I don’t know who. But just a few hours ago I was readying myself to take a break from these forums for the 100th time, because I am frankly sick and tired of endgame players and top 20 builds(*) dictating the narrative of how a game should be balanced. And yet, this thread made me feel not all is lost and not everyone thinks this is right, and I should stick around for a little bit longer.
Now, some of the original post premises got me worried. Because my focus over the years has been around leveling-time game balance (GC gameplay, if you will) and how absolutely destroyed the game difficulty modes have been over the years. I read none of that on the OP. On the contrary: seems to appeal to power creep right from the start.
But it sure was a refreshing post nonetheless. Thank goodness for that.
(*) BTW, the funny thing about top 20 builds is that everyone wants them but no one can have them. It’s like the cake. If I’m allowed the caricature, the only purpose of a top 20 build list is to tell the developers they need to be nerfed. It’s beyond ridiculous.
As an average GD player with 3638 hours, I can confidently say that out of 36 builds, about third of them dating back to early AOM and about half to early FG with some serious jank in them, not a single build of those got killed over the years.
I did make some precautions, purposefully sticking to sets assuming them most safe from sweeping changes.
There were some close calls with Dagallon set, forcing me off set (but not off build) during dark times of early FG balancing, and a relatively recent MURDER attempt closely avoided.
And there was a singular case of Ultos Warder forcing me to switch from leech to regen setup.
And that’s it. Beyond that, veritably ancient shit not only still functions, but consistently climbed higher and higher through SR stages, nowadays making 36 on some builds that originally were unable to even clear what’s now 30.
Edit: ok, there was also a case of Trozan druid. Fuck Trozan druid, I will never understand how people play Trozan druid and I was a happier man when I finally switched that build to warlock.
I’m the kind of player who wants to avoid meta builds because I hate it when everyone uses the same stronger builds just to finish the game and farm items, instead of making a different build to do the same thing.
I see this happening too. It’s not like Aikimox says in his message, but it’s hard to take someone like this seriously:
If you don’t have Grim Tools, then show some video proving what you wrote. Show us the build or videos that prove what you wrote, otherwise you’re just someone with no arguments.
Besides, you can only speak for yourself and not for the “majority of casual players.”
The meta builds are often over-hyped anyway because a lot of them rely on proper piloting skills to work as intended. If a player doesn’t have such abilities, certain builds fall apart quickly and feel ridiculously squishy. Contrary to what some people here might suggest, those builds usually don’t get a massive hit with a nerf hammer. They simply fall off over time because someone else found something better or a new patch made other things more interesting because of buffs. And buffs happen far more often than nerfs.
I wouldn’t say I avoid the meta builds but I don’t copy them either. I just take inspiration from them and build a more moderate/balanced version out of it, like a hardcore player would do.
If you do not balance the game because people want OP things, they’ll play the most OP thing then immediately drop the game because they’ve already played the most OP thing and the non-OP things don’t interest them.
Honestly, I’m very disappointed with the current sloppy balancing. I’ve given a lot of feedback until now, but I’ve only gotten slight improvements or even been ignored, so what kind of joke is this power inflation?
You base this on what exactly? I’m a semi-casual (these definitions are always a mess but I’m not even 1k hours and I don’t even know what most of this GDstashing is even supposed to look like) and “play any build you want, they’re all viable” is pretty much what what I want from an ARPG. I open the skill trees, try some items, come up with a concept and then I want to rule of cool my way through the game with it.
The only time I specifically need a “STRONG” build is when the game gates lots of content behind your build being that specific level of strong (looking at you, PoE). GD, by and large, does not. You only need a strong build for higher SR numbers and community brownie points, and I’m skeptical that this is something the average person cares about unless they listen too much to some streamer.
So this claim that GD is only balanced around GDStash players and theorycrafting doesn’t make sense to me. What in the game is gated behind that?
The only people I see creating a lot of gatekeeping is people who discuss the game on this very forum, creating weird baselines around SR numbers, invalidating the experience of other players by saying they’re not “really playing the game”, asking to delete pets from the game (?), or complaining someone doesn’t put a “required” skill in their build.
Let’s begin with this: if you are inquiring about the meta, you are not a casual. No amount of gaslighting talk-no-jutsu can escape this simple premise.
Let’s suppose we give the OP and such exactly what he’s asking for: a secret mechanics interaction or combination of items that allows for a select few secret builds that defeat Calla / Uber / whatever in 10 seconds.
If that were to happen, the very same people - without any hesitation, reflection, or sense of irony - would then immediately complain that there’s only 2 “viable” builds and every item in the game that doesn’t contribute to the OP builds are worthless dumpster garbage.
When we respond that there are numerous builds that can also beat every content in the game, but in about 2 minutes instead of 10 seconds, they will immediately respond with “stop shoving shovelware average build garbage to our faces, we want STRONG builds!”
They lie about their premises.
They lie about their intentions.
They harass the developers in emails and Discord campaigns and then lie about that as well.
It’s lying all the way down. The fact that the OP has contributed nothing in the span between the last expansion (which Norzan linked) and this one in terms of positive community engagement or suggestions in the forums is all the proof you need to verify this claim.
Honestly, that’s the reason I dislike the notion of top20. I acknowledge it, i recognize that some builds are indeed that much stronger than others. But the discussion around them makes the game look so much smaller than it really is, with sweeping claims of “ranged not being viable” or “dual damage builds aren’t a thing” or some other bizzare statements.
And the end result is 20k hours casuals complaining about nerfs to some fotm build bringing Ravager kill times from 8 seconds down to 10. Literally unplayable.
How you about you focused less on the person? That would also be a good contribution. You know, get riled up around the arguments not the person. Reserve all that attitude for when someone is actually being aggressive towards you. I always cringe at the amount of likes these type of inflammatory posts end up having…
Add some interesting skills instead of them