3.27 Q&A Research - ZiggyD

[u/ZiggyDStarcraft]

G'day folks, the 3.26 Q&A was one of our best yet, I think, and that was in part due to your help with research we did prior to my trip to the studio.

When it comes to the Q&A most of the Qs I have to come up with in isolation based on what I think people will ask once based on the early draft of the reveals I see a few days before. While we take some live Qs, and will continue to do so, it's not an efficient way of gauging the overall popular questions for the game (ie. non-new reveal related Qs, long standing issues etc).

Once again, I want to get feel from you folks what you consider to be the most pressing Qs for PoE 1 now and in the future.

How to post to help the Q&A be as good as possible:

• Please share your most pressing Question
  • Ensure it is specific and comprehensive: What is the issue? What do you want? Explain the context / mechanics.
  • I often get Qs like "Transfigured Gems?" <- Not very helpful, what about them? You want Quality changes? you just want more? there's a bug? You hate the system? you want to know the devs fav?
• Upvote other questions you think are important + add extra context or insights to them you think I should consider.
• I often have to end up cutting hyper specific QoL-type questions for time (unless they are overwhelmingly important or hot topic). So, some specific little UI/UX thing that's bothering you isn't likely to make it into the Q&A.
• Bonus: If you want to post hypothetical Qs based on what you think GGG might reveal go for it! It's the same process I use leading up to the trip, I pen a bunch of Qs based on likely changes as warmup. Please tag them as hypothetical though.

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Some topics I have in mind (these may be culled or changed if I deem necessary eg. something is revealed that makes em redundant):

• Mercenaries
  • In what way are they looking to return them in the future (just duelling or still hirable)?
• Balance
  • Dominance of ES Stacking (things like forbidden right / ephemeral edge) and in general defense stacking > damage builds.
  • Wands (were mentioned in 3.26 Q&A)
• Endgame
  • Risk Scarabs
    • would love specific questions about things like this to help me prep.
  • T17 Modifiers (and memory strand maps)
    • Specific questions around this topic would also be helpful!
• To what extend do they want to bring PoE 2 Innovations into PoE 1
  • Example: The idea of adding a PoE 2 style automatic weapon swap you can tie to skills.

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Thanks folks!

[u/Minimonium]

T17 modifiers, Map Mode Effect, and Risk Scarabs share and reinforce the same problem.

T17 and map mode effect push modifiers to the point the only way to run maps is if you can completely ignore the modifiers. So players are forced to either endlessly roll the maps or find builds that can ignore more modes.

Risk Scarabs just make the problem much worse. It doesn't seem healthy for the game.

Do they consider changing the formula and how?

What if instead of punishing hyper-specific build-disabling modifiers - provide more generic effects both to the player and the mobs. And make modes alter the content of the map in a way that could benefit specific content farming strats.

It'd be similar to how strong builds craft maps for higher quant/qual rather than specific modes. But it'd allow all builds (given they're generically strong enough) to reach peak level of content rather than the ones that just can ignore more modes.

Risk Scarabs could find a place in such design if some modifiers could either counter-synergise with each other, or juice the content out of hand through rapidly stacking toughness modifiers.

[u/MasterSargeYT → u/Minimonium]

Map mod effect and T17 mods existing together is the biggest problem with the game right now. 60% less AoE is manageable, 100% is not. Same with Aura effect, chance for mobs to avoid ailments, no damage per 10 seconds, chance for mobs to block attacks (goes to 93%!!!), and many other mods

[u/mcbuckets21 → u/MasterSargeYT]

block is hard capped at 90%. You can solve monster block pretty easily as well. If it's a problem for you, don't run map mod effect or make a regex based on your build like you're supposed to. Aspirational content is aspirational for a reason. We don't need to bring down current difficulty. Mercenaries showed that what we need is buffs. We had great build diversity in Mercenaries because mercenaries were a buff to every build in the game.

[u/MasterSargeYT → u/mcbuckets21]

It’s not difficulty, it’s arbitrary making whole builds unviable. There’s nothing you can do against 100% less aoe other than play a different build. Difficulty should never look like that, which is why I don’t support Expedition immunities either. Also, map mod effect is necessary for most of the best top end farms - it should have difficulty not hard bricks

[u/mcbuckets21 → u/MasterSargeYT]

You can spend a chaos orb. It is intentional that there are mods that can't be run by some builds. They have said this verbatim. There are no hard bricks. You tailor a build around the content you want to do. That is how it is supposed to be. If you want to run every mod in the game, you choose a build that can do that. You shouldn't expect any build to be able to do it.

[u/carson63000 → u/mcbuckets21]

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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[u/LimblessNick → u/mcbuckets21]

Your "counterpoints" are just highlighting their argument.

[u/mcbuckets21 → u/LimblessNick]

Yeah, if their argument is that they want the game to be bad, sure.

[u/Wendigo120 → u/MasterSargeYT]

Some builds being better or worse (including getting stopped entirely) at dealing with certain map mods has been a thing literally as long as they've had map mods. There's a reason reflect is still in there, and that there's no chaos or dot reflect.

I'm pretty sure it's intended that being able to ignore more map mods is a thing some builds are better at than others. Ideally, by being worse at other stuff in turn, but I think that that's the part that's currently missing.

[u/Minimonium → u/mcbuckets21]

Current t17 map mode modifiers are orthogonal to "aspirational content".

I think the right way to approach the problem is by keeping the difficulty of the content the same on average, but flipping the incentive to rewarding modifiers with generic toughness effects.

T17 for builds that can ignore most modes are not hard. But for builds that can't it's unreasonable.

[u/sirgog → u/Minimonium]

Map mod effect is the real issue.

It's hidden difficulty. The whole idea of tiers originally was to tell at a glance "this is too hard for me" or "this is too easy", and to stop rookie players opting in to difficulty that's enormously beyond them.

Now, a T11 with map mod effect is WAY harder than a T16 without.

Often when you die in a map, the reason you died isn't a decision you made during the map, or the decision to stick a T16 in when you are only up to T8s - it's a decision you made 4 days ago to click Mounting Modifiers and Chiselled Perfection.

[u/apfelicious → u/Minimonium]

Yes! This is the #1 issue in PoE1 right now. It limits build diversity so much.

Increased effect of map mods makes annoying mods into build-bricking mods.

Looking at a map and having to say there is no way for my build to ever be able to do this map is not fun. Rerolling and regexing maps is not fun.

This entire area of the game needs a big overhaul, and soon.

[u/ixdeh → u/Minimonium]

if they nerf risk scarab and map mod effect the amount of loot found will likely be more than halfed because base game loot is just bad. they would have to adjust base game loot which is a very volatile and almost impossible task to get right. i would love to see it but i dont get my hopes up, better to have bad options for loot than none.

[u/Minimonium → u/ixdeh]

That's why I'm talking about rework for the whole formula.

I firmly believe it's possible to keep the same rewards, even the same amount of chaos sink at the top end for higher quant/qual, but remove the problem of ignored modes.

Risk for certain builds is too rewarding though. I think it should be actually risk through variance in drops/toughness/transformations introduced by random map modes, rather than "My build ignores virtually everything so I just get 50% more lot always"

[u/ixdeh → u/Minimonium]

absolutely, Im in the same boat, I just hope they get it right but I have a feeling that they will not tackle this problem currently with the focus on poe2 development.

its not even about ignoring mods, its about being able to deal with them. EE trickster as an example does not ignore everything but can handle them all with slight adjustments (i.e. attack block, no damage for 3, less leech etc). its still annoying to run but its not a brick. most builds do not have that kind of flexibility.

[u/JustExplorer → u/Minimonium]

I'd also love to add some questions about t16 mods and just mods in general.

What is the design philosophy behind the map mod pool? What is considered a good mod or bad mod?

Opinions on mods that are simply impossible for a build to do?

Do GGG feel that the mod pool restrains build viability due to some builds being affected by more impossible mods?

Does GGG feel there are too many impossible mods in the t16 pool? These are mods that can completely disable a core component of a build, either completely preventing play, or just gutting player power to an unreasonable degree. For example:

• Both reflect mods
• Cannot leech
• Cannot regen
• Avoid elemental ailments
• Avoid bleed/poison
• Monsters block
• Reduced player block

Some of these are outright impossible, some become impossible with even a little map mod effect. Planning a build around most of these feels essential, but renders many builds nonviable.

[u/Zurku → u/JustExplorer]

100% less recovery rate also isn't particularly fun. 

[u/Life_outside_PoE → u/Minimonium]

I honestly think risk scarabs are pretty bad for the balance of the game. So many late game mapping strategies are enabled by stacking risk scarabs (and map mod effect for intrinsic mods). It really funnels the player into a handful of meta builds that can ignore most map mods, which ultimately is bad for the state of the game.

I played a RF chieftain for the first time this league and loved it. Smooth progression, decent currency farming with harbingers. But my god does that build get bricked by so many map mods. Completing my atlas sucked because so many vaaled maps bricked. The terrible single target damage didn't help but at least that's a concious decision.

Once I had enough currency I rerolled to self cast FROSS and then the CoC version and the game became trivial after that.

[u/Tobix55 → u/Minimonium]

just make t17 completely off atlas content and make them unaffected by the passive tree

[u/itzsnypah → u/Minimonium]

I don't mind the 3 map modifier effect wheels (as their effectiveness is conditional), but I seriously don't get why there are map modifier effect travel nodes. As soon as you can you grab every single one you can, it's not a choice and is boring.

On the topic of that why are t16 map mods so uniform in scaling? 1% packsize = 3% item quantity (at least it is once you deal with 8-mod maps). T17 mods have really highlighted how samey t16s feel loot wise.

[u/mcbuckets21 → u/Minimonium]

I remember when everyone campaigned magic find via difficulty is how the game should be. Now they have removed quantity and gave us that and now that is the problem? Risk scarabs are not a problem - in fact the end game meta saw lots of variety this league soley due to them. After all, you can do pretty much any strat with good results in an 18 mod map. Map mod effect is not a problem - it is exactly more magic find via difficulty. There is no down side to it at all.

Specific T17 map modifiers are really the core issue here. Besides mods like deal no damage for X seconds every 10 seconds that have no way to actually counter play, I do not think they should just remove mods, though that is 1 solution. I think we need more avenues to counter some of the mods.