I'm so sick and tired of friction as a balancing mechanic

This game is such a great iteration on what is in all ways the best ARPG ever. Its streamlined, accessible, punishing, beautifull and fascinating.

But why in the good lords name:
-Are there still doors you need to click.
-Do items drop unidentified.
-Is there not an option to auto-pickup filtered currency items and maps.
-Are some maps such an utter pain to traverse.
-Are 95% of the dropped uniques completely useless.
-Does so much fodder drop in top tier maps.
-Do I have to click each little fragment/spinter or whatever.
-Is there no way to get proper inventory size.
-Cant I path my build-nodes in the skilltree.
-Is the skilltree search function highlight near invisible.
-Are strongboxes unidentified when literally nobody holds identification scrolls.
-Do I loose a weekends worth of experience if I die (by random one-shots) above Lv95.


...trade


Everytime I hear GGG talk about friction I just think; Dudes grow up, we're not in the 90s anymore. Every single modern game we love has one simple thing in common, they don't think in actively negative terms like friction to balance their game around, but try to find other ways that are pleasant to the player instead.

Image developing a car and using "lack of comfort" as an engineering criterium.

This doesn't mean a game can't be hard, punishing, deep or have longevity. It just means you think about those things in the context of "how can I make this fun" and not "how can I make it slower or more difficult than it should be". I'm not saying to drop big stacks of divs only and god-tier rares, but there has to be a way you can run a map without spending half the time clicking and back-tracking around when you have a 'very-strict' filter already.

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Kasparov13#2702 a écrit :

...

Image developing a car and using "lack of comfort" as an engineering criterium.

This doesn't mean a game can't be hard, punishing, deep or have longevity. It just means you think about those things in the context of "how can I make this fun" and not "how can I make it slower or more difficult than it should be". ...

THIS, just this.

Agreed. GGG should be looking at every aspect and every mechanic of the game and to try and make it as fun as possible all players. How some things even made it into the game is mindboggling. So much seems to have been designed without "fun" even being a consideration.

Yeah i really don't like their ideas on 'friction'. You can call it whatever you want, it doesn't feel good. Diablo 2 wasn't a success because of 'friction', it was a success in spite of 'friction'.

"Imagine building a car and using 'lack of comfort'".... This is it bro. There's no need for the game to be so annoying about certain things.

I'm frankly impressed that I can get randomly one shot by white mobs when I'm slightly over leveled for the zone, and don't have negative resists.

I get what they're trying to achieve, but as I pointed out in another thread, I'm starting to feel like this game wasn't designed for me, or those like me.

80's kid so had the privilege of playing D1 and D2 when they were new. Been around the block a while. Still hurts when I see punishing design philosophies that they think are attractive to the older crowd.

If they really want it to be a soulslike that badly, that's cool. It's just that there's no place for me in that network of gaming systems, because of physical pain and the lack of instant reflexes because I'm not 18.

It's missing important pieces if they ever really want it to be a real soulslike.

Dodge rolls in soulslike have iframes and even some mobility skills have them as well. Mastering the iframes is what makes those no hit runs so damn impressive. The windows are small and they hit them perfectly. What the average player gains with iframes is the chance to get lucky every once in a while which is all you need sometimes in the most demanding parts of the game.

Good soulslike games also have a reasonable punishment window where you can get off several attacks by performing a well timed dodge against a highly telegraphed move. In this game against bosses in particular their attacks are so spammy that you have the time to get in one basic attack as a melee character if you manage to get the timing right.

Soulslike games also have guaranteed equipment drops and upgrades that aren't a total gamble. If you know where to farm the equipment you will eventually get it, same goes for the upgrade materials. The highest level of those materials often has a limit, so that's your only point of friction in obtaining the best gear other than the difficulty of the game itself.

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Renegade_Archer#1313 a écrit :

Agreed. GGG should be looking at every aspect and every mechanic of the game and to try and make it as fun as possible all players. How some things even made it into the game is mindboggling. So much seems to have been designed without "fun" even being a consideration.

i think the point of friction is that without it, the game loses a lot of its appeal.

The problem is here:

It might suck to hit identify on an item 99/100 times - but that 100th time should be exciting and make it all worth it.

The problem is that identify has no purpose. All unique drops for instance are all the same item when the unidentified item drops.

A solution isn't to auto identify, but to provide some excitement when you DO identify. For instance - HeadHunters is fun to identify and causes a lot of excitement. But unfortunately, its far too rare of a drop rate to justify requiring it for everything.

Also - you get so many rare drops that peoples assumption is that what you identify will be crap. Thats bad.

A real solution would be to adjust drop rates of rares so that you get less of them, but when you get them, its exciting to pop it open.

Make more uniques that have better value and use and scale certain modifiers to make them useful or broken.

The same mentality needs to be applied to all aspects of the game.

I like to use the example of your favorite character in a show. The first few seasons you love a character. Then when the producers hear that, they make that character the center of the shows storylines constantly. Then they aren't the same character you liked. You LIKED them because they appeared rarely.

Thats friction.

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fr0st2k#1732 a écrit :

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Renegade_Archer#1313 a écrit :

Agreed. GGG should be looking at every aspect and every mechanic of the game and to try and make it as fun as possible all players. How some things even made it into the game is mindboggling. So much seems to have been designed without "fun" even being a consideration.

i think the point of friction is that without it, the game loses a lot of its appeal.

The problem is here:

It might suck to hit identify on an item 99/100 times - but that 100th time should be exciting and make it all worth it.

The problem is that identify has no purpose. All unique drops for instance are all the same item when the unidentified item drops.

A solution isn't to auto identify, but to provide some excitement when you DO identify. For instance - HeadHunters is fun to identify and causes a lot of excitement. But unfortunately, its far too rare of a drop rate to justify requiring it for everything.

Also - you get so many rare drops that peoples assumption is that what you identify will be crap. Thats bad.

A real solution would be to adjust drop rates of rares so that you get less of them, but when you get them, its exciting to pop it open.

Make more uniques that have better value and use and scale certain modifiers to make them useful or broken.

The same mentality needs to be applied to all aspects of the game.

I like to use the example of your favorite character in a show. The first few seasons you love a character. Then when the producers hear that, they make that character the center of the shows storylines constantly. Then they aren't the same character you liked. You LIKED them because they appeared rarely.

Thats friction.

That is completley true, if you look at development in terms of limitation instead of oppertunity.

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BattLeSCVs#6386 a écrit :

Yeah i really don't like their ideas on 'friction'. You can call it whatever you want, it doesn't feel good. Diablo 2 wasn't a success because of 'friction', it was a success in spite of 'friction'.

Exactly, back then games were cumbersome because either a better alternative was not invented, or technically possible.

In this age it's just lack of creativity. Or worse, lack of motivation because so many games have solved most of this already and all you have to do is look around.

The punishment of XP is right now one of the things that makes me most angry.

If you loose some stuff in the game - fine. But loose TIME i have spent? That is a bit to much to ask.