The ONLY way to make melee feel good is by slowing everything down

Better timing, and a greater weight to each blow. It challenges players to think more strategically about their attacks, parries, and movement.:)

"

TrunktenUK#3407 wrote:

This and your newer post which basically just spins a narrative of they'll keep bloating the game so you'll be satisfied and potentially sick from all the layers of goodness is really not any arguement towards why we can't have GGG working swiftly towards fixing their core/foundations.

im not trying to use it as one. they need to fix the core and they are off working on the core trying to fix it. we dont need to make a case for them working on everything that happens after act 3 because we already know nothing that happens after act 3 is a finished system and theyre still working on finishing them asap.

"

TrunktenUK#3407 wrote:

EA should be any immediate resolution ground but they're almost treating it like a League saying stuff along the lines of "we won't rework some skills right now because it will force some players to rebuild so we will wait until economy reset", its almost high cringe to see devs overly care, even towards the no life addicts, but they need to do a job and no should care about being bathed in cotton wool when on the course of progression...

i would say theres 2 issues. one is that if you invite people in an instantly start nerfing everything theyre doing the vets will understand, the smart people will understand, most people wont and when a community turns and becomes megatoxic en mass it can be really bad for your game.




second they probably dont need the data. i dont think they really knew how endgame builds would function given the mechanics already in play when tested by over a million people and they needed to see that before they could judge what they were happy and unhappy with, where they wanted to pitch the power curve and where the cut off for power should be.

theyve probably seen enough now to know what is possible with the current mechanics and where they think its not correct. so they need to go do a massive rebalance and then test it on a fresh progression server to see how it interacts with the rebalanced items from lvl1 to 100. so why throw non essential nerfs onto the live servers? if it doesnt give them meaningful data to drip feed small changes into the server and it does piss people off by breaking their builds and causing them to demand free respecs etc which they dont want to normalise, why do it?

nothing to gain, a fair bit to lose, what is the point?


thats how i read the situation.

"

TrunktenUK#3407 wrote:

This gane is massively confused (POE2 Dark Souls lets go...ah space shooter End Game lets leave) and I can only rate the future negatively and you're not even understanding, you're not understanding why there's barely anyone rating End Game as any kind of great experience, not even from a potential standpoint because the Emd Game at a core level is just lacking and its SIMPLE purpose is just to satisfy a D2 addict at best instead of directing itself towards anyone who enjoyed progressing through the actual campaign!

i rate the core of the endgame system, the atlas is a fantastic idea. its like our old atlas meets delves mine, it has the most potential of any endgame system ive seen in an arpg.

but its just a sketch. they want proper quests within endgame to guide you through the mechanics and exploration, have narrative hooks. they want way more content, 3x as many maps, tons of unique maps, pinnacle bosses, interesting things to find. theyve said all this, theyre int he studio right now developing all this at the same time as acts 4-6 and the 6 other classes and the 24 other ascendancies and all the base items from act 4-endgame and all the uniques from act 4 onwards and the 60+ more bosses and twice as many skills and rebalancing all the existing mechanics and classes and skills and items already in the game.

theyre doing all that right now, its not gonna be finished tomorrow or next week or maybe even this year. they say they want a new reset to get the right data from the first massive balance patch, in order to make that worth while they want to add a significant amount of new content with it. when they have that done they will launch it.




we dont even have endgame uniques yet, its a loot hunt game, core parts of the motivation loop of playing endgame are not even in the game so why am i gonna lose my mind that endgame doesnt feel right yet? the only part of the game where the content, characters, items and gameplay is actually a fully designed first pass is acts 1-3 and theyre really good.

im giving critical feedback on what is here, but im not freaking out as if what we have is the finished game because its not even remotely close to the finished game. some of it isnt even the idea of what it will be, its a place holder, some of it doesnt even have a place holder its just completely missing.

"

exsea#1724 wrote:

"

Snorkle_uk#0761 wrote:

sure, but this is the thing right, its the 3 month cycle.

its what i think a lot of the people who want better crafting and make a lot of noise about it arnt seeing.



know what i mean? its why i say to people dont worry about it. game too slow for you? dont worry. crafting not powerful enough? dont worry. they know they will add power and crafting constantly after release and that it will get out of all sense and control. enjoy the moment where its not enough, because one day it will be too much and you will long for the days before it got there.

actually thats the sad thing that i see about poe2.

i actually like the idea of going back to somewhere near d2 slowness. but d2 slowness is the antithesis of temp leagues.

yeah i hear you. i had a vibe when D1 and D2 first came out, i had it first time i played poe1 and i had it when i first played poe2. it was me in this world just enjoying the moment by moment, not on a treadmill counting orbs per hour, just the joy of each moment playing, killing a pack of monsters and getting an item.


it will go down the rabbit hole of the league cycle. poe1 didnt thrive for 12 years from capturing that magic moment, it grew, evolved, expanded, became more extreme.

to me its all the more reason to stay conservative now, keep the speed down, no we dont need fully deterministic crafting right away. part of the problem with poe1 is it ran out of room to grow and got too extreme. do we want a game that lasts 10 years? yes? ok then we need to leave room to grow. so all the people who want to zoomies and the harvest item printer and the gigachad deeps just need to chill, the devs need to slow the game down, bring the dps down.

if they do it now then theres hope that we can grow for a long time before it gets truly out of hand.






but eventually it will get out of hand, thats the price we pay for the only proven model of keeping an arpg like this growing for a decade, were kidding ourselves if we think it wont.

"

Snorkle_uk#0761 wrote:

eventually it will get out of hand, thats the price we pay for the only proven model of keeping an arpg like this growing for a decade, were kidding ourselves if we think it wont.

i pray it wont but if it happens it happens.

tho i would say poe1 was never "ggg's" game. poe1 is the result of wanting to keep the players happy, and players seemed to love a faster paced combat.

ggg had always been afraid to nerf during poe's beginnings because each player was valuable. less players meant less income. also nobody "knows" ggg/poe back then.

ggg was held at financial gunpoint. make zoom content and more content for players to zoom or else.

a lot of people shit on tencent, but now with tencents money, ggg now is actually quite brazen. also ggg is now world famous so is poe. it is no longer some wannabes who made a diablo clone. now theyre the guys who "killed diablo" in a sense. they're no longer too beholden to angry gamers who want to leave.

they also now have the benefit of having POE1 around. i may dislike poe1 for being zoom but its still freaking solid. ggg could offload zoom there and keep poe2 slow.

but in any case, its really far ahead into the future. i m just hoping that poe2 is kept slower and more tight.

all we can do now is sit tight and see where things go. a lot of my anticipation for poe2 hangs on ggg's next big announcement. pretty sure they want to announce a temp league for poe2 so that they can make an economy reset. during which, they will definitely announce how they intend to rebalance the skills/game or not.

if they intend to let trumelee remain the underdog. i think i ll just skip the league and quit poe2 until things get better. if it doesnt. one day i ll just forget about poe entirely.

I don't understand why we can move a little while attacking on other classes, but on Warrior we can't. We're hard stuck in place. Why is that? Being able to move a little while performing basic attacks could give this class more freedom. Gameplay feels different when holding the basic attack as a Mercenary compared to as a Warrior, where we can't move at all.. Let us move a little, and slow everything down.

"

maltretacja#6160 wrote:

I don't understand why we can move a little while attacking on other classes, but on Warrior we can't. We're hard stuck in place. Why is that? Being able to move a little while performing basic attacks could give this class more freedom. Gameplay feels different when holding the basic attack as a Mercenary compared to as a Warrior, where we can't move at all.. Let us move a little, and slow everything down.

There is an issues with Mouse + Keybord control may occur. There is alredy some tiny move, which alredy make some troubles but it is still cool ofk.

Ranges don't have "max radius" so they suffer this less.

"

maltretacja#6160 wrote:

I don't understand why we can move a little while attacking on other classes, but on Warrior we can't. We're hard stuck in place. Why is that? Being able to move a little while performing basic attacks could give this class more freedom. Gameplay feels different when holding the basic attack as a Mercenary compared to as a Warrior, where we can't move at all.. Let us move a little, and slow everything down.

one thing i ve always suggested even back in poe1 is to give melee strikes skills a mini dash towards the enemy. consecrated path in poe1 does this somewhat.

ironically wolcen has a nice solution where attacking enemies with melee dashes towards them but with certain limitations.

i dont mind it if we're stuck in place if we're already in the enemies face, but having zero built in engage options feel fucking bad.

especially against enemies that casually walk away from you and throw projectiles at you if you ignore them.

Bottomline

"

Character animation is pre-shaped. The game itself does not change the shape in real-time.
The pre-shaped character model has bones and skins. We can have pre-shaped "flexible arm" or w/e body pieces/items if we don't mind how it looks.

In game, the weapon range and the size of hit box fill the gap between reality and perception.
We don't really care if the character actually touches the surface of weaving cat's whiskers by the character's fingertip or scraping off the face or trampling on the tail. (it's carefully aligned "in most case")

We can actually miss the target if the target is moving away quick enough. It doesn't "slide" our character or "extend" the weapon or arm.
Or we can actually hit the target even if the weapon is not touching the target. It doesn't "pull" the target to the weapon or "bleed" the air.

As long as our perception is settling around this "virtual/augmented reality", it makes the room for "the feel of control". In another word, we have to choose "visual inconsistency" or "feeling inconsistency".

Technically, this can be solved by emulating the real physics that moves forward our character's body mass depending on the strength of acceleration. (and evolves the sync issue into another dimension :P)

As long as I know, ppl tends to dislike the "push back" or "rolling attack" that emulates the "emulation of real physics". (I admire their imagination, decision and humour.)

Edit
This "space" (the feel of control) could be described in quantitative and qualitative perception and emulated into visual/numerical interface design.
It's actually happening and causing the feel of control for better or worse.

Edit2
In my opinion, perceptual events placed at around 60~180 (around 120) bmp tend to feel comfortable (it can be felt quicker when we "count" and slower when we "feel").
Events placed evenly in terms of interval and intensity actually impair the senses, so random distribution is ultimately a safe bet.
However, a "complete" random state is no different from "even" so designing for hard and soft, width and height is necessary. -> dynamics or dynamic range

Edit3
60 bpm can be 2x120 bmp, or 2x180bmp with aftertaste like double strike.
I like how Ice Strike can be "tapped" into beats. Many? skills actually have shorter window than it looking but not many of them can be "tapped" smoothly.
Fundamentally, the window is determined by how it syncs. The more stricter on server side, the less free on player side. For example, "pre-input" for consecutive commands.

Edit4
At this point, some may notice the reasons and backgrounds of "screen clutter" "zoom zoom" issues.

Opinions might differ on secondary effects. They are actually implemented as separate functions so they cannot be discussed within the framework of a direct feel. (or "base damage" must be used as launch pad and warriors will be watching as the rocket penetrates the clouds and reaches space.)

To emulate the "depth" of direct hit damage (bone damage or internal destruction rather than "intimidate" effect which can be absorbed more effectively by heavy armour and muscles), we need to limit the window or frequency. For example, once per 0.5 second (~2 APS). Edit We have "bleed" but there is a scaling issue.

Critical hits are in the category of "precision" and "randomness".

Initial damage can be scaled in different methods such like empowered attack or charges.

Sustain and defense for melee in PoE

It's like there's a mod "lose 10% of your maximum assets every second while being stationary". (I REALLY hate Super Mario Bros btw. It was one of the worst experience in my childhood.)

We have to find a balance to keep going. Before we dive deep into defenses, meaningful battle or w/e as melee, we need to be aware of this game design.

First and formost