Buff difficulty of regular content

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ArtCrusade wrote:

Right now SC Affliction is showing 97k characters, not players.

poe.ninja doesnt seem to use the official class ladders - not sure though, didnt check. So if true we overall have more data than that - see my 105k. Whether mixing it together makes sense or no is another matter.

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ArtCrusade wrote:

Many seasoned players will have multiple characters at level 90+ by now so we cannot conflate characters with player accounts.

The 24h peak of players on Steam was just 91k accounts which does not include the standalone users.

Further, private characters do not show on poe.ninja. They'd show on poe-racing with name/level but no gear, but will not be displayed on poe.ninja.

Inconsistencies aside, the top percentile of players is not representative of the overall playerbase. They play more efficiently & invest more time on average. It just isn't a good data point

See https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3467880/page/8#p25207540 for potential usefulness of the data.

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Pizzarugi wrote:

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Nomancs wrote:

15% magebloods, 9% headhuntes, 24% are using t0 belts based on that, compared to 8% mageblood and 4% headhunters from last league week 3. I don't want to jump on conclusions here but 2x...

Is that a result of significantly increased HH/MB drops, divine drops from Affliction juicing, div cards for those items becoming much easier to farm, or even a mix?

Supposedly also Valdo maps, no idea if true...

Edit: Maybe also Reliquary keys in loot excess.

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Zrevnur wrote:

See https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3467880/page/8#p25207540 for potential usefulness of the data.

You have to make too many assumptions for that to be useful. You can ask GGG to release the data and then we can have a proper discussion about this, because without that it'll not be fruitful

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Pizzarugi wrote:

Is that a result of significantly increased HH/MB drops, divine drops from Affliction juicing, div cards for those items becoming much easier to farm, or even a mix?

There's lots of factors that could be at play here than just simply powercreep. You've said already in your 40/40 feedback thread that Affliction was a mistake for offering ridiculous amounts of juice and crazy divine orb drops.

yes, that is why I will not make any conclusions around poe.ninja data, but I would safely assume that increased droprate is directly adding to power creep.

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Pizzarugi wrote:

If GGG has suddenly decided to dole out temporary powercreep leagues instead of balanced ones intended to be rolled into core, of course we're going to be seeing an increase in higher quality items. That doesn't necessarily equate to the base game itself being powercrept to the point the game needs to be harder for everyone, especially those who don't even juice maps and yet are still struggling. If anything, we should be demanding more that GGG stop giving us OP leagues.

Some people will always struggle. Question is to GGG, do they want a casual game to compete directly with diablo 4, or a game that is challenging for veteran arpg gamers. I have my own entertainment as priority here, so I would want game for arpg veterans.

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ArtCrusade wrote:

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Zrevnur wrote:

See https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3467880/page/8#p25207540 for potential usefulness of the data.

You have to make too many assumptions for that to be useful. You can ask GGG to release the data and then we can have a proper discussion about this, because without that it'll not be fruitful

Obviously GGG releasing full data is superior.
But otherwise it depends on what you want to achieve and what the data contains. The big obstacle is the effort to extract the information. I dont think assumptions like "upper end has more voidstones than average" are out of line.

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Nomancs wrote:

Some people will always struggle. Question is to GGG, do they want a casual game to compete directly with diablo 4, or a game that is challenging for veteran arpg gamers. I have my own entertainment as priority here, so I would want game for arpg veterans.

GGG would have to completely upend literally everything about PoE to make it even come remotely close to Diablo 4 in terms of casual appeal. As it currently stands, it's level of difficulty and complexity still remains far and above every other modern ARPG to date. Grim Dawn and Last Epoch don't even come close, and they're already more difficult and complex than Diablo 3/4.

Making the game a little easier to let more people in isn't suddenly going to blur the line between this and the atrocity ActiBlizz are doing with their franchise. That is transcendent level of hyperbole.

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Pizzarugi wrote:

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Nomancs wrote:

Some people will always struggle. Question is to GGG, do they want a casual game to compete directly with diablo 4, or a game that is challenging for veteran arpg gamers. I have my own entertainment as priority here, so I would want game for arpg veterans.

GGG would have to completely upend literally everything about PoE to make it even come remotely close to Diablo 4 in terms of casual appeal. As it currently stands, it's level of difficulty and complexity still remains far and above every other modern ARPG to date. Grim Dawn and Last Epoch don't even come close, and they're already more difficult and complex than Diablo 3/4.

Making the game a little easier to let more people in isn't suddenly going to blur the line between this and the atrocity ActiBlizz are doing with their franchise. That is transcendent level of hyperbole.

Well, they are not getting money from me because of this. They could lose players by making game easier too.

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Nomancs wrote:

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Pizzarugi wrote:

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Nomancs wrote:

Some people will always struggle. Question is to GGG, do they want a casual game to compete directly with diablo 4, or a game that is challenging for veteran arpg gamers. I have my own entertainment as priority here, so I would want game for arpg veterans.

GGG would have to completely upend literally everything about PoE to make it even come remotely close to Diablo 4 in terms of casual appeal. As it currently stands, it's level of difficulty and complexity still remains far and above every other modern ARPG to date. Grim Dawn and Last Epoch don't even come close, and they're already more difficult and complex than Diablo 3/4.

Making the game a little easier to let more people in isn't suddenly going to blur the line between this and the atrocity ActiBlizz are doing with their franchise. That is transcendent level of hyperbole.

Well, they are not getting money from me because of this. They could lose players by making game easier too.

Chances are good GGG would gain more players making the game easier than they would lose from no longer being so difficult that most people are being chased away. :P

As it stands, PoE still remains the only modern ARPG that actually understands what it takes to make a fun and enjoyable summoner playstyle the likes of which I haven't seen since Diablo 2. Hell not even Crate, the Diablo 2 devs who made Grim Dawn, can recapture the summoner necro magic. I think that's amazing, and their continued efforts to keep it fun and even improve upon it is why I continue to play PoE as well as giving them money.

I'm willing to tolerate a lot of weird shit with PoE, including its difficulty, because summoners are good.

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Pizzarugi wrote:

Chances are good GGG would gain more players making the game easier than they would lose from no longer being so difficult that most people are being chased away. :P

As it stands, PoE still remains the only modern ARPG that actually understands what it takes to make a fun and enjoyable summoner playstyle the likes of which I haven't seen since Diablo 2. Hell not even Crate, the Diablo 2 devs who made Grim Dawn, can recapture the summoner necro magic. I think that's amazing, and their continued efforts to keep it fun and even improve upon it is why I continue to play PoE as well as giving them money.

Sure they would gain more players, if they would turn it to a cellphone game they could gain millions of users, and they could implement heavy p2w to get even more cash. But I hope GGG will stay true to their vision.

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Nomancs wrote:

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Pizzarugi wrote:

Chances are good GGG would gain more players making the game easier than they would lose from no longer being so difficult that most people are being chased away. :P

As it stands, PoE still remains the only modern ARPG that actually understands what it takes to make a fun and enjoyable summoner playstyle the likes of which I haven't seen since Diablo 2. Hell not even Crate, the Diablo 2 devs who made Grim Dawn, can recapture the summoner necro magic. I think that's amazing, and their continued efforts to keep it fun and even improve upon it is why I continue to play PoE as well as giving them money.

Sure they would gain more players, if they would turn it to a cellphone game they could gain millions of users, and they could implement heavy p2w to get even more cash. But I hope GGG will stay true to their vision.

Again, you're being so hyperbolic with that statement that it transcends the very definition of it into an entirely new state of being. I really don't know where else to go in this discussion.