Buff difficulty of regular content

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sownice wrote:

Did I understand correctly that because a handful of players want a more demanding campaign, that everyone else, where there are people who can't even make it to the end, should also play more demanding content? and even though there is a mode, ruthless, where all your dreams come true, you want to make other people's lives miserable, why?

What logic do you use?

The logic is that right now there are HUGE jumps in difficulty between content that seems adjacent. The difficulty curve needs to be greatly accelerated so that there is a steady increase from the start of the game to the end of the game, instead of these random sudden spikes.

We all saw a neverending stream of people crying about T17s too hard this league, the point is that running T17s feels like hitting a wall because T16s are too easy. If Tier 16 maps were two to three times more difficult than they currently are, the step up to T17 isn't as extreme and players would feel less blindsided by that content.

This isn't even Game Design 101, this is like... Game Design Kindergarten. If you tell people "this is act 4, and this is act 5, so the difficulty jump between acts feels like this" they are JUSTIFIED in feeling frustrated when they get to Act 6 and just start getting annihilated by scorching ray totems. There is a massive jump there, especially for non-veteran players, and the solution is to make act 5 harder. Every piece of content should set the players' expectations for the next bit of content, and when you have huge portions of both the campaign and the early endgame which do not increase in difficulty you are setting the players up to feel bad when they finally hit that wall.

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate wrote:

"

sownice wrote:

Did I understand correctly that because a handful of players want a more demanding campaign, that everyone else, where there are people who can't even make it to the end, should also play more demanding content? and even though there is a mode, ruthless, where all your dreams come true, you want to make other people's lives miserable, why?

What logic do you use?

The logic is that right now there are HUGE jumps in difficulty between content that seems adjacent. The difficulty curve needs to be greatly accelerated so that there is a steady increase from the start of the game to the end of the game, instead of these random sudden spikes.

We all saw a neverending stream of people crying about T17s too hard this league, the point is that running T17s feels like hitting a wall because T16s are too easy. If Tier 16 maps were two to three times more difficult than they currently are, the step up to T17 isn't as extreme and players would feel less blindsided by that content.

This isn't even Game Design 101, this is like... Game Design Kindergarten. If you tell people "this is act 4, and this is act 5, so the difficulty jump between acts feels like this" they are JUSTIFIED in feeling frustrated when they get to Act 6 and just start getting annihilated by scorching ray totems. There is a massive jump there, especially for non-veteran players, and the solution is to make act 5 harder. Every piece of content should set the players' expectations for the next bit of content, and when you have huge portions of both the campaign and the early endgame which do not increase in difficulty you are setting the players up to feel bad when they finally hit that wall.

Or maybe they could tone it down if difficulty jumps so high. One of the things I dislike about GGG balancing is a blanket nerf to an entire playerbase offset by making a ever more complex set of mods from different crafting systems that have failure states built into the crafting process that aren't interesting and just waste time. Lets make the monsters hit less hard and get rid of synth implicits or something, that would be a real adjustment instead of adding another 15% phys overwhelm as a map mod. I think players that play with things like adorned and or mageblood need to get their heads out of the sand about weird the scaling really is and how bad items usually are. Frankly expensive super powerful items are boring. Enjoy them if you want, but if it makes the game too easy, don't complain about it.

The truth is GGG has been nerfing player player for years without really giving it back until the point of minmaxing. Straight up buffs to skills are usually offset with pretty nasty nerfs to core items, passive tree routing, or mana reservation nerfs.

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roundishcap wrote:

I think players that play with things like adorned and or mageblood need to get their heads out of the sand about weird the scaling really is and how bad items usually are. Frankly expensive super powerful items are boring. Enjoy them if you want, but if it makes the game too easy, don't complain about it.

I highly doubt that anyone runs around with a adorned setup during a league start.
The campaign and t1-t16 was already way too easy before the item was even introduced.
Mb is also not the problem for the lacking difficulty of early game even in a fresh league.
The even early existing strong power creep however is a problem.

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Pashid wrote:

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.

I love how you turned the deletion of many of the most busted Helmet enchants and Alt quality gems, many of which simply got deleted (you've seen that thread right? I'm not making this up; yeah T-gems are more fun but they aren't making those who lost Alt qual power forget that loss now are they?) into evidence that the game got easier.

Meanwhile glossing over T17's, Uber bosses with more HP than GOD; hand waving AN, the across the board support gem nerfs, the majority of leagues that got deleted which have mostly been borrowed power. Then there's the massive and manifold crafting nerfs over and over, massive nerfs to agency, constant dilution of systems that aren't .01% enough (like veiled chaos nerf for example).

I bet you're going to spin Valdo's boxes being diluted "made more common but rare outcomes being much rarer" into powercreep as well? This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about, GGG hides -- No -- slight of hands their nerfs shockingly well I guess. GGG's buff with one hand; nerf with the giant stick behind their back marketing tricks are pretty effective it seems.

I'll say it again, the people who think the game is easier now than during say Shaper or even say before the new Uber bosses are people who variously: follow metas, have tons of experience/time/skill or will to follow directions, and... of course play the easy mode of the game.

Back in Shaper days I could beat endgame in week 2, casual old 53 year old me; voluntarily mostly SSF even in trade league me, trying dumb ideas even when I know they'll struggle me. These days I quite frequently don't reach 4 stones before the tedium and EXPONENTIAL REPETITION compared to those days just bores the shit out of me.

Viewing the game as "easier" is pure meta survivorship bias.

The game is both vastly more bloated, and vastly more grindy. Agency they've put into the game that partially alleviated some of this tedium keeps getting gutted. Anyone who thinks the game is easy is viewing from the impossible to balance for vantage point I detailed already.

They can't make Easy mode into a 7th hard mode if you want them too you're being unreasonable.

"

roundishcap wrote:

The truth is GGG has been nerfing player player for years without really giving it back until the point of minmaxing. Straight up buffs to skills are usually offset with pretty nasty nerfs to core items, passive tree routing, or mana reservation nerfs.

Yep, plenty of people have noticed that Masteries were a skill tree nerf, yes by themselves they gave QoL and some power even some interesting build enablers (not unlike T-gems being interesting and thematic vs Alt quality being numerical power) but what they really did (big nerf stick behind GGG's back style as usual) was become a passive opportunity tax that made it more punishing to go get far flung keystones and cluster jewel sockets. Lots of 3 point notables became 4 and 5 pointers. Wheels expanded in general and the cost of a notable node got higher. Some flexibility was gained in corner cases where you used to have to travel to get X passive but now you get it closer, but most wheels became larger absorbing some of that "efficiency" and in many cases adding things you wanted to take more local wheels to get.

The same thing can be said of making the game harder (AN monsters which still exist to this day in all but name) while also increasing the amount of passives a player should spend on defenses. Making Det/Grace meta even in SOFT CORE... These are opportunity costs! They got buffed sure but they aren't free they cost DPS. AN pushed everyone to fit auras in, and take the new Suppression passives on the tree and mods on gear.

Then they progressively made it harder and harder to fit auras in. Nerfed many Masteries a couple leagues back as well in a classic "these are buffs, except the ones that aren't" move.

Even the top end has been nerfed OVER AND OVER. With high end builds constantly being brought down. The truth is the top end is so utterly broken that it can absorb nerfs without flinching. Meta players feel this + their gained experience as "powercreep" when the power by in large for average players has only gone down for a couple years. So meta players just switch to the next most broken skill; rush to endgame/economic domination on day one, buy their HH/MB on day 2 or 3 and leverage the meta to trivialize the game.

Then they come and complain that the game is too easy. classic.

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alhazred70 wrote:

Spoiler

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Pashid wrote:

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.

I love how you turned the deletion of many of the most busted Helmet enchants and Alt quality gems, many of which simply got deleted (you've seen that thread right? I'm not making this up; yeah T-gems are more fun but they aren't making those who lost Alt qual power forget that loss now are they?) into evidence that the game got easier.

Meanwhile glossing over T17's, Uber bosses with more HP than GOD; hand waving AN, the across the board support gem nerfs, the majority of leagues that got deleted which have mostly been borrowed power. Then there's the massive and manifold crafting nerfs over and over, massive nerfs to agency, constant dilution of systems that aren't .01% enough (like veiled chaos nerf for example).

I bet you're going to spin Valdo's boxes being diluted "made more common but rare outcomes being much rarer" into powercreep as well? This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about, GGG hides -- No -- slight of hands their nerfs shockingly well I guess. GGG's buff with one hand; nerf with the giant stick behind their back marketing tricks are pretty effective it seems.

I'll say it again, the people who think the game is easier now than during say Shaper or even say before the new Uber bosses are people who variously: follow metas, have tons of experience/time/skill or will to follow directions, and... of course play the easy mode of the game.

Back in Shaper days I could beat endgame in week 2, casual old 53 year old me; voluntarily mostly SSF even in trade league me, trying dumb ideas even when I know they'll struggle me. These days I quite frequently don't reach 4 stones before the tedium and EXPONENTIAL REPETITION compared to those days just bores the shit out of me.

Viewing the game as "easier" is pure meta survivorship bias.

The game is both vastly more bloated, and vastly more grindy. Agency they've put into the game that partially alleviated some of this tedium keeps getting gutted. Anyone who thinks the game is easy is viewing from the impossible to balance for vantage point I detailed already.

They can't make Easy mode into a 7th hard mode if you want them too you're being unreasonable.

But you're wrong on this one, we have so much buffs in form of fractured items since early maps, tons of essences, easier access to 6L from vaal sides during campaign, in general, access to a lot more loot during campaign and early maps, mostly by extra league mechanics, like bestiary for unique items, essence, ritual, expedition... Overall, power creep outweighs any nerfs we had.

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Nomancs wrote:

But you're wrong on this one, we have so much buffs in form of fractured items since early maps, tons of essences, easier access to 6L from vaal sides during campaign, in general, access to a lot more loot during campaign and early maps, mostly by extra league mechanics, like bestiary for unique items, essence, ritual, expedition... Overall, power creep outweighs any nerfs we had.

Those things aren't even compensating for T17's and Uber bosses let alone all the other massive nerfs to agency (crafting for the .1% only) that I and many other people have brought up already. Its hard to understand when you only see the game from the .1% outcome oriented pre-solved process viewpoint.

When you can't fail and you're doing 20 or 40 or 100million more DPS than Uber bosses were designed for because you're following a meta or successful effectively 100% deterministic process well of course you think the game is easier and easier.

They put T17's in just last league and you don't even seem to have noticed.

You're probably Over trivializing the game in creative mode to such a degree that GGG would need to quadruple everything's HP for you guys to even NOTICE SOMETHING DIFFERENT.

Its hard but there's plenty of evidence you can look into that I've pointed out already if you want to consider a broader more representative view of the game. Until then when I see a terrible idea like "make easy mode hard for 40 out of 40 people who meta game and have copious free time but wont play one of the games harder modes" I feel like I have to push back.

Honestly what you really should be pushing for if you ACTUALLY want your pre solved play style to take longer is massive 80% to 90% nerfs to all the strongest meta stuff: clear speed, compounding MF, Juicing, movement skill spam and DPS nerfs for meta builds with 80 to 90 times more DPS than anyone needs. Besides playing the easy mode, this is your ACTUAL problem.

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alhazred70 wrote:

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Nomancs wrote:

But you're wrong on this one, we have so much buffs in form of fractured items since early maps, tons of essences, easier access to 6L from vaal sides during campaign, in general, access to a lot more loot during campaign and early maps, mostly by extra league mechanics, like bestiary for unique items, essence, ritual, expedition... Overall, power creep outweighs any nerfs we had.

Those things aren't even compensating for T17's and Uber bosses let alone all the other massive nerfs to agency (crafting for the .1% only) that I and many other people have brought up already. Its hard to understand when you only see the game from the .1% outcome oriented pre-solved process viewpoint.

When you can't fail and you're doing 20 or 40 or 100million more DPS than Uber bosses were designed for because you're following a meta or successful effectively 100% deterministic process well of course you think the game is easier and easier.

They put T17's in just last league and you don't even seem to have noticed.

You're probably Over trivializing the game in creative mode to such a degree that GGG would need to quadruple everything's HP for you guys to even NOTICE SOMETHING DIFFERENT.

Its hard but there's plenty of evidence you can look into that I've pointed out already if you want to consider a broader more representative view of the game. Until then when I see a terrible idea like "make easy mode hard for 40 out of 40 people who meta game and have copious free time but wont play one of the games harder modes" I feel like I have to push back.

Honestly what you really should be pushing for if you ACTUALLY want your pre solved play style to take longer is massive 80% to 90% nerfs to all the strongest meta stuff: clear speed, compounding MF, Juicing, movement skill spam and DPS nerfs for meta builds with 80 to 90 times more DPS than anyone needs. Besides playing the easy mode, this is your ACTUAL problem.

Why do you write about t17 and ubers? This topic is not about them.

Oh BTW sort of a PS to my last post as I listen to Mark in the Q and A so:

Apparently T17 monsters had quadruple the life of a T16 and this was an error.

"the games getting easier, too much powercreep"

You didn't even notice... ask yourself why you didn't even notice.

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Nomancs wrote:

Why do you write about t17 and ubers? This topic is not about them.

Because the topic over 30+ pages has become the overall difficulty of the game and weather there's been actual "powercreep" or if thats just the perspective of the 1%'ers. If powercreep is making the game too easy or wether this is mostly just meta followers refining their process.

lets not pretend that with (lets say) 50x trivialization you do to "regular content" and the (lets say) only 25x trivialization you do to T17's that you would actually "notice" one more than the other.

Or for that matter that GGG could actually do anything remotely sane to make "regular content" hard for someone who has locked in meta process in easy mode.