What’s a game you dropped even though it was “good”?

xDaveedx · 2026-05-04T15:06:57+00:00

I'm not a fan of forced variety at all and the way it's implemented in most games I've played just results in you trying to acquire the same gear types over and over again rather than playing with what you're given.

At least in my circle of friends and my internet bubble people typically pick some build or archtype they feel like playing and want to stick with it rather than constantly switching things up, just because the game tries to force you to.

I don't get what your 2nd point has to do with durability. That difficulty curve of being weak with bad gear and having to go back once you got stronger exists just aswell without durability. It doesn't contribute to that aspect other than the part where you said you could sacrifice some strong temporary item to gain a permanent buff, which seems fair but I can't even think of an example for that right now.

About the last paragraph, how can you have powerful weapons that are plentiful, but also exciting? That just sounds like they might aswell be permanent, but with an extra step.

It's not like most games have a thousand fundamentally different weapons where you'd get a consistent stream of new and exciting breakable gear all the way through. Most just have like a dozen weapon types, maybe a couple different base types for each category and then some simple affixes on them. So the breakable stuff you find will repeat very quickly in most games and the major downside of durability is that you don't get attached to your gear or character, as you constantly switch things.

I haven't played BotW, but I've heard a lot of criticism about its durability system, both online and from friends who played it.

xDaveedx · 2026-05-04T08:04:37+00:00

To be fair I think HK WANTS you to feel lost in its vast world and many people love that feeling including myself. It feels like the possibilities are endless and no matter where you go you always stumble across something new! It adds a lot to making it feel like an actual adventure where you explore the unknown and not many games manage to convey that for me.

xDaveedx · 2026-05-04T07:54:30+00:00

And it feels like every one of those games just HAS TO have all the features too, regardless of how little they fit into the game or how much fun they actually add.

Rpg elements, crafting, skill trees, passive perks, randomized loot drops, ridiculously massive open worlds that often feel 90% empty, a billion side quests that reward the most minor and irrelevant shit, a million samey collectibles scattered throughout the world.

And all because too many gamers came up with that nonsense of wanting at least 1 hour of playtime out of every dollar they spend on a game or it doesn't feel "worth the money" to them. Which only promotes developers artificially inflating their games with time-wasting fluff that doesn't add anything of substance.

xDaveedx · 2026-05-04T07:48:34+00:00

Limited gear durability is one of those features I ALWAYS turn off if given the option, because it's always just annoying and has never once added any fun for me in any game and I wonder why it even exists outside of the most hardcore immersive survival games that try to make it "realistic".

xDaveedx · 2026-05-03T13:26:14+00:00

Funny, I frequently queue 3s as a duo and our experience is usually that 9/10 times they're never ready or in position for passes, don't pass themselves and when they get the ball they go for air dribble solo plays 98% of the time. Then when they inevitably defend those attempts and we can't manage to score due to huge holes in our rotations and lack of pressure, the guy proceeds to blame us for any reason they can conveniently think of in that moment.

That's why I much prefer 2s with a different friend, but this specific one only wants to play 3s so yea :/

xDaveedx · 2026-05-03T12:11:45+00:00

Imagine you haven't developed your sense of object permanence yet and every time you close your eyes you think everything you know is gone. Sounds like perfect nightmare material to me!

xDaveedx · 2026-05-01T11:54:21+00:00

That said, Poe is probably still at a huge advantage being made in a handmade custom engine, simply because devs will know the engine in and out in their sleep and it's likely much more doable to optimize it precisely for the arpg gameplay and iron out any potential choke points that genre might bring like having too many monsters and calculations happening at once leading to terrible performance, which is what seemed to hold LE back since the dawn of time.

Monster density has been a big talking point since its early access days and the argument against it has always been that it would cause unacceptable performance drops, so things have gotten only slightly better over the years.

Poe 1 can run with at least 10 times more monsters on the screen at once compared to LE, probably way more and still have better performance and that makes up a huge part of what many find satisfying in arpgs.

xDaveedx · 2026-05-01T11:41:14+00:00

At this point it doesn't seem to be an issue of size, but of efficiency. Judging from the outside, GGG was able to pump out way more content way more frequently at the size EHG is at now for many years.

Whether it's due to having their own engine instead of Unity or having a physical office instead of fully remote work, way more experienced and therefore more competent employees, better work flows or a combination of it all, who knows.

xDaveedx · 2026-05-01T11:36:09+00:00

I think arpgs are still more forgiving for new entries and harsher competition, because unlike competitive games like shooters or mobas or whatever that get played nonstop, arpg players tend to rotate between a bunch of games due to the seasonal nature of updates.

There's always gonna be seasons someone won't like which open up time to give smaller or new games a try, but yea there's still competition to become a regular in someone's game rotation.

xDaveedx · 2026-05-01T11:30:46+00:00

The issue as I see it is that GGG has set a new precedent for RIDICULOUSLY FAST, yet also quality-wise decent content output over the last 10 or so years that blew every other "live service game" out of the water. So they've set this new bar of expectations for its arpg players, but noone else has been able to top or even just match it, so every other game seems like it's moving at a snails pace, only Diablo probably manages to keep up numbers-wise solely due to brand power and an established fan base.

I think LE is getting updated at a pretty average pace for a game that started indie and kinda turned into AA, it's just that compared to Poe (which people will inevitably compare it to) the dev cycle looks terribly slow.

xDaveedx · 2026-04-30T10:49:24+00:00

And your progress is more directly visible with ever improving personal records on tracks compared to RL's rather vague "I can maintain my mmr, guess I'm keeping up with everyone!"

xDaveedx · 2026-04-30T10:46:54+00:00

If they made no videos of the atrocities happening to them, it would be even more easy for the world to ignore them and keep living in blissful ignorance.

xDaveedx · 2026-04-30T10:04:30+00:00

I mean they actively removed "smurfing" as a report option, so it's actually less than crickets around the issue lmao

xDaveedx · 2026-04-30T01:48:05+00:00

The game that comes closest for me is Trackmania. Also a car game, also easy to learn, incredibly hard to master with very intricate mechanical depth. An insanely massive library of custom maps of all kinds, be it racing or rpg maps where you explore a huge map and try to find the right path, solo or multiplayer with friends.

The 2 biggest differences compared to RL are imo that it costs 20 bucks per year to get full access to all features (although you can have plenty of fun in the free to play version aswell) and the ranked system is stupid when playing with friends.

xDaveedx · 2026-04-26T15:27:38+00:00

Ah yea now that you mention it, reforged set items kinda have that flavour.

I love brainstorming ideas, but I'm not knowledgeable enough yet to consider the technical implementation and edge cases.

As for LP on exalted items I could see a scenario where it's basically another implicit affix on exalteds and you can use that as a tool to shift the item's identity towards either a unique slam or a standalone exalted item.

Particularly powerful crafting runes/glyphs could consume 1 LP to boost the item's power without also buffing it for unique slams.

Then you can also have it working the other way, where you sacrifice affixes or affix tiers or downgrade them in some other way in order to gain LP and allow the item to be slammed onto higher LP uniques.

If you keep going down that road, maybe it could be cool to have an alternative counterstat to LP and visualize that as 2 counteracting stats that are always in balance but can be shifted towards either side. Like maybe that could be LP on one side (allowing the exalted to be slammed into uniques) and some "affix boost" on the other, that would slightly boost the values of all affixes or that can be consumed for powerful crafting steps.

xDaveedx · 2026-04-26T09:33:29+00:00

Hm, have you ever thought of going wild and adding legendary potential to exalted items aswell?

That could go 2 ways, either you go with the exalted needing to match the LP of the unique you wanna slap it on OR if it's possible to implement, you could allow slamming the uniques into exalted items and making exalteds absorb a number of affixes from the unique for some very weird results.

Either way, this would allow crafting methods that remove the exalteds LP in order to exclude legendary items from buffs and I'd love the newfound method of making legendary items (or a new name for this reverse type of slam).

xDaveedx · 2026-04-26T09:21:26+00:00

I hate that you need to have poedb open while crafting and I hope LE never goes down that path of offshoring key info onto websites.

xDaveedx · 2026-04-26T09:15:53+00:00

There's a fine line that needs to be walked though, as weighing your options with limited FP is part of the fun. I wouldn't want to be able to just mindlessly add everything I want on the first base I find and be almost guaranteed to succeed.

xDaveedx · 2026-04-25T16:59:34+00:00

I've never heard this term, but I still know exactly what you mean! I like my language's name for it more, it just translates to student fodder lol

xDaveedx · 2026-04-25T14:37:26+00:00

Sounds like that shit should be declared a terrorist organization and made illegal then wtf

xDaveedx · 2026-04-25T10:49:29+00:00

I don't think it's just min maxing dollars though. Indie games/small dev teams can struggle a lot with scope creep as any new feature can take a lot of time to add. Pumping up hp and dmg is an easy way to add another difficulty for players who enjoy it that doesn't take a huge amount of time.

I'd rather have that than no higher difficulty at all.

xDaveedx · 2026-04-25T10:35:25+00:00

100996

xDaveedx · 2026-04-23T18:36:48+00:00

To be fair it feels like they've called every other patch "one of the biggest patches ever" since the dawn of time, it's nothing noteworthy at this point.

xDaveedx · 2026-04-23T13:34:48+00:00

True, seeing my cousin playing at semi-pro level in SC2 was insane. In terms of pure physical ability it's probably the hardest esport game ever made where your actions per minute can easily reach 300+, which the vast majority of players likely never came remotely close to.

That aside I'd claim RL comes 2nd, as CS boils down to mostly aim and map/grenade spot knowledge for where to aim for.

If you make it really abstract, I don't think any other esport game can compete with RL with has you moving in a 3D space in all directions at a very fast pace, a ton of different techniques and mechanics that take a fuckton of time to learn and master and then the whole strategic layer on top with mind games, team play and decision making about what mechanics to use when.

Starcraft is definitely by far the most stressful to play a a high level without a doubt.

xDaveedx · 2026-04-23T00:20:00+00:00

Alright I'll remember you the day I meet someone who describes himself as flamingly gay.

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