Chaos recipe nerf only fixed a symptom

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KoTao a écrit :

/players X just chokes build diversity, as there are few builds capable of efficiently soloing 60+ content with quadruple monster life.

This already happens.

There are very few characters capable of stacking absurd amounts of IIR/IIQ without sacrificing killing power and survivability as well (hello summoner), and those are the guys that reap the benefits of the current system. I've actually rerolled a summoner just for the sake of farming areas with high IIR/IIQ, and it's a system I absolutely abhor. Why should IIR/IIQ be the determinant of getting good gear instead of the quality of your character/build?

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KoTao a écrit :

At some point the static effect items like gems, gcps etc are going to need some randomization, probably in the form of a tiny chance of minor affixes on dropped gems (ie, blue/yellow versions) and some kind of rng on gcps, whetstones etc. Otherwise itll reach the point where everyone beyond the newest newb is going to ignore these things as their marginal utility will eventually (especially in default) be close enough to zero to render them worthless. That or all of the above need to be usable in expensive crafting recipes. Implimenting both solutions would make the game even more interesting.

GCP's are far from useless. I personally would rather GCP my gems than waste chaos on anything other than maps.

The thing about consumption is that it boils down to economics, which is often more counterintuitive than people think. People think that they horde GCP's because it's static and simply raises the quality of a gem automatically, so people consume them less. But really, I think the fact that the odds of getting a decent craft with fusings/chaos is so low that all but a select few people prefer to horde these if possible and unload them in trades. Of course, you could argue that they eventually pool their way into the hands of a 'hardcore' player that wants to reroll a lot of high level maps and make their 6l, but these cases probably far outweigh the people that simply horde these items for currency.

Because crafting is so arbitrary and the odds are so low, most people don't make their living using their currency for crafting. They use it for hording currency for trading. The fix to this is to make crafting yield better results more frequently. That means high end items will fall in value as crafting them will be easier, and it will also take care of inflation from currency items because more people would be willing to use them.

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UnderOmerta a écrit :

Because crafting is so arbitrary and the odds are so low, most people don't make their living using their currency for crafting. They use it for hording currency for trading. The fix to this is to make crafting yield better results more frequently. That means high end items will fall in value as crafting them will be easier, and it will also take care of inflation from currency items because more people would be willing to use them.

Exactly. When closed beta started i was so in love with the crafting system. Now PoE seems to become more and more a game based on trading like d3 was. That would be sad.

Problem is that it was (and still is to a lesser degree) way more rewarding currency wise to face-roll low lvl easy content than it was to progress and take risks doing challenging high level content. This should not be the case. 70+ Maps should be dropping much more currency esp for solo players given how much you put into them. Under lvl 70 maps are ez to get and should not drop too much currency.

Hardcore economy is 1000x better than default btw since there are lots of item sinks when people die.

But ya make hard content more rewarding currency wise or add in /players X imo so normal ppl can at least faceroll content to get orbs like the professionals who start multibox 6 accounts do.

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KoTao a écrit :

Re Chaos Recipe:

Should be all of merciless. 60 is a completely arbitrary cutoff- it still allows mindlessly easy areas like merc fellshrine but doesnt allow potentially deadly areas like merc coves, and ultimately just restricts player choice even more. We could use some recipes (however difficult to complete) for blesseds, exalts and all the other recipe-less orbs too.

Doesn't really fix the problem; the point should be that leveling your low-level character should reward you currency, while taking your high-level character through low-level content shouldn't be more rewarding.

Although the currency penalty (see Mechanics thread if you don't know it) is an attempt to fix this, in a way it does more harm than good by punishing endgame characters who run out of maps. A level 80 character running Merciless Docks has the same currency penalty as a level 44 character running doing Normal Oversoul runs.

My fix:
* Apply the current currency modifier to quantity dropped for all gear, except for maps, where it becomes a "more" bonus instead of a "less" penalty. This would mean that a level 60 farming normal Vaal (level 26) gets a "80% less" penalty to all drops there, which kind of kills personally incentive to run normal Vaal. However, a level 80 running Lunaris 3 (level 64) gets a "35% less" penalty to currency and gear drops... but a "35% more" bonus to map drops.
* In parties, always have the highest level player determine the drop modifier, regardless of who created the instance. That means a level 24 who adds a level 60 to his party gets the same "80% less" quantity penalty. This should kill the multibox abuse without the need for penalizing low-level formulas.
* Change recipes back to the way they were in 10.1.x. This lets players more effectively use formulas as they level up characters through Normal and Cruel.

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KoTao a écrit :

Re Loot:

/players X just chokes build diversity, as there are few builds capable of efficiently soloing 60+ content with quadruple monster life.

Trying to code in bandaids like not counting idle or low level characters toward iiq increases always gets circumvented, its just a matter of time. Its also a waste of dev resources.

Doing nothing leaves us with running 5x idle alts as the best path to wealth. Poor for everyone who wants to just play the game and might strain the servers if it becomes too widespread.

I think the best solution is to increase base monster drops to 2.5x to 3x what they are now and remove the party iiq bonus. Removes all reason to run dummy accounts and makes soloing players more competitive with partying players as well, especially in long term events. Parties will see less overall loot but considering what a massive gameplay advantage partying is, i dont see this as a major issue, not to mention itd clamp the insane item spam in high iiq maps somewhat.

Not a very good solution. The problem with partying isn't that the party gets more loot overall (3.5 divided 6 ways isn't very much)... unfortunately that's what your suggestion attempts to fix. The main problem with partying is that the game gets much easier by having effectively six times the DPS vs 3.5x the monster life, which means 71% more effective DPS, which means with the 6-player IIQ bonus plus the extra killspeed from DPS they're getting 6 times the loot, divided 6 ways, against easier monsters. Your suggestion doesn't address this at all.

My fix:
* Each additional player adds 100% increased monster health and 100% increased item quantity, instead of 50% each. This gets rid of the DPS advantage; the monsters are just as hard as solo, and still drop 6 times the loot divided 6 ways.
* Two player parties get 25% increased map quantity, 3 players 45%, 4 players 60%, 5 players 70%, 6 players 75%. You might think this is a big buff, but remember that a party of 6 currently kills 71% faster due to the DPS advantage... for 2-man parties, 33% faster, 3-man 50%, 4-man 60%, 5-man 67%. So really this would pretty much neutralize the stealth penalties to party map drops made by the first change.

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KoTao a écrit :

Re Maps:

Combo affixes (any affixes that combine to multiply difficulty instead of just adding to it, ie elem weakness + exposure or physical reflect + vulnerability) should give iir as well as iiq.

Maps should be less likely to drop lower level maps as their difficulty (iiq/iir) increases. This also passively punishes players for rolling only monster+size mods with no negative affixes.

Merciless catacombs and at least one side area in each of act 2 and act 1 should be level 64, so players looking for semi-reliable map drops arent forced to grind the exact same area over and over (lunaris 3). They would provide places to gear up along the way for players running gear intensive builds as well.

An alternate endgame area thats permanently available, similar to old MoC, should be (re)added. Base level of 65, so its lower than maps but higher than merciless content, with iir/iiq/alvl bonuses for continuing further into it (up to a certain cap so that it doesnt outshine maps). The map system lacks the smooth "jump in whenever and just play" feel that MoC and permanent, no entry barrier endgame areas in general grantin arpgs and this would shore up that lack.

Disagree with most of these too.

I think you were going in a good direction with the very first point. Unfortunately, IIR doesn't really help you chain from one map to another, which is what we want here.

Making "bad" maps less likely to drop is one answer, but simply increasing IIQ so that all maps drop more is probably better; having low-level maps to trade or as a fallback if good maps run out is always nice.

Totally agree that Merci Catacombs should be 64. I think having another 64 side zone would be nice, but adding it to Act 1/2 seems artificial; it would be better to just flat-out create a new side zone and put it in Act 3.

An alternate endgame is a horrible idea. The map system is cool and should be used.

My fix:
* Increase area level of Catacombs to 64.
* Map affixes (other than quality bonus) are always "more" bonuses, not "increased" bonuses. Right now a 20% quality map with the Deadly, Enraged, Fleet, of Temporal Chains, of Smothering, and of Flames affixes gives 148% quantity, but after this it would give a whopping 281% quantity, which I think is far more appropriate for such an insane map.

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KoTao a écrit :

Re Economy:

At some point the static effect items like gems, gcps etc are going to need some randomization, probably in the form of a tiny chance of minor affixes on dropped gems (ie, blue/yellow versions) and some kind of rng on gcps, whetstones etc. Otherwise itll reach the point where everyone beyond the newest newb is going to ignore these things as their marginal utility will eventually (especially in default) be close enough to zero to render them worthless. That or all of the above need to be usable in expensive crafting recipes. Implimenting both solutions would make the game even more interesting.

Best in slot uniques like lioneyes glare need to be nerfed and the mistake not repeated. A single unique of this sort can make an entire subgroup of rares obsolete in a rather short timeframe and have accordingly nasty effects on game longevity.

That first suggestion is great. It's really two suggestions, but they're both great: although I don't think gems should be capable of rare, they should be capable of magic, making them another Trans/Alt sink and allowing GCPs to have more effect on white gems.

I'd suggest basing Whestone/Scrap/Bauble/GCP randomness off of the negative binomial distribution by giving each use a chance of p to get zero, otherwise +1 quality and reroll; r=20 since we want 20 "failures" of increasing quality by one. That would give us:
white items (4 currency mean): 1/6 chance to fail, 5/6 chance of +1 and reroll
blue items (10 currency mean): 1/3 chance to fail, 2/3 chance of +1 and reroll
rare item (20 currency mean): 1/2 chance to fail, 1/2 chance of +1 and reroll

However, the unique thing I can't really agree with. Uniques should be good for certain builds and thus exciting to find.

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

A level 80 character running Merciless Docks has the same currency penalty as a level 44 character running doing Normal Oversoul runs.

A level 80 in merc docks has a negligible penalty of 10%. That equation caps effective character level at 68, so any area 66+ has no penalty at all.

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

Not a very good solution. The problem with partying isn't that the party gets more loot overall (3.5 divided 6 ways isn't very much)... unfortunately that's what your suggestion attempts to fix. The main problem with partying is that the game gets much easier by having effectively six times the DPS vs 3.5x the monster life, which means 71% more effective DPS, which means with the 6-player IIQ bonus plus the extra killspeed from DPS they're getting 6 times the loot, divided 6 ways, against easier monsters. Your suggestion doesn't address this at all.

I was looking to address the multiboxing and party loot+currency per map issues, not partying making the game easier.

Increasing monster life wont change anything anyway, the problem here is how divided up the aggro is and how easy it is for everyone to just hide behind a full party wall of minions and totems that the monsters cant break since they dont have 6 times the damage to compensate (and cant have, for obvious reasons). This is an issue thats going to take a whole lot more than numbers shuffling to fix.

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

Disagree with most of these too.

I think you were going in a good direction with the very first point. Unfortunately, IIR doesn't really help you chain from one map to another, which is what we want here.

Making "bad" maps less likely to drop is one answer, but simply increasing IIQ so that all maps drop more is probably better; having low-level maps to trade or as a fallback if good maps run out is always nice.

Totally agree that Merci Catacombs should be 64. I think having another 64 side zone would be nice, but adding it to Act 1/2 seems artificial; it would be better to just flat-out create a new side zone and put it in Act 3.

An alternate endgame is a horrible idea. The map system is cool and should be used.

Perhaps more iiq overall is better than my suggestions; there just needs to be a good reason to actually roll and run hard maps, as currently there isnt. Massive/Maze/Twinned of Commanders/Champions/Hordes with a regal on top has been the best roll since the system was implimented, and its generally cheaper to roll and safer to run than an equivalent alch~chaos rare to boot.

An alternate endgame isnt meant to replace or dethrone the map system (which is an excellent concept for an arpg), its meant to suppliment it for those times when players are either out of maps, or just want a less involved, lower overhead experience. The quick, non commital run feel of docks, fellshrine, ledge etc with proper endgame level risk:reward but without the predictability and monotony that a static zone suffers from.

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

That first suggestion is great. It's really two suggestions, but they're both great: although I don't think gems should be capable of rare, they should be capable of magic, making them another Trans/Alt sink and allowing GCPs to have more effect on white gems.

I'd suggest basing Whestone/Scrap/Bauble/GCP randomness off of the negative binomial distribution by giving each use a chance of p to get zero, otherwise +1 quality and reroll; r=20 since we want 20 "failures" of increasing quality by one. That would give us:
white items (4 currency mean): 1/6 chance to fail, 5/6 chance of +1 and reroll
blue items (10 currency mean): 1/3 chance to fail, 2/3 chance of +1 and reroll
rare item (20 currency mean): 1/2 chance to fail, 1/2 chance of +1 and reroll

However, the unique thing I can't really agree with. Uniques should be good for certain builds and thus exciting to find.

That equation seems better than a flat addition, but id still like to see more sinks for all orbs.

My concept for magic/rare gems would have the rare affix pool be lower across the board, and the affixe values for both would be extremely low as well, similar to rare jewels in d2.

I agree uniques should be good for certain builds, but when a unique is simply the best for its slot on almost any build that uses its item type, it becomes a problem. So far lioneyes glare appears to be the only unique with this issue and i hope the devs realize their mistake before repeating it.

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KoTao a écrit :

I was looking to address the multiboxing and party loot+currency per map issues, not partying making the game easier.

My point from the start has been that partying is too easy and needs to be made harder.

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KoTao a écrit :

Increasing monster life wont change anything anyway, the problem here is how divided up the aggro is and how easy it is for everyone to just hide behind a full party wall of minions and totems that the monsters cant break since they dont have 6 times the damage to compensate (and cant have, for obvious reasons). This is an issue thats going to take a whole lot more than numbers shuffling to fix.

Hmm, you do have a point there about hiding behind totems and summons... life does nothing to fix that.

Thinking about it, you're probably wrong about not being able to increase damage. Damage is increased on maps, and parties still run them. The thing is that we don't want to increase damage too fast as additional players are added; extra damage maps are playable, but push it too far and they won't be.

The relevant map mods here are Fleet (increased attack/cast/move speed) and (30-35% increase monster damage). From what I can tell, both of these affixes go from about 21 to 35. So we should be able to increase damage, attack speed, cast speed, and movement speed by 5% per additional player and end at +25% to all without any serious issues.

Also relevant are the mobs size map mods: of Champions, of Commanders, and of Hordes. All of these increase the monster density, which means more things coming at once to whittle down those minions and totems. These affixes seem to be able to go to 50, so +10% per additional player should be fine.

So my new recommendations are these changes per additional player:
+5% attack/cast/movement speed
+5% monster damage
+60% monster life
+60% improved item quantity
+10% more normal/magic/rare monsters

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KoTao a écrit :

An alternate endgame isnt meant to replace or dethrone the map system (which is an excellent concept for an arpg), its meant to suppliment it for those times when players are either out of maps, or just want a less involved, lower overhead experience. The quick, non commital run feel of docks, fellshrine, ledge etc with proper endgame level risk:reward but without the predictability and monotony that a static zone suffers from.

I think you're contradicting yourself a bit. Why introduce an alternate endgame if it isn't meant to replace, at least in part, the current endgame? Doesn't "alternate" very much imply "partial replacement"? I think my suggestion of increasing map drops if you're overleveled farming Solaris is a better fix.

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KoTao a écrit :

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

I'd suggest basing Whestone/Scrap/Bauble/GCP randomness off of the negative binomial distribution by giving each use a chance of p to get zero, otherwise +1 quality and reroll; r=20 since we want 20 "failures" of increasing quality by one. That would give us:
white items (4 currency mean): 1/6 chance to fail, 5/6 chance of +1 and reroll
blue items (10 currency mean): 1/3 chance to fail, 2/3 chance of +1 and reroll
rare item (20 currency mean): 1/2 chance to fail, 1/2 chance of +1 and reroll

That equation seems better than a flat addition, but id still like to see more sinks for all orbs.

I decided to fire up Ye Old Randomizer and do 300 random pulls (100 white, 100 blue, 100 rare) with this suggested system. Of course, it's still RNG so my results/real results would vary.

Those monster changes do nothing to change multiboxing and/or partying being vastly superior to soloing once a player reaches maps. Theyd have unpleasant effects on races too. More monster damage is also not a great idea as endgame builds are already forced to run a majority of their points in life/es etc if they want to be out of 1-2 shot range vs harder hitting whites- if anything, we need to see monster damage scaled down and defensive stats from all sources scaled down to match.

Alternate endgame is meant to be a "lite" version of the true endgame. A reloaded MoC that starts at 65 and gains, say, +5% iiq per chaos gate passed and +1 alvl per 5 chaos gates passed, to a maximum bonus of 10 gates (meaning the alt endgame caps at alvl 67 and 50% iiq), in no way replaces maps- but it does provide a nice alternative to them when a player doesnt have maps, cant afford to roll maps, doesnt have the gear to do higher maps or doesnt have a party they trust to run maps with. There was no commitment in old MoC- you could just party up with anyone, skip parts you didnt like, not worry about randoms running off and opening chests, having to kill every stray white and kick every last urn and could just leave whenever you wished without feeling like youd lost out in the process. Maps, especially the higher ones, force some pretty hefty commitment from the players (no ones going to run them white or bail half way through, hence a specific amount of currency and time have to be sacrificed) and its nice to have an alternative to this or the endgame can get tiresome. Static main campaign zones, with their poor alvls, terrible map drop rates and non dynamic area/monster layouts, dont really fit the bill.

Interesting randomizer results, though unless im misreading them, it looks like rares actually took fewer orbs to max overall than they did with the current system.

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KoTao a écrit :

Those monster changes do nothing to change multiboxing and/or partying being vastly superior to soloing once a player reaches maps. Theyd have unpleasant effects on races too. More monster damage is also not a great idea as endgame builds are already forced to run a majority of their points in life/es etc if they want to be out of 1-2 shot range vs harder hitting whites- if anything, we need to see monster damage scaled down and defensive stats from all sources scaled down to match.

Agreed, scaling up monster damage is a bad idea. The game is already Path of Life Nodes and this would only make it all the worse. Meanwhile, it would further homogenize the kinds of characters that could farm, as they would be the kind of characters that can effectively soak up the extra damage with minions/totems and deal damage from relative safety.

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

My fix:
* Apply the current currency modifier to quantity dropped for all gear, except for maps, where it becomes a "more" bonus instead of a "less" penalty. This would mean that a level 60 farming normal Vaal (level 26) gets a "80% less" penalty to all drops there, which kind of kills personally incentive to run normal Vaal. However, a level 80 running Lunaris 3 (level 64) gets a "35% less" penalty to currency and gear drops... but a "35% more" bonus to map drops.
* In parties, always have the highest level player determine the drop modifier, regardless of who created the instance. That means a level 24 who adds a level 60 to his party gets the same "80% less" quantity penalty. This should kill the multibox abuse without the need for penalizing low-level formulas.
* Change recipes back to the way they were in 10.1.x. This lets players more effectively use formulas as they level up characters through Normal and Cruel.

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KoTao a écrit :

Increasing monster life wont change anything anyway, the problem here is how divided up the aggro is and how easy it is for everyone to just hide behind a full party wall of minions and totems that the monsters cant break since they dont have 6 times the damage to compensate (and cant have, for obvious reasons). This is an issue thats going to take a whole lot more than numbers shuffling to fix.

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KoTao a écrit :

Those monster changes do nothing to change multiboxing and/or partying being vastly superior to soloing once a player reaches maps. Theyd have unpleasant effects on races too. More monster damage is also not a great idea as endgame builds are already forced to run a majority of their points in life/es etc if they want to be out of 1-2 shot range vs harder hitting whites- if anything, we need to see monster damage scaled down and defensive stats from all sources scaled down to match.

Enough of this catch-22 nonsense. Either it's too easy to tank in a full party, or it's not too easy to tank in a full party. The method of tanking -- summons/totems vs personal defense -- is a total non-issue, since even very melee players grow a brain and use things like Decoy Totem. Figure out which side you're actually on -- tanking too easy, or tanking not too easy -- and get back to me.

If I had to guess, you're a solo player and more likely to pick the handy argument against party play rather than actually have a real conviction on the issue.

If you ask me, your original appraisal was correct, tanking in a full party is too easy, and upping monster damage (but not too much) is the smart way to go. And you can't say that it's a total nonstarter, because I based the damage increase off of what we know players can handle in terms of map affixes.

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KoTao a écrit :

Interesting randomizer results, though unless im misreading them, it looks like rares actually took fewer orbs to max overall than they did with the current system.

Yes. Rares got done in fewer, whites took more, and magics were a hair away from being exactly the same. Of course, random samples may vary.

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ScrotieMcB a écrit :

Enough of this catch-22 nonsense. Either it's too easy to tank in a full party, or it's not too easy to tank in a full party. The method of tanking -- summons/totems vs personal defense -- is a total non-issue, since even very melee players grow a brain and use things like Decoy Totem. Figure out which side you're actually on -- tanking too easy, or tanking not too easy -- and get back to me.

Enough of this black and white nonsense. You need to understand that game-based outcomes are rarely a case of "purely A" or "purely B."

It's too easy to tank in a party of 6 which work together perfectly as a unit and compliment each other's weaknesses. A well built party of 6 will faceroll the game even if you do great increase monster health and monster damage. When all 6 members of the party create decoys and minions, the monsters will pretty much never touch a player's health bar.

But if you do raise monster damage, you're making the game too tough on solo players, and it also punishes players in a party that get hit because of factors beyond their individual control (lag, FPS dips, desyncs, etc) that can all result in them taking damage without the opportunity to react. That means unless they're perfectly coordinated with their party, they have that much more likelihood to get one-shot by any stray monster that they may or may not see.

And personally, I fail to see how anyone can advocate raising the damage of monsters when the entire game is already a quest to pursue the next life node.