Chris Wilson defends instant logout with all the wrong excuses

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grepman a écrit :

They started out serving category 2,marketing poe as an unforgiving hardcore game, closed beta poe was all about racing etc, and hc was the predominant mode. then the switch flipped. now they trying to balance awkwardly between two chairs, trying to not lose their og core audience

That is how indie games usually start... However, if they are successful, at some point the 'core audience' will have shifted to the more casual crowd. When that happens the company focus will also change. They may try to keep some focus on the hardcore (original) players, but the cash-flow will determine that it'll only be superficial. There's simply not enough money in the hardcore players once a game grows beyond a certain size. They may spend 10x as much money as the average casual player, but that doesn't matter if they're only 1/100th of the player base.

This usually doesn't go down well with the original (hard)core audience as they're no longer at the centre of the world, and this is hard for them to accept... :-p

This thread is a good example.

I don't know where this "balancing this will be hard" argument is coming from.

As I finally progressed deeper into maps with non-meta character that don't nuke everything on the screen within milliseconds, due to not abusing current state of the game (I'm looking at you Pen), I can literally pinpoint which mobs and mechanics belong to the "one-shot log out category".

The "gotta go fast" mods, that have insane movement/attack speed to catch the player and kill him before log out. You can find them either on abyss mobs or Beyond.

The "lets put in this fire-based zone few nuking chaos based mobs because an only small percentage of players are specing into chaos resist". A bonus is bleed/poison dot stack, that kill you even if you log out.

The invincible mod, where you need to kill the big bad, to kill his ads, while ads cast all kind of dots and slow curses.

Slow down curses, overlapping big nuke aoe, invincibility stages and list can go on and on.

You can literally feel, how they are fighting against meta, but they are also embracing it.

I never saw something like this in a video game industry.

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Sixtysan a écrit :

I don't know where this "balancing this will be hard" argument is coming from.

It is fairly simple... The balancing would have to do this:
If the logout timer is say 15 seconds, then no mobs should be able to kill you in 15 seconds if you stop being responsive (having been involuntarily disconnected), even if you're down on life/mana/luck!

This is because the functionality desired and implemented by GGG is to protect players against involuntary disconnect. The functionality has nothing to do with preventing players abusing insta-logout (this is just an unfortunate side-effect).

Balancing this would not just mean the few mobs you (with your functioning and advanced neural network learning machine... your brain) can identify as insta-killers, but what the servers (with their severely limited processing abilities) can identify as possibly able to kill players that have disconnected. This is 'very difficult' (HUGE understatement). There is also NO way the servers can distinguish between voluntary and involuntary disconnects.

There is NO solution to the problem of involuntary disconnect except the one that accept that insta-logout can also be used.

bet if they could sell such timer for 20$ we'll get one in a heartbeat.....

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Cyzax a écrit :

This is actually wrong... Chris may belong to 'Category 2', BUT the ones he's trying to serve by keeping the feature that a disconnect logs you out immediately is 'Category 1' (the large majority of the players). A side-effect of that is that insta-logout is also possible...

No.

A disconnect logs you out after six seconds, which is very long. So just make the logout take 6 seconds as well, and re-balance the game.

I am clearly a category 1 player, and I feel that it hurts my enjoyment of the game (indirectly) that instant logouts are possible. Personally, I do not use them, they feel like cheating.

I'm just gonna leave my agreement on this one.

Hmm, actually, no - I'll add something.
It boils my blood when I hear about how exciting and adrenaline pumping the one-shotty nature of PoE is. It isn't. It is annoying, it causes people to stop playing. It has nothing to do with any fun or positive emotions of engagement.
How can you engage in combat when it is over in a millisecond? Wouldn't a close call that you know you can't just alt+f4 from be far more exciting? Running around and trying to survive, doing everything you can?

For me it is another severe case of we can't do lockstep because hardcore mechanics and loot allocation takes away the cutthroat nature of the game. But this one is just so deep inside GGG's psyche that they can't just let go. :/

If they bake a logout macro into the game I will most likely quit.

Balancing around logoutcore is one of the most stupid things GGG have ever done.

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Char1983 a écrit :

A disconnect logs you out after six seconds, which is very long. So just make the logout take 6 seconds as well, and re-balance the game.

A re-balance is not in the cards... Any 'solution' that depends on that is not possible (as Chris himself said).

It simply cannot be done with the resources of a small company like GGG, given that is would probably force them to not do any new content for a year or two but purely focus on rebalancing. This is a monumental task, especially given how difficult for them it is to balance the game just to keep current.
It would strangle the inflow of new players, while causing a lot of the older ones to either loose interest, or storm off in a huff because they don't like the changes. In either case, the company is dead...

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Char1983 a écrit :

I am clearly a category 1 player, and I feel that it hurts my enjoyment of the game (indirectly) that instant logouts are possible. Personally, I do not use them, they feel like cheating.

Why does it 'hurt your enjoyment' in your single-player game that someone you don't know and don't actually play against does instant logouts in their single-player game?
For anyone bar the most competitive players (maybe a few 100s), PoE is in effect a single-player game.

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Doomstryver a écrit :

Balancing around logoutcore is one of the most stupid things GGG have ever done.

Once. Again.
No. One. Ever. Has. Intentionally. Balanced. The game. Around. Logouts.

It's a complete nonsense speaking about development and balancing of a computer game, let alone an aRPG.
Technically, from a developer's POV, it only makes sense to implement delayed logout for balancing reasons. But not to intentionally balance and adjust your game to instant logouts.

This statement of Chris (altogether with members of the balance team, in the past), is in the same category of "lockstep will hurt the game" kind of statements.
He has his reasons.

It's not about if they balance the game around logouts. It's about if they can properly balance it at all. Or even if they aren't intentionally creating disbalance, for reasons.

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torturo a écrit :

Once. Again.
No. One. Ever. Has. Intentionally. Balanced. The game. Around. Logouts.

It's a complete nonsense speaking about development and balancing of a computer game, let alone an aRPG.
Technically, from a developer's POV, it only makes sense to implement delayed logout for balancing reasons. But not to intentionally balance and adjust your game to instant logouts.

This statement of Chris (altogether with members of the balance team, in the past), is in the same category of "lockstep will hurt the game" kind of statements.
He has his reasons.

It's not about if they balance the game around logouts. It's about if they can properly balance it at all. Or even if they aren't intentionally creating disbalance, for reasons.

So what you're saying is they can't ban/remove logout macro because it would require a rebalance of the game. Is that not the same thing as saying that they have been balancing around logouts in the past (and will most likely continue to)?

In fact some of the comments the OP linked show Chris himself speaking about how he feels the ability to logout is tantamount to creating exciting and adrenaline rich situations.

The logout disconnection timer is one of the few things D3 has up on PoE.