What happened to Engaging Combat? Video Feedback.

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raV#3445 เขียน:

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KaosuRyoko#1633 เขียน:

Turns out the true engaging combat was the forum enemies we made along the way.

:D good one

True ;D

Thanks for reposting, missed it in the flood of quotes somehow — not the most clear forum...

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KäsePizza#3007 เขียน:

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IonSugeRau1#1069 เขียน:

I was quite serious about it. It's not the first time I seen this as well. I've made a thread discussing it previously. It somehow didn't cross my mind again untill now. Of course I don't understand you guys. You're fundamentally thinking of it from a place i could never understand since I don't have such addictions and just want a good game.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3828788

Idk... everyone should enjoy what they want. It's not like everyone who likes more complex gameplay is superior to people who can play vampire survivors for 1000h... Yea, people might be addicted to the feeling of divines dropping - but thats most games. Everyone gets his dopamine spikes - or whatever - from different experiences, in some way we are all slightly broken in the head. Hard not to be nowadays. And you say you don't have the addictions, you just want a good game. One that aims at what you enjoy, at your vulnerability to addictions. Not saying everyone who plays a game is addicted, addiction starts when you lose the ability to set priorities. But in some way we all play to have a good time or smth, no need for this here...

It's not about complex or not gameplay though. I play a lot of other more simple games and that's perfectly normal. You're missing the point of his whole reason for farming there. Read it carefully. It immediately clicked for me and recalled that previous thread.

Can you say the same about gacha games and people that get addicted to those? There's documentaries made on them.

But beyond that, at the very least it explains the disconnect if nothing else.

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Grayeye#1799 เขียน:

Trade, my friend, trade... If a player then buys items from one tier above, or two, then the engaging combat is gone, he will blasts entire screens... that is the problem... Or you would have to restrict trade or make soulbound items, and that destroy the value of items, as they are valued by what value the community attribute to it.

I will have to quote Chris Wilson on the subject;

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Items Matter. Trade is Important.

When we started developing Path of Exile in 2006, we identified several key design pillars. These are fundamental philosophies chosen to guide our design decisions throughout development. One of these was that "items matter". Items are a player's reward for playing Path of Exile. They're the primary way of measuring progress in a league. A person with vastly more in-game wealth has often played longer than someone with a higher level character. They also matter because if a player had better items, then they'd be able to build more powerful characters, play harder content, and be viewed as richer and more successful within the game. The acquisition of items is why people play Action RPGs. Chances are, if you're reading this, you understand why it's important that items matter because your Path of Exile items mean a lot to you as well.

For items to matter, it's important that they can be traded to other players. It's important that you could give the item to the other player, if they were able to convince you into it. For this reason, almost nothing in Path of Exile is bound to your account. Even in Solo Self-Found mode, which doesn't allow trading, items can be moved at will into the regular trading leagues so that you can benefit from their value if desired.

Yea, maybe. Perhaps it's possible with stricter level requirements and even less exp from lower level mobs. Perhaps trade can't not be a way to skip tiers, perhaps it shouldn't not be. For people who want the "real" experience, there's always SSF. It's not like trade doesn't "break" the game now as well — you can buy boss specific uniques before you have even seen that boss. The thing I want, is always the possiblity of a challenge. If someone decides he wants to buy a “t15” weapon when in t2 maps — fine. Maybe it shouldn't be possible to skip that far — maybe the economy prevents it — maybe it doesn't. But even if you skip it on your first character, because you had enough currency to buy all the equipment you need — there is still content you can do. It's kinda the same as buying upgrade currency in a game like Lost Ark — you skip a part of the game. Just without the real money aspect in this case. And if that's what you want — why not?

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Grayeye#1799 เขียน:

That implies these players will blast screens in average content, and that will be the meta.

If there is always appropriate content for a build — no. You go play that. It should feel more rewarding. But if it's really what you want — even without the movespeed to zoom the distances between the rares — then go and do maps below your level. There's noone to stop you. If it makes more currency - maybe it becomes the trade meta and gets nerfed the next league. That's all fine with me. It's also not healthy to force a player to go to the next map tier if he doesn't want to yet.

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Grayeye#1799 เขียน:

Perhaps it can be done with clever mechanics, exclusively defence ones, but then there is the risk the game developes to a pain-simulator for the below-average player, that will spend his existance in a constant state of being debuffed and utterly destroyed. But yes, there is alot of things in the game that makes it more wild than PoE 1 at the moment, but I hope there will be balance patch in the future, a large one.

I think players can adapt and learn very quickly. You just can't expect them to know everything all of a sudden. If you throw a player into 3 rares with 10 modifiers that give 8 debuffs you need to care about — ofc it will feel terrible. That's also not what I want in any way. The campaign should teach you, yea. But I don't think there is any point in the game where you should want the player to know each debuff by sight of the particles around enemies, press 5 different curse cleansers in the correct order or pull off an 18 skill combo to damage a boss. Its enough to just have appropriate skills to react to what comes your way. Like as a dex character — maybe get a "dodge" skill that makes you dodge the next slam skill/AoE skill — or reduce it by half or a part of your EV or whatever and makes your next attack always crit if you have dodged something. It is conditional, relies on player skill and gives power. Ofc something like this needs a cooldown. Useless in current PoE2 tho, cause you got 50%+ crit-chance anyway, and you go around one-shotting everything before it can even slam you. Maybe for hardcore there would be a use, but else…

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KäsePizza#3007 เขียน:

It's also not healthy to force a player to go to the next map tier if he doesn't want to yet.

I read everything you wrote, but I just wanted to highlight this one line for you to clarify: what do you mean its unhealthy?

The entire game is designed around "forcing" you into harder content in order to progress. That's why items and mods have tiers. That's why we level up. That's why different levels of maps or even acts exist.

Lower difficulty content should NEVER be designed to be as rewarding, or more rewarding, than more difficult content. We can again turn to PoE 1 for an excellent example of what this does: 3.23 abyss farming in yellow maps. Character progression stops being a "thing" if you get all the rewards at a lower difficulty. And yet, much like finding loot, the striving to make your character more powerful via loot and gear is essential to the game loop. And a mandatory part of that is rewarding the completion of more difficult content.

If you literally mean players get "locked out" of easier content after completing it once then...yea that's bad design. But that also doesn't exist lol.

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cowmoo275#3095 เขียน:

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KäsePizza#3007 เขียน:

It's also not healthy to force a player to go to the next map tier if he doesn't want to yet.

I read everything you wrote, but I just wanted to highlight this one line for you to clarify: what do you mean its unhealthy?

The entire game is designed around "forcing" you into harder content in order to progress. That's why items and mods have tiers. That's why we level up. That's why different levels of maps or even acts exist.

Lower difficulty content should NEVER be designed to be as rewarding, or more rewarding, than more difficult content. We can again turn to PoE 1 for an excellent example of what this does: 3.23 abyss farming in yellow maps. Character progression stops being a "thing" if you get all the rewards at a lower difficulty. And yet, much like finding loot, the striving to make your character more powerful via loot and gear is essential to the game loop. And a mandatory part of that is rewarding the completion of more difficult content.

If you literally mean players get "locked out" of easier content after completing it once then...yea that's bad design. But that also doesn't exist lol.

I just meant it to highlight the things I said before. If you have the gear to beat lets say t5 maps in reasonable time — noone is there to stop you from doing t1 maps quicker. You could prevent players — with reducing loot drops of monsters too far below your level, or something like that. That would be forcing the player into higher content and unhealthy for a game, imo. It is important for exp in PoE1 for example, but it should never be for loot. Probably didn't clarify this enough, ty.

As for what you stated below, ofc it shouldn't be designed to do so. But design and reality are often 2 different things. Like, a higher tier map always should yield better rewards with the same amount of juice — and so to say a higher level of difficulty. But that doesn't prevent a lower tier map with more investment or juice ending up a bit easier to farm and higher in loot/time.

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IonSugeRau1#1069 เขียน:

So then, what purpose does gear have anymore, when you can already beat that challenge with no issue and there's nothing further to challenge? What exactly are you farming for? Why would you even care to beat it in 7 hits less as you say? The whole purpose of farming is to get stronger so you can tackle on the next challenge.

Only half true. The other half is that there are a TON of players, basically every single streamer.....who simply want to maximize their numbers no matter WHAT the challenge is.

After all, a lot of us have been playing for a decade or longer. There ARE no challenges left in PoE 1. Yet we still play, collect gear, create builds, etc. Why?

Some have an end goal of beating a particular content, but most veterans simply want to see how powerful they can make a build, and are perfectly happy blinking bosses out of existence WEEKS or even months before they stop playing their build.

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KäsePizza#3007 เขียน:

I just meant it to highlight the things I said before. If you have the gear to beat lets say t5 maps in reasonable time — noone is there to stop you from doing t1 maps quicker. You could prevent players — with reducing loot drops of monsters too far below your level, or something like that. That would be forcing the player into higher content and unhealthy for a game, imo. Probably didn't clarify this enough, ty.

Ah...and in that regard, POE 1 AND 2 actually do an excellent job here, with trade playing a central role.

The fact that trade exists mean you can "trade up" lower items you find earlier into higher items that allow you to break into the next layer of difficulty.

There is never really a situation where you get "stuck" permanently because you don't have the power to progress, nor the ability to farm anything to help you acquire that power.

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KäsePizza#3007 เขียน:

previous post

The reason why I am saying its impossible is because, at its core and no matter what GGG has SAID their intention was.....PoE 2 is the same game as PoE 1. Exactly the same. There is no difference. If you can highlight a specific difference other than "things are temporarily slower"....please let me know.

Like you yourself said, trying to "force" meaningful combat into PoE 1 was never going to work. Given that PoE 2 is fundamentally the same game...it will never work in PoE 2 either.

I mean.....we already see that. That's why this thread exists. We are now almost a year into the public release of the game, well over 5 years into the DEVELOPMENT of the game. And we still don't have a "fix" on meaningful combat. Not to mention we have the entire history of PoE 1 which, we can assume, they tried to use to teach themselves what NOT to do in order to create a different game.

And yet here we are.


The fixes being bandied about: reducing the mob size, multiplying health, making every rare a "miniboss" yields a completely different backdrop to a game designed around killing a LOT of things, over a limited amount of time. They are incompatible with each other, within the CONTEXT of the core Path of Exile and Path of Exile 2 game. They might work in OTHER contexts...but they do not, and have been shown to not work.

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cowmoo275#3095 เขียน:

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KäsePizza#3007 เขียน:

I just meant it to highlight the things I said before. If you have the gear to beat lets say t5 maps in reasonable time — noone is there to stop you from doing t1 maps quicker. You could prevent players — with reducing loot drops of monsters too far below your level, or something like that. That would be forcing the player into higher content and unhealthy for a game, imo. Probably didn't clarify this enough, ty.

Ah...and in that regard, POE 1 AND 2 actually do an excellent job here, with trade playing a central role.

The fact that trade exists mean you can "trade up" lower items you find earlier into higher items that allow you to break into the next layer of difficulty.

There is never really a situation where you get "stuck" permanently because you don't have the power to progress, nor the ability to farm anything to help you acquire that power.

Also, not exactly what I meant. Like trading up is completely fine and good for trade.

Maybe if I say it more like this. If you have the gear to do t5 maps — as monsters would probably need to scale more to get engaging combat at every level and worthwhile gear/upgrades to farm — you would kill the rares in t1 maps much faster. If you juice these t1 maps enough, it might lead to more currency dropping from doing 3 juiced t1 maps in the same time it would take you to do one juiced t5 map. T1 and T5 just being random numbers here. Just wanted to say that this might be an issue that might not be easy to balance, but probably arises when you have the scaling on gear so you feel the upgrades and the scaling on mobs so there is always a good fight.

^oh yes, thats what I thought you meant and my post does illustrate that as well. We are describing the same thing in different ways.

I mentioned trade because ultimately...that is what is balancing your drops regardless of tier. Currency only has value because of trade: it is unlikely you will ever have enough currency to craft your way from low tier to high tier completely on your own, without specialized currency like essences and/or being an extremely good gamer. Kinda....no matter how fast you can complete the easier content. I mean unless you are getting like 100x the currency. The amount of currency that is required to craft a piece of gear in the endgame that would actually help you is like, in the thousands of pieces.

But yes, its still available to you and a perfectly viable and "normal" strategy for all grind-based games to grind easier content that you can finish fast, to accumuluate what you need to power up.

And again...to connect that to the "meaningful combat" debate: speed will win out no matter what, because whatever will allow you to farm the most efficiently is what players will inevitably gravitate towards: willingly or unwillingly. Otherwise....they sit in front of a brick wall and do absolutely nothing. Gamers won't do that.