Chris Wilson: "I want to make sure that melee classes are as good as they can be"

Bah, PoE could get improved "melee" if it would be "deemed necessary". Faster than anyone of us would think, I'd bet.

The sad fact is it's not necessary as long as GGG prefers to target spikes of interest and not look at PoE as a "finished" product with an integral experience, but they are slowly getting there - adding more personality via Ascendacies, preparing the Pantheon system to further add "diversity" on character's level, and making the game require 1 playthrough through 10 acts instead of having "repeats & increases in difficulty"...

PoE rides the "speed meta hype train" as efficiency and "targeted loot/currency farming" became the most important "thing", "fun" be damned.

Keeping level 100 locked via artificial walls, and forcing those that "want" to experience the leagues to mindlessly compete and race on the same "mice wheel", will make most players pick the "path of least resistance". It is the humane thing to do.

But with all it's shortcomings, "melee" aka "smelling monster armpits to do damage", should have a purpose and be for the "perfectly" decked and built characters as viable as ranged/cast as playstyles, if balance is meant to be achieved, if not, at least highlight it in the "tutorial" - it's no problem having a "Hard mode" as long as you are warned.

GGG did improve the base damage of one handed weapons recently, next to adjusting a bit the targeting system, in an effort to help "melee" (unfortunately, two handers have a larger comfort in providing multiple 6L skills, and that it's very important at times). Sadly, single target namelocking melee still feels miles after even AoE/ranged melee, not to mention ranged/cast playstyles.

GGG "adjusted" (lowered) density of monsters due to others more pressing reasons (cough, XBOX + sextant system, cough), which should have helped "melee", but unfortunately, due to keeping the packs "tight" instead of "loosening" them, they mainly succeeded in making maps feel a lot more empty and nerf the EXP gain for those that do use a slower playstyle, while the players "abusing opie-op speed meta" remained unaffected.

Really, there are two main aspects that would make single target namelocking melee work completely fine in this game:

1. Further address targeting, so even with desync, your character would "focus and hit" the closest proximity monster if the one where the cursor initially was moved/died/visited it's family etc.

2. Add substantial "purpose" for the single target namelocking melee skills, be that via obscene damage or improved survivability. Going bonkers on bosses HP was necessary, as all the "power creep buffs" needed to be kept in check, but could we get the best damage possible in game versus those dangerous enemies due to us standing in a 16 radius to them? If that would be "too much", could we get "double Fortify effect for 1 sec when hitting an enemy in a 16 radius" added to ALL the single target namelocking melee skills?

Those 2 improvements will make "melee" a viable option, and give you incentive to test yourself activating "Hard mode" for PoE...

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鬼殺し написал:

Sorry raics, looks like it skipped over my efforts at replying in-depth and went straight for you. This is why you DON'T TL;DR me, dude. :P

And I was right. Cerywhatever was just being facetious. Fucking pearls before swine, as usual.

Preach on Brother Charan

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鬼殺し написал:

Instead they just *really* stretched the definition of 'melee'. Which is perfectly fine -- D3 did as well, as I recall. And if it's good enough for D3, it's good enough for PoE. Only difference is melee and ranged weren't in direct competition in D3 because class skills are locked.

This is the bed GGG made and it's the bed we lie in. It comes equipped with machine guns and endless ammo. That's so cool.

Kiwi Game Dev Needs Self-Honesty Badly.

note on D3. they did not 'stretch it' there. they actually made an environment where melee makes sense

a) mob density is 'just right' for single target and AOE to both have their places
b) D3's animation and gameplay is FLUID and intuitive. even if you missclick you WILL hit the mob you wanted to hit
c) skills are actually somehwat balanced. via cooldowns (not to everyone's liking), via AOE, via damage. basic Monk attacks are strong, have interesting synergy, are mechanicaly sound and just look right. there are stronger skills - sure, but you do not want to hurt yourself while using basic attacks

POE lacks all 3. the mob density is absurd. you can hit a map where youll be stuck without quartz flask.
the 'melee autolock' is clunky at best, it is miles better than before but still more 20th century tech than anything. D2 did that better..
and the skills..

Kinetic blast vs dual strike. cmon.. just @#$%#@$^

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sidtherat написал:

even if you missclick you WILL hit the mob you wanted to hit

how are you presenting this as a good thing ?

you being rewarded for misclicking is a GOOD thing ?
really ?

what other idiot-proof thing do you support in games, sid ? auto-aim, invisible walls so you cant die, linear corridors so you cant get lost ?

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grepman написал:

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sidtherat написал:

even if you missclick you WILL hit the mob you wanted to hit

how are you presenting this as a good thing ?

you being rewarded for misclicking is a GOOD thing ?
really ?

what other idiot-proof thing do you support in games, sid ? auto-aim, invisible walls so you cant die, linear corridors so you cant get lost ?

No, its because you have mob density. If you fail to hit you target there will be another monster close to hit.

Here you need to run 100 miles to find another mob.

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Jojenmaihem написал:

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grepman написал:

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sidtherat написал:

even if you missclick you WILL hit the mob you wanted to hit

how are you presenting this as a good thing ?

you being rewarded for misclicking is a GOOD thing ?
really ?

what other idiot-proof thing do you support in games, sid ? auto-aim, invisible walls so you cant die, linear corridors so you cant get lost ?

No, its because you have mob density. If you fail to hit you target there will be another monster close to hit.

Here you need to run 100 miles to find another mob.

thats not what he said, he said poe's mob density is absurd (as in too high) compared to d3.

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grepman написал:

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sidtherat написал:

even if you missclick you WILL hit the mob you wanted to hit

how are you presenting this as a good thing ?

you being rewarded for misclicking is a GOOD thing ?...

Because of the isometric perspective. You can test this by clicking on a group of pots: Half the time, the game selects not the closest pot to your char, but some pot further back which the engine calculates as probably the one you tried to click because of the perspective.
I'm sure that's also the reason why my char will often run into the wrong passage in trials that have narrow borders between parallel passages.
This can probably be improved, but will never be perfect, so the game must give you some leeway here.

ofc the mob density is stupidly high. it is a mob soup not a game. add to that these mobs are nothing more than shapeless loot globes with no identity


D3 aim system is YEARS ahead of what POE has. and that aim system alone makes playing melee an option. because you can actually hit things you want to hit

in POE, with all the gfx vomit on the screen you can only pray.

play namelock melee for once so youll 'enjoy' this thing. it is not 'auto aim' or 'crutch' it is just technology that modern games are expected to have.

note: pretty much every other ARPG game has something similar, that alone makes melee an option. without it - it is stuff you do just because you got bored with better, working options

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what other idiot-proof thing do you support in games, sid ? auto-aim, invisible walls so you cant die, linear corridors so you cant get lost ?

auto aim AOE spells, with 2-screen coverage in a Strand map?

stuff you describe as something pretty bad is exactly what POE's meta is atm. mindless, skill-less AOE spam done on linear (or open - depding on your taste of no-skill skill) map

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sidtherat написал:

play namelock melee for once so youll 'enjoy' this thing. it is not 'auto aim' or 'crutch' it is just technology that modern games are expected to have.

Also, it isn't a matter of being isometric or not, it's a matter of the way a game is played. In games like DotA there's less targets on screen and less action on average, the game expects you to focus on targeting in short bursts so it's possible to base your success on doing it properly or not. In a game that expects you to kill several thousand enemies in 10 minutes you can't have that kind of requirement, it's physically impossible to maintain focus.

Of course, provided you can actually see what you're doing, which is often a tricky box to tick.

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鬼殺し написал:

J33bus! It did it again. Help.

No, seriously. What's so special about PoE that we should accept people falling away in droves halfway into a league? How come that's the status quo?

Do you believe GGG look at that graph and go "yup, that's about right, we didn't want to make any more money from those people anyway"?