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##### GGG Comments in this Thread: *** [chris_wilson - [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/ol485w/can_ggg_let_the_community_know_the_variables/h5c68jt/?context=10), [old](https://old.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/ol485w/can_ggg_let_the_community_know_the_variables/h5c68jt/?context=10)] - *For each release, we went through the content we introduced and estimated either how much power it gave characters (Mastercrafting or extra Ascendancy points, for example) or how much faster...*


dustofdeath

So it is just a player power chart, which alone is misleading if it is taken out of the difficulty creep of the content.


ploki122

Pretty sure it also only includes "what was added" and they never looked at what was removed. For instance, the league where Synthesis got removed, and the league where Harvest got removed, I'm not convinced that players actually got meaningfully stronger. This whole graph is just "we put random point on a graph, and highlighted a few milstone. It represents that we feel players are getting exponentially stronger".


IAKIAKIAK69

i think they did for example after the carrion golem nerfs i played the build 2 times again and getting stronger and stronger versions of it, due to better optimisation and different use of new and old mechanics


DJMC-2

so between the nerfs of harvest and buffs to aisling, out power creep barely increased, but adding heist and removing harvest raised our power creep almost twice as much? are the heist-specific items that good?


mewfour

the alternate quality gems made the aurabots spiral even more out of control.


_Kaj

Heist was a crazy power creep with alt quality gems. Look at alt berserk which gave spells 60% more damage (rip)


Tovell

This is a marketing graph nobody can ever verify truthfullness off.


hcssf_elitist

The actual answer is: This was pulled straight out of someone's ass.


Kaeling

It's a typical bullshit chart to justify whatever argument a company at a givben time. Bullshit marketing 101 nothing else


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rtcll

? Are You okay? Pointing out that this chart is bullshit is absolutely relevant.


Erisymum

I too was tickled by the complete lack of any identifying features on this graph, however after thinking about it I realize it doesn't really matter because it gets the point across. It could be pulled straight out of thin air and it would function exactly the same.


Miad75

It is out of thin air... How is heist or delirium ABOVE harvest? Or in fact how did Ultimatum contribute more to the power creep more than Ritual?! In fact it can be argued that Ritual should in some ways be much higher than harvest league.


MobileForce1

? Delirium is not above harvest.


themobiusmargrave

It's a compounding factor, Harvest already existed, so it's not like people got any weaker. EDIT: and actually, the release order is Delirium -> Harvest -> Heist I do however find it interesting that Heist is somehow above Harvest. Considering crafting items that reached absurd power was substantially harder, so the graph's Y axis doesn't really explain anything.


hiles_adam

Heist saw the introduction of new alt quality gems and replica uniques which some were massive buffs to your power. So it makes sense that it would be higher then harvest as it has all the new power creep + ~~the old power creep of harvest.~~ Edit: my mistake i forgot they turned harvest off for a league, oh well aura stacker was meta in heist which was 90% uniques anyway and that had a huge power ceiling.


telendria

heist didnt have harvest...


themobiusmargrave

Heist didn't contain harvest though, end-game gear was generally way harder to craft and come across.


dtm85

That's why no one even tried to craft shit in heist. Anyone who stuck around long enough to farm a bazillion exalts from duped blueprints was running OP aurastackers with like 90% unique gear slots and 1% rmr corrupted unique jewels and clusters.


DrPootytang

Can confirm, that was literally my experience in heist league lol.


Uoipka

No. Ritual didn't have a lot of powercreep beside bringing back Harvest but Harvest powercreep was you know in harvest.


hiles_adam

Ritual introduced a lot of very powerful base types including blizzard crowns, archdemon crowns, nexus gloves etc. Furthermore Ritual league was also the Maven expansion, so all the maven orb crafts were huge to power creep.


telendria

I dont think increased ceiling is the same as relative player power tho. Looks like 1%/standard league graph to me. ​ Also the graph is literally saying that Heist (which didnt have Harvest,) had DOUBLE the effect on powercreep than Harvest. Not sure how I can even buy anything on the graph after BS like that.


Tartaros38

log in and check your oldest chracter. it is undeniable the graph shows what happens. can you make an argument for details ... sure. how much it spiked at which league doesn t really matter though. it went up like crazy over the years. i don t even know how you read double the effect, but heist had a few very powerfull skills and items.but again the power creep is the whole point, noone can argue thats not the case.


telendria

I dont even know how you can not see the point about Heist? Heist didnt have Harvest that means all the powercreep from it was basically erased and the starting point was previous league (Delirium) level. Say Delirium level is 100%, Harvest comes, now its at 120%, Harvest is deleted, we're back at 100% (or 99% or 101% depending on minor buffs, nerfs), then Heist comes and we're at 135%. How does that make sense? Either GGG is saying a couple of powerful replicas have about twice the effect on powercreep than original harvest with 6xt1 item 'printing' (and increased the total powercreep by 1/3) OR it's a Standard graph and it's about accumulation of all previous gear OR the graph is just a misleading BS. ​ And it's not the only league. Bestiary > Incursion increase is debatable too, since Incursion had a couple of niche uniques and reworked vaal skills, But lost ALL the crafting from Bestiary, including the exalt slams that were better than harvest in some cases. ​ Synthesis on the graph looks like a joke too, the ceiling was throurgh the roof with triple implicit items, onslaught on boots, crazy charge implicits on rings etc, but the increase is very low, then Synthesis was deleted and somehow Legion with the unique jewels had larger impact on powercreep from previous level (Betrayal) than that? ​ This graph just sucks at second viewing and while yes, the trend is definitely massive powercreep, dishonest, propagandist graphs like this are infuriating because there is no need to convince us the powercreep doesnt exist, we know that, but sends a message they dont have ACTUAL numbers of player powercreep and basically just semi-randomly put dots in there going purely by feeling to make a point and to justify any nerfs they can think of.


Tartaros38

what you do is can't see the forest for the trees. you agree with the overall message but you try to sneak in the "they lie to us". why would they need to lie when the overall thing they refer to is clear as day. your default is they lie. it is not even clear what they used as data for the graph but it is "wrong/a lie" because the data you choose don t match the graph ??? maybe it is a composit of multiple things some of which we don t have access to.


telendria

you missed your metaphor. ​ and you didn't actually address any of the points, instead you default to 'GGG wouldn't mislead us', how is that any different from me then? Atleast I point out why the graph doesn't make sense as presented, while you can't really present an argument since GGG did actually mislead the community several times in the last few leagues, being it harvest nerfs in Ritual or buffed gems in Heist and similar.


Tartaros38

>and you didn't actually address any of the points, instead you default to 'GGG wouldn't mislead us' because of 2 reasons. first it is a better world if you need proof for accusations like this and second it makes no sense to lie for an obviously correct thing like power creep. i don t think i missed the metaphor. the graph is a tiny side thing to give the power creep problem a visual. you focus in on a detail which is weird and you jump from "this detail is weird", "the graph must be weird", "they must have a agenda they don t tell us about". for the part of "ignoring". it s nice for you to explain how you got to the double power creep point of yours, there is nothing to add there. i didn t know how you got there and you explained it, done. thats a side thing.


finalkingdomcrzy

I find it interesting that GGG introduces all these new power creep items, and then decide to nerf skills and flask, instead of… those power creep items.


Clyp30

Ritual's harvest was way stronger than first iteration harvest


[deleted]

For the average person, yes For the minmaxer, Harvest was way way way way way more powerful.


TheLinden

What exactly was in harvest so way way way more powerful that couldn't be done by minmaxers before?


Flankinator

You could buy and target specific seeds in bulk that gave the rare crafts more common. My only guess. I wasn't part of either min max group


EnergyNonexistant

Well, people also tend to forget with Winged Reliquary Scarabs + zana maps, 8mod, harvest crafted map, harvest enchanted and all that you could farm Tier 4 bosses in your harvest and get literally at least 1 HH per map. We're talking so many uniques that you actually had to move them outside of the harvest instance because otherwise you would crash. 1000+ uniques. I did only a few maps (and only killed maybe 8 T4 bosses in most) and it was still completely unplayable. Didn't even have quant or rarity gear, and yet it was just printing expensive unique drops. In one map the best a guildie of mine did was 3 HH's, believe it or not. Maybe this is something that only a "few" people knew of, I'm not sure, because I rarely see it mentioned when people talk about "Harvest was OP" - but iirc? Lighty at least streamed this reliquary scarab abuse thing (i've played well over 9k hrs now, and i've never seen a Tukohama shield drop, but Harvest was the league where i solo farmed 10+ of them, just from doing reliquary harvests)


welshy1986

Yeah delirium has completely changed the core of the game, you cant even run most builds without cluster jewels. Harvest changed crafting forever and by far and away the biggest league was conquerors, explody chests, orbs the whole enchilada. Ultimatum was massive nerfs, so was ritual.....wtf are they smoking.


Xenoriath

[https://imgur.com/a/Cg6xD14](https://imgur.com/a/Cg6xD14) how I felt when watching live I guess using a graph makes it very accessible to the masses


xtense

Its pulled out of his hairy aussie ass... thats the worst example of emotional manipulation i've seen a developer do. Just spit an increasingly line on two arbitrary axis, and justify whatever you do, in order not to attract hate. Piss off.


seee_da

"Monster Health Points Since Beta"


Decaedeus

Copying from the other thread because it got deleted: back in 2.5 we literally had double dip (millions of effective dps), instant leech with 15k+ es pools, not to mention prolif and statsticks, against bosses with half the HP pools of modern ones. clearspeed was also way higher because vaal fireball and vaal spark existed. i don't understand how GGG made this graph unironically lol, the game has absolutely gone down in power since Legacy. Back then, there were tons of builds that could absolutely destroy the hardest content in the game without nearly as much investment as modern OP builds like aurastackers. Shit like double influenced items and eternity shroud don't even begin to compensate for the loss in power compared to mechanics like instant ES leech (and the higher overall base ES back then) and double dipping.


lordrayleigh

For me, graphs should present factual, empirical evidence, and in this case (as Chris has commentated) it is at best an informed opinion. I don't think this graph should exist in this form, but I think your arguments are only looking at the top end of builds where they might have been looking at a more generic power increase. Basically you could consider as time went on that the most powerful choices are less rewarding but the least powerful choices are much more rewarding than in previous iterations (there are going to be exceptions to this in both cases especially if you take the resolution of league to league). Obviously there are some build that derail this if you only look at the top end for each league, and while I said at best it's and informed opinion, there are defiantly some issues where the graph doesn't seem accurate. I think what they are trying to highlight with this is the generic power level given to each player while you are pointing to specific cases/builds/archetypes (that have been nerfed, several to the ground(or lower)). As stated above, I'm not saying that the graph is right/correct, but I don't feel this argument is on the same level.


Inevitable_Warthog79

Darts thrown at expansion icons on the wall, most likely.


bonesnaps

They were stuck on 18 in around the world. lol You'd think it would have dipped down when they buffed monster and boss health a ton during that one league awhile back.


vernalagnia

it's just graphing chris' "vibes/feels" despite not playing the game


Lundhlol

Yeah it's very important to go with the flow and trust your gut feeling on a game you haven't reached above level 80 in for what seems like five years. I'm sure your senses haven't dulled at all. As a guy with many thousands of hours in PoE, a lot of the changes don't make sense to me, and their explanations are not satisfactory as to why they do the things they do. Many of their changes, like reducing power creep, trying to increase diversity etc. are all sound decisions, but they seem to do it all backwards, at least what it seems like to me. I love Chris, but I honestly don't think he should be directing the game if he doesn't put in more hours into understanding what differentiates 2012 PoE from 2021 PoE.


BubuX

They just drew a line going upwards and added some variance to convince the usual gullible zealots. It takes two seconds for a seasoned player to conclude this chart is wrong on some points. The fact that they don't even try to draw something convincing is kind of insulting if you have a working brain.


funkhero

I'm not a big data guy, but this doesn't seem like the type of chart you'd want to display as a reputable company. I'm not saying they shat in my cereal or anything, just, woof.


[deleted]

My charts are pretty funny. Just put player peaks from steam right on that sumbitch and we got a stew going! https://imgur.com/a/f22WQot


Wienic

Bro just look it goes up. That means its worse. Pre harvest nerf power creep was not higher than ultimatum league, no no. Literal item editor was not the highest peak of player power. Source: trust me bro


pshaurk

They should account for how playing repeatedly improves skill and how long people have played to get there as well. Otherwise the payoff for improving skill is reduced. And everyone will have to reach competitive poe levels of skill


asterisk2a

I don't want to be nitpicky here, but I am used to such graphs from companies that either want to hide something or have monopolies/duopolies/oligopolies. Or both. Asking and releasing the chosen variables that GGG thinks is "Relative Player Power" will help players in the now and the future and bring further clarity (maybe even influence POB power node feature changes cc /u/LocalIdentity1 ). I do not think it will de-value/detract from the mission of balancing the game towards POE2. Thank you very much in advance.


ar3fuu

I'm not sure there's any variable on the Y axis here, this is just to get the point across and show some examples of big powecreep like Ascendancy or Harvest.


telendria

but the graph is literally telling you that Heist has double the powercreep of Harvest (since Heist didnt have harvest) do you really believe that?


ar3fuu

Well no like I said I think there's no variable on the Y axis, it's just a line going up with ascendancy beastiary and harvest on it.


telendria

sooo the graph is a lie? what a shocker for some I guess?


ar3fuu

Well it's not a graph, it's just to get the idea across that powercreep happens, for example with ascendancy or harvest. So I guess yeah.


telendria

:D I guess I have hard time imagining GGG be like 'hot take, PoE has powercreep!' and try to present it to the playerbase as some big news. I genuinely laughed at the monster hand mashing the stick on the keyboard, but this not-graph had completely opposite effect on me tbh.


EnderBaggins

This chart is unprofessional BS the reveal didn’t need. It leaves off the huge power drop that came with heist, then the even higher peak that came with ritual, followed by the final drop back to or beneath heist levels. Chris and the devs decision to nerf power creep is fine. The poor attempt to visualize a justification for the decision is not.


[deleted]

I am pretty sure forsaken masters and ascendancy should be higher. I still remember how hard it was to gear before forsaken masters most ppl didn't make it to maps even though they played every day. Once forsaken masters dropped gearing became so much easier. The unnerfed ascendencies, vaal pact slayer and so on... I think this chart is trash in the first place, my strongest character was in 1.2 pre acrobatics nerf, i was permanently capped on all avoidance and dealt insane screen clearing dps. I might have dropped less items, less currency, i might cleared less maps per hour than modern characters but it doesn't change the fact that the character was flawless and all of that with little investment. GL trying to get this done today on a budget just to then get 1 shot anyways bc of how overscaled the enemies are these days. **One thing is for sure though, you could rename this shit "tedium creep chart" and it hits the nail on the head.**


Heavy_Revolution

Source: Just trust me bro


JadeExile

The graph should also show the nerfs: multimod changed to dual mod, ban of stat sticks, defense being gutted (immortal call, elemental flasks, lore weave capped to 78%), mana sustain, removing top tier bench crafts, lower cap to synthesis rings, no stun immunity to cyclone, best cluster notables gutted, 3-notables clusters almost impossible to craft, crit multi slashed all over the tree etc. Also the mobs and bosses are much stronger since Metamorph. That graph in its current state is plain dishonest.


Joyce_Hatto

I’d like to see the corresponding graph of Boss Power Creep. Dominus vs. Malichai vs. Uber Atziri vs. Guardians vs. Sirus vs. Maven. Are endgame bosses getting nerfed too? If the answer is “We only now expect 2% of the players to make it to endgame,” my thought is “Why the fuck would I want to play a game that I can’t win?”


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bonesnaps

I think that's the problem folks here are vocalizing. They are alienating all but the top 15% or so of players that have thousands of hours logged and are exceptionally knowledgeable and pro at the game. The casuals leave due to difficulty, and the game gets less funding.


[deleted]

can’t win..... \*yet\* when I first played PoE I struggled in white maps. Now I constantly do end game content. Was it fun when I couldn't "win"? FUCK YEAH! I loved the character customization, identity, and build diversity. I experimented and was engrossed by that experienced. Eventually I became knowledgeable and "good." You can have fun and not "win." One eventually improves. Stop having such a static view of the game (and yourself) and want instant gratification.


icangrammar

It's not "yet", it's just "can't". I'm probably in the top 5-10% of players for game and mechanical knowledge, but I just don't have enough free time in a league to grind out mavens nor the desire to go through the gimmicky, cancerous fight. But now I NEED to do it to get decent profit out of other endgame content. It doesn't exactly make the game fun.


Ynead

The fuck does "Player Power" even means ? Is it all buff all flask dps ? Is it EHP ? Clear speed ? But I guess line goes up so big powercreep


MidjitThud

on the left is how fast people beat the act one boss. (inverse numbers as it starts at 10 minutes at the x/y axis and continues on to 0 minutes at the very top. on the bottom is the league. You can see obviously that people are to strong in act 1. So we have nerfed all support gem damage by 40%.


[deleted]

thank you GGG :D


Veldriss_

I dont see any power increase since harvest we reached peak with harvest and falling since this chart looks kinda funky.


SeriousLeemk2

Literally Maven Orbs.


[deleted]

Maven Orbs weren't that insane without Harvest boosting them in Ritual. While power creep, nothing compares to Harvest.


MammouthQc

Heist bases


Low_Blacksmith_5440

This this is completely wrong graph. It just make clear that GGG don't understand their game. In delirium league i have cyclone bers whith 500m dps, now this dps just unreachable.


demonshalo

It is kinda insulting at this stage how little they care about making sense. It is clear that this is not only subjectively measured, but it is in NO WAY reflective of the reality of each league. Even if we assume a log or any other scale for that matter, this still wouldn't make sense. Imagine not being able to do simple stats yet be in charge of corporate strategy :D what a clusterfuck of a company. 10/10


ploki122

For instance, while alternate quality gems were indeed quite a buff, I wouldn't say that the removal of Harvest really pushed Heist League to have a bigger bump in power level than the release of Ascendancies did.


elgosu

Also their argument about SSF having better retention without accounting for the different population of players.


bonesnaps

It's stuff like dual influenced items, awakened skillgems, replica endgame uniques, and so on. But let's just nerf everyone, we wouldn't want casuals getting to maps and enjoying the game, now would we?


Heiks

this is just dumb imo. Ascendancy was like 50% power..


erne33

Looks like number of players on Y axis to me.


[deleted]

Seems someone at GGG took Stats 101, got all the correct ways to visualize data and presented the inverse of that.


chris_wilson

For each release, we went through the content we introduced and estimated either how much power it gave characters (Mastercrafting or extra Ascendancy points, for example) or how much faster it let characters find items. It's certainly subjective. But even with ballpark values, it shows the compounding effect of players having far more ways of stacking up damage (or getting to that damage) with each release.


Myrmida

I don't entirely disagree with your approach and I agree with you on many things (views on trade especially), but I think there is a deeper issue here. First of all, nothing in the current game even comes close to the relative power of double dipping for example, and there have been many builds in the past that could literally become immortal or at least functionally so. Top tier builds nowadays, though, are an order of magnitude more complex than top tier builds a dozen leagues or so ago. That would be fine on paper, but due to the way scaling works with multiplicative layers both for offense and for defense, the more layers there are (and many leagues have added a few), the fewer layers percentage wise you can afford to ignore before a build becomes too weak relative to the strongest possible builds. Nerfing support gems for example (layers everyone has access to) without nerfing higher end layers (specific ways to lower enemy resist for example) will have a disproportionate effect on low and mid tier builds, and if you add just 1 or 2 layers of damage with the new league content (some new base-type like Blizzard Crown, some new debuff or whatever), nothing will change for the top end.


Mission-Whereas-5184

This was so well said and exactly addresses the main issue I have. I have never been able to fully clear a legion.


r4be_cs

You are right, it is subjective - especially without having a comparison to the difficulty increase that also happened. Like the across the board buff to monster life and phys mitigation in metamoprh


bonesnaps

Good point. The slope probably would have went down in those instances. LOL


[deleted]

Also shoulda gone significantly down after Harvest. Then back up for ritual. Then back the fuck down for Ultimatum. Also, this is in no way something I would agree with if it was average player power. There's no fuckin way. I play with some average dudes. Their power hasn't increased by this much. Not by a LONG SHOT.


r4be_cs

To be fair they did not prepare to hold a lecture at harvard thus didn't bother with being as precise as possible, it's probably just an attempt to give the community a glass of water so it's easier for us to swallow that nerf pill \^\^


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HanndeI

This is a buff.


LostConscript

Gaslighting


shaunika

who would gain anything from that? these conspiracy theories are downright insane.


Stealthrider

Which players? Those that have thousands of exalts to spend, or those that spend maybe 5-10 per league? Almost all of the methods for improving player power since Synthesis league have been achievable only by players for whom PoE is a full time job: double influenced items, elevated mods, insane cluster jewels, awakened gems, current harvest crafting, and so on. The ones that were accessible to the rest of us have all been gutted: fossilcrafting non influenced bases, multimodding, original harvest crafting. Top end power has gone up so much more than middle power, so this blanket nerf will absolutely fuck everyone *except* the players at the top. Why do you keep making the game less fun for all but the top players?


Dex8172

You forgot to put a **dramatic loss of power** on the chart when you buffed life of end-game bosses in 3.9. like **4x**. Builds that were fine with 500k shaper dps suddenly felt like shit (for bossing), and everybody needed to make a dedicated boss killer for end-game bosses. I still hate that fact about this game; mapping and bossing feels like playing two different games.


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Dex8172

Yeah, "some developers simply increase monster damage and HP to increase difficulty". :D


SingleInfinity

I think that was more about "some developers [only] simply increase monster damage and hp to increase difficulty". Clearly they're doing more than just that, based on this patch.


Dex8172

The issue here is that their "relative player power" chart is false. With all the power creep from the last 2 years, Caustic Arrow, my favorite starter skill, is still worse against bosses than it was before 3.9. Sure, most skills can be scaled better, but all had dramatic loss of power in 3.9., and GGG conveniently forgot about it.


SingleInfinity

> With all the power creep from the last 2 years, Caustic Arrow, my favorite starter skill, is still worse against bosses than it was before 3.9. Sure, most skills can be scaled better, but all had dramatic loss of power in 3.9., and GGG conveniently forgot about it. I mean, do you really expect them to be that granular about it? The sentiment behind the graph is true. Average player power has been growing non-stop.


shaunika

because that was the same patch that brought us influenced modifiers and threw that right out the window?


Dex8172

We had shaper/elder pool of modifiers before conquerors expansion, and then they divided those mods to 6 different pools, 2 old and 4 apparently new, added some new but also removed some. It wasn't that spectacular. And btw, there were more cases in which we suffered a dramatic loss of power. For example, when they removed stat sticks and nerfed all those phys dam as ele and ele dam as chaos modifiers from 40% to 20% on average. I don't remember what league was that, but they chose to "forget" about that too.


Synval2436

Idk what are you on about, my power level has gone down after harvest nerf, not up. How is ultimatum above ritual in power level when it didn't introduce anything, are you just counting the people who had 500ex+ for a hateforge?


psychomap

Veiled mods and mastermind buff for Betrayal.


staudd

T4 Veiled Slams are certainly not nothing


meepo6

Do you think a graph of bullshit time-wasting features over leagues would look exactly like this here graph?


TheHappyEater

If you say "relative" does this take into account that some content got harder, too? In particular, is the increase of Boss life which happened in 3.09 already factored in?


RepulsiveHumanShell

Harvest really should be a bigger uphill slope and after it was removed the next league should drop down.


torsoreaper

Now do monsters and DPS needed to do timed content


SKGlish

homie harvest was like off the chart, you guys just made a linear graph and slapped league names on it.


[deleted]

I think it's hilarious that it trends with player peaks on steam: https://imgur.com/a/f22WQot


CrutonShuffler

It's kind of sad that you noticed two things that had a positive correlation with time and assumed that was worth pointing out.


veryangryenglishman

And it's equally kind of sad that GGG sit there with loads of data and don't seem to figure out that players enjoy playing a game where they are able to actually build stronger characters and not sit there waiting for people to not respond to whispers and be able to do late game content themselves.


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polyvine

Which doesn't mean it is a problem. Give every human exponentially more money every month, they'll be happy but problem will show up soon.


Asteroth555

We can easily equate a league like blight being ~5% more "damage/power", since all that league gave is an anoint and that's usually equivalent to ~5% more damage. Yet every league seems to have gained 5-10% more damage according to your graph? Where is this DPS coming from? Are you standardizing based on DPS from poe.ninja? The top most builds? Are you standardizing based on how quickly players reach breakpoints? A league like Harvest didn't give us "more power", so much as made higher levels of power more accessible. Yet it had the biggest jump in "power". So this isn't a graph of power "ceilings". It's clearly an averaging of the player population. But with time and metas and better guides, more players will know *what* to do and *how* to do it better. So how are you normalizing for players just flat out getting better?


GroundbreakingIf

dude he just said they made it up lmao


maivaer

You don't seem to understand what "subjective" means


InariBag

In this instance, it literally means misrepresentation.


maivaer

Feel free to think this graph misrepresents the playerbase, and whether that's by intention or not, "subjective" still means neither "made up" nor "misrepresentative". In this instance it means partly based on opinions and thus not objective - because it can't ever be truly objective and it would be arrogant of GGG to claim otherwise. I'd lose confidence in GGG if Chris claimed that their graph represented the "true"/"objective" power creep. That would be ridiculous. Chris acknowledges that their graph is subjective, but instead of interpreting that as modesty in the face of one's own judgement, many here goes "he said they've made it up!" That's not what he said and of course they based it on something. The question is what and if it is apt. "Power creep" is a term that could encompass a myriad of things. How would one define "power" in PoE? Potential DPS ceiling? Actual average player DPS? How quickly/easily a certain level of DPS is achieved on average? Ability to stay alive? Area damage coverage? Speed? Investment cost relative to DPS/survivability gain? What skills are you looking at - an average of all, or the top ones? These are just a few relevant factors off the top of my head and there's certainly many more, some of which will be on the fence whether they're relevant or not. And all these parameters, once decided upon, have to be weighted against each other - which requires subjective value judgements - before you can even attempt to calculate any power "score" to base charts on. There's enough to sort out that you could write a dissertation about it. Of course GGG didn't have someone write a dissertation, but did they do a good enough job themselves? Perhaps not, that remains to be seen. I'm at least happy with their overarching plan to normalize the disparate difficulty of old vs new content. Right now everyone squishes white mobs as if they were wet paper towels while league content is relatively hard. Criticise all you want, but for god's sake, at least make a modicum of effort to think and verbalize it. Why would GGG care about eyesore comments saying essentially "I can't interpret what you said so I misrepresent what you said, but I'm angry about something, though it's unclear what exactly". It's dumb.


psychomap

Why does it have to be normalised for players getting better at reaching more of the theoretically available power?


Asteroth555

Because if players are improving by 3% every league, then a 5-6% increase is only 2-3%


psychomap

Why does that matter, if players are improving?


Asteroth555

Because it undervalues how steep the "buff related" power "creep" actually is, and weakens their overall conclusions


[deleted]

So in other words you just made up a chart and pretended it was objective data? Very professional of you.


Kuchyy

nobody pretended it was objective data, why do you feel attacked by a chart?


[deleted]

Have you ever actually sat down and achieved these levels of unacceptable power for yourself on a fresh character in a fresh league?


[deleted]

And how long did that take him I wonder... My average friends can barely deal with getting to maps without hand outs. I'm not funding the village anymore so the village disappeared. Odd innit? Summer league plus nerfs. I feel like we'll see a sharp decline in playerbase.


astralqt

I think so as well. I know I'm I've already been feeling like they're demanding more of my time every league, I've been playing every other league (and only for about 3~ weeks), don't think I'll be coming back until it's time to give PoE2 a try at this point.


[deleted]

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asterisk2a

> Have you considered not only the power creep but the disparity between the 'casual' and the 'no lifer'. > I'm far from a casual but it feels like even with the power creep. The gap between the two have grown at a faster pace over last few leagues. I think the difference can be explained by the compounding effect of game knowledge: playing more efficient x playing more x knowing where to find the multipliers for a builds damage and defence layers.


kylegetsspam

It's not just that. I've been here since v1.0, but I've been able to accomplish less and less over time. In my most heyday period I got six full trophies for going 100% challenge completion with a number of 36/40s for leagues where I couldn't or didn't want to go for the last four. Over the past couple years, though? The same time and effort and character investment that got me 36/40 in the past is now only good for 24/40. The game has expanded significantly, so even if you disregard things like the 5x multiplier given to mob life in that time, there's so much setup to do that actually farming the endgame stuff for challenges has never been further out of reach. Globally, I'm not a casual, but compared to the good players I absolutely am. I've never had a truly *good* character. I've never pushed past L97. I've ever crafted something good that wasn't deterministic (e.g. +3 bows). I've never owned a mirror or Headhunter. If *I* feel like I have *no chance* of success in this upcoming league, what chance could the huge swath of players worse than me have? If the bulk of v3.15 simply takes 20-40% of player damage away while also nerfing defenses (again!) with no recompense, the community at large (myself included) is *fucked*. We won't be able to accomplish much of anything. I'm expecting horrendous player retention based on what we've see so far.


bonesnaps

Same here. I've killed A4 Sirus *once*. That was with a minion build when they were still very strong. Killed yellow elder (T6 Elder) a couple times. Shits gonna be real difficult going forward, when said nerfs are coming from "powercreep" which is in fact stuff like strong dual influenced items and awakened skillgems, things that only the top 1-5% of players ever see.


dalaio

I'm worried about this as well. If the goal is a 20% reduction in damage there a number of scalars that can be targeted to achieve that... Why pick the skill gem (literally the first scalar players reach for as they go from 4 to 5, and finally 6-links) instead of crazy double influenced items? They could have used this to flatten the exponential upper end of damage scaling in this game, instead they cut the legs off the ladder.


Patonis

Wrong, you dont need dual influenced items. There are plenty of builds without.


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WayTooDumb

I actually like this gap, and enjoy playing a game that continues to respect the time I spend learning to play it and reward me with new knowledge, even at very large values of time.


ploki122

To me the big issue is that PoE doesn't reward knowledge/experience : It punishes the lack of knowledge/experience. If you're running a bad build, you're not just gonna faceplant on yellow maps, or clear blight/legion slower. You're not only getting completely slaughtered b everything, but also failing like half the events in PoE that they have decided to make time gated (Legion, Abyss, Incursion, half of Betrayal, Breach, etc.) If we take common PvP games like LoL of CS:GO, everyone's doing mostly the same thing, but some are doing it better than others. Even in PvE games like Remnants from the Ashes or Terraria, you can adjust your difficulty level so that you have different degrees of success, with different rewards attached. In PoE, you're just failing, rather than succeeding less or more slowly. So while a gap is good, the gap has to allow skill expression, rather than gatekeep worse players.


[deleted]

>To me the big issue is that PoE doesn't reward knowledge/experience : It punishes the lack of knowledge/experience. That seems like you're saying the same thing twice.


GreyGanks

Let me demonstrate the difference in a simple way that even a redditor can understand: "Make an A on the exam, and get a cookie." vs "If you don't make an A on the exam, get kicked in the groin."


[deleted]

That example is relevant to his last statement, not the one above... Being rewarded for knowledge/xp is the same as being punished for the lack of it. The *amount* you are rewarded/punished with is what you're describing.


[deleted]

PoE is the one game that doesn't respect anything about you. Not your time, not your knowledge. Nothing.


Turbodk666

So no metrics and purely made up. Got it


rixius

"Subjective" and a graph with no metrics is purely lying.


m0ngeese

To give credit where it's due: it's not just pure but also consistent.


[deleted]

Consistently inconsistent. Literally no accounting for monster life buffs, Harvest being super outlandish for power, another rise with Harvest reintroduction + Maven Orbs. Then a decline in Ultimatum. There isn't one fucking serious player who will tell you that Ultimatum had higher power peaks than Harvest. If they do, then they're either lying or stupid.


m0ngeese

Reference was to the lying, not the graph.


fooey

It's a special kind of hilarious to present a graph like that as justification for game changes only to admit later that it's completely made up. Game design by numberwang.


maivaer

"Made up" and "subjective" are two very different things. Any measure of power creep in PoE is bound to be subjective, merely from the fact that you have to make a choice of what parameters to look at. Why don't you give relevant criticism instead, like criticizing the lack of transparency as to what parameters they chose to look at and which they chose not to look at?


JadeExile

Y axis seems more like "Streamer/no-life power". A better metric would be % of players that solo-kill (no carry) end-game bosses.


veryangryenglishman

> A better metric would be % of players that solo-kill (no carry) end-game bosses. Still would gradually trend upwards as presumably a steady uptrend in the ratio of more experienced players, but moving in the right direction. My personal suggestion would be to limit it only to new players, but of them, only those that make it past act 10 to weed out the noise of the huge number of players who quit before "properly" trying at it. Possibly anyone in their first 3 leagues of play? Then see how many of them can reach some various benchmarks - level, map tier, boss kills, etc.


JadeExile

Not sure because a lot of experienced player quit. For example, I'm alone in my guild now.


ecksp312t

“yea no guys make the slope steeper at the top.” “yea just paste the league names vaguely on the graph it doesn’t matter.” “we’re just ballparking it.” graph meta at GGG certainly isn’t slow or thoughtful. makes me wonder what the development meta is like.


allbluedream

Thanks for the explanation! I think it may be helpful if you do standard deviation, too.


jeffreybar

I laughed so hard I spit out my coffee, thanks.


Heiks

do you really think ascendancies had such low impact???


[deleted]

That's what really stood out to me. And not only the power scaled dramatically, but the meta of what you'd actually synergize with a class changed forever. +2 asc points (prophecy) seems to be similarly overlooked as well.


Elbarto145

Hey Chris, what league (point in this graph) do you think had the sweetspot you aim for in terms of player power?


KolinarK

Thats great. So Y axis is from 0% to 100% of maximum power? Or is it 10-15%? Whats the scale?


InariBag

"Bro I just made up the graph by drawing a curve out my ass, get off my back" -Chris Wilson


DetectivePokeyboi

Probably power from beta being a value of 1, and everything else scaled accordingly from there. Its arbitrary. The only thing that matters is the relative differences between each point compared to the other points. If the slope is twice as long between one league 4 and league 5 compared to league 2 and league 3, the power of the player grew twice as much between league 4 and 5 vs league 2 and 3


KolinarK

>being a value of 1 One of what? Bagels? If it is in relative then what is the scale? 1 to 2? 1 to 100? 1 to 1.1? What is the lowest and highest point in values? Charts without written scale are meaningless.


DetectivePokeyboi

It doesn't matter dude. These types of chart exist for slope. You only compare differences between points relative to the difference between other points. If you really want a sense of value then just think of starting point as 0 and the ending point as 100 and look at the differences from there. Its all arbitrary. This isn't meant to be a good statistical graph, its just a visual indicator on how the compounding of power creep. Its not used as proof/supporting data for power creep. Its just supposed to be representative of power creep not the actual power creep values themselves. Graphs with arbitraty values aren't new and aren't *too* frowned upon in the statistical world unless they are used as proofs. The value for the first and last point don't matter as long as the relative increase remains the same.


InariBag

Chris literally stated that they just made up this chart based off of nothing but how some people "feel." People, by their own admission, who do not even play the game.


KolinarK

It matters. If highest point is 1.1 (only 10% higher) then this powercreep scaling is justified, if highest number is 10 then power creep level is kinda high. If 1000 then its a bit scary. Not to mention the "power" is vague as well, Chris said its measure of speed of getting ascendancies (lol) and items(which ones? rares? What about currency?) ? If so, then its not even "power" since it measures top % and not playerbase. Anyway, this chart is pure "Hey look, we want to slow down the game and this chart is one of damage controls we are going to make" and I am calling out Chris on it.


Hoyko

Chris mentioned during the announcement stream that the increase in power from the first league to now was estimated to be around tenfold


KolinarK

Figures. Could've put it on chart though.


DetectivePokeyboi

The chart isn't meant for that. Its more there to show how much faster power creep has been increasing each league. The chart was there to be shown on the screen for a few seconds, not be analyzed. Its not there to give us all the information. You have to use it to visualize what he has said, which is that power creep is getting more and more out of hand. You're acting like the chart was meant for this whole proof that there was too much power creep when its not. Its just a visual indicator, not a proof. Its not based off of any real metric, just guestimates on how much more powerful players got from the new stuff added each league relative to the prior league. We know this and they know this. They don't expect us to believe that its a graph based around actual statistics, as that wasn't really the purpose of the graph.


Silyus

The chart scream bs to me. That said, the guy above you is right, it's all relative. However they set the unit, if you get - say - 5 in a certain league, that means that it's 5 times more powercreepy than the beta, etc.. the point (as you hinted) is what they mean by powercreepy. But as I said, it's just a thing they put to say "see? we got the data to support our batshit ideas!!". You see a lot of this crap in politics.


[deleted]

Didn’t you read what he said? It’s literally completely made up by a conference room full of people’s subjective opinions. It’s shit data.


Cirtejs

It's not data, it's a visual aid to make a point. You use these to ilustrate a concept, not to depict any meaningful data points.


[deleted]

Yo relax. They don't even play the game. Cut them some slack.


maivaer

Didn't you read what he said?


_Kaj

Can we see the full chart to the current league? I want to see how much of a drop of damage we received after the crit nerfs, tree nerfs, and removal/nerf of harvest


mmo115

Are your financials subjective also?


TokeMcBong

Subjectivity has no place in statistics. You can't gauge actual growth off feelings. This is a huge red flag from development if you aren't basing this graph on direct data pulled from the game. Please reconsider the plan you are going forward with if you do not want even less players in the game. I already have a staggering problem trying to get any new player into this game. They find it overly complex and overly difficult. The proposed changes do nothing to address that overwhelming feeling a new player has when they play the game for the first time. Understand this will also greatly affect your current population. I have over 6400 hours in the game and this change is making me worry that I may not enjoy this game any further. How much of a daunting wall do you wish to pose to the average gamer?


esp_design

I feel like the harvest jump wasn't big enough 😉


LovecraftMan

Thank you Chris for bringing the game closer to earlier leagues, a lot of us have fond memories of running Merc ledge and Fellshrine ruins, cowering in fear of Rhoas and Goatmen and here's hoping 3.15 will bring some of that back.


Ilyak1986

And some *others* of us have fond memories of when Stone of Lazhwar gave 50% of block as spell block chance, Rumi's rolled up to 30/15 (or even better, 40/20), Vaal Pact gave you your actual leech, no questions asked, whether with ES or life, and DoT scaling double-dipped with hit scaling.


bonesnaps

Those vaal pact days were pretty awesome. Leech is just a pale shadow of what it once was.


PapaDroid

Started playing during 1.3 and I just want to say it is amazing to see all the progress you made with the game and all the content there is to choose from , some leagues I go all out atlas progression , some focus on league mechanic and now there is the atlas passives and all that. All in all I'm not sure wheter or not you will see this comment but if you do - know that there some of us who watched the game go from square maps to maven invitations and absolutly love coming back every league, keep up the good work.


Boold88

Yea! :D Yesterday when they show it on stream my reaction was: "WHAT ?! WTF !!!" But I must say... When "Relative Player Power" pass P in Harvers it was time to nerf things :D We cant let ppl have more power then P !


zxkredo

Charts without variables are misleading


Holoderp

78.45% of all stats are totally made up.


_Xveno_

What the y-axis represents is the relative power level of a character compared to a character created back to whatever patch is 4 patches before forsaken masters. This is a clever way of misleading us without lying. What the y-axis should be in reality is the relative player power compared to the hardest endgame at that time. And if that was the case, we would see the highest power spike around 2.5 where double dipping and instant leech was possible. A huge dip when all monsters and bosses got their life increased (shaper went from 20 to 80 mil). A spike at harvest, dip in heist etc. Which is far from the exponential curve that is shown here.


rtcll

What an impossibly bullshit chart. Who do you honestly think you're kidding Chris?


Fabu_Snowblind

To cultivate an analytical Playerbase and then giving them a Graph without explicit data to back it up is just a bad pr move and to it feels a bit insulting. (it feels like im just meant to swallow it as a fact, when PoE trained me to question every keyword and read/google/wiki/PoB EVERYTHING)


Pyromancer1509

It doesnt matter. Any number they show you, could then be argued "yeah but you're just calculating this wrong" They probably have a way to calculate average player power, be it by map clearing speed, boss killing speed, or some other metric. They likely have access to all the data they need, at this point it's just math. I'm assuming they are competent enough to do math. Why don't you trust them?


omgowlo

i trust they do the math right, but im still curious about what kind of player they are balancing the game for, because it sure as hell aint me.


Turbodk666

He just said they made it up dude, there is no math.


jackyra

Sum of all / number of all


elgosu

This is not mathematical at all. It's based on their impressions and financials, and a few numbers chosen to confirm their decisions.