Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

[you know what time it is]

i still cant get over the fact that animation is so fucking terrible in a game where smashing shit is 99% of gameplay

 

[dibens]

Care to elaborate?

 

[you know what time it is]

its wooden, mostly abrupt and looking very cheap, i dont get any satisfaction from killing shit in a game about killing shit
diablo 2 still packs more punch and feels much more fluid than this, go figure. (even diablo 3 got monster smashing part right)

 

[Lyric Suite]

Didn't notice it myself. Of course you can tell the visuals were made on the cheap, but the game looks very good and the graphics serve their purpose. In short, troll less, faggit.

BTW, they are (or have) nerfed Cast on Damage Taken. Let the butthurt commence.

 

[dibens]

PoE can be rough around the edges in several departaments, but not once was the animation among the things I ever wanted to complain about. Some don't like the fact that you can't cancel the animations, but other than that it certainly is not on the level of unplayability as you described. I find combat very satisfying. Things explode, frozen enemies shatter, blood splatters, screen shakes. Skills like Heave Strike, Frozen Mallet, Ice Shot and others pack plenty of punch.

My guess is that you are playing a character with an incredibly slow weapon or spell. Leap Slam with a 0.90 AS weapon or Ethereal Knives with 0 cast speed indeed feel very sluggish and cumbersome. If this is not the case, you're either having some technical issues or just are not used to games that were not published by multibillion corporations.

250ms cooldown on CoDT is hardly a nerf, though. They need to attach the resource costs to those skills. I'm actually quite baffled by the decision to leave it out AND make the damage taken increase with levels, instead the other way around.

 

[Lyric Suite]

It seems more a fix than a nerf since i heard some skills went on a loop with it. Stuff like Enduring Cry always had their own cool down so this changes nothing, unless what it does is prevent all linked spells to trigger instantly at the same time.

More changes are on the way though. Personally, i see two problems with it. One, leveling the gem actually makes it worst, and i think there's just something wrong with that. Two, spells triggered don't use any mana, which is the only aspect of it that seems really OP to me.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Well, i'm going to hold out and see what they change in the patch. I'm almost at the end of act 2 on merciless and the game as gotten piss easy. Aside for the trololo one shot boss moment, there's no challenge whatsoever. I was farming the monkey area and i literally stood idle while waves of monkeys were swarming around me. I was having a conversation on chat and my health never dropped.

Rerolling on hardcore. I swore never to play hardcore since the day i lost an high level character on d2 due to a lag spike, but it seems they solved a lot of instability issues with the latest updates and so its worth a try now. Picking hardcore rather then nemesis just to get a head start with the cheaper permanent economy. If i see i like it i'll try nemesis as well.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

https://www.pathofexile.com/seasons

Some pre-season races this weekend, no prizes/points though.

 

[communard]

Decided to pick this up again for lack of better things to waste my time on. Have they even made any attempts to mitigate desynch issues? Because it sure as fuck doesn't feel like it. Oh well, game is still fun. We'll see how long it takes before I get bored this time.

 

[subotaiy]

No, desynch still remains and I think will always be a problem, a huge one at that.

 

[communard]

It's sad because it's keeping me from rolling hardcore characters. I get mad enough in standard when desynchs kill me. Doesn't help that I like playing builds that can get really fucked by it.

 

[DakaSha]

I seriously have never ever died because of a desync and i think that people just rather lame the game than themselves. Not saying it doesnt happen, but i think peoplepoint the finger extremely quickly.

And im not saying i dont get desyncs, i get them constantly( im in the middle of the pacific for christs sake), it just seems that the game can see it and you usually dont take any damage.

Maybe i just play much more cautiously

 

[communard]

Oh I agree. Desync related deaths are completely avoidable. Ideally you should never put yourself in a situation where a desync can kill you and accomplishing that isn't really all that hard. However that can result in you having to change the way you play the game in a way that severely limits your enjoyment of it.

 

[Aothan]

the desynchronisation issue has been noticeably improved, previously it could easily compromise players who would be teleported into the room of creatures they were holding at a doorway or by other methods that would redirect the movements of a number of on screen creatures. Not that I would say this problem has been entirely resolved, but it now appears to be mostly produced because of the skill combinations my character uses such as Heavy Strike supported with Faster Attacks, Melee Splash and Multi-Strike. These skills have a knockback effect on large groups of creatures and after chain knockbacks on any creature that can endure seven or more successive strikes they tend to be displaced, however whilst they are usually displaced unlike before my character is not. In that sense there has been considerable improvement, at least from my perspective. All the same, it is definitely a concern for any player who wants to try hardcore but is likely to experience desynchronisation issues.

I also agree that hardcore basically promote a conservative playstyle and is thus constraining on playstyles which emphasise speed, finesse and combat skills rather than defensive qualities. My newest character is a Templar spellcaster which has been an interesting change for me, especially since I intend to use Frost Wall and Lightning Warp as defensive and mobility techniques. Yet as a matter of practical design a heavy emphasis on life nodes and armour types will be necessary and as such limits some of the more creative possibilities that could be accentuated. Likewise with my favourite character, a two-handed sword Ranger, that for the very reasons I favour the engaging playstyle of the character would never be viable for hardcore play, and yet in my view requires far more skill and focus to play than how my 'hardcore' designed characters typically advance through areas.

these observations are not about flaws of the game or its game modes just that in my view hardcore promotes specific playstyles which are not necessarily the hardest or most skill intensive approach to the game. One of if not Path of Exile's defining feature is that is accomodates all types of play styles from casual, to power gamers, to those who enjoy developing specific character concepts which may be more difficult to use but can be satisfying to create and play with.

 

[Jigawatt]

Had my first lag (desync?) death last night - got rushed by a pack with extra fast aura then my attacks started having no effect. After a few seconds of non-responsiveness got dropped back to the login screen, then logged in and saw 'Standard League' . The char I can deal with losing but having a few decent uniques sent back to standard stings quite a bit.

 

[Gerrard]

SOUNDS LIKE YOU'RE NOT HARDCORE ENOUGH BRO

 

[Lyric Suite]

Had my first lag (desync?) death last night - got rushed by a pack with extra fast aura then my attacks started having no effect. After a few seconds of non-responsiveness got dropped back to the login screen, then logged in and saw 'Standard League' . The char I can deal with losing but having a few decent uniques sent back to standard stings quite a bit.

That's not desync, that's just plain lag/disconnect. My connection comes and goes and when it goes that's precisely what happens. Strangely, i never die though. Guess i'm just lucky.

Losing my d2 lv 60 hardcore character was more fun though. I was entering the cave to act 2 end boss and when the screen finished loading i was dead.

 

[Lyric Suite]

PoE can be rough around the edges in several departaments, but not once was the animation among the things I ever wanted to complain about.

Personally, the only animation that needs work for me is shield charge. Seems kinda wimpy compared to stuff like leap slam.

 

[set]

Shield Charge is a pretty worthless skill anyway - the majority of the damage comes from a highly predictable charge and they nerfed your ability to spam it as a single target attack. It needs a tune up.

 

[Kane]

wrt to desyncs, these happen because unlike d2, poe performs two checks for attack collision: once when you fire and once when your attack hits (or should hit) the mob. naturally, twice the calculation is twice as costly. if you use a lot of AoE attacks in rapid successions there's a lot of processing to be done and desyncs are more likely, depending on a) your processing power, b) the servers processing power (how many people are already using its ressources) c) your connection to the server.

the benefit of the dual calculation is that it allows for real dodging.

 

[set]

They also have some kind of algorithm in play to accomodate for 250ms or more of lag. I've played PoE 'successfully' at 500 ping. Try playing a game like WC3 or LoL with this kind of ping - you basically can't.

Desync is a problem, but the way they handle clients is really advanced for an indie title.

 

[abija]

wrt to desyncs, these happen because unlike d2, poe performs two checks for attack collision: once when you fire and once when your attack hits (or should hit) the mob. naturally, twice the calculation is twice as costly. if you use a lot of AoE attacks in rapid successions there's a lot of processing to be done and desyncs are more likely, depending on a) your processing power, b) the servers processing power (how many people are already using its ressources) c) your connection to the server.

the benefit of the dual calculation is that it allows for real dodging.

No, it happens because they use a lot of prediction on client and server to minimize effect of latency. It doesn't work like standard client-server games where each action is confirmed by server and only executed after.
It's a common practice but what makes PoE special is they don't trust the clients at all so they can't mask the desyncs.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Apparently, they are introducing some sort of trading mechanism with the next patch. Which is good because i can't play anymore since i've filled all my stash tabs with stuff which is too good to vendor but i'm just too fucking lazy to sell. I tried for a bit but it is simply against my nature to peddle my shit in chat like some kind of street merchant. I want to smash shit in the face, i didn't ask to be a Jew.

 

[subotaiy]

You can use the forums until then or post in the party panel like some players do.

 

[Minttunator]

I hope they introduce at least a decent search function - I'm fine with the forum trading otherwise, but I always have to browse through dozens of threads to find something that I'm interested in.