Everyone generally agrees that Path of Exile is a game with a high degree of freedom, one of which is very important-and I think the basis for the freedom of the entire game-in official terms is called deep character customization. Customization is easy to understand, that is, each player can play the role he wants, or use the commonly used term of the player to call the BD he wants to play. But if the BD that can be played is not rich enough, there will be no depth, and naturally there will be no freedom at all. Now let's sort out the design of the road of exile in this regard.

1. Rich and even complcated combat system

For a player who wants to build a BD by himself, one of the biggest difficulties comes from understanding the game’s combat system, because it is too complicated. It took me 3 seasons to have a more comprehensive understanding. It's a decent BD that I can play by myself. The complexity comes from two aspects:

1). Combat formula and attribute calculation. The battle formula itself is nothing special except for the content. Most of it is regular content, but it is very much... Basically, every link in the damage process is used, and every attribute that can be thought of is used. Both can be modified in some way. In addition, the specific algorithm of the attribute in the formula will have very different benefits, and because many attributes can be piled up very high, the marginal effect of the benefit must also be considered. Players with poor mathematics may have certain difficulties in understanding. The internal calculation of attributes is also more complicated. There are 3 ways to increase attributes according to the description in the game. Increase specific values (for example, armor increase by 50), increase percentage (for example, armor increase by 10%), and additional increase percentage (for example, armor additional Add 20), the final attribute formula:

Final value = (base value + Σ increase value) * (1 + Σ increase percentage) * (1 + additional increase percentage 1) * (1 + additional increase percentage 2).

There seems to be a difference in the additional increase algorithm for some attributes, and I have not fully figured it out. It can be seen that in this formula, the benefits of the three increasing methods are not stable. In addition to their own marginal effects, they are also closely related to other parts of the formula. If you want to stack an attribute to a very high level, just All kinds of values should be allocated reasonably. Not all attributes have all the ways to increase, for example, there is no way to increase life (maybe some very special equipment, too lazy to check...), element resistance only has a way to increase the value, understand each attribute The available ways to increase also require a learning process.

2). Combat mechanism. The reason there are so many attributes in Path of Exile is because there are so many mechanisms, and the mechanisms themselves have their own special rules. The most basic, for example, life-related mechanisms, in addition to life itself, there are also life recovery and life stealing. Life stealing has its own set of rules that leads to three attributes. A little more complicated, such as the continuous damage rules, which attributes have bonuses to damage and which ones do not, which are not counted as hits, so they cannot be dodged and blocked, etc. For more complicated things, such as projectiles and tricolor energy balls, light interpretation rules are already very troublesome. The number of mechanisms is huge, and each has its own unique rules and attributes. If you want to build a BD yourself, you must at least understand most of the mechanisms, and because the number is too large, the process will take longer.

Design mechanisms and attributes are like making Lego parts with different shapes and different splicing methods, and using various mechanisms to build a BD is like using a variety of Lego parts to finally piece together a molded thing. The design of the parts is not arbitrary. The coupling between the parts must be considered, and the differences between the parts must be considered. The design complexity and the complexity of the player's learning are both high, and the possibility space generated is also great. It is also an effect made by Path of Exile.

However, if you put a hundred Lego parts directly in front of a person and let him do it himself, there is a high probability that the person will be stunned. Lego’s solution is to provide a shaped picture as a guide, and people can also see how others have put together on the Internet for reference. In the road of exile, the latter corresponds to copying BD by watching the guide, while the former does not provide it, and it provides more like fragments of blueprints.

2. Skills, sublimation and some mechanism legends

These three contents are the fragments of the drawing, which act as the core and the introductory role in the whole construction. Every BD strategy, without exception, starts from one or more of these three, and the rest of the content is developed around them, or strengthens or supplements shortcomings. The common feature of these contents is that they are either a composite of many mechanisms, or they have very special mechanisms that can be assisted by many mechanisms, or both. It's a bit like putting together a few parts first and then taking them out, and it's not random spelling, they are all directed in a limited number of directions. Separately:

Skills: There are a set of more complicated labeling rules in the skill system, which are not elaborated. Generally speaking, it can be regarded as a way to classify skills by labeling a set of skills. Each label approximately corresponds to a mechanism. , And then analyze some special mechanisms specific to the skill, basically you can determine which direction a skill corresponds to. Such as slashing skills

This is a skill with a relatively simple mechanism. There are 4 tags, so the attributes related to these 4 tags can be added to it. There is also a line in the skill effect that says "When dual wielding weapons, the weapon is not caused 60 % Damage", the damage of dual wielding will be higher than the damage of other weapon holding methods, usually dual wielding is selected to use this skill, then dual wielding related attributes can also be added to it. Each skill is roughly analyzed according to this logic (there are some exceptions, the details are not shown below). In addition, because all battles in the game revolve around skills, skills are the part of building BD as the foundation, and all attribute selections are revolving around skills to strengthen the effect of skills, so building BD starts from selecting skills. Very common way, but not the only way.

In addition to the above-mentioned content, there are three points in the design ideas of the Path of Exile skill:

On the whole, it covers most of the mechanisms in the game. You can pick out the corresponding skills for any mechanism you want to play, although it may not be easy to use.

In terms of a single skill, each skill has its own characteristics that are different from other skills. The difference is not small, and most of the characteristics are more complicated. It also has the characteristics of the label type, such as projectiles and totems, as well as the skill itself. Features, such as Scourge Arrow (projection), Ancestral Guardian (totem), so it is more complicated to play.

From an experience point of view, they hope that the experience of each skill will be quite different, at least each tag type is different. Skills can only be said to be best-efforts, and there are indeed some more similar ones, such as sprint and frost flash. , Blaze Sprint, relatively speaking, the difference is not that big (although some people can play with flowers, the Blaze Sprint totem really shows my face).

Sublimation: Sublimation is a concept similar to professions in the road of exile. For each type of sublimation, you can choose 4 from 6-8 talent points. The effect of each talent point is very powerful and basically has a special mechanism. Also compound some common mechanisms. Each sublimation revolves around several directions. For example, the first warrior sublimation I played, the biggest direction is the endurance ball, other directions also have hits, movement speed (with avoidance of stun), and armor. The direction will not be very few, such a sublimation can play too single, nor too much, otherwise it will make the player's attention too distracted, and it is easy to make sublimation become homogeneous. Through the design of these directions, players are guided to try the construction of these directions, and matched with skills to form the core part of BD. And like skills, sublimation also covers most of the mechanics and the difference between sublimation is huge, so you can find skills that can be used for any sublimation you want to play, and vice versa. Of course, it is not guaranteed to be easy to use (the balance problem is It's more complicated, I'll write it later).

Part of the mechanism legend: This is quite special. The legendary equipment that can be used as the core of the BD basically has a very special mechanism, such as a feather pen, a zombie head of a thousand powers, and a halo of death clothes, etc., which are all unique mechanisms and They seem to be the result of brainstorming. If the way the skill sublimation combination is used as the core of the BD is like a regular army, the BD with these legendary equipment as the core is like a guerrilla, scattered but many and many of them are very interesting. People sighed that "this equipment can still be played like this".

These are the three most important elements for building a BD. Generally speaking, the starting point of the construction is "I want to play this skill/sublimation/legendary equipment, let's see if it works", then open the pob and start the simulation.

In addition to the role in construction, there is also the role of substitution. The direction of sublimation represents the characteristics of the character, which is in line with the name of sublimation and the painting, but it is limited to this... Some things that don't look like it at all when playing, after all, the degree of freedom is high. In terms of skills, feel and performance are also very important parts, after all, they are the main part of the experience. Legendary equipment can only look at the name icon and inscription, this part feels relatively weak. But on the whole, because the degree of freedom is extremely high, the sense of substitution is weak, and the experience is basically violent and refreshing. This will be written later.

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3. Play some dismantling

Although the content is very complicated, but the summary of the play points is very simple, it is a pure learning and experience cycle, learning various skill effects, sublimation effects, legendary effects, and the combination of learning effects, and then constructing a BD to experience, it is also possible It is to experience first and then learn. Since the content of the game is extremely large, this cycle can be maintained for a long, long time, and each season's update will add new content and modify the original content to maintain this cycle. There should be many players who have been playing until now. For example, I want to see what new changes will be made every season to build a new BD.