My Question to GGG: We Enjoyed Your Game, Was That Offensive to You?

I GET the vision. I understand that well-tuned experience that pushes the players to their limits with their builds and play styles and serves as a vehicle to give the absolute most die hard players of this genre to enjoy their challenges for years on end. The satisfaction for those wanting to micromanage every element of a game so they can be competitive and feel as though they have earned their place reaching campaigns end and beyond.

But why is it such an offense that other players might enjoy a different experience? Why does every change seek to tell the player, "No, you are not enjoying this game the way we have decided is best for you, you haven't earned this fun you are having".

There's something that was said that really stuck with me after the interview. The players have taken their medicine, now we can unlock the true nature of the game.

What are we being cured of? Of having fun?

And I know what the usual crowd will take from this post. I'm a noob, I don't "Get it".

No, many of us do get it. We do understand how much those small %'s compound and how greatly that power level can spike and that without several layers of arbitrary gear checks players will be able to make the content inconsequential.

I feel as though the disconnect isn't in the raw power of items and gear and such, but a misunderstanding of difficulty on a fundamental level as it is experienced for many players.

Let me try to illustrate this as best I can. There are two kinds of players, those who will intentionally gloss over boring elements of a game even if it makes them a little weaker because that doesn't feel like how the game SHOULD be played.

Back in the diablo 2 days, I wouldn't bother looking over items in a shop. What's the fun in that? I don't play games to min max at that level, besides, the best items don't show up in the shop, I can just kill monsters in the campaign and eventually I know i'll find superior rares and uniques.

And the lower difficulty of Dialbo gave me a buffer. If the game was too easy I could charge forward and get to areas that would hand my ass to me. THIS IS KEY! The absolute greatest means of difficulty tuning is simply allowing the player to progress to the areas where they encounter challenges!

I get the feeling playing POE 2 that there's some invisible hand judging me and smacking me upside the head if i'm not enjoying the game the way they believe I should be enjoying it.

"No idiot! You must loot every single item, you must convert everything into regents, you must analyze everything in the shop and have encyclopedic knowledge of your character's weak points and seek to elminate them one by one understanding your current bottleneck.

I ENJOY DOING THAT! But only in the late game! For me and many others, ARPG's are like a full course meal, you get the appatizer where you get to run around like a goofball and not worry about anything, you can pick up trash off the ground and PWN the low level mobs and it's a nice sandbox to learn the new mechanics of differing classes. What stun systems are if you're warrior, what freeze systems are if you're Sorc, etc. You're alloted a small bit of wiggle room to learn the ropes.

Then you move on and you encounter the "meat and potatoes" of the game as you reach the higher acts and things get more serious and some point down the road you get that unique item that lets you crush through weeks of content and find yourself in a higher tier of the game where rising difficulty meets your current power level, you kinda fall into where you belong and where that is is arbitrary because the scaling difficulty just goes on forever and it's up to the player to decide how they want to play, pushing the envelope and barely surviving at the absolute highest tier they can achieve, or smashing through screens of enemies farming junk.

Make it make sense WHY DOES IT MATTER THAT SOME POEOPLE ARE SIMPLY ENJOYING THE GAME!?

I just DO NOT understand the unnessary wound that patch .2 represents.

I'm not sure some adjustments can undo the damage, the cat is out of the bag, the devs of POE 2 do not want us to have fun on our terms, we must enjoy the game the way they have deemed we must. If we're not willing to micromanage and play a slow and methodical "slog" we are not worthy of enjoying their game.

It highlights a really sad element in this industry. Very capable, very methodical people who are very good at making games are forced to a degree to cater to a bunch of whiney ungrateful shart heads like us. They aren't allowed to create the work that they want, the perfect incarnation of balance and systems that deserves to exist in its bure form, all systems working in harmony, all elements relevant and important. A game that truly forces mastery of the genera, not just in itemization, but in execution as well.

It's a lofty ideal, it's a love letter to the genre, I get it.

But for the life of me, I can't understand why the devs after all these years after more than a decade can't just add a shallow end to the damn pool and make everyone happy.

Stubbornness is going to kill this game. And it's frustrating to no end because it is so painfully close to being the best ARPG ever made. But it truly feels as though the existence of a large player base that wants to have fun on their terms is offensive to GGG.

It's hard to express the frustration... I guess what it feels like, is rather than making 90% of players exceptionally happy and 70% of them call this the perfect game. GGG would rather cater to the smallest 5% of players who prefer an extremely punishing, micromanaging experience that demands total mastery right out of the gate.

And that just feels so horribly self serving. As if growing the genre isn't important, giving a means of showing the game to knew players and getting them hooked, letting people play with their friends and loved ones who may not be gigachad ARPG enjoyers.

Nope the only playstyle that matters in this world is the ultra hardcore player.

It would be one thing if it felt as though there were design decisions seeking to make everyone happy, seeking to deliver a greater challenge for those who enjoy that, and something easier for others.

But this entire game just feels as though it's designed to make people feel inadequate if they don't take this experience as seriously as others.

Like holy sh*t, GGG. This is a f*cking video game.

You guys are like the grown @ss adult that shows up to a family vollyeball game and spikes the ball directly into a small child face.

There are avenues that could have been taken to make this game enjoyable for all. But instead you took it upon yourselves to punish players who were enjoying the game, but you deemed weren't worthy enough to do so, so they had to be punished. That's how it feels anyhow.

At every turn you wax poetic about how difficulty and punishment are the only things that keep anyone engaged. It's as if you guys have no concept of the other side of the coin, how satisfying it is to progress and feel powerful and kill stuff and get fat loots.

I think maybe you guys have spent too much time as designers and lost sight of the fact that your job is not to create challenges to restrict the player and to get in their way. Your job is to create the illusion of challenge so players can experience a power fantasy.

I'm repeating myself, but i'll end with some very basic design pillars that have been tried and true for many decades now.

You DO NOT stun the player.

The beginning of the game is easy and simple and grows in complexity and difficulty over time.

There is no negative space here, every feature, every element no matter how tedious, no matter how unfun is given as much shelf space as the rest.

Stun resistance is now more important than crit rate. Rather than coming up with fun and awesome new mods for the player to have a variety of build optoins with, you guys continue to double down on elements that are mundane and serve only to allow the player to play in a default, slow manner only after they have countered.

It's total insanity. Somewhere over all these years you guys have lost the notion of what fun is, or even worse, maybe you resent the players for asking for fun things and wear it as a badge of honor that you smash fun things in your game for the players own good.

Maybe that "Medicine" that's been administered was actually poison. But hey, you got your wish, all those annoying scrubs that were enjoying your game the wrong way are purged from this community.

same here.

well I think good game would creat lots of oppotunity for players to do A Lot crazy things, that's enjoying. But right now it seems GGG just cut off those chances, and limit our player only few ways to play this game in a cruel way, very grinding.

not fun at all.

+ a million. Thanks for explaining how ARPGs are played to devs who clearly don't play their own game.

"

crazyfingers619#3901 wrote:

But for the life of me, I can't understand why the devs after all these years after more than a decade can't just add a shallow end to the damn pool and make everyone happy.

I think you misunderstand that for many of us, POE2 is too easy.. trivially easy and quick. I'm trying to see how far i can get in only blue gear, because without self imposed limitations, i can snooze through (at least in softcore)..

...and yet others find the game too hard and slow.

how are they supposed to fix both of those problems? your problem can be overcome by learning the gems and passive tree math.. but if they make the game easier the rest of us will have nothing to play.

"

KuroSF#6521 wrote:

"

crazyfingers619#3901 wrote:

But for the life of me, I can't understand why the devs after all these years after more than a decade can't just add a shallow end to the damn pool and make everyone happy.

I think you misunderstand that for many of us, POE2 is too easy.. trivially easy and quick. I'm trying to see how far i can get in only blue gear, because without self imposed limitations, i can snooze through (at least in softcore)..

...and yet others find the game too hard and slow.

how are they supposed to fix both of those problems? your problem can be overcome by learning the gems and passive tree math.. but if they make the game easier the rest of us will have nothing to play.

There could be a ruthless difficulty. Make it unlockable after you reach a certain level of late game. SSF, add some special unique items and mods to help deal with the increased difficulty, give mobs enhanced movement speed and stuns.

Hell make items found here account bound so they could give them to alts in normal league but not trade them to others.

But this is tarting to highlight over design decisions that are at odds with the notion of actually tuning this game.

Are ideas along these lines reasonable? Give players options for added difficulty so the top 5% of players who play these games every single day for hours a day don't ruin the experience of the bulk of players who do not play this genre as hardcore.

You people will blather about how important diffiuclty is, and then wax poetic about how important trade is so you can trivially gain the items that make the content superior.

Sometimes I wonder if you guys actually want a difficult game, or just want some kind of set of rules that let you and overly complex system so your can lord your superiority over others. Maybe I'm being toxic by inferring that, but that's the impression I get after having many arguments over these topics.

So you say having pure blues is the only way to have a challenge.

Let's try to have an actually productive conversation.

What is stopping you from reaching content that poses a challenge? Are zones too large forcing you to level too much? Are quests getting in the way?

Would difficult, optional side quests help?

What can we do to create a system where you can find your challenge, but players who do not understand the various mechanisms of difficulty are not chewed up?

"

crazyfingers619#3901 wrote:

I GET the vision. I understand that well-tuned experience that pushes the players to their limits with their builds and play styles and serves as a vehicle to give the absolute most die hard players of this genre to enjoy their challenges for years on end. The satisfaction for those wanting to micromanage every element of a game so they can be competitive and feel as though they have earned their place reaching campaigns end and beyond.

But why is it such an offense that other players might enjoy a different experience? Why does every change seek to tell the player, "No, you are not enjoying this game the way we have decided is best for you, you haven't earned this fun you are having".

There's something that was said that really stuck with me after the interview. The players have taken their medicine, now we can unlock the true nature of the game.

What are we being cured of? Of having fun?

I could say the same thing about PoE1...

In PoE1 you HAVE to play the way the game wants and that means mostly 1 skill spam. Other options are very few or very underpowered compared to that.

So PoE1 also "forces" a playstyle on you and this playstyle has been a subject of criticism for YEARS.

"

Gordyne#2944 wrote:

I could say the same thing about PoE1...

In PoE1 you HAVE to play the way the game wants and that means mostly 1 skill spam. Other options are very few or very underpowered compared to that.

So PoE1 also "forces" a playstyle on you and this playstyle has been a subject of criticism for YEARS.

I think we can all agree that the nuance of combo's and the thrill of maximizing damage output by using many different skills artfully is a huge boon to POE 2.

This notion that everyone just wants POE 2 to be a 1 button easy mode game is really disengenuous.

There are mechanics/ modes/ systems that could allow higher tier players to get their challenge without leaving casuals in the dust.

What's frustrating is that "leet" players constantly talking down and demeaning players and insisting that for them to enjoy the game, lesser players need to suffer and hit road blocks.

The dialogue has grown really toxic. Rather than people working together to find solutions that work for everyone, it feels like everyone is fighting over ownership of a singular toy as if that toy can't be something that delights us all.

What sticks out in my mind is a line from Mark that I recall from the end of the initial patch intro video:

"We look forward to seeing what broken builds you come up with."

If only that were true.