Feedback including a deal breaker that went live with .703

I made this post initially on reddit. Had hoped to get some dev response. Will post here with an addendum, as there was a change in the latest patch that unfortunately kills the game in its current state for me.

As I have only played one class, I wont be touching on skills or classes. Just overarching game topics.

First, the below reflects “complaints”. I like this game, and I think it has great potential. But constructive criticism will get us to a better end product, than nothing but applause.

Item Drops - The skew toward higher tier bases seems very low. I believe that Ranseur is the highest polearm at level req 60. It is the highest I have seen anyway. Which if not the highest, probably only further proves my point I am about to make. After 20 monolith timelines, I didnt see a single Ranseur. After 75 Arena waves, I finally had one drop which I crafted (unfortunately it had a bad break down grading two T5 Stats to T4, a T4 stat to T3, and dropping another altogether). I get that our gear is supposed to be crafted. I like that. I even like that we have a chance to make our really good shit go bad, like what happened to me. It is awesome to find a base item you want, with one mod, and nothing else. You know have a great starting point. Sounds weird to say that finding an item with a single T3 Affix is a great find, but I legit like this design. But, I find that having just even the plain white bases I want, is WAY too rare. If I am doing level 70+ monolith, I want to see more top end bases than lower. I shouldnt have to grind 5 hours to get a simple base for the weapon I want to craft. Given that you will likely have to go through MANY crafting attempts and a lot of crafting materials to even get to a decent end result, we need better access to bases.

THE ADDENDUM
The vendor reset after monolith timelines has been killed. She no longer resets. This means even less ability to find bases you are looking for, and even more importantly MUCH MUCH MUCH less access to runes of shattering.

EHG, you want this game to be pretty much entirely SSF/Crafted gear, and you just killed our best method to target the mods we need for our builds.

Sorry, but this unfortunately for me sets the game off in a really bad direction and I dont believe I will be able to enjoy it. This is a big deal. Targeting bases was already hard enough. I literally havent seen a gold ring drop in the last 50+ timelines, and 200+ Waves. All I want is a freaking white base ring… I have the mats I need to craft it, if I can ever get one, but I wouldnt without the vendor resets so that I can buy runes of shattering.

END ADDENDUM

The reward differential between Arena and Monolith is both cool, and frustrating.

My experience is that I grind XP in Arena, and grind crafting mats from the monolith. Yes, I would say that I get about equal amount of drops from a 5 wave cycle in the arena, as I do from a single timeline from monolith. But, the difference is that in Arena, the vendor doesnt reset but maybe every 50 waves or so, so I cannot buy hardly any shattering runes. So I just end up vendoring all the items except for the couple that are highly desirable for shattering later, or a good crafting base.

Arena is just great all around. No one complains about it.

Monolith is kinda sorta “meh”. The problem is two fold: 1) there arent enough mobs. I go three or four screens often times without seeing any. 2) There are too many disproportionately high HP mobs. Seriously. It is ridiculous. With some of these guys, I sit there, wailing with 5 and 6k crits back to back to back to back to see their bar move like 10% after 50K damage. So… I just run away. Not worth it. They offer no reward hardly. Monolith just becomes a game of kiting a trail 5 or 6 fat boys to the boys, kill the boss, and dip out.

There needs to be more jank mobs, and the life of the fat boys dropped significantly. It isnt that they are “too hard” they are “too boring” with that much life.

No Clue what my actual DPS is, or how a stat actually effects my skill. I have a “Base attack DPS” from the “C Menu” of like 1550 or something like that. But what is my DPS with “Cyclone” (Sorry, will always be Cyclone! :P) Do I benefit more from added crit, added melee phys, added melee void, how much does strength benefit me, will 4% inc damage be better than 7% phys? Will Attack Speed be a better mod choice for prefix than crit or flat dam?

I have no way of knowing. I am trying my best to intuit it and just sorta see what “feels” better.

Sorry, but this unfortunately for me sets the game off in a really bad direction and I dont believe I will be able to enjoy it. This is a big deal. Targeting bases was already hard enough. I literally havent seen a gold ring drop in the last 50+ timelines, and 200+ Waves. All I want is a freaking white base ring… I have the mats I need to craft it, if I can ever get one, but I wouldnt without the vendor resets so that I can buy runes of shattering.

Things like this will definitely be out of balance during beta phase (but your feedback is what gets it fixed!)

I totally agree with you the crafting aspect of this game has great potential. Love the idea of hunting for crafting bases.

I am sure this was a conscious decision, based on data showing that people were obtaining crafting mats too easy. And that may be at least part accurate in my opinion, but this skews it too far in the other direction.

I understand balance, and the need to make items and crafting feel important, but if there is one thing I have learned from POE, it is that nerfs feel bad. Over nerfs feel REALLY bad. Gradual balancing changes are important. But the fact that mats are now much more scarce, and crafting base hunting SUCKS right now, coupled with the fact that even when we do get our base, and our mats, we run high probability of bricking our items…

Crafting has amazing potential in this game. Probably the best I have seen in an arpg. But as is… and especially considering that all our gear is crafted… geez.

Yea. Out for now! Hope to be back!

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I’m currently trying to craft a perfect 100+% base spell wand, and it’s tough. I’ve found, it’s best to pick up all of them I find, and just scour all the mods, then craft what I want. It makes it harder, since scouring gives more fracture chance, but it’s really the only way I can even try.
Some bases are REALLY rare, but it’ll make more sense when we can trade for them.

I think you share some good feedback. And no one should really be afraid to share aspects of the game that isn’t quite well done yet - I completely agree there is no point just having everyone praise how good the game is as if the game is in a state for release.

But similarly, don’t be too worried about any particular thing you’re seeing. Almost everything is in a state of flux and will keep changing as our feedback comes in :slight_smile:

I’ve asked a developer and there were no intentional changes made to the vendor last patch. Could you please elaborate on the behavior you saw before and after the patch so we can look into it?

Especially at higher levels, progression is very much work in progress, so look forward to the future! Thanks.

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Hey there, and thanks for the response.

Before, after every timeline on the monolith, the vendor would reset, so I would see new items, including 1-4 runes of shattering for purchase.

Now the vendor is static and does not reset. Ran 5 timelines, and there was no reset.

My hope is that this is a personal bug, now that you have chimed in.

My understanding is that the vendor resets every 10min? Perhaps you’re clearing runs faster?

No, def not. My pace is the same. I run and string a bunch of packs, aoe down, rinse repeat. Nothing has changed.

The best polearm drops starting lv74,(sovyna) but agree that lv60+ items are rare than lower lv.

However, I don’t have a problem with low drop rates. Beta has only been out a week and people have lv100 and near perfect rolled items already, not sure getting strong items should be any easier.

I’m lv82 and average maybe 1 sovyna drop per 30min+ of play, was still enough for me to find a decent one and roll good stats. I like that I still have to farm if I want a perfect rolled sovyna and then need luck to get tier5 stats on it.

I think loot drops too much honestly, as once online and trading starts its going to be too easy at current drop rates to near max gear a character within week(s).

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Totally agree. I don’t think anyone should take the current drop and crafting rates too seriously. Pretty sure the devs will continue to balance gearing progression based off data collected in beta.

I agree with this 100%. There needs to be a way to distinguish between what’s better, than just going in and “guessing” you do more damage. The base tooltip is unreliable and doesn’t factor in all the additive bonuses.

If the mechanic hasn’t changed lately, the vendor is on a set timer (I think it was 5mins?), if you open the vendor before the timer ends then the timer is reset, therefore if you keep opening the vendor repeatedly you’ll never get new items.


As for the overall topic:
I think that being able to get end game gear < 1 week is probably not too great for the longevity of the game, as I’m sure cycles are going to eventually be months.

That said there are some slight annoyances that can be made to feel better:
*Shattering Stones- They used to drop and all was fine. They were added to the store and they hardly drop anymore. In order to get more I have to stop playing the game and go find a vendor in town (remember to buy them) which doesn’t feel particularly great. Being able to find shattering stones in a more germane or frequent fashion would help.

*Gear spread - You mentioned finding too much low level gear. Shards and gear have a level minimum before they start dropping. Introducing a soft level maximum of some sort would help ensure that loot dropped remains relevant to the character playing.

*Affix Rarity - Weapons are particularly bad for actually finding the one you want, as there are so many of them. It also makes the armor/trinkets rarer when they are probably the most common thing you’d want on your build. Combined with the fact that some affixes are specific to certain pieces of gear, of the Ocean, Lightning Leech, etc. affixes are nearly impossible to find. I had hoped that affixes dropping on the ground would help in the discoverability of rare affixes, but it seems that most of the shard drops are still generic added health, which doesn’t feel very useful.

Have not noticed any changes to the vendor resetting to be honest. I have multiple characters right now, and when leveling I buy all the shattering runes the vendor has when I am in town, so I haven’t been in a rough spot yet. So I’d recommend starting a new characters? Any reason why you only play one character? Some classes are not that well developed atm, but it’s still fun to check some of them out.

I can say with 100% certainty that what is being described here is not what I was experiencing, and is not what I experienced last night (last night was my first login after the new patch)

I am positive that I was getting a vendor reset after every single monolith timeline, regardless of how long it took me to run it. Most I clear in 120-150 secs. Many in less.

I am positive that after the patch, I was not getting resets after timelines, nor after 5 minutes had transpired.

I know that things are a bit funky during development like this, so I will try again tonight after work. I am fine with a 5 min reset I.e., about after every two timelines. That would be sufficient, and frankly would probably be better for market health once we have an economy than what I was initially experiencing since .7 release.

I’m pretty sure I saw one of the devs mentioned 10min on discord.

Dang yo, what build are you using that clears THAT fast?

I feel like my build isn’t optimal at all, some of my items are trash, but I hit 13-20k+ hits, and with teleport can clear a monolith in minutes. I don’t think this is that out of the ordinary, you can just skip past mobs to get to the end of the monolith and either 2-3shot the boss or clear the very small waves.

Again, I’ve seen streamers, and my gear is actually not that good at all, lots of trash rolls, but at around level 60-70, monoliths seem relatively not that bad (lag kills me way more than anything).

Warpath voidknight. Keep in mind, I just dinged 75. So not like I am clearing level 100 timelines.

But yea, average clear time is just a couple minutes. You can gather entire “maps” into one or two groups kiting and then aoe’ing down. A lot of times I will drag most of the zone right on to the boss and just do it all right there.

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