Buff difficulty of regular content

From where would the gear come from? From same sources as it is now, nothing will change. What would be harder? Monsters. Did you read first post in this discussion?

Do you remember affliction during campaign? I want story to be somewhere in between old difficulty and affliction there, so the gap wouldn’t be that huge.

Why buff difficulty? Because we had a lot of power creep in recent leagues, at current state it is laughably easy, not preparing new players for endgame. Almost any build (almost any, because of skills like dash - excluding such skills, any build) can beat campaign of first play, that was proved by multiple people going in blind. It doesn’t prepare anyone for league content or endgame.

If they would run away because campaign would be more in line (despite A1 and 2 were already reworked to be harder) with endgame, then they wouldn’t play it anyway. With proper, more in line difficulty, they would be at least prepared.

But as I wrote, if A1 or 2 were acceptable for new players already, making other acts harder in similar fashion, will not change anything.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

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ArtCrusade wrote:

I have a strong distaste of how „just play Ruthless“ has become a throwaway line to toss at people who express they want the game to be more challenging. It‘s a disingenuous to the arguments that have been made.

To use the restaurant example: people don't want a different dish, they want the same dish but better quality.

Wished we could move past the antics already..

Do you want me to go through the topic and collect all the "go play D4/D3 lines that your side has thrown around? I haven't really followed the entire topic but i'd be willing to bet i'd find at least a dozen of them easily. If you don't like antics, don't use them yourself.

Besides, this entire topic is disingenous from the start. A no lifer playing the easiest mode available using only the strongest builds out there complaining about the game being to easy. The irony is off the charts.

Please don't attribute other people's words and actions to myself. I talk only for myself. If you have a civilised argument to make I am happy to respond

Or you could simply play Ruthless if the game isn't hard enough for you...

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RightHandofGod wrote:

Or you could simply play Ruthless if the game isn't hard enough for you...

Literally go back 3 posts and read what I wrote about Ruthless.

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Nomancs wrote:

The answer is in the first post - for difficulty of campaign and early maps to be more in line with endgame and juiced league content, so the difference between, for example, t1 and affliction juiced t1 to be smaller. Campaign and maps should be like stairs in difficulty, not a flat horizontal line, so new players don’t think that wole game is easy and are surprised that endgame isn’t trivial. This way they will be better prepaired and actually progress raising difficulty.
Also, accumulated power creep need to be adressed.

This would significantly increase the time it takes to get through the campaign. People already bored of running the same path every league, every character.
The difference with endgame is you have the tools and means to acquire new gear, currency, crafting, the ability to farm. You can easily push your character harder, faster post campaign.
You'd need this same approach during the campaign, as an example;
A1 & A2, you go and do it how it currently is picking loot up from the floor.
Then if A3+ was harder, you'd likely need to farm some currency, acquire or craft better gear before tackling it.
And if you were to do that for all acts, it would take a significant amount of time and all that time and currency you spent on low tier gear could go to serve other players progressing through the campaign but likely just end up in the bin and it may feel like a wasted investment.

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Baharoth15 wrote:

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.

[edited for what I'm responding to]

Worth noting here is that it's fundamentally impossible to have over 200 gems on equal footing when "competitiveness" is your viewpoint.

I don't think we're agreeing so much as not seeing eye to eye on base concepts while having similar views of the state of specific things in the game. So for example obviously I think Easy mode is easy. And the OP also seems to think Easy mode is easy, but the OP wants the base game to be made harder. Which we very much don't agree on.

"competitive" for me does not mean div per hour, because I'm not a Wage earn and go shopping player. For me the gameplay loop of an ARPG is to kill monsters to take their loot, hoping something fun or interesting drops, trade is literally counter to that and over time it errodes any sense of accomplishment or satisfaction knowing you can just "earn and shop".

Competitive in most respects for me and I think most POE players means: not so far behind that it makes you feel dumb for using it. Ben has literally used this definition in so many words as has Quin69, and I'm 100% sure I've heard Ziz, ZiggyD, Steel and many others use something like this to define whats worth using or not. I've seen countless vids over the years using this definition, buff and nerf vids almost always have some caveat or words to this effect. I can't tell you how many times over more than 10 years I've heard someone in the POE community say things like ""im not asking for it to be meta" or "I just want it to not be trash".

No one is asking for, or expecting equal footing, simply a smaller gulf in between whats meta and everything else.

While equality is effectively impossible (due to three body problem like variability, breath of content that is tackled differently and subjectivity) It's entirely possible to scope the game in such a way that there is LESS disparity between skills. Unfortunately GGG has only made it worse. Jacking up spell damage (hand casting buffs) and ranged damage (Bow league) giving 3 free ranged totems to ranged characters, while giving 1 squishy outdated and obligatory totem to melees... This sort of thing. Then about a year later they made across the board support gem nerfs... this predictably WIDENED THE DISPARITY because struggling skills become trash and meta skills hardly noticed. And that disparity or gap between the good stuff and everything else is what most people mean when they talk about "the stale meta" which is a nearly constant criticism of the last few years by just about the entire playerbase and just about every streamer of every mode.

Making content harder (Archnem and then "pretend its no longer Archnem by removing the names") adding Ubers "that will not have special rewards they are just for bragging rights" and then 3 Months later giving them special rewards. These things raised the bar while multiple changes lowered the floor.

When you raise the bar and lower the floor you get a bigger gap.

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ArtCrusade wrote:

To use the restaurant example: people don't want a different dish, they want the same dish but better quality.

Yeah but there are also people who walk into an Chinese Restaurant and get upset that they don't serve Burgers.

POE IMO Needs better difficulty modes either a medium one or to refactor the 6 hard modes and 1 easy mode into something with more design intention and thoughtful graduation. Intention is the big thing thats missing from them. They are all just trade leagues with less stuff including no trading.

The laziest possible and least thoughtful design. Just uncheck some boxes and reduce some drop rate and in the case of Ruthless take the Butchers cleaver and hack off large swaths of the end game.

POE very much does not need easy mode to be turned into a 7th hard mode or for the base game to be harder which just makes the 6 hard modes goes from uber thirsty and "even the try hards wont play it" to psychotic and serving literally no one.

Quin69 regularly spends 2-3 WEEKS of 8 to 10 hour streams min maxing a character only to fall over to some bullshit. He also regularly invests those same weeks into a character that never drops the needed item(s).

The game is plenty hard.

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ArtCrusade wrote:

Wished we could move past the antics already..

I mean, Ruthless is a kind of extreme suggestion, but is "maybe play one of the 6 harder difficulty modes" really an stunt or an antic?

Is "maybe you should be asking for a medium mode" an antic? Instead of strenuously disagreeing with the OP I'd be strenuously agreeing.

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Nomancs wrote:

Because we had a lot of power creep in recent leagues, at current state it is laughably easy,

Actually false. In recent times we've had lots of Borrowed power leagues (most of them), Archnem, support gem nerfs, mutiple harvest nerfs, Uber bosses, the addition of a new harder mode, and finally T17's and new bosses just last league.

What you're experiencing as "the game getting easier" is your own improvement at playing, refinement of meta, combined with playing a 100% deterministic meta of play, and doing so in the easiest mode the game has to offer you.

What you're asking for is that the easiest mode of the game (and the 6 already drastically harder modes) be balanced to make easy mode harder for you, an experienced player with plenty of time.

Games especially a games easiest mode should NEVER be balanced around highly experienced meta gamers with outlier amounts of free time. This leaves the easy mode in a state of being impossibly thirsty and unapproachable for 99% of your playerbase.

Not to say GGG hasn't made this mistake many times already, but thats not going to keep me from pushing back against bad ideas.

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alhazred70 wrote:

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Nomancs wrote:

Because we had a lot of power creep in recent leagues, at current state it is laughably easy,

Actually false. In recent times we've had lots of Borrowed power leagues (most of them), Archnem, support gem nerfs, mutiple harvest nerfs, Uber bosses, the addition of a new harder mode, and finally T17's and new bosses just last league.

Actually true and you can argue as much as you want it won't change the fact that the player power continuesly increased over the past couple of leagues even without any of the temporary league mechanic power.

Cooking most old lab helm enchantments into the new gems is nothing but ridicules early power creep compared to the previous system.
The new gem system is much superior to the helm enchantments for many reasons sure but they do come with crazy player power regardless.
The mastery rework allowed much earlier player power.
Even the new automation gems are just straight up additional power for builds that didn't used a warcry before and gain benefits out of it.
Various adjustments of how easy it is to obtain certain items is also just power creep. 6l items are a good example for that especially this league with how easy and quick you can get one via the new beast, dirt cheap by the way.
I remember back in tota the 6l omen was a few d and not just a couple of c already at league start.

The game just became easier with all the made changes over the last few years simply because GGG puts more and more player power out without any big adjustments to the base game difficulty. Campaign and even maps are just out of date with the current player power and the few minor adjustments here and there didn't do much about the lacking difficulty.

You're just spend to much time watching all those streamers, no surprise you don't realize the current state of the game. You just hear fav streamer xyz complain about something and you just take it as the most important and accurate words in the world.

Old AN was a good example of a difficulty adjustment. Rare enemies actually did fight back early and mid game instead of being just another random enemy.
But even with AN people did managed to finish camping and maps, shocking how little a slightly difficulty increase hurts. Cause it doesn't hurt at all and the only thing that hurts is the endless stacking of player power without serious and meaningful adjustments and we all do know how that ends. D3 and D4 are both a great example for that.

AN first day ... yea sure I got past the mobs and dealt with it, with volcanic fissure in the campaign nonetheless.

Dude general gravicius I had to load and unload the zone like 4 times because all his guards AND HIM had STACKED mods that I couldn't do anything about. Eventually got through it with a lucky load lol.

But theres no way they are buffing mobs to that silliness EVER again. Countless posts all over here, reddit, even streamers who dont struggle with them said they were cooked.

Buff the top end like I said. The campaign no one cares about...