Just 2 people have worked on balance so far... 5 in the future...?

Diablo 4 only has 1 person in charge of all of the tree/skill balance as well. Exponential scaling and bugged damage builds get left alone for multiple seasons because there's just no one available to smooth things out. It seems to be a really bad industry standard. Ultimately it's likely a human nature problem because adjusting numbers and timings in a database is extremely easy and once you get that job you make sure no one else is allowed input so that you can keep doing it by yourself forever.

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

Glad you qualify that by admitting it's possible you're wrong, because why should the game tell you in advance what mechanics to look out for or what type of damage bosses do beforehand? Where's the fun in knowing everything in advance? Where's the learning curve that lets you see an improvement in your gameplay?

I had a friend who came back to PoE1 a while back and didn't know how to get the 4th Voidstone and I realized. Literally nothing in the game tells you Uber Elder has it. I then laughed.

From a game design standpoint. Show, Don't Tell is often the best solution. Introduce players to a mechanic. Intensify said mechanic and or introduce a new mechanic. Do both mechanics at once or whatever. The player learns by playing and the stakes grow.

The major flaw with MMO style boss designs is that their mechanics are entirely unique to anything else in the game. Without good queues or dynamic interaction it's little more than trial and error.

Often when I design a boss I will make their nasty ability part of their introduction. Let the players see what the boss is capable of. Then when they miss that similar animation again, it's their fault.

An example would be that ghost from Act1 who throws a fit before attacking.

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DiabloImmoral#7632 wrote:

Diablo 4 only has 1 person in charge of all of the tree/skill balance as well. Exponential scaling and bugged damage builds get left alone for multiple seasons because there's just no one available to smooth things out. It seems to be a really bad industry standard. Ultimately it's likely a human nature problem because adjusting numbers and timings in a database is extremely easy and once you get that job you make sure no one else is allowed input so that you can keep doing it by yourself forever.

It's totally possible it's their philosophy to not touch these builds that exist because of bugged damage. Seen it before with Last Epoch also. GGG also has taken a stance where they only act swiftly when the behaviour is entirely unintentional such as when they noticed how many modifiers in the game had the Aura tag with Delirium league's Herald / Aura stackers. Considering that, I would not immediately jump to the conclusion that this stuff is left untouched only because of missing personell.

A person in that position must have a very deep understanding of the game, its code, and how systems interact with one another. So even if you hired more people today, their onboarding would take a minimum of 1, more likely 2 years, and while it's going on the person training the new staff would be less productive. It's more likely they moved people who have been with GGG to that new position.

Either way, it depends on what the philosophy is, but also on availabilty of people because not everyone can do this kind of job.

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Xzorn#7046 wrote:

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

Glad you qualify that by admitting it's possible you're wrong, because why should the game tell you in advance what mechanics to look out for or what type of damage bosses do beforehand? Where's the fun in knowing everything in advance? Where's the learning curve that lets you see an improvement in your gameplay?

I had a friend who came back to PoE1 a while back and didn't know how to get the 4th Voidstone and I realized. Literally nothing in the game tells you Uber Elder has it. I then laughed.

From a game design standpoint. Show, Don't Tell is often the best solution. Introduce players to a mechanic. Intensify said mechanic and or introduce a new mechanic. Do both mechanics at once or whatever. The player learns by playing and the stakes grow.

The major flaw with MMO style boss designs is that their mechanics are entirely unique to anything else in the game. Without good queues or dynamic interaction it's little more than trial and error.

Often when I design a boss I will make their nasty ability part of their introduction. Let the players see what the boss is capable of. Then when they miss that similar animation again, it's their fault.

An example would be that ghost from Act1 who throws a fit before attacking.

"Show, don't tell" is usually a great design principle with few exceptions. It relies on the player being able to perceive what's happening, but that may not always be possible due to screen clutter, colours matching.

Examples would be something like taking a red skill MTX to Sirus, or the arena being too noisy (again looking at you, Sirus), or when the arena is so big that the boss can wind up an attack while the player is offscreen (yep, Sirus... but also Exarch, Eater to a lesser degree).

That's why GGG is using distinct audio queues and voice lines to warn players something will happen. Humans are great at pattern recognition, so it's a great way to teach players what mechanics to expect. When Sirus shouts "DIE!" we know that he's going to use something particularily deadly. When Maven says "Stand still." we enter non-compliance mode. PoE can be quite hectic, but these cues elevate otherwise complicated mechanics.

As for your friend, leading up to there we follow the Maven, Eater and Exarch quest line which culminate in their respective Voidstones dropping. We thus learn that these major bosses will drop stones that make our Atlas better and open up the endgame more. Uber Elder though? No tell. At least not in the quest UI. We can see that 1 stone is missing, and if we open the quest list... there's a quest for The Elder. And it literally says "Defeat the memory of The Elder in the Shaper's Realm"

So I am not sure that the clues are missing. It's just your friend didn't check their quest log. By the time you've acquired the other 3 stones you're bound to have found a few Shaper/Elder maps, and defeating either boss will drop a key fragment that has the context clues to what's expected of the player. I think that's fine. At most, the source of a Voidstone could be shown in the Voidstone overlay on the atlas as a tooltip

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

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Echothesis#7320 wrote:

Because the game never tells you about what will be required of you soon, you have to know it in advance from... somewhere. But again I may be wrong, no one really knows the goal of this project.

Glad you qualify that by admitting it's possible you're wrong, because why should the game tell you in advance what mechanics to look out for or what type of damage bosses do beforehand? Where's the fun in knowing everything in advance? Where's the learning curve that lets you see an improvement in your gameplay?

That wasn't quite what I meant in being wrong. Sanctum doesn't fit into any learning curve one can imagine. Souls games make their intention towards players clear in the first 10 minutes of gameplay. If player doesn't like that, no time lost. If player decides to go ahead, they will continue to encounter same challenges of gradually increasing intensity. This is a learning curve.

Poe2 starts "like any other" arpg, you are pushing through campaign and suddenly discover you aren't supposed to get hit at all. Moreover, this challenge gates the ascendancy, the biggest personification part of your character.

Further, you don't have easy access to respec at that point. Passive refund expensive, items even more expensive, and new gems have to be grinded instead of progressing further. Failing at this stage can cause player enough frustration to leave the game, what kind of game designer willfully creates situation like that?

There are more of the same designs, intitally GGG had no intention of giving trial runs on endgame bosses at all. First time see new oneshot mechanic? Better luck next time, go grind access again. No souls game does that, you can keep trying any boss you wish.

Your last question is entirely correct, there is no "learning curve that lets you see an improvement in your gameplay". Go in blind and invest in underperforming skill, no improvement. Read the guides and use trade, again no improvement because you'll be on top of content from level 1 until you get bored with the character.

That's why you can do either Sanctum or Ultimatum. They're interchangeable for a reason... no one is forced to do no-hit runs. Avoiding most hits is enough to get you through.

I don't know why you are so dead set on the souls comparison. Most one-shot abilities from map bosses are introduced during the campaign when you first encounter them (like monkey) with Checkpoints being very close by. Later bosses, well, tough luck. They're called Grinding Gear Games for a reason. Crazy how the content matches the wrapping...

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

That's why you can do either Sanctum or Ultimatum. They're interchangeable for a reason... no one is forced to do no-hit runs. Avoiding most hits is enough to get you through.

I don't know why you are so dead set on the souls comparison. Most one-shot abilities from map bosses are introduced during the campaign when you first encounter them (like monkey) with Checkpoints being very close by. Later bosses, well, tough luck. They're called Grinding Gear Games for a reason. Crazy how the content matches the wrapping...

Making punishing content is fine, but you have to guide new players into it step by step, and make sure ALL instruments you provide can be used to overcome this content. Maybe not with flying colors, but should at least work without 50+ retries.

Souls comparison is not me, GGG started this tale saying how they had been inspired by Elden Ring. Where you can get through with any weapon or spell because there is no RNG in combat. You should remember videos of beating ER bosses naked at level 1:)

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Echothesis#7320 wrote:

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

That's why you can do either Sanctum or Ultimatum. They're interchangeable for a reason... no one is forced to do no-hit runs. Avoiding most hits is enough to get you through.

I don't know why you are so dead set on the souls comparison. Most one-shot abilities from map bosses are introduced during the campaign when you first encounter them (like monkey) with Checkpoints being very close by. Later bosses, well, tough luck. They're called Grinding Gear Games for a reason. Crazy how the content matches the wrapping...

Making punishing content is fine, but you have to guide new players into it step by step, and make sure ALL instruments you provide can be used to overcome this content. Maybe not with flying colors, but should at least work without 50+ retries.

Souls comparison is not me, GGG started this tale saying how they had been inspired by Elden Ring. Where you can get through with any weapon or spell because there is no RNG in combat. You should remember videos of beating ER bosses naked at level 1:)

What you are remembering was Jonathan talking with IGN back in 2023. Elden Ring had only been out for a year at that point, while development on PoE2 had been ongoing "a little while longer" considering the first reveal at ExileCon 2019.

When asked what separates PoE2 from D4, Jonathan answered that D4 gameplay is built around cooldowns and open world design. Jonathan mentioned Elden Ring to describe how PoE2 differs in approach, which is more action focused and combat being more visceral.

And that was the extent of the mention. I don't know how people misunderstood that short quote but to this day people just run with it.

https://www.ign.com/articles/path-of-exile-2-diablo-4-developer-interview

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

What you are remembering was Jonathan talking with IGN back in 2023. Elden Ring had only been out for a year at that point, while development on PoE2 had been ongoing "a little while longer" considering the first reveal at ExileCon 2019.

When asked what separates PoE2 from D4, Jonathan answered that D4 gameplay is built around cooldowns and open world design. Jonathan mentioned Elden Ring to describe how PoE2 differs in approach, which is more action focused and combat being more visceral.

And that was the extent of the mention. I don't know how people misunderstood that short quote but to this day people just run with it.

https://www.ign.com/articles/path-of-exile-2-diablo-4-developer-interview

You are relentless and you managed to derail original topic:) But fine, I have no idea how poe2 world or combat can be compared to ER world or combat regardless of how one spells it. Please do not act like you truly think they're related. But still GGG tried to compare poe to ER, I found that funny so remembered it. And beloved Ruthless mode sure looks like an attempt to crossbreed souls with arpg. Attempt doomed to failure because of RNG, but still.

Also, forgot to answer one of your last points: sure, if you cannot do sanctum, there is ultimatum. Good.

- First, where does the game inform an Act 2 player that they can get same rewards further down the road? Nowhere, not before sanctum (as it should be), not even after failing sanctum. Game doesn't even inform about relics and their honor resistance. 1 trash relic you get for free is hardly a tutorial.

- Second, you are well aware that ultimatum is also a big difficulty spike over campaign. And also coming unexpected. Only "correct" build can do ultimatum as they go, without skipping and overleveling it. GGG finally nerfed Bahlak in last hotfixes, but did nothing about random hazards present in boss rooms. When there are turrets and globes all over the place, and boss has buffed stats, there is simply no room to dodge.

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DiabloImmoral#7632 wrote:

Diablo 4 only has 1 person in charge of all of the tree/skill balance as well. Exponential scaling and bugged damage builds get left alone for multiple seasons because there's just no one available to smooth things out. It seems to be a really bad industry standard. Ultimately it's likely a human nature problem because adjusting numbers and timings in a database is extremely easy and once you get that job you make sure no one else is allowed input so that you can keep doing it by yourself forever.

Seems to be more of an isometric ARPG problem than an industry problem as many, many other games by both indie devs and AAA studios are way, way better balanced than both POE and Diablo.