0.9.9 Patch Notes

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Neonexe wrote:

I think there should be a very very slow, but progressive, way to move towards better items.

Examples might be selling 500 fusings for an orb that adds +1 link - it's a monster grind, but it means you can go for a "safe option" that allows you to feel like you are actually making progress to a goal.

Otherwise you just end up burning through 300 fusings, not getting 5 links and feeling worse off than you were before you used your items!

Like I said earlier, the safe way is to keep several items, and always orb the worst one.

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thepmrc wrote:

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gh0un wrote:

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So you are upset that it is hard to win the lottery? Maybe adjust your expectations and you will not be so disappointed.

Arpgs are mostly competitive games.
You dont want too much of a lottery aspect in a competitive game, period.

If a player puts in 10 times the amount of time than another player, then i expect that player to have better loot than the player that played less.

This is not the case with the current system, nowhere close.
You could put in 1000 times the amount of time, and still get worse stuff than a lucky joe that crafts incredible stuff on his first try.

A lottery implicates that you dont win by participating more often than others, because the chances are so low that it actually doesnt matter how many times you play, unless you play a million times and more.

A lottery is always won by a lucky joe that didnt actually expect to win the lottery, and just participated in the lottery once.

The same applies to path of exile.
Since you cant put in a million times more effort than other players, you have absolutely no guarantee that you get anything out of your time.

Thats not a good mechanic.
Lotteries as the ONLY real way of getting better stuff, IS NOT a good mechanic.

Finding these rare orbs is already quite hard because they have such low drop rates.
Thats not all though, their effects are luck based aswell.
If you connect two luck based mechanics in series, you get such low probabilites on actually creating useful stuff, that you might aswell not try at all, just like in the lottery.

If you dont believe in this concept, then you should probably play the lottery.

In diablo2, the rarest stuff, like runes and uniques, were hard to get, but once it dropped, you had it in your hands, their effects arent luck based.
In current path of exile, the rarest stuff is hard to get and on top of that, will most probably create bullshit.

Neither sounds like a fun system, nor does it sound like a system that encourages good play.

I get your point, but don't agree. Your D2 reference is way off base as well. Obtaining godly items in D2 was a complete lottery as well. There was no alternative to getting a 2/20 ammy outside of crafting a billion ammys and getting lucky just as there was no way of getting a 10fcr/25str/50life ring without crafting infinite rings and getting lucky. Finding a hr before patch 1.13 (the patch that ruined the game) was exactly like hitting the lottery, damn near impossible. I found one hr in 9-10 years of D2 pre 1.13. Was this bad for the games longevity? Nope, its why I kept playing....

Thats why i said that "lotteries as the only way of obtaining better stuff" is terrible.
The emphasis is on only.

D2 had many ways of obtaining better stuff, be it rune words, uniques, or certain drops in hellfire.

In path of exile, everything is based on a lottery when it comes to late game items.
There is too much emphasis on the lottery aspect of things in PoE.

Im also not saying that D2 had the perfect system of handling things.
D2 also had a too luck based item system, but PoE is taking it to a whole new level.

Instead of going into the direction of rewarding skill, GGG decided to further tap into the lottery bullshit, which i dont think is good design.

I probably shouldnt have used D2 as an example at all, since the crafting system in D2 was terrible aswell, but it had a few options atleast.

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thepmrc wrote:

So you are upset that it is hard to win the lottery? Maybe adjust your expectations and you will not be so disappointed.

I'm not playing the lottery, I'm playing an ARPG. If I wanted the thrill of a one-in-a-million chance of winning, I'd go buy a lottery ticket. Instead, I want to get the feeling that I am as good as I deserve to be - not being good just because I got lucky.

I personally dislike games that are all about luck. Life is enough about luck as it is - in games, you can generally get as good as you want just by becoming more skillful and/or investing more time.


A solution to the fusing-orb problem seems simple enough to me, but maybe I haven't thought it over enough. Why not some kind of system like...

Upgradable orbs

Add prefixes, like Glowing, Shining, Sparkling,... Sell an amount of a kind of orb to a vendor and he'll give you a better version.
- Normal fusing orb: randomly reforges the links between sockets on an item.
- Glowing fusing orb (5 normal fusing orbs ?): Allows you to choose which sockets to link, up to a maximum of 4 sockets
- Shining fusing orb (10 glowing / 50 normal fusing orbs ?): Allows you to choose which sockets to link, up to a maximum of 5 sockets
- Sparkling fusing orb (10 shining / 100 glowing / 500 normal fusing orbs ?): Creates a 6-link item.

Do the same for jeweler's orbs:
- Normal: random amount of sockets like it is now
- Glowing: adds 1 socket, up to 4
- Shining: adds 1 socket, up to 5
- Sparkling: creates 6-socketed item

And for chromatic orbs:
- Normal: all random colors
- Glowing: change the color of the chosen socket, up till sockets in 4-links
- Shining: up till 5-links
- Sparkling: up till 6-links

This way, you keep the current (random) system. But then players who are willing to invest a lot of time, can at least choose to go a route which doesn't involve pure luck...


About that other sad thing about this otherwise totally absolutely wonderful game: the lack of incentive to party up. I believe the best way to fix this is...

Immune monsters

Try to create a mixture of monsters which, for one character alone, would be practically impossible or at least extremely slow to kill. Why aren't there immunities in the game yet ? Immune to a specific type of elemental damage, immune to all elemental damage, immune to all physical,... I doubt any one character can get a decent amount of each of these types of damage. Perhaps it's possible, but it would probably be damn slow and thus ineffecient.

Of course, similar to D2, only start adding immunities to one sort of damge in difficulty level 2, and to multiple types of damage in difficulty level 3.

This would encourage people to actually either look for specific types of players, or to create multi-player builds: two players often playing together with builds perfectly complementing each other.

[Edit, thanks Jmancini]
Perhaps increasing the effectiveness and range of aura's can also increase the usefulness of teaming up with multiple players with different aura's.


Other than these two culprits, I totally love the game, and the upcoming patch :)

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If a player puts in 10 times the amount of time than another player, then i expect that player to have better loot than the player that played less.

I agree with this however that by no means better luck. Or better loot from every avenue ventured. The randomization of loot leads to ups and downs. And those ups and downs belong to everyone weather they play 5 hours a week or 50.

There is a passive that allows for 2 auras at once.

Edit: also when is this patch coming out?!!!!!!!

P.P.S: also its nice to know that drops are random because you know that you might only have 30 minutes to play, but you could still get something useful. There's also that chance, and that's what makes ARPGs exciting.

I feel like you are missing the entire point of this system.

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My biggest concern is currently the orb system. I like some randomization in items and gameplay, but the current system can drive me to hate myself, the game, and anyone who happens to be within a hundred yards of me. I've gone 70 levels and not seen a single orb above Chaos, then when I *finally* get a Regal orb and apply it... it adds a single stat to an item that's absolutely useless. I get a six-socket saint robe, blow 100 fusings on it, and end up with no 5-6L result. I blow *another* hundred fusings, get a 5L... and sit there unsatisfied because it's not a 6L, but I'm worried that I could invest another 200 fusings and end up worse than I was before.

I think that's really my biggest problem - the ability to invest truly staggering amounts of time and resources, and end up worse off than when you started. The amount of bitter dissatisfaction and disappointment this generates cannot be overstressed.

The orb system seems like it should be a way to lessen randomness and allow people more control over their items. Instead, it seems like it's the opposite - a massive resource sink of dissatisfaction for all but the top few massive farmers rolling in orbs. Others mileage may vary.

Randomness is the name of the game. I think it has been shown pretty clearly in beta so far that even with a relatively small number of players playing, people can quickly accumulate pretty godly gear. Imagine if we had 10x, or 100x the number of players playing, finding orbs, crafting gear, finding drops, etc. The pool of items that are out there grows out of control. Even at the end of this current league we have seen many many people with EXTRA 5l and 6l gear, with more orbs than they know what to do with (Heck, I gave away the equivalent of 85 GCPs worth of items when I decided to take a break last week while anticipating this migration.) I also had countless 5l pieces of gear that I picked up doing Fellshine and Chaos runs -- for what its worth, I wasn't one of the OP classes that could one shot everything either.


Currently there are pretty much two types of players in regards to how gear is viewed:

There are people like myself who are happy to "waste" hundreds of orbs crafting items, potentially getting something godly, or potentially failing miserably and eating the cost. The first bow I "crafted" in this league ended up being a 210% maraketh bow -- and I have to admit the adrenaline rush when I used an exalted on a 136% ipd bow, ending up with a 210% bow, was magnificent. Results like that are the reason I love this game. Since I crafted that bow -- I went ahead and decided to try and make a worthwhile Thicket Bow... I used over 50 fusings, 400 alteration, 10 regals, 10 scouring, and 5 exalted orbs with nothing decent to show for it... and you know what? I LOVED IT.

There are also people like you, who would prefer to have a guaranteed thing. Somewhere in this thread I read a post where a guy said he would gladly pay tons of fusings (I think it was hundreds but I am too lazy atm to click through to find it) **EDIT** I see that a guy above this post also posted a similar concept -- I am not so lazy that I couldn't look up 2 posts -- it was posted while typing this post... I was referring to one of the earlier pages **END EDIT** just to guarantee an upgrade from 5l-6l. There is already a similar system in place... its called TRADING. I guarantee you that you can find someone willing to sell you a 6l item for "hundreds" of fusings. If you want a guaranteed thing, what you should do is save your orbs and then TRADE those orbs to the players who are "wasting them" by crafting.

As I see it now, the game already caters to both people. If you want to gamble (lets be honest that is what crafting with orbs in this game is) then go right ahead! You may end up with an amazingly good item, or it may backfire and put you back to square one. If you would prefer to not gamble, then you definitely have the option to save your orbs and go for the "guarantee" by paying me whatever the community feels your item is worth.

What I think it comes down to though is this: You don't want to save orbs and trade for gear, you want to spend them, you want the rush of crafting an awesome item. You just also don't want to take any of the risk that leads to that reward. At the end of the day you want to say, "Hey check out this AWESOME item I crafted", when in reality, getting that "awesome" item won't be exciting, it will just be expected - and just like every other person's "Awesome item!".

Unfortunately you remind of me a guy I knew in college who kept bragging about his 300 game in bowling (In case anyone doesn't know, this is a perfect game). We found out through a mutual friend that he grew up with that his "perfect game" was achieved while playing *BUMPER BOWLING* (Again, just in case anyone isn't familiar with this, bumper bowling is where it is impossible to throw a gutter ball because the gutter is filled with an inflated bumper which guarantees you that your ball will eventually make it to the end of the lane and most likely hit some pins).

All in all, getting a 300 game even in bumper bowling is an impressive feat which requires a lot of luck and/or skill. However we still gave the guy crap for two years over his lapse of the "tiny" fact it was with bumpers.

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gh0un wrote:

"

So you are upset that it is hard to win the lottery? Maybe adjust your expectations and you will not be so disappointed.

Arpgs are mostly competitive games.
You dont want too much of a lottery aspect in a competitive game, period.

If a player puts in 10 times the amount of time than another player, then i expect that player to have better loot than the player that played less.

This is not the case with the current system, nowhere close.
You could put in 1000 times the amount of time, and still get worse stuff than a lucky joe that crafts incredible stuff on his first try.

A lottery implicates that you dont win by participating more often than others, because the chances are so low that it actually doesnt matter how many times you play, unless you play a million times and more.

A lottery is always won by a lucky joe that didnt actually expect to win the lottery, and just participated in the lottery once.

The same applies to path of exile.
Since you cant put in a million times more effort than other players, you have absolutely no guarantee that you get anything out of your time.

Thats not a good mechanic.
Lotteries as the ONLY real way of getting better stuff, IS NOT a good mechanic.

Finding these rare orbs is already quite hard because they have such low drop rates.
Thats not all though, their effects are luck based aswell.
If you connect two luck based mechanics in series, you get such low probabilites on actually creating useful stuff, that you might aswell not try at all, just like in the lottery.

If you dont believe in this concept, then you should probably play the lottery.

In diablo2, the rarest stuff, like runes and uniques, were hard to get, but once it dropped, you had it in your hands, their effects arent luck based.
In current path of exile, the rarest stuff is hard to get and on top of that, will most probably create bullshit.

Neither sounds like a fun system, nor does it sound like a system that encourages good play.

AGREE !!!
The game must be challenge but not frustrating.
PoE is really frustrating because of this some times.

Ummm......(wipes drool from face)...

Oh Baby! Great work guys!! Don't you poor bastards at GGG ever sleep?!?!? That's a boatload of work you guys have done there. Bravo!

Cheers!

Immortal. :)

Here is a little thought experiment for the guys that think that exalteds are actually worth their money.

Imagine for a second, that exalteds effect, instead of just adding a mod, was able to also reroll that particular mod you just added using an exalted.

The effect of this exalted is far superior to an actual exalted orb, since it bypasses the whole part where you use thousands of alterations on an item until it finally gets 2 really good mods and then use regals until it gets a third good mod.
Instead you do it once, and then you are free to use as many exalteds as you like on that item.

Now tell me, how many exalteds will it take, until you roll a third really good mod on that item?
A hundred? I dont think so.
Two hundred? Still a low probability.
Five hundred? Maybe, but still way too uncertain.
A thousand? Now we are talking.
Now do this for the remaining 2 slots.

Even with this thousand times superior exalted orb, it would take you around 3000 exalteds to actually create a really good item.

If you want the perfect item, you will probably use up 100k of these superior exalteds until you finally manage to get closer to the goal of creating the "perfect item".

Now imagine you go back to the, in reality crappy, exalted of the current iteration of path of exile.

You will use thousands of alterations, and for each of those thousand of alterations, you will use one regal, just to create a crappy item.
Rinse and repeat until you have 3 good mods.
This will probably already consume such a huge amount of alterations and regals, and thus time, that you will probably have died of old age.

Using an exalted at that point, is quite useless, even with the superior version from my thought experiment.

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gh0un wrote:

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Flytheelephant wrote:

Blizzard makes a game just for you and it's almost at release.

No they dont.
Diablo 3 is not a competitive game.
Its a casualized piece of crap that lost track of what is important in a good game, because activision is greedy for money.

Agreed, lol. Look out for incoming flames.