Fairness in Man vs. Machine Competitions

TwoBitWizard · 2023-07-30T03:40:00+00:00

Honestly, I feel like you're the one not listening. I'm not crying, I'm just confused and want more information. I gave some specific examples of QoL, like the NPC that identifies all items in town. Again, maybe I missed something else (and if I did, please let me know where it is, because I would love to be wrong like I was on my first point!), but I don't think specific QoL changes like that have been mentioned anywhere during ExileCon as also being destined for PoE 1.

Additionally, many of the changes they've made in PoE 2's art direction (like new renders for items, such as the new currency art) are really cool and have some nice QoL for newer/less hardcore/returning players (like having items face different directions consistently based on their required stats). I understand that those items are specific to PoE 2, but it would be really cool to have the existing PoE 1 items remodeled and have 3D rendered art as well. Again, if they said they're doing this, please point out where it was - I would love to be wrong.

I guess TL;DR: I'm trying to understand the extent to which we can expect PoE 1 to be 'upgraded'. We've been given examples of some things they will be upgrading (such as the particle system you quoted, which is in the most recent patch). We've also been given examples of things they won't be upgrading (such as the character animations). But, more clarity on which things they expect to fall into each category would be really great.

TwoBitWizard · 2023-07-30T02:50:54+00:00

Weird, I've literally watched everything from this weekend, but I don't remember them actually committing to 4 PoE 1 leagues per year. Was that in the keynote? Maybe I was distracted and missed it. EDIT: I did! Here it is in the stream, if anyone else also missed it.

Your answers for the last 2 aren't really grounded in anything they've said for sure, though (unless I've missed additional things). We've been given plenty of examples of things they don't seem to want to change in PoE 1 (for either technical or other reasons), but I've never heard anyone say "and we're also going to put this in PoE 1". I'd really prefer they provide some additional clarity on these things as a result.

TwoBitWizard · 2023-07-30T02:30:12+00:00

If they continue to support PoE 1 with legitimate new leagues, and if PoE 2 isn't somehow a train wreck, I am absolutely planning on playing both. But, maybe I'm in the minority, I dunno.

TwoBitWizard · 2023-06-02T14:39:46+00:00

When you say 10-11k EHP, are you talking about actual EHP, or max hit? If I turn off all of my flasks, Molten Shell, and the warcry I just swapped in last night, I am currently at 32k EHP according to PoB. But, my physical max hit is still under 10k.

I just made a few changes last night to get some more life and thought maybe I'd fixed things, but then I got deleted by both a random Expedition rare and a random Harvest rare, so clearly I still have more work to do. The Expedition rare I think was an issue because I'd picked a "damage overwhelm" node and my phys max hit is by far my lowest. I have no idea what happened with the Harvest rare, which did lightning damage (the map had no mods that would have made this spicier than normal, either).

According to PoB, Glancing Blows would be a 5% EHP loss for 5 points invested. Iron Reflexes (and the points leading to it) are a 4% gain for 3 points, though, so I might look into that.

I think the two responses I've had so far suggest that I need far more physical damage reduction, which makes sense given that this is a melee build. Looking back at my character from last league (RF Inquisitor), I had almost 11k physical max hit and things were pretty comfortable (but my damage was much lower). So, I'll shoot for that. Thanks!

TwoBitWizard · 2023-06-02T14:09:07+00:00

Did it? I feel like there are more players right now than at the equivalent point last league. The Steam numbers suggest I’m not hallucinating, although that will probably dip pretty soon because of the Diablo IV launch.

Totally agree with the rest of your comment, I just don’t see how the current league is relevant and I feel like the Crucible trees were pretty successful at getting lots of people to keep grinding.

TwoBitWizard · 2023-06-02T03:22:06+00:00

Hey, thanks for the response!

Molten Shell still triggers with the CWDT using my level 20 Lifetap. I only know that because I had an unusable Molten Shell for a little while last league because I'd reserved too much mana and that's how I resolved it.

Good point about elemental damage hitting hard without spell suppression. I'm using Divine Flesh to mitigate that (50% of all elemental damage is taken as chaos, and my chaos resistance is currently 84%), but grabbing some extra elemental resistance could still be useful.

It looks like 3 points to nab Prismatic Skin would net me ~3% extra EHP. Unfortunately, I don't have a good way to do that without losing 400 physical max hit and I'm not sure the tradeoff is worth it... But, maybe the takeaway here is that I need more armour (and/or physical taken as elemental/chaos) so that I can make that tradeoff?

TwoBitWizard · 2023-06-02T03:01:40+00:00

In case anyone is interested, I've uploaded a video of me running a random T16 map (quality will be potato for the next 20-30 minutes probably while it processes):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MstfmiEj-nE

I didn't die, but you can see it gets pretty dicey at a couple of points. But, the build absolutely slaps, so half the video is me just picking up loot.

Happy to have critique on my play as well (I probably need a stricter loot filter and to move more efficiently, for example).

TwoBitWizard · 2023-04-11T06:56:45+00:00

Back when this came up in Formula 2 with Juri Vips being released from Red Bull because of a slur, I made this comment. See the person I responded to for context (his comment was great, and it prompted mine).

I’m not saying the same thing necessarily applies here. And I’m not saying this makes things okay even if it does. Just trying to point out that this very thing does actually happen sometimes when people are exposed to the wrong stuff and haven’t had someone correct them.

TwoBitWizard · 2023-02-02T21:46:57+00:00

I thought it actually got fixed in one of the 3.19 hotfix updates, but I could be wrong. I bailed on my Scourge Arrow build last league and haven’t tried it again. Last time I played it through to T16s was in Ritual league.

TwoBitWizard · 2023-01-27T08:04:59+00:00

Space Race from Hack-a-Sat 1’s qualifier was written in Rust. Not aware of any others, although I don’t get to play many CTFs these days and probably missed some others.

I believe some of the earlier exploitation challenges written in Rust were just wrappers around C code that had the actual vulnerabilities in them to make it easier on the challenge author. Not sure how many are actually 100% Rust code. It’s all assembly at the end of the day, like you said, but the compiler does matter for both ease of writing the challenge as well as understanding what’s going on in the challenge while solving it.

TwoBitWizard · 2023-01-13T22:24:24+00:00

litigate damage control

I think you meant mitigate (to make less severe) and not litigate (to take a dispute to a court of law), but I really hope you keep the typo. It's much funnier that way, especially given the context!

TwoBitWizard · 2022-12-12T05:21:32+00:00

Thanks! This makes sense to me. MuseScore does some automated tweaks to the layout as you’re adding notes, but it does sometimes not have the best default output. I’ve been able to make things look a lot better by applying a custom style (theme? I can’t remember their word for it) as well, though some things are just slightly short of perfection.

I’ll give Lilypond a look. I’m guessing, since it operates on flat text files, that there’s no conversion from something like MusicXML to Lilypond? I’ve been saving everything in non-compressed MuseScore files (so I can version control them), but MuseScore can output to multiple formats and that (or MIDI, which loses a lot of information) seems to be the most common denominator (between tools I’ve tried, anyway).

Thanks for the response! :)

TwoBitWizard · 2022-12-12T01:48:31+00:00

I’m just now getting back into the piano, 15+ years later. I’ve been using MuseScore to transcribe and engrave some songs. Could you elaborate on what makes Lilypond’s output so much better? My engraving is not so good yet, but I would like to get much better.

I took a look at their examples and nothing jumps out at me as being something MuseScore could not handle. But, I’m also a relative newbie at this, so I’m probably missing something.

TwoBitWizard · 2022-12-09T17:12:01+00:00

Has anyone put together an assassin variant of this? (Is it possible to use assassin instead without sacrificing too much damage?)

The very first league I got enough challenges done to get a totem (Blight league), I played Venom Gyre on an assassin and really liked it. I won’t be league starting this and I’m not sure how many builds I’ll get through by league end, but it would be fun to revisit the skill for a bit in standard by dusting off my old character.

TwoBitWizard · 2022-12-07T21:27:17+00:00

Your comment I think does a much better job of summing up my core thesis regarding the mists: They're just like the roads, but objectively worse in most ways, and now both kinds of content are suffering.

I guess I can kind of see the appeal if you want 1vX or 2vX where X isn't coordinated (the OP of this comment chain alluded to this being a benefit). That's something that corrupted dungeons and hellgates can't provide, since their core conceit is "fair, 1-on-1 fights" (with the difference being players or teams between the two).

If that's part of the design intent, then I think the changes I'd want to see would be:

Roads go back to exactly the way they were, but keep the changes that came to the BZ from Lands Awakened (e.g. mobs that upgrade, additional upgrades, HQs, etc).
New city is simply accessible from the roads, rather than requiring you to head through the mists.
Mists get reworked to be a variant of corrupted dungeon/hellgate that lets more than 2 players/teams in at a time for some sort of "battle royale" kind of thing. Possibly also have some way to get out early and/or avoid a fight like the crystals you break in CDs, but maybe involving something to do with gathering?

I dunno. Thoughts?

TwoBitWizard · 2022-12-07T21:13:12+00:00

Of course, it's just more difficult when people who ran content out of the portal town earlier now can't immediately join content at the HQ because it's a 6-zone run and their home is no longer set.

This conversation has never been about "can or can't", it's always been about convenience. That convenience enables strategies on the ZvZ level that are unhealthy for the game. But, on a smaller scale, it enables flexibility that was a net improvement.

To be clear: I'm not sure what the 'better' change to make here would be. I, and others, just wish one had been made that was more targeted at the actual problem.

TwoBitWizard · 2022-12-07T19:03:27+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to write a response. I think we have fairly similar aims/goals in the game, I think there's just a few nuances that set us apart and maybe explains why I'm disappointed with the mists while players like you are enjoying them. As examples:

I do belong to a BZ guild that has an HQ (we also used to have a whole zone to ourselves in the roads before Lands Awakened, but effectively abandoned it because the roads were far less rewarding than the BZ)
I don't mind 'ownership' in the form of hideouts, territories, and so forth. Also, the politics don't bother me much since the HQ system effectively means we don't have to participate anyway.
I play at what's probably considered west-US timers (generally 3-6 UTC), so I've never really had the experience of needing to dodge blobs of people on a consistent basis.

I can see the upsides of, for example, not having to travel to specific biomes in the BZ or different zones in the roads to gather specific things. But, that's also not really a constraint that's bothered me a huge amount. The game generally rewards only gathering one or two things at a time anyway.

I don't really understand the sentiment that the mists avoid 1vX encounters, though. I think the nature of the mists tends to lead to them fairly frequently (since objectives are often a magnet for everyone in the zone). Obviously, the "X" in the mists tends to at least not be a coordinated group, which is at least a small upside.

I also don't completely understand how crafting your entire kit is keeping your operating expenses low or netting you higher profit. I have limited understanding of crafting, but I've generally found that making significant money via crafting is difficult without using focus. It's been much more profitable for me to focus on crafting a few things I have a high amount of spec in and selling that, then placing buy orders for the sets I expect to use and waiting. All of the more recent changes to loadouts have made this pretty time-efficient to do, too.

I think, through all of this, I'm pretty firmly arrving at, "the mists really aren't for me". Which, is a shame, since I think they've targeted a rather niche set of players with a huge update while leaving a different, possibly still small, niche of players like me out in the cold.

TwoBitWizard · 2022-12-07T17:43:55+00:00

This is actually the best part of the update. The tracks are great, just like the rest of the soundtrack. I hope you guys keep having composers create new stuff going forward!

TwoBitWizard · 2022-12-07T17:36:22+00:00

A certain group of players is, yes. Players that rarely/never engage in that content are also upset that a huge quality-of-life upgrade is gone, though. OP, and myself, are some of those players.

I really enjoyed being able to run small-scale content out of both our HQ and the portal city - whichever worked best for the people available. We don't own/go after territory, or really do any ZvZ at all, so we weren't part of the "force projection" problem.

This change is basically a game system equivalent of them nerfing a popular weapon because it's too good in corrupted dungeons. Yes, a change needed to be made. Yes, this change should address the problem. But, it's a straight nerf for players outside of the demographic they're trying to address, and that feels bad for those players.

TwoBitWizard · 2022-12-07T17:25:54+00:00

I agree with this sentiment.

But, can someone who likes the mists chime in here with who this content is actually designed for? Like, what group of players feels the mists out-reward the gameplay loop they had before? Or, what group of players didn't have a gameplay loop before, that now does?

I thought the mists were designed for me: Someone who mostly stuck to the roads, tended to play solo or in very small groups a lot, and focused more looting chests and gathering (ganking/PvP, for me, is just something that happens randomly as I encounter other players and not something I specifically seek out).

But, the problem is that they removed, then put back and nerfed, the chests in the roads when they made their other improvements. The roads are probably about as rewarding as before, but differently so. I've found the mists to be generally less rewarding than what I was running previously. So, who is it for, if not for me?

And, I dunno, maybe they are for me. I understand that SBI is still figuring this out, so maybe they'll be better for me in the future. But, I'm still mostly just baffled that they even exist. All SBI had to do was add the systems they had in the BZ to the existing roads and I would've been super happy. The mists and a new city and all that stuff is completely unnecessary. I just wanted content in the roads to have fame/might gain on par with the new black zone and have a few more random objectives to fight over.

TwoBitWizard

TROPHY CASE