Buff difficulty of regular content

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Nomancs wrote:

I remember, when I first played PoE, I was also collecting everything, I soon learned to control this bad habit I got from other games.

took me years and i'm still struggling sometimes, no wrist problems though :)

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other games? there are very few that interest me and do not install spyware which take over my hardware.

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Pashid wrote:

Funny enough there's still a huge build diversity in the game if you don't put your focus just on the full turbo sweat streamers playing the same BiS meta builds over and over again.

Yeah I guess we're just not playing the same game or reading the same forum or watching the same streams. I see people constantly lamenting the vast swath of skills that aren't worth using all the time around here. You don't see that? And I know its not just me, Ben spends half his pre league theorycrafting streams complaining about how many skills are just woefully out of date and non competitive. When a "casual" player like me and a mega sweaty player like Ben see eye to eye on an issue it suggests a certain amount of veracity. But hey maybe you know better than both of us? In any case I disagree strongly.

The game is actually hard to talk about with such drastically differing views. There are plenty of people saying the same things I am around here. and for sure plenty of people echo'ing your sentiments... though I must say most of them very much fit into the category's I outlined earlier.

"POE isn't balanced around HC" well maybe it should be? should it really be balanced around creative mode where you shop for gear and earn a wage? Where the game is farcically easy and effectively deterministic?

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Pashid wrote:

You should also check out the amount of players who actually do reach 90+ after just a few days in a fresh league across all modes. Shocking numbers that do reflect the lacking difficulty and do tell you that it's not just 0.1% of players being just too good at the game.
Maybe just maybe you should also start to play the game more yourself instead of watching all those streams to get more in-game experience of the current state of the game :)

I might talk about those stats if you post them though I doubt they're very interesting or relevant.

Here's some things I would point out: the vast majority of player who are in a rush are simply following directions or past experience, using already solved metas to solve the game again but even faster.

I'm not sure why we should care about that? If you follow successful directions or past experience in the 100% deterministic mode; the game is easy?... Imagine that.

IMHO I play plenty probably too much for a person with Kids and a Job who also plays other games. Not sure why thats relevant to the discussion.
I can and have easily trivialized that mode myself, even had some fun doing it. Its a bit of fun occasionally to play creative mode POE. The harder modes are too thirsty for my available time and attention span even when they call to me because they're not easy mode.

I don't feel too bad about this. After all the hardest mode is also too thirsty for Al-fucking-kaizer's available time and attention span...

Games too easy? LOL. Okay. Cue that old Jenifer Lawrence meme.

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vio wrote:

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Nomancs wrote:

I remember, when I first played PoE, I was also collecting everything, I soon learned to control this bad habit I got from other games.

took me years and i'm still struggling sometimes, no wrist problems though :)

--

other games? there are very few that interest me and do not install spyware which take over my hardware.

i still have the mentality to pick up stuff regardless. tho its reduced due to loot filters.

back in diablo one i click on every chest/barrel. i picked up everything.

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alhazred70 wrote:

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Pashid wrote:

Funny enough there's still a huge build diversity in the game if you don't put your focus just on the full turbo sweat streamers playing the same BiS meta builds over and over again.

Yeah I guess we're just not playing the same game or reading the same forum or watching the same streams. I see people constantly lamenting the vast swath of skills that aren't worth using all the time around here. You don't see that? And I know its not just me, Ben spends half his pre league theorycrafting streams complaining about how many skills are just woefully out of date and non competitive.

You two aren't really disagreeing here. All the whiners and Ben as well talk about competitiveness. Meaning they look at some meta build and then compare that to some other build involving a lackluster gem they made themselves and then come to the conclusion "not worth using" or "not competitive". And they are obviously correct in stating that.

Thing is, if you just made a proper build using that lackluster gem and measured it by the content you can get done that way and not by div/hour you'll realize that you can actually do 100% of the games content on those lackluster gems. In many cases even for cheap because you don't need expensive meta gear. That's what pashid is talking about.
Neither the whiners nor ben care about that though, the whiners don't care because they can't make proper builds themselves anyway and Ben doesn't care because his focus is on competitve races/gauntlets taking place in SSFHF which obviously require competitive skills to have a chance.

Worth noting here is that it's fundamentally impossible to have over 200 gems on equal footing when "competitiveness" is your viewpoint. In a competitive environment it ALWAYS boils down to 2 or 3 options that are better than all the others and with "winning" as a priority there is no reason to use anything except those options. WIth "competitive" as your metric it doesn't even matter how big the difference is because 1% better still means you have a clear cut better choice available and if you want to win no matter what (aka you have a competitive mindset) you obviously make that choice.

Take essence drain. Never hit by nerfhammer. It has even received buffs relatively recently. Yet it went from everyone playing it to 0.1 percent.

Where is the power creep? Cause what I am observing is reverse power creep. Monster healthbar inflated so much that this skill went from being meta to being dont touch unless stupid.

Anyone still calling for making content harder given this obvious example of reverse power creep are utterly out of touch and in denial of objectively observable reality.

Vast majority of skills are behind content curve. Passive tree nerfed. Ascendancies nerfed. Monster buffed, multilple times, across the board. MUH POWER CREEP.

Someone terminally online, playing with auracucks or groups doing it faster than ever is not an indicator of power creep. Its an indicator of terminally online getting even better at being terminally online. Its a sign of game being solved.
If this is incorrectly interpreted as power creep and players keep getting nerfed game will end up with handfull usable buids and everything else will be noobtrap. Everyone not terminally online will leave and so will the terminally online after them, cause there will be no one to flex their hyper optimized metaest of meta build "achievements" to.

If you want more challenge play on 4 link OR put down that fucking poison srs and pick up that scorching ray. If the game is still too fucking easy and you do ubers day 1-2 of league on scorching ray - post video evidence of your god gamerhood and I will kneel. But we all know thats not happening.

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Bosscannon wrote:

Take essence drain. Never hit by nerfhammer. It has even received buffs relatively recently. Yet it went from everyone playing it to 0.1 percent.

Where is the power creep? Cause what I am observing is reverse power creep. Monster healthbar inflated so much that this skill went from being meta to being dont touch unless stupid.

Anyone still calling for making content harder given this obvious example of reverse power creep are utterly out of touch and in denial of objectively observable reality.

Vast majority of skills are behind content curve. Passive tree nerfed. Ascendancies nerfed. Monster buffed, multilple times, across the board. MUH POWER CREEP.

Someone terminally online, playing with auracucks or groups doing it faster than ever is not an indicator of power creep. Its an indicator of terminally online getting even better at being terminally online. Its a sign of game being solved.
If this is incorrectly interpreted as power creep and players keep getting nerfed game will end up with handfull usable buids and everything else will be noobtrap. Everyone not terminally online will leave and so will the terminally online after them, cause there will be no one to flex their hyper optimized metaest of meta build "achievements" to.

If you want more challenge play on 4 link OR put down that fucking poison srs and pick up that scorching ray. If the game is still too fucking easy and you do ubers day 1-2 of league on scorching ray - post video evidence of your god gamerhood and I will kneel. But we all know thats not happening.

Quite the contrary... ED never was "adjusted for inflation" quite like other archetypes. The Withering Step nerf, the removal of the Blight threshold jewels, the fact that ED never was a powerful single target spell in the first place... you get the picture. Reaching a million DPS with ED already had you deep in character progression where other builds have a much easier time building up.

Having to sacrifice 3-4 more gem slots for a Contagion setup just adds insult to injury.

I wrote a lengthy ED buildguide for SC softcore back in 3.9 and updated it until 3.13 since after that it really fell off. The remains of it are here. ^^

The fundamental flaw is that ED doesn't benefit from e.g. cast speed. Reapplying ED does nothing but add some forgettable hit damage and resetting the duration of the debuff. Meanwhile some Spark dude is getting a Haste aura from an aura bot and goes nuts. ED needs better scaling options is all.

In part you are right, but only to the extent that adding more difficult content puts a focus lense on skills that already were struggling to compete. It reveals fundamental flaws or lack of scaling options for players who want to take a certain skill or archetype to the maximum.

And it's sad, because I really like ED and would like to give it another shot, but alas..

Regarding your writeup, ArtCrusade, you essentially say NO, YOU INCORRECT but then proceed to say what I said in other words...

I dont care how you call this phenomenon, but while majority skills in game don't scale for shit the game content should not be made harder just cause some individuals only play what has busted scaling. If they do, game will become even more boring. Going from doing red maps on ED to doing yellow maps next league on same ED setup with same items is boring. You did it all before but now you have to do it for even longer cause some shmuck ran meta and was bored. Fix bored for the few but add boredom to the many? How about they make adjustments to how they play instead of being a bother to everyone else?

To the first point: I said you are in part correct (your observation), but I disagree on what it means for the game. I said as much, so I am not sure where you get that connotation from. Whatevers, moving on

To the second point: powercreep is as much a part of an ongoing, live-service ARPG as economic growth is for countries. GGG plans for a certain percentage of power creep to be introduced into the game every single season to keep the game fresh and have you excited for the next time you log on.

This is fine as long as the growth in power happens to all the builds, but as I explained in great detail ED has seen none of that, and thus has fallen behind so much it barely is played anymore.

Maybe this is more understandable now, let's see

whatever, my point stands:
until all the dumpstered and forgotten skills are unfucked there is no place for global increases of game difficulty

applying only precise nerfs and buffs where they are needed is the way

everything else is lazy and lazy tends to hit more than what was the intended target and we have had enough ambitious yet lazy blanket "balance" patching and we still got the same problems we always had, clearly that shit is not working

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Bosscannon wrote:

whatever, my point stands:
until all the dumpstered and forgotten skills are unfucked there is no place for global increases of game difficulty

applying only precise nerfs and buffs where they are needed is the way

everything else is lazy and lazy tends to hit more than what was the intended target and we have had enough ambitious yet lazy blanket "balance" patching and we still got the same problems we always had, clearly that shit is not working

You are aware that almost any build can do campaign and early+mid maps? I feel like you didin’t even checked what we’re writing about. It was never so easy as in recent leagues.

Also, what you understand by „dumpstered and forgotten” skills? those that can’t farm maps as quick as meta or arn’t used in races to kill ubers? Like need to be able to kill ubers first day with flame dash or something like that?