Should capped resistances be a requirement rather than an advantage?

One thing I've always thought about is if having capped resistances (>=75%) being a requirement is the best thing for the game, or really any game for that matter.

Forcing capped resistances doesn't create any options or decision-making for the player; it's just a hard gear check to playing the content.

Would resistances bring more of a bonus later if defense rather than a baseline requirement promote better gameplay and itemization? I think it would.

I think the current state of Chaos resistance is more like how all resistances work; capping your Chaos resistance isn't a requirement necessarily, but the more you have, the better it feels. Chaos resistance never feels bad on gear, while over-capping other resistances does, and after renders an otherwise good piece of equipment useless to you.

Last Epoch found an interesting way to addressing this issue by adding a variety of ways to benefit from over-capping resistances. That's one way to approach this dilemma. Another way I feel, would be to just have resistances be something you just don't ever plan on capping, similar to any other defense - more is simply just better, but less isn't necessarily a death sentence.

Any thoughts?

+1

The current resistance system for PoE is objectively bad for an ARPG based around build/playe-style diversity and looting/gearing. I have an entire post talking about the issues the current system has and how they could be alleviated:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3629096

PoE1 has many things that change how you build around resistances,
for example increased damage from overcapped, things that lower your capped resistance but gives other defenses in return, so you can use other gear that does not give so much resist. Or you can build characters that increase their cap etc.

PoE2 has a few things like that but not that many yet, so it does give some options to how to build your character and I assume that more will probably be added in the future.

+1

I said it since POE 1 came out. Default -60% resistances just forces you to max res half your gear. But at least you could pretty much get most of it via the skill tree and jewels. Necromancer could literally max out from the tree and ascendency.

In POE 2 there are no significant nodes on the tree to overcome the utterly pointless -40% resistances. You can use runes and gear but you still need 115% fire, lightning and cold resistances + 75% chaos on your gear to realistically tank those elements at higher difficulties. Add to that physical damage reduction though armour doesn't work so block is the only realistic option. All you have left to increase damage is gem levels and crit from gear which are super expensive which is why there are like two working endgame builds.

It was a bad idea in POE and even worse in POE 2. GGG - "That's how we do it" because muh difficulty is annoying af. If by the end of act 3 you have +20% as the default till endgame many builds would open up with that change alone.

Made many posts on this.

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SplashKing#6352 wrote:

One thing I've always thought about is if having capped resistances (>=75%) being a requirement is the best thing for the game, or really any game for that matter.

Forcing capped resistances doesn't create any options or decision-making for the player; it's just a hard gear check to playing the content.

Would resistances bring more of a bonus later if defense rather than a baseline requirement promote better gameplay and itemization? I think it would.

I think the current state of Chaos resistance is more like how all resistances work; capping your Chaos resistance isn't a requirement necessarily, but the more you have, the better it feels. Chaos resistance never feels bad on gear, while over-capping other resistances does, and after renders an otherwise good piece of equipment useless to you.

Last Epoch found an interesting way to addressing this issue by adding a variety of ways to benefit from over-capping resistances. That's one way to approach this dilemma. Another way I feel, would be to just have resistances be something you just don't ever plan on capping, similar to any other defense - more is simply just better, but less isn't necessarily a death sentence.

Any thoughts?

Sadly this is a tricky part of game designing.
Because on one side you say its boring that you must find gears to hit defenses first
on the other hand there's the escalation problem that could results in characters of 100% crit, hit, damage, etc... resulting in an even worse scenario of who has the highest dps.

Certain classes has diminishing returns in stats. For example: once you have 65% armor any other def stats worths more than getting more armor. Because like 1k armor gives you an extra %, while 1k evasion gives you 25% dodge (pulling out numbers from my noble parts, hope points taken at least)

But same with other stats. Once you hit your crit target (usually correlated with attack speed) crit% becomes worthless and crit damage is all the way to go.

Not sure if its worthy to complain about. We have the same problems later.
Like many bosses become technically dps checks. Currently I am having fun, but not sure how long for, because I am 81, and I am only in a "lousy" tens of k dps range. And I see people with million dps build taking minutes to kill bosses. Will I even reach that point with my build?
Will I need 2 hours to kill the boss?
Or I will hit another Forgemaster if "you must be this tall to take the ride"?

Resistances are the only thing POE has to min-max. Its boring.

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LVSviral#3689 wrote:

+1

The current resistance system for PoE is objectively bad for an ARPG based around build/playe-style diversity and looting/gearing. I have an entire post talking about the issues the current system has and how they could be alleviated:
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3629096

I saw that wall of text. I get the idea, but current resistance system it's simple and it works.

This formula you made as example (50+0.05*resistance)/(50+resistance), will force people even more to get into resistances, and not just reaching 75% base which is fairly simple now, but investing way more to get more defenses.

Balancing damage of mobs will be a lot harder, because there's no more static value that majority of players have, with that system they will have to find ways to track it, to find average value and balance around that.

Not to say it will be more confusing for new player to understand why his 150% resistance reduce damage only by 72%, and that new player will likely not go and search why, to find out some weird formula they not want to deal with.
Currently its simple, you have 75% resist - you reduce elemental damage by 75%.

But if GGG decide to change it, so be it, they clearly know better what's good for their game.

I think in general, not talking about any particular game, capping resistances or a defensive-like stat is good for the progression of characters. It gives a player something that has value and weight throughout all parts of the game. That is also why most games have resistance penalties. I can see your argument though, and maybe where PoE 2 can improve is the item acquisition to achieve those resistance and defensive stats. I think that loot in general is not in the best place, where almost all loot comes from rares, and breaches. If they can streamline the loot system and crafting, 100% resistance, and even chaos resistance will feel much better to get.

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This formula you made as example (50+0.05*resistance)/(50+resistance), will force people even more to get into resistances, and not just reaching 75% base which is fairly simple now, but investing way more to get more defenses.

Forced? Diminished returns combined with other mod options on gear would mean no one is 'forced' into anything. Such a change would actually remove more 'illusion of choice' than it would add. Perhaps if certain item slots don't have any affix variety then resistances would become a default on those item slots, but that implies that said item mod pool is bad to begin with.

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Balancing damage of mobs will be a lot harder, because there's no more static value that majority of players have, with that system they will have to find ways to track it, to find average value and balance around that.

Mobs wouldn't need to be re-balanced at all. Let's not forget that this game already has many optional defensive layers, +max res being among them. The current baseline for balance can easily be maintained. Also, the great thing about using a formula for resistances is that the calculation can be adjusted if the devs aren't happy with the investment scaling, rather than the more tedious job of changing resistances and damage on everything else.

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Not to say it will be more confusing for new player to understand why his 150% resistance reduce damage only by 72%, and that new player will likely not go and search why, to find out some weird formula they not want to deal with.

In my linked post I mentioned that the % sign would be removed if such a formula change were to happen to avoid confusion. Having +150 resistance and opening your stat page to see 150 res and 71% mitigation (if using the example formula) right next to it would not be confusing for a super-majority of users. More resistance = tankier is very basic even if players don't know the math behind it and the end result would always be displayable.