State of POE forums 2024

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Hilbert wrote:

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theyre making them even more important in poe2 and that is part of why they are leaving out the scion.

The Scion had a different issue. Upon releases Spectral Weapon was new and a great skill but the Scion was a Jack of all trades.

Usually the classes migrated best into their neighbouring areas:
Templar to Witch and Mara
Witch to Templar and Shadow
Mara to Duelist and Templar
Duelist to Mara and Ranger
Ranger to Shadow and Dueliest
Shadow to Witch and Ranger

Nobody build a Witch and went like:"Yeah now I gonna go stat to the STR tree"

The Scion had inferior nodes for several builds and in the end it was "Why didn't you take Class X?"



well that might be an issue with the scion for sure, i agree, but they have spoken about the scion in terms of class identity and tree access specifically in poe2. when you have the scion you need to grant access through the middle of the tree which cuts down the importance of your starting location, which cuts down the importance of picking one class over another.

people did actually take witches to the str tree, more so back in the day tho because thats where the +5 max res node and most of the good life nodes were tho.



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DarthSki44 wrote:

Either way, the gender selector is a bit of a moot point since PoE2 is shipping without it. I just maintain this is a poor decsison, with little upside, and will likely be difficult to be defended with any developmental integrity. (Other than just saying they didn't think it was important to them, which is bold imo)



why developmental integrity? you talk about it as if they have committed some kind of moral offence. it costs a lot of resources to implement, waters down class identity and has very little return in exchange. it actually has little downside for the majority of players. i get that its something you really want and personally i dont care either way, if they can find the time and resources to make it happen then cool im glad u guys got what u wanted, dont take it as me saying they shouldnt do it, far from it. i imagine it will be an mtx thing because they will see it as 'if it pays for itself then why not?' as i believe the issue is a bit of identity and a lot of resource allocation. just my guess.

if its a trade off between 50% of the unique items now dont get ingame art if we spend the time putting in alt genders then im unique item art for example, i think theres much bigger priorities when it comes to the look of the game. if its an mtx tho then thats not an issue because it generates the resources needed to do it.


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exsea wrote:


but in any case. due to the inherent classless nature of poe, POE will never have class identity where visuals are concerned.



its not really inherently classless tho, the first thing you do is pick a class right? you can put a shavs on a marauder and some spell gems and you are now a marauder who wears a robe and casts spells. youre still a marauder.

i can go make an army of chaos barbarians in warhammer and there will still be barbarian sorcerers in the army. i get what u mean but im not sure that was the intention and the visual side of poe always seemed on the back burner because of limited resources. and i know poe2, its big budget thats no excuses but if u look at diablo 3 with all the money in that game they still didnt have in game models for 95% of the legendary and set items. its a really big expense and even people like blizzard do less than poe1 has even done most of the time.



being classless is not a good thing. i dont think they aimed the game to be classless and characterless and you can just do anything you want. i know from some points of view people could feel that way but i think what they actually were going for is replayability. the primary focus of the game was the items and then on having a game you could replay forever with rng zones, rng drops and a lot of build choices.

at some point having no class identity or mechanical significance actually gives you less character diversity and replayability because theres no difference doing a witch firestorm build vs a marauder firestorm build. class limitations be they mechanical or aesthetic can actually increase the amount of things you can do in some situations, might seem counter intuitive but theres actually a balance between freedom and restriction where you get to make a ton of choices but the choices also matter and thats i think where theyre actually aiming. not freedom for freedoms sake but rather maximum meaningful replayability.


i dunno, maybe im wrong i cant speak for them, but i watched almost every interview and podcast theyve been on for the last 11 years and thats the impression ive been left with.

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Hilbert wrote:


Closed Beta 2012: Charan was a mod and a double or triple Diamond supporter. Some people accused him to have paid himself to mod status. Maybe he can clarify it himself but to me it looked like he took the invitation of those people antagonizing him and made them look stupid(most of them didn't even need to do anything and citing some phrases did the job). Those players were happy during OB when the there were paid mods in NZ. I no exaggeration that between closed Beta and some point at Open Beta he was the most hated user in PoE. When he joined reddit he was downvoted into oblivion just because "It's Charan" and that's saying something because reddit wanted one user to become a reddit mod one week the next week they wanted his head impaled on a stick.


Shit. Okay.

Firstly, yeah. I was hated. Still am. I still see posts about me around the net hating my sword simply because 'the guy made it is a total jerk' or something like that. Like, dude. I don't even know who you are. Anyway, closest I come to fame and honestly still closer than I'd like.

Anyway. 2012. The days of Charan and Hilbert. And yes, the GGG staff knew of both of us. In fact, I think Hilbert was more infamous with them because of the volume of his posts, whereas I was probably more 'that flatterer who has lots of money, well gee, good for us!'

A few clarifications then. Chris noticed me on here before I spent a cent because I got in on a gifted key from someone called Jahkaka (you just don't forget these things) and immediately started posting my feedback and praise. I was in a huge D3-shat-the-bed slump and of course PoE was here quietly Doing It Right. A few weeks after I got in, they opened up the first supporter packs. Chris and co had no idea who'd buy them or how many they'd buy, and I SERIOUSLY underpriced them. I bought the first Diamond pack because I know a bargain when I see one. I bought a few more for the same reason. This was enough to get me a direct email from Chris (in hindsight, pretty cheap considering how bonkers rich GGG are now and how piddling a few thousand dollars must seem) and so we started chatting. I met him in July 2012 after some serious coaxing from my partner, and we got along well enough. I suppose that's when he and GGG overall got a true measure of what sort of person was behind that early-stage whale-level support. I was really active on the forum but didn't really think past user level. We had volunteer moderators that point (Wittgenstein, Whiteboy, duolc/siffin, Metronomy, a few others I've certainly forgotten) and I thought they did a fine job. But at some point GGG did ask if I wanted to give it a go. There were by then other whales who had spent close to as much as me who either weren't approached or declined, but I did see a few of them on alpha later (alpha realm access then being a sort of 'test of trust' since...well, it's alpha). Anyway, I said yes. I've moderated elsewhere before and thought this community was extremely good for its size and type. I recruited some other forum regulars for volunteer moderation as well, and for the most part that worked too. Some are still Valued Posters to this day (and yes, I turned down that tag because at the time I was already well on my way to criticising GGG much more than praising them, and I knew it wasn't going to stop).

Anyway, after a settling-in period of volmodding I made probably my first real mistake: I was too hands-on with the moderating. You'll notice now that there are safeguards in play to keep the paid mods safe from retribution -- a collective account name, fairly vague censorship, very broad rules. We didn't have any of those, so it was a lot of ad hoc reactions. If someone got out of hand, we were allowed to modify their posts and say roughly why. I was...quite creative in that aspect. I have since learned from observation of much larger groups with effective moderation that doing that is an error -- it gives people room to react in turn, and they take it personally (understandable!). Anyway, many regrets from that time but actually being a volunteer moderator isn't one of them.

The subreddit in those days was handled by Chris himself, but he had to step down due to conflict of interest. I had no interest in it myself. We had here, after all. GGG staff posted here. Interacted here. The subreddit seemed to be a sort of Other place for those who didn't like it here. Or, yep, felt like they'd be run off. Whatever. So I never really tried to fit in there, and as I recall the most...lively threads concerning me were sword-related. Again: whatever.

Finally, we volunteer moderators were very gently replaced by paid staff and I think most of us were glad for it. Something very awful happened almost overnight with Open Beta: the massive influx of players caused the chat to turn into a blur. We simply couldn't moderate it at all and there was no report function, nothing. I remember *actually getting a migraine* from trying to read the in-game chat. But then after the first wave of paid moderation staff came in and the transition began, things started to change again: we had more chat instances, there was a report function, and basically...moderating was kind of easy again. Oh well, good for these new folks. For a while some of us exiting volmods assisted the paid ones, but in hindsight maybe they saw it more as pestering and nit-picking. I remember chatting with Bex a lot, and I did meet Sam and a few of the others at the time in...August 2013 I think it was. Wonderful people, all.

My last memory of being involved behind the scenes was in the drafting of the first proper set of rules for the forum, but they've changed since and I don't even remember any of them. Only that it was great to finally have...well, rules.

Man, this was like 11 years ago. It's a wonder I fucking remember any of it because it was both SO MUCH and SO LITTLE. I have clearer memories of my role as Ruler than as moderator, because that one was much more tongue in cheek but also genuinely occasionally good. I loved the hunt for The Goddess Scorned. I loved people's reaction to the drop bear. I REALLY loved the proper implementation of The Goddess Unleashed/Oni-Goroshi. And I simply don't have the words to fully express what my guild the Bird-Lovers öf Wræclast made me feel. Everything, sooner or later. Everything. Still have some from those days I consider true friends. Some even followed me to Facebook, bless 'em.

My god, I've given myself a headache just writing this. Triggered myself. Hard. LOL.

Nice to see you again, Hilbert. I hope you know just how much you meant to GGG back then. I swear there was a reverent tone when some of the devs said your name, like, this dude *really* cares about the game.

Okay, back to 2024. And not here. Those Mother-loving demons won't kill themselves, and I remain the same filthy casual I've always been, struggling to keep up with PoE's brilliance for only as long as I had to. I no longer have to.

Apologies in advance if any of this gets censored. It might. I honestly don't know what I'm allowed to say and what I'm not. I still keep some real secrets of the Beta day though. Some of those are going to my grave. I remember the one time I saw Chris get genuinely angry, and it was when someone betrayed his trust. I never want him to see me that way, and if he already does, fucking oops. Roughly 99% sure he'll never read a word of this though. After all, it's not Reddit. ^_~

C




https://linktr.ee/wjameschan -- everything I've ever done worth talking about, and even that is debatable.
Well I am too out of touch when it comes to dropbears but if they are any dangerous you are lucky that they don't know you designed them. You aren't the only Exalt/Diamond supporter bashed for their unique. Very few people know that the very first uniques very pretty basic on purpose because you could release them without further issues.

First I was infamous with certain group of racers and then I was blatantly ignoring the no naming and shaming rule in OB. I remind you that closed beta allowed naming and shaming and I even think you moderated a thread shaming the whirling blade scammers(there was no trade screen everything was ground trade)

Giving people nicks like "RMTName" I still have couple of DMs of people asking who is RMTthis and RMTthat. I didn't even need to do detective work they used the same nick on RMT sites. It's hilarious in hindsight that several of those got the banned tag now including one once very active racer.

At some point scammers even managed to get users probated posting "Negative trading experience" in their thread. Not allowing to expose RMTers, price fixers and scammers drove the community to reddit.

I became infamous with support for 4 things after OB:

-Poor Droprate(Risk no reward) and (stealth) nerf complaints

-Constantly complaining about the raceshedule(Characternames)

-Balance(eg Oneshot mechanics) and the design how I think eg a summoner should be played complaints.

If I had continued playing I would have way more complaints such as too many side events such as you have to level up masters, do daily missions etc.

The TDLR was I desired an ARPG design and PoE turned MMO, wanting to be Dark Soulsx2. You can see things like Classic WoW Hardcore. This is a kind of mode I would never ever play and HC PoE became pretty close to that.
It's kinda a shame that private leagues just offer some buttons. I would have prefered a "I am gonna show them how I would do it" mode with full control. Stuff like that could have created something like DotA for an ARPG.


And let's be honest compared to the streamers or youtubers that followed I was nothing. One thing that GGG totally forgot though was how to punish somebody in style. Only CB members remember "OldManWithABow".

EG: "Like how BANNED are you, you *reason here*, I dunno man, the more times you get banned, the more likely you are getting HARDWAREIDBANNED now that you got banned the x-th time YOU ARE HARDWAREIDBANNED".

I wouldn't say volume of posts though. I was a very active closed beta player, after A3 I only did races and some CT events. Most critical feedback hit after OB.

Reading some posts I am kinda confused why some threads in techsupport are still up. Those are written in a way that would get you instant 3 day probation back in the day.


I think you forgot Invalesco. TBH I would have loved reading reddit and BAMBI posts if you became MVP.

I am logging in every few years since 2016 I think, so I don't know any safeguards or new things. But iirc several mods used fake nicks back in the day and disappeared after some 'controverse'. It was mostly reddit though and the main target of ire were the poor mods enforcing the "No naming and shaming" rule in the tradesection.


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I was...quite creative in that aspect. I have since learned from observation of much larger groups with effective moderation that doing that is an error -- it gives people room to react in turn, and they take it personally (understandable!).


It was good entertainment for bystanders though. "What you gonna do stab me?"
-Guy who was stabbed

Since you are somewhat active:
What happened to Bambi? Last I checked I saw a suspected alt.
bhavv got released? I remember seeing him being On Probation 4 and 2 years ago.

Do you have any insight on the 2 sentence ending nuisance? Looks like he got perma-probated he was one of 3 users that were really going on my nerves back in the day. It felt like being conditioned like a dog seeing the same 2 words at the end.

That was Alpha and after that leak the Alpha got the content after the PR tour.


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as for what you mention about asmongold, if we're being specific, you're correct. its inaccurate to say "everyone" is like that. definitely there are a lot of agitators etc. but i still say it has some truth to it in a very general statement.

I don't watch or follow streamers but it's painfully obvious he gets baited into covering those things. That causes the other side to attack him.

When you do some research on agitators of all kinds you will find the books of their masterminds and those have well thought out strategies how to recruit followers including debates and online discussion.

EG. "When you are confronted with a quote say you were taken out of context, say it's character assasination from the other side and deflect with a harmless interpretation."

"Stay on the grey line for some time till nobody cares anymore then start going beyond that to feed them forbidden ideas step by step"

All those strategies were developed in the cold war to destabilize countries in the Soviet Union and refined ~20 years ago.

You can already see several examples where the first steps.

Take for example the goal to legalize hard heavily addictive drugs.
Drug A is a topic
Drug A gets decriminalized->No major change.
Drug A gets legalized-->Druglords profit
Drug B gets a topic
Drug B gets decriminilazed rinse and repeat.

You can guess what when harder drugs get legal and Cartels get influence.


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i've debated many people online. one important skill is you need to identify their intent. some people just cant be reasoned with. you can give them 1001 explanation, with elaboration, examples etc. but nope. its not enough for them. its like arguing with a flat earther.

There are many ways to debate. Most arguments are my point vs your point.

But try something like: "Why do you think that?" and let them elaborate then ask questions and put them into your perspective.

You are right that some discussions are pointless because somebody is just parroting without deeper knowledge.

But you mentioned a flat earther and that's where the deprogramming of family members turned into nutjobs comes into play.

What you learn is they have a programmed block in their brain and they play it on loop like a record. When you argument against it you often get into traps set by the agitators. Ex "It's a conspiracy, everybody trying to argue against you is part of the conspiracy"

To deprogram those you need to find a weak point and make them doubt that one themselves one by one. Once you destroy some parts of the block the block will crumble.

What's also possible is to ask questions they cannot answer. For a Flat earther for example. "What's beneath the disc?"


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scion was a very interesting addition to POE to be honest. but when ascendencies came GGG ran out of ideas for the scion which kinda made her suck ass badly. its really tragic.

if ascendencies didnt exist i would argue that ascendant would actually be OP as she has easy and fast access to jewels slots.

I can't speak for Ascendencies or jewels but one big issue was that GGG created so many side projects and they didn't fully finished one.

Take Vaal Gems for example. I know they continued at some point but it had been years.

Rogue Exiles. (It might even be Charan's feedback that lowered their HP) but at some point you had 3 exiles ruining everything and the rest being meh.

Huge Backlog of Uniques to design, because almost everybody wanted some new mechanic. I am not even sure if some keystone or item had to be disabled at some point. I think the devs were happy when somebody just wanted a map.

Halls of Grandmasters+Backlog. Technically you'd have to allow players to resent every single patch changing the skill tree.

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as for the forums being toxic. i would say all forums have toxicity. just that in the recent week or 2 i've seen so many thread here being locked up, which is something i havent seen happen and is quite exceptional

A large portion of the PoE community is just toxic and always have been. Moderating forums must be a breeze compared to chat.

I forgot the name of those guys having the podcast but both of them were bullied out of PoE(the first guy podcast) for reasons as "the devs are talking to them instead of me/streamer y". It didn't help that the soldier was taking the bait of trolls.

How many redditors tried to get streamers banned for minor things. But it also should be noted that some complaints were legit.

When somebody died with a message they got dmed by dozens of people just to be mocked and laughed at.

Feuds between racers themselves X is better he must be cheating.
The entire elitism.

I'd even say that the PoE community is worse than years ago because the insults adapted to the rules. Ex instead of calling somebody fat it's said "You look skinnier than tommorow"


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people did actually take witches to the str tree, more so back in the day tho because thats where the +5 max res node and most of the good life nodes were tho.

My point was that' you would't start a class just to move straight to the nodes of another class. Grabbing Keystones and important nodes is something different.
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I don't watch or follow streamers but it's painfully obvious he gets baited into covering those things. That causes the other side to attack him.


i kinda watch a lot of asmon's takes on things. i can tell you that hes quite open about why he does things. he's not really baited into covering this or that, to him it's all content and hes not ashamed to say he's farming views. one thing i do like is he actually gives his opinions and takes and talks about his POV in great lengths.

he even gave a good example of him streaming himself playing some lame ass clash of clan type game and playing badly like using coins to instantly complete a building while the building had just 2-3 seconds left to complete. he knew he would get engagement and views.

i dont want to put him on a pedestal, but i would say i share a lot of his views and opinions.

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To deprogram those you need to find a weak point and make them doubt that one themselves one by one. Once you destroy some parts of the block the block will crumble.


sometimes i do manage to find some weak points. for example people who argue about transwomen in women categoried sports. i can give them newsposts/articles etc, proof of transwomen having a huge advantage over natrual women. like a transwoman cyclist that won the race by 5 MINUTES. yet the other party would just simply refuse/dont want to talk using logic.

to be honest, i think you're right that we need to find the chip in their armor for their viewpoints to come crumbling down. but when theyre plugging mud or scrambling to find whatever they can to cover the weakpoints. i cant help but feel that my time is wasted on them. i do realize that i simply dont care enough to continue. i have no stakes and no need to win the person over. i even had a friend that apparently was open to talk about religion. we talked over the span of months. then one day i realized, he was arguing in bad faith. i used pure logic to debunk something that he said and he doesnt even acknowledge it. i've wasted so much of my time entertaining him. for what?

we ended our discussion "amicably" but we havent interacted near a year or maybe longer by now.

but thanks to him i found the importance of identifying a person's stance when debating. if i think it will ultimately lead to a waste of my time and effort, i simply stop.

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Take Vaal Gems for example. I know they continued at some point but it had been years.


lol sadly scion seems to be one of em. her ascendency hasnt been touched only except when ggg makes a change to a different ascendency that forces them to update the relevant "scion version" of that ascendency.

as for jewels. paired with tattoos, we now have a great deal of flexibility when making our own builds.

talking about uniques and player created content. i honestly feel that GGG needs to come back and fix shit up after POE2 has been released and stabilized.

i dont have any special custom content attributed under my name. but i know i would be damn pissed if what i wanted became sidelined so badly as the game grew. like what you mentioned, uniques being weak as its easier to balance them out by having them be weak so they can churn out more player made uniques with less resistance. if my custom unique ended up being relegated into "vendor food" i think it would leave a salty taste in my mouth. especially when newer players ask what they should do with them and most players would say something along the likes of "its vendorfood".

to make things worse are divination cards. the list of divinitation cards that are simply "disabled" are staggering.

i m not rich but i have splurged a huge lot on this game. getting those supporter packs require a very large sum of money, and i think its a great disservice to all the older supporters to have things the way its at.

but on the other hand, if ggg is stuck clearing the backlog, poe2 would never have happened.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:



its not really inherently classless tho, the first thing you do is pick a class right? you can put a shavs on a marauder and some spell gems and you are now a marauder who wears a robe and casts spells. youre still a marauder.

i can go make an army of chaos barbarians in warhammer and there will still be barbarian sorcerers in the army. i get what u mean but im not sure that was the intention and the visual side of poe always seemed on the back burner because of limited resources. and i know poe2, its big budget thats no excuses but if u look at diablo 3 with all the money in that game they still didnt have in game models for 95% of the legendary and set items. its a really big expense and even people like blizzard do less than poe1 has even done most of the time.



being classless is not a good thing. i dont think they aimed the game to be classless and characterless and you can just do anything you want. i know from some points of view people could feel that way but i think what they actually were going for is replayability. the primary focus of the game was the items and then on having a game you could replay forever with rng zones, rng drops and a lot of build choices.

at some point having no class identity or mechanical significance actually gives you less character diversity and replayability because theres no difference doing a witch firestorm build vs a marauder firestorm build. class limitations be they mechanical or aesthetic can actually increase the amount of things you can do in some situations, might seem counter intuitive but theres actually a balance between freedom and restriction where you get to make a ton of choices but the choices also matter and thats i think where theyre actually aiming. not freedom for freedoms sake but rather maximum meaningful replayability.


i dunno, maybe im wrong i cant speak for them, but i watched almost every interview and podcast theyve been on for the last 11 years and thats the impression ive been left with.



POE actually is one of the most "classless" games in the market. despite having 3 base classes at launch, expanding to 7 later, and even after introducing ascendancies, it still is one of the most classless games.

why would i say that? for starters is gearing. all equipment in the game. all skill gems in the game are not class locked. you meet the stat requirement, you're free to use it.

you want to be a marauder summoner? you can do it. in fact some people chose to be duelist archers as champions could grant them perma fortify.

the only exception is the newer stuff tied to ascendencies such as the forbidden flesh/flame combo.

i would also go on to say that i disagree with your opinion on that having no class identity would reduce diversity. in fact i would say if a game gives MORE diversity by being classless.

for example. lightning strike. its currently listed as the meta under poe ninja. but if you check the list of classes used, you can see a lot of wardens but you can see tricksters, slayers, and even the odd juggernaught, inquisitor, and even deadeye.

that shows how much diversity we get from allowing things to be classless. if lightning strike was "warden only". we wont see any of these unique and interesting builds.

another example is hexblast. one would think that it fits perfectly with occultist, but if you check the ninja, there are a handful of other ascendencies that make it work.

if you locked hexblast to be a class specific skill, poe ninja's builds would be reworked. you would NOT see any class variance.

in LE, if you check reapers, there are many different reaper variants. but as it's locked under the lich class. thats all you get. maybe 10-20 reaper variants.

i m pretty sure in POE, skills also have 10-20 variants. but then thats multiplied further because you also can use different classes on top of running a certain variant.

i would also like to clarify what i mean by classless, is classless as a feature. poe definitely started with 3 base classes. it is definitely not purely classless since the fact we have 3 base classes is the antithesis of the entire "poe is classless" argument.

normally i would actually link one old POE announcement from it's original release. in that announcement, the game being "classless" was touted as an original feature. i am unable to find that post now as any time i search for the post, search engines tend to shove "POE2 release" announcements instead.

regardless, i do recognize that GGG is pushing more class identity as well as weapon class identity in poe2. but despite that, poe2 still has a very strong classless feature.

other games with classless features include GD/TQ/TLI/Undecember and even diablo 1.

tho d2 onwards and many other arpgs have many gear that are classlocked.

i would even go out to say the entire reason why i started playing POE was because it was touted as being classless. looking into the wayback machine, its interesting to see how the original classes were portrayed and described, where each class was mainly "aligned to an attribute". how the game was designed mainly revolved around all these attributes. attributes were the class identity. and technically you dont lose out too much for being a melee witch "back in the day".

i would argue this, because back in the day, losing 10-20 passive points was fine. 100-500k dps was enough to clear a huge majority of content so there was a lot of diversity.

now we need literal millions of dps a lot of potential diversity is lost.

[Removed by Support]
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exsea wrote:


POE actually is one of the most "classless" games in the market.



its not classless, all these games you mentioned have classes including poe.


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exsea wrote:

i would also go on to say that i disagree with your opinion on that having no class identity would reduce diversity. in fact i would say if a game gives MORE diversity by being classless.





with respect you are wrong and you are about to explain why you are wrong with your own argument...


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exsea wrote:

for example. lightning strike. its currently listed as the meta under poe ninja. but if you check the list of classes used, you can see a lot of wardens but you can see tricksters, slayers, and even the odd juggernaught, inquisitor, and even deadeye.



so because we have classes you can now see 6 different variations of the build, if we did not have those 6 classes there would not be those 6 variations. so we get more diversity and options because we have classes.


"
exsea wrote:

that shows how much diversity we get from allowing things to be classless.



it shows how much diversity you get from having fixed classes that are different to each other.





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i would even go out to say the entire reason why i started playing POE was because it was touted as being classless. looking into the wayback machine, its interesting to see how the original classes were portrayed and described, where each class was mainly "aligned to an attribute". how the game was designed mainly revolved around all these attributes. attributes were the class identity. and technically you dont lose out too much for being a melee witch "back in the day".



we had less build diversity back then. you can still play a melee witch, the difference is that in 2013/2014 the best melee class was witch and marauder was trash. dagger was the best melee weapon and es was the best core defence mechanic, that made shadow or witch the optimal melee choice and because the shadow started with a string of small % damage nodes that were meaningless but the witch started with small es% nodes which were worth taking the witch was the optimal pick between shadow and witch. the difference between those 2 classes was so small that it was simple math, one class got more % than the other and otherwise was identical.


the game was worse back then, there were less real options. you could make a bow duelist or a bow ranger, you could make a sword cleave duelist or ranger, you could make a claw reave duelist or ranger but the answer was always that ranger was better for everything they both could do as a life based build.

it wasnt an opinion based on if you like what u get from warden or champion more, the ranger started with a string of life nodes and the duelist started with bad % damage nodes and that meant that you basically lost points if you started duelist. if you went duelist you took the life nodes at the ranger start because path of life nodes you needed them, if you started ranger you didnt take the damage nodes at the duelist start, you spent the points on a better set of damage nodes elsewhere and your build was just better, it had all the same stats just had more of the % damage.

it was meaningless, now that classes come with ascendancies and there is an actual significant difference between what you get with different classes it means there are now way more build variations that have meaningful differences, as you yourself have pointed out.
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yet the other party would just simply refuse/dont want to talk using logic.


Because you go "point vs point".

You need to understand you deal with a younger generation that has a high chance to have been told what wrongthink is but never learned to think to themselves.

They get pulled into circles where it's "US vs them". They are already programmed in a way.

Instead of going "No you are wrong here is why..."
Let them go on and you will see if the knowledge is superficial and then ask specific questions. There are many vids where you can see it in action even though it's just the "gotcha format"

There are also cases where teachers got fired after they uploaded a video asking teaching a student how to think. In the end the student understood everything.



"
but on the other hand, if ggg is stuck clearing the backlog, poe2 would never have happened.

I don't know how big the backlog is but one of my CB friends got transfered the right to design an item and he was keen to design a Meleestaff as staffs didn't get any love. That was 2014 I don't know if the staff ever made it into the game.

Very often it's the players fault losing interest. How many Grandmaster supporters are still playing so they could update their character?

POE2 is more or less PoE1 with a different design idea. There were many kinda unskippable encounters, kill speed meta and lots of things cluttering the screen. This drove away players not enjoying that type of content.
Or rather said many changes in PoE1 couldn't be reverted after certain decisions so they are stuck. Data likely also showed that most players are On and Off players very few sticking for longer in a league.

It's like an author having a book and many unfinished side stories.

Then you see messages players getting league banned for using a mechanic that wasn't meant to work that way, when in reality those players played by the rules and either experimented with something or they found something involving a forgotten mechanic. It might be better to disables everything but the most recent mechanics to remain in control.

PoE is in a state like TCGs. You release something new and suddenly an old card nobody ever cared about enables somme broken BS. To be clear it happened in the past as well but now it's more difficult to keep track of everything.


"
we had less build diversity back then. you can still play a melee witch, the difference is that in 2013/2014 the best melee class was witch and marauder was trash. dagger was the best melee weapon and es was the best core defence mechanic, that made shadow or witch the optimal melee choice and because the shadow started with a string of small % damage nodes that were meaningless but the witch started with small es% nodes which were worth taking the witch was the optimal pick between shadow and witch. the difference between those 2 classes was so small that it was simple math, one class got more % than the other and otherwise was identical.


True there were fewer builds. But you have to consider that the game went from beta state1 to beta state2. When the Shadow was new ALMOST NOBODY played shadow, the class didn't have any access to Strength and life nodes, claws and daggers were his suggested weapons and those were bad I mean really bad.I think Metronomy was one of the few players trying to make Shadow work in the One week races during CB.
There wasn't even a keystone close to him. I think one that got moved closer to ranger(that one was bad back then) and CI were the closest. Then Daggerbuff, Sporkbuilds, Ghostreaver, Vaal Pact everything to make it playable.

Back then it was natural that you'd enter the tree of another class because they had very good nodes close together.

While PoE allows you to play the way you want the original design never was classless.


You picked between 6 later 7 focus Attributes, you received suggested skillgems
with a focus on your Attributes and the skilltree supports those suggested builds.

Gem Muling and Trading was very common because some skills were great while others were poor.

Games like Dark Souls are classless. You get to play with a few starter items but over the course of the game you deceide how to build the character.

In PoE you played one of the suggested builds or interrupt it with a lot of Gemmuling.



i ll clarify myself abit and mention POE is not a true classless game but how it originally was, was technically classless. it still maintains classless features.

which is why i did mention and acknowledge that poe is not truly classless but had classless mechanics. but i do remember that GGG did market the game as being classless once upon a time. i m so annoyed that i cant the post anymore.

to avoid confusion and to use proper terms i ll just say that POE has a very minimal amount of classlocked gear/skills in their game. and that alone was one of the reasons why i love the game so much as it allows a great amount of flexibility.

as for saying that

"
so because we have classes you can now see 6 different variations of the build, if we did not have those 6 classes there would not be those 6 variations. so we get more diversity and options because we have classes.


the reason these variations work is because ggg did not class lock gear or skills.

if POE 1.5 was released and everything was exactly the same but in POE1.5 the game leaned heavily into classlocking stuff, then these variations would simply not exist.

by definition poe is not a classless game, the existence of classes nullifies any notion of that and i would admit i would be wrong to say poe is a classless game by definition.

but via practical application, poe is classless since theres practically zero classlocks.

so i would agree with you at saying i m wrong, but i would still ask you view it from a practical pov.

"
There are also cases where teachers got fired after they uploaded a video asking teaching a student how to think. In the end the student understood everything.


i could definitely have had the wrong approach. i've tried many different approaches. but ultimately i respect my own time more and became less invested in others.

[Removed by Support]
"
Hilbert wrote:


I think you forgot Invalesco.



Good ole Inva who baited me to try his flicker strike shadow back in the days when Chris advertised it in BOTW. He's a casual now in my guild. POE has evolved so much from back in the days. Arguably better now (for me at least), but the community has lost much of the identity of old.
It will convert your forum titles into decorative square badges that use the space next to your forum posts more economically so that you can show off an unlimited number of them at any one time. - GGG, 2018 (https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3573673)
Mentioning BotW reminded me of HotW. I think I got probated once for linking/quoting to KurtCubainsShotgun's hideout video, which was to put it nicely was a representation of WW2 showing symbols using corpses.

BotW is a relict of ancient times though because the patches destroyed builds and the commmunity then replied "This build sucks". The reasons could be as simple as cost multipliers going fromm 120-130% to 150-160%.

I would rather say it took a few directions. Sure there were new skills and such but the core issues remained the same. It's a core issue that the devs forget what makes a game fun vs how they think their game should be played.

This happens everywhere. I remind you how Blizzard responded with something "You believe you want Oldschool WoW but you don't want it" and after that there was a huge emulated server for classic WoW.

1. Stealth-Nerfs to drop rates and crafting.

I noticed it between CB and OB crafting items with certain mods became considerably harder. So was finding maps, during CB and races it took some time till I ran out of maps and even then it took only a short time to find new maps. This map "drop slot" at Piety wouldn't ever be needed if the droprates had been fine. A ran out of maps after a few maps in OB.

You could see the sad highlight in the Kalandra league even though as far I understood the Archnemesis mods were a major offender.

2. Constant destruction of builds and items. Creating new gems as flavor of the league.

After a patch serveral builds became unplayable. Eg life rolls go down, life nodes get decreased, regen gets decreased etc. Melee became unplayable at some point. And TBH would it really matter if Kaoms Armor still had 1k HP? I see builds with 8k HP going from 8k to zero after one hit.

Especially the item designs and skill changes at some point created well deserved hostility. I am pretty sure when Charan's sword was mishandled the devs were like "Why did Charan let Hilbert enter his account"

All these legacy items only created a large RMT market for PoE. At that point responding with "no fun allowed" got players probated in the patchnotes.

To be clear I am not talking about stuff like freezing major bosses this should never work in the first place. I talk about stuff that was supposedly doing too much damage.

In CB you could play around and even if you could get by. Then you suddenly needed external sites to see how viable a build is.

3. Constant BS mechanics and the lack of risk and reward. If you lose a HC char it should feel like you made a mistake not you died to BS. Sure you can add that BS but then it should at least feel rewarding. Players were just skipping bosses because they did overtunded damage and years later you see players fight rares for 20+ minutes just to get scraps, whetstones and flasks.

All in all those 3 points created memes that got people probated when posting in the wrong thread from "No Fun allowed" to "The Vision"



When it comes to the community there are several reasons for it:

First players naturally quitting.

As I mentioned above changes made PoE a wet dream for RMT on top of that the no naming and shaming rule protected those scammers/RMTers. It isn't any better nowdays when those communities are in discords. With Naming and Shaming could see for themselves if somebody is scamming or it's rather a personal vendetta. There also could be ways to provide evidence that somebody is scamming such as recording the screen. I think this rule was a massive mistake. Scamvictims also often let out their frustration on the mods here.

The elitism brought in by certain streamer. Those followers don't play anymore and leagues aren't different anymore and BS speaks against HC they are mostly gone. Not that they would be missed but for completions sake. They drove away casual players.

Increasing toxicticy mostly due to the 3 fundamental problems and tone deaf or PR reactions resulting in heavy handed moderations so players left the forums(I was a major offender of that + naming and shaming).

White knight trolls being equally toxic avoiding punishment. 2 of those trolls were really going my nerves there was a 3rd one constantly being mentioned on reddit but they really drove engagement away from the forums.


I think GGG missed an opportunity to save money. They could have used some kind of Karma+Overwatch system to let the community regulate itself.
Users would gain Karmapoints for reports they could trade in for MTX points/special MTX or lose some on fake reports to have their reports fully ignored.
Then some random users would see the posts without username and deceide if it warrants or doesn't warrant an action.
The idea has a flaw because some very active users could be identified or when they use their nick as signature. But it would have required fewer resources.


But it looks like moderation read my post mentioning toxic posts in the tech support section as I now saw one probated account(might be unrelated though) the mods should have really have added "We saw a post by Hilbert mentioning toxic posts so we found yours" as probation reason. Would be hilarious to see some flame PM in a few years over the usual Racereward PMs. ;D
my posts sometimes gets removed as ggg sees it as me attacking people.

but whenever i point out that some posts prior seem to be attacking me, i am told to report them?

sometimes i dont know if i m being actively reported on or if GGG staff are actively choosing to be more harsh on me. while letting others slide past.

regardless, i've decided to not let it bother me. in fact, i just choose not to debate too much if i realize the other side is coming in with bad faith.

its really mind boggling how when GGG themselves humbly acknowledge that POE 1's melee is so damn bad the best way to fix melee was to make a new game, some folk be like "nah melee has always been fine".

also when you talk elitism. there definitely is a lot of that. especially in poe.

the very good players want the game to be ball numbingly hard the way it is now and reject every notion of making the game more fun for newer players as it takes away from their accolades. since achievements means nothing if everyone has it.

i m convinced that there are many people who are in the forums argue in bad faith in their own best interest. like what you mention no naming and shaming. one popular topic is automated trade. which has some forummers even victim blaming scam victims for not checking the trade properly. its the victims fault.

like what the fuck? i m glad i havent been scammed so far. but people have tried to scam me before. switching out starforges with voidforges. also i've had people try to snipe perandus trades too.

all this and the best they do is blame the victim. for sure, scams happened back in d2 too but back then its a very different scene. arpgs were in the stone ages. the devs did the bare basic to facilitate trade.

its 2024, roughly a decade has past yet a lot of people are so intent on living in the past and having the game difficult for everyone.
[Removed by Support]

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