Fixing the Aura Stacking + Pumping Single Skill Problem

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

Although I'm about to poke some holes in it, that's still a very good analysis and I'm very impressed.

1. This is an important distinction. However, I feel that a resistance/weakness system wins the comparison here. Diversity based off the content, which is randomly generated, forces a player to react to the situation. Diversity based off what the player did is something that, to a large extent, isn't diversity at all; players can go through an established macro of skill use the doesn't vary much if at all from encounter to encounter. It's not like the cooldowns will have random durations.

2. This is another important distinction. I'm going to think about this one today, as it's a key flaw; I'm hoping I can think of a work-around. Thank you for pointing it out.

3. Resistances are already very well communicated to players. The difference is a matter of seriousness.
Reaction to "Resists Cold" text, current system
Reaction to "Resists Cold" text, proposed system

4. Encountering a resistance you are not prepared for is just as much a period of weakness as a cooldown you are not prepared for.

5. I think that one is advantage me.

Thank you for cordial reply. Now on to response:

Zones have a limited set of creatures that spawn, and those creatures have predictable resists. So most of the time you are not actually facing RNG.

The difference is the elites because they have additional powers. They often have 6+ lines of text enumerating their abilities. If our objective is to cause players to have tiered responses to resists, then not only do we need to track what is resisted but we also need to track how resistant it is. And that information needs to be obvious enough that it won't be skipped.

GGG wisely recognized that it can be difficult to read the text for all the abilities in the heat of battle, and put visual cues on important abilities so you wouldn't have to read the text to notice them. Now resists could be added to the list of things "important enough for a visual cue" but here's the pitfall: if they put visual cues on too many different things then the visual cues suffer the same problem the text had. It becomes too busy to concisely and quickly communicate important information. They need to invent something else to highlight the important visual cues.

A comparison:


I guess a concise way of putting it would be that immunities create strategic diversity whereas cooldowns provide tactical diversity. If the problem is "spamming one skill" I would expect that to be referring to a lack of tactical diversity.

Last point, I am not against immunities! But you already have a good grasp on their advantages so there is no need for me to rehash that. I am pointing out weaknesses lest one imagine immunities could solve the problem by themself.

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PolarisOrbit a écrit :

The difference is the elites because they have additional powers. They often have 6+ lines of text enumerating their abilities. If our objective is to cause players to have tiered responses to resists, then not only do we need to track what is resisted but we also need to track how resistant it is. And that information needs to be obvious enough that it won't be skipped.

GGG wisely recognized that it can be difficult to read the text for all the abilities in the heat of battle, and put visual cues on important abilities so you wouldn't have to read the text to notice them. Now resists could be added to the list of things "important enough for a visual cue" but here's the pitfall: if they put visual cues on too many different things then the visual cues suffer the same problem the text had. It becomes too busy to concisely and quickly communicate important information. They need to invent something else to highlight the important visual cues.

Good points.

So how about something like this then:

• The Elemental Resistance aura is toned down to adding 25% to all elemental resistances.
• All other blue/rare monster mods that increase elemental resistance are removed from the game.
• All white mobs are either given a single elemental or chaos resistance of {50% normal, 75% cruel, 90% mericless}, or massive armour.
• All white mobs are either given a single negative elemental or chaos resistance or zero armour.

Under this system, it would be very clear when you'd be dealing with a possible immunity: whenever you see the monster Purity aura. The rest would be learning the native resistances (displayed) and weaknesses (not displayed) for each monster type. You could try to take out the whole group, or focus on the source of the aura then use your normal attack pattern. Note that physical and chaos immunities are impossible, since penetration with those types is impossible.

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

So how about something like this then:

• The Elemental Resistance aura is toned down to adding 25% to all elemental resistances.
• All other blue/rare monster mods that increase elemental resistance are removed from the game.
• All white mobs are either given a single elemental or chaos resistance of {50% normal, 75% cruel, 90% mericless}, or massive armour.
• All white mobs are either given a single negative elemental or chaos resistance or zero armour.

Under this system, it would be very clear when you'd be dealing with a possible immunity: whenever you see the monster Purity aura. The rest would be learning the native resistances (displayed) and weaknesses (not displayed) for each monster type. You could try to take out the whole group, or focus on the source of the aura then use your normal attack pattern. Note that physical and chaos immunities are impossible, since penetration with those types is impossible.

This is all theoretical fluff

As has been said before, you are solving the wrong problem with immunities. Sure you can implement immunities (although your system is way too complicated and way too high in the sky to ever see light in PoE), but its not actually solving the problem, that we are dealing with in the thread, that is spamming single skills

All the immunities are going to do, is if they are too weak (like they are currently), it won't change anything at all, and if they are too strong (what you are proposing) all it means is that the characters would level up an alternate skill to deal with the immunity, and they would spam that alternate skill instead of the original one. This isn't solving the problem at all, if I am a fire mage and I go up against a fire "immune" mob, I might just spam Freezing Pulse instead of Fireball.

Has it fixed the problem? No it hasn't. It hasn't fixed it anywhere else, and it won't fix it here. Drop the ball on immunities, its not going to work. The only problem, that immunities are there to solve, if they solve it, is build diversity. It has nothing to do with tactical and dynamic gameplay for a single mob of monsters

tl;dr I am not sure what problem you are trying to solve with immunities (or why you are even fixated on it so much), but its not fixing the problem indicated in this thread

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

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PolarisOrbit a écrit :

The difference is the elites because they have additional powers. They often have 6+ lines of text enumerating their abilities. If our objective is to cause players to have tiered responses to resists, then not only do we need to track what is resisted but we also need to track how resistant it is. And that information needs to be obvious enough that it won't be skipped.

GGG wisely recognized that it can be difficult to read the text for all the abilities in the heat of battle, and put visual cues on important abilities so you wouldn't have to read the text to notice them. Now resists could be added to the list of things "important enough for a visual cue" but here's the pitfall: if they put visual cues on too many different things then the visual cues suffer the same problem the text had. It becomes too busy to concisely and quickly communicate important information. They need to invent something else to highlight the important visual cues.

Good points.

So how about something like this then:

• The Elemental Resistance aura is toned down to adding 25% to all elemental resistances.
• All other blue/rare monster mods that increase elemental resistance are removed from the game.
• All white mobs are either given a single elemental or chaos resistance of {50% normal, 75% cruel, 90% mericless}, or massive armour.
• All white mobs are either given a single negative elemental or chaos resistance or zero armour.

Under this system, it would be very clear when you'd be dealing with a possible immunity: whenever you see the monster Purity aura. The rest would be learning the native resistances (displayed) and weaknesses (not displayed) for each monster type. You could try to take out the whole group, or focus on the source of the aura then use your normal attack pattern. Note that physical and chaos immunities are impossible, since penetration with those types is impossible.

I like you Scrotie, you took my commentary and came up with a solution to address it. That seems like a very reasonable idea that addresses my main concerns. Well done.

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

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Pastromy a écrit :

Also, penetration works the same way that -maximum resistances work on maps, so setting a resistance cap of 100% wouldn't suffice in your plan.

No, it doesn't; check the wiki. However, we'd just set the cap of monster resistance at, say, 125%. It would never need to resist more, ever. It's not exactly super-hard coding.

Actually, it does. I just did check the wiki and it confirms what I said--and what I have also had confirmed by a dev.

I think you guys are missing the entire point of the game. It is to make characters and builds with a simple rule set in mind. Souping up that one or two abilities while trying to squeeze every last bit out of the character in terms of auras etc IS what the game is about. You're trying to fix a "problem" that's essentially the fundamental aspect of the game and what gives it replayability.

But okay, let's say that all these changes happen and the entire socket + skill system gets scrapped and something different where abilities have cooldowns is put into place (socket system HAS to be changed because there is no way this game would be enjoyable if you had to constantly cast unsupported abilities - it would come down to people just switching gems once they met mobs they couldn't deal with. That would be WAY WORSE.). So, here we have 6 abilities the character can use, and has to use, because he can't use one ability to try to deal with most situations. So now I play this character for a while and I've essentially been using 6 abilities, if I make a new character instead of having mainly used 2 to 3 of 35 skills I've now used 8 to 10 of 35 skills.

And to top it off those abilities will most likely be very similar to what they do (eg glacial hammer as #1 and infernal blow as #2). Would you really play a game like that rather than this game? If you do, perhaps it's time to find a new game to play, because the "problem" you are addressing would require changes that would essentially make this an entirely different game. You would have to address pretty much every aspect of the game with fundamental changes.