My comprehensive view of the game balance and what should be changed

I wish to offer my thoughts on the current state of the game balance and provoke a discussion among players.


There are a few distinct groups of players with different goals, which makes balancing the game quite a tough challenge since all changes affect everyone simultaneously. Let me briefly characterize different player types:

• Softcore trade player who wants screen-wide explosions, bright colors, and lots of sounds.
• Casual player who plays softcore trade; he progresses through the Atlas and kills some bosses, and that’s what he enjoys. He doesn’t need to min-max his character to feel satisfied with the game.
• “Bill Gates” of PoE — wants to get as much currency as possible. He doesn’t care about game balance and will always use the most profitable strategy.
• Racer - wants to improve his gameplay efficiency and doesn't care about lategame
• Level 100 chaser
• Character optimizer — will spend the entire league optimizing a single character.
• Boss kill chaser — wants to complete the hardest content possible, not necessarily only bosses.

Many of the playstyles above are just not viable in the modern POE

• Problem: Hitting level 100 is a joke, even though it could be a reasonable long-term goal for many players if it were actually a challenge.
Proposed Solution: Make progression beyond level 95 gated behind hard content. Not necessarily requiring players to kill billions of monsters, but for example requiring them to apply gauntlet-like modifiers on the map device to progress further, also balance Energy Shield. Proposed Solution: Make progressing experience beyond level 95 gated behind hard content. Not necessarily requiring to kill 10 billion monsters, but for example requiring players to put gauntlet-like modifiers on map device to be able to progress past 95, also balance energy shield.
• Problem: You can easily acquire perfect or 90%+ of perfect gear, and that's a problem for people who want to min-max their characters and also it removes the element of figuring out how to make a character with what you have available - that makes the game much less interesting
Solution: [list=1]
• Nerf recombinators - For example make recombination not guarantee keeping the same tiers of mods used for recombinating
• Mirror of Kalandra - It's an iconic currency that is known to be problematic, and we understand why developers don't want to remove it but perhaps repurpose it.

[*]Problem: Bosses are too easy, and difficulty progression is shallow.
Solution: Make some bosses be available to farm earlier in progression maybe like tier10 maps, so less experienced players can have a sense of progression facing bosses earlier. Make end game bosses substantially harder(maybe add gauntlet mods an mechanics), in my opinion bosses should also grant decent amount of experience, especially the hard ones. Also uber bosses fights should reset on death - that would make a killing bosses a reasonable goal for softcore players too.
[*]Problem: Some stats scale character power faster than O(n^3) and that will be a balance problem no matter what. Aura stacking has been rightfully nerfed, but int stacking still scales flat damage %damage and % es.
[*]Problem: Spell suppression is mandatory for every high-end build.
Solution: Make spell suppression lessen spell damage taken by 40%, instead of 50.
[*]Problem: int32 size - it has a positive side forcing developers to somewhat keep the balance intact.
Solution - reduce %dmg modifiers on tree and gear - it will not only help with int overflow, but also makes each source of %dmg matter more and therefor make min -maxing your character more important. Also reducing flat damage numbers on weapons will help keeping the attack-spell balance.
[*]Problem: chaos inoculation is OP - as chaos damage became more relevant and getting chaos resistance became necessary, the power of CI grew and grew
Solution: Make CI grant chaos damage doesn't bypass energy shield and +50 to chaos resistance
[/list]

Obviously slams are overpowered, but i expect them getting nerfed anyway.

Can someone help me with formatting? Would be grateful.

Ps. Can we have LaTeX style formatting; we aren't all programmers.

"

godimmo#5371 wrote:

I wish to offer my thoughts on the current state of the game balance and provoke a discussion among players.


There are a few distinct groups of players with different goals, which makes balancing the game quite a tough challenge since all changes affect everyone simultaneously. Let me briefly characterize different player types:

• Softcore trade player who wants screen-wide explosions, bright colors, and lots of sounds.
• Casual player who plays softcore trade; he progresses through the Atlas and kills some bosses, and that’s what he enjoys. He doesn’t need to min-max his character to feel satisfied with the game.
• “Bill Gates” of PoE — wants to get as much currency as possible. He doesn’t care about game balance and will always use the most profitable strategy.
• Racer - wants to improve his gameplay efficiency and doesn't care about lategame
• Level 100 chaser
• Character optimizer — will spend the entire league optimizing a single character.
• Boss kill chaser — wants to complete the hardest content possible, not necessarily only bosses.

Many of the playstyles above are just not viable in the modern POE

This is not a comprehensive, or well defined, summary of the player base. for the sake of time, we'll go with it though.

Level 100:
Making it harder just isn't going to happen. People already complain about experience loss. Reaching level 100 is not an end-game objective. We have the Challenge system for more complicated end-game character achievements.

(Why is ES balance included in this topic at all?)


Near Perfect Gear Too Easy:
This just isn't true. 90% might be true, but 90% is a long way from perfect. If you love min/maxing, you always have the option for synth/double influence on rares, and double corrupts on unique, neither of which is easily obtainable.

Recomb's were too powerful, and they got nerfed this league.


Bosses:

Yea I think uber's have not kept up with power creep as well.

We already have early map bosses, the quest versions.


Stat Scaling:

Not sure why this is a problem. Of course there is going to be something that is better than others for anything, thats a good design. Why would I want to play something where my choice didnt matter, because any choice was equally good/valid?

Spell Suppression:

Isn't mandatory. I'm egtting along just fine right now with almost no suppression.

About level 100 I included es balance there, as it really makes it hard to die right now making level 100 just a grind without any difficulty. When I played berserker on leaguestart i had a lot of fun mapping, feeling that I could die if i made a mistake. On a CI character i don't even have to pay much attention in maps.


About gear:
Synth/influence items are a thing for some characters, but usually eldritch items are just better for armour piece slots. Best weapons are usually uniques and for amulet the perfect piece is easily craftable simplex amulet.


About stat scaling:
It's a problem because whenever players get new sources of that stat the power gains of that characters will be enormous and it's inevitable that players will get new sources of different stats as the game gets updates back in time it was hard to exceed 1500 intelligence for example. Now players reach 3000 int. You can see the problem when imagining players getting 10000 int for example.


About suppression:
Yes of course You can make a character without suppress, but it's just too strong. Jugg characters use it, min-maxed berserkers use it. Practically aegis and inquisitor build are the only ones not using it. Ineverate is by far the most anointed passive