PoE is punishing, not difficult. Video to clarify the difference.

dark souls got away with character deaths , because there was a mechanic in place that enabled you to get your progress back.

poe doesn't have that mechanic.

but i am not convinced such a mechanic is a good idea.

maybe 50% exp back if you get your corpse.

that seems realistic

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Saltychipmunk a écrit :

maybe 50% exp back if you get your corpse.

I always hated this in D2. Also it flat out wouldn't work here. D2 you were still strong naked. POE you don't have skills or anything, you die in a crowd and it's not like default attack is saving you. Also it leads to a spiral. I want to save what exp I can, go in, die again, repeat until I can't take it anymore or rage quit.

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Saltychipmunk a écrit :

dark souls got away with character deaths , because there was a mechanic in place that enabled you to get your progress back.

poe doesn't have that mechanic.

but i am not convinced such a mechanic is a good idea.

maybe 50% exp back if you get your corpse.

that seems realistic

Like, back in DAoC, if one would come back on its grave ( deaths would spawn a grave ), /pray would restitute half of your xp.

That was good !
I would be somewhat less useful in PoE I guess, because you usually cannot just go in a way too high level area for you, that will be a huge threat if you want to go back there to get back half of your xp loss after having died.


@Moosifer : right ? I keep saying that he misunderstood because he took one part out of the context.
FF series is a Titan in the rpg world for many reasons, that's basically why I took it for the example.

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Fruz a écrit :

FF series is a Titan in the rpg world for many reasons, that's basically why I took it for the example.

Only game(s) I've logged more time than POE on. I've been playing them all since I was 11. Disappointed I don't have a PS3/4 to play any of the ones since 13-2.

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Cronk a écrit :

Normal RPG:

Crappy character design = harder game
Standard character design = normal game
Min/max = easier game

PoE:

Crappy character design = impossible game
Standard character design = harder game, possibly impossible
Min/max = steamroll

Intuitive:

To me, most of PoE is generally intuitive. You select passives which look like the same wording as your skills, you wear skills that seem to do the job in a way you like, each class is 'generally' defined by their innate stat, and the gear is quite evident/blatant (in most but not all cases) about whether it will be useful for your build.

However, once you are up and running with your build, at some point the build might well fail. It has a very good probability of failing - even by following the most intuitive path, and the reason will most likely be Life/Resists and/or ineffectual DPS.

Traditionally, RPGs have a 'variety' of ways to complete content if you have an underpowered character facing an over-powered mob. The only 'variety' of making an underpowered character survivable in PoE is by having them join a party - let someone else do the content.

So, while PoE has rules and objectives, like any game, and it punishes you with failure if you do not abide by these rules and objectives, the idea that these rules and objectives are somehow 'normal' for RPGs specifically is incorrect.

PoE is, whatever character you take, pretty much an exercise in balancing Life/Resists/DPS, with very little in-game challenge variety.

This is fine. This works ok. There are no end of people who are perfectly happy with this scenario. The game provides a whole lot of different stimuli than simply role-playing a character. Trading, partying, repetitive monster killing, collecting things, etc etc, is more than enough to make a lot of people very happy indeed.

But, please, don't make rabid generalisations that the entire point of RPGs is to create failure when, in reality, the exact opposite is the truth.

Well the only difference in PoE is that things are irreversible. Actually in D2 you could fail similarly. But in most RPGs you can get a setup which is rather worthless, however not all of them force you to stay with it as D2 and PoE do.

Also if you have a cookie-cutter build the game is incredible easy. If you have a weak build you need insane equip to compete. But I can't see how an average build can't finish the game.

A friend who started with me decided to make a Bloodmage 2h-Marauder. Something most people wouldn't consider a good build, exspecially since BM cuts him off auras, which would make the character a lot stronger. However this character performs fine. He would propably not have succeeded with that character in hardcore, because it had certain phases where it was very weak, but playing your first character of a game you don't know in hardcore and blame the game if you fail is stupid anyway. The char doesn't even has IR (actually it doesn't have a whole lot of Armor at all^^).

It is pretty clear that the game isn't designed for cookie-cutter builds. A strong rightious-fire build is basically only limited by the map-mods which can screw them, but if they don't it is a walk in the park. A properly designed CI-Melee can't even die if stun and freeze-immun, because he leeches more than his total ES per second.


And actually Fruz is right. RPGs are build around failing, they always where. This actually started with real role-playing. Every game wants you to fail, that's the point of the game. No game wants you to succeed. The game is like the dungeon-master was. He throws things at you that he hopes will kill you. And some dungeon-masters were a bit nastier than others. But a game never wants you to succeed. It is basically your rival.

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There's one other thing from the video that could apply - game rule consistency. Sometimes you feel enemies hold some other copy of the book from the one you read from. Take charges, for example, their effect on minions and enemies is what, double, triple?

Well that is something you can't blame the games for. In other games they would simply did something completly unrelated with the same effect. GGG called these things endurance charges for mobs too so that people get an understanding what they do. They could also worded it "can shield himself" and instead of showing the charges some shields whirl around the mob. In that case the mob would have a skill totally unavaible to players, which is how most games handle it. They decided, propably also because of limited ressources, to reuse graphics and to not confuse too much also the wording from certain skills. And in most cases these skills also do similar things. You could even argue that they do the same. We don't know which passivs mobs have or which items they wear. Maybe those bears have a unique with the mod "gain 2 endurance charges when you use enduring cry".

You could argue the same about players. Player one has power-charges that give him crit, while player two has power-charges that give him a large amount of spell-power and crit. I actually think this is something they did right. They used graphical effects and wording from your player for mobs too, which means that you know what a certain effect does. I would never have expected the same numbers for enemy skills, but it is good to know that they work the same.

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Emphasy a écrit :

And actually Fruz is right. RPGs are build around failing, they always where

wow wow wow ^^
Don't make me say that, I didn't lol.
I just said that according to the video, rpg is meant to be a failure in its design = which is obviously not the case.

But I understand your point and I agree with it, a good game ( at least to me <=> a game that I enjoy playing at ) is a game where the content is meant to give you some challenge = to try to make your life difficult in playing it.
Now a good game needs the proper balance between where the user get discouraged and where it's too easy.

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Emphasy a écrit :

Well that is something you can't blame the games for. In other games they would simply did something completly unrelated with the same effect. GGG called these things endurance charges for mobs too so that people get an understanding what they do. They could also worded it "can shield himself" and instead of showing the charges some shields whirl around the mob. In that case the mob would have a skill totally unavaible to players, which is how most games handle it.

they could have put more charges with the same effect than on players too, would have make more sense imho.

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Emphasy a écrit :

You could argue the same about players. Player one has power-charges that give him crit, while player two has power-charges that give him a large amount of spell-power and crit. I actually think this is something they did right. They used graphical effects and wording from your player for mobs too, which means that you know what a certain effect does. I would never have expected the same numbers for enemy skills, but it is good to know that they work the same.

Can't really agree with that. Charges, auras and enemy skills were just a small example, the game skips rules and cuts corners whenever it's convenient to do so. Trigger gems are the perfect example rules aren't consistent even when just the player is concerned. A serious effort to consolidate it was really never made.

Or check out poison status that poison arrow inflicts, it's the same effect that adder's touch and items that say 'poisons enemy' inflict, they replace one another, but duration and strength of poison arrow effect is completely arbitrary and has no relation to weapon damage. 'Poison' is an effect with clearly defined properties, like ignite, but poison arrow throws all that out of the window. Not to mention the game expects you to know what 'poisons enemy' means, just imagine a situation where a player tries to build a poison arrow user that uses those new snakebite gloves. Even many veteran players wouldn't assume the combo doesn't work.

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Fruz a écrit :

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Saltychipmunk a écrit :

dark souls got away with character deaths , because there was a mechanic in place that enabled you to get your progress back.

poe doesn't have that mechanic.

but i am not convinced such a mechanic is a good idea.

maybe 50% exp back if you get your corpse.

that seems realistic

Like, back in DAoC, if one would come back on its grave ( deaths would spawn a grave ), /pray would restitute half of your xp.

That was good !
I would be somewhat less useful in PoE I guess, because you usually cannot just go in a way too high level area for you, that will be a huge threat if you want to go back there to get back half of your xp loss after having died.

At first glance it gives a nice risk vs. reward choice, but problem is that in PoE you can just have friends clear mobs up for you, so such a feature would discourage solo play.