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

@raics

(rough numbers off-hand)

HC Standard (<2% of players)
Default Standard (<30%? of player?)
Temp 4mo League (40%~ of players)
Temp 4mo League (28%~ of players)

vs

HC Standard
Default Standard
Default with Tiny Death Penalty
Temp 4mo League (Standard)
Temp 4mo League (Standard with Tiny Death Penalty)
Temp 4mo League (HC)

Can you imagine what the distributions would be for this new permanent and semi-permanent league type?

People play default because it is the easiest difficulty of the game. The game is pretty split between HC and SC, yes some leagues like standard HC are tiny, but they can be more or less represented as a block. HC take about 30% of players and SC 70%.

HC players are generally always looking for the hardcoriest play. If a permanent cutthroat master boot record frying account deletion league were added to the game, at least half of the people playing Nemesis/HC right now would jump ship to go play it. Part of it's peer pressure and the other part of it is the spirit of competition. I play HC mostly because I like the lower item prices -- I don't need to farm 20 exalts to buy an item I want, usually half or less that.

People who play SC do so for various reasons by the unifying theme is they don't want to lose progress when they die. A new HC league would further define what it means to be "Hardcore" and you'd see fewer and fewer SC players even creating their characters first on HC to see how far they can get.

GGG wants HC to be more inclusive, not less. Introducing a new HC mode would make being HC harder and it would also dilute HC communities further. Introducing a new SC mode, however, would result in probably something far worse -- people would be ridiculed for playing "Super Softcore Mode" and you'd definitely hear the snickering of the HC players whenever someone said they played that mode.

We'd also see at least 50% or more of SC migrate to this Super Softcore and honestly, softcore is already forgiving enough as it is. If you remove all the danger of farming your levels post level 80, then everyone can become level 100. It's still supposed to mean SOMETHING when you reach level 100, even in SC.

Veteran players are the ones who will support PoE with monies. You can see this in other niche games like EVE. EVE is all about rewarding the hardcore longterm veterans. GGG ideally wants to convert more SC players to HC, so that they'll feel more included and invested in PoE. HC should thus be more inclusive, not less-- without sacrificing the difficulty.

"

Cronk a écrit :

But moosifer doesn't think RPGs are 'fail-based' where as furz thinks they are when discussing the one teeny point in the video about regarding how long it takes to get back to where you were when you die - snd 'I'm' the one being berated for 'not understanding'. Quite amazing.

n pages later, you are still unable to read an explicit statement which is in the first tiny post I made in this very thread.

Now I must ask ... are you a troll ? Seriously, that's a real question.


Now, I'm gonna quote wikipedia ( I know, not the best source at all, but this is still relevant to me ) :

"

wikipedia a écrit :

Arcade games often have short levels, simple and intuitive control schemes, and rapidly increasing difficulty. This is due to the environment of the Arcade, where the player is essentially renting the game for as long as their in-game avatar can stay alive (or until they run out of tokens).

Games on consoles or PCs can be referred to as "arcade games" if they share these qualities or are direct ports of arcade titles. Many independent developers are now producing games in the arcade genre that are designed specifically for use on the Internet. These games are usually designed with Flash/Java/DHTML and run directly in web-browsers.

Arcade games are originally machines in public places, and the arcade video game genre is coming from this.
It is nothing like a rpg, where the main point is often to build a character/team to progress through the story, and where this building mechanism is most-likely the core of the game.

RPGs implies commitment in your character = you need to have stakes so that you value your character. If there is not stake, there is like just no point.
And ( I'm gonna say it, again ) : the guy at the end of the video just says that a video will basically fail if you need to spend minutes in a content you already mastered to come back to the point where you failed and died.
Such a design would mean no stake, because if you die : you just can almost instantly re do it : This is just not how a rpg is made <=> The video's author's reasoning doesn't apply to RPG but to arcade games.

Now, after saying it - again - I'm gonna just ignoring you if you still don't understand what I meant, because you're just making me loosing my time.

"

Cronk a écrit :

Well, you had to make this reply to another poster...

Does that count?

Actually, he prolly just got that from you <=> your misunderstanding

"

anubite a écrit :

@raics

GGG wants HC to be more inclusive, not less. Introducing a new HC mode would make being HC harder and it would also dilute HC communities further. Introducing a new SC mode, however, would result in probably something far worse -- people would be ridiculed for playing "Super Softcore Mode" and you'd definitely hear the snickering of the HC players whenever someone said they played that mode.

I don't see the community knitted in any special way now either, in case devs haven't noticed, they do not have a persistent world MMO here, keeping all the sheep in the same pen accomplishes nothing. And not even players of the same league are especially knitted together, when was the last time any of us here played public party? As long as the league has enough players for the economy to function, that's perfectly fine.

Who cares if new leagues split people more if total number increases:

Standard 30% - 3000 players
Hardcore 2% - 200 players
4m standard 40% - 4000 players
4m hardcore 28% - 2800 players

So, 6000 players return to the game to play self-found as they wished all this time, 2000 goes to standard, 2000 to 4m standard and 2000 to 4m HC version, some players switch from standard to SF.

Standard 15% - 2400
Standard self-found 15% 2400
4m standard 20% - 3200 players
4m standard SF 20% - 3200 players
4m hardcore 15% - 2400 players
4m hardcore SF 15% - 2400 players

Percentages are lower, but actual player number per league is only a little lower and total player number is much higher - same playing environment withing leagues - more money for devs.

Permanent HC league might as well really be removed, HC chars aren't permanent by nature anyway, having HC in 4 month leagues is enough. And I don't think 'no death penalty' softcore is a really good idea, I was just reminding people we had that in TQ. The thing I'm interested in is replacing MF stats with something akin to survival bonus from sacred, which will encourage HC-like play in all leagues, punish zerging, and actually reward HC players for the risk (and also increase challenge for good players that die rarely or never).

Intredasting video. Good premise, logical arguments, but the awful conclusion is what made me say "wut?" and want to post here.

"... and punishing games will NEVER succeed." is the video's conclusion.

What is "succeed"? Did Everquest not succeed? Battletoads, then, too? Did Dark Souls succeed, and if so, how is this success measured up against otherwise punishing-but-not-difficult games?

More to the point, is Path of Exile succeeding?

"

Phoobrak a écrit :

Intredasting video. Good premise, logical arguments, but the awful conclusion is what made me say "wut?" and want to post here.

"... and punishing games will NEVER succeed." is the video's conclusion.

What is "succeed"? Did Everquest not succeed? Battletoads, then, too? Did Dark Souls succeed, and if so, how is this success measured up against otherwise punishing-but-not-difficult games?

More to the point, is Path of Exile succeeding?

Exactly.

Any game that needs some investment from the player ( like and rpgs since you have to spend time building your character, exploring dungeons, etc ... and Path of Exile is in this category of course ) will need to be somewhat punishing. Because otherwise, there would be no real value if you do something wrong => no real choice to make => boring.

So yeah, the conclusion of this video is completely wrong, but maybe for arcade games.
Hopefully there are many other game in the world that ended up being awesome, and succeeding ... and that were somewhat punishing.

"

Phoobrak a écrit :

Intredasting video. Good premise, logical arguments, but the awful conclusion is what made me say "wut?" and want to post here.

"... and punishing games will NEVER succeed." is the video's conclusion.

What is "succeed"? Did Everquest not succeed? Battletoads, then, too? Did Dark Souls succeed, and if so, how is this success measured up against otherwise punishing-but-not-difficult games?

More to the point, is Path of Exile succeeding?

Everquest, Dark Souls, and other 'difficult' games succeeded because they punished the player while also telling them or communicating to them why the player died.


Path of Exile is not difficult, it's just straight punishing. For the most part, it is completely random as to why you die unless you specifically look up hidden mechanics.

"

allbusiness a écrit :

Everquest, Dark Souls, and other 'difficult' games ... punished the player while also telling them or communicating to them why the player died.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Regarding the whole "mediumcore" thing: I firmly believe that XP penalties shouldn't be in the game at all, and items should have irreparable durability which diminishes as you die. This would have added a gear sink to Standard which it desperately needs, and create an interesting economic distinction between damaged and undamaged items... but most importantly, a small number of deaths on a self-found character would essentially go unpunished. (Those who intend to resell their items after use would probably get less for them if they die, helping correct self-found vs trade-heavy balance.)

thats a good way to guarantee the utter destruction of build diversity and mandate everyone to macro alt f4 when HP is less than 60%.