Genuine question for the one-button build guys and screen clearer enthusiasts.

I was watching one of the interviews Jonathan gave recently and I yet again have heard questions related to that and it's just that one thing that always leaves me completely baffled.

I don't know of any other game where people ask for this kind of thing, literally none... on that note.. what other games do you play where there's farming involved, is it also the case that you have/want one button builds and screen clears there too?

But beyond that, I struggle to understand... what is it that compels some people so much to want these kind of things? The only real reason I can think of is that farming is somehow the most important thing to you and everything else takes a backseat... therefore anything that makes farming easier and less of a hassle is the most desired thing for you.... and in that case, you'd probably want one button builds and screen clears with each click... or even no-button builds.

But then, if farming is your sole purpose, how is this fun to you for more then a week or so?

One button builds, no matter how people might try to spin it, are just too simple and become boring really fast... you're simply not engaging much with combat and it's only natural it gets boring fast...

The same thing can be said about one-tapping everything with screen clears... if you were to compare it with other games.. it's as if you have an ultimate ability to use all the time, or having cheat codes activated... it might be fun for a few minutes or so but it gets boring really fast because you're not really engaging with anything.

Imagine if in every other game you play or would've played, everything just died in 1 hit with 1 button... does that make it a good game for you? How long would you even play that? Why is it something you seek here and why don't you seek it there as well?

The only other reason I can think of that people push for this kind of thing is probably PoE1's combat limitations... essentially, because PoE1 had limited combat possibilities, the combat itself couldn't be too engaging... and pressing more then one button there didn't really feel particularly exciting (piano flasking for example)... and that's why people probably leaned towards less and less friction in PoE1 as farming was pretty much the only exciting thing to do there.

That being said, PoE2 is a whole nother beast and has different possibilities. Key takeaways from PoE1 shouldn't have applied here...

If you don't enjoy the early game combat feel/gameplay of PoE 2, then ask yourself why that is... because when you ask the game to embrace 1 button builds and screen clears it essentially means you either don't care about gameplay or you don't like it much and you're probably only playing for the farming aspect...

One of the things that sadly proves my points here is the really early player drop off in a new league and even the league model's existence itself to begin with.

PoE has some of steepest player drop-offs in the entire gaming industry... despite having tons of content to explore on paper...

Why do you even have to question it? I like vanilla ice cream, others like chocolate ice cream. I don't make forum posts on why do some people like chocolate ice cream. I just enjoy my vanilla ice cream.

Try it.

Dopamine. Really just that.

People make the error to conflate it with fun, but they are very distinct, and most of the time they do not coincide.

They can say things like "cause it's fun" but it's not. If it is, it's just for 5 minutes.
And yes it sounds presumptious, and it's easy to oppose this with the typical "de gustibus", reality is there's no normally functioning human being that finds pressing a single button for hours on end "fun".

It's dopaminergic, a deformation of modern lifestyle, that we didn't evolve around.

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Didaco#9615 wrote:

They can say things like "cause it's fun" but it's not. If it is, it's just for 5 minutes.
And yes it sounds presumptious, and it's easy to oppose this with the typical "de gustibus", reality is there's no normally functioning human being that finds pressing a single button for hours on end "fun".

It's dopaminergic, a deformation of modern lifestyle, that we didn't evolve around.

armchair neuroscience it is? there is actually not much difference in dopamine triggers btween one and 5 button pressing. If you want to argue with the lack of "surprise", this happens in both playstyles and situations. And fun? thats completely sujective, and yes, being gratified through interal drugs is a common source of fun. Just look at most hobby athletes, nothing wrong with that...

the slow methodical gameplay dudes also gain dopamine, but more from selfsatisfaction than from loot, nothing more, and most importantly, no need to feel superior.

Have you ever played a Cyclone character on POE1?? Some one-button builds are:

1. Fun because they are easier to manage

2. Faster to move through the map because you walk and click and move on. Not spam 4 different skills to combo a chain to kill one pack of mobs.

3. Interesting to see what people come up with and what triggers from the one button build. I like the idea of a triggered system. The meta gems in POE2 are so nerfed that any real damage is minimal anymore.

4. The biggest challenge I face is learning to stay alive and building around a specific skill to get to the endgame. By the time I arrive, I want things to progressively get easier NOT More difficult. I want to be able to cast a few skills on a boss and focus on dodging mechanics. I don't want to worry about cast order and making sure 6 skills hit the boss while trying to dodge boss mechanics. This is too painful for some builds and makes the game easier for others.

5. Customization. As a player in a game that promises customization, I should have the choice of one-button or 5 button builds... Don't offer choice and then take it away. I'd just move on to another game.

6. Casual Players, like myself, want simplicity and ease of use.

Hopefully this helps you see from someone else's point of view who supports the one-button builds.

Wait until you hear about people that spend almost all their time trading rather than playing...

In addition to the challenge of build-crafting, some zero/one button builds aren't really so, since positioning can be pretty damn important.
(Emphasized even more in PoE2 thanks to WASD, Dodge-Roll, boss fights ?)

I'll try to make an analogy. I like gun games. But I like it when it's semi realistic. should not be dropping a full mag in someone just to have them bunny hop around me.

Similarly, If I'm swinging a big axe/mace, but on the enemies seem to act like a foam weapon it them, instead of loosing body parts and such, it will make my character feel weak and remove me a bit from the roleplaying aspect of the game and makes it more into a math game about making numbers match (which takes me out of the atmosphere of being an adventurer in a strange land).

Maybe the game is boring when requiring a bunch of APM per map per farming session, due to the way it's balanced around not dropping useful stuff, frustrating elements and extending your playtime artificially?

I'd gladly play a combo-based single player ARPG, but when you're competing against 200k-500k players with devs afraid of normalizing the progression curve and deeply in love with RNG elements, i kinda get the Vampire Survivor players here and in PoE 1 both.

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tsunamikun#0433 wrote:

armchair neuroscience it is? there is actually not much difference in dopamine triggers btween one and 5 button pressing.

Based on what are you saying that?

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tsunamikun#0433 wrote:

If you want to argue with the lack of "surprise", this happens in both playstyles and situations.

Gross approximation, there A LOT more that can happen the more you let time go (aka pressing five buttons) than in the short time (where you delete multiple screens of enemies in a single button press).
Which situation is more likely to give you more surprises?

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tsunamikun#0433 wrote:

And fun? thats completely sujective, and yes, being gratified through interal drugs is a common source of fun. Just look at most hobby athletes, nothing wrong with that...

If there's sarcasm to be picked up in these sentences, it's completely flying over my head.
In case there isn't: no, most drugs are not fun, they might enable it, but most just make you miserable.

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tsunamikun#0433 wrote:

the slow methodical gameplay dudes also gain dopamine, but more from selfsatisfaction than from loot, nothing more, and most importantly, no need to feel superior.

It's not a matter of having whatever superior to whatever else.
The point is: which approach is more game-development friendly? The slow and methodical or the one button?

If you were a developer and had to implement in your game whatever amount of unique bosses, and you spend a ton of resources on it but the player base just deletes that in a second without experiencing anything of the hardwork you put into it, wouldn't you feel like there's something wrong at a very basic level?

There are other example of games that have hit dev-burnout because uncontrolled player powercreep: Warframe hasn't released a good bossfight in years (unless in very specific scenarios, for example: you don't control your op Warframe, your load out is not available, the enemy is invulnerable most of the time and you can only do Super Mario levels of mechanics in order to deal damage, etc).
The old team of Warframe basically didn't want to work on new bosses because it was utterly useless and a waste of resources... But lo and behold, as soon as they switch to a new game where powercreep doesn't exist, developing bosses is suddenly not a problem.

I wonder why?

And yes, dopamine should come after some form of overcoming a challenge, denying this would be equal to denying that overuse of modern technology isn't a problem for the brain (doomscrolling?).

Super Mario Brothers is a videogame where you only press the jump button and where you can't even attack directly most of the time. According to you, Super Mario Brothers cannot be a fun game.