Path of Exile Questions Thread - January 31, 2021

Edit: Actual TL;DR - There is none. It's a complicated issue and I'm hoping you will take the time to read the post if you want to engage in the discussion. That's why the post is tagged 'discussion'.

I made a lengthy comment after reading this post yesterday. What a crazy helmet! But it was the top comment chain in that thread that caught my attention, particularly this comment:

Annoyance leads to a group that is willing to put up with it getting all the rewards but hating the game because it's annoying and a second group that doesn't put up with it but hates that they're missing out on the stuff the first group is getting. Everyone loses.

My thoughts on this subject probably merit its own discussion thread, so here it is.

This reminds me of Grod's Law:

Grod's Law: You cannot and should not balance bad mechanics by making them annoying to use

Years ago on the Giant in the Playground forums (a community for the D&D 3.5 edition tabletop roleplaying game), an argument broke out when a user recommended balancing the absurd power of magic using classes by making them meticulously track their material components for each spell.

For those unaware, material costs for spells that didn't have an explicit monetary cost listed were generally just flavorful; holdovers from Gary Gygax's day at the helm, basically little Easter eggs in the game. Like Detect Thoughts required you to use 2 copper pieces to cast, e.g. 'penny for your thoughts?', and Fireball required you to use bat guano (known to be high in sulfur content) and saltpeter (chemically combined they create an exothermic reaction IRL).

Anyway, your wizard or whatever was expected to buy a spell component pouch for a few gold and that pouch was assumed to have all the basic material components they'd need for most spells in limitless quantity. Spells in D&D can be incredibly powerful and versatile in their use, and the most powerful builds in the game all involve casting magic. Well, this user suggested balancing those spells by making wizards have to spend time gathering their individual material components. Want to cast Fireball? Spend a few days scraping bat shit off the cave floor, etc.

The problem with this rationale is that it doesn't really solve any problems. Wizards are still just as powerful, but now the player has to go out of their way, detracting from the campaign and story, so they can scrape their spell juice off the dungeon floor. Grod argued the following:

The disruptive munchkin ignores it, argues it, or forces the rest of the group to suffer through it. His power remains the same, and he gets more annoying to play with.
The inappropriate powergamer figures out how to circumvent the restriction. His power remains the same.
The reasonable player either figures out how to circumvent the restriction (rendering it moot), avoids the class (turning it into a ban) or suffers through it. His power remains the same and/or his enjoyment goes down.
The new player avoids the class or suffers through it. His enjoyment goes down.

Tie this back into PoE already!

Yes, sorry. Thanks for putting up with my rambling.

I kinda feel like harvest is like this - A terrible implementation of a mechanic that GGG (i.e. Chris Wilson) hates (i.e. thinks is 'bad' for the game). It highlights a massive problem with itemization and crafting in this game.

Way too much character power is tied up in gear as compared to skills and passives. And Harvest crafts are so powerful because other crafting tools in PoE are are way too random, but the power creep in items over the years has made it way too appealing (various influence mods for example). Crafting most items is a gamble, plain and simple. Gambling is just not appealing to many people, and it can get expensive very fast. It's layers upon layers of RNG for even the chance of getting a decent item, some of which can be build-enabling, and there are very few deterministic methods of getting what you want. It's far easier to just buy a powerful item like that from someone else. Of course, that can't be done for SSF players, but even in trade league it can be problematic when GGG balances the game around meta-builds (supply and demand means you might not get to enjoy playing your build because upgrades are too expensive).

GGG wants the game to be like this. They want you to engage in the skinner box of gambling RNG they've designed. Harvest just doesn't jive with how they want you to build your character, but it's immensely popular for anyone who hates gambling and wants to build their character in a predictable and targeted way. Their solution was to leave it in the game but make it as cumbersome and obnoxious to engage with as possible, so it becomes a massive opportunity cost to do so.

You find a grove in a map. Cue 20 to 30 minutes of reviewing your stash and gear for possible upgrades and reviewing craft options for valuable ones that might be sold on TFT, etc. It completely disrupts the flow of the game and you can barely save enough valuable crafts for one or two side builds. When you finally do get one of the few good craft options, you might not even have something to use it on! Ultimately it's far more time-efficient to sell your good crafts (using 3rd party mechanisms, of course) and just keep playing the game.

How does this affect me, SaneExile?

The system affects the game exactly how Grod proposes:

The inappropriate powergamer figures out how to circumvent the restriction. His power remains the same.

PoE isn't a collaborative tabletop game like D&D, so "inappropriate powergamer" is, well, an inappropriate name for this group. Optimizing gameplay in PoE is perfectly reasonable and encouraged. But people who trade crafts in large volume on TFT or are in massive guilds throwing around thousands of exalts are not your average optimizer, and are not affected by this cumbersome barrier to entry. They find the optimal solution and just incorporate it into their gameplay and profit off it massively.

The reasonable player either figures out how to circumvent the restriction (rendering it moot), avoids the class (turning it into a ban) or suffers through it. His power remains the same and/or his enjoyment goes down.

Reasonable player -> average PoE player. The distinction between these two groups can get fuzzy, but it's hard to argue that someone playing 40 hours per week and someone playing 10 hours per week can achieve the same levels of effectiveness. Practice makes perfect, and practice takes time. Those in large communities are, likewise, not really playing the same game as the solo players (e.g. aura-bots, trade groups, etc.). For some, efficiency is measured in chaos per hour. For a few, it can be exalts per hour. This group is very much the former.

The new player avoids the class or suffers through it. His enjoyment goes down.

Class -> game mechanic. In this case, I'm sure a lot of people just pretend the Sacred Grove doesn't exist. Harvest is a thing that other people do. And if they do choose to engage with it, its cumbersomeness and complexity means their overall enjoyment of PoE is diminished. I couldn't even begin to explain the system to someone new to the game, at least in a reasonable manner that doesn't sound like a college economics lecture.

Conclusions

So, average people either suffer through harvest's implementation because it's so damn useful, or they avoid it and suffer FOMO or other gambling-induced psychological issues because the power-players in the community are cranking out incredibly OP gear on the trading market. Lose-Lose. This isn't unique to harvest, it's just the most obvious with this crafting system in the game. Crafting in general is fucked up, when you really consider how it's designed to prey on gambling addiction.

This might not be a problem in the short term (obviously you don't need the helmet posted above to make specters work), but in the long term it throws off the balance of the game through power creep. The Raise Specters gem was meganerfed this league, but it's definitely still playable, and with items like this, it's not even that much weaker than before. Essentially, the power of the skill was offloaded from the gem to PoE's itemization system, and the barrier to OPness is that much higher. The rich get richer and the average market has one less meta build.

GGG really fucked up Harvest, but it's only because Harvest highlighted just how fucked up crafting in this game is. Super powerful crafts have always been something only the PoE rich engage with regularly and with any significant profit. Harvest, for its league at least, let more casual players engage with that system. And the power creep ended up being so massive that they hamstrung it every chance they got.

Ultimately, GGG's implementation ends up hurting the whole game because of Grod's Law - the benefits of it are minimized while the annoyance is maximized. It's possible we can benefit from some stopgap solutions, like more horticrafting station space, tradeable crafts (like beasts), etc., but many of these come with their own host of issues. They're just bandaids on the crafting mechanic as a whole, which is a product of the itemization design.

TL;DR, thanks for coming to my TEDTalk. General disclaimer that this is my personal opinion of the state of the game, one that I've put way too much time into. It's still fun in a lot of ways, but the more I play the more I see problematic design features creeping their way into the game.

submitted by /u/ecstatic1
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I fucking hate unveiling system.

Posted: 30 Jan 2021 09:49 PM PST

At level 97 at ssf A8 having done Sirus and many other endgame fights, I'm still missing Elreon's -mana cost crafts, and I have been doing Jun missions regularly at regions that boosts betrayal mechanics. Finding them and having to unveil them both are terrible mechanic. At least with the old master missions, I would have unlocked all crafts by now. Why are syndicate specific unveil not given the utmost priority if they have not been unlocked?? I killed multiple Elreons, not a single -mana cost unveil. Fuck this.

Also "thank you" for nerfing niche kalandra craft trick.

submitted by /u/SoulofArtoria
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Why cant These be This?

Posted: 31 Jan 2021 09:48 AM PST

submitted by /u/serejalolshto
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You might not know about this hidden QoL

Posted: 31 Jan 2021 06:15 AM PST

submitted by /u/kurisaka
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I love the complexity and depth in this game and the massive amount of content you can encounter, but the sheer amount of clicking needed to play it all is a pain in the ass.

Posted: 31 Jan 2021 08:01 AM PST

The moment I find a game with 20% of the complexity and 50% less clicking, I'm sold if the aesthetics are remotely pleasing.

Just about everything in this game is being done in single units or with (to me unnecessary) extra steps and it's so annoying at times.

Unveiling
Indentifying
Moving anything from A to B (sometimes in small stacks)
Collecting 20 seperate stacks of the same currency within the same screen
Fossil crafting and Resonator socketing (this one is beyond insane if you get a few hundred fossils to craft imo)
Trading (again, in small stacks at times)

and probably other stuff that doesn't come to my mind right now.

I understand that some items make sense to not be stackable or drop in single units, but that's not often the case.

I certainly DON'T want to have some loot vacuum that just slurps ALL LOOT up and sends it straight to my stash like some people like to say as "counter arguments" to ridicule the issues people have and share in this type of discussions. I also obviously don't want to just start with GG gear right away like those same people like to claim to further ridicule these valid complaints.

I do like the approach of Diablo 3 where you collect all stacks of the same currency within a given radius, when you click on one stack, that felt really smooth and it was most definitely not what drove people away from the game, as some people like to claim.

I know there have been plenty of discussions about all the different sub systems in the past, but I just felt like writing it all down in one place and shouting it into the void of reddit. Do with that whatever you want. I'm sure this will TOTALLY change GGG's mind on everything and it's all uphill from here (/s).

ARPG DEVS ALL OVER THE PLANET, TAKE MY ENERGY!

submitted by /u/xDaveedx
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For the love of god, please buff The Heart of The Grove

Posted: 31 Jan 2021 09:58 AM PST

There is absolutely no reason why I should find a super rare league mechanic in my map that most people love, and be severely disappointed when I see I am stuck with a boss fight that is arguably harder than 80% of endgame bosses, but seems to drop nothing worthwhile. Every endgame boss has a decently rewarding loot pool except for Oshabi, spending all of this energy for a few infused engineer orbs and MAYBE a winged scarab that people actually want to use. If they don't buff the loot, at least let us get a few harvest plants after killing her.

submitted by /u/yankee0310
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When you just wanna map quickly but going fast also makes you run into sacred groves more often

Posted: 31 Jan 2021 12:03 AM PST

submitted by /u/Emience
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These options are nice and all, but I made the right choice.

Posted: 31 Jan 2021 03:42 AM PST

submitted by /u/Kryses1274
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Getting spammed for an hour straight for a currency you listed 1 hour ago IS NOT FUN neither for the buyer nor the seller. GGG please fix the trade

Posted: 31 Jan 2021 11:17 AM PST

submitted by /u/Total-Nothing
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Played Since Beta... Performance Now, Is By Far the Worst Ever

Posted: 31 Jan 2021 12:32 AM PST

I've played this game for basically as long as you could play it, going way back in the day of Beta on an i5-3570 and a 670FTW. Through the Dark Days of Desync...

Now fast forward how many years, patches, Leagues later...

3 PC's later... Each one exponentially more powerful.

Let me add in... 0 Issues last league.

And now today at Ritual League...

Textures of Runescape... Performance drops that make the OG Strongbox microstutter opening days giggle.

And don't get me started what my monitoring software shows my CPU and GPU at when you start a Ritual.

I'm on a PC that had 0 issues running that joke of game Cyberpunk at basically max.

Now I play Ritual, again after 0 issues just a few months ago with last league...

AND THE F'ING GAME LOOKS LIKE A MARSHMELLOW HALF THE TIME... The other half the time during a Ritual it's a clusterfuck of pixels(seriously does anyone have a clue wtf is going on???), drops to 40fps(haven't seen 40fps in this game EVER even in Beta) and the game want's to make an omelette on my GPU/CPU.

This shit's frustrating... Games are supposed to IMPROVE as they get older.

PoE is just getting more bloated and progressively worse.

submitted by /u/AnalWarfare
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I got a HH but I can't afford 3 Chaos :^)

Posted: 31 Jan 2021 11:08 AM PST

submitted by /u/LeOpinionHasArrived
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Decided to roll my Brutal Restraint three times for my dex stacking One With Nothing build, got this disgusting result

Posted: 31 Jan 2021 09:39 AM PST

submitted by /u/Hexkon
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I can’t always remmember how exactly to juice each region, so I made a little reminder. Also clicking on the region will highlight available maps in your stash.

Posted: 31 Jan 2021 05:15 AM PST

submitted by /u/Boonkeerss
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Quin69 - Hardcore gameplay in a nutshell

Posted: 31 Jan 2021 11:43 AM PST

submitted by /u/Jaylay99
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3.13 Ritual League challenges guide is now COMPLETED *UPDATED*

Posted: 31 Jan 2021 07:20 AM PST

submitted by /u/vironlawck
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GGG fix your trade site.

Posted: 31 Jan 2021 12:27 PM PST

I'm using official poe trade website. This has been an issue for 2 weeks. I am sick of not finding trades because the website can't update itself. I'm sick of getting spammed for a listing I sold over 30 minutes ago. I just want to play the damn game.

submitted by /u/aSurlyBird
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Finally some eyes! Love the valdo metamorph nodes!

Posted: 31 Jan 2021 09:12 AM PST

submitted by /u/le_reddit_me
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Was like "f*** it" before bed time... now I can't sleep.

Posted: 30 Jan 2021 07:43 PM PST

submitted by /u/OllieeStar
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I can't handle these performance issues this league at all. The game isn't fun anymore.

Posted: 30 Jan 2021 05:10 PM PST

Every fucking map I have massive lag spikes as things load in. Invisible mobs, all that. Usually I just fire off some fireballs and hope for the best but I finally broke. I spawned Sirus for the first time this league. It took me a solid 5 minutes of wandering around to load the environment. Than when I started the fight proper, well, lo and behold, my FPS graph turned into a porcupine as it had to stop me and load each skill he used. Except it didn't all his attacks, his beams, his meteor, it was all invisible. Then I got disconnected from the instance. I finally managed to get him to his third phase dodging invisible beams and meteor arenas. Then I lose my final few portals to this phase and my FPS dropping to 0 for 15 seconds at a time. I've fought him a ton in past leagues, I've never had these issues with Sirus, he's never been bugged for me. I'm done, I'm tired of this. It's not fun to work up to Sirus, get all the conqs, and try to fight him only to die to stuff that is literally out of my control.

submitted by /u/ufo2222
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Results of "The Patient" drop rate experiment - Don't farm Headhunter in Armory

Posted: 31 Jan 2021 02:25 AM PST