Friction is becoming such a boomer thing

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exsea wrote:

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lordraz0r wrote:

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zakalwe55 wrote:

Torchlight Infinite, Diablo 4 and Last Epoch are really ramping up their seasons now

Are we just going to ignore the fact that this is inherently a false statement?

Diablo 4's latest season has focused purely on the core of the game itself?
LE's Cycles are also moving away from the heavily seasonal changes.

Are we also going to ignore the fact that both Last Epoch and Torchlight has a tiny playerbase compared to POE?

I am all for making comparisons with things that work but player retention is a valuable metric. Necropolis served as a great example of swinging the pendulum too far into the realm of randomness and it bombed heavily. Instead of focusing so much on borrowed power systems of the seasons there are larger problems to worry about like the gradual degradation of game and server performance that is causing players quite a lot of issues.

i think he was using the term ramping up rather loosely.

if compared to POE i would say yeah they are "not as big" but i would argue not tiny.

currently i m enjoying TLI a huge lot. to me its POE lite.

Ramping up includes changes as well. PoE leagues are 4 months apart now which seems slower than its competitors. Does anyone think PoE will ever go back to 3 month leagues?

Torchlight Infinite is cranking out new content every 3 months now. Also, unlike PoE the content is tested. Torchlight Infinite doesn't have to make major tweaks to gameplay for 2 weeks after launch.

PoE also has a tiny playerbase compared to Diablo 4. Some people still play PoE. Go figure.

Last Epoch, Diablo 4 and Torchlight Infinite crushes PoE in terms of game performance. This won't change.

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zakalwe55 wrote:

Ramping up includes changes as well. PoE leagues are 4 months apart now which seems slower than its competitors. Does anyone think PoE will ever go back to 3 month leagues?

Torchlight Infinite is cranking out new content every 3 months now. Also, unlike PoE the content is tested. Torchlight Infinite doesn't have to make major tweaks to gameplay for 2 weeks after launch.

PoE also has a tiny playerbase compared to Diablo 4. Some people still play PoE. Go figure.

Last Epoch, Diablo 4 and Torchlight Infinite crushes PoE in terms of game performance. This won't change.

i really like not having the game crash on me randomly while playing TLI. zooming thru maps feels so smooth too.

each of the games brings something different to the table. and you know what. i want ALL of them to succeed. TLI shamelessly "borrows" ideas from poe/poe2. but you know what? i m loving it. recently they even copied poe's atlas tree.

LE innovates the fuck out of arpg genre. i really love their iteration of "leagues" and how they handled trade/ssf.

d4 is a perfect arpg for casuals.

frankly when i compare all of these games side by side with poe. poe is a behemoth BUT, really isnt for everyone. i still wont recommend poe to anyone unless they dont mind spending ungodly amount of hours and dont mind following a build.

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exsea wrote:

frankly when i compare all of these games side by side with poe. poe is a behemoth BUT, really isnt for everyone. i still wont recommend poe to anyone unless they dont mind spending ungodly amount of hours and dont mind following a build.

A behemoth in what measure?

It doesn't have the most players, it doesn't have the most revenue, and it's by far the most isolating or least accessible of the games you mentioned. The bar for entry is insanely high as you touched on briefly.

PoE has awful game performance, it has unstable servers (especially regionally), poor visual clarity, is new player hostile, 99% of loot drops are terrible and need to be filtered, and the game is significantly bloated. Not to mention the 3rd party tools required, and the cost of stash tabs.

There is no way I would recommend PoE1 to a friend either, nor advise anyone to pick it up. I did that once and I was shocked at not only all the questions they had, but also the questions that didn't get asked. The game is massively unintuitive.

I think often time people don't step back and look at PoE1. It's like the frog in boiling water. It didn't have much competition for a decent amount of time, but my subjective opinion is that PoE1 isn't in a good place and quite honestly, is disrespectful to players time.

PoE1 had a good run for me, but its over now. It's just not worth it any longer. Maybe PoE2 will be different enough, but I guess we will find out in the fall.

PoE is the One Piece of ARPGs.

Maybe PoE 2 will be The One Piece.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

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I think often time people don't step back and look at PoE1. It's like the frog in boiling water. It didn't have much competition for a decent amount of time, but my subjective opinion is that PoE1 isn't in a good place and quite honestly, is disrespectful to players time.
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What's funny to me is that Grinding Gear clearly knows this, and agrees. That's why Path 2 exists - Path the First was constraining them too tightly and they were falling behind, they needed to make a whole new game to catch up to the modern competition that's cropped up since the Diablows Resurgence.

Buuuut...the company is also beholden to Path the First. This game is the only one on the market that speaks to the kind of people who play it. Just look at the constant "I WANNA ZOOOOOOOOM" threads by people who are addicted to the game's utterly ludicrous scaling and are too much of a game veteran to see how incredibly bloated and complicated the game is. if you're not in on all the secrets by now, you never will be.

Look at the sorts of mechanical/system changes they're making to Path of Exile 2. Almost all of them are, in some way, addressing "this is more fiddly and complicated than it needs to be." they haven't spoken on endgame yet for obvious and understandable reasons, but I would not be surprised to learn that the "enable old league mechanics" functionality they've spoken of in endgame is dramatically reduced compared to Path the First.

Hell, the entire Atlas Tree system is Grinding Gear's admission that there's too much going on in endgame right now and they want to give you a way to filter out the junk you don't care about. Everybody here could likely name half a dozen or so leagues/league mechanics off the top of their head they'd be overjoyed to never see again (Torment/tormented spirits, Heist, Incursion, Heist, Ultimatum, Heist, Tempest, Heist, Heist, freaking Heist, Kurai I will cram these rogues' markers down your gob until 'the clinking of markers' haunts your goddamned nightmares...).

And yet, people never seem to do anything but endlessly complain about the existence of path the Second. Despite Path the First simply not really being relevant or competitive anymore.

Oh well. Grinding Gear's doing Path the Second anyways, and once that's done I'm not sure I'll ever care enough about path the First to come back to it. Fond memories of some of the times I had in the game, but little need to reprise them.

I'd expect that by 2035-2036 PoE2 will be pretty complex and bloated too...

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BlueTemplar85 wrote:

I'd expect that by 2035-2036 PoE2 will be pretty complex and bloated too...

Potentially. But unlike path the First, Grinding Gear is going into PoE2 with over a decade of experience in running a live game of this type, with extensive prior knowledge of the pitfalls and potholes that comes with doing so. The second game is built from the ground up to accommodate this requirement rather than GGG stumbleclucking into it haphazardly like they did with PoE1. Path the First was them learning how all this works; Path the Second is where they get to apply what they learned to a proper modern game.

And besides, even if Path the Second winds up bloated and weird in twelve years' time? We'll have gotten twelve years out of it and they'll be well positioned to do Path the Third. They're up to four Diablows and doubtlessly there will be a Diablows Five during PoE2's runtime, feels like PoE is allowed to get up to 3 at the least, ne?

BOOMERS
1945-1960


65-80 year olds are responsible eh.

Ill believe your post when you show me the 80 year olds crushing it!

There is good friction and bad friction.

An example of good friction would be socket colour weighting. It adds to the games complexity. It gives base items varying values depending on what build you are playing. It balances builds into certain archetypes, at least until you are rich enough to overcome the weighted odds.

An example of bad friction is something that just adds more clicks to a process you are going to do anyways. Some examples:

Remember when stash tabs didnt have affinities? That was friction. You had to decide what was worth taking the time to store away and what wasnt. You had to remember where you were putting you items and make an effort to organize them manually.

Remember when currency didnt drop in stacks? That was friction. You had to judge whether it was worth a click picking up a single shard or low tier currency.

I dont think any sane person would miss this friction because it was completely arbitrary. You WANTED to store items that had some value. You WANTED to pick up currency. You were going to do all this anyways. GGG just decided that there should be an arbitrary barrier that made you not want to do this.

And this isnt even considering how this affects people with RSI, or how it causes RSI. Its basic ergonomics. The user wants to perform an action. They are going to do it regardless of how many clicks it takes. There is absolutely no good reason to add friction to those kinds of actions.

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Paradoxoglanis wrote:

There is good friction and bad friction.

An example of good friction would be socket colour weighting. It adds to the games complexity. It gives base items varying values depending on what build you are playing. It balances builds into certain archetypes, at least until you are rich enough to overcome the weighted odds.

An example of bad friction is something that just adds more clicks to a process you are going to do anyways. Some examples:

Remember when stash tabs didnt have affinities? That was friction. You had to decide what was worth taking the time to store away and what wasnt. You had to remember where you were putting you items and make an effort to organize them manually.

Remember when currency didnt drop in stacks? That was friction. You had to judge whether it was worth a click picking up a single shard or low tier currency.

I dont think any sane person would miss this friction because it was completely arbitrary. You WANTED to store items that had some value. You WANTED to pick up currency. You were going to do all this anyways. GGG just decided that there should be an arbitrary barrier that made you not want to do this.

And this isnt even considering how this affects people with RSI, or how it causes RSI. Its basic ergonomics. The user wants to perform an action. They are going to do it regardless of how many clicks it takes. There is absolutely no good reason to add friction to those kinds of actions.

We had to wait 5 pages of forum friction before someone dropped a useful post.