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

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alhazred70#2994 wrote:

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Phrazz#3529 wrote:

We're already seeing HUGE delays and minimal support for PoE 1, so the "just stick to PoE 1" argument is mute. At best.

I have sympathy for this. Tbh I can't wait for the die hard POE1 clear speed fans to go back to POE1 and let 2 be its own thing. I expect the main reason for completely ignoring POE1 outside of obvious manhours to POE2 into EA, is that they want to give everyone a fair shot to at least try to adapt to a slower pace and higher skill cap without an immediate POE1 league for everyone to rage quit into.

I feel like GGG is "starting to figure it out" they showed this when they forked POE2 off as a separate game because they finally realized the POE1 players were going to riot. They still got the Riot tbh. But they'll probably mollify that with a POE1 league announcement soon(TM)

It's probably easier at this point to bring 1 to the higher graphical standard and update/ build on it, than make 2 into sth resembling 1 for zoom crowd.

Would be great btw, I want to play both and hopefully very different.

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AintCare#6513 wrote:

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GregoryAdams#7051 wrote:

I mean, the base versions of the encounters in the campaign might as well be a bit more handcrafted/controlled.
Their versions in maps with modifiers etc... they can go wild there.

exactly and this is due to rng, hence my question to begin with. how can you do this with the amount of rng anyway?

Well, for example, you can add things like quest rewards. Resist rings, for example. To give you some kind of baseline not-completely-RNG thing you can rely on.

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Rabarbar_Lichy#7553 wrote:

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alhazred70#2994 wrote:

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Phrazz#3529 wrote:

We're already seeing HUGE delays and minimal support for PoE 1, so the "just stick to PoE 1" argument is mute. At best.

I have sympathy for this. Tbh I can't wait for the die hard POE1 clear speed fans to go back to POE1 and let 2 be its own thing. I expect the main reason for completely ignoring POE1 outside of obvious manhours to POE2 into EA, is that they want to give everyone a fair shot to at least try to adapt to a slower pace and higher skill cap without an immediate POE1 league for everyone to rage quit into.

I feel like GGG is "starting to figure it out" they showed this when they forked POE2 off as a separate game because they finally realized the POE1 players were going to riot. They still got the Riot tbh. But they'll probably mollify that with a POE1 league announcement soon(TM)

It's probably easier at this point to bring 1 to the higher graphical standard and update/ build on it, than make 2 into sth resembling 1 for zoom crowd.

Would be great btw, I want to play both and hopefully very different.

I'm with you on this one I might play both at times, I don't love what POE1 became I wanted something a lot closer to what we've gottn with 2 (up to the point where it gets dumb again in maps) but I can still enjoy myself and Settlers was a good time.

The Cast on crit, cast on freese, etc. would have to go. They are always going to make clearing trash mobs and non-boss enemies trivial with the correct build. If they want the game to be more deliberate, they can't put in a system to automate attacks. This is like asking: how do you make a clicker not play like a clicker.

The skill gems already make the game pretty hard to balance.

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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.

The problem is the huge efficiency difference between optimized and non-optimized builds and then balance the game around only optimized builds while allowing some form of snowballing with an in-game market. It is fine for an optimized build to have double the chances to make mistakes but still come out on top, which I think the game went the totally wrong way of nerfing player defensive abilities while putting little if any restrictions on offensive scaling. If GGG really want to slow the game down they need to tune the offensive scaling way down and focus on making interesting defensive scaling, as lowered/limited dps is the only way to um, “make sure” people are engaged with any mechanism they make instead of current meta of killing enemy off screen so you never need to worry about how you may be killed.

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alhazred70#2994 wrote:

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Phrazz#3529 wrote:

We're already seeing HUGE delays and minimal support for PoE 1, so the "just stick to PoE 1" argument is mute. At best.

I have sympathy for this. Tbh I can't wait for the die hard POE1 clear speed fans to go back to POE1 and let 2 be its own thing. I expect the main reason for completely ignoring POE1 outside of obvious manhours to POE2 into EA, is that they want to give everyone a fair shot to at least try to adapt to a slower pace and higher skill cap without an immediate POE1 league for everyone to rage quit into.

I feel like GGG is "starting to figure it out" they showed this when they forked POE2 off as a separate game because they finally realized the POE1 players were going to riot. They still got the Riot tbh. But they'll probably mollify that with a POE1 league announcement soon(TM)

Personally, I'm not asking for clear speed. I'm asking for the game to be better.

so am I i just find the current bones to be really exciting and promising of greater things.

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alhazred70#2994 wrote:

so am I i just find the current bones to be really exciting and promising of greater things.

The bones are there. What's frightening, is all of the anti-fun, deliberate design decisions.

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Sutopia#6937 wrote:

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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.

The problem is the huge efficiency difference between optimized and non-optimized builds and then balance the game around only optimized builds while allowing some form of snowballing with an in-game market. It is fine for an optimized build to have double the chances to make mistakes but still come out on top, which I think the game went the totally wrong way of nerfing player defensive abilities while putting little if any restrictions on offensive scaling. If GGG really want to slow the game down they need to tune the offensive scaling way down and focus on making interesting defensive scaling, as lowered/limited dps is the only way to um, “make sure” people are engaged with any mechanism they make instead of current meta of killing enemy off screen so you never need to worry about how you may be killed.

Yeah, that's a good point. Offense scales so much compared to defense, that investing in defense "feels" like a waste. If the returns on both types of investment were similar, that would result in more builds with more balance between offense and defense.

Good topic to think about.
But we still haven't heard from GGG: what is their vision?

There are 2 opinions on the matter right now, but both must be confirmed by devs themselves first.

1. They added zoomzoom POE1 endgame just because they had no time to prepare "correct POE 2 endgame" which is in plans.

2. They added zoomzoom POE1 endgame because this was the vision right from the start (from those times when they said that POE2 will be just a big POE1 update with 2 different campaigns and better graphics).


Personally, I'd love to see the first variant where you have to move very slowly and methodically to some distant endgame goal just like you do it in the campaign. With visual clarity, tactical combat, clever combos, interesting monsters, bosses and all along those lines. But is it possible to do? With current skills/supports/passives - no way. Too much powercreep and too many things to keep in check. Even Cruel difficulty is ironically less cruel than first three acts because of that.

If, however, the plan was to make POE1 campaign right from the start, then I'd say the very concept has failed, because right now campaing/endgame are 2 different games with very different feeling. Those who like 1st part will stop playing upon reaching 2nd (we already see this when people keep rolling new chars right after A3 cruel - but what will they do when they ll try all 6 classes? Right.) And those who like 2nd part might stop playing the game just because they hate doing part 1. In this case, I'm afraid, campaign difficulty will be nerfed and the game will return to POE1 formula totally (and eventually POE1 will be forgotten all at once as there will be no sense to support it, as it happens now with Diablo III).