When devs start playing their own game instead of playing editors based on GDStash player feedback.
Let us know when you’ve caught up to our hours played.
3 Likes
Are you serious? 20k hours in vanilla GD hardcore, 4k hours modded GD. Any other questions about my credentials in relation to GD and ARPGs in general?
Here’s just my steam account for reference (I also own a GOG version and play offline a lot)
Then why do you feel the need to question ours?
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I feel that way because, let’s face it, the whole “balance” topic is very questionable.
When it comes to balance, it’s a LOT more complex than the perspective provided by a small group of GDStashers, who create their own meta and their own endgame baseline. Your largest group of players is not us the hardcore veterans, not GDStash builders, - your MAIN audience is casual players and those come to GD from Diablo and other similar games. They don’t buy your game to become permanent beta testers. They are the ones suffering the most from your constant reshuffling of stats. Let me give you an example, something I’ve seen too many times over my 10 years of playing this game with other people.
A new player joins the community. They don’t want to “play any build you want, they are all viable”, or “play skill X, because your chosen build’s skill Y is not viable till endgame”, they want to play a STRONG build. You can see it right now, look at how much excitement there is in the storm spread threads. Lots of casual players want to play it. Rekt is streaming that pierce runekeeper run, many others post videos. Action, excitement, fun. But. Most of these newbies and casual players will never get to test this build because it is going to get “toned down” to the ground shortly. Like it happened so many times before. In the end, streamers, veterans, GDStashers, get to have fun while it lasts, but the main player base, YOUR MAIN source of $, always gets shafted. And you always use the “it was unbalanced, unintended mechanics” or whatever to brush them off. End result, lots of people get frustrated and burnt out. For no reason. Because you don’t need to please Madlee, or Maya, or me, or anyone here. You don’t need to have a perfect balance in a diabloid. In fact, one of the key factors of Diablo 2 success was lack of balance, there were always hard-to-get builds that were and still are OP. Because your main player base, you average casual player, doesn’t want to play an average build that performs the same as every other build. They want to feel POWER, they play for something SPECIAL. Nobody wants and army of identically performing builds.
And another point when talking about balance. If one build takes 1 day to complete and its on the same tier as say a build that takes 2 months to assemble - now THAT is BAD balance. Someone who plays GDStash doesn’t see that, but casual players notice difference. Their efforts should be rewarded, even if reshuffles someone’s top 20 meta.
Talking about balance, you added sunder and hard hitting attacks, which essentially killed the very concept of tanks, regen builds, 100% block builds. Everyone needs to press a dash button every few sec, big deal. Add skill? Not a chance. But ruins a lot of build groups that existed earlier. Fun? Questionable. You don’t want afk tanks to exist? Sure, but what about my conjurer that kills Ascendant Callagadra in 17seconds fully AFK? Balanced? I mean, seriously. Balance is a lot more complicated topic, it shouldn’t be maintained is such a manner that most players feel like they perma beta testers.
The above doesn’t apply to people like me, because we can pause updates, we can stay on a version of interest for a year if we like. We can use mods. But I bring this all up because I see a lot of frustration among new and casual players, which are your main audience.
Hopefully you can get some insights from the above wall of text. I share it not in frustration but rather offering constructive criticizm because I really want this game to get better.
2 Likes
genuinely curious, as a casual veteran player, how many times have a build been killed from GDstasher/streamer privilege feedback? - because i don’t recall many time top20 etc results in following patch notes equating to said build not still being both viable and fun.
Unless you’re in the "uber mega overpowered only acceptable"mindset, how does these changes or most changelogs actually affect your builds, or these 1% new players that get there?
Heck, after Avenger got put on top20, subsequently nerfed a bit on next patch, requested to be buffed by the same top20 builders/players; I advocated for it to not be, since it still felt “busted and fun” aplenty to me
One of the actual few builds i can recall being killed was Upheaval, but there’s a big difference in something being outright removed, vs toned down 5-10-15%… - you’re still making scrambled eggs out of everything in Cairn then.
Yeah, I agree, let’s avoid the uber secret (non-existent) builds and focus on “official” meta.
I have a few examples going back to the days before the whole top 20 concept even existed. Remember the retal rta builds, lucky bullets + RF for example? Granted, it needed adjustments, but name a single build that has EVER made it to the “meta” or recent years “top 20” that uses those rings or synergies as BIS after the mechanics got nerfed? Why do these rings even exist now? It wasn’t toned down, it was killed. And by extension a few more retal synergies got nerfed to the ground during those days. What about physical DoT tanks? Any top 10-20 builds lately after the entire physical damage concept got reworked? How is that markovian warlord doing right now, or last couple of years?
Next, never really top or OP, but the whole concept of uber tanks based on massive regen, 100% block chance/recovery, basically deleted (with very few exceptions, like that 2hander avenger warder, which btw is still top 20? Guess not). Because nerfs / adjustments to physical damage plus addition of sunder and harder hitting attacks, forced tanks to move nearly the same way as all the rest of the builds, thus making it pointless to over-invest into toughness with ever more crippled damage. Why would the devs, who emphasize build diversity, nullify multiple build categories like that? Wouldn’t it be better for all to still have viable regen tanks, 100% block titans, etc, that could potentially be close to the meta in damage (maybe one tier below the top)? And what about those DW saboteurs? Where are they now? How are all those builds doing within the current meta? I could continue and every example would have to be discussed separately, but let’s not go there right now.
The above perspective is given from the builder point of view. My main concern, however, is that the vast majority of players want to have fun and most of the time fun means playing strong builds. Strong compared to what? Exactly! To the rest of them. Everyone wants to play something powerful, they want their time invested into gearing up for 100+ hours to be properly rewarded. Perhaps by beating Callagadra in 1 min. Or oneshotting bosses, or whatever baseline they wanna use for reference. And every single major patch it’s the same story all over again. I get people asking “What’s the current top build pls” or “show me the meta”. They don’t accept the “play whatever you like” motto, sorry. That’s boring for most ppl. Do we care about the vast majority of players? I think we should. Because based on countless polls, and balance discussions, the vast majority of people would rather play a build that kills celestial bosses in 5sec than have “fun” leveling “whatever they like”. But when we talk about balance we ignore the main problem, time delay. Zantai is preparing new patch, new balance adjustments. But people are playing right now. Most of them are casual players. They might wanna build that pierce runekeeper or that uber pet conjurer, or whatever OP build that got discovered recently. The patch will likely land before most of them are able to assemble their fav builds. Is this fair? You and me are fine, you had time to play the test version, I pause updates until I’m ready to move on to the next patch. But the casual players lose interest when you take away their reward which they invested time into. There’s a reason balance changes are so often discussed during streams. Last night, someone asked Rekt during his stream, “when will the game be finally balanced and players would stopped being beta testers?”, and many viewers agreed and supported that line of thinking. Players want stability. They paid money for a final product not an early access game. Game where build is everything. That’s why D2 still has some of their original 20 year old meta and many still play. There is room for new things, new builds, new gear, DLCs. But you never kill the old kings, the original cornerstones. Changes like that need to be VERY careful. Like your favorite tv series, imagine next episode with all actors replaced, half characters dead, half gone, etc. You get the point.
P.S. Here’s an example. D2, dead game. Boring old meta - Zealot Paladin, nobody cares about. Some low tier YouTuber I’ve never even heard about in all my years of D2 and D2R. 11k views in 24 hours. People still want that meta. People will keep playing old meta even in 2050 because most people want a STABLE meta they can always come back to:
5 Likes
Bigger question is there a problem questioning things? If people see changes that are questionable, they can’t ask why?
Regardless of who brought upon the changes, I’ve lost several builds due to the removal of conversions from items and such. When I politely asked for that not to happen it was met with absolute DS behavior that would piss off most civil people. If you played something for 100+ hours and then have it rug pulled…yeah it can be quite disheartening. And no I can’t remake them because they simply cannot exist with the current itemization (would lose set bonuses and have to use completely different MH/OH).
No one is going to perfectly balance this or any other ARPG. Some semblance of balance is required but the issue is who is dictating there said balance.
You seen that meme picture in the another thread (soldier one I think)? What was the implication there? Dredging up inquisitor and solider from the sea bed to put them on the ledge of the pool side?
Bad idea, as with making everything “viable” to a small sub section of people because it’s not meeting some sort of subjective standard. No one appears to want to look at how we got here so it’s doomed to repeat itself back to where we started pre 1.3. Not everything needs to be viable at the highest levels. Giving non power creep “facelifts” I could get behind.
Yeah sunder upends the systems in the game, but only after a certain point. You can still build to tank it just not at the highest levels. I may not like it but I can’t argue it not being fair. I’m curious if you can use the numbers game to facetank sunders in SR 36+ and still meet the timer. There are other more glaring issues with those heavy hits like bypassing circuit breakers and block “not blocking” things (AoE aside).
By the way, MrLlamaSC is not a low tier D2 YouTuber but the meta there is very stale for sure.
2 Likes
You know I am one of those that wants it balanced and not being a beta tester but most balancing are buffs. Few are nerfs and the nerfs are deserved typically.
none of those have relations to streamers or top20 feedback,
and are even unrelated to what you think on top - which is kinda funny because if anything would be stronger post armour bypass change; it would be phys dot (since it was entirely unaffected to begin with)
not only not deleted, still exists and got buffed; they just suck and always sucked because of their inherent drawbacks and dmg tradeoffs; no GDstasher or streamer has ever feedbacked that block or regen was OP and should get nerfed (because it wasn’t) - and they didn’t feature on top20s because of that pre-existing drawback (aside from top20 being about speed/high dmg not just pure tank)
same, but that’s again rarely from the so proclaimed privileged feedbackers cause, and largely zantai changing design positions, eg Radaggan and Agrivix etc or opening up dual sets as actual dual sets or hard gating them off to be mono focused by intent like Morgo. - no one asked to have Morgo become pure vit focused 
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You want me to find the exact quote where Madlee and a few other builders asked to get that rta synergy with lucky bullets nerfed? Sure, you can argue they didn’t ask to get it KILLED, but that’s the thing with changes, be careful what you wish for. It was actually one of the builds the three of us with Spanks, Contra and myself created. So, sorry but I DO remember full well how it works. Or rather doesn’t work.
I can safely say that the top20 crowd rarely if ever, get pets nerfed and that they have never managed to get the tanky pet builds nerfed 
. Neither have any of the popular streamers.
I will however in part, agree that the viability of tanky builds that prioritize survivability over damage is at an all time low atm, but that is due to Zantai’s own machinations and ideas on how the game should be.
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again, it wasn’t killed, it was dialed down because an unintended item use had an interaction not considered
it had projectiles reduced, not rata interaction/mechanic killed, it was a basic dmg dial back from reducing prots from 4 to 3…
If anything was “killed” it was the blanket retal nerfs later that affected basically every retal build and put them on the back from v.1.1.5? until Kingred tried to get them reverted in 1.2 5 years later as other powercreep had long surpassed retal’s old power…
Delete pets from the game 
2 Likes
LMAO, you should never complain, if anything, pets are doing better than ever. A fully AFK Ascendant Calla in under 20sec, bro, BRUH, hahah
Show me that pet build, ty.
I thought that the sub 1 minute Calla builds were Charles Valentin Alkan level of pianism.
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Try to look at it from end user or player perspective. Something was great and then it was…unplayable. I moved on, but people kept asking me for years why the build no longer works. It doesn’t matter the reason, you don’t kill working builds. Careful changes vs blanket fix. The players don’t care about your reasons. They care about their efforts nullified. If you can’t understand that, - we have a huge problem. You never EVER hurt your player, no matter what.
There is no pet build capable of afk killing cally in 20 sec.
That guy is just lying 
.
Infact, pets are at their weakest atm compared to what non pet builds can pull off.
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How much money are you willing to put to back up those words? I will ask the builder who made that spec if he is willing to share