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

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Lord_Tao написал:

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diablofdb написал:

well we have access... you can check on steam and realize that at every launch POE is more and more popular... fact

Steam doesn't account for the POE player base. I am a tech mod on War Thunder and players pull Steam stats all of the time. The Steam stats don't closely follow the overall stats that the devs have. In statistics you need "a sufficiently random sample" to draw conclusions of the overall population. Steam is not a random sample as it is an entire market segment, and thus the behaviour of this segment is skewed in relation to the market as a whole.

fact is... you still see more and more people playing the game and pouring money in. GGG has been growing over the past few year, bigger studio bigger team etc....


That is success... FACT.

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diablofdb написал:

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Lord_Tao написал:

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diablofdb написал:

well we have access... you can check on steam and realize that at every launch POE is more and more popular... fact

Steam doesn't account for the POE player base. I am a tech mod on War Thunder and players pull Steam stats all of the time. The Steam stats don't closely follow the overall stats that the devs have. In statistics you need "a sufficiently random sample" to draw conclusions of the overall population. Steam is not a random sample as it is an entire market segment, and thus the behaviour of this segment is skewed in relation to the market as a whole.

fact is... you still see more and more people playing the game and pouring money in. GGG has been growing over the past few year, bigger studio bigger team etc....


That is success... FACT.

Fact yes, but a non-sequitur fallacy as a counter to my arguments. Being successful doesn't mean there isn't problems, or problems starting to arise.


Anyway I think I have spent enough time explaining myself. Please offer up something a bit more tangible as a counter point next time.

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Lord_Tao написал:

Fact yes, but a non-sequitur fallacy as a counter to my arguments. Being successful doesn't mean there isn't problems, or problems starting to arise.


Anyway I think I have spent enough time explaining myself. Please offer up something a bit more tangible as a counter point next time.

says the guy who have brought zero facts or any argument whatsoever during this whole thread.


have a nice day sir :3


edit: btw saying words such as fallacy and sequitur doesn't make you more intelligent.... actually it has the opposite result when you miss use them just like you did.

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diablofdb написал:

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Lord_Tao написал:

Fact yes, but a non-sequitur fallacy as a counter to my arguments. Being successful doesn't mean there isn't problems, or problems starting to arise.


Anyway I think I have spent enough time explaining myself. Please offer up something a bit more tangible as a counter point next time.

says the guy who have brought zero facts or any argument whatsoever during this whole thread.


have a nice day sir :3


edit: btw saying words such as fallacy and sequitur doesn't make you more intelligent.... actually it has the opposite result when you miss use them just like you did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur_(logic)


You assert that my argument about problems in the game is invalid because the game is doing well. Implying that something doing well has no problems.

I did not misuse the term.

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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.

theres no indication anywhere that the majority of ppl enjoy lab, conisdering how incredibly rewarding it is i would say the opposite. Players arent rushing to do it optionally (outside of ascendancy) in the same way they like to do shaper, atziri etc. Anyway since ggg dont include polls asking for feedback on these kind of things there will never be anyway to know 100%.

A big issue is how Evasion/Armor feel kind of useless as defenses. the reason why people go for Life and CI? they work against EVERYTHING, and they WORK.

You get high armor? Oh, well this enemy does insane crit damage, basically bypassing your armor, or they do a crapton of elemental damage, also bypassing your armor. You need a bunch of OTHER defenses to make armor work, at which point you ask "Why the hell am I buying all these nodes if they aren't actually doing jack?"
GGG has tried to "fix" this by giving you other defensive stats in Armor nodes... but that kind of just points out how useless it is. You're not buying it for the armor, you're buying it for the crit suppression or the increased HP. Basically, its a tacit admittance of the failure of the stat. its not like Crit Nodes have to give a "+increased physical damage" for their final node for people to get them, the crit is perfectly viable as a stat: Armor on the other hand doesn't stand on its own legs.

Similar kind of thing with Evasion, in that evasion basically turns into a slot machine-- sure you'll avoid 95% of those attacks, but the ONE time you get hit, its going to hurt and hurt HARD, potentially oneshotting you. And when an enemy starts using Physical damage spells like alot of Rogue exiles do? Well, nice knowing you.



Conversely, with chaos innoculation, Energy shield works against everything fullstop. You can rely on it, you're never going to find yourself going "Well shit, the defenses I bought? They're useless". Likewise, Life works against everything.


This is something that occurs constantly in POE: Its a race to find a defense, ANY defense that actually WORKS, because GGG is intent on making most of its defenses stop working once you get past the leveling phase of the game--- Remember when the Meta was Max Block and spell block? It was because it WORKED, and you could rely on it.

The game's not changing that much, this has always been how its gone: Life meta, max block meta, CI meta, Lightning coil meta... Armor has ALWAYS been shit and players have ALWAYS looked for alternate defenses, because why invest in a defense that doesn't work? You're going to have to end up buying ANOTHER defense that actually *DOES* to offset that defense you're investing precious skill points in.

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Fhark написал:

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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.

theres no indication anywhere that the majority of ppl enjoy lab, conisdering how incredibly rewarding it is i would say the opposite. Players arent rushing to do it optionally (outside of ascendancy) in the same way they like to do shaper, atziri etc. Anyway since ggg dont include polls asking for feedback on these kind of things there will never be anyway to know 100%.

The simple fact that the game has more and more success mean they have made good decision.

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diablofdb написал:

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Fhark написал:

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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.

theres no indication anywhere that the majority of ppl enjoy lab, conisdering how incredibly rewarding it is i would say the opposite. Players arent rushing to do it optionally (outside of ascendancy) in the same way they like to do shaper, atziri etc. Anyway since ggg dont include polls asking for feedback on these kind of things there will never be anyway to know 100%.

The simple fact that the game has more and more success mean they have made good decision.

No it doesn't it just means the games good enough that they may have made a bad decision but people still play and more people play. Also ascendancy's themselves maybe the popular part of it, i dont particularly like lab (mainly feel its just 2 long) but its a cheap price to pay for what you get.

Hello guys,

I want to say something.

I am 31 y/o now, and I have played Diablo and Diablo II for about 10 years, stopped only when D3 came out.

I really love PoE but I can agree with some points.

1. The colors of the sockets is a useless mechanic imo, especially in SSF because it prevents using the skill combination you want only because you didn't find some currency, I think skills/abilities usage shouldn't be tied to some RNG or currency grinding/trading.

The same can be said about 5/6L, it shouldn't be so costy to obtain, especially for a casual player who likes the game and temp leagues but doesn't have so much time to grind for 1500 fuses..

And remember you have to grind Vorici to use this recipe, I played around 500 hours in PoE, and I have never successfully made a 6L with fuses, and I used a lot of them, it's just better to buy them(6links),
makes SSF feel pointless and to much time consuming only to be able to use the skill combination you want.

When making a 6L costs more than a very rare item like Shavs, than something is wrong.

2. I hate the LAB, I really hate the fact that I have to grind trials in maps so I can than waste more time in the uber lab just to have my last 2 ascendancy points.
I have never ran lab for the treasure room.. because I hate it..

I would love to get the ascendancy points when I finish an act, or achieve some level cap, leave the lab for people who want the treasure.

Bottom line, skills and abilities shouldn't be tied to RNG manipulations, and if they are, not so crazy that people have to grind hours and hours, that doesnt make the game enjoyable.

The thing I enjoyed most in Diablo was finding some rare unique item, being excited for every cool drop..
Not grinding so I can use my skill with some 15% supporting skill.. That I don't find enjoyable and was the reason why I left long time ago, and came back only recently to the breach and legacy leagues.

I liked your write up on the state of trading, but I don't agree that GGG does not consider/want trading to be a core mechanic. Surely, the contribution they have put in on the development side does not indicate that they consider it a core mechanic, but I'm quite sure that GGG has stated multiple times that they consider trading to be vital, and, more recently, they consider the explosion of the 3rd party sites and relatively easy access to trading to be "a crisis."

From the Developer Q&A part 2:

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With all the talk of trade improvements over the years but very little concrete to show for it, it's clear that GGG wants to take steps, but is being held up by various concerns. What actual goals and restrictions are you guys working with in your efforts toward improving trade? Are there concerns that these goals are even attainable?

Being able to trade items is critical to the success of an Action RPG. This is why Path of Exile has no item binding and why SSF items can become regular items with the click of a button.

Given that we want trade, the next question is how easy the trade should be. It seems obvious to jump to the answer of "as easy as possible, of course!" but more care needs to be taken. The easier that trade is, the more trades that traders can perform, increasing the utility that items provide to them. This has a few consequences:
The gap between traders and non-traders widens. This gap is apparent when you see feedback that the game is too hard for some people and too easy for others. Most of the time, that is proportionate to how much they have traded.
Item pricing becomes more skewed towards only very-cheap and very-expensive. Items either become trivially cheap or unaffordable. If you have ever felt that it's going to take too many 1-alch sales to finally save up for that 80 exalt item you want, then this is the reason.
Progression is trivialised. While trading for an item to get a leg up on difficult content is of course fine, being able to trivially and cheaply quadruple your clear speed on a whim isn't something that should be expected on your first character in a league. In addition, the fewer item upgrades you make on a character before capping out your items, the lower chance you have of sticking around for a decent portion of the league. Upgrading items more times (in smaller steps) is more fun than jumping right to the perfect gear.

The existing community tools (combined with our public stash tab API) already put us pretty far down this spectrum, compared to the old days of trade chat. We already view this as a crisis. That is why we are hesitant to add more convenience features.

I know this explanation doesn't mention any solutions, but the things we're experimenting with aren't ready yet. Thanks for your patience.

So, GGG does consider trading to be a core mechanic. But, if I am reading this correctly, they do not want trading to be easy.

I don't know what economic philosophy the developers ascribe to... but it surely seems like something odd is going on when you look at the current state of the economy (awkward, time consuming, opaque, broken, even dangerous [in the form of scammers]) and compare it to what they seem to want the economy to be: more awkward, more time consuming, more opaque, etc.

It's also EXTREMELY disheartening to see that GGG currently contends that making trading easier will widen the gap between the haves and have nots. My experience with economics is very shallow, but I cannot fathom the economic theory that is being used to support this position. If anything, I would equate a more easily accessible market to a more "free" market in terms of participation of both buyers and sellers, as well as more free in terms of more accessible information and knowledge of the market (increased transparency). It's hard for me to envision more market participation and more transparency leading to an increase in inequity.

It is possible that the rich will get richer in a market easier to navigate, but I find it extremely unlikely that the average player will not also get significantly richer and/or have significantly reduced troubles in buying what they want for the lowest prices. The fact that you can flip currency all day and make far more than you can actually killing monsters and gathering currency indicates to me how truly broken the game economy is and a large part of that is just down to player ignorance and/or exhaustion, because the system is so opaque and cumbersome. A market that is easier to navigate should reduce the number of people being taken advantage of, offer more opportunities to small time traders on the fringes, and more.

In the quote above it even mentions a more accessible market skewing the prices to the lows and highs... But not only is that an unsubstantiated claim (again, my economic knowledge is minimal so maybe this is a claim that didn't need to be supported), even if it were true, it totally ignores the fact that with an easier market (like an AH) you could easily and tirelessly sell hundreds of items for 1 alch each to afford those expensive items... and give the consumer a massively better experience at the same time. And comparing a future market of rich and poor... what percentage of players could ever afford that 80 exalt item in the first place? The economy has ALWAYS priced the top end items way out of reach of the middle tier players. I don't see that trend getting any worse with increased market participation, and I do see the possibility of it getting much better.


All this matters to me enough to write this up in response to you because I believe in practice the trading situation leads to the end game of PoE being rather effectively closed off to the vast majority of players. The statistics from the leagues seem to support this as they show that a rather tiny percentage of players currently make it into red maps and even less get to a point where red maps and the "end game" content and achievements are completed. If I remember correctly, several years ago the situation was even worse and only a small fraction of players even made it to maps at all - although I could be mistaken about that.

If anything, it seems that GGG and I agree on one thing: that ease of trading is correlated with the ease of completing the game's content. The problem is that GGG thinks this is an argument against easy trading, while I view it as an extremely strong argument for easier trading. Even with easier trading the GG items will not get any more numerous. It's only that their prices and availability will be more visible to everyone and a more transparent market can form. Although the prices on all "tiers" of items may change in a more informed market, the difference in value should remain - I think we can agree that better stats = more value. An easier to navigate marketplace doesn't change this basic fact.

The game can still be balanced in many ways, and even if they didn't balance the actual gameplay - and continued to use the trading system as a balance - the rarity of items can always be adjusted (they've done it before), but the current system of gating it behind a trade system that entirely pulls you OUT of playing the actual game, and even pulls you into alt tabbing to a third party website, is truly bizarre and frustrating even before you factor in the AFKers and price-fixers and general unpleasantness you can come across in the current situation.

Heh. I guess this is the /endrant