gets popular for another reason. And ascendancy as game mechanic has nothing to do with the labyrinth, except one interior object in final room that give 2 points to your character ONE TIME PER LABYRINTH.

I repeat my words: don't mess up.

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diablofdb написал:

Boom.... Fact vs emotions

There was not a single counter-argument. Try again.

you're the one coming up with no facts +


"game gets popular for another reason"..... not only you don't give the reason but..... just your opinion

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Lord_Tao написал:

Diablo 1 you played through on gear you found, and part of the challenge was to get the gear back. Duping items in that game made you a god. To draw comparisons, POE is at the point where it assumes you have the best gear,

it really doesnt, people are hitting lvl100 in solo self found hardcore, at what point do you look at whats being done and take on board the idea that maybe youre doing something wrong?

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Snorkle_uk написал:

it really doesnt, people are hitting lvl100 in solo self found hardcore, at what point do you look at whats being done and take on board the idea that maybe youre doing something wrong?

I'm close to betting my favourite pair of high heels that this Tao-guy is either trolling, or lacks common sense, because I have no other explanation for all of this to be quite honest...

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Sure_K4y написал:

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Snorkle_uk написал:

it really doesnt, people are hitting lvl100 in solo self found hardcore, at what point do you look at whats being done and take on board the idea that maybe youre doing something wrong?

I'm close to betting my favourite pair of high heels that this Tao-guy is either trolling, or lacks common sense, because I have no other explanation for all of this to be quite honest...

I think he's just new and has incorrect expectations about the game. Most of the original post was filled with false premises (GGG doesn't consider trading to be core to the game, game should not require you to look for information outside of it, game is intended to be casual/ignorant player friendly, high crafting costs are bad, you shouldn't be penalized for losing in standard leagues, etc.) so you can't really expect his conclusions to be correct either.