Heist is Genius, and here is why!

"

Khari_Eventide escribió:

Heist is Genius, and here is why!


With how unhappy the Subreddit is, you could think that either Heist is the worst thing that ever happened to the game, or that GGG is some horrible greedy tyrant, throwing shitty unfinished mechanics at people. And while I disagree with that reading in general, I would especially do so given this league. In fact I would go as far as to say, that this league mechanic has me thoroughly enchanted eventhough I’m really early on in it’s progression. This league accomplishes a lot of things extremely well, and I have to talk about it.

First, I’ll have to explain what I mean, when I say “it’s genius”. So the thing is, game mechanics often move around on certain scales that have to be balanced with one another to be truly strong and effective. Gameplay has to be crisp, so the pacing is important, but it has to be balanced with it’s rewards. The thematic aspect has to be gotten right, feel immersive, but not to the point where it detriments the gameplay too much. Specifically in Path of Exile a mechanic has to be rewarding, but it can’t be too rewarding for too little investment, else it will dominate every other game mechanic, detriment the trade economy and lead to degenerate gameplay that burns out people immediately. However it also cannot be too unrewarding, or only rewarding when one overinvests or the mechanic might be ignored completely. And it is these aspects that I will be looking at – Prominently it’s rewards structure, gameplay and the theme. I will be disregarding the technical issues, as I don’t think those can be brought up when analysing a mechanic itself.

I. Theme
I’ll start with the theming, because it’s truly the most enchanting to me. Now when it comes to general themes, I’d say GGG is always doing well, however this Heist theme is more believable and immersive than for instance the Blight Mechanic, because we don’t know what the Blight is, how it would be dangerous to this world, and why it only appears when Cassia is around. As much as I love Blight (and I do), thematically it’s kind of bullshit for the sake of gameplay. In that sense though, Heist makes sense because I can absolutely believe that in a world of Exiles, Rogues and Gladiators, with Nobles of Oriath and crazy mad scientists around, some people would go and rob from them in the same way we farm maps. Which is also why we’re so non-special to these Rogues. We’re not the chosen ones, we’re just another type of Exile-Rogue, going for some loot.

Secondly, the personalities of all the Rogues are really fun, and I enjoy talking to all of them. Especially them interacting with one another gives me vibes of something I haven’t seen since Baldur’s Gate II, when you’re not involved yourself, you’re enjoying different characters fighting, bantering, teasing each other. They play off each other’s personalities and I love that. Considering the older Masters in comparison, well I love Cassia and Alva, Jun having a crush on Zana is cool, and I’ll never forget Tora fantasizing about Vagan’s sweaty body. But damn I have no idea what Alva’s personality really is. Compared to that, I could listen to the Rogues all day.

And lastly the strongest aspect of the theming to me. Look, a lot of people these days are throwing around the word “Ludonarrative Dissonance” as opposed to Verisimilitude, when your gameplay just doesn’t really match that the plot / lore / theme seems to think it is about. But Heist actually excels in this aspect the most.
If you observed me playing Heist, but without access to my screen or the sounds, but instead looking at a heartrate monitor, you could see what I am doing at any given point. In phase 1 of the Heist I would be in a medium area of tension. Things are fine but enemies are rippy, so while trying to open the way to the end there will be a bit of tension in the air. To be followed by it settling down once all the paths are open, having me go back and check all the chests, deciding which ones to get before the alarm goes off, you can call that Phase 2. Then Phase 3 – the Alert Phase. When shit hits the fan and you’re having a mad dash to the end. Your pulse running high as you try to escape with your character alive and the items in your bag. A locked door? Shit! Send in the Rogues while you try to keep the Guards at bay. This is gonna get rocky!
That moment when you finally make it to the end and leave the area, that sudden release of all tension, of knowing you are alive and have your rewards in tow, that massive crescendo! WOW. Just wow. Perfect translation of an actual heist into gameplay. From an Immersion standpoint, this alone is genius.

II. The Mediumcore Aspect is Perfect

Let’s be honest, to many of us the themes are just window dressing. While being thematically strong is great, the gameplay is where it all shines, where it counts, where it has to work. And it does. The mediumcore aspect of this league is in my opinion so good, that it blows every other league out of the water.

To explain why, I will have to go back a bit. Do you all remember the trailer and previews for Legion League? One of the explained goals of GGG was, according to them, to have the breaking out mechanic allow for people to pick their own poison, to balance rewards with difficulty. You could just try to release them all, but that might result in you dying. So it was supposed to be a consideration between risk and reward on the side of the player. In Hardcore that absolutely held true, with me losing multiple characters to my greed and being pierced and wrecked by projectiles all over the place. However for the majority of players, this mechanic fell completely flat, and it’s because of how oddly apart HC and SC are in this game these days.

The difference in playstyle between Hardcore and Softcore in this game, is really far apart these days. The game is no longer being balanced around Hardcore (which it used to be), but instead around Softcore, which has a low degree of punishment for reaching it’s main failure state – dying. Dying is a huge mistake, the main failure state in most games, especially in Path of Exile. It should be punished plenty, to incentivise players to build defensively, play consciously and weigh risk versus reward carefully. In HC, this is the case as dying results in you losing your entire character, their gear, and whatever character specific progression was tied to them, as well as the map / instance you were in. Pretty brutal, but that is hardcore. In SC you don’t just “not lose your character” you also don’t lose the items, the character specific progression or the instance. In fact for most maps / types of content you would have to die 6 times before you lose the instance due to run out of maps. Additionally you lose 10% of your current experience. And while that is a lot to lose for someone in high 90s, getting to lvl 100 is an optional goal, and one not desired by lots of people. And even there it is preferable to losing the character.
Because of unpunishing a death is in Softcore, more and more leagues seem to be balanced around trying to kill the player more often, and sometimes quite cheaply, to be able to still challenge them somehow. But now it is the acquisition of many types of content that is the issue, now surviving the encounters themselves.

You risk nothing, you gain fairly little in an oversaturated economy, you burn out even quicker and you push yourself into content you are not strong enough for because there is little downside to it. Meanwhile the value of building, stacking and planning your characters with intricate defences sinks massively. The consideration of whether or not you should take more defence or more damage, is absolutely out of wack on Softcore. Meanwhile in Hardcore you overthinking everything you are doing. You can argue for yourself how easy you want SC to be, and I’m sure there is value in a Sandbox-God_Mode style play as well, but with it being a multiplayer ARPG, I think it is not too much to expect there to be some challenge. SC and HC should be closer to each other in terms of gameplay. In HC a mistake’s punishment being more grave, should be change in HC, not be the only mode in which people actually consciously play.

Before, if you had asked how I would solve the SC and HC discrepancy, I would have argued that one should lose their instance when they die. Meaning you lose the ability to enter the remaining portals of a map (which exist mostly for groups anyway). That way you are not losing your items, your character, or anything like that. You are only losing the instance. And building defensively actually holds some value (3k Life MFer does not become the strongest way to play always), rolling maps, opening lockboxes and trying bosses actually becomes something you consider consciously. I even could have seen a map mod to craft on your map to make it have infinite portal access or have deaths not send you to standard, at the price of the map not dropping items, fragments or atlas progression. A practice mode so to say.

Well, Heist just solves all these SC issues in one fell swoop. Dying during the heist has you losing the instance, and also the items you found within, meaning if you want to get a lot out of it, you will have to build some defences and carefully consider whether or not you want to get the big item at the end and having to deal with the crazy alert Phase that could risk losing all that gear, or whether you should just leave with the items you just got and ignore the final item. It’s consciously weighting risk vs reward. And that is absolutely genius. It succeeded where Legion failed. I have to say, Kudos GGG for achieving this, cause it blows my mind how well this works.

I’m sure someone here will critique how they should not forced to consider this or something. But I disagree. It’s a multiplayer game, where every item got automatically stands in competition with others. If GGG found a way to give people a god-mode SSF league where they are all in a sandbox and can do what they want while invincible, that would be okay with me. You would then just have to keep them from accessing the normal trade leagues.

III. Rewards and Incentives

This part will be a lot shorter. Remember when I stated earlier that rewards have to be good enough for the risk to be considered? Given the huge amount of drops that are coming out of chests, trinkets potentially turning other currency into fusings and exalts, many people currently pulling multiple Ex out of their Blueprints and there being lots of new basetypes and alternative uniques – I think the rewards are pretty good. And if you want them you gotta build some defense, you just gotta build some defense.
And good news, if the game ends up continuing with Mediumcore mechanics like in Heist, the game design will shift away from cheap deaths more and more, it will actually move back to more fair and balanced gameplay. Actually PoE2 already looks primed and ready for that. And I absolutely cannot wait for that to happen. Kamil Orman-Janowski’s amazing and dark music pumping in your ears are you walk the hunting ground, danger and potential death behind any bush. Reminding you that this game used to be inspired by Diablo 2, not Diablo 3. Cruel and Grim it makes you walk the Path of Exile, and only the wise and dextrous will survive.

Thank you GGG, thank you for this amazing league.

And please buff Raider next league.

"

innervation escribió:

"

Miská escribió:

I don't think anyone complained about how Heist is not very nicely made. Cool lore, nice characters etc.

They complain about the mountain of bugs that is affecting them in some way or another. They complain about unstable connections wich really mess up your game.

If that's toxic to you then I'm super toxic I guess.

This falls flat when I see that anyone who dies claims its due to bugs without a hint of irony or introspection.

There is a front page reddit post right now claiming that allies cannot die mod is a bug. With thousands of upvotes. And if you go there and tell them that the mod isn't a bug, that it is in fact a design decision they disagree with, they will literally tell you that up is down, blue is red, and that it's a bug.

Nice post OP.

"

Miská escribió:

I don't think anyone complained about how Heist is not very nicely made. Cool lore, nice characters etc.

They complain about the mountain of bugs that is affecting them in some way or another. They complain about unstable connections wich really mess up your game.

If that's toxic to you then I'm super toxic I guess.

"

Khari_Eventide escribió:

I changed the wording to "unhappy".

But I would argue that the subreddit absolutely has become a cesspool of toxicity, outside of people complaining about bugs and performance, which is still absolutely justified.

Positivity is absolutely repressed on the sub these days, you will absolutely be insulted or downvote spammed if your opinion is counter whatever is the dominant idea on the subreddit that week, even if well explained an reasoned with no ill will.

"

Khari_Eventide escribió:

It should be punished plenty, to incentivise players to build defensively, play consciously and weigh risk versus reward carefully.

"

Exile009 escribió:

"

Khari_Eventide escribió:

I changed the wording to "unhappy".

But I would argue that the subreddit absolutely has become a cesspool of toxicity, outside of people complaining about bugs and performance, which is still absolutely justified.

Positivity is absolutely repressed on the sub these days, you will absolutely be insulted or downvote spammed if your opinion is counter whatever is the dominant idea on the subreddit that week, even if well explained an reasoned with no ill will.

Was this meant to just be a criticism of the subreddit? Cos I've seen at least as much negativity here on the forums, somewhat less positivity compared to the subreddit and FAR LESS productivity (i.e. guides, PSA's, general information sharing, etc.) compared to Reddit. Indeed I've had to borrow the latter to share over here, and so far have seen zero such posts on here that're worth sharing there.

"

Well I can't see a good reason for allies can't die, so the devs are stupid and should be fired

"

innervation escribió:

The biggest problem with reddit is that the upvote/downvote system leads people to conflate things they agree with, with being objectively right. Here's the example that fully set me off: Thread title

[Angry thread] Daily complaint that "Allies cannot die" mod still spawns in Heist, GGG still refuses to acknowledge the issue.

So to begin, this title unjustifiably presumes that this mod is not supposed to spawn in the content. Just asserts it to be the true default position despite the fact that it's the opposite. This is smuggling of the most foul degree.

Now, Bex responded to this post and mentioned that the devs have talked about allies can't die in the past, and decided there were benefits that outweighed the cons.

That still didn't stop the most idiotic opinions from rising to the top - in summary:

"

Well I can't see a good reason for allies can't die, so the devs are stupid and should be fired

-

To bring the point back to my first paragraph, by virtue of living in their echo chamber - even worse, one in which they can see in real time their opinion being upvoted and reality being downvoted - they then get more and more entrenched in their bewilderment when GGG design things that they disagree with. Because all they see day in and day out for months is people getting big e-points on their posts saying 'GGG devs dumb, player smart'.

"

Khari_Eventide escribió:

Heist is Genius, and here is why!


With how unhappy the Subreddit is, you could think that either Heist is the worst thing that ever happened to the game, or that GGG is some horrible greedy tyrant, throwing shitty unfinished mechanics at people. And while I disagree with that reading in general, I would especially do so given this league. In fact I would go as far as to say, that this league mechanic has me thoroughly enchanted eventhough I’m really early on in it’s progression. This league accomplishes a lot of things extremely well, and I have to talk about it.

First, I’ll have to explain what I mean, when I say “it’s genius”. So the thing is, game mechanics often move around on certain scales that have to be balanced with one another to be truly strong and effective. Gameplay has to be crisp, so the pacing is important, but it has to be balanced with it’s rewards. The thematic aspect has to be gotten right, feel immersive, but not to the point where it detriments the gameplay too much. Specifically in Path of Exile a mechanic has to be rewarding, but it can’t be too rewarding for too little investment, else it will dominate every other game mechanic, detriment the trade economy and lead to degenerate gameplay that burns out people immediately. However it also cannot be too unrewarding, or only rewarding when one overinvests or the mechanic might be ignored completely. And it is these aspects that I will be looking at – Prominently it’s rewards structure, gameplay and the theme. I will be disregarding the technical issues, as I don’t think those can be brought up when analysing a mechanic itself.

I. Theme
I’ll start with the theming, because it’s truly the most enchanting to me. Now when it comes to general themes, I’d say GGG is always doing well, however this Heist theme is more believable and immersive than for instance the Blight Mechanic, because we don’t know what the Blight is, how it would be dangerous to this world, and why it only appears when Cassia is around. As much as I love Blight (and I do), thematically it’s kind of bullshit for the sake of gameplay. In that sense though, Heist makes sense because I can absolutely believe that in a world of Exiles, Rogues and Gladiators, with Nobles of Oriath and crazy mad scientists around, some people would go and rob from them in the same way we farm maps. Which is also why we’re so non-special to these Rogues. We’re not the chosen ones, we’re just another type of Exile-Rogue, going for some loot.

Secondly, the personalities of all the Rogues are really fun, and I enjoy talking to all of them. Especially them interacting with one another gives me vibes of something I haven’t seen since Baldur’s Gate II, when you’re not involved yourself, you’re enjoying different characters fighting, bantering, teasing each other. They play off each other’s personalities and I love that. Considering the older Masters in comparison, well I love Cassia and Alva, Jun having a crush on Zana is cool, and I’ll never forget Tora fantasizing about Vagan’s sweaty body. But damn I have no idea what Alva’s personality really is. Compared to that, I could listen to the Rogues all day.

And lastly the strongest aspect of the theming to me. Look, a lot of people these days are throwing around the word “Ludonarrative Dissonance” as opposed to Verisimilitude, when your gameplay just doesn’t really match that the plot / lore / theme seems to think it is about. But Heist actually excels in this aspect the most.
If you observed me playing Heist, but without access to my screen or the sounds, but instead looking at a heartrate monitor, you could see what I am doing at any given point. In phase 1 of the Heist I would be in a medium area of tension. Things are fine but enemies are rippy, so while trying to open the way to the end there will be a bit of tension in the air. To be followed by it settling down once all the paths are open, having me go back and check all the chests, deciding which ones to get before the alarm goes off, you can call that Phase 2. Then Phase 3 – the Alert Phase. When shit hits the fan and you’re having a mad dash to the end. Your pulse running high as you try to escape with your character alive and the items in your bag. A locked door? Shit! Send in the Rogues while you try to keep the Guards at bay. This is gonna get rocky!
That moment when you finally make it to the end and leave the area, that sudden release of all tension, of knowing you are alive and have your rewards in tow, that massive crescendo! WOW. Just wow. Perfect translation of an actual heist into gameplay. From an Immersion standpoint, this alone is genius.

II. The Mediumcore Aspect is Perfect

Let’s be honest, to many of us the themes are just window dressing. While being thematically strong is great, the gameplay is where it all shines, where it counts, where it has to work. And it does. The mediumcore aspect of this league is in my opinion so good, that it blows every other league out of the water.

To explain why, I will have to go back a bit. Do you all remember the trailer and previews for Legion League? One of the explained goals of GGG was, according to them, to have the breaking out mechanic allow for people to pick their own poison, to balance rewards with difficulty. You could just try to release them all, but that might result in you dying. So it was supposed to be a consideration between risk and reward on the side of the player. In Hardcore that absolutely held true, with me losing multiple characters to my greed and being pierced and wrecked by projectiles all over the place. However for the majority of players, this mechanic fell completely flat, and it’s because of how oddly apart HC and SC are in this game these days.

The difference in playstyle between Hardcore and Softcore in this game, is really far apart these days. The game is no longer being balanced around Hardcore (which it used to be), but instead around Softcore, which has a low degree of punishment for reaching it’s main failure state – dying. Dying is a huge mistake, the main failure state in most games, especially in Path of Exile. It should be punished plenty, to incentivise players to build defensively, play consciously and weigh risk versus reward carefully. In HC, this is the case as dying results in you losing your entire character, their gear, and whatever character specific progression was tied to them, as well as the map / instance you were in. Pretty brutal, but that is hardcore. In SC you don’t just “not lose your character” you also don’t lose the items, the character specific progression or the instance. In fact for most maps / types of content you would have to die 6 times before you lose the instance due to run out of maps. Additionally you lose 10% of your current experience. And while that is a lot to lose for someone in high 90s, getting to lvl 100 is an optional goal, and one not desired by lots of people. And even there it is preferable to losing the character.
Because of unpunishing a death is in Softcore, more and more leagues seem to be balanced around trying to kill the player more often, and sometimes quite cheaply, to be able to still challenge them somehow. But now it is the acquisition of many types of content that is the issue, now surviving the encounters themselves.

You risk nothing, you gain fairly little in an oversaturated economy, you burn out even quicker and you push yourself into content you are not strong enough for because there is little downside to it. Meanwhile the value of building, stacking and planning your characters with intricate defences sinks massively. The consideration of whether or not you should take more defence or more damage, is absolutely out of wack on Softcore. Meanwhile in Hardcore you overthinking everything you are doing. You can argue for yourself how easy you want SC to be, and I’m sure there is value in a Sandbox-God_Mode style play as well, but with it being a multiplayer ARPG, I think it is not too much to expect there to be some challenge. SC and HC should be closer to each other in terms of gameplay. In HC a mistake’s punishment being more grave, should be change in HC, not be the only mode in which people actually consciously play.

Before, if you had asked how I would solve the SC and HC discrepancy, I would have argued that one should lose their instance when they die. Meaning you lose the ability to enter the remaining portals of a map (which exist mostly for groups anyway). That way you are not losing your items, your character, or anything like that. You are only losing the instance. And building defensively actually holds some value (3k Life MFer does not become the strongest way to play always), rolling maps, opening lockboxes and trying bosses actually becomes something you consider consciously. I even could have seen a map mod to craft on your map to make it have infinite portal access or have deaths not send you to standard, at the price of the map not dropping items, fragments or atlas progression. A practice mode so to say.

Well, Heist just solves all these SC issues in one fell swoop. Dying during the heist has you losing the instance, and also the items you found within, meaning if you want to get a lot out of it, you will have to build some defences and carefully consider whether or not you want to get the big item at the end and having to deal with the crazy alert Phase that could risk losing all that gear, or whether you should just leave with the items you just got and ignore the final item. It’s consciously weighting risk vs reward. And that is absolutely genius. It succeeded where Legion failed. I have to say, Kudos GGG for achieving this, cause it blows my mind how well this works.

I’m sure someone here will critique how they should not forced to consider this or something. But I disagree. It’s a multiplayer game, where every item got automatically stands in competition with others. If GGG found a way to give people a god-mode SSF league where they are all in a sandbox and can do what they want while invincible, that would be okay with me. You would then just have to keep them from accessing the normal trade leagues.

III. Rewards and Incentives

This part will be a lot shorter. Remember when I stated earlier that rewards have to be good enough for the risk to be considered? Given the huge amount of drops that are coming out of chests, trinkets potentially turning other currency into fusings and exalts, many people currently pulling multiple Ex out of their Blueprints and there being lots of new basetypes and alternative uniques – I think the rewards are pretty good. And if you want them you gotta build some defense, you just gotta build some defense.
And good news, if the game ends up continuing with Mediumcore mechanics like in Heist, the game design will shift away from cheap deaths more and more, it will actually move back to more fair and balanced gameplay. Actually PoE2 already looks primed and ready for that. And I absolutely cannot wait for that to happen. Kamil Orman-Janowski’s amazing and dark music pumping in your ears are you walk the hunting ground, danger and potential death behind any bush. Reminding you that this game used to be inspired by Diablo 2, not Diablo 3. Cruel and Grim it makes you walk the Path of Exile, and only the wise and dextrous will survive.

Thank you GGG, thank you for this amazing league.

And please buff Raider next league.