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On December 10 2012 18:48 Sufficiency wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2012 12:45 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:On December 10 2012 11:54 Sufficiency wrote:
It's very easy to make gold just as useful as anything else in game, and it's even easier to make gold sinks.
Consider the following system. There is gold, and there is a merchant at town which:
1. Rerolls your rare for X gold
2. Rerolls numerical values of your items for Y gold
3. Enchant a normal item into a magical item for Z gold
4. Identifies an item for W gold
etc. Obviously X and Y are much higher amount then Z and W.
This essentially mimicks the current PoE system, except simpler. Gold is useful and numerical, but you can't get items directly from gold unless you trade from another player. Now gold has value and it is universally useful.
You can criticize this system for being way too simple, but I argue that the current currency system in PoE is way too complicated - it was intentionally made complicated to cater a certain niche class of players. When a game is designed such that "fun" comes from arbitrarily increased burden of knowledge it's not a good design. The difference is that those gold values must be set to something unless you develop some sort of dynamic gold valuing system (which I'd argue is a waste of effort when you can just use orbs). A currency based system allows for easier fluctuations based on player input. I still standby the fact that the orb system isn't nearly as complicated as you make it out to be though, and that the developers didn't design it to be complicated. It was definitely designed this way to cater to certain players, but I wouldn't call that intentionally making it complicated. You'd also be trashing a lot of the recipe system by exchanging the currency items for gold, but you probably think that is just another burden that isn't worth keeping around. There is a fine line between making games more enjoyable and making them so easy that they become generic garbage. You have to have some effects to differentiate your game from the others. Sure, if you think dynamic fluctuation is important and healthy for the game, make it that the currency items exist, but can be traded with gold. It's still simple enough to be grasped by all players and will allow dynamic price fluctuation.
I don't mean to be disrespectful, but how is the orb system not simple enough to be grasped by all players? It's a barter system. There are some commonly used ratios, but you pick them up very quickly.
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Of course PoE currency at the LAST stage can be summed as gold. When you gather enough orbs of each kind you treat it more like "gold". It is rather the problem of end-game which is a nemesis of every non-(human vs human centric) multiplayer game.
Why did i say "end-game"? Well psychologically, first you see orbs simply as tools, later when you gather the rarity of it and the effectiveness and demand for it you start to use it as trading tool (cause its simpler than items). Sure, probably half of "mirrors"(the most rare item in the game, barring few uniques) were used by noobs who didnt know what's up, and this will happen again in Open Beta. But I'm against removing stepping mechanics in game, certain type of masochism/getting pwned by lack of knowledge is fun in controlled doses. And it happens in every environemnt even the ones like D3 or WoW.
You may say its part of human nature to interact with the unknown and judge the value of with method of trial and error. I haven't played a multiplayer game where i didnt make a mistake /i wasn't scammed(or scammed myself :D)/didn't fuck up at something at least once. And im hardly a novice gamer, it is just that my real life characteristic is to be sometimes rush on something, and i find it fun because it mirrors my real-life at some level.
Going back to End-game. The only game which i've played that had enough lasting end-game effect was WoW, but for that i had to pay monthly and mostly it succeded because of sometimes teeth grinding, grinding system that was pre-requirement to gear-checks.
There are few things worth to note, PoE feels *very* good at "enabling" (however it feels slightly to late or the way to do it sometimes may be obscured for newer players). This is what was supposed to rock in D3 but was completely twisted in its meaning. It is incredibly fun to put 1 point after 1 point and see your statistics grow, your attack speed grow and compare it to slugish movement on the beginning. It feels good to link your skill gem with support gem and another support gem and see your DPS spike up. This "enabling" is what makes you love PoE. It is even better than in D2 because of complexity as a backbone instead of redundancy.
Forget "all vita, only that much strenght i need to equip this and this" from d2, here you balance out your statistics as you go stats are interacted with your gear, skill gems and passive tree, you can have a lot of stats of each kind and be a total wuss, in fact the less statistics you have the more efficient your build is. Which is logical when you consider that stat points are points on passive tree that gets you to more meaningful passives.
I think End-game needs a little shift and some spiciness, i believe it will happen after they will implement Act3 which is supposed to be equivalent of Act1+Act2 in lenght. I would love to see an alternative to maps or spicing up the map system a little (Chris Wilson hinted Map-words so maybe this will be an answer).
I will talk about flaws of PoE other time.
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this game is so awesome..
I cant wait for full release.. waaaaaaaaa :'(
I love the fact that this game will be f2p but I would easily give these ppl 60bux for this game if that meant a sooner full release and expansions to come(np paying for either)
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Has the combat system received some improvements since 3 months ago?
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On December 10 2012 21:46 bgx wrote:
I think End-game needs a little shift and some spiciness, i believe it will happen after they will implement Act3 which is supposed to be equivalent of Act1+Act2 in lenght. I would love to see an alternative to maps or spicing up the map system a little (Chris Wilson hinted Map-words so maybe this will be an answer).
I will talk about flaws of PoE other time.
Good post.
Also there's no way that the map receptacle in the lab being a 2x2 grid is an accident. I gurantee that system will be expanded upon.
On December 11 2012 00:02 heishe wrote:
Has the combat system received some improvements since 3 months ago?
Not sure what you mean - there are more gems and stuff but the combat system is the same.
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On December 10 2012 18:48 Sufficiency wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2012 12:45 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:On December 10 2012 11:54 Sufficiency wrote:
It's very easy to make gold just as useful as anything else in game, and it's even easier to make gold sinks.
Consider the following system. There is gold, and there is a merchant at town which:
1. Rerolls your rare for X gold
2. Rerolls numerical values of your items for Y gold
3. Enchant a normal item into a magical item for Z gold
4. Identifies an item for W gold
etc. Obviously X and Y are much higher amount then Z and W.
This essentially mimicks the current PoE system, except simpler. Gold is useful and numerical, but you can't get items directly from gold unless you trade from another player. Now gold has value and it is universally useful.
You can criticize this system for being way too simple, but I argue that the current currency system in PoE is way too complicated - it was intentionally made complicated to cater a certain niche class of players. When a game is designed such that "fun" comes from arbitrarily increased burden of knowledge it's not a good design. The difference is that those gold values must be set to something unless you develop some sort of dynamic gold valuing system (which I'd argue is a waste of effort when you can just use orbs). A currency based system allows for easier fluctuations based on player input. I still standby the fact that the orb system isn't nearly as complicated as you make it out to be though, and that the developers didn't design it to be complicated. It was definitely designed this way to cater to certain players, but I wouldn't call that intentionally making it complicated. You'd also be trashing a lot of the recipe system by exchanging the currency items for gold, but you probably think that is just another burden that isn't worth keeping around. There is a fine line between making games more enjoyable and making them so easy that they become generic garbage. You have to have some effects to differentiate your game from the others. Sure, if you think dynamic fluctuation is important and healthy for the game, make it that the currency items exist, but can be traded with gold. It's still simple enough to be grasped by all players and will allow dynamic price fluctuation.
If your goal is to make the currency system less complicated then including both is a step in the wrong direction. Adding gold to the current system would make it even more complicated, not make it easier. In fact, smart people would just trade in orbs still because gold has no value besides being an easier trading medium when in fact it is just adding an extra step to the trading process to waste everyones' time.
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On December 11 2012 00:02 heishe wrote:
Has the combat system received some improvements since 3 months ago?
If you're talking about all the desync errors then no.
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I really do not understand this gold discussion. I really liked the orbs and non-gold based currency. It´s a nice way to make playing low level HC chars feel rewarding. Even though you will die and lose everything pretty early on, you will at least get some useful trinkets for your trouble. Getting some small gold puddles would not feel comparable.
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I just got sent a betakey. If you wanna try out a little before the wipe and the open beta in january, PM me. Please have some posts and some time registered on TL.
and it's claimed
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On December 11 2012 05:07 Grend wrote:
I really do not understand this gold discussion. I really liked the orbs and non-gold based currency. It´s a nice way to make playing low level HC chars feel rewarding. Even though you will die and lose everything pretty early on, you will at least get some useful trinkets for your trouble. Getting some small gold puddles would not feel comparable.
I really like the orb system and your hardcore statement is very true. I've lost many hardcore characters but I've always gained some orbs from the character. I think I like the orb system just because its a breath of fresh air since most games are gold ruled. I miss trading items in D2 instead of using gold on an AH. It really brings back memories of being in trade games looking for the best deals trading chipped gems when I just started for items that were pretty good! Gold just doesn't give that same feeling as item trading.
I feel PoE will hopefully still have players trading items for items and not always orbs but then again most things are valued by their worth in x orb. Haven't seen much item trading myself except gems always got a player wanting to trade gems for other gems.
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The system is also great when you look at the passive "tree's" relation with newcomers. Naturally they will mess up their builds and that character will not be viable in end game and will have to remake them. Here is where the currency system will come in handy, since they will still gain currency at a similar rate compared to endgame characters with little Increased Item Quantity mods. This way a big deterrent in remaking characters is gone and everyone is happy while still maintaining real consequences for bad play.
One thing that might be harder to overcome by new players is the awkward difficulty curve of the game. I feel the normal mode can sometimes be really punishing. Meeting the first hard hitters or the first elemental damage monsters can get stupid (as in one moment you are at full health, the next one you are burning/frozen/shocked and at low health from just one attack). Melee in particular will have a very nasty time dealing with most of the "bosses" (and by that I mean any monster with an orange name, not just the ones at the end of each act). By contrast Cruel and early Ruthless are easy as long as you pay attention to defenses and don't go glass-cannon mode (and you can even afford great dmg and defence at that point without much hassle and without much, if any, trading).
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On December 11 2012 08:02 -Dustin- wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2012 05:07 Grend wrote:
I really do not understand this gold discussion. I really liked the orbs and non-gold based currency. It´s a nice way to make playing low level HC chars feel rewarding. Even though you will die and lose everything pretty early on, you will at least get some useful trinkets for your trouble. Getting some small gold puddles would not feel comparable. I really like the orb system and your hardcore statement is very true. I've lost many hardcore characters but I've always gained some orbs from the character. I think I like the orb system just because its a breath of fresh air since most games are gold ruled. I miss trading items in D2 instead of using gold on an AH. It really brings back memories of being in trade games looking for the best deals trading chipped gems when I just started for items that were pretty good! Gold just doesn't give that same feeling as item trading. I feel PoE will hopefully still have players trading items for items and not always orbs but then again most things are valued by their worth in x orb. Haven't seen much item trading myself except gems always got a player wanting to trade gems for other gems.
You won't see item trading because unlike D2 items here are worthless outside endgame. Their usefulness goes away fast and due to needing to get correct combination of item sockets you cannot easily get a really good item for any level. It is not worth to do any kind of item hunting or trading before act 2 merciless.
I personally feel this mechanic is the worst part of PoE as it makes item hunt part of the game uninteresting as you level up. By now I really don't care at all about items. Even when a unique drops, 85% of the time it is not going to be useful to you at that moment or it is only going to be useful for twinking.
Only items worth trading earlier are stuff like daggers, wands and staffs due to their ability to be both spellcasting or melee/ranged focused and when you are looking for one of those version is it hard to get anything decent yourself (especially if you play a ranged build with wands and Power Siphon).
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On December 11 2012 20:04 -Archangel- wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2012 08:02 -Dustin- wrote:On December 11 2012 05:07 Grend wrote:
I really do not understand this gold discussion. I really liked the orbs and non-gold based currency. It´s a nice way to make playing low level HC chars feel rewarding. Even though you will die and lose everything pretty early on, you will at least get some useful trinkets for your trouble. Getting some small gold puddles would not feel comparable. I really like the orb system and your hardcore statement is very true. I've lost many hardcore characters but I've always gained some orbs from the character. I think I like the orb system just because its a breath of fresh air since most games are gold ruled. I miss trading items in D2 instead of using gold on an AH. It really brings back memories of being in trade games looking for the best deals trading chipped gems when I just started for items that were pretty good! Gold just doesn't give that same feeling as item trading. I feel PoE will hopefully still have players trading items for items and not always orbs but then again most things are valued by their worth in x orb. Haven't seen much item trading myself except gems always got a player wanting to trade gems for other gems. You won't see item trading because unlike D2 items here are worthless outside endgame. Their usefulness goes away fast and due to needing to get correct combination of item sockets you cannot easily get a really good item for any level. It is not worth to do any kind of item hunting or trading before act 2 merciless. I personally feel this mechanic is the worst part of PoE as it makes item hunt part of the game uninteresting as you level up. By now I really don't care at all about items. Even when a unique drops, 85% of the time it is not going to be useful to you at that moment or it is only going to be useful for twinking. Only items worth trading earlier are stuff like daggers, wands and staffs due to their ability to be both spellcasting or melee/ranged focused and when you are looking for one of those version is it hard to get anything decent yourself (especially if you play a ranged build with wands and Power Siphon).
This is a problem. No one will buy an item unless it has linked sockets. No one will link sockets unless they want to use the item, because the cost of linking the sockets is likely to be worth more than the item itself.
Most of the gear that is traded is in fact rings and amulets, because they have no sockets.
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On December 11 2012 20:04 -Archangel- wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2012 08:02 -Dustin- wrote:On December 11 2012 05:07 Grend wrote:
I really do not understand this gold discussion. I really liked the orbs and non-gold based currency. It´s a nice way to make playing low level HC chars feel rewarding. Even though you will die and lose everything pretty early on, you will at least get some useful trinkets for your trouble. Getting some small gold puddles would not feel comparable. I really like the orb system and your hardcore statement is very true. I've lost many hardcore characters but I've always gained some orbs from the character. I think I like the orb system just because its a breath of fresh air since most games are gold ruled. I miss trading items in D2 instead of using gold on an AH. It really brings back memories of being in trade games looking for the best deals trading chipped gems when I just started for items that were pretty good! Gold just doesn't give that same feeling as item trading. I feel PoE will hopefully still have players trading items for items and not always orbs but then again most things are valued by their worth in x orb. Haven't seen much item trading myself except gems always got a player wanting to trade gems for other gems. You won't see item trading because unlike D2 items here are worthless outside endgame. Their usefulness goes away fast and due to needing to get correct combination of item sockets you cannot easily get a really good item for any level. It is not worth to do any kind of item hunting or trading before act 2 merciless. I personally feel this mechanic is the worst part of PoE as it makes item hunt part of the game uninteresting as you level up. By now I really don't care at all about items. Even when a unique drops, 85% of the time it is not going to be useful to you at that moment or it is only going to be useful for twinking. Only items worth trading earlier are stuff like daggers, wands and staffs due to their ability to be both spellcasting or melee/ranged focused and when you are looking for one of those version is it hard to get anything decent yourself (especially if you play a ranged build with wands and Power Siphon).
Nope, you are selling it too short.
If you get a weapon with 80/90+ phys dmg you will probably use it a lot, on average when i have such weapon i use it for 10 levels average while leveling.
Rings, Belts, Amulets can already have end-game worthy stats on 30 level equip.
Belt level req 30
+30 life
-----------
8% reduced stun tresh.
57 life
+7 maximum shield (ok this one trash)
26 cold
25 lightning
19 flask recovery rate
dropped around level 40, this is Diablo2 esque nightmare drop that sticks to you till you kill baal/diablo on hell.
rings can get insane stats on 20+ equip
just lower mod value
Trading is always good because for a low price you can get a sure upgrade, having bad luck in rerolling could waste you 10 times more currency in value.
uniques are different than uniques in D2, some are twink some are the ones you will never wear unless you want to enable the build, the D2 esque uniques are the end-game face stopming uniques like Karui Maul unique or Kaoms Chest both are incredibly rare, because well they stomp the game.
Act 3 will bring much more diversity and give a new item tier, maybe it will be harder than A1/A2.
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On December 11 2012 01:56 beef42 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2012 00:02 heishe wrote:
Has the combat system received some improvements since 3 months ago? Not sure what you mean - there are more gems and stuff but the combat system is the same.
The combat system is clunky, badly animated and has no fluency to it at all. There's no force feedback when you hit anything, the graphical effects are not very good, and the sound effects are pretty bad as well.
D3 did this very well, T2 did this okay-ish, and Path of Exile does it terribly. I thought they might have improved it a little. But I guess not.
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A little ? Yes it improved. Compare how it works today with videos from half year ago.
They want to fix the desync issues when Open Beta hits.
Kinda shows the difference when a game has several the /few times(D3/TL2) the budget of PoE. Certain things can't be really done with the power of thought 
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True, you can trade for decent weapons before end game but that is all. Anything else is not worth trading (except rare skill gems or quality gems) before near end game, especially since the game is not really dangerous until merciless act 2 and no special equipment is needed to do the content.
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On December 11 2012 21:49 bgx wrote:A little ? Yes it improved. Compare how it works today with videos from half year ago. They want to fix the desync issues when Open Beta hits. Kinda shows the difference when a game has several the /few times(D3/TL2) the budget of PoE. Certain things can't be really done with the power of thought
If you try to sell a chocolate that tastes like chocolate but looks, smells and feels like broccoli don't expect people to like it.
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On December 11 2012 20:51 bgx wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2012 20:04 -Archangel- wrote:On December 11 2012 08:02 -Dustin- wrote:On December 11 2012 05:07 Grend wrote:
I really do not understand this gold discussion. I really liked the orbs and non-gold based currency. It´s a nice way to make playing low level HC chars feel rewarding. Even though you will die and lose everything pretty early on, you will at least get some useful trinkets for your trouble. Getting some small gold puddles would not feel comparable. I really like the orb system and your hardcore statement is very true. I've lost many hardcore characters but I've always gained some orbs from the character. I think I like the orb system just because its a breath of fresh air since most games are gold ruled. I miss trading items in D2 instead of using gold on an AH. It really brings back memories of being in trade games looking for the best deals trading chipped gems when I just started for items that were pretty good! Gold just doesn't give that same feeling as item trading. I feel PoE will hopefully still have players trading items for items and not always orbs but then again most things are valued by their worth in x orb. Haven't seen much item trading myself except gems always got a player wanting to trade gems for other gems. You won't see item trading because unlike D2 items here are worthless outside endgame. Their usefulness goes away fast and due to needing to get correct combination of item sockets you cannot easily get a really good item for any level. It is not worth to do any kind of item hunting or trading before act 2 merciless. I personally feel this mechanic is the worst part of PoE as it makes item hunt part of the game uninteresting as you level up. By now I really don't care at all about items. Even when a unique drops, 85% of the time it is not going to be useful to you at that moment or it is only going to be useful for twinking. Only items worth trading earlier are stuff like daggers, wands and staffs due to their ability to be both spellcasting or melee/ranged focused and when you are looking for one of those version is it hard to get anything decent yourself (especially if you play a ranged build with wands and Power Siphon). Nope, you are selling it too short. If you get a weapon with 80/90+ phys dmg you will probably use it a lot, on average when i have such weapon i use it for 10 levels average while leveling. Rings, Belts, Amulets can already have end-game worthy stats on 30 level equip. Belt level req 30 +30 life ----------- 8% reduced stun tresh. 57 life +7 maximum shield (ok this one trash) 26 cold 25 lightning 19 flask recovery rate dropped around level 40, this is Diablo2 esque nightmare drop that sticks to you till you kill baal/diablo on hell. rings can get insane stats on 20+ equip just lower mod value Trading is always good because for a low price you can get a sure upgrade, having bad luck in rerolling could waste you 10 times more currency in value. uniques are different than uniques in D2, some are twink some are the ones you will never wear unless you want to enable the build, the D2 esque uniques are the end-game face stopming uniques like Karui Maul unique or Kaoms Chest both are incredibly rare, because well they stomp the game. Act 3 will bring much more diversity and give a new item tier, maybe it will be harder than A1/A2.
That belt is trash, and you cannot usually get great items that require level 30. For a start, unless you are CI you want Fecund on every belt, ring and neck, and that is a level 64 minimum.
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On December 11 2012 21:49 bgx wrote:A little ? Yes it improved. Compare how it works today with videos from half year ago. They want to fix the desync issues when Open Beta hits. Kinda shows the difference when a game has several the /few times(D3/TL2) the budget of PoE. Certain things can't be really done with the power of thought
In terms of graphics and sound effects, I certainly agree. But they could improve the feel of the combat system with a couple of inexpensive tweaks a lot I think.
E.g. there's a noticable delay between your input and what actually happens on the screen. For example, when you hit something, your character gets stuck in this mode where he can't do anything else until his animation finishes (at least that's how it was 3 months ago). Then there's the fact that the sound effects and the animations are not synchronized well, which confuses your brain and defeats force-feedback. These are things which I can't imagine being very expensive to implement (in terms of man-hours), but it's probably pretty annoying to do (manual labor) so they push it off until the game is in the final polishing stages.
D3 has this exact same thing as well, but the lock-time is just much, much shorter and the audio effects are synchronized better. I think they could reduce this lock time in PoE as well and it would feel a lot better.
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EPT
