Open letters to GGG - A Remedy for the Community Divide

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Soulsniper1313#7576 wrote:

The fix is balance the game to where you can "zoom" in maps but have to focus on bosses in an attrition style fight.

I think that actually it is what they r going to do.

Atlas tree is heavy boss related and they stated that ppl should be challenged by bosses.

We will see how 0.5 will look. Im hyped after watching interviews. They r talking about so many extra stuff in 0.5, that im on copium about them announcing something similar to "Disciple of Varashta" in next 2 weeks.

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its_sovren#3450 wrote:

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Soulsniper1313#7576 wrote:

The fix is balance the game to where you can "zoom" in maps but have to focus on bosses in an attrition style fight.

I think that actually it is what they r going to do.

Atlas tree is heavy boss related and they stated that ppl should be challenged by bosses.

We will see how 0.5 will look. Im hyped after watching interviews. They r talking about so many extra stuff in 0.5, that im on copium about them announcing something similar to "Disciple of Varashta" in next 2 weeks.

Considering that a few patches ago they brought the ceiling down when it was already so easy simply because the average player couldn't do t4 Xesht (which in their view is the guy who takes 20 minutes in a map), I really doubt we will ever have any challenging bosses

I'm more than happy to be wrong but I would be very surprised if I can't destroy every pinnacle right after getting into t15

Edit: we did have challenging bosses before, but it wasn't even intended lmao

Funnily enough, it was one of the most fun things in the game. Remember every content creator doing the boss challenge? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNAI1VAliAY

The only thing it missed from being a good mechanic was having appropriate rewards for the difficulty and obviously not being random bosses that aren't supposed to scale that high

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WhisperSlade#0532 wrote:

I'll keep it brief for now, but update the idea if it becomes an engaging topic.

As most people here know, there's a division among players in their preference for which game philosophy PoE2 should take.
• Fast-paced screen clearing with many monsters.
• Attrition-style engaging combat with fewer monsters.

The endgame atlas passive tree could potentially provide a solution to satisfy both play styles. I believe the original intent was to enable players to customize their experience with regard to which league mechanics they engage with.

But what if it could also enable players to customize meta gameplay aspects with keystone nodes which gave a clear choice between:
• More monster density / pack size.
• Or drastically reduced density with increased effectiveness.
And to approximate the reward balance as best you can.

It would be important to closely balance the reward incentives between these two, because it is my belief that unless they are perceived as having proportional loot / rewards for the time investment, players engaging with the endgame will by and large gravitate toward meta play styles that yield the most reward for their time.

For more detail about why this is, please see this other post, which discusses player-incentives, and the perception of clear-meta as popular, due to clear-meta being the most rewarding in terms of loot rewards.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3879773

Thanks for your consideration, and please keep replies cordial.

I think the current monster design of rares mostly just wont work too well with them being just made tankier and monsters made fewer. My problem is that monsters kind of are the same. Whites are exploding in the endgame - fine for me. Can be some big packs aswell. The issue (imo) is that magic monsters are just slightly stronger whites with some mods you might need to dodge (frost crystals on death, ...) and rares mods are often just some stat boosts. I think it would be much cooler to have rares with classes (like each rare has 1 class and can roll some mods in the pool of that class). Each monster can just roll certain classes that make sense on it -> some physical slam monster wont suddenly turn into a caster (maybe even that would be fun...).
Then also monsters that are near you are again visible on the minimap again, showing different icons depending on their class, so you know beforehand what you are fighting, no hovering over anything.
Classes could be stuff like Berserker (Lots of damage/speed, melee only). To like Generals (have a pack of buffed monsters or smth). Some kind of mages, ranged stuff...

I don't know if this would help make it feel more meaningful, but I think it's a cool idea at least. Here's the original idea (I think) https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3855808

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iHiems#0168 wrote:

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its_sovren#3450 wrote:

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Soulsniper1313#7576 wrote:

The fix is balance the game to where you can “zoom” in maps but have to focus on bosses in an attrition style fight.

I think that actually it is what they r going to do.

Atlas tree is heavy boss related and they stated that ppl should be challenged by bosses.

We will see how 0.5 will look. Im hyped after watching interviews. They r talking about so many extra stuff in 0.5, that im on copium about them announcing something similar to “Disciple of Varashta” in next 2 weeks.

Considering that a few patches ago they brought the ceiling down when it was already so easy simply because the average player couldn't do t4 Xesht (which in their view is the guy who takes 20 minutes in a map), I really doubt we will ever have any challenging bosses

I'm more than happy to be wrong but I would be very surprised if I can't destroy every pinnacle right after getting into t15

Edit: we did have challenging bosses before, but it wasn't even intended lmao

Funnily enough, it was one of the most fun things in the game. Remember every content creator doing the boss challenge? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNAI1VAliAY

The only thing it missed from being a good mechanic was having appropriate rewards for the difficulty and obviously not being random bosses that aren't supposed to scale that high

I think its inevitable that some content (lets say “unjuiced” T15) at some point. They should just ignore the “casuals” for fully juiced and pinnacle content. Make it hard, make it need good builds or player skill. Hope the current ones won't just be frozen and dead, even with a good build... But ig its just hard to balance with the current scaling of power, maybe just too much multiplicative scalings to make it possible for a decent build to need like 2 min and a min-maxed one to still need 30 seconds...

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KäsePizza#3007 wrote:

I think its inevitable that some content (lets say “unjuiced” T15) at some point. They should just ignore the “casuals” for fully juiced and pinnacle content. Make it hard, make it need good builds or player skill. Hope the current ones won't just be frozen and dead, even with a good build... But ig its just hard to balance with the current scaling of power, maybe just too much multiplicative scalings to make it possible for a decent build to need like 2 min and a min-maxed one to still need 30 seconds...

Yea. Balance of course needs to be addressed before we move to talk about bosses scaling or pace

Personally, I don't care about the pace in maps too much. What's missing in the game for me are real challenges like bosses that don't die in 5 seconds, more challenge chase uniques like the temporalis one

Make a challenge where you have to dodge arbiter for 5 minutes without getting hit or hitting him but the chase unique drops 100% of the time, something like that

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WhisperSlade#0532 wrote:

I'll keep it brief for now, but update the idea if it becomes an engaging topic.

As most people here know, there's a division among players in their preference for which game philosophy PoE2 should take.
• Fast-paced screen clearing with many monsters.
• Attrition-style engaging combat with fewer monsters.

The endgame atlas passive tree could potentially provide a solution to satisfy both play styles. I believe the original intent was to enable players to customize their experience with regard to which league mechanics they engage with.

But what if it could also enable players to customize meta gameplay aspects with keystone nodes which gave a clear choice between:
• More monster density / pack size.
• Or drastically reduced density with increased effectiveness.
And to approximate the reward balance as best you can.

It would be important to closely balance the reward incentives between these two, because it is my belief that unless they are perceived as having proportional loot / rewards for the time investment, players engaging with the endgame will by and large gravitate toward meta play styles that yield the most reward for their time.

For more detail about why this is, please see this other post, which discusses player-incentives, and the perception of clear-meta as popular, due to clear-meta being the most rewarding in terms of loot rewards.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3879773

Thanks for your consideration, and please keep replies cordial.

+1

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WhisperSlade#0532 wrote:

I'll keep it brief for now, but update the idea if it becomes an engaging topic.

As most people here know, there's a division among players in their preference for which game philosophy PoE2 should take.
• Fast-paced screen clearing with many monsters.
• Attrition-style engaging combat with fewer monsters.

The endgame atlas passive tree could potentially provide a solution to satisfy both play styles. I believe the original intent was to enable players to customize their experience with regard to which league mechanics they engage with.

But what if it could also enable players to customize meta gameplay aspects with keystone nodes which gave a clear choice between:
• More monster density / pack size.
• Or drastically reduced density with increased effectiveness.
And to approximate the reward balance as best you can.

It would be important to closely balance the reward incentives between these two, because it is my belief that unless they are perceived as having proportional loot / rewards for the time investment, players engaging with the endgame will by and large gravitate toward meta play styles that yield the most reward for their time.

For more detail about why this is, please see this other post, which discusses player-incentives, and the perception of clear-meta as popular, due to clear-meta being the most rewarding in terms of loot rewards.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3879773

Thanks for your consideration, and please keep replies cordial.

I think what they could do is make a whole mechanic around slower paced gameplay. For example, perhaps they end up making a mechanic where you go through dungeons where there are fewer monsters with more health etc in a smaller area, so that density can feel better. The deeper you go in the dungeons, the more monster effectiveness goes up. Perhaps more monsters are also added, but not a crazy number of monsters, just enough so that it can build up over time.

Make it so players don't have to engage with the content if they don't want to, but if they want to, perhaps they can get items/rewards that can apply specifically to that mechanic, or at least can be used anywhere, but works better with that mechanic.

In other words, make a Ruthless mode mechanic with other past mechanics (or new) that would fit with it. BUT the league that this mechanic is added, it also needs to have an "opposite"/"regular" mechanic added so that people who don't like Ruthless mode get something to play/do as well.

I agree with the general sentiment of the OP and the idea that there are levers GGG can provide with the atlas passive tree or other systems that allow players to customize the game to fit their preferred playstyle.

However I believe that the reason that GGG often favours designs that require an "INT" approach by the players is due to structural assymetry between the devolpment of INT and DEX content:
To develop new INT-style content GGG has simple and easy implementable tools at their disposal. Normal monsters are plentiful and the expectation is that they dont live long, so the complexity of their moveset can be minimal. This means that the development effort is smaller. To increase difficulty, just increase monster speed, damage, health etc...
For bosses we can see this idea with some examples from the 0.5 reveal stream:

1. They make it possible to fight 2 citadel bosses at the same time
2. During the new ritual "rite of the nameless", the final boss of every map is added to the ritual encounter up to a maximum of 5 bosses that have to be fought at the same time.
This type of encounter design requires an INT approach by the player by building a powerful character. Engaging combat is hardly possible since the screen is completely cluttered and no longer readable.



With that in mind lets look at the opposite, developing DEX-style content:
To do that GGG can no longer utilise the easy approach from before. If you have less monsters on screen and your goal is engaging combat, you need to make the monsters more interesting by giving them unique movesets and abilities that need to be engaged with (in addition to what they have at base difficulty). If all you do is increase their hp you will end up with bullet sponges that feel like training dummies, not an engaging combat experience.
For bosses, if the goal is to have more challenging fights that allow for engaging combat, you cant just put multiple of them in the same arena. You need to develop new bosses from scratch or add new mechanics to existing ones, which requires substantially more development time compared to the approach mentioned in the INT section.


Hope this is understandable somewhat
TLDR = INT-content much easier to develop



• Fast-paced screen clearing with many monsters. = INT
• Attrition-style engaging combat with fewer monsters. = DEX

Such proposition would imply reduced drops from the fast pacing/ clear screen/zerg nonstop playstyle because if not, the slow play style with less monsters would have terrible drops for the same amount of time played.

Unfortunately I think that's the reality behind the 2 styles, it would end up as a "Quality VS Quantity" and I'm pretty sure the ones that prefer to go fast and zerg would complain that the loot is bad, it would certaintly be worst then now AKA a nerf to drops so the slower playstyle can trive.

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Soulsniper1313#7576 wrote:

No matter how good the campaign is, once you have done it so many times it is no longer good and enjoyable.

They totally missed the opportunity of making campaign more dynamic, everything is so static and linear

If the game was meant to be played multiple times with no campaign skip, why not make the campaign more interesting?

Things that'd make the acts less repetitive, like different weather/lightning for zones, or each new league the order of act is different with some lore reason behind, for example, act 3 as a starting zone, and the final boss in the whole campaign is Lord Ogham because in this timeline he was capable of growing the beast or whatever