mumbogumshoe

Thank you kilay, I will try this!

My first playthrough was on PotD as it was originally. I wasn't one of those people complaining that it was too easy but I could see where they were coming from. It provided a good challenge for me, it was fun, hard but manageable, I never felt as if I was in over my head. However, I think that if I can play a game on the highest difficulty setting and not feel "this is much too hard", it's probably too easy. That's because I'm not a great player, I'm just ok. I don't optimize every last bit, don't look for synergies in everything, don't want to obsessively prepare ahead of every fight, don't want to micromanage everything. I do all that to some extent but I don't make a science out of it. So when I went back to play the game recently I found that, after the recent patches, PotD had become too hard for me. I barely made it out of that first cave on the beach alive. That solitary rusted construct from before now has a couple of revenants and skeletons to guard it and at the raised platform that had a revenant and 2 skellies before, there's a high-ish level rotghast around now, that, while you can draw it alone, will absolutely maul you if you're not careful. The cave felt just at the edge of acceptable challenge for my first level mindstalker and swashbuckler Eder. I thought, well, you gotta overcome and soldier on but I soon had to admit, no, this doesn't feel good, it's frustrating. The looters in the flooded part of Port Maje, that I found to be a pretty challenging fight before, now have a couple more, higher level goons among them and they just slaughter me. At the digsite I get mauled by boars and a young drake. I think that's ok, this is what the highest difficulty should feel like, just swallow your pride and play on Veteran. But now this feels too easy. Not only are enemies much easier to kill now because they don't have the PotD modifiers, the high level enemies that felt overwhelming before but should actually be challenging but fun on Veteran, are (mostly) gone. I feel there is too much of a difficulty gap now between Veteran and PotD. What would absolutely hit the sweet spot for me, what I would find really fun, is if I could have all the PotD enemies, the Rotghast, all the boars, the bloody Drake but in their normal, non-PotD buffed versions. I have no idea how to make this happen, if it would be easy, difficult or impossible to do. But if there's someone out there who's able to do it and willing to invest the time and energy, I'd absolutely sing your praises!

It's not a made up word, it's Old English, and the plural seems to be Eotens. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/eoten I've voted for Eoten as plural though. Old English is much closer to other Germanic languages than modern English and -en is a perfectly fine Germanic plural ending.

Oh please! You're playing a CRPG but don't get why people like to get rewards and like to level? The distinguishing feature of the genre is the reward mechanic, the loot, the leveling, getting stronger, getting new abilities. Of course the story is important, but if it was only about the story I could as well read a book or whatch a movie or play any other kind of game that tells a story. A lot of them do. To say that people who enjoy the reward part are treating the game like work is just silly. Obviously they enjoy it because it's fun. I couldnt care a rats ass for leveling. I autolevel all my npcs. I get most passive upgrades for me so i wouldnt need to micro a lot and maybe choose an ability that i never use...passives are always on. I never rush to an npc companion to get them before they are higher level. I only upgrade equipment once every 2 or 3 waves of story insteead of every map or hub plus quest In poe1 i think after chapter 1 i re equiped my party like 5x. And only in the last did i enchant. I finish every game with a pocket full of money i never use. Not everybody has Game Asperger's... I really don't care how you play your game. It's not my business, no opinion whatsoever about it. But I do find it bloody ridiculous that you act all superior and diagnose people with aspergers for enjoying the core feature of CRPGs in a CRPG.

Oh please! You're playing a CRPG but don't get why people like to get rewards and like to level? The distinguishing feature of the genre is the reward mechanic, the loot, the leveling, getting stronger, getting new abilities. Of course the story is important, but if it was only about the story I could as well read a book or whatch a movie or play any other kind of game that tells a story. A lot of them do. To say that people who enjoy the reward part are treating the game like work is just silly. Obviously they enjoy it because it's fun.

It obviously makes a difference because they have much more to work with. If they pace it similar to PoE1 it won't be a problem. That's why I'm not worried.

The gripe you appear to have (the balance issue with hitting the level cap) can also be solved by an adjusted scaling system. The problem with losing incentive is imo best fought, as someone already stated in the thread, by good endgame writing/quest design. I feel like that aspect was done well in PoE - by the endgame you were interacting with some pretty interesting people/beings. Yeah that's a big part of it and I know they're doing it, a more comprehensive level scaling system, I mean. It's gonna be optional because many people think that any kind of scaling is of the devil but that's fine, I trust them to do it well and I'm going to turn it on for sure. The second point, that I've been hitting the level cap far too early, isn't going to be remedied by this, though. I understand that people enjoy playing with a fully realized build but I don't feel the appeal so much myself. Leveling up, getting stronger, is one of the core elements of RPGs and when it's not there anymore, I always lose interest a bit. A good story, interesting quests and encounters, challenging combat still make the game interesting, but an essential element is gone and it can't just be replaced. You can have a good story, interesting quests, challenging combat and leveling, after all. For me it would be perfect if you hit max level just before the last dungeon or quest or whatever in a game like this. Have that be a long one, with several hard combat encounters and a really tough end battle so I can still play my maxed out character a bit, but that's it. Anyway, I'm not too worried about PoE2. With 20 levels there's a good chance that it will take substantially longer to hit the cap.

I think the OP has a point (even though he's a bit rude about it). Last play through on PotD I hit the level cap shortly before WM2. I was already feeling too strong at that point for a while. I still had the 2nd part of the expansion, Crägholdt, a couple of side quest sand the Burial Isle to go. All of that felt way too easy even though I used the level scaling option where it was available. This is one of my biggest gripes about the game, I felt it was handled very poorly. It's fine if you hit the level cap a bit before the end but not hours before, with so much content still to go.

Quick new update from bob over at fig, Slacker Backer money stands at 54,020 right now.

I've asked Josh on his blog if fewer trash mobs would lead to a reduction in combat frequency. Here's his answer.

New update about the slacker backer money. It's standing at $49,494 right now, up just a little bit more than 4,000 compared to yesterday. That's not good. If it continues like this we'll probably not make the 5 million goal. On the bright side, the 4.5 million goal is in the bag.

What's interesting is if there will be overall a significant decrease in combat encounters with most of trash mobs taken out or if the amount of combat stays more or less the same with trash mobs getting replaced by uniquely placed tactical encounters. If it's the latter, I'm all on board with reducing the trash mobs, if it's the former I'm not so sure. PoE is a combat heavy game and I like it that way. I build my characters and party for combat effectiveness and I want lots of opportunities to test them. Combat is fun, even against trash mobs, if it's not really that same after same again slog. That can really become tedious. At the very least you need to have a bunch of dudes you can steamroll every now and again to make you feel how powerful you have become.

There's a good chance that something will happen during those 2 months that gives us a bit of a bump. Maybe another small media blitz towards the end. Then we'll lock in that last stretch goal as well.

New information! Through the backer portal we have $42,261. So it seems as if we're making about as much there as on fig. We've also almost cleared the 4.5 million stretch goal.

Yeah, that seems doable! Especially since once the fig pledges are over at the backer portal some people might be upgrading their pledge. I'm certainly considering it, after all, new paycheck and all that.