Gambling Simulator rather than ARPG

Ok, Kieran and Will. If you are so sure the development team will bother with our posts here, this was my original email. Bullet formatting and alignment got messed up because of this forum's limitations:

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Hi GGG,

I've decided to spend some time writing this instead of posting on the forum. I noticed most of my posts in the official forums get drown out by plenty other things. Consider this my personal message to you, between me and the developers, and the one who have the power and authority to steer the direction of the game. I don't need the rest of the player base, or fake accounts to come invalidate what I am going to convey to you. I will try to keep it as respectful as possible. And go through it again for profanities before sending. Please, don't just simply toss this email to trash without forwarding it to people who I wish can see this; perhaps Jonathan, a fellow D2 lover.

So how has it been GGG, and POE2 team? I hear the number of active players has been dipping downwards. Still, I got to give credit when it is due. Several "saving-grace" updates right after 0.2.0 updates have been good, at least to me. Keep up the good work, team. But so many efforts and changes, it's been missing the right spot. Hear me out and perhaps, it can entice players to come back.

The root problem still remains and no matter how much band-aid workaround/solutions y'all apply, the root of problem still persists. There are still bugs in the campaign and endgame that requires attention. And I believe these won't take up much of your time to fix them. I will get right to the details later on these bugs. Because first, I want to talk about the issues on the non-bugs, which are currently features of the game. As the email subject suggests, this game, at this point of writing, is too much of a Gambling Simulator, with very little to look forward to even when the RNG-God favours your attempted roll.

*Prelude:*
I remember back in my Diablo 2 days; I can ALWAYS depend on runewords. The outcome of the item I wanted was ALWAYS absolute. I go secret-cow level or Baal-run or whatever, in hell-mode, I find the normal items with the right number of sockets I need (even no socket, no problem, there's recipes to make new holes), and I plug in the runes in specific order, and the item I want will ALWAYS turn out to be what it is. With only a few negligible modifiers coming out on a random value range; most of them scales with your character level. But the value-range is not wide. There's plenty more set items and unique items, it is what it is without any huge random modifiers on them. You find it, you ID it, you'll know the item and its exact modifiers and expected values for any particular item name. We have MORE controls how we want any specific item to become from large list of crafting recipes. There's plenty you can do with Horadric Cube with generally absolute outcome. The only "Gambling" element if I can reference it to, is the drop rate. We go in with a huge party, and the only one with the highest Magic-Find % gears land the last blow on the boss, and we'll see what goodies it'll drop! Perfect Kinder-Surprise experience. We go again and again. Nothing really discourages us. To clarify, the Stone of Jordan ring, Annihilus charm, Hellfire Torch charm, and a few others "one of best D2 items" including some full set items Tal Rasha, they may have modifiers with random range, but the main benefits of these items are the absolute +1, +3 to all skills, etc. The rest are negligible. Just a plus and better trading worth if the item got max roll on those concerned value ranges. The only time gears get destroyed is because you never repair them and they break, or it's due to hacking duplication and you got scam-traded. NEVER, will it go POOF due to bad luck in reroll, crafting, failure to repair, etc.

*POE2 shortcomings as Gaming Simulator:*
In almost everything we see in POE2, it's always "RANDOM" this "RANDOM" that! Very little control. Most unique items are trash despite the beautiful artwork. So, most people turn to crafting rare items to help them with this unforgiving punishing game. This is where POE2 becomes an ugly Gambling Simulator. As I commit so many hours into this game, 1,100hrs and growing, I'm increasingly agreeing to a lot of online posts/articles about the gambling element of this game! See Reddit and Steam Reviews ngl. That, it's a BAD gambling experiences with BAD odds and rewards. It is so discouraging that it is driving players away; among other not-fun experiences in POE2 and reasons.

*My negative experiences from this "Gambling-with-RNG-God":*
Say, I found a spear after a gruelling fight with a map boss. The map is Level 80 and the item level reads 81. I ID it and it comes with 150% Increased Physical Damage and everything else lame modifiers only befitting on items level 10 and below. A potentially great item but mired with unprotected range of random modifiers with unbelievable range of random values. You think the crafting orbs can help you? Nah. Read the description. It's all Random this random that. Not going to waste the currencies like that. Oh wait, there's the Recombinator. But so far, it's been an Incinerator to me. Fine. I keep aside the spear, hoping to find another spear that carries a decent value of "Adds 1?-2? Physical Damage". I finally found another spear that says Adds 30-50 Physical Damage and as usual, all other stats are disappointing. So, let's try the Incinerator I mean the Recombinator. I pick the two stats I want, and the machine tells me the chance so low, that buying a lottery will be even more successful. Fine, the two items by themselves are worthless due to the other bad stats. I gather the expedition materials required to power up the machine, and then, POOF. Expedition materials, or Artifacts from at least 2 runs of Kalguuran-Tentage maps, GONE. The two items, EVAPORATED. Ok fine. I thought give it another try since GGG is putting in effort to try to turn the game around. 10-20 tries later (remember, think about the time and effort taken to re-acquire similar spears), finally, I got a new spear with 150% Increase Physical Damage and Adds 30-50 Physical Damage. But it's only 2 modifiers. Ok, lets put in 4 more Exalted Orbs to make it decent. 4 clicks later, I get "+40 to Accuracy Rating", "Gain 10 Life per Enemy Killed", "Gain 10 Mana per Enemy Killed", "+10 to Intelligence". How broken my heart is…

Points from this experience:
- It's like, you pay $$$ (Expedition Artefacts) for your lottery ticket, the winning numbers revealed but you didn't win. Now, you didn't just lose the $$$ for buying the ticket; you lose both your hands (The two items for recombination), ok fine, too extreme, no bodily harm, but you lose your wallet on top of losing the lottery, because it is from GGG, Great Gambling Game.
- Even if you won (e.g. successful recombination), you want to collect your prize, but you have to go through more processes that will dilute away the worth of your prize (like, getting lame random stats from Exalted Orbs).
- Even if it is 3 lousy stats from each side, the % of success is devilishly unforgiving. Does GGG employ Schadenfreude (look it up) people? The % of failure should not scale this dramatically when picking the better/more stats to recombine.
- How many players are using this machine btw? I know many, including my pro-friend who pulled me into the game, told me and others to stay the F away from this scam machine.

What could be done different and BETTER:
- Currently, I feel the successful recombination chances are designed to punish attempts at greatness, much less at perfection. The % of selecting good modifier tiers should not be this devastating. Don't forget, we still need to succumb to additional lame random modifiers afterwards. The metrics table for the successful chances needs serious rework. Are you running a casino here? And a scam one at that?
- Failure to recombine should not result in the destruction of the original items. The cost to power up the machine is a cost GREAT enough. Either the recombinator is free to power up and there's risk of items getting destroyed, or there's cost to use the machine but the items stay when failed to recombine, giving us another run with the same artefacts cost (I want this. It's already a great dumb-luck challenge to get those items to recombine, I rather not lose them).
- The usage and the status of Exalted Orbs, can't be helped at this point. You guys are just too deep the rabbit hole for this gambling path. So;
- - Fracturing Orb, is already so HARD to find, for it's worth and the conditions (Minimum 4 stats, and only 1 time fracturing) of using it, it should not be "RANDOM". For the worth and value of Fracturing Orb, it should be "SELECTED". Don't worry about this getting over-powered. It's not dropping like Augmentation Orb. Its rarity will speak for its value and ability. And why you guys worry so much about breaking the balance of the game? 1,100hrs in the game, I only found 2.
- - Chaos Orb, so random, so uncontrollable, isn't cheap too. It removes random modifier and adds another one, including the chance to remove the good modifier. Sure, you have Omen of Whittling to assert some kind of control, to remove the lousiest modifier upon using Chaos Orb. But the next modifier getting rerolled in is still freakishly RANDOM! Also, this Omen, I've never seen it in my life. Why is that? As rare as the Mirror which I still haven't seen any? Make the Omen more frequent in rituals! Life is already so hard in POE2, by increasing this Omen to be more accessible, what, is it going to break the game? Remember the fact, at this point, it's no longer attractive to play anymore lol.
- - Items receiving modifiers, must be protected with proper low-end and high-end caps. For example, a Level 82 items must not be getting T5 and above lousy stats. It should be having T1 20%, T2 23%, T3 27%, T4 30%. Each of these tiers still have their own value range. But at least, the potentially good item will not be wasted by T5 and worse stats. A Level 1 item from normal Clearfell, should be T7 15% T8 22% T9 28% T10 35%. If GGG needs help setting the metrics table on which item level should have what chances of which tier, I will gladly assist.
- - Divine Orbs, randomising all the values on any item, including good values, other than the one and ONLY one protected by the Fracturing Orb. It's one big gambling simulation, this one. There should be an Omen to provide more controls. Don't forget, it is still random in the rerolling. Introducing these omens won't break the game, at least, not much more than GGG already done lol no offense. You can have 3 types of omens for this scenario. For example, Omen of Betterment that helps Divine Orb reroll 3 lowest modifier, Omen of Greater Betterment for 2, and Omen of Perfect Betterment for 1 lowest modifier.

*More ideas to improve the disappointing experiences of crafting:*
Oh, so much more but at this point, I think I will just list the bugs/issue first. I fear this email may get tossed away.

*BUT WAIT, first, let's talk about the unique items situation:*
Every unique item comes with a huge insane range of values of their modifiers. It is evident in the trade listings; most of them are worthless. I buy most that lists for 1 Regal orb and below to disenchant for Chance Shards. I have nothing much to say about the Chance Orbs as I think they function like what they are; original white item gets destroyed upon failure, fine by me. But the 99% of unique items deserves more attention instead of just another chance shard. It's too disrespectful to the ones creating them, in the naming, the thought, the artwork, etc. So, hear me out. What if, we can use the recombinator for unique items to improve them, OF COURSE WITHOUT EVAPORATING THEM.
- Recombinator now accepts two identical unique items.
- Recombining unique items will always be successful.
- It will improve the values of the unique item on each recombination.
- For example, a Northpaw Suede Bracers is;
- - (15-25) to Evasion Rating
- - Adds (3-5) to (8-10) Physical Damage to Attacks
- - (10-15%) Increased Critical Hit Bonus
- - Base Critical Hit Chance for Attacks with Weapon is 7% (Unscalable Value)
- And for case study, I have;
- - 20 to Evasion Rating
- - Adds 5 to 8 Physical Damage to Attacks
- - 15% Increased Critical Hit Bonus
- - Base Critical Hit Chance for Attacks with Weapon is 7%
- I found another, and regardless the values on this copy, if I smash this identical-named unique together using the recombinator, it will improve the stats by a random amount, like;
- - 21 to Evasion Rating
- - Adds 5 to 9 Physical Damage to Attacks
- - 15% Increased Critical Hit Bonus
- - Base Critical Hit Chance for Attacks with Weapon is 7%
- If a particular modifier is already at best value, the rest of the modifiers continue to get the small improvements.
- If all modifiers are already at max value, the recombinator tells you the item is already maxed.
- Again, this will not break the game. In fact, players will treat the unique items with more respect and excitement now, instead of just tossing them away. Most don't even bother to disenchant for a Chance Shard. Carrying them back also pointless as it sells for, 1 fricking K??? What? An Ultimate Potion Flask cost more from NPC! Anyway, with this improvement, people will be acquiring the same identical ones in effort to improve the ones they already have.
- AND again, most existing unique items in the game are undesirable unlike Diablo 2. In the current POE2 unique items pool, only a handful have specific uses and worth wielding. So, with this ability to smash two together to improve the unique item's modifier values, completionists like me with Unique Item Stash tab, will be collecting the best, and will have lesser disdain on coming across more unique items as we play.
- Think about it, it'll entice players to spend on procuring more stash tabs, NO?

*Campaign issues:*
I get it that this is still Early Access and there's no news on whether proper story line Act 4, 5 and 6 gets rolled out or not. It better not be a separate DLC to suck $$$ or POE3 future thing. I want to see the story through! Nonetheless, here's something that is bothering me and other "completionist" players:
- Act 3 Cruel - Rootdredge not registering as completed despite defeating the boss multiple times, since the beginning to time this issue already here. Should be a clear-cut thing like how you guys fixed Ignaduk Cruel mode.
- Act 3 Cruel - Ultimatum cannot be completed despite using T80 coin. Or am I missing out something, like I need to down the Taskmaster to close this?
- Act 3 Cruel - What is this Undamaged Core thing? I've cleaned up Aggorat up and down many times. This symbol still appears lit up and uncompleted.
- Act 2 Cruel - Ascend to Power, related to Trials of Sekhema, the dialogue with Zarka should be fixed. It's not hard to fix this actually. Even in cruel mode, with or without ascendency, we should be able to instruct the Ardura to go to the trials, and then register a quest completion when we use T80 coin and defeat all 4 floors. I know that, even in cruel mode, when we attempt the trials, the trial lobby map always appears to be in Normal mode. This can be easily fixed, right?

*Endgame issues:*
- Some towers are bugged out, I believe from the 0.2.0 update, where the update removes excessive towers and tries to add more power ones. Perhaps, at this point, if the tower says, "Already Used", create something "Would you like to close and mark this tower completed instead?", and when we click yes, the slots for tablets gets closed up and the node stays green. PLEASE!!!
- Citadel, failed, stays red forever like a prick on your skin that cannot be removed. Come on, at least when a citadel fails, the node becomes a normal Vaal theme map without any modifiers, to let us clean it up and close it. It becomes GREEN. And not a constant reminder that we FAILED!!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!

Instead of introducing more secondary stuffs (What bullcrap Azmeri spirit and new socketables with scam-drop rates). please just focus on primary stuffs like basic bugs like mentioned above, AND THE STORY LINE, 4 5 and 6!!!

That's all I have to say for now. My weekend is drawing to a close and I wish to get other things done. Despite my huge disappointment and heartbreak from the unforgiving nature of POE2, I had still bought a big supporter pack. My Steam negative review is about to change. Improve the undesirable and uncontrollable gambling aspect of this game, and I will update it to positive review.

A Very Hopeful Exile
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ShingoYabuki#8098 wrote:

*POE2 shortcomings as Gaming Simulator:*
In almost everything we see in POE2, it's always "RANDOM" this "RANDOM" that! Very little control. Most unique items are trash despite the beautiful artwork.

Truer words have never been spoken.

Good post op. Dude, you legit made me excited for a moment, mentally enjoying good itemization by naming some of the uniques in Diablo 2.

I had really big hopes for this game when I first saw items like Ingenuity and of course it got gutted down.

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Oinkaments#6390 wrote:

Truer words have never been spoken.

Thanks! I thought I'm alone in my hopes for POE2...

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Oinkaments#6390 wrote:

Good post op. Dude, you legit made me excited for a moment, mentally enjoying good itemization by naming some of the uniques in Diablo 2.

Aye... That Anni charm, thousands of hours, hundreds more in uber content, I've gotten only one. Tons of Hellfire Torches though. The only runeword I need; Enigma! Bwahahaa A Necro teleports with his army. You cannot say no this FUN time!

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Oinkaments#6390 wrote:

I had really big hopes for this game when I first saw items like Ingenuity and of course it got gutted down.

I dun get it why must it be nerfed. Is 80% a lot? Even when nerfed, it fails at the opportunity to include Amulet into the benefit. Actually, the old belt still won't make your character invincible. I still die left right up down center even with everything at 75% resist max, so much life and evasion scaled from the belt. No use at all...

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ShingoYabuki#8098 wrote:

*POE2 shortcomings as Gaming Simulator:*
In almost everything we see in POE2, it's always "RANDOM" this "RANDOM" that! Very little control.

Exactly.
I would like to add here: Trials of Sekhema and Chaos rely far too much on Random RNG debuffs to increase the challenge.

And when fighting Zarokh, if you're unlucky enough to get a hourglass layout that's on all 4 corners of the arena, then your run is over.
Even if you have had a perfect run, full honour etc.
There's nothing you can do about it, no strategy you can employ.
Nothing.
All this RNG is quite frankly demoralising and the opposite of fun.

I won't even bother adding anything. You pretty much nailed it. Theres barely any fun to be had outside of the combat itself, and that gets old fast when theres no reason to even go into combat, as you aint gonna get shit. It's a sweat shop, and feels like its designed to cater to RMT.

Good luck.

funny you mention Diablo II since Diablo II was also a gambling simulator by design. Players to this day basically just repeat the campaign 3 times then grind the same 5 bosses / areas hoping for extremely rare drops (and good rolls on those drops), or incredibly rare high runes for the valuable rune words you mention. Many are of the opinion that rune words actually made Diablo II worse, but in either situation you are playing the game seeking rare drops, not because the core gameplay is very fun. If you're one of the few who even make it to D2 endgame, I'm sure you will love to see the re-used assets with different names, so you can play yet another slot machine, trying to farm a valuable torch that is probably 1/20 odds

In early access, POE2 already has infinitely more thought put into its endgame than the patched-together sloppy uber tristram bullshit that blizzard half assedly came up with, and yet that game is still somehow the gold standard. The reason why is because these games are entirely about loot and gambling and the loot in diablo 2 is GOOD. ARPGs are gambling simulators.

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Glowie_Zigger#5018 wrote:

funny you mention Diablo II since Diablo II was also a gambling simulator by design.

Yes, of course there is RNG but like OP said, the RNG mostly affect secondary affixes of an item. The big good thing on the item itself is usually locked down and the variance only occurs to min max around it. That distinction, is astronomically huge. And like you said, the itemization in D2 is actually good, unlike POE 2 that is a charsi food generator.

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Glowie_Zigger#5018 wrote:

ARPGs are gambling simulators.

Allow me to clarify.

In D2, you fight, you get random drops, having high MF% influence your chances of unique items. In POE2, Rarity % do similar work. Sure, you can call this gambling.

But you cannot ignore that D2's crafting recipes yield more controlled outcome! In POE2, it's an even bigger gambling APRG than most other popular ones! How many "random" words in the crafting currencies and material? Only one omen says "lowest".

And, D2, even without the additional uber content, I won't call tower runs gambling. I know every time I down that Countess, I'll get runes. I'll keep doing Hell-level Tower. I can combine lower runes to better ones. Outcome is absolute. There's no scenario where the supposedly rune drops won't drop and give me other craps. There's no scenario that if I get killed by the Countess, all my previously earned runes disappear. And when I get the runes I need to craft Enigma, I know I will have teleport skill. It will not say failed to craft and my base item goes poof. Oh yeah, it sure hell is grindy, especially to rush multiple spare characters to hell level hell forge to smash the soul stones for high tier runes. Yes, it's random. But the gambling element is not as risky and unpleasantly unpredictable than current POE2. I know a high tier rune will drop. Well, in POE2, you know you will get Item Level 80+ if you run T15 WS + Irridated nodes. But are you agreeing to that level 80 item getting normal-clearfell level modifiers?

Perhaps you're one of the few that LOVES swimming in so much randomness in POE2. I'm just saying, this game can do better with much lesser "Random" and more "Selected" or "Chosen" modifier. And half of my proposed suggestion considered and implemented. Will those improvement destroy your gambling addiction with POE2?

They yield controlled outcome of mostly junk items. Most players don't know how crafting works in Diablo II, dont want to alt+tab out of game to pull up some giant table and go acquire a perfect amethyst, a jewel, and a bunch of random items that never seem to drop when you're looking for them. All this just to get an item that sucks compared to rune words and unique items for most gear slots

When you run Countess you are looking for Um and up, more or less, and you are looking for keys. You are still gambling your time for High runes, and every run you get Thuls and Els was a failed run. The concept is still the same.

Now you want to talk about Enigma.. Maybe this has changed in Project Diablo / Resurrected... But it used to be basically pointless to make any character other than a Sorceress as your ladder starter because procuring a jah and ber rune without teleport would be agonizing. So the entire game became about getting Enigma, once that runeword was patched into the game. The entire meta shifted and you dealt with the annoyance of playing an elemental character in a world full of mobs with elemental resistances, trying to grind out high runes so that you can play as another character. Really fun, right.

Also, you are not "crafting" Enigma. You already know what the item is going to be - basically just creating a unique item. There is actually less randomness in POE's runes, as in D2 your rune words had rolls (such as 30-40 to resistances or 1-2 to skills). With some rune words you are likely to roll a bad item that is worth less than the runes you spent making it.

You say you "know a high rune will drop". When? How many hours of running the same content before this guaranteed high rune drop? The chance of getting a very good rare item in POE2 approaches 99.9999% the longer you spend trying to farm one, so what is the difference here? The amount of trade-able stuff that drops in a single map on poe2 (for a player who knows what they are doing) puts diablo II to shame

It's really delusional to say that POE2 players have a gambling addiction, when you hold this Diablo II slot machine (devs called it this) on such a pedestal. You just sit there for hours plugging away at the same boring content until it drops the pixels you are looking for, yet this is not gambling? Give me a break. It's just binary gambling. Nothing until something. POE2 is dynamic and if you know what you are doing you dont have to grind your face against a wall for hours like this just waiting for the odds to roll in your favour.