What happened to Engaging Combat? Video Feedback.

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AintCare#6513 เขียน:

no not really man, playing semantics is a fun way to avoid acknowledging the answers you are getting.

its pretty clear to me that people are speaking of combat that lets you 'play the game' on a second monitor while watching YT.

this thread has 30 pages. official build examples were given, exact points in the game were pin pointed. but many will still come here and refuse to acknowledge any of it.

Exactly.. some of them go as far as negating how past events unfolded eventhough everyone knows, and trying to gaslight.

Others go in a weird loop of gacha questions that were answered long ago, some even in my video in the first page lol.

Some think I've mentioned Jonathan because somehow I think he's an omnipotent being..

I can't with these guys.

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IonSugeRau1#1069 เขียน:

Exactly.. some of them go as far as negating how past events unfolded eventhough everyone knows, and trying to gaslight.

Others go in a weird loop of gacha questions that were answered long ago, some even in my video in the first page lol.

Some think I've mentioned Jonathan because somehow I think he's an omnipotent being..

I can't with these guys.

What are you asking for? You want less monsters, so that the combat stays intentionally paced in a sense that you can see and interact with what is going by dodging most things and feeling rewarded for skill, right?

Ok, if there is less monsters let's say, at the stage you feel there should be. Then where does it scale? Does it not scale? Does it keep going on and on in an even line?

No, your idea also scales, like an ARPG, and so it comes to the same exact problem. At a point, there is too many monsters to deal with using skill alone. At a point, you need to give the player power that allows them to ignore some things. Whether that point is 15 easily mitigatable monsters or 5 that are extremely dangerous. At a point, there is too much going on to qualify for your definition of "engaging combat".

Which is why, you need to provide specific examples of when it broke down for you, playing what, how you felt when it happened and how you would like to see the game practically and realistically changed compared to it's current iteration.

You are just letting your emotions after the fact take over saying the problem is "the whole game" and "everything, do it over". If they listened, they would just remake the same game with the same problems and 5 years later you will be back here saying the same thing.

I feel like I should also reiterate, you are all agreeing to the sentiment of "the game should have well-paced combat" which is easy, but you all have wildly different expectations of what that would actually be. Even if you took only the people in this thread who agreed with OP, they would all have different opinions and make extremely different games when you started actually talking about specifics.

Everyone agrees with the sentiment guys, you just have to actually try and identify the solvable problems. Which is done case by case, specifically and intentionally. Not by simply wishing it were so.

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AverBeg7#1689 เขียน:

What are you asking for? You want less monsters, so that the combat stays intentionally paced in a sense that you can see and interact with what is going by dodging most things and feeling rewarded for skill, right?

Mostly correct. There's more to it then that though, like we've mentioned many times.

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AverBeg7#1689 เขียน:

Ok, if there is less monsters let's say, at the stage you feel there should be. Then where does it scale? Does it not scale? Does it keep going on and on in an even line?

Nuanced but in general, density should NOT be a continuous scaling factor, which is something that happens in PoE1 (and now in PoE2 as well). What actually needs to scale is DIFFICULTY organically. That can be achieved through more monsters in some niche cases if it makes sense. Harder well telegraphed mechanics/abilities to deal with, less cooldowns in some cases, more abilities themselves in some cases, like we've mentioned before... and so on.

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AverBeg7#1689 เขียน:

No, your idea also scales, like an ARPG, and so it comes to the same exact problem. At a point, there is too many monsters to deal with using skill alone. At a point, you need to give the player power that allows them to ignore some things. Whether that point is 15 easily mitigatable monsters or 5 that are extremely dangerous. At a point, there is too much going on to qualify for your definition of "engaging combat".

No, I've already answered it above. Scaling difficulty through numbers alone is incredibly shallow and it leads to zoom zoom and poor combat, like you've said.

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AverBeg7#1689 เขียน:

Which is why, you need to provide specific examples of when it broke down for you, playing what, how you felt when it happened and how you would like to see the game practically and realistically changed compared to it's current iteration.

From the get-go. As soon as you exit Clearfell. Worm boss used to be able to kill you, so was the hag. I died multiple times on them in the past. Not anymore. Abyss monsters have a large density of monsters from the start as well, which immediately make for an awful combat experience and a showcase for what's to come more and more gradually.

This is not ok, even less so on a completely fresh character:
https://gyazo.com/c908e43b3b8684c104bd5bfbef8460e2

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IonSugeRau1#1069 เขียน:

Nuanced but in general, density should NOT be a continuous scaling factor, which is something that happens in PoE1. What actually needs to scale is DIFFICULTY. That can be achieved through more monsters in some niche cases if it makes sense. Harder well telegraphed mechanics/abilities to deal with, less cooldowns in some cases, more abilities themselves in some cases, like we've mentioned before... and so on.

I understand, and like I've mentioned many times, it's the same problem from a different baseline. Even if it's 5 really difficult enemies instead of 50, you are going to need more player power, you are going to ignore more things, there is still this immense depth and ceiling to the game.

If it is not 5 enemies say it is 1. Still people want to feel their progression, know they are stronger, see their character and their skills develop. That is not achievable throughout the entire game in a system like an ARPG. What you are describing is basically an action rogue-like with increasingly difficult encounters, which many exist. Just not at the depth and breadth of something like an ARPG.

It is achievable up until a point. The areas where it is pertinent to talk about the integrity of basic combat in my opinion should be campaign/ early map progression. An intentionally paced experience through these parts of the game is doable, but not easy. They will have to take in a lot of feedback about specific skills and do a lot of testing themselves to really curate a good experience.

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IonSugeRau1#1069 เขียน:

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AverBeg7#1689 เขียน:

Which is why, you need to provide specific examples of when it broke down for you, playing what, how you felt when it happened and how you would like to see the game practically and realistically changed compared to it's current iteration.

From the get-go. As soon as you exit Clearfell. Worm boss used to be able to kill you, so was the hag. I died multiple times on them in the past. Not anymore. Abyss monsters have a large density of monsters from the start as well, which immediately make for an awful combat experience and a showcase for what's to come more and more gradually.

This is not ok:
https://gyazo.com/c908e43b3b8684c104bd5bfbef8460e2

I agree, they should buff the bosses after they nerfed their HP in 0.2 and we received some player buffs in 0.3. I didn't really like the 0.2 nerf to begin with, I felt like it was a lazy way to address core problems with the way skills function throughout the campaign. It was a band-aid that should've been removed after increasing the QOL of underperforming skills in the campaign. It should be a better curated experience in the campaign and early progression in maps but it's actually quite hard to actually pin down the exact problems. You have so many players and builds.

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cowmoo275#3095 เขียน:

I am done with this thread. Cutting myself off.

These last 10+ pages have been utter nonsense.

No one needs to explain to anyone what good/engaging combat means. It's obviously open to interpretation. I think the entire point of this thread is to remind GGG, "you are not delivering on your promise."

Reading between the lines (because that's all we have to go from), GGG has either shifted their direction entirely, this was their direction from the beginning and literally everyone just misinterpreted, or they are still planning to make massive changes and provide what many of us hope to be the next evolution of the ARPG genre. Either way, I hope they communicate more clearly because 0.3 was a disappointment.

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IILU81II#8410 เขียน:

Have a look at bow players killing pinnacles without ascendancy too. Nice balance there, also very engaging.

Great now do it on HC, or HCSSF.

No-one is forcing you to play the easy-mode glass cannon game mode and then complain about it. There are harder game-modes right now that require more deliberate gameplay where this isn't viable, you just don't want to play them.

In POE1 people also complain about end-game being easy but there's a grand total of one person who cleared the last Gauntlet (and most gauntlets). Like 99% of people don't even get out of the campaign in a gauntlet. There's probably <200 people who have ever cleared ubers in HCSSF. There's probably a similar number who have killed all the pinnacles at max difficulty in POE2 HCSSF.

Clearly most people talking about easy gameplay have not actually mastered it and can't actually survive in a setting that requires deliberate gameplay and defense.

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Shrodin#0981 เขียน:

No one needs to explain to anyone what good/engaging combat means. It's obviously open to interpretation. I think the entire point of this thread is to remind GGG, "you are not delivering on your promise."

Reading between the lines (because that's all we have to go from), GGG has either shifted their direction entirely, this was their direction from the beginning and literally everyone just misinterpreted, or they are still planning to make massive changes and provide what many of us hope to be the next evolution of the ARPG genre. Either way, I hope they communicate more clearly because 0.3 was a disappointment.

Precisely.

That being said, I think their intentions were rather clear and hard to misinterpret, based on the videos they were making long ago, prior to launch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UehsEJCfuns
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buc4-NTomSU

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Shrodin#0981 เขียน:

No one needs to explain to anyone what good/engaging combat means. It's obviously open to interpretation. I think the entire point of this thread is to remind GGG, "you are not delivering on your promise."

That is also open to interpretation, and I think they have delivered on their promise mostly. It is not easy to balance intentionally paced combat in a game with so many builds.

Why do you think simply changing the phrasing strengthens the argument?

There needs to be specific feedback that they can act on. Sitting here echoing a sour sentiment helps no one. It only feeds the poe1 trolls in the poe2 section that want us all to suffer for taking up their dev time (which is why this post has so many responses, if you look at the people who responded a lot apart from OP, their post history is not exactly poe2-friendly, and they just sit there posting fluff in response to everything).

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AverBeg7#1689 เขียน:

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Shrodin#0981 เขียน:

No one needs to explain to anyone what good/engaging combat means. It's obviously open to interpretation. I think the entire point of this thread is to remind GGG, "you are not delivering on your promise."

That is also open to interpretation, and I think they have delivered on their promise mostly. It is not easy to balance intentionally paced combat in a game with so many builds.

Obviously everything is open to interpretation. Just like how "I think the game should be sped up," is open to interpretation. You could boil down all feedback to "open to interpretation" unless you expect someone to sit down for weeks and come up with a design document that has no room for interpretation. This argument around semantics is noise. The OP posted a long video that gets the point across. Anyone who says otherwise is not discussing in good faith. If you disagree with the video, that's fine, but gatekeeping this forum to "actionable feedback" is crazy.

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AverBeg7#1689 เขียน:

There needs to be specific feedback that they can act on. Sitting here echoing a sour sentiment helps no one.

Man, if I haven't done stuff like that in the past, idk who did. And there were definitely others too with really interesting ideas, I have seen them.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3744610
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3709985
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3749999
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3746675