Open Letter to GGG From Hardcore Player

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inethil#2258 wrote:

Hello GGG

As most of us understand right now, hardcore is not genuinely viable in this game. There are a few reasons for this, but for the purposes of this discussion, I would rather begin with a game perfectly designed for the hardcore experience, then we can derive from that an analysis of what makes it work and, perhaps, see why POE 2 is not there currently - and of course how it could be.

Diablo 2 is a game perfectly balanced for hardcore. Speaking as someone who plays exclusively hardcore in that game and has played that game since it's release, 25 years ago, I can point to the most basic reason for its success in this specific area.

In Diablo 2, if my hardcore character dies I always, ALWAYS, know exactly how I died and it is always a skill issue. I simply made a mistake. Hardcore, in order to be a viable experience, caters to players willing to entertain every contingency. It is not just about skills and defenses, it is about how one reacts to situations which are higher in threat than others. In order to be successful in this, the player must be able to learn the game extremely well, much better than a softcore player who can afford to be surprised with situations for which he or she is unprepared.

So, the monsters are distinct, which keeps the game fun, but it also enables different strategies for dealing with such monsters. Second, no monster has capabilities that are so overwhelming that the player has no viable tactical options. Third, the player can always see what is going on. As I mentioned, I always know how I died on those, now extremely rare, occasions when I do, because I can always see what is happening on the screen. It is clear and intelligible.

The greatest offenders on this list, from the point of view of POE, are on death effects and ground effects. There are few on death effects in Diablo 2, but the those that do exist are well telegraphed or understood by the community. Cold monsters will always explode on death and that explosion will always occur with a predictable radius. Thus, the player can adjust. Some on death effects are well telegraphed by monster type, if you encounter that type of monster the player always knows that encounter will end with a bang - a well telegraphed bang, but one the player saw coming because, whether normal mob or rare variant, the on death effect is tied to a clearly recognizable monster type.

This is the core of it. On death effects must never be random, must never be a complete surprise, or HC players will die and - rightly - feel cheated in a way, because the game design did not reward his or her extensive preparation. An overhaul of this system, based on an adoption of this design philosophy, would fix on death effects in a way that makes hardcore viable. But that's half the story.

The other half is ground effects and the impossibility of ever having visual clarity while they exist. The answer is simple - get rid of ALL non-player ground effects. All of them. I'm not sure why GGG has been so married to ground effects, but they are universally horrible for the hardcore experience and, in the current meta, as long as they exist, no amount of preparation will ever suffice to keeping a hardcore player alive. Why?

Because you can't prepare for something you can neither predict, nor even see when it occurs. If you intend to make a game in which players feel rewarded for tactical skill and preparation in terms of their survival, the definition of hardcore, this crutch must be abandoned completely. Now I am not talking about the occasional patch of lava, which is predictable and will not spawn randomly under your feet, but the current level of visual chaos where nothing is predictable and so many things are happening beneath your feet that intelligent adjustment becomes impossible.

Survival, in this current game, becomes a matter of luck and that does not reward skill. All you can do is layer defenses, then layer more, then layer more and ... it will never be enough.

I sincerely hope you take this to heart GGG, because your game would have so much more replayability. Consider how HC players bank gear - because they expect to have to start over, having learned painful lessons. Where a sofcore player replaces gear and moves on, the Hardcore player builds a bank for his team of current - and future - characters. It's a very different approach and very sticky. These aren't the players who beat the season and drop, no, these are players devoting serious time and wishing a season they are enjoying would last longer.

They may always be a smaller cohort, sure, but they are vastly more devoted if the game properly rewards their investment of time, skill and preparation through adhering to basic rules. Make these adjustments and that small, but devoted cohort will grow, while not penalizing softcore players - because even softcore players, on dying, prefer to be able to look at the screen and say to themselves ...

Man, I should have seen that coming ... meaning, it should ALWAYS be a skill issue which, therefore, rewards skills and incentivizes their acquisition.

Thank you for your time. As a long standing enjoyer of POE, I hope you steer toward this goal and away from the growing screen chaos we are now dealing with. I look forward, in other words, for my preferred game mode to be viable in this game.

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inethil#2258 wrote:

If GGG resists making these changes I would love to better understand why. Ground and on death effects just feel so 'gotcha' - a lazy way in which to increase game difficulty.