How can an ARPG fit a vision of more deliberate combat? A discussion thread

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AintCare#6513 wrote:

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Gordyne#2944 wrote:

The only way to kind of solve this dillema is by slowing the game down and make it more reaction/combo skill based which is what PoE 2 at least allegedly tried to do.
So even if you build meta and well, you can still die because gear/build isn't everything and spamming mindlessly doesn't cut it anymore, but at the same time you can overcome bosses even with a suboptimal build because you play well mechanically.

I'm personally an RPG type of player, so I always prefer when meta isn't strongly enforced encouraged, or else we only have to play the same shit over and over

this is great on paper. but poe has so much variable (skills/mobs/maps) all with their own sets of mods that tailoring such system will be close to impossible to prevent min-maxers of completely bypassing it. and while you might play non-meta is all fine and dandy till the next change will destroy your character becuase patch changed some stuff around to prohibit min-maxers abuse. they can't balance the game around min-maxers and satisfy non-meta players. just look what happened with poe1, it arrived to the point where you can play meta build by 'accident'

That's not entirely true. I think a middle ground can definitely be achieved.
Especially since PoE2 is actually a slower game.

Balance isn't all or nothing. You can tweak it in a way that off-meta can still play fine(it just won't kill the UBER optinal boss) and min-maxxers won't be able to delete everything.

Min-max and top players will always exist, it is up to GGG to decide how much power they can actually get.

One suggestion that kept appearing on the forums were diminishing returns on damge and tankiness and it is a very straightforward way to do this.

And in the end the top players will always complain that the game is too easy. GGG just should not listen to it.

What? You picked the best items in the game and it is now too easy after 300 hours? Great, achieved your goal, your character is now complete, now go make another one.

So it is very possible and not only on paper. Although not perfect other ARPGs managed this problem better than PoE by miles.

You can't please everyone with one game mode.
That much is clear.

Which is why I time and again advocate for a diversity of game modes to fit a broader audience. In terms of difficulty, length, drops, and accessability.

Why someone would argue against this, I do not know.
But somehow they do.

God forbid some plebian gets the lvl 100 achievement, or uber Maven, without enduring the same grueling ruthless experience they did.

Fame, as we all know, lies in bragging rights and steam achievements.
Apparently.

I still remember the joy of conquering quake on increasing difficulty levels. The same would hold through for any ARPG.

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Gordyne#2944 wrote:

Although not perfect other ARPGs managed this problem better than PoE by miles.

this is because PoE is an rng bonanza man. don't feel like re-typing but you are under estimating the amount of variables here.

For the combat to remain "slow and methodical", you need to absolutely constrain and control the player power and reduce variance. I think it totally defeats the purpose of an arpg (so the real answer is these things are not compatible), but here are a few ideas to reduce variance :

- Remove the passive tree: You need something more similar to what you have in Grim Dawn, or more so Last Epoch (but probably with smaller trees). Specific, limited, meticulously curated and balanced skill trees.

- Remove skill/passive gems: Or HEAVILY restrict their usage. But the Last Epoch solution, with skills attached to classes and having their own (again: limited) skill trees

- Gear: Reduce RNG to an absolute minimum. Each base has specific affixes (may be you can have a little variance in the values, but why bother), and will always come with those. Basically what I'm saying is there are only uniques. Also probably some restriction on what each class can use?

- Crafting: Really? ok, if you insist you can have a few modifiers you can add to your gear, and you can rub it with some shit you collect to make it marginally better.

- Mobs: Fewer, more dangerous

- Endgame: Why bother? OK have some way to increase the difficulty of whatever is already there

- Seasons/leagues/DLC: A new zone, new bosses, may be some new gear, some story?

- Trading: Why bother?

There. Basically in my opinion you need to completely gut the arpg aspect. Remove one of the points above and either it makes it more probable that the players will find a way to exploit and trivialise the game, or the game becomes unplayable.

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eldheim#2436 wrote:

You can't please everyone with one game mode.
That much is clear.

Which is why I time and again advocate for a diversity of game modes to fit a broader audience. In terms of difficulty, length, drops, and accessability.

Why someone would argue against this, I do not know.
But somehow they do.

God forbid some plebian gets the lvl 100 achievement, or uber Maven, without enduring the same grueling ruthless experience they did.

Fame, as we all know, lies in bragging rights and steam achievements.
Apparently.

I still remember the joy of conquering quake on increasing difficulty levels. The same would hold through for any ARPG.

problem with this is that GGG made it clear they will balance the game around one mode only. so unless they change their take on this you will always have ppl that feel left out or their issues un-adressed. great example of this was ruthless in poe1, great mode but it was just bare bones of regular ssf which is just regular mode with restrictions... if they can balance the content around slow gameplay fro some ppl this will be great, but right now it doesn't look promising at all

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Gordyne#2944 wrote:

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GregoryAdams#7051 wrote:

The problem is that this is a goal that is incompatible with the very nature of this particular subgenre of ARPGs.

ARPGs that are in some way descended from Diablo 2 all have a relatively simple game loop:
kill monsters -> get better gear and level up -> kill bigger monsters -> get even better gear and level up -> ...

Naturally, every player quickly realizes that the faster they can execute this loop, the faster they can progress through the game, and experience content that they haven't previously seen.

The only way you'd get more deliberate combat is if you remove the incentive to increase the pace of this loop.

So, as a stupid example, you could say that during any 5 second interval only 1 monster can give you XP and drop items, thereby removing the incentive to build characters that can kill more than 1 monster every 5 seconds.

Or you could make it so that only the boss of an area gives you XP and drops items, but the boss arena only "unlocks" after you've been in the map for at least 2 minutes.

Every single thing I can think of sounds awful. If you want a slow ARPG, then I'm afraid that you'll have to throw 99% of this game in the bin and start over.

I think there is a different way to view this.

I see it like this:

There are people that like to roleplay
There are people that like to min-max

Role players will want to develop different kinds of builds: Specialised, Hybrid, Off meta, Thematic Builds.

These people will prefer slower pacing and don't care that much about killing very very fast, as long as their build makes it to the end after farming/trading.

They like to optimize as well but they won't kill the fun to optimize and will try to find a middle ground.

Then there are the min-max player that will simply "optimize the fun out of the game".

They will only play meta and complain that things are too easy while ignoring 95% of the rest of the builds the game has to offer because it can't live up to in efficiency.

The only way to kind of solve this dillema is by slowing the game down and make it more reaction/combo skill based which is what PoE 2 at least allegedly tried to do.
So even if you build meta and well, you can still die because gear/build isn't everything and spamming mindlessly doesn't cut it anymore, but at the same time you can overcome bosses even with a suboptimal build because you play well mechanically.

I'm personally an RPG type of player, so I always prefer when meta isn't strongly enforced encouraged, or else we only have to play the same shit over and over

Well, in that case, wouldn't it make more sense to make the skill floor lower, i.e. make the base game easier overall? Then you enable all the less optimized builds to complete the game, too.

The reason I'm mentioning this is that I personally don't really like the focus on mechanical gameplay at all.

The problem is that you can't have a game that's both difficult AND doesn't invite hyper optimization. Because that's the logical "solution" to the difficulty.

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AintCare#6513 wrote:

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GregoryAdams#7051 wrote:

Because if you decrease mob density people will just optimize for movement speed.

if you decrease mob density you can make each mob tougher and more dangerous. MS has nothing to do with it since it would function the same as it does now... weird take

Well, if you decrease mob density AND make each mob tougher, then sure. But that's an important detail you left out. XD

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GregoryAdams#7051 wrote:

Well, in that case, wouldn't it make more sense to make the skill floor lower, i.e. make the base game easier overall? Then you enable all the less optimized builds to complete the game, too.

The reason I'm mentioning this is that I personally don't really like the focus on mechanical gameplay at all.

The problem is that you can't have a game that's both difficult AND doesn't invite hyper optimization. Because that's the logical "solution" to the difficulty.

this is very interesting. but how would you do this? we would have to start in maps and end up in handcrafted acts as 'end-game'? i still feel like the rng is way too great and the only reason normal 1-3 feels so good its because it has the least rng in it.

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GregoryAdams#7051 wrote:

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AintCare#6513 wrote:

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GregoryAdams#7051 wrote:

Because if you decrease mob density people will just optimize for movement speed.

if you decrease mob density you can make each mob tougher and more dangerous. MS has nothing to do with it since it would function the same as it does now... weird take

Well, if you decrease mob density AND make each mob tougher, then sure. But that's an important detail you left out. XD

yes sorry i thought it was implied lol. i mean if we go from each end- the most methodical being bosses, and least being mob packs, its logical the middle ground should be in between. this was even attempted in poe1 with exiles, and then 'accompanied by map bosses' mod. and i thought it was interesting. and i know ppl hate AN mobs because they are foobared but imo they were the most fun in poe1. i just don;t think this is the direction poe2 is heading

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GregoryAdams#7051 wrote:

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AintCare#6513 wrote:

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GregoryAdams#7051 wrote:

The problem is that this is a goal that is incompatible with the very nature of this particular subgenre of ARPGs.

ARPGs that are in some way descended from Diablo 2 all have a relatively simple game loop:
kill monsters -> get better gear and level up -> kill bigger monsters -> get even better gear and level up -> ...

Naturally, every player quickly realizes that the faster they can execute this loop, the faster they can progress through the game, and experience content that they haven't previously seen.

The only way you'd get more deliberate combat is if you remove the incentive to increase the pace of this loop.

So, as a stupid example, you could say that during any 5 second interval only 1 monster can give you XP and drop items, thereby removing the incentive to build characters that can kill more than 1 monster every 5 seconds.

Or you could make it so that only the boss of an area gives you XP and drops items, but the boss arena only "unlocks" after you've been in the map for at least 2 minutes.

Every single thing I can think of sounds awful. If you want a slow ARPG, then I'm afraid that you'll have to throw 99% of this game in the bin and start over.

weird that you didn't suggest decreasing mob density. like one of the most glaring issues here.

Because if you decrease mob density people will just optimize for movement speed.

Only if the maps are fucking huge.