D4: What not to do. Lessons from PoE from a 1.4k hrs ex-player

General Discussion
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I posted the same on Last Epcoh forum
I know Path of Exile is one of the most popular ARPG today & it’s okay to take ideas from the game. I have put in 1400 hours into the game, done most end game content, end game bosses, meta crafting, discord crafting (buyer/seller). I am not the 1% elite to but I think I have enough experience as well as being a long-time active member of PoE forum to know what many gamers feel about the game (my opinions obviously that no one needs to agree fully) things in PoE I hope Last Epoch avoids.

Let’s start with the few most complained features of the game:

  1. Trading.
  2. BS One-shot
  3. Exp lost on death
  4. Lab End game boss “mechanics”

1) Trading
For clarification, trading in PoE is like Diablo 2. You PM someone what you want to buy, what you offer. He invited you to the party. you go to his hideout (personal area) using the trade screen ala Diablo 2. It is made easier via 3rd party sites that allow you to filter what you want to buy/sell.
What is it so hatred?
a) It is tedious, time-consuming, time that could be spent on well killing mobs & getting loot
b) You need a third-party website & it’s more awful if you do not have a dual monitor or similar.
c) Price manipulators & AFKer, resulting in having to spend a massive amount of time mass PMs sellers (see point a)
d) It’s an annoyance when you are in the middle of a level when someone PM you for your sales, & you either have to waste a limited portal, give up the level, or the sales. In some cases, you can ask the buyer to wait, if he agreed.

The solution? An auction house. If Blizzard wants to prevent “buy your way to success”, there are many ways to limit the number of transactions. My suggestion is a limited trade currency/orb that required effort to farm or rare & you can keep only a limited supply. Another simpler option is to limit transactions per day, but then people will create multiple accounts to trade.

2) BS One-shot
BS One-shot should NOT be confused with reasonable One-shot due to poor gear/defense/mistake etc. That why it has a prefix BS.

Getting One-shot is not unique to PoE. it’s in many action games. The issue is, (as someone who only plays tanky characters) many of the One-shot in PoE is precepted as unfair, include,
a) One-shot mechanics that ignore your HP, often not well calligraphed.
Solution: Preferably NOT have one shot mechanic, but DoT, but also make sure thes attacks are calligraphed so you have just enough window to dodge.

b) off-screen attacks you did not see coming
Solution: You shouldn’t be able to hit enemies off-screen, & they shouldn’t offscreen attack you. End of.

c) Synchronised attack (every mob attack, or death explosion at the same time)
Solution: stagger the time of attacks.

d) Damage spike (surge of damage when all stars are aligned)
Solution: Have a damage cap for output base on average damage output.

Let me be clear, I am not trying to make D4 easier. It about making sure, its almost always the fault of the player if they died. Often in PoE, you do not know what killed you.

3) Exp Lost on death
This is the hottest topic on the PoE forum. I heard dev for LE (on steam) is considering XP lost on death. For Christ’s sake, DO NOT do it. A lot of ex PoE player quitted due to this. If LE wanted to grow the user base, avoid this with a 10-foot pole.

Just be clear, there should be a penalty for dying and not sufficient defense, so players do not go full glass cannon. But there is a fine line between punishing players that ignore defense or play badly, vs frustration & stress of losing hours even days of progress. This is made worst when players perceive death were not their fault (see one-shot)

Solution: For bossing, restarting is enough of a deterrence for not dying. For end game, not able to complete a map or reduce reward is sufficient of a reason not to die. You can push more by reducing experience gain for 10 mins or so. LE is an ARPG, not need to make it into dark soul. There is HC mode for people who like the tension of living on the edge. Most gamers don’t which is why HC are a very small minority of gamers.

4) Lab & end bosses "Mechanics"
Also one of the hottest topics.
Lab, short for the labyrinth, is one of the most controversial areas in the game. 2 things making it so hated among many. You have to restart all over if you died at any point, & the lab can take a while especially if you do not make a lab runner.
But more hatred is the lab traps. Imagine tomb raider, & traps can kill you in 1-2 sec, & yes, restarting the lab all over. Some of the traps over the top, especially in the final uber lab, & many think (include me) that such game design has in place in an ARPG where it tests reflex, dodge. that is more in line with super Mario than ARPG.

Same with many boss mechanics. Bullet storm, lava ground, even memory games, which make you think you are playing dark soul, Zelda than ARPG. The issue is made worse in POE as you have to farmed hours, even days for a rematch.

Solution: Its okay to have some fancy mechanics, but keep them simple. Gamers who play ARPG may not enjoy playing reflex/memory style gameplay. It’s an ARPG, players hldul be able to OVERPOWER a boss via well overpowering with decent dodge skill. YOu do not want to make a boss where most players loses to “mechanics”.

If Blizzard is considering end-game bosses. I am fine, but for christ’s sake, if we failed, let us retry within a reasonable time (best if immediately if not within 30min max) & not reset the whole end game & required players to beat 100 more level bosses before we can engage them again. You can reset the fight after we beat the end bosses.

6 Likes
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Regarding the trading:

I never understood why PoE doesn’t kinda half-automated the marketplace. Not like a classic auction house, because obviously there is no gold in PoE. More like: "I want to sell item X for currency Y. So I place my offer, and the first player who accepts and puts currency Y in his trading tab gets it. Both players get a message, and the item/currency goes to the respective mailbox. Done.

I sunk hundreds or probably even thousands of hours into D2, but the trading was extremely tedious for the reasons you described.

2 Likes
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Just give us a no-trade mode, with higher droprates for balance. All trading is bad tbh, even though, sure, you can make all kinds of limitations in an attempt to rain it in.

Yeah, oneshots in a reasonable scenario (decent gear) should not happen. Bad game design.

I strognlyy disagree there.
Death penalties need to be much more significant. I do agree xp loss is a bad penalty though.
Make it a survival bonus instead; if you dont die, you are building up an XP/MF/GF bonus. So you never lose xp by dying, but you get XP, items and gold faster if you do not die.

I very much like that part.

But yeah, traps are overpowered. Leading back to the one-shot issue.

Yeah, I see no reason why we should not be able to immediately retry a boss on failure. That would make no sense to limit.
A good death penalty already encourages us not to fail, having a wait time for new tries is just bad game design tbh.
Now, if you manage to kill the boss, I think it is fine if you cant just do it again and again, to avoid D2 style boss farming.
Like, imo it would be fair if you had to replay the campaign to farm all the campaign bosses (of course, there should be many other types of end-game beyond that, including other types of boss battle end-game).

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The PoE player base is so hooked to their game. Even when major nerfs like with Harvest happen, they are never rioting and giving ultimatums. One may think they are addicted to the point of having no real alternative.

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Good point,. I do wanted to point out, that in PoE; past level 94 or so, a single death can means hours even days of progress. So unless you never died in days, you will have xp lost, & it does not stop there. You could loss another 10% until you have 0% progress which could be weeks of progress.

I have a level 96 char, so I know a bit of grinding, and the last 5% is super stressful, with the heartbeat reaching a hard running level. Obviously, not everyone will be like me, but it is certainly a dealbreaker for me.

If there are some kind of XP lock every 30mins or after you log out, it wouldn’t be so bad.

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The solution is not to have open trading, but instead allow the player the freedom to customize/upgrade gear through in-game systems. Much like PoE does with Delve/Harvest, though hopefully not quite as annoying.

Telegraphed.

As long as it’s not an absurd amount, it’s fine. 5% on death - which is what PoE is, I think - is not excessive. Nobody dies much until they get to the endgame, anyway, if they know what they’re doing. By that point your level doesn’t matter as much, as you’ve long since gotten the most important of your skills.

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I’d say modding/upgrading gear should be a thing, but very limited in scope. If not, the game just becomes a crafting game.

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Or, we let Diablo be Diablo and POE be POE

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It becomes a crafting game only when crafting is cheap, or you can RMT crafting resources.

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It still becomes a crafting game I’d it’s a viable path to getting endgame gear.

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Tell me how exactly when you don’t have the resources to craft end game gear during mid game? You’ll hack the game or what?

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Just to try and say it another way : PoE has set up an abusive relationship with its player base. Don’t do that, please.
And please avoid content bloat. Any player should be able to properly understand the game without requiring a constant use of the wiki and having been there through most of the game’s history.

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Content bloat is a huge issue. I don’t mind when in one league theme that there are other league stuffs going on. They need to limit how many or just keep old themes out completely.

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You know the answer to this already. You’ll farm the mats since that would be an easier way to get what you need. Stop playing dumb.

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If crafting is properly done you won’t be able to get those endgame mats during early/mid game, at least not consistently aka you may get lucky once in 20 Seasons, but that’d be all.

Crafting of end game stuff should never be cheap, but can become less expensive the more you progress in the game.

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No one said jack about gettingnendgame mats mid game. You just live in your own little future world where you seem to have your own conversations regardless if what others say to you.

You completely ignored that players would farm mats to make guaranteed items/upgrades than just farm hoping for drops. But that doesn’t fit what you want to argue now does it?

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When I write stuff I am game specific only when I explicitly mention it. In the above posts I don’t relate to D3 mats or D3 crafting.

Here’s the cycle:

  • Players farm gear only through combat
  • Mats come from gear players don’t need
  • Crafting is done with mats and is never cheap
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Who exactly has mentioned D2R other than you? Seriously.

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What’s the point in ears is D4… interesting.

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AH didn’t work for D3 and it won’t work for D4. What we will be trading won’t be top end gear anyway. The trading in D4 is there will be three classes of items for trade.

1.) Items that can be traded without limits.
2.) Items that can only be traded once (Bind on Trade or BoT)
3.) Items that can never be traded (Bind on Account. BoA)

So I wouldn’t worry about trading being that big of a complaint.

One shots are gonna be hard to determine if it is a cheesy mechanic that shouldn’t exist or is it the player’s fault.

We do know that we are in a age of gaming where death penalties are not as bad as the days of Everquest (when that game was at its peak). You could actually lose levels in Everquest if you died often enough. If we go by D3’s the likelihood of us losing a lot of hours of work just because of dying is not likely.

I know that I have beaten uber lab at least once and that means that I can do it again with other builds. I just have to make sure that I have enough damage and maybe defense to handle Izaro.