(I originally posted this on the official forums, but wanted to see what people think about this situation here. Still liking the game, but this aspect seems a bit messed up to me. )
Some of the design decisions we are getting blue posts on as of 1.0.3 seem contradictory to me. Blizzard seems interested in makign sure the optimal way to play, is stacking NV and running acts or extended sections of acts. They also seem interested in making sure you do this by taking on content you can fight consistently, instead of death flopping your way through. That is one of the stated purposes of the new repair costs. It all makes sense, and sounds fun, on the surface. Then today we get this:
Having to restart a game or skipping packs altogether is also totally fine. As you become more powerful, finesse your builds, and develop a variety of tactics to use in different situations, you'll be able to kill more monsters. If you could kill everything uniformly the first time you stepped into an Act, you'd have a really limited sense of progression and the feeling of becoming "more powerful" wouldn't be as present. The design intent is that some affix packs will unbeatable for you at first, but then you'll come back later and get your sweet (and well deserved) revenge. We feel that making every affix combo equally difficult would take away the satisfaction of overcoming the more challenging combos later on. I posted about this a few weeks ago, and our general philosophy hasn't really changed since then. You feedback is still encouraged, though!
So, the idea is to stack NV and run through the acts, dying as little as possible. But, if cheap, unfair combos come up and you have to die several times, soaking up ridiculuos repair costs, and then have to give up and start another game, losing NV, that is "fine."Being able to easily handle regular enemies, bosses, and most combos of enemies, and then having random content in the same area that is able to.... cover the floor with green plague, teleport you into it, jail you and then have its near invulnerable minions beat you to death in 2 seconds, seems a bit unbalanced, ilogical, and runs counter to the direction your other decisions are going.
I understand that it is so players feel they are making progress, as they gear up enough to overcome these obstacles. Unfortunately though, you have to wade through these things to gear up, and some of them spawn in locations that make them unavoidable. If you are playing "right" at farming content that is 80% easy for you, building NV and then taking on bosses, then a near unavoidable pack spawns in your way, what are you going to do? Before you give up 5 stacks of NV, you are going to make 100% sure you can't beat it probably. And for that, you get punished with crazy repair costs.
I'm disapointed to hear that the devs are satisfied with the randomizationn of affixes. I hope that will be reconsidered, because some of these combinations are interfering with the playstyle you are trying to encourage. I think gearing and perfecting your build as you progress from section to section and act to act gives a sense of progression. Or being able to handle difficult elites more easily, as oposed to dying 3 times. I don't think having some content in an act that is randomly gnerated and exponentially harder to fight leads to a sense of progression. It leads to a sense of frustration.
If you're farming gear (i.e. gear progression), you should be doing it in an act that is already mostly/completely unlocked, in which case you can always skip forward to the next waypoint... that doesn't cost NV stacks. The only downside is that you'll miss out on boss kills, but that's no longer a big deal.
If the Act you're in hasn't been mostly cleared, your focus should be on quest progression, so losing NV stacks isn't as much of a problem.
If you're trying to do quest progression and gear progression at the same time... well... don't be suprised if you end up having to pick one over the other.
Thanks for the advice! I think I will start picking a late quest and just using waypoints to get around. Then if I die on something more than twice, or it just clearly isn't going to be possible, I can skip to another waypoint. I guess that should have been obvious.
Edit: For the record, I still think it would be a lot more enjoyable game if they would balance the elite packs a little better.
Also when meeting impossible affixes, if you need to go through where they are you can just kite them back to a fork in the dungeon and die there (so the next time you can avoid them, while not forgetting to leave dumb followers/summons at home) or if they're out in the open you can literally just avoid them.
I know sometimes that isn't easy (or even possible), happened to me in the caves searching for Kulle's blood, but with enough deaths you can put the champs/rares anywhere you want most of the times.
I think they're tackling monster affixes very slowly because it's one of the main combat features right now and they probably don't want to break it (like they did with the Mortar affix for instance, as some have reported). But like you, I also expect a couple changes (for the better, not to "make things easier").
@Zero(pS) For farming I like the idea of using the last waypoints. But I think I'm going to have to take your suggestion of parking them in a corner somewhere to finish Act 2. Seems like everytime I make a little progress, I eventually meet something I can't beat and can't finish the quest.
@Deleo You are right about hardcore. I can't even imagine. Safest strategy for hadcore play is jsut to outgear the content apparently. But when the bosses and most elite backs are well within your reach, and then one pack spawns that's 5 times harder. In good RPG design, enemy difficuly scales evenly, then the tough encounters are consistently more difficult and take more focus, but require the same level of gear as the other things around them.
In this game, instead, there are just things that illogically and randomly have exponentially higher difficulty. It feels like a poor design decision to me. I'm ranting though, so I'll end with that. Except, yeh, hardcore. I want to try it sometime, but I thik it would be frustrating with elite packs in their current state.
A contradiction is when someone states clearly opposing facts or goals. In this case, it is not contradictory. The optimal means of farming is getting 5 NV and killings packs/bosses. Repair changes were to stop death zerging, which for some classes provided an optimal approach outside the intended gameplay.
Part of the *strategy* of the game is knowing when to fight and when to run. From reading Blizzard posts in regards to intended gameplay, it seems clear to me that some packs are easy, some are hard, and some are your perfect counter, and you won't kill them short of gross gear imbalance at some later point.
For me, even when I see those (Arcane/Illusionist/Frozen/Waller comes to mind), I still give them 1 attempt, and if I die, but feel like I could have done it with a bit more luck/skill/better kiting location, I will go it again - otherwise I gtfo and move on, or reset and go at it again. And this was before the repair changes.
A contradiction is when someone states clearly opposing facts or goals. In this case, it is not contradictory. The optimal means of farming is getting 5 NV and killings packs/bosses. Repair changes were to stop death zerging, which for some classes provided an optimal approach outside the intended gameplay.
Part of the *strategy* of the game is knowing when to fight and when to run. From reading Blizzard posts in regards to intended gameplay, it seems clear to me that some packs are easy, some are hard, and some are your perfect counter, and you won't kill them short of gross gear imbalance at some later point.
For me, even when I see those (Arcane/Illusionist/Frozen/Waller comes to mind), I still give them 1 attempt, and if I die, but feel like I could have done it with a bit more luck/skill/better kiting location, I will go it again - otherwise I gtfo and move on, or reset and go at it again. And this was before the repair changes.
That's a bit like what I was doigng a little earlier today. I'll give it one try, and if I lose, and its a very uneven fight, I walk away now. If I almost win, or I down a few of them, I'll consider a second try. Never a third. It's hard to let go though. I always wonder what they would have dropped.
I'll admit that high repair costs combined with randoml near impossible elites might not be completely contradictory to the playstyle they are trying to establish after all. It's just that experiencing the game mostly in solo play, and coming from a background of other RPGs, its not imediately clear what you are supposed to be trying to do. In most games this linear, if you are needing to run from fights regulary, you are doing something wrong. Guess I just have to get out of that mind set.
Edit: Also in most games, the boss of an act/stage/area/dungeon is ussualy the toughest enemy. That's another reason it feels strange I guess. There's nothing wrong with it being that way. It's just different.
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Some of the design decisions we are getting blue posts on as of 1.0.3 seem contradictory to me. Blizzard seems interested in makign sure the optimal way to play, is stacking NV and running acts or extended sections of acts. They also seem interested in making sure you do this by taking on content you can fight consistently, instead of death flopping your way through. That is one of the stated purposes of the new repair costs. It all makes sense, and sounds fun, on the surface. Then today we get this:
So, the idea is to stack NV and run through the acts, dying as little as possible. But, if cheap, unfair combos come up and you have to die several times, soaking up ridiculuos repair costs, and then have to give up and start another game, losing NV, that is "fine."Being able to easily handle regular enemies, bosses, and most combos of enemies, and then having random content in the same area that is able to.... cover the floor with green plague, teleport you into it, jail you and then have its near invulnerable minions beat you to death in 2 seconds, seems a bit unbalanced, ilogical, and runs counter to the direction your other decisions are going.
I understand that it is so players feel they are making progress, as they gear up enough to overcome these obstacles. Unfortunately though, you have to wade through these things to gear up, and some of them spawn in locations that make them unavoidable. If you are playing "right" at farming content that is 80% easy for you, building NV and then taking on bosses, then a near unavoidable pack spawns in your way, what are you going to do? Before you give up 5 stacks of NV, you are going to make 100% sure you can't beat it probably. And for that, you get punished with crazy repair costs.
I'm disapointed to hear that the devs are satisfied with the randomizationn of affixes. I hope that will be reconsidered, because some of these combinations are interfering with the playstyle you are trying to encourage. I think gearing and perfecting your build as you progress from section to section and act to act gives a sense of progression. Or being able to handle difficult elites more easily, as oposed to dying 3 times. I don't think having some content in an act that is randomly gnerated and exponentially harder to fight leads to a sense of progression. It leads to a sense of frustration.
If the Act you're in hasn't been mostly cleared, your focus should be on quest progression, so losing NV stacks isn't as much of a problem.
If you're trying to do quest progression and gear progression at the same time... well... don't be suprised if you end up having to pick one over the other.
Thanks for the advice! I think I will start picking a late quest and just using waypoints to get around. Then if I die on something more than twice, or it just clearly isn't going to be possible, I can skip to another waypoint. I guess that should have been obvious.
Edit: For the record, I still think it would be a lot more enjoyable game if they would balance the elite packs a little better.
I know sometimes that isn't easy (or even possible), happened to me in the caves searching for Kulle's blood, but with enough deaths you can put the champs/rares anywhere you want most of the times.
I think they're tackling monster affixes very slowly because it's one of the main combat features right now and they probably don't want to break it (like they did with the Mortar affix for instance, as some have reported). But like you, I also expect a couple changes (for the better, not to "make things easier").
@Deleo You are right about hardcore. I can't even imagine. Safest strategy for hadcore play is jsut to outgear the content apparently. But when the bosses and most elite backs are well within your reach, and then one pack spawns that's 5 times harder. In good RPG design, enemy difficuly scales evenly, then the tough encounters are consistently more difficult and take more focus, but require the same level of gear as the other things around them.
In this game, instead, there are just things that illogically and randomly have exponentially higher difficulty. It feels like a poor design decision to me. I'm ranting though, so I'll end with that. Except, yeh, hardcore. I want to try it sometime, but I thik it would be frustrating with elite packs in their current state.
Part of the *strategy* of the game is knowing when to fight and when to run. From reading Blizzard posts in regards to intended gameplay, it seems clear to me that some packs are easy, some are hard, and some are your perfect counter, and you won't kill them short of gross gear imbalance at some later point.
For me, even when I see those (Arcane/Illusionist/Frozen/Waller comes to mind), I still give them 1 attempt, and if I die, but feel like I could have done it with a bit more luck/skill/better kiting location, I will go it again - otherwise I gtfo and move on, or reset and go at it again. And this was before the repair changes.
That's a bit like what I was doigng a little earlier today. I'll give it one try, and if I lose, and its a very uneven fight, I walk away now. If I almost win, or I down a few of them, I'll consider a second try. Never a third. It's hard to let go though. I always wonder what they would have dropped.
I'll admit that high repair costs combined with randoml near impossible elites might not be completely contradictory to the playstyle they are trying to establish after all. It's just that experiencing the game mostly in solo play, and coming from a background of other RPGs, its not imediately clear what you are supposed to be trying to do. In most games this linear, if you are needing to run from fights regulary, you are doing something wrong. Guess I just have to get out of that mind set.
Edit: Also in most games, the boss of an act/stage/area/dungeon is ussualy the toughest enemy. That's another reason it feels strange I guess. There's nothing wrong with it being that way. It's just different.