Trivializing content/bosses is a huge problem and you're playing it down, Mark.

Seems like the problem isn't that it's possible to trivialize bosses, it's about how "cheap" it is (and they specify that they don't mean that in regards to the in-game economy prices).

To me that says that they think player power is too accessible overall, that if you're going to trivialize content, the items which allow that to occur should be much rarer than they currently are.

One of my concerns are that they've mentioned they're new to using data analysis to make balance decisions and they specified "average" in reference to how long people are taking to kill bosses. I think it would be more appropriate to look at the median, especially since he said there are people taking "way longer" than the average.

In a data-set where one guy takes 5 minutes and 4 normal players take 10 seconds to kill the same boss, the "average time" is just over 1 minute, which makes it appear like a fight that everyone is engaging in when it was realistically one guy who's mouse came unplugged when he spilled his coffee mid fight and ran to the corner to afk while he cleaned it up and the boss is actually a joke for everyone. A median in this scenario would be 10 seconds - a more accurate representation.

It's also the case that temple has been responsible for a lot of player power inflation this league, and that won't be there going forward. I guess we'll wait for patch notes to see what other adjustments they'll make.

"

Seems like the problem isn't that it's possible to trivialize bosses, it's about how "cheap" it is (and they specify that they don't mean that in regards to the in-game economy prices).

Yes, this is the same in PoE1 and whole community does not have a problem with that. Balance in PoE1 is much healthier: you can actually feel the difference in map tiers, you have your specific points of checking your power: quest end-game bosses, non quest versions, then ubers.

I, and many players who voice their concers, have no problem with the possibility of becoming god: to develop such good and min-maxed character that can make pinnacle content look like non-issue. The problem is player power curve and how fast and easy, without much friction, we are becoming powerful.

GGG is adding to 0.5 many new end-game bosses but ALSO good chunk of powercreep in form of new emotions, catalysts, currency from league etc. I understand that the first weeks of 0.5 could be off ther charts in terms of balance, but they just HAVE TO fix the balance before 1.0 and aim for at least something similar like in PoE1: clear points of player power progressions check and flatten the curve of getting that power.

"

DenimBoy#1964 wrote:

"

On the campaign part, I'll have to disagree personally. If they keep the campaign devoid of any challenge... it will become more like a chore to do then an actual experience to be enjoyed. As such, it almost validates the insistent push for campaign skips many have... and it also just devalues the whole campaign as a whole.

I still remember how fun Act 1 was and especially Count Geonor. It felt really good beating him after 8 or 10 attempts or so. It actually felt like my reactions to what he did mattered. One too many hits and I would be a goner. Ever since then though, I can get hit so many more times before I even feel like I there's any chance for me to die...

It kind of feels like he's just roleplaying as a boss now, him and everyone else.

I had the same experience as you and I also would like to live that again but from the objective POV its just impossible because we're already different (better) players than when we first played the game. Not to mention that the game itself is different, and many things that are IMO good changes (changing support gem restrictions etc.) made the game easier: better, but easier.

If the campaign would be a challenge TODAY for players with multiple characters made then just imagine what would it be like for the new/casuals players: it would be a hard roadblock.

I truly believe that for the most players campaign is STILL a challenge that requires multiple tries before many bosses. You can find many such examples on different forums.

Maybe we will get some sort of that magic with act 5 and 6 purely because of unknown content we will face, but I dont expect that from content we already know.

And again, dont get me wrong: I would LOVE to have that feeling again during campaing, I truly would. I just doubt that its realistic today. I just hope to get that challenge with pinnacle content and some other aspect of end-game encounters.

Yea, ofc learning mechanics should make bossfights easier, but easier and trivial is different. I dont want to need multiple tries for most bosses if I have decent gear at that point, and did the boss like 50 times already. But knowing the mechanics, avoiding them and having a fight is great. Rn its more like, throw a few grenades at it and it drops dead after throwing out one mechanic...

In a game like this with SO many different variables that influence your dps, players will naturally ALWAYS make VERY different experiences.

- Personal performance (player skill)
- Game Knowledge (about items, formulas, mechanic interactions etc.)
- Skill Gems
- Support Gems
- Equipment
- Unqiues
- Runes
- Crafting
- Passive Tree
- Classes
- Ascendencies
- Jewels
- Shrines
- Enemies
- Bosses
- Map Mods
- Atlas Tree

And I bet I have missed alot of other variables/mechanics. If things are SO complicated like this, you will NEVER be able to perfectly balance a game.

You say you usually need a few seconds to kill bosses. But as soon as I have leveled up all the +1 boss level on atlas tree, bosses seem unkillable for me. Probably not enough multipliers are missing +level on equipment, but unless I respec some of the +1 boss level nodes, bosses seem unkillable for me, taking more then 15 minutes to beat. But to be fair, my game knowledge is very low and my player skill only mediocre. Still, I enjoy the game, but endgame gets brutal for me.

So I think that's what GGG is trying: Balancing the game in a way that everyone can have fun to some degree. Ofc they could balance it all around the super hardcore gamer. But then less proficient gamers would lose interest quite fast and GGG will not make enough money out of a handful elite gamers. But making it to easy? This would too boring for many players as well. And finding that sweetspot is hard, but some players will always be much better or worse then others.

"

Yea, ofc learning mechanics should make bossfights easier, but easier and trivial is different. I dont want to need multiple tries for most bosses if I have decent gear at that point, and did the boss like 50 times already. But knowing the mechanics, avoiding them and having a fight is great. Rn its more like, throw a few grenades at it and it drops dead after throwing out one mechanic...

Agree, campaign needs balance too, but I dont expect it to return to the state known from 0.1.
Hope we will get reasonable balance that will reward wisdom and skill but also not make game unplayable for new players.
Big weeks/months ahead.
I just hope they will get it right because I truly believe that PoE2 can be best aRPG of all time. Without proper balance that will be very hard to achive.

"

AbyssianOne#1625 wrote:

"

DiabloImmoral#7632 wrote:

You have the option of *not* playing ultra meta builds that do 10x the damage of average builds, turning an 80 second boss into an 8 second boss.

And no, the devs can't raise the floor and lower the ceiling or streamers will pump out thousands and thousands of videos on how it's not fair that they're only killing 4x as fast as commoners. That will poison and kill the game.

An ultra meta build should be able to pop anything instantly except ubers or upscaled content like 100% delirium.

Nah. Sorry, but a game shouldn't be held hostage to what some whiney kids on youtube say. Running through a game evaporating everything with no challenge isn't fun. It's absolutely boring.

There is no universe where the meta og player is going to need 2 minutes to kill a boss and Timmy the weekend warrior with his homebrew build takes the same 2 minutes to kill the boss.

It is literally impossible to take a veteran player (who can take almost any skill and make it powerful) and make them have the same experience as the new player attempting to make a fun home brew build.

If you balance it for the meta og player you completely alienate the newer players. Why is this so hard to comprehended. This is the explanation for the time differences and the average of 2 minutes which is where they said they want it.

"

KäsePizza#3007 wrote:

"

DiabloImmoral#7632 wrote:

You have the option of *not* playing ultra meta builds that do 10x the damage of average builds, turning an 80 second boss into an 8 second boss.

And no, the devs can't raise the floor and lower the ceiling or streamers will pump out thousands and thousands of videos on how it's not fair that they're only killing 4x as fast as commoners. That will poison and kill the game.

An ultra meta build should be able to pop anything instantly except ubers or upscaled content like 100% delirium.

Imo there should be content it doesnt just pop. Even if its just ubers and 100% deli, but even those (not sure about deli) seem to be trivial for higher end builds. Maybe they should make pinnacle content more pinnacle and get the outliers a bit in line (Skill level, CoC, and Crit mostly i guess?)

I dont think they should balance pinnacle content around your standard endgame build at all. Just throwing together something okayish shouldnt let you kill gods (as long as your not playing it perfectly at least).

It is a complete waste of dev time to balance a boss even if it is only one around the absolute most broken op build in the game. It is better to just balance the skill/interaction.

Take one of the wand builds that others have claimed need like 10+ levels meaning it is a 30+ skill gem to kill stuff. Remove those bonus levels and fight the same boss. If it is tuned around the 30+ and takes that long then the lvl 20 version is going to take wll over 5 minutes.

+levels and skill balance they can do
monster hp and damage balance they can do

balanceing the og veteran meta player vs Timmy the weekend warrior, they can not

There will never be content balance if you design a game solely for the meta veteran. Instead the meta veteran can challenge themselves as they claim to want but never do. Lower damage passives, dont use 500 divine gear, dont use meta skills/builds, nerf yourself to experience that challenge. But we all know 99% of the I want a challenge people wont ever do this.

"

karsey#2995 wrote:

One of my concerns are that they've mentioned they're new to using data analysis to make balance decisions and they specified "average" in reference to how long people are taking to kill bosses. I think it would be more appropriate to look at the median, especially since he said there are people taking "way longer" than the average.

They mentioned that somewhere? Was it in this interview or somewhere else? I might have missed that. That's interesting, it would explain quite a bit.

"

KäsePizza#3007 wrote:

Yea, ofc learning mechanics should make bossfights easier, but easier and trivial is different. I dont want to need multiple tries for most bosses if I have decent gear at that point, and did the boss like 50 times already. But knowing the mechanics, avoiding them and having a fight is great. Rn its more like, throw a few grenades at it and it drops dead after throwing out one mechanic...

You've put it very well! Easier is one thing but trivial is different.

"

DenimBoy#1964 wrote:

Agree, campaign needs balance too, but I dont expect it to return to the state known from 0.1.
Hope we will get reasonable balance that will reward wisdom and skill but also not make game unplayable for new players.
Big weeks/months ahead.
I just hope they will get it right because I truly believe that PoE2 can be best aRPG of all time. Without proper balance that will be very hard to achive.

I wouldn't get my hopes up too much, since they kind of said themselves that balance wasn't really something they looked at much this patch and that they will focus on that for 1.0 release. I expect much of the same, maybe with a few extreme outliers out of the picture.... and probably new ones introduced with the new additions.. lol

That being said, something that I didn't particularly like from the interview was how they were saying that because they focused on adding so much new stuff... they didn't really have time for balancing as well. And it is true, they did a lot of new stuff... but ..

How do I put this... they chose to do the seasonal model... they will always be adding new stuff... this will never cease to be the case. Even with the 1.0 launch... a lot of stuff will still be missing... and even if nothing were missing... with new seasons they will try to add new things all the time. I don't think that can be used indefinitely as an excuse.

But hey, not everything I heard there was negative... I believe Mark mentioned that we will be able to try attempting all bosses for which you need some sort of key to fight them as many times as we want without losing the key on first death... which is a great thing... this in itself leaves space for challenging bosses to exist without major punishment on failure.

I never understood how they did the right thing with bosses for the campaign but didn't extend that to endgame bosses... well.. I kind of do but it feels really amateurish to me. (because endgame was put together in a rushed manner)

"

DenimBoy#1964 wrote:

"

Yea, ofc learning mechanics should make bossfights easier, but easier and trivial is different. I dont want to need multiple tries for most bosses if I have decent gear at that point, and did the boss like 50 times already. But knowing the mechanics, avoiding them and having a fight is great. Rn its more like, throw a few grenades at it and it drops dead after throwing out one mechanic...

Agree, campaign needs balance too, but I dont expect it to return to the state known from 0.1.
Hope we will get reasonable balance that will reward wisdom and skill but also not make game unplayable for new players.
Big weeks/months ahead.
I just hope they will get it right because I truly believe that PoE2 can be best aRPG of all time. Without proper balance that will be very hard to achive.

What you described is actually where the game is now according to what Mark said.

.1 challenge is superficial anyway. Newer classes/skills gave more options to solve the problems. More game knowledge lets you know how to dodge better, what to avoid, how to get more damage quicker, etc.

"

DenimBoy#1964 wrote:

Yes, this is the same in PoE1 and whole community does not have a problem with that. Balance in PoE1 is much healthier: you can actually feel the difference in map tiers, you have your specific points of checking your power: quest end-game bosses, non quest versions, then ubers.

I, and many players who voice their concers, have no problem with the possibility of becoming god: to develop such good and min-maxed character that can make pinnacle content look like non-issue. The problem is player power curve and how fast and easy, without much friction, we are becoming powerful.

GGG is adding to 0.5 many new end-game bosses but ALSO good chunk of powercreep in form of new emotions, catalysts, currency from league etc. I understand that the first weeks of 0.5 could be off ther charts in terms of balance, but they just HAVE TO fix the balance before 1.0 and aim for at least something similar like in PoE1: clear points of player power progressions check and flatten the curve of getting that power.

That is exactly why it doesn't matter to quarrel about this at this time. PoE1 had already 12 years of balancing and polishing, naturally it is in a better place.

Until now we have played PoE2 as a game that is at maximum 50% finished. With 0.5 it will maybe go to 75%. They were/are still concentrated on content and all we do each update is test the game for them.

Maybe they have more time in the next window until december to do more balancing but with 1.0 on the horizon I doubt it. There are to many classes, weapons and skills still missing from the game. The extreme fine tuning some in here demand would take to much time and manpower (which there is a lack of the whole time PoE2 exists) just for the next update to ruin it again.

Only when the basegame is finished with 1.0 they will probably truly start with balancing. Before that they are frantically trying to finish the game.