Was the 2016 Ascendancy expansion the start of content bloat?
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I remember a while back people complained about how the ascendancies introduced power creep and more or less eroded the non-meta build diversity.
As a returning player, content like blight, heist and other league mechanics feel estranged from the core game. I know that more content is inherently good, but I dislike having all of these extra items existing that I never use. Last bumped on Nov 3, 2024, 11:26:48 PM
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I seem to recall GGG increasing monster density about seven years ago, specifically in response to a request from a combination of long-time racing and speed running fans and recently-arrived Reaper of Souls refugees who were used to a faster pace of play. The idea, IIRC, was that increased monster density would allow for more flask uptime which would allow players to go faster. GGG weren't philosophically opposed to the idea, so they made the change, but wanted to keep XP gain roughly the same afterwards, so they nerfed normal monsters damage and health slightly to balance the risk/reward ratio that they posed.
Of course, flasks were really powerful at that point in time, so increasing flask uptime was huge power spike for players, and basically turned normal monsters (which could and would kill you if you weren't attentive) into trash mobs (which don't pose any threat to the player at all). But people were, broadly, really enjoying the newly-endorsed zoom-zoom meta, so the problems it created were largely ignored as GGG doubled down on the change by introducing several league mechanics in a row with explicit timers built into them. Those problems included the fact that melee simply stopped working. I mean, melee had always been clunky, but the zoom-zoom meta being centered as the correct way to play made melee completely irrelevant. Also, ground litter, since all those extra monsters dropped mostly junk that just cluttered the screen. Build diversity vanished; single target stopped being a skill that just did a bunch of damage to one target, and became an AoE that could stack overlapping damaging effects on a single point on the screen. And so on. So, did Ascendancies add to the game's power creep? Sure. So did a lot of the Unique items and skill gems that were added to the game over the years, and the Passive Mastery system, and the Pantheon system, and a bunch of the crafting systems. But if I were to blame a single root cause for most of the game's current issues, the decision to deliberately accelerate the game would probably be it. The artist formerly known as Waitubold. Taking the Lord's name in vain since birth, basically. Last edited by NicknamesOfGod#1810 on Nov 2, 2024, 6:52:12 PM
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" This is the beauty of the atlas Tree, With it you can completly disable league content you're not interested in, go for it, personalize your endgame ;) Current Build: Penance Brand
God build?! https://pobb.in/bO32dZtLjji5 |
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There are a few things to unpack here
Firstly it was death by a thousand cuts really, we get incremental power creep most every league and many get rolled into the base game afterwards this just means without major balance fixes to baseline monster power we were always going to end up further away from their desired point. Content bloat is a personal thing and so you can't really pinpoint a start point, some people still think its fine right now and they would happily have more. I personally think it started at Heist but that's probably because I didn't like their implementation. Others will think it started ages ago and they liked a very vanilla game so this will always vary from player to player. Diversity is a complex one but I think it comes down to two things, GGG increasingly creating drastically overperforming skills/item combinations each league and a change in perspective for the playerbase at large. The first I personally put down as being deliriums fault, delirium was the first league where we needed drastically more power to clear the content while it also introduced some of the dumbest most broken shit imaginable that clearly wasn't intended by GGG balance at the time. Maximum character power pre and post delirium had an enormous difference and when you consider GGG aim at 11% (I think) power creep per league delirium was vastly above that. Secondly player perspectives have changed substantially over the years with increasing media coverage catering to the larger playerbase producing more and more tools to analyse and optimise. Players now have more of a psychological pressure to play the busted and OP shit created by everyone else also playing it and information bombardment associated with it. Players made truly great builds back in the day but they were unusual and frequently protected - now we have PoENinja with a huge advanced filtering list with heatmaps and item specifications its absolutely nuts how power focused its become. Put simply back in the day if you measured your character in div/hr players would look at you like you were an idiot who'd lost the plot. Now it is the norm and players think you are an idiot for not caring about div/hr. Breaking that down would take too long and i've already touched on the edges of it so i'll just leave it there. The tldr of that though is you can't compare old diversity to new diversity because what players think of as an acceptable build has totally transformed. If you have been playing long enough however and make your own builds you'll know that diversity now actually isn't worse than it was in the past - some things work, some don't and most patches make it slightly better or slightly worse. We don't have way less builds than we used to though, that's only true if you are mainlining build power like its the only thing that matters. |
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content bloat tbh comes from GGG NOT culling extra content. so far they got rid of prophecy and cadiro.
i think if we're cutting bloat, anarchy, tormented souls, ambush, shrines, could be removed with little issue (tho tormented souls removal would make the unique tied to it require a rework) moving a step further, beyond, harbinger, vaal side areas could probably be removed too and have their currency drops go some other place. ascendancy power creep. i have mixed feelings. on one hand it took away one of POE's greatest strengths which was "classlessness". but on another it gave players a lot of power. content power creep is all on GGG. but tbh i find it hard to blame them. players were finding interesting interactions that multiplied damage in crazy ways. but instead of recognizing that the interactions might be OP and nerfing them, GGG "rewarded" this innovation by giving players harder content. which has evolved to the point where the "end-end" game in POE requires players to be hyperoptimized. this is a total separate issue than content bloat. to me the sweet spot was right before maven was introduced. you still could do some dumb ass jank build with 100k dps. probably struggle with shaper/elder but i guess it was still doable. now? you need at least 1-3 million Uber dps as baseline and even then you're considered "starting out" on end end game content. its quite interesting. i grew alongside with POE over a decade. it evolved out from the game i originally wanted, into something else. but i m still here because i'm strong enough to do most content. on the flipside, if i came to POE now and never played POE before i would be disgusted at how hyperoptimized you need to be in order to play the game that i wouldnt touch the game. if you're hyperoptimized you can run content like gauntlet. if you're trying to learn organically? even rhoas can wreck you badly. i've digressed a lot. theres no real answer to content bloat but if i were to pinpoint, it would be maven's introduction. the atlas tree only works because of all the extra content. now that the tree exists, GGG will find it VERY difficult to remove content as it would involve reworking the tree. [Removed by Support]
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" Agreed. " Also agreed. |
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