The wall of real problems that prevent PoE from being a god-tier game

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

Actually, I think they're greedy because they feel entitled to run high maps without taking a week (or more, I'd actually say it's more like two weeks if you're doing it right) for their map pool to get there, or they feel entitled to uberhunt as if it's not deliberately the hardest content GGG could throw at players.

That isn't the game. There's a lot of fun to be had with both low and mid maps, both of which are pretty darn accessible. I'm handling both at the moment with gear which cost me slightly less than 1 Ex total (that's all items combined).

The problem with the idea of making the absolute highest content available to everyone is that it denies a sense of continuous progression the more you play the game. It's important that, as long as you're playing, there's a feeling you're continually making progress. Once someone reaches the end, they can't progress any further. That's why the end is very delayed. I think everyone's just too impatient to see that giving you what you want earlier isn't going to make things more fun, it's just going to end the fun sooner.

The problem mostly isn't about getting there, trade is here, one can just buy 10+ top level maps and he's there, the problem is staying there and not being pushed back to even more faceroll grinding.

Here you're talking about continuous progression, where is it here when players are constantly pushed back to grind easier content and get less loot and experience? How can that be even called progression, explain.

"There's a lot of fun to be had with both low and mid maps" - that's a personal opinion, most players want to fight harder content if they can handle it, logically.

The end which you're referring to is delayed by luck, and that's what's bothering most of players.
It can be done differently, but sadly, judging by GGG's obsession with gambling, that's never going to happen I'm afraid.

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

The problem with the idea of making the absolute highest content available to everyone is that it denies a sense of continuous progression the more you play the game. It's important that, as long as you're playing, there's a feeling you're continually making progress. Once someone reaches the end, they can't progress any further. That's why the end is very delayed. I think everyone's just too impatient to see that giving you what you want earlier isn't going to make things more fun, it's just going to end the fun sooner.

What you're saying, basically, boils down to: PoE doesn't have a lot of end-game content, but GGG wants players to stick around as long as possible even if that means players have to spend hours, days, weeks, with content that provides no challenge and little reward. This is a very good decision in terms of running a business, because you disguise the lack of challenging end-game content by actively denying access to this content through RNG, and thus they make the current end-game content last as long as possible, disregarding entirely whether this is fun or not.

The consequence is that people are forced to grind boring content that provides no challenge whatsoever. Even worse, in case you don't get lucky every once in a while and get a map-level that still is challenging, the game no longer actively challenges you. From act 1 to 3, you progress depending on how good your character is, how good your build is, how good your skills are, how good your items are, versus how challenging the game is. From map-level 66 to 78 you progress depending on how lucky or rich you are, and if you're not lucky or rich enough, all your skills, hours spend grinding, improving your build, improving your gear and characters becomes meaningless in the face of RNG map-drops.

The current map-system makes it seem, periodically, as though playing the game is pointless to some people. I, for one, love to grind to improve my character, my build and my gear so as to be able to beat more challenging content. When I first did maps, they were challenging and fun. But progress to higher map-levels was slow, whereas my build, gear and character kept improving, thus soon making the content I had access to boring. When I finally got to higher level maps they were no longer a challenge because I had already out-grown them by grinding lower-level maps. When I finally reached 77-78 maps, I was glad to finally find somewhat challenging content again, only to deplete my stash of those maps rather quickly in an unlucky streak and end up being thrown back into more boring map-levels. If this continues, my prospect for the game is currently to out-grow 77-78 maps by grinding boring content, to then find that 77-78 maps have become equally boring. In effect, if you don't spend copious amounts of currency on both buying maps as well as improving maps, you are likely to go through most of the map-content being bored and facing little to no challenges.

This does, in no way, improve the game. All it does is prolong the time people spend with the game. In terms of business decisions, I get what GGG is trying to accomplish. In terms of delivering fun and challenging end-game content, it fails. In the worst-case scenario, people can end up going through all of the maps, from 66 to 78, being bored and without being challenged.

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Emphasy a écrit :

Well, PoE is an Action-RPG. Endgame just means providing varying challanges like the previous part did. While leveling you go through different acts experience the 3 difficulties etc. Endgame needs simply a way to simulate this to keep people entertained. PoE mainly uses the map-system for that, while D3 uses bounties and Rifts. Bounties are hard for PoE since D3 does not have a definite level-system anymore (you basically just unlock new skills and equipment), while in PoE it would be kinda silly to ask a lvl80 player to go kill Hillock in Merciless.

And yet this is figuratively what the game demands you do whenever you run out of maps that are a challenge to you, to grind pointless low level content in the hopes of being blessed by the RNG map gods. My ranger is now level 88 and until recently, when I had a very lucky streak of 2 cartographer boxes in a row on maps level 73-74, she was periodically running level 70-71 maps because that was the highest map-level available to her, maps that were pretty much as difficult as killing Hillock in normal difficulty over and over and over.

Now, as for solutions. There are a few ways to go about solving the map-problem.

1) Increase map drop rates
2) Balance difficulty of current maps
3) Make more, and more difficult, end-game content


1) Increase map drop rates
What would this end up doing? First, the downside. Yes, people would sooner reach end-game maps, would sooner end up farming the most difficult content, and would thus end up getting bored sooner and would quit playing their high level character or the game entirely. The upside, however, is that people would progress through the end-game content at their own pace, being continuously challenged and having fun.

Basically, adjusting map drop-rate influences the speed with which you let people progress through the game. You don’t want this to be greatly slower than the progress people make with their characters, because otherwise they’ll be bored, but allowing full access equally involves the risk that people will get bored. Which is why other solutions, apart from improving map drop rates, are either also required or just straight up better.


2) Balance difficulty of current maps
Currently the difficulty progression through maps is very uneven, with some low level maps that have lots of act 3.5 enemies and a strong boss being far more difficult than some higher level maps. Some higher level maps are veritable pushovers, like the 74 Gorge map, whereas the level 66 Orchard boss can one-shot even very high level characters. To improve a feeling of progression and challenge, maps need to be better balanced overall. But, if we allow people to progress through maps faster by relying less on RNG-gating, content should also become more difficult the higher you get.

One simple solution is to adopt the item-system into the map-system. Items with item level 5 can have different prefixes and suffixes compared to items of item level 79. For example, the level 1 ‘Heated’ prefix adds 1-2 fire damage, whereas the possible level 76 ‘Cremating’ prefix adds 19-25 to 39-45 fire damage.

Why not use the same system for maps? For example, the current ‘physical resistance’ mod, ‘Armoured’, doesn’t even have a variable, it is ALWAYS 30% monster physical resistance, whether you’re doing a level 66 map or whether you’re doing a level 78 map. Why not split this up into level-dependant tiers? Say, the following:

map-level 66-70: ‘Reinforced’, 10-20% physical resistance
map-levels 71-74: ‘Fortified’, 20-30% physical resistance
map levels 75-78: ‘Impregnable’, 30-40% physical resistance

If you do this for all map pre- and suffixes that can be variable, maps become more difficult, more challenging, the higher they go. You could even introduce especially challenging map-modifiers for level 78 maps alone, like 50% physical resistance. This way, you put more emphasis on making content last longer through difficulty and challenge, rather than RNG. Progressing into a higher tier of maps will be a build/level/gear-challenge, and grinding lower level maps will feel more useful because you are doing so with the goal of improving your level, build and items, to be able to beat the next tier of maps, not because RNG doesn't allow you to progress, but because your character simply isn't ready yet to safely beat the more difficult content.

What would be the downside? You would get more complaints that the game is too difficult and that players can't progress because of gear-checks, skill-checks, level-checks, build-checks. But I believe these type of complaints are normal to any ARPG, and far less damaging to a game than complaints that the game doesn't allow you to progress because of bad luck.

3) Make more, and more difficult, end-game content
This is probably the best, but also most expensive option, to simply make 78+ content that is absurdly difficult. The only downside to this is that it is expensive to make. There is, really, little else to be said about this.

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Emphasy a écrit :

Most of the old games lacked any kind of reward except for the most important one... being able to play them. A lot of NES games exspecially hat so shitty endings because nobody expected that people want to beat games, they wanted to play them. A lot of older games were terrible hard. The old Castlevania-Titles are a really good example for that or Contra.

About the first Castlevania game:

"UP.com's Jeremy Parish felt that the game had become dated due to the relative limitations between Simon Belmont and later Castlevania characters such as Alucard and Soma Cruz. He also felt that it was too short. In spite of this he praised it for its hard-but-fair challenge and its audio and visuals" (from wikipedia)

The key words being "hard-but-fair challenge". That's something we often miss in PoE and something hopefully Chris can do something about now that he is paying more attention to the balancing.

Well, I guess I should point out that the following is based on a hypothesis which I'm currently testing. I'd have to level further to really confirm it as a theory, although all results so far (level 85) point to it being correct. I've even been planning a big new thread on the topic, complete with findings, upon completion of my experiment. Thus, I'm in a bit of an awkward position of desiring to state things which I believe rather than things which I know, something which I've attempted to avoid earlier in this thread, and in general.

That said, allow me to respond to others with that which I believe.

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tinko92 a écrit :

"

Here you're talking about continuous progression, where is it here when players are constantly pushed back to grind easier content and get less loot and experience? How can that be even called progression, explain.

"There's a lot of fun to be had with both low and mid maps" - that's a personal opinion, most players want to fight harder content if they can handle it, logically.

10-12 maps is a joke pool. You need far more than that to be solid.

The key is to take each map level slowly, so that you never have to backtrack. That's what I mean by "continuous progression" and "there's a lot of fun to be had with low and mid maps." The push to get to high maps quickly is a huge mistake.

It's a waste for two reasons.

First, it's a waste of XP, because you know damn well that high maps are the only good way to XP up once you get into the mid-90s... so why would you squander them earlier? It's as dumb as throwing Exalts on random rares you find on the Docks, for the exact same reason; you get more utility if you're patient and wait for better opportunities. If you're running 78s before... hmm, let's say level 92ish?... you are doing it wrong.

Second, when you run those "harder" maps, you end up using far too much currency to roll, because you can't handle the hard mods. I've barely used Chaos at all, which means I've run some pretty crazy low maps (at the level at which the XP they provided was appropriate), just because RNGesus felt like being rough. Ever run a Vulnerability, Twinned, Overlord's Museum and taken out the bosses? I have, deathlessly. - max res Villa with Anarchic and both Exiles spawn in the boss room? I actually backed away from that one... but not before offing Thena Moga while kiting traps. There's your "fighting harder content if you can handle it" right there. A higher map with safe quantity mods isn't necessarily more of a challenge, it's usually just a lot more expensive. You go broke spending too much Chaos rerolling a pool you can't sustain.

This style of map running, where you take most any affixes which come your way, leads to an interestingly random pacing. You have easy maps where you take a breather, you have intense maps where you fear the reaper. When you actually let RNG dictate your mapping experience instead of Chaosing every map into conformity, you break the monotony of the same content over and over again, because it isn't the same content over and over again.

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Fleve a écrit :

Spoiler

What you're saying, basically, boils down to: PoE doesn't have a lot of end-game content, but GGG wants players to stick around as long as possible even if that means players have to spend hours, days, weeks, with content that provides no challenge and little reward. This is a very good decision in terms of running a business, because you disguise the lack of challenging end-game content by actively denying access to this content through RNG, and thus they make the current end-game content last as long as possible, disregarding entirely whether this is fun or not.

The consequence is that people are forced to grind boring content that provides no challenge whatsoever. Even worse, in case you don't get lucky every once in a while and get a map-level that still is challenging, the game no longer actively challenges you. From act 1 to 3, you progress depending on how good your character is, how good your build is, how good your skills are, how good your items are, versus how challenging the game is. From map-level 66 to 78 you progress depending on how lucky or rich you are, and if you're not lucky or rich enough, all your skills, hours spend grinding, improving your build, improving your gear and characters becomes meaningless in the face of RNG map-drops.

The current map-system makes it seem, periodically, as though playing the game is pointless to some people. I, for one, love to grind to improve my character, my build and my gear so as to be able to beat more challenging content. When I first did maps, they were challenging and fun. But progress to higher map-levels was slow, whereas my build, gear and character kept improving, thus soon making the content I had access to boring. When I finally got to higher level maps they were no longer a challenge because I had already out-grown them by grinding lower-level maps. When I finally reached 77-78 maps, I was glad to finally find somewhat challenging content again, only to deplete my stash of those maps rather quickly in an unlucky streak and end up being thrown back into more boring map-levels. If this continues, my prospect for the game is currently to out-grow 77-78 maps by grinding boring content, to then find that 77-78 maps have become equally boring. In effect, if you don't spend copious amounts of currency on both buying maps as well as improving maps, you are likely to go through most of the map-content being bored and facing little to no challenges.

This does, in no way, improve the game. All it does is prolong the time people spend with the game. In terms of business decisions, I get what GGG is trying to accomplish. In terms of delivering fun and challenging end-game content, it fails. In the worst-case scenario, people can end up going through all of the maps, from 66 to 78, being bored and without being challenged.

I actually agree with you that maps fail many users in terms of fun and challenging endgame content. However, I do not view this failure as intrinsic to the map system itself; instead, I view it as the result of user error.

When done thoroughly and giving each map-level its proper due, I don't think there's a lot of RNG involved. When you roll, say, 4 six-sided dice at a time, you're going to get much more variation than when you roll 40 of them; as you repeat a random process, it becomes less luck and more statistics.

It's a lot like Fusings. According to statistics I've collected myself (over 100,000 fuses), if you have 700 Fusings, the odds of you getting a 6L before running out are over 50%. Some people misinterpret this to mean that you can expect to 6L with 700 fuses, and that's very, very wrong. In order to get a 95% chance of 6L before you run out, you'd need over 3000. Even then, you could be in that 5%.

The same is true with maps; if your pool is all but squandered and you're counting on this last map to give you an upgrade, you're going to have a bad time. Fortunately, if you progress through map levels patiently, you will have a vast pool and it is very unlikely you won't be able to build a good pool for the next level by the time you complete it.

Lastly, I believe it's an understatement to say it's a good business move; I'd call it a mandatory business move. Content costs money to generate, so in order to provide players with varying content, GGG needs to rely on RNG to provide that content. That's what map affixes are for. In order for the system to work, map affixes, not map levels, have to do the heavy lifting. GGG cannot finance an endgame of white maps; it can finance an endgame of rare ones.

edit: In terms of suggestions, I may have some, but right now the only two I have are...
1. remove Temporal Chains as a map affix — not a difficulty problem, I've ran them enough times to know how bad it is in terms of surviving, but a boring as hell problem
2. change the four elemental curses so they can't be utterly defeated by overcapping resists, because right now when I see them they're just free quantity for me, almost no additional challenge whatsoever.
I feel everything else is premature, as I have no convincing evidence at this point that there is a problem. I would have to complete my experiment first in order to have a more concrete opinion, but I refuse to jump ahead in progress impatiently; I will slowly develop my map pool with an eye towards maximum sustainability, which will mean taking things rather slow (but not necessarily easy, as pointed out earlier in the Museum and Villa examples). It is, of course, nice to get confirmation from those I'm debating with that there's still difficult challenges in low maps if that's something you're looking for. In particular, Fleve's point #2 seems like a bullshit idea which would probably make the game worse if implemented.

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

The same is true with maps; if your pool is all but squandered and you're counting on this last map to give you an upgrade, you're going to have a bad time. Fortunately, if you progress through map levels patiently, you will have a vast pool and it is very unlikely you won't be able to build a good pool for the next level by the time you complete it.

For ingame economic reasons, it is meant to on average be impossible to sustain lv78 maps. (probably 77s too)

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

Spoiler

10-12 maps is a joke pool. You need far more than that to be solid.

The key is to take each map level slowly, so that you never have to backtrack. That's what I mean by "continuous progression" and "there's a lot of fun to be had with low and mid maps." The push to get to high maps quickly is a huge mistake.

It's a waste for two reasons.

First, it's a waste of XP, because you know damn well that high maps are the only good way to XP up once you get into the mid-90s... so why would you squander them earlier? It's as dumb as throwing Exalts on random rares you find on the Docks, for the exact same reason; you get more utility if you're patient and wait for better opportunities. If you're running 78s before... hmm, let's say level 92ish?... you are doing it wrong.

Second, when you run those "harder" maps, you end up using far too much currency to roll, because you can't handle the hard mods. I've barely used Chaos at all, which means I've run some pretty crazy low maps (at the level at which the XP they provided was appropriate), just because RNGesus felt like being rough. Ever run a Vulnerability, Twinned, Overlord's Museum and taken out the bosses? I have, deathlessly. - max res Villa with Anarchic and both Exiles spawn in the boss room? I actually backed away from that one... but not before offing Thena Moga while kiting traps. There's your "fighting harder content if you can handle it" right there. A higher map with safe quantity mods isn't necessarily more of a challenge, it's usually just a lot more expensive. You go broke spending too much Chaos rerolling a pool you can't sustain.

This style of map running, where you take most any affixes which come your way, leads to an interestingly random pacing. You have easy maps where you take a breather, you have intense maps where you fear the reaper. When you actually let RNG dictate your mapping experience instead of Chaosing every map into conformity, you break the monotony of the same content over and over again, because it isn't the same content over and over again.

I've never said that it's not a joke pool, you should re-read (or read) more thoroughly.

And here you're talking about no backtracks, which is a sign for me to step out of this discussion with you, but some things will get addressed before bailing out.

I don't remember asking for mapping advices, you should save that for some beginner.

Your example of lower maps being hard content is totally illogical and wrong in every possible way.
For a lower level map to be harder than higher one, on average, you would have to spend more currency on rolling the lower maps. And even with that, the sense of progression is non-existent due to almost no exp gain.
A balance between sense of progression and hardness of the content should be important.

So in the end, you're splashing your personal opinions all over the place, which is fine, until you start promoting them as facts.

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tinko92 a écrit :

Your example of lower maps being hard content is totally illogical and wrong in every possible way.
For a lower level map to be harder than higher one, on average, you would have to spend more currency on rolling the lower maps. And even with that, the sense of progression is non-existent due to almost no exp gain.
A balance between sense of progression and hardness of the content should be important.

You're trying to make everything average out. Stop. It's a waste. Allow some low maps to be wicked hard, and some to give you a chance to catch your breath. Permit variety. If you go with the flow you'll be a lot happier.

Also, I'm not suggesting that a truly high-level character run 68 maps. I'm suggesting that a high-level character run high maps, and have them available due to not having ran them earlier. I'm suggesting pacing yourself and running lots and lots (probably 30 to 40) of 68s between 67 and 69.

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tinko92 a écrit :

So in the end, you're splashing your personal opinions all over the place, which is fine, until you start promoting them as facts.

Seems unfair, given the preface I made to that post. The best term for them is hypotheses in a process of either independent confirmation or independent disproof.

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

You're trying to make everything average out. Stop. It's a waste. Allow some low maps to be wicked hard, and some to give you a chance to catch your breath. Permit variety. If you go with the flow you'll be a lot happier.

Also, I'm not suggesting that a truly high-level character run 68 maps. I'm suggesting that a high-level character run high maps, and have them available due to not having ran them earlier. I'm suggesting pacing yourself and running lots and lots (probably 30 to 40) of 68s between 67 and 69.

So, what you're talking about is players running 77 maps before 87th lvl (example). Which is ridiculous to even talk about, of course that those players are wasting currency.

And, judging by that last part, you're saying that if a player that isn't high level shouldn't run high level maps, so he'll be able to do that when the time comes - when he's high level. Is that what you're saying?

And please, stop with the mapping education.

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tinko92 a écrit :

So, what you're talking about is players running 77 maps before 87th lvl (example). Which is ridiculous to even talk about, of course that those players are wasting currency.

I'm going a little further than that. More like: if you're running 77 maps before level 92 you're wasting currency.