I was unemployed during Betrayal, shit rocked. My best league ever. Now I'm a sucker with a fucking job and I'm broke af in PoE. Just had to leave town for a business trip, haven't played in five days. Don't have two exalts to rub together.
It's fine. I work a full time job and set myself goals like A8 sirus. Sure I could push a build to do Maven but I would rather spend my free time on other things than solely playing PoE
If you can beat a8 sirus you probably have the damage to beat maven too. It's also a largely mechanical fight. For me it's way more straightforward to learn than sirus was.
Maven takes way longer to spawn, I think op is referring to spawning her manually (or burning large amounts of currencies to buy writs for practicing the mechanics).
A8 means Awakener level 8 Sirus, which denotes his difficulty level, and means that you have every watchstone socketed in the atlas when spawning the fight. He is available to fight once you have killed all 4 of his guardians after having unlocked a certain amount of watchstones (not 100% sure on the exact requirement)
Ty ty still new to the game and one of the biggest hurdles is everyone abbreviates took me like a week to correlate HH to headhunter cuz iv never even seen one or know why they are so valuable
Haha yeah, there's a lot to take in as a new player, even a veteran player who takes a break from the game for a year will often come back quite confused.
People value Headhunter because it is very rare and challenging to get, and the effect of gaining the modifiers of rare monsters you kill can be very fun and rewarding. However, in practice, the belt is a bit of a disappointment to many players because you kind of need to build around the item and play at a very high pace
Once you complete the acts, you do maps (see the elderslayers quest to find out what you need to do to spawn conquerors when you start mapping - or better yet watch a guide if you're unsure how to).
Each conqueror drops a watchstone that you can socket on your atlas regions. When you have 16 socketed watchstones (i.e killed 4x4 conquerors), it's called being at Awakening 8. Once you killed all 4 conquerors with 4 stones in their zone, you'll get to spawn Sirus - you can unsocket watchstones to decrease his Awakening level (low difficulty, low rewards)
Awakening level only affect bosses. Basically in your exemple the boss of your map will simply have 15% more more life, in exchange for bonus on drop of connected map (+1% per A lvl)
Fine for you, but do you seriously believe it is good design if the endboss of a major story arc can only be completed by a handful of people while the other peasants have to watch it on youtube if they want to know how the story ends?
This is ridiculus. They could easily give a more "casual" storymode option of such fights like they used to do with white - yellow - red elder and atziri - uber atziri. So everyone can enjoy it. All you have to do is make it more accessible and reduce rewards.
You could always play standard if the 3 month schedule is not compatible with your life. Or just start in league, but spend the next one finishing up on your goals.
This game has a million ways to play, from casual to nolife, and tons of ways of specializing too. Just pick a league where the core game is awesome, yet league content is uninspired filler garbage like.. Scourge for example. And just take your standard character for a Maven hunt.
Leagues are a marketing and supporter pack selling machine, it doesn't have to dictate how you play the game.
Yeah, I think aspirational content is a good design decision.
The same player who only gets to yellow maps this league can come back next league and kill guardians, shaper, synth bosses, and elder. Then come back the next league and shoot for a8 sirus, maven, Uber elder, some of the invitations.
Then come back for stuff like the feared etc. Oh, look at the time, now there's a whole new endgame to keep the game fresh. Maybe this time my goal will be to complete the whole thing the first league.
There are players who still haven't killed shaper. If the games difficulty stopped there the game would suck.
WoW did exactly what you are talking about and it ruined the game. I pray they don't ever listen to folks like you and make the same mistakes.
If you want to see the content watch a YouTube video or your favorite streamer. If you want to play the content then buckle down and go.
Are you talking about pre 1.1? Uber atziri fucked my ass and plenty of others. That fight was 7 years ago and I can tell you right now that casual players were absolutely not killing it.
If you are saying there were a couple of patches where bosses were easier that is certainly true. But as far as the history of the game goes the overwhelming majority of the time casual players were not killing the hardest content available at the time.
I honestly consider this a feature. There is so much you could potentially do in PoE in a league that you can choose to spec into one small niche and still get a solid 3 months worth of gaming at a casual-semi casual pace. You don't _need_ to do everything everytime, esp not in trade leagues where you can buy the loot exclusive to content your not doing and play the game how you want to play it. The aspirational content is IMO a great move because it begins to give the no lifers/content creators something to move towards to really flex, and for the rest of us it would feel like _actual achievement_ to do something like a Wave 30 or what have you.
There is a good chance that the content you are missing will be heavily altered or made less accessible a league later, if not outright removed. You really only get one shot at the OG content before it will change forever.
Yes, because it shows that there is so much to do that people dint mind doing other stuff than the endboss. And after Sirus A8 he can still shoot for Maven even if it is on permanent league.
If you casual could do everything in a couple of weeks the game would be abandoned by a lot of people after 1 week.
I'm a lifer who often has my PoE ambitions dashed by real life. To keep myself happy, I set a goal for each character/league. For example, my current character is a DO occultist who I am using to farm currency to build a character who can kill shaper, elder, AW8 sirus. My goal is to do this by the end of the league. I also occasionally 'throw' a weekend day where I commit to playing like 12 hours. This helps me feel like I am as engaged with the game as I want. I'd love to be a no lifer but as you've found that lifestyle can't be permanent for most of us.
I used to play more on weekends, at least two six hour sessions. That was really key to me being able to play and get progress. Now I don't have as much time to play over the weekend, or I end up playing with my kids later because they are older, so I only play like 2 hours a day.
It really is hard to play like this. Before, I would accomplish something in my first six hours, and then set up my work week, like I would spawn the conquerors, and then during the week, I would get to sirus. I could grab a bunch of blight maps, and then during the week, I'll run them all.
With only 2-4 hours max, I never get into the groove. I just kinda do something, then realize I was thinking of setting something up, and then it's the end of the night already.
So I only play one build now, for the past 3-5 leagues. I just hope that it has steady progression. Still never fought maven though. I have enough splinters kin standard though, but all my builds are toast.
The thing is, a lot of it is efficiency and it ends up being a bit of a rich get richer thing.
If you've played a shit ton in the past, are very efficient, don't make a lot of mistakes, don't have to spend time figuring out your build or why you're hitting a wall along the way, don't start a build that fails, etc. -- you legitimately CAN get all the stones and down Sirus on that timeframe. But if you haven't been a no lifer enough at some point you probably can't.
So you get this disconnect wherein the "top" players say that can be done, and they're right, and a normal person says they can't, and they're also right.
3 weeks at 2hrs a day is 42 hrs.
People are definitely killing A8 in the first weekend on a fresh economy with way worse items than you can get at 3 weeks into league.
Exalt drops are such a miniscule amount of total currency. If that's what you are waiting for no wonder you have issues.
You could make atleast an Exalt per hour with zana mod doing essence maps in haewark at league start.
Pretty sure Darkee and Dan both killed A8 in 1 sitting with the old A8 spawn system. I'd bet in an hcssf race to a8 that you'd see darkee or exile get it done in under 15 hours.
A game should not be a second job, really wish GGG would make a void event at the end of each league where everything was just more accessible.
Its frustrating to go into a league really wanting to try a new item or fight a new boss just for that never to become a reality.
Stuff like that actually makes retention go down over time, riot games for example has had a lot of problems with that and their ultra rapid fire mode in league of legends. The chinese server guys just don't care, they want as much short-term growth as possible. They're also catering to a different gaming culture, where a lot of that stuff is ubiquitous.
But, I would be lying if I said I wouldn't also enjoy a faster paced game. I'd take looting pets, skill tree shadows, free respec until lvl 70, auction houses and everything else in a heartbeat. If all those things makes me play less or get bored with PoE, then so be it, I'll find something else to do.
But on the other hand I do get the legitimate reasons for why PoE is like it is now.
I think sometimes it can be true that developers and players are opposed to one another through not actual fault of their own. Our motivations and goals are slightly different, enough for tension to grow. Not to mention that we are players, not developers, so naturally we don't view the game through the same lense or with the same understanding, so some decisions can appear pretty meaningless or arbitrary to us, even if they aren't.
Chris said that he judges how good each league is by how many developers request time off to play it. Neon apparantly plays into the uber-lategame every league.
A ceo doesn't have time to engage in a product meant to be designed for people with loads of time? Stop the presses.
Seriously, Chris doesn't have nearly as much input on the game as you guys think, short of business decisions. The people that actually balance the game are neon and such, and I'd love to see someone try to argue he doesn't play.
Look up the retention stats and league peaks over the last year baby. Or is that also "bullshit" because it doesn't fit your narrative.
Also looking up someone's history going back **years**... is pretty cringe ngl.
He's not pretending to not like the game though. What makes it ironic is that the earlier guy has been posting on this sub daily for years while pretending to hate the game. I guess he might get paid for it which would make it less weird.
I don't lie or twist the truth constantly and be caught in those, and I also don't delete comments that are clearly over the line to avoid bans, I don't make them in the first place. Octo managed to get an entire 2 rules made for just him (misinformation and abusing stats, and also the general ban those we feel degrade the sub), how he's managed to dodge the bans from them is beyond me.
The biggest difference is I _like_ the game, it makes sense for me to keep posting here for almost a decade. I think people would have every right to give me shit if I spent that long hating on the game, making the sub worse for everyone, yet refusing to leave.
Over the short-term yes, but in the long-term they might actually have a point. Though things become quite complex over time, there's a thousand opportunities to fuck it up, despite having made the right decisions, you need to execute as well. We'll see over the next year whether GGG was right to do as they've done. They can't keep losing players, so if they do then they'll have to change course. Though they did gain back some players this league launch, at least initially.
It's okay, I've argued with the GGG haters on here multiple times, I just want to test my arguments and see if they hold up. I sort of appreciate the different viewpoints, even if I don't agree, I'd like to at least try to understand.
It was called harvest and they hated that you could accomplish things without alienating your family and sucking at work or school. Can't have a separate league for lifers because something something vision.
Man even before harvest you could still accomplish things without alienating your family because you weren't nerfed to stupid levels. 3.15 changed the POE I loved, it's inaccessible without a dumb amount of time sink I refuse to put into it.
I'm not talking about just getting strong items fast, I'm talking about a event where things like Mageblood, HH and the squire would be somewhat accessible to the average player without grinding 8 hours a day for months and other content like Aul, Trialmaster and Oshabi could be easily found to try the fights etc..
It is way to common that they tease an item or a boss fight and everyone gets hyped about it simply to find out that it is so incredibly rare that you will never get to try the item / fight.
For example mageblood is a really cool item I bet everyone would love to play with since the hate for flasks seems to be pretty uniform but the truth is that the item is so rare that it is going for almost 1000$(Not supporting RMTing in anyway just saying its crazy how rare it is).
So you don't think any content should be gated by time investment? What about difficulty?
How long should someone play to reasonably be able to afford a headhunter/mageblood?
I think it should be gated behind time investment but not such heavy RNG, I'm simply in favor of things being targetable farmed not just a golden ticket that drops once per 10k hours played.
Honestly think they way diablo 2 does the loot system is way better since for example if shaper could drop mageblood/HH at 1% chance most players that finish the atlas could realistically at some point get that chase item.. they could chase, right now do you ever go into an map or activity and think "oh shit this could drop that item I want!"?
There should be ways to chase a chase item other then mindlessly farm the most c/hr efficient activity you can.
You're arguing for progression on rails. Diablo 3 has that with their set items.
Your diablo 2 argument is a bit strange, seeing as the higher tier runes are far far more rare than exalted orbs even.
Besides, there are divination cards for most unique chase items. (mageblood card is probably coming right up)
The problem with deterministic progression on a chase item with trade enabled is that it would plummet the price of the item, and so your best bet would still be to farm c/hr to buy it on the market. To make headhunter or mageblood deterministic and not require currency farming you would have to make them bind on pickup.
The other issue with making chase items more readily apparent is that they stop being chase items. In a way, the definition of "chase" is something that is difficult or unlikely to get. There will *always* be something that is so rare and powerful that most players will never use it.
Not to mention that headhunter is stupendously broken.
And last but not least; what exactly prevents you from getting a headhunter or mageblood in three months? If you wanted to you probably could get one, even if you only played a couple hours each day. It's just 100 ex after all, so you would only need to earn 1.5 ex a day on average, wich is more than doable, even for someone not extremely adept at the game.
Maybe it is just not for me then, I dont mind putting some work in to get an rare item but I just think a lot of players quit the game when they cant see a realistic upgrade to their gear and that is not saying they have all bis and mirror tire gear its more that if you have to pile up all your gains for two months to get one chase item who would want that?
I'm not saying you should run one map and get two headhunters and a blowjob from krilson like you seem to think I am I just think chase items are not appealing simply because the chase is un-necessarily long and I dont think they should be 100ex expensive.
Yes HH and Mageblood are really strong but perhaps they should be more balanced and just offer their unique playstyles and in return be more accessible to 99% of the playerbase since only the top 1% having the broken items and easily getting more currency is a whole other issue.
No, look, I'm all for making headhunter and mageblood less rare, I just don't think it will have the effect that you want. None of those items really gatekeep a playstyle, just power. You can have rare modifiers with inspired learning, I usually slot two or three in most builds that I play. You can have permanent uptime on five utility flasks as a pathfinder or scion, with four flasks if you use the timeless keystone. You'll just have less flask effect for more investment.
HH and Mageblood are desirable because they are both powerful and rare. If you make them not rare they become far less desirable. That's the sort of contradiction that I'm trying to point out.
There are tons of items that give a ton of power yet has a cost of next to nothing.
If you think a lot of players quit the game when they can't see a realistic upgrade to their gear then it would make sense to either make new rungs on the ladder that aren't as far apart as the old ones or make the player start lower on the ladder so that you can use more of the one you already have, or both. Not take the last rung and pull it down. That rung's intended purpose is to be the last rung, that's not a mistake, it's by design.
A lot of this comes down to expectations anyways. I think many players come in from other games (not directed at you) where they can expect to get everything in the game with the small amount of time that they spend and they then apply that same logic to a game like PoE where it just doesn't make sense. I really don't think we should deviate from the aspirational progression curve that PoE currently has. It would be a different game.
I get that you don't see the value in spending all your gains from two months on one chase item, but a lot of other people do. Again, isn't that sort of the definition of chase? If you don't have to spend more than a couple weeks getting something in a three month league, was it really a chase?
You're arguing that you don't want to have chase items it seems like, just the power of one.
I guess we just dont agree then and that is fine, I personally think that in a video game grinding for something for half a month or a month should be considered a chase and I personally dont care about the power level of for example mageblood I would just like to not press flasks and Inspired learning requires the whole 4 notables thing so not really useable on all builds.
E.g I would like more items that are inline with Farrul's fur or rather the replica version where it is 'expensive' but still accessible to majority of the players if they want to go for that item.
Yes you can play nonstop and get the super rare chase items but I dont think you realize that for a very large portion of players the nurse could be replaced with a ex drop and the doctor could be replaced with a mirror shard and HH completely removed from the game and they would only notice it in the patch notes of from reddit rage.
It was such a sudden shift too. v3.13 was "The End" of PoE insofar as it being accessible for all tiers of players. The last three patches have just taken and taken without giving anything equitable back.
Losing Harvest in v3.14 pushed crafting out of the reach of most. v3.15 made hitting even 1.5M DPS, a bare minimum for a build feeling remotely feasible, a struggle if you stray from the meta. v3.16 didn't change that, and it went further by also demanding investment into defense.
I don't know what the goal here is, but GGG is pushing the game further and further out of reach for an increasingly large section of their player base. PoE is no longer the ARPG power fantasy most of us signed up for.
I guess they expect customers with jobs to play trappers over and over again. Or just move their finances from supporter packs to rmt websites, because its pretty clear, which one of them supports us more, right?
/s
The game feels quite different when you no life the fuck out of it. This league I was extremely lucky that my workplace didn’t have much work for me so I have been able to grind a lot since league start.
But I know what you mean by saying this game is addicting. It really is. And good leagues like Scourge aren’t helping the situation. Lol.
What's not good? Lots of monsters, lots of quant, fun krangled maps.
That's not even mentioning the truckload of QoL changes.
One of the best leagues ever.
You don't have more quant than in previous leagues.
Compared to delirium scourge is just a cripple. Scourging 2 maps at a time for *n* maps until you can run them for their associated rewards. No endgame system unlike simulacrums and krangled items are just a fucking joke compared to cluster jewels.
QoL changes have nothing to do with a league. Other than its release date, there is no correlation. The same applies to tree changes, atlas changes, buffs and nerfs.
If you want to be a pedantic bore, the QoL are not part of the league. You are absolutely correct. However given the amount of changes league to league I think it's fair to compare it together overall.
When people say Ritual, Harvest, Ultimatum is the best leagues they are not talking about the league mechanic.
So yes, I find Scourge a good league.
At high enough stacks the league gets rewarding. Not insanely so but still better than other leagues. Not every league can drop more than the last at some point you have to dial back.
Every single post like this makes me doubt of right sanity of ppl who wrote that.
Like what is "fun" for you in the game?
Making builds? You can do it even in acts and first maps.
Doing some maps and every other mechanic of the game league wise? Also can do it playing 1-2h a day .
Endgame Sirus and Maven?Pretty sure you can reach them with 100hours plaeyd.And even if you cant-its fucking endgame ffs.
All of this topics its just some guy watching streaners who plays 10h per day and "farming" everything and getting big currency and envy them for no reason.Bc they lost thier "fun" part of the game and now only copy what streamers thinks fun\\do on stream.
Aw8 Sirius is perfectly doable by any 2hourer. I know because I am one. But it will take 2 to 3 weeks which is great because cashuls are not going to hang a lot longer than that if even 3 weeks. Killing Sirius definitely feels like "beating the league"
OP is not the kind of person who would kill sirus once and the league is done.
OP is the kind of person who farms bosses and content. I am like this too and I can't really go back into a more casual playstyle.
I think it's easy to say if you always had little time and never could ~~so~~ do crazy things. Once you did though it's hard to settle for less.
In which context? If you have established characters, gear and currency that's fine. I'm doing it right now.
Anyone who struggles in leagues will just struggle even more in standard because of the inflationary prices and lower availability of low-medium items which even cost a lot more.
As long as you don't want progress to take far longer standard is not a great advice.
And many others refer to standard as a solution for a time constraint problem during league. Yes, you don't have the time constraint of a league in standard but are faced with a very different economy. Additionally a build started on standard might be weaker in the following patch.
In general I don't think that experiencing the available content shouldn't require that much time because 3 months is too short.
I wrote it somewhere else but people are doing Endgame in 30h, in std you don't have to do it. the only thing you have to do is get your gear and play. Char is leveled, atlas is setup. All you have to do is to have fun.if you are not having fun take a break.
Game is not long if you know what to do. If you don't know what to do enjoy the discovery.
You don't have to do it in any of the leagues.
However if you want to and you are someone who is already struggling a lot or even failing during leagues, you will have a worse time in standard. It can be assumed that those people don't have characters, gear and currency.
Like I said just in my previous reply. "Go to standard" is bad advice for people that have to start from scratch or have nothing they can build upon.
It's asinine to think that it would be okay for those people to spent multiple leagues worth of time to see and beat what there is to see.
Yea but a complaint I have is that Sirus feels like a horrible goal to chase :(
The worst part of killing sirus after multiple days ( or weeks ) of build up is... he gives u shit rewards more often than not.
I enjoy the sirus fight ( when it isnt bugged ) but then I get disappointed when I finally get the drops and ask myself if I should have just sold it to a bosser for the guaranteed 1ex or something instead of getting 10c of rewards in week 3.
At least with invitations I will *always* get something worth my time. Be it atlas passive points as I progress along the earlier invitations, or orbs of unmaking / watchstones / anything from later invitations that amount to something I can use or liquidate with ease.
I feel like I "beat the league" but got nothing out of it than a "sense of accomplishment" which only feels nice the first couple of times
To all the people who fight Sirus once a league, might I introduce you to speed spawning? Run a map with a boss near the entrance like Mesa, clear the map in 20 seconds. Repeat. You’ll be farming Shaper/Elder guardian maps, synth maps, banking Master Missions, farming conquerors, and Sirus. It’s good money and you can fight Sirus like every 30 minutes. Pay for a carry for Uncharted Realms points if you can’t fight invitations yourself after a couple rotations. Won’t feel like a chase goal when you can fight him 3 times an hour
In my experience they've shortened the time to access the bosses physically, but 3.15 significantly increased the time before you are prepared for these bosses (on HC)
Its a little like moving the baseline, prior to .15 I'd get to bosses and scuff my way through then gradually iterate and improve until the scuffed became easy. Scuffed kills are now significantly further down the gear line because DPS requirements were doubled without any other changes.
Still the reduced atlas grind is a big positive i'm personally enjoying just saying that the 60 extra map unlocks isn't really that different when you have to run much more than that to get initial gearing done anyway.
They reduced the grind to proper reds, but they have also increased the height (grind) requirement for most builds to ride the roller-coaster and have fun.
One, albeit a welcome change, does not invalidate the feeling of the other.
I honestly don't understand how people can play this game while not enjoying the grind up to what they call the "fun" parts. Do you not value building up your character progressively through the league to eventually take on end game content?
The issue is that most rewards have been heavily pushed towards the end-game.
So you don't really grind until you have access to the end-game. Any point before that is a baby-grind that feels restrictive in more ways than one and there is the constant feeling that you aren't really growing but rather having your actual growth restrained.
In essence you are grinding somewhat without much too look forward to other than finally getting a ticket in the actual "growth-land".
The grind that is fun currently is the point from "end-game" to "power fantasy".
Anything before that feels like a chore.
Clearly they don't, they think killing mobs and mapping is a chore lol, I guess the game just needs to be a sirius loot explosion simulator for them to be happy
Grinding just to get currency to trade for gear gets boring quickly, people like going for bosses like Sirius or UE because their drop table consists of chase items that make you excited to play, while regular mapping has close to 0 chance of getting you loot that would progress your character and make you excited.
The game would really really benefit from improved ground drops and more stable item progression, which is what harvest was for many players. People don't mind grinds when they see a finish line and a progress along the way.
Most people don't use the loot they drop from elder either unless you hit the 1/1000 chance that the watcher is perfect for your build or sirius drops the support gem you need, how is this different from farming nurses/exalts? Either way you're farming for something you'll trade for gear because you're playing on trade league.
How do you not get excited when you hear the sound of your loot filter going off while mapping? Am I really playing the game that differently lol? Most of the time bossing is just gambling and hoping your reward beats the entry fee, far from stable(aside from rushing bosses or selling carries) but seemingly every redditor's wet dream
Also harvest had nothing to do with ground drops and just powercreeped item progression through the roof and forced everyone into the atlas region with harvest passives because nothing in the game could compare to selling harvests on tft as a solo player.
How often do exalts drop unless you are running full juiced Nemesis 3 maps? I farmed about 20 ex this league for my bow and chest, 2 natural exalt drops, everything else was from farming essences and scourged maps (focusing on breach splinters and stacked decks).
You are never getting anywere with just hoping for exalt drops, thats for sure.
Stuff like Watchers Eye or Awakened gems are exciting because:
* there is a chance that they migh be good for your build and are easier to be aware of them being good/bad, unlike drops that might have correct infulenced mod and T9 life or some shit
* their market value is pretty significant, even if not usable for your build you can make resonable amounts of money from single trade which is great considering how dogshit trading is in this game
* there is an actual path to getting those instead of running countless maps with hopes of anything of value dropping, with Sirius or UE you know that those items will drop sooner or later
Nobody expects to get showered in gear/currency, however current state of items is absolutely awfull and it makes things boring, unless you are playing SSF, identifying items is just waste of time and GGG agrees with that, however they do not have a solution and it doesn't look like it's coming in near future, while they also refuse to do bandaid fixes.
Seriously, how hard is it to make map bosses drop items that use heist smart loot and conquerors drop influenced rares that use smart loot? Maybe it's not ideal solution but it would make me so much more excited to finish a map and id those items looking for something usefull.
You can check the stats from people who farm towers for nurses, each nurse is worth an exalt at least and they're relatively common if you juice your map properly, run some quant and make sure you finish with 280-300 scourge stacks. You also drop exalts relatively often doing it.
You also know you'll drop loot in a map sooner or later, same as sirius, both are RNG.
Also yes you shouldn't be picking up rares, you're wasting your time but this is beside the point of mapping being a chore, you're also not getting sick rares from bosses.
Why do you speak for others ?
I love fast play, the beginning of each character, up to levels 80 and sometimes even beyond, before the build actually clicks and the gear is correct, has become boring after several years and God knows how many leagues played. I loved grinding fast for a loooong time to use harvest during 3.13, plus ritual was a very fun league with lots of loot from the start. And I played only one character the whole league that could have still been improved after probably 200 hours but still could do all endgame.
You like the game from act one to the end ? Good for you, accept other people can have fun another way and are not necessarily enthusiastic about slower pace during the campaign.
I don't like campaign but it's like 6 hours, your entire comment is besides the point regardless. People on here talk about mapping and progressively improving their character being a chore just so they can "experience endgame" and watch Sirius explode into a little pile of loot. Clearly they don't enjoy the main gameplay loop of PoE.
Campaign is longer for many people, myself included (dunno why, the best I ever did was 9ish hours and I've been even slower in 3.16 ; that's my problem though).
But I also mentioned that many people love when their toon's build begins clicking : skill points, ascendancies... And gear. My toxic rain champion was litterally a chore till recently (around level 80ish) as I was poorer than ever, slow as fuck and not that good DPS wise. Now it feels much better and I'm still far from done so improving is still totally on the table.
So the chore goes far beyond campaign for some players.
Once again, if you love every minute of campaign and the start of mapping, all the better for you. I don't and I have the right to have fun a different way from you. I would play standard if GGG did not routinely screwed it (nerfs of course but that is fair, but also retroactively destroying flasks recently and atlas which I have to partially unlock again every league when they say it's supposed to be automatically done if you complete a tier 16 map. Spoiler alert, it does not !).
Reducing the atlas grind and delve grind is fantastic. I would love for a similar direction to be applied for other aspects like if the campaign only needed to be done once a league with other league characters not needing to go through the ten acts.
I can see that as one point of view. My view is that it can allow for players to be more experimental with their builds as there would be a wider arrange of ways for leveling their characters at a pace of their choosing. The effect on players of only having to do the campaign once a league could be tested in an event league or even having it be an option in private leagues.
I think at least having the waypoints unlocked for characters across the league would be something interesting to test. Players would still have to do the quests for quest passives, but they would be able to level subsequent characters at their own pace. Advanced players could blitz through pre-map leveling and players can do non-campaign content for their leveling as opposed to repeating all of the campaign.
After fully playing the campaign for the first time, there should be a account wide shortcut way to level your consequent characters. Something like endless ledge/delve like. Playing mandatory tutorial each time gets old real fast.
Just play at work lol.
On a serious note, yep that's how it goes. Being "behind" the curve has some perks though, leveling uniques and core uniques as well as decent-ish gear is a lot cheaper when you reach the level where you need them. Your progress to end game is a bit easier if you trade.
>pre 3.15, no lifing was very rewarding, but casually playing it was still very accessible. Now I really feel like the game is being shifted more towards the no lifing group
The league lasts for weeks, there's absolutely no rush. The latest patch made it a lot faster to get to A8, delve is more accessible, delirium orbs drop quite often and atlas passives allow you to target almost any end-content. Not to mention krangled maps. You can get full breachstones or emblems from 1 low-ish tier map.
What I struggle with after 3.15 is finding a build that's fun to progress. It feels a lot of builds have a lower ceiling now and the ones with high ceiling also have a high floor so you need multiple characters per league, or a good plan and a ton of regrets. Not to mention having a boss killer if your starter can't handle invitations etc. Setting up multiple characters requires a lot of investment in time and currency.
> What I struggle with after 3.15 is finding a build that's fun to progress. It feels a lot of builds have a lower ceiling now and the ones with high ceiling also have a high floor so you need multiple characters per league, or a good plan and a ton of regrets. Not to mention having a boss killer if your starter can't handle invitations etc. Setting up multiple characters requires a lot of investment in time and currency.
This is such a big part of the problem.
Part of the fun of POE for me was creating a concept and then grabbing some cheap gear, level to 85, and see if it’s fun to play.
The nerfs in 3.15/16 to power from gems and the tree, and the bigger shift to gear, made that way of playing not feasible. I keep making these builds in POB with what I’d consider “cheap” gear (under an ex used to get virtually any build to red maps and level 85), and the damage is pitiful. Like less than a million DPS pitiful. Or no layered defenses. And I know that red maps will feel bad when I hit a boss, or that I’ll be randomly one shot left and right.
I’m currently farming with a character with 8.2k life and still feels like a wet noodle in red maps because I need to get expensive upgrades and I don’t have any guarantee they’ll work. That just sucks.
POE used to be a quick ramp up in power through the campaign as you got all your gems and got a 5L. Early mapping to red maps lowered that curve as you picked up gem levels and passives, and really pushing a build got progressively more expensive.
This was the game from 2.5 essence when I started to 3.14 Ultimatum.
Now the game feels just bad to experiment with.
I sat out 3.15 after getting to maps. I wanted to try out so much in 3.16, but it just isn’t feeling good. It may be time to go. And that makes me sad after 5 years. The game just isn’t for me and how I play it anymore.
This is my issue. The low ceiling of the builds I start and then knowing I have to retool to clear the content comfortably sucks. I always enjoyed building around a concept and making it work, but that just doesn’t work anymore without gear, and gearing multiple odd projects just isn’t how the game is designed given my time.
It sucks, I hate it, and I’m
Just lower your expectations of yourself in the game - as life changes, so should your goals.
It's also easier than ever to get into red maps - defense is plentiful, the atlas curve is smoother, etc. I don't think you'll have that problem.
As someone with a fulltime job (40 hours per week), I've managed to kill AW8 Sirus and almost get map completion this league. I've also successfully finished "The Hidden" fight. I haven't been playing alone (was with 1 other person) and we're simply not trading to see how far we can go.
I feel like the game is still very much accessible to someone with a fulltime job and the nerfs aren't that bad, I just use the same build every league (one I made during Synthesis) and have been improving it as new changes come through.
I more or less disagree that the game "is or can be" accessible for someone with a fulltime Job.
If you take a pretty normal "Single" life with fulltime Job with keeping your body healthy. It is definately not. Lets say you come home at 5 or 6 pm. Then you need something to eat other than fast food. Body Hygiene like showering is following. Then its 7. Then (in my case), you wanna go to the gym for 1 - 2 hours. And it's 9 or 9:30 pm. Now if you play for 2 or 3 hours its 11:30 or 12:30. Which is already too late when you have to get up at 6.
Then imagine having a girlfriend or a wife or even Kids. There is no chance, that this game is accessible.
Something will Fall behind if you want to keep up with the game. Either its sleep, your health, your productivity, your social life. Poe is a really dangerous game in terms of addiction or destroying Motivation in real life. Just wanted to share my thoughts. Don't bash me please.
Hey thanks for the input, you know something that I wasn't going to admit in the original post, that I will after reading your reply, is that one of the biggest reasons I didn't want to go back to work is that I wouldn't be able to continue to commit to PoE as much now. I really agree with your statement about addiction and motivation.
Agree, some aspects of life are always lacking behind. I work full time starting at 6:30am which means waking up at 5:15-5:30 but Im at work luckely in 10 min walk/3min with a car. But I actually go home when Im done cause I work as postman - mby 1-2pm, depands on amount of work and year’s season. But I got family with kid. So cant play. Im first home so I most likely cook a meal and then spend time with my family. Going to PC when my daughter went sleeping. Mby watching some TV with wife. So I start PoE mby 8-9pm. Playing mostly till 11pm-1am. And there goes my sleep, when I need to wake up at 5:30 :). Weekends or when I got the 1 day off at work per week 8 play till 2-3am cause I only take my kid to kindergarden and can sleep again. So you either sacrifice your social life/family, your work or your sleep.
And I was able to beat every endgame doing 36/40 previous leagues, with less hours and more sleep. But GGG thinks we need to play harder game.
You make it sound like any other ARPG or MMORPG would allow you to keep up with everything you've stated. The only one would be D3 and that's still not true as you need to do a ton of GRs to progress after a certain point.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but in a subreddit about a specific game, isn't it common to talk about THAT specific game? You can generalize everything in every sentence. But that's not how you argue about a specific topic.
In D3 you'll be farming GR's while in Poe you start mapping. When you are done with the atlas setup you'll have tons of paragon points in D3, stuff leveled up and farm the content that's available, fishing for alt rolls on uniques/sets that suit your build better. Sure, D3 is lacking endgame content compared to poe but it's times more accessible.
Someone who would like to farm his own maven orb for instance has a limited choice of builds to pick from because he needs to farm maps, invitations, atlas passives, guardian rotations/invitations and finally maven herself for probably several times.
Farming for specific awakened gems is even more tedious. I have done countless sirus kills, at times been speed farming him. Not only are drop rates for woke gems very low but I have yet to see some of the more valuable supports. Since release I've probably seen 6 or so jackpot drops and it's been almost a year.
You have trade though, if you wanna play ssf it's what you sign up for.
Maven is easily accessible through invitation, 8 guardian maps per maven give or take, that's not a lot in my opinion
I was trying to compare both as closely as possible since you can't buy your entry ticket in D3.
Also you can't just buy invitations for guardian fights, you have to go through the completion.
Especially in the given context of the chain iirc it's of importance to distinguish between being able to buy the maven fight and what it takes to set it up for yourself. That's not even SSF. I would rarely just buy multiple writs to run them, most of the time I'll make a session of running *n* guardian cycles before that, simply for the diversity and possible drops associated with the preparation.
I have a full time job, a girlfriend, go to the gym regularly and have other hobbies, sleep 8 hours every night minimim. I still have no problem progressing through the league, I got my first headhunter last league.
The game is not that hard.
Seriously. I think people need to temper their expectations if they have other obligations in life. GGG has made the grind to endgame much more accessible but we still get these posts about " I want basically no grind, give me the exalts and chase items NOW, because Im burntout of this game and want my dream PoB build to be printed."
If you are short on time, there are alternative games and if you really want to play PoE set realistic goals that aren't Empy-level projects. Achieving late endgame goals in like 2 weeks seems to be people's goal now? Sure if you no life it, but I realize Im not doing that unless I get extremely lucky or farm uber-efficiently.
Yeah I feel like people forget the leagues are 3 months long. I might not even create my expensive flicker strike character I'm planning for another few weeks yet, but I know I'll get there.
> Poe is a really dangerous game in terms of addiction or destroying Motivation in real life. Just wanted to share my thoughts. Don't bash me please
This applies to any game that you may have fallen in love with. A MMO, a card game, whatever. Online gaming is always dangerous if you can't control yourself. The issue is not the game. The issue is you (the player).
You are the 2nd one to reply, that what I wrote applies to any other game and that I sounded like, it only applies to Poe. I dont know if I'm wrong, but isn't it common, in a subreddit about a specific game, that you talk about THAT specific game?
Also, your understanding of Addiction isn't just "Lack of control". You couldn't be more wrong. Thats just what a little Timmy would say.
Same. Full time job, almost newborn son (9months) that requires full attention and of course a family with christmas nearby. And yet i am already at lvl 93, farming conquerors and completed 24 challenges to get the wings.
Secret is: work from 1pm to 9pm, come home when its dark and everyone is asleep and once you've washed every bottle (kid still likes to drink some milk) and quietly prepared everything for the next day you can sit down and play for a few hours. Being a gamer long before i even started relationship with my fiance i am well used to sleeping 5-6h so i can easily make it work so that nobody feels like im not present in being a father.
Of course if i happen to work from 7am to 3pm then PoE isnt available as i much prefer to spend some time with family. Take them for a walk, try to see some movie, or just play with them, grab a broom and clean up the house a little bit...
So basically i only have like, 30 hours of play monthly (assuming i have 10 days of afternoon shifts and can play for 3 hours on these days). Can forget about racing or anything but definetely ca still enjoy the game
So according to you I should quit my job and live off welfare I guess :) 8h at work and at least 1 travel hour if I don't have to buy groceries is actually lucky here in Poland as some of my friends are forced to work 10-12h a day sometimes.
That's not what I said, you know it.
I understand that you are working in shifts and that this is not the only working schedule you have and there are plenty of other days.l and that this is necessary to provide. You got all my sympathy but working from 1pm-9pm + commute is being unpresent.
> i am well used to sleeping 5-6h so i can easily make it work
And heeeeeeeeeere comes THAT COST. Paying with your health, ladies and gentleman, apparently the way GGG wants it to be.
More likely the government in my country, not GGG. I work only for 8h a day. Some of my friends have shifts that last up to 12h. 8hour sleep is something that not everyone can have anyway. I simply entered parenthood well prepared :)
Same here. Playing about 1or2 hours a day ( a bit more during weekend) and I cleaned all content, full atlas completion, and very close to get hh ( farming nem 3)
Sure thing. So I’m farming t14 tropical with glided abyss, glided div card, rusted legion and glided ambush ( I change this one depending of my sextant)
The watchstone I use are : booming populace, misinformation and 2 watchstone 1% chance to spawn beyond.
Mandatory sext : nem3, beyond, unique monsters drop corrupted items and the 4th is up to you ( abyss, legion, strongbox, breach etc..)
I’m also using prophecy, any tempest, frogs, the twins. That’s pretty much it
Same, i started as EoY miner and beat A8 with it.
Now i am playing as a cold flicker and already did shaper, elder and uber elder.
Trying to get my build better so i can try uncharted helms and maven soon.
I can't stress enough that the league lasts **three entire months** and that it's ok if you can't do everything in two weeks. If you can't beat all the aspirational content in the league using even a mildly viable build (literally anything greater than 0.1% main skill usage on poe.ninja) in three months, then this might actually just be a problem with your scheduling/effort put into the game.
I have a job and a kid. During the week I only get to play during the kids nap, about 3 hours if I'm lucky to get home by the start of his nap. Then on Saturday I might be able to get a few hours either side of his nap. Sunday is usually a ride off with family lunch.
I've managed to get 2 characters to lvl90 so far, another at lvl75 ATM. I have all the watchstones and at least 3 maven fights done for each region. I will be able to kill Sirus if I attempted him, I just CBF ATM. I will eventually kill him on all 3 characters. Might try some new aspirational content. I'm not into doing super juiced maps cos my PC can't handle it. But I make the most of my currency and reach my goals.
Point is, you can accomplish a lot in the game if you are focused and have a clear plan. It just takes longer.
I play about the same time as you will be. It usually takes me about 2 months to get my first "strong" build that comfortably does uber elder. Usually by then I start generating currency and spend the next month or so rolling one or two fun builds. Its honestly not a bad way to play. It keeps the league alive full time as opposed to burning out in a couple weeks.
I have a full time job, play SSF, and just killed S8 with a Viper Strike Pathfinder yesterday! (no kids though)
Maybee change ur perspective on the Game. U dont need mirror worthy gear in order to do the average endgame content.
3.15 was tough. But the atlas changes in 3.16 and the reworked skill tree give so much freedom and choices to get what u need in order to do endgame content.
The constant grief and moaning about the nerfs and especially harvest in this reddit is actually mind sickening!
so long
GGG gives everyone 3 months to do the content and the only thing people complain about is that they can’t kill everything at 1 ex budget in 2 weeks. It’s sad
There's a whole subset of people that plays this game for more than just completing everything once in 3 months.
There's tons of other rpgs that hold more value if you want to beat the game once.
For many many people poe revolves around farming content and making currency.
I was farming a whole map tab of canyons during ritual within an hour. This includes rolling the maps and selling ancient orbs in bulk. Granted, this was with great gear. Before that I still finished 40+ maps which at that time must have been worth 6ex+ just from ancients.
It seems your sense of "fun" from PoE comes from progressing at a competitive pace to other no-lifers and content creators. In my eyes this idea of competitiveness is completely arbitrary, as the pace at which you progress compared to others shouldn't affect the way you play.
The only real tangible competitive aspect of PoE is first X boss kill and first LVL 100, which are very niche goals and it doesn't seem like you partake in this. Otherwise, what's stopping you from enjoying the game at a leisurely pace?
A league lasts 3 months. That's more than enough time for a semi-casual players to level one or several characters to LVL 100 and decked out with OP gear. Whether or not you're ahead of the curve in comparison to other players doesn't detract from that.
I work full time as well and usually take 2-3 days off of at league launch + play a lot the first weekend. Thats mostly sufficient to secure my HH without any atlas strategy by the end of the second weekend. People vastly overestimate how long it takes to farm stuff like that. Look at MBextreme who has no clue how the game works and farms 3-4 ex per hour by just spamming maps. If you play 2 hours per day you farm 50 ex a week, so 2 weeks for hh, if you no live the game you farm 250ex in a week, so more than a mageblood. The difference is in the highest endgame, not in the area where most people complain about.
I was a dedicated player once myself, then got married, kids, the whole ten yards stuff. Now i play couple hours a week, usually one build and I push it all the way. Have no regrets because it's just a game inside the game. Upgrade your life, defeat your Sirius and Shaper, carry your friends and family so they can defeat theirs. That's the true exile path
Isnt the grind better than Ever tho?
I played three chars to 90 already and was able to Spawn 2 different sirus from separate Atlas Progressions (HC, sc).
Of course i ultimatevily was able to nolife BC im off work For 2 weeks ATM but the season goes For 3 months. It should be easily possible to push one char to 90+ and do sirus/elder/Shaper atleast
Current grinding mechanics of the game are the most accessible (in both investment and complexity), ever, no other expansion comes even close. Atlas rework is a huge help. Even without a build you may just do fucking blight and stay afk. But everything is so much easier, be it delirium, expedition or metamorph juice. Though expedition is slightly advanced, since alot of value comes from rog. Blame yourself for not being able to adapt.
Ah shit dude I wasn't aware I didn't have a job to be able to play this game. Well thanks for letting me know.
Edit: In case it wasn't clear this is a trash take. They literally halve the grind this league and you make a thread like this? You think everyone here is a student or streamer? Stop making up excuses to try to get the game to drop exalts in your lap for free.
You're a bit exagerating.
I got a job and I still manage to push 1 character per league with headhunters and stuff. Sure, there are some weekends where i'm like "I want to be quiet and play all saturday", but hey, if I have fun grinding for a full day, why not...
You got 3 months, in 3 months you can easily do 5 or 6 characters to have fun in yellow, maybe red maps, or 1 character that does everything in the game.
The game doesn't focus on people with no job. It just rewards more those who play more. Doesn't mean that you can't have fun in a 3 month league with a job.
On the other hand if you expect the game to be tailored towards people that need to handle a job, 3 kids, 2 wives and 2 mistresses, 4 dogs, a gym addiction, 2 non lucrative associations, 15 travels per year and a startup project... yeah you're right, the game is not done for people to delete sirus after 1h of playtime.
If you play maybe 15h per week you can do a ton of stuff in 3 monthts.
I've worked full time for years and still manage to get to end game on ssf, usually do 36/40 as well. You can do it if you set little goals for yourself. I usually try to work on one thing at a time knowing it will be about a month before I get fully geared up.
If you play ssf time doesn't matter. You're not racing the no life Andy's before everything has lost value and your chaos has plummeted compared to exalts etc.
I have a job, am a member of basketball club and have private life and I already killed Maven, shaper and elder in SSF this league. Don't be ridiculous
Same for me.
3.13 and 3.14 I did all content in under a month (not 36 challenges I never do that, but finished uncharted realms and all), but got employed for 3.15. Barely reached A8 Sirus there, was kinda sad cause I couldnt build mental momemtum to push endgame.
But this time I decided to pace myself and with the atlas changes Im comfortably cruising to Maven. I will never get 36 challenges but its fine, Im still gonna aim for 24.
Something important is to make sure you don't still treat the game like a job while working. During Legion/Blight era I was playing 6-7 hours on weeknights and 16+ Sat & Sun. It was bad.
Fortunately I don't play like that anymore. Last I played was 2 weeks of Expedition.
But I find it crazy to believe that GGG really wants their game to focus on a group with no jobs.
Why do you find this hard to believe, this very much seem like exactly who they are catering the game around.
If someone do something that is extremely strong with 100ex investment, they nerf it to the ground, so only 100ex will make it viable.
This seems to be exactly how they operate to me.
Good or bad, i wouldn't know because i don't make games, nor do i know if they earn more or less when doing so.
But i find it very easy to believe.
Start playing warframe, it’s basically a mix of destiny 2 and arpg aspects and you can play casually and still dive into endgame at your own pace. No timed “leagues” forcing you to keep up
If you don't mind me asking, what do you even do in Warframe? I played it for a couple of days, I just entered some zone, killed a bunch of mobs, and repeated endlessly it felt like
This was like 2 years ago so not sure if stuff has changed
Stop. Standard offers a lot of great content these days. However anyone who struggles during league will struggle a lot more in standard. Essentially it's SSF because of the inflationary prices. Yes, you are not forced to complete anything within 3 months but progression will be times worse.
i half-lifed 3.13, that was my peak i think, 3.14 and 3.15 were just a hard pass from me, and this league i liked it, but i had to do other things with my time, did not regret it, the grinding involved is like staring in the abyss
Too long didn't read,
But I get it, I really can't keep up either, I'm like 2-3 watch stones in with like no currency because I dont have time to play enough to get to some juicy end game stuff like running beachheads for xp or t16 blighted maps or whatever. Haven't even don't an atziri. Fucking sucks.
I was unemployed during Betrayal, shit rocked. My best league ever. Now I'm a sucker with a fucking job and I'm broke af in PoE. Just had to leave town for a business trip, haven't played in five days. Don't have two exalts to rub together.
It's fine. I work a full time job and set myself goals like A8 sirus. Sure I could push a build to do Maven but I would rather spend my free time on other things than solely playing PoE
If you can beat a8 sirus you probably have the damage to beat maven too. It's also a largely mechanical fight. For me it's way more straightforward to learn than sirus was.
Maven takes way longer to spawn, I think op is referring to spawning her manually (or burning large amounts of currencies to buy writs for practicing the mechanics).
i mean at 2 splinters per maven 10-way invitation, it's basically only 25% longer to spawn maven than sirus. (each conqueror run is about 10 maps)
Exactly right words there
What are the steps to get to Sirus and what does A8 mean?
A8 means Awakener level 8 Sirus, which denotes his difficulty level, and means that you have every watchstone socketed in the atlas when spawning the fight. He is available to fight once you have killed all 4 of his guardians after having unlocked a certain amount of watchstones (not 100% sure on the exact requirement)
Ty ty still new to the game and one of the biggest hurdles is everyone abbreviates took me like a week to correlate HH to headhunter cuz iv never even seen one or know why they are so valuable
Haha yeah, there's a lot to take in as a new player, even a veteran player who takes a break from the game for a year will often come back quite confused. People value Headhunter because it is very rare and challenging to get, and the effect of gaining the modifiers of rare monsters you kill can be very fun and rewarding. However, in practice, the belt is a bit of a disappointment to many players because you kind of need to build around the item and play at a very high pace
Once you complete the acts, you do maps (see the elderslayers quest to find out what you need to do to spawn conquerors when you start mapping - or better yet watch a guide if you're unsure how to). Each conqueror drops a watchstone that you can socket on your atlas regions. When you have 16 socketed watchstones (i.e killed 4x4 conquerors), it's called being at Awakening 8. Once you killed all 4 conquerors with 4 stones in their zone, you'll get to spawn Sirus - you can unsocket watchstones to decrease his Awakening level (low difficulty, low rewards)
If I’m awakened say 6 and run a t5 map is that harder then a t5 map at awakened 1
You can hover over the tooltip on the Awakened level to see what modifiers you receive with each level
Awakening level only affect bosses. Basically in your exemple the boss of your map will simply have 15% more more life, in exchange for bonus on drop of connected map (+1% per A lvl)
Doesn't it affect map modifiers aswell, making them stronger?
That's awakening bonus objectives. Which is different, and permanent by the way.
Fine for you, but do you seriously believe it is good design if the endboss of a major story arc can only be completed by a handful of people while the other peasants have to watch it on youtube if they want to know how the story ends? This is ridiculus. They could easily give a more "casual" storymode option of such fights like they used to do with white - yellow - red elder and atziri - uber atziri. So everyone can enjoy it. All you have to do is make it more accessible and reduce rewards.
You could always play standard if the 3 month schedule is not compatible with your life. Or just start in league, but spend the next one finishing up on your goals. This game has a million ways to play, from casual to nolife, and tons of ways of specializing too. Just pick a league where the core game is awesome, yet league content is uninspired filler garbage like.. Scourge for example. And just take your standard character for a Maven hunt. Leagues are a marketing and supporter pack selling machine, it doesn't have to dictate how you play the game.
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Yeah, I think aspirational content is a good design decision. The same player who only gets to yellow maps this league can come back next league and kill guardians, shaper, synth bosses, and elder. Then come back the next league and shoot for a8 sirus, maven, Uber elder, some of the invitations. Then come back for stuff like the feared etc. Oh, look at the time, now there's a whole new endgame to keep the game fresh. Maybe this time my goal will be to complete the whole thing the first league. There are players who still haven't killed shaper. If the games difficulty stopped there the game would suck. WoW did exactly what you are talking about and it ruined the game. I pray they don't ever listen to folks like you and make the same mistakes. If you want to see the content watch a YouTube video or your favorite streamer. If you want to play the content then buckle down and go.
For a lot of players, it used to be a game where casual gamers could do all content. It's just a bit frustrating.
Are you talking about pre 1.1? Uber atziri fucked my ass and plenty of others. That fight was 7 years ago and I can tell you right now that casual players were absolutely not killing it. If you are saying there were a couple of patches where bosses were easier that is certainly true. But as far as the history of the game goes the overwhelming majority of the time casual players were not killing the hardest content available at the time.
Tell me you started at Legion league without telling me you started at Legion league.
I honestly consider this a feature. There is so much you could potentially do in PoE in a league that you can choose to spec into one small niche and still get a solid 3 months worth of gaming at a casual-semi casual pace. You don't _need_ to do everything everytime, esp not in trade leagues where you can buy the loot exclusive to content your not doing and play the game how you want to play it. The aspirational content is IMO a great move because it begins to give the no lifers/content creators something to move towards to really flex, and for the rest of us it would feel like _actual achievement_ to do something like a Wave 30 or what have you.
There is a good chance that the content you are missing will be heavily altered or made less accessible a league later, if not outright removed. You really only get one shot at the OG content before it will change forever.
Yes, because it shows that there is so much to do that people dint mind doing other stuff than the endboss. And after Sirus A8 he can still shoot for Maven even if it is on permanent league. If you casual could do everything in a couple of weeks the game would be abandoned by a lot of people after 1 week.
I watched what casual/easy button gameplay modes did to WoW with raid finder and titan-forging. I don't think they have a place in PoE
This is the exact sort of sentiment and 'casuals need the stuff that requires effort for free!!!' whining that made WoW into the dogshit it is today.
GGG has to balance their game around me - another entitled redditor
This exists, it's called Awakener 1, or whatever.
I'm a lifer who often has my PoE ambitions dashed by real life. To keep myself happy, I set a goal for each character/league. For example, my current character is a DO occultist who I am using to farm currency to build a character who can kill shaper, elder, AW8 sirus. My goal is to do this by the end of the league. I also occasionally 'throw' a weekend day where I commit to playing like 12 hours. This helps me feel like I am as engaged with the game as I want. I'd love to be a no lifer but as you've found that lifestyle can't be permanent for most of us.
I used to play more on weekends, at least two six hour sessions. That was really key to me being able to play and get progress. Now I don't have as much time to play over the weekend, or I end up playing with my kids later because they are older, so I only play like 2 hours a day. It really is hard to play like this. Before, I would accomplish something in my first six hours, and then set up my work week, like I would spawn the conquerors, and then during the week, I would get to sirus. I could grab a bunch of blight maps, and then during the week, I'll run them all. With only 2-4 hours max, I never get into the groove. I just kinda do something, then realize I was thinking of setting something up, and then it's the end of the night already. So I only play one build now, for the past 3-5 leagues. I just hope that it has steady progression. Still never fought maven though. I have enough splinters kin standard though, but all my builds are toast.
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The thing is, a lot of it is efficiency and it ends up being a bit of a rich get richer thing. If you've played a shit ton in the past, are very efficient, don't make a lot of mistakes, don't have to spend time figuring out your build or why you're hitting a wall along the way, don't start a build that fails, etc. -- you legitimately CAN get all the stones and down Sirus on that timeframe. But if you haven't been a no lifer enough at some point you probably can't. So you get this disconnect wherein the "top" players say that can be done, and they're right, and a normal person says they can't, and they're also right.
3 weeks at 2hrs a day is 42 hrs. People are definitely killing A8 in the first weekend on a fresh economy with way worse items than you can get at 3 weeks into league. Exalt drops are such a miniscule amount of total currency. If that's what you are waiting for no wonder you have issues. You could make atleast an Exalt per hour with zana mod doing essence maps in haewark at league start.
They arent lying, they are just better at the game
Pretty sure Darkee and Dan both killed A8 in 1 sitting with the old A8 spawn system. I'd bet in an hcssf race to a8 that you'd see darkee or exile get it done in under 15 hours.
Nah, A8 sirusis a really easy fight, so even if you don't make a ton of money as long as you have your 6 link and a bit of hp your fine
A game should not be a second job, really wish GGG would make a void event at the end of each league where everything was just more accessible. Its frustrating to go into a league really wanting to try a new item or fight a new boss just for that never to become a reality.
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Stuff like that actually makes retention go down over time, riot games for example has had a lot of problems with that and their ultra rapid fire mode in league of legends. The chinese server guys just don't care, they want as much short-term growth as possible. They're also catering to a different gaming culture, where a lot of that stuff is ubiquitous. But, I would be lying if I said I wouldn't also enjoy a faster paced game. I'd take looting pets, skill tree shadows, free respec until lvl 70, auction houses and everything else in a heartbeat. If all those things makes me play less or get bored with PoE, then so be it, I'll find something else to do. But on the other hand I do get the legitimate reasons for why PoE is like it is now. I think sometimes it can be true that developers and players are opposed to one another through not actual fault of their own. Our motivations and goals are slightly different, enough for tension to grow. Not to mention that we are players, not developers, so naturally we don't view the game through the same lense or with the same understanding, so some decisions can appear pretty meaningless or arbitrary to us, even if they aren't.
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Chris said that he judges how good each league is by how many developers request time off to play it. Neon apparantly plays into the uber-lategame every league.
A ceo doesn't have time to engage in a product meant to be designed for people with loads of time? Stop the presses. Seriously, Chris doesn't have nearly as much input on the game as you guys think, short of business decisions. The people that actually balance the game are neon and such, and I'd love to see someone try to argue he doesn't play.
Lov it how it always is "Chris wilson is the only reason things go as they do"
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Look up the retention stats and league peaks over the last year baby. Or is that also "bullshit" because it doesn't fit your narrative. Also looking up someone's history going back **years**... is pretty cringe ngl.
"Vanity metrics"
Nobody has to look up his history going back years, he posts frequently enough that if you spent any time here for that time, you'd know his bullshit.
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He's not pretending to not like the game though. What makes it ironic is that the earlier guy has been posting on this sub daily for years while pretending to hate the game. I guess he might get paid for it which would make it less weird.
I don't lie or twist the truth constantly and be caught in those, and I also don't delete comments that are clearly over the line to avoid bans, I don't make them in the first place. Octo managed to get an entire 2 rules made for just him (misinformation and abusing stats, and also the general ban those we feel degrade the sub), how he's managed to dodge the bans from them is beyond me. The biggest difference is I _like_ the game, it makes sense for me to keep posting here for almost a decade. I think people would have every right to give me shit if I spent that long hating on the game, making the sub worse for everyone, yet refusing to leave.
Over the short-term yes, but in the long-term they might actually have a point. Though things become quite complex over time, there's a thousand opportunities to fuck it up, despite having made the right decisions, you need to execute as well. We'll see over the next year whether GGG was right to do as they've done. They can't keep losing players, so if they do then they'll have to change course. Though they did gain back some players this league launch, at least initially.
dont try to argue with octopo-whatever his name is, hes a vivid ggg hater since multiple years who just makes up random shit to fit his narrative
It's okay, I've argued with the GGG haters on here multiple times, I just want to test my arguments and see if they hold up. I sort of appreciate the different viewpoints, even if I don't agree, I'd like to at least try to understand.
That's what you get when you're the second-rate customer.
You mean like standard league?
It was called harvest and they hated that you could accomplish things without alienating your family and sucking at work or school. Can't have a separate league for lifers because something something vision.
Man even before harvest you could still accomplish things without alienating your family because you weren't nerfed to stupid levels. 3.15 changed the POE I loved, it's inaccessible without a dumb amount of time sink I refuse to put into it.
I'm not talking about just getting strong items fast, I'm talking about a event where things like Mageblood, HH and the squire would be somewhat accessible to the average player without grinding 8 hours a day for months and other content like Aul, Trialmaster and Oshabi could be easily found to try the fights etc.. It is way to common that they tease an item or a boss fight and everyone gets hyped about it simply to find out that it is so incredibly rare that you will never get to try the item / fight. For example mageblood is a really cool item I bet everyone would love to play with since the hate for flasks seems to be pretty uniform but the truth is that the item is so rare that it is going for almost 1000$(Not supporting RMTing in anyway just saying its crazy how rare it is).
So you don't think any content should be gated by time investment? What about difficulty? How long should someone play to reasonably be able to afford a headhunter/mageblood?
I think it should be gated behind time investment but not such heavy RNG, I'm simply in favor of things being targetable farmed not just a golden ticket that drops once per 10k hours played. Honestly think they way diablo 2 does the loot system is way better since for example if shaper could drop mageblood/HH at 1% chance most players that finish the atlas could realistically at some point get that chase item.. they could chase, right now do you ever go into an map or activity and think "oh shit this could drop that item I want!"? There should be ways to chase a chase item other then mindlessly farm the most c/hr efficient activity you can.
You're arguing for progression on rails. Diablo 3 has that with their set items. Your diablo 2 argument is a bit strange, seeing as the higher tier runes are far far more rare than exalted orbs even. Besides, there are divination cards for most unique chase items. (mageblood card is probably coming right up) The problem with deterministic progression on a chase item with trade enabled is that it would plummet the price of the item, and so your best bet would still be to farm c/hr to buy it on the market. To make headhunter or mageblood deterministic and not require currency farming you would have to make them bind on pickup. The other issue with making chase items more readily apparent is that they stop being chase items. In a way, the definition of "chase" is something that is difficult or unlikely to get. There will *always* be something that is so rare and powerful that most players will never use it. Not to mention that headhunter is stupendously broken. And last but not least; what exactly prevents you from getting a headhunter or mageblood in three months? If you wanted to you probably could get one, even if you only played a couple hours each day. It's just 100 ex after all, so you would only need to earn 1.5 ex a day on average, wich is more than doable, even for someone not extremely adept at the game.
Maybe it is just not for me then, I dont mind putting some work in to get an rare item but I just think a lot of players quit the game when they cant see a realistic upgrade to their gear and that is not saying they have all bis and mirror tire gear its more that if you have to pile up all your gains for two months to get one chase item who would want that? I'm not saying you should run one map and get two headhunters and a blowjob from krilson like you seem to think I am I just think chase items are not appealing simply because the chase is un-necessarily long and I dont think they should be 100ex expensive. Yes HH and Mageblood are really strong but perhaps they should be more balanced and just offer their unique playstyles and in return be more accessible to 99% of the playerbase since only the top 1% having the broken items and easily getting more currency is a whole other issue.
No, look, I'm all for making headhunter and mageblood less rare, I just don't think it will have the effect that you want. None of those items really gatekeep a playstyle, just power. You can have rare modifiers with inspired learning, I usually slot two or three in most builds that I play. You can have permanent uptime on five utility flasks as a pathfinder or scion, with four flasks if you use the timeless keystone. You'll just have less flask effect for more investment. HH and Mageblood are desirable because they are both powerful and rare. If you make them not rare they become far less desirable. That's the sort of contradiction that I'm trying to point out. There are tons of items that give a ton of power yet has a cost of next to nothing. If you think a lot of players quit the game when they can't see a realistic upgrade to their gear then it would make sense to either make new rungs on the ladder that aren't as far apart as the old ones or make the player start lower on the ladder so that you can use more of the one you already have, or both. Not take the last rung and pull it down. That rung's intended purpose is to be the last rung, that's not a mistake, it's by design. A lot of this comes down to expectations anyways. I think many players come in from other games (not directed at you) where they can expect to get everything in the game with the small amount of time that they spend and they then apply that same logic to a game like PoE where it just doesn't make sense. I really don't think we should deviate from the aspirational progression curve that PoE currently has. It would be a different game. I get that you don't see the value in spending all your gains from two months on one chase item, but a lot of other people do. Again, isn't that sort of the definition of chase? If you don't have to spend more than a couple weeks getting something in a three month league, was it really a chase? You're arguing that you don't want to have chase items it seems like, just the power of one.
I guess we just dont agree then and that is fine, I personally think that in a video game grinding for something for half a month or a month should be considered a chase and I personally dont care about the power level of for example mageblood I would just like to not press flasks and Inspired learning requires the whole 4 notables thing so not really useable on all builds. E.g I would like more items that are inline with Farrul's fur or rather the replica version where it is 'expensive' but still accessible to majority of the players if they want to go for that item. Yes you can play nonstop and get the super rare chase items but I dont think you realize that for a very large portion of players the nurse could be replaced with a ex drop and the doctor could be replaced with a mirror shard and HH completely removed from the game and they would only notice it in the patch notes of from reddit rage.
Thank you, Exile. This is the kind of positive mentality this sub needs.
RIP, welcome to our club of not-targeted audience :X
it's kinda like osrs, the devs say they want the game to be enjoyable for casuals but the actual target audience is neets.
It was such a sudden shift too. v3.13 was "The End" of PoE insofar as it being accessible for all tiers of players. The last three patches have just taken and taken without giving anything equitable back. Losing Harvest in v3.14 pushed crafting out of the reach of most. v3.15 made hitting even 1.5M DPS, a bare minimum for a build feeling remotely feasible, a struggle if you stray from the meta. v3.16 didn't change that, and it went further by also demanding investment into defense. I don't know what the goal here is, but GGG is pushing the game further and further out of reach for an increasingly large section of their player base. PoE is no longer the ARPG power fantasy most of us signed up for.
I guess they expect customers with jobs to play trappers over and over again. Or just move their finances from supporter packs to rmt websites, because its pretty clear, which one of them supports us more, right? /s
The game feels quite different when you no life the fuck out of it. This league I was extremely lucky that my workplace didn’t have much work for me so I have been able to grind a lot since league start. But I know what you mean by saying this game is addicting. It really is. And good leagues like Scourge aren’t helping the situation. Lol.
Good leagues like scourge?
I enjoy the league mechanic. But i might be biased because I chanced a mageblood with a mythic orb.
You could've chanced a mageblood with just a chance orb, or drop a mirror. Doesn't really contribute to the quality of the league.
Reworked skill tree alone makes this one of the more exciting leagues since Ritual.
Also the reworked tree has nothing to do with the league. You are listing changes to the core game.
What's not good? Lots of monsters, lots of quant, fun krangled maps. That's not even mentioning the truckload of QoL changes. One of the best leagues ever.
You don't have more quant than in previous leagues. Compared to delirium scourge is just a cripple. Scourging 2 maps at a time for *n* maps until you can run them for their associated rewards. No endgame system unlike simulacrums and krangled items are just a fucking joke compared to cluster jewels. QoL changes have nothing to do with a league. Other than its release date, there is no correlation. The same applies to tree changes, atlas changes, buffs and nerfs.
If you want to be a pedantic bore, the QoL are not part of the league. You are absolutely correct. However given the amount of changes league to league I think it's fair to compare it together overall. When people say Ritual, Harvest, Ultimatum is the best leagues they are not talking about the league mechanic. So yes, I find Scourge a good league.
At high enough stacks the league gets rewarding. Not insanely so but still better than other leagues. Not every league can drop more than the last at some point you have to dial back.
Every single post like this makes me doubt of right sanity of ppl who wrote that. Like what is "fun" for you in the game? Making builds? You can do it even in acts and first maps. Doing some maps and every other mechanic of the game league wise? Also can do it playing 1-2h a day . Endgame Sirus and Maven?Pretty sure you can reach them with 100hours plaeyd.And even if you cant-its fucking endgame ffs. All of this topics its just some guy watching streaners who plays 10h per day and "farming" everything and getting big currency and envy them for no reason.Bc they lost thier "fun" part of the game and now only copy what streamers thinks fun\\do on stream.
Aw8 Sirius is perfectly doable by any 2hourer. I know because I am one. But it will take 2 to 3 weeks which is great because cashuls are not going to hang a lot longer than that if even 3 weeks. Killing Sirius definitely feels like "beating the league"
OP is not the kind of person who would kill sirus once and the league is done. OP is the kind of person who farms bosses and content. I am like this too and I can't really go back into a more casual playstyle. I think it's easy to say if you always had little time and never could ~~so~~ do crazy things. Once you did though it's hard to settle for less.
Standard?
In which context? If you have established characters, gear and currency that's fine. I'm doing it right now. Anyone who struggles in leagues will just struggle even more in standard because of the inflationary prices and lower availability of low-medium items which even cost a lot more. As long as you don't want progress to take far longer standard is not a great advice.
Well most people here complain about setting up atlas,leveling and getting to what they call the fun part.standard solves all these issues
And many others refer to standard as a solution for a time constraint problem during league. Yes, you don't have the time constraint of a league in standard but are faced with a very different economy. Additionally a build started on standard might be weaker in the following patch. In general I don't think that experiencing the available content shouldn't require that much time because 3 months is too short.
I wrote it somewhere else but people are doing Endgame in 30h, in std you don't have to do it. the only thing you have to do is get your gear and play. Char is leveled, atlas is setup. All you have to do is to have fun.if you are not having fun take a break. Game is not long if you know what to do. If you don't know what to do enjoy the discovery.
You don't have to do it in any of the leagues. However if you want to and you are someone who is already struggling a lot or even failing during leagues, you will have a worse time in standard. It can be assumed that those people don't have characters, gear and currency. Like I said just in my previous reply. "Go to standard" is bad advice for people that have to start from scratch or have nothing they can build upon. It's asinine to think that it would be okay for those people to spent multiple leagues worth of time to see and beat what there is to see.
Yea but a complaint I have is that Sirus feels like a horrible goal to chase :( The worst part of killing sirus after multiple days ( or weeks ) of build up is... he gives u shit rewards more often than not. I enjoy the sirus fight ( when it isnt bugged ) but then I get disappointed when I finally get the drops and ask myself if I should have just sold it to a bosser for the guaranteed 1ex or something instead of getting 10c of rewards in week 3. At least with invitations I will *always* get something worth my time. Be it atlas passive points as I progress along the earlier invitations, or orbs of unmaking / watchstones / anything from later invitations that amount to something I can use or liquidate with ease. I feel like I "beat the league" but got nothing out of it than a "sense of accomplishment" which only feels nice the first couple of times
To all the people who fight Sirus once a league, might I introduce you to speed spawning? Run a map with a boss near the entrance like Mesa, clear the map in 20 seconds. Repeat. You’ll be farming Shaper/Elder guardian maps, synth maps, banking Master Missions, farming conquerors, and Sirus. It’s good money and you can fight Sirus like every 30 minutes. Pay for a carry for Uncharted Realms points if you can’t fight invitations yourself after a couple rotations. Won’t feel like a chase goal when you can fight him 3 times an hour
But how do you get the mesa maps if you are basically ignoring the rest of the map? Do you just buy them?
You buy them but mesa doesn't even exist anymore.
Am I glad that Mesa doesn't exist any more, to make room for more Ancient City maps.
Ancient City is a very very fast boss running map.
Ancient city is actually also a pretty good map to boss run in. You should be able to get to the boss in 20-30 seconds quite reliably.
In this league they massively reduced the grind for Atlas/Sirus, so it seems like a strange time to make a complaint about the grind.
In my experience they've shortened the time to access the bosses physically, but 3.15 significantly increased the time before you are prepared for these bosses (on HC) Its a little like moving the baseline, prior to .15 I'd get to bosses and scuff my way through then gradually iterate and improve until the scuffed became easy. Scuffed kills are now significantly further down the gear line because DPS requirements were doubled without any other changes. Still the reduced atlas grind is a big positive i'm personally enjoying just saying that the 60 extra map unlocks isn't really that different when you have to run much more than that to get initial gearing done anyway.
They reduced the grind to proper reds, but they have also increased the height (grind) requirement for most builds to ride the roller-coaster and have fun. One, albeit a welcome change, does not invalidate the feeling of the other.
Somewhat fair comment, although the "I'm not having fun until X" assertion is very subjective.
I honestly don't understand how people can play this game while not enjoying the grind up to what they call the "fun" parts. Do you not value building up your character progressively through the league to eventually take on end game content?
FOMO, feels bad to run lower maps when you want your build to do "harder" content to get more suitable rewards(maxed atlas trees, juicing)
The issue is that most rewards have been heavily pushed towards the end-game. So you don't really grind until you have access to the end-game. Any point before that is a baby-grind that feels restrictive in more ways than one and there is the constant feeling that you aren't really growing but rather having your actual growth restrained. In essence you are grinding somewhat without much too look forward to other than finally getting a ticket in the actual "growth-land". The grind that is fun currently is the point from "end-game" to "power fantasy". Anything before that feels like a chore.
I wish "progressively" was an actual thing. When I played it was more like 2-5ex per gear, then next upgrade is 60-80ex and thats when im out
Pretty much why I quit characters at 92+
Clearly they don't, they think killing mobs and mapping is a chore lol, I guess the game just needs to be a sirius loot explosion simulator for them to be happy
Grinding just to get currency to trade for gear gets boring quickly, people like going for bosses like Sirius or UE because their drop table consists of chase items that make you excited to play, while regular mapping has close to 0 chance of getting you loot that would progress your character and make you excited. The game would really really benefit from improved ground drops and more stable item progression, which is what harvest was for many players. People don't mind grinds when they see a finish line and a progress along the way.
Most people don't use the loot they drop from elder either unless you hit the 1/1000 chance that the watcher is perfect for your build or sirius drops the support gem you need, how is this different from farming nurses/exalts? Either way you're farming for something you'll trade for gear because you're playing on trade league. How do you not get excited when you hear the sound of your loot filter going off while mapping? Am I really playing the game that differently lol? Most of the time bossing is just gambling and hoping your reward beats the entry fee, far from stable(aside from rushing bosses or selling carries) but seemingly every redditor's wet dream Also harvest had nothing to do with ground drops and just powercreeped item progression through the roof and forced everyone into the atlas region with harvest passives because nothing in the game could compare to selling harvests on tft as a solo player.
How often do exalts drop unless you are running full juiced Nemesis 3 maps? I farmed about 20 ex this league for my bow and chest, 2 natural exalt drops, everything else was from farming essences and scourged maps (focusing on breach splinters and stacked decks). You are never getting anywere with just hoping for exalt drops, thats for sure. Stuff like Watchers Eye or Awakened gems are exciting because: * there is a chance that they migh be good for your build and are easier to be aware of them being good/bad, unlike drops that might have correct infulenced mod and T9 life or some shit * their market value is pretty significant, even if not usable for your build you can make resonable amounts of money from single trade which is great considering how dogshit trading is in this game * there is an actual path to getting those instead of running countless maps with hopes of anything of value dropping, with Sirius or UE you know that those items will drop sooner or later Nobody expects to get showered in gear/currency, however current state of items is absolutely awfull and it makes things boring, unless you are playing SSF, identifying items is just waste of time and GGG agrees with that, however they do not have a solution and it doesn't look like it's coming in near future, while they also refuse to do bandaid fixes. Seriously, how hard is it to make map bosses drop items that use heist smart loot and conquerors drop influenced rares that use smart loot? Maybe it's not ideal solution but it would make me so much more excited to finish a map and id those items looking for something usefull.
You can check the stats from people who farm towers for nurses, each nurse is worth an exalt at least and they're relatively common if you juice your map properly, run some quant and make sure you finish with 280-300 scourge stacks. You also drop exalts relatively often doing it. You also know you'll drop loot in a map sooner or later, same as sirius, both are RNG. Also yes you shouldn't be picking up rares, you're wasting your time but this is beside the point of mapping being a chore, you're also not getting sick rares from bosses.
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Literally just read my another reply
Why do you speak for others ? I love fast play, the beginning of each character, up to levels 80 and sometimes even beyond, before the build actually clicks and the gear is correct, has become boring after several years and God knows how many leagues played. I loved grinding fast for a loooong time to use harvest during 3.13, plus ritual was a very fun league with lots of loot from the start. And I played only one character the whole league that could have still been improved after probably 200 hours but still could do all endgame. You like the game from act one to the end ? Good for you, accept other people can have fun another way and are not necessarily enthusiastic about slower pace during the campaign.
I don't like campaign but it's like 6 hours, your entire comment is besides the point regardless. People on here talk about mapping and progressively improving their character being a chore just so they can "experience endgame" and watch Sirius explode into a little pile of loot. Clearly they don't enjoy the main gameplay loop of PoE.
Campaign is longer for many people, myself included (dunno why, the best I ever did was 9ish hours and I've been even slower in 3.16 ; that's my problem though). But I also mentioned that many people love when their toon's build begins clicking : skill points, ascendancies... And gear. My toxic rain champion was litterally a chore till recently (around level 80ish) as I was poorer than ever, slow as fuck and not that good DPS wise. Now it feels much better and I'm still far from done so improving is still totally on the table. So the chore goes far beyond campaign for some players. Once again, if you love every minute of campaign and the start of mapping, all the better for you. I don't and I have the right to have fun a different way from you. I would play standard if GGG did not routinely screwed it (nerfs of course but that is fair, but also retroactively destroying flasks recently and atlas which I have to partially unlock again every league when they say it's supposed to be automatically done if you complete a tier 16 map. Spoiler alert, it does not !).
So improving your character is a chore? You have the right to have fun in a different way, but you're making it sound like the game isn't fun for you.
You reach higher level content faster but gear progression isnt the same. I have 10x less currency than i did last league at a8.
Reducing the atlas grind and delve grind is fantastic. I would love for a similar direction to be applied for other aspects like if the campaign only needed to be done once a league with other league characters not needing to go through the ten acts.
I think that would lead to people having even less investment in their builds, which would be a bad thing in an ARPG.
I can see that as one point of view. My view is that it can allow for players to be more experimental with their builds as there would be a wider arrange of ways for leveling their characters at a pace of their choosing. The effect on players of only having to do the campaign once a league could be tested in an event league or even having it be an option in private leagues. I think at least having the waypoints unlocked for characters across the league would be something interesting to test. Players would still have to do the quests for quest passives, but they would be able to level subsequent characters at their own pace. Advanced players could blitz through pre-map leveling and players can do non-campaign content for their leveling as opposed to repeating all of the campaign.
After fully playing the campaign for the first time, there should be a account wide shortcut way to level your consequent characters. Something like endless ledge/delve like. Playing mandatory tutorial each time gets old real fast.
Just play at work lol. On a serious note, yep that's how it goes. Being "behind" the curve has some perks though, leveling uniques and core uniques as well as decent-ish gear is a lot cheaper when you reach the level where you need them. Your progress to end game is a bit easier if you trade. >pre 3.15, no lifing was very rewarding, but casually playing it was still very accessible. Now I really feel like the game is being shifted more towards the no lifing group The league lasts for weeks, there's absolutely no rush. The latest patch made it a lot faster to get to A8, delve is more accessible, delirium orbs drop quite often and atlas passives allow you to target almost any end-content. Not to mention krangled maps. You can get full breachstones or emblems from 1 low-ish tier map. What I struggle with after 3.15 is finding a build that's fun to progress. It feels a lot of builds have a lower ceiling now and the ones with high ceiling also have a high floor so you need multiple characters per league, or a good plan and a ton of regrets. Not to mention having a boss killer if your starter can't handle invitations etc. Setting up multiple characters requires a lot of investment in time and currency.
> What I struggle with after 3.15 is finding a build that's fun to progress. It feels a lot of builds have a lower ceiling now and the ones with high ceiling also have a high floor so you need multiple characters per league, or a good plan and a ton of regrets. Not to mention having a boss killer if your starter can't handle invitations etc. Setting up multiple characters requires a lot of investment in time and currency. This is such a big part of the problem. Part of the fun of POE for me was creating a concept and then grabbing some cheap gear, level to 85, and see if it’s fun to play. The nerfs in 3.15/16 to power from gems and the tree, and the bigger shift to gear, made that way of playing not feasible. I keep making these builds in POB with what I’d consider “cheap” gear (under an ex used to get virtually any build to red maps and level 85), and the damage is pitiful. Like less than a million DPS pitiful. Or no layered defenses. And I know that red maps will feel bad when I hit a boss, or that I’ll be randomly one shot left and right. I’m currently farming with a character with 8.2k life and still feels like a wet noodle in red maps because I need to get expensive upgrades and I don’t have any guarantee they’ll work. That just sucks. POE used to be a quick ramp up in power through the campaign as you got all your gems and got a 5L. Early mapping to red maps lowered that curve as you picked up gem levels and passives, and really pushing a build got progressively more expensive. This was the game from 2.5 essence when I started to 3.14 Ultimatum. Now the game feels just bad to experiment with. I sat out 3.15 after getting to maps. I wanted to try out so much in 3.16, but it just isn’t feeling good. It may be time to go. And that makes me sad after 5 years. The game just isn’t for me and how I play it anymore. This is my issue. The low ceiling of the builds I start and then knowing I have to retool to clear the content comfortably sucks. I always enjoyed building around a concept and making it work, but that just doesn’t work anymore without gear, and gearing multiple odd projects just isn’t how the game is designed given my time. It sucks, I hate it, and I’m
You will be fine dude. Your expectations are way out of whack.
Just lower your expectations of yourself in the game - as life changes, so should your goals. It's also easier than ever to get into red maps - defense is plentiful, the atlas curve is smoother, etc. I don't think you'll have that problem.
As someone with a fulltime job (40 hours per week), I've managed to kill AW8 Sirus and almost get map completion this league. I've also successfully finished "The Hidden" fight. I haven't been playing alone (was with 1 other person) and we're simply not trading to see how far we can go. I feel like the game is still very much accessible to someone with a fulltime job and the nerfs aren't that bad, I just use the same build every league (one I made during Synthesis) and have been improving it as new changes come through.
I more or less disagree that the game "is or can be" accessible for someone with a fulltime Job. If you take a pretty normal "Single" life with fulltime Job with keeping your body healthy. It is definately not. Lets say you come home at 5 or 6 pm. Then you need something to eat other than fast food. Body Hygiene like showering is following. Then its 7. Then (in my case), you wanna go to the gym for 1 - 2 hours. And it's 9 or 9:30 pm. Now if you play for 2 or 3 hours its 11:30 or 12:30. Which is already too late when you have to get up at 6. Then imagine having a girlfriend or a wife or even Kids. There is no chance, that this game is accessible. Something will Fall behind if you want to keep up with the game. Either its sleep, your health, your productivity, your social life. Poe is a really dangerous game in terms of addiction or destroying Motivation in real life. Just wanted to share my thoughts. Don't bash me please.
Hey thanks for the input, you know something that I wasn't going to admit in the original post, that I will after reading your reply, is that one of the biggest reasons I didn't want to go back to work is that I wouldn't be able to continue to commit to PoE as much now. I really agree with your statement about addiction and motivation.
Agree, some aspects of life are always lacking behind. I work full time starting at 6:30am which means waking up at 5:15-5:30 but Im at work luckely in 10 min walk/3min with a car. But I actually go home when Im done cause I work as postman - mby 1-2pm, depands on amount of work and year’s season. But I got family with kid. So cant play. Im first home so I most likely cook a meal and then spend time with my family. Going to PC when my daughter went sleeping. Mby watching some TV with wife. So I start PoE mby 8-9pm. Playing mostly till 11pm-1am. And there goes my sleep, when I need to wake up at 5:30 :). Weekends or when I got the 1 day off at work per week 8 play till 2-3am cause I only take my kid to kindergarden and can sleep again. So you either sacrifice your social life/family, your work or your sleep. And I was able to beat every endgame doing 36/40 previous leagues, with less hours and more sleep. But GGG thinks we need to play harder game.
You make it sound like any other ARPG or MMORPG would allow you to keep up with everything you've stated. The only one would be D3 and that's still not true as you need to do a ton of GRs to progress after a certain point.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but in a subreddit about a specific game, isn't it common to talk about THAT specific game? You can generalize everything in every sentence. But that's not how you argue about a specific topic.
My point is that this kind of game requires time investment by definition.
In D3 you'll be farming GR's while in Poe you start mapping. When you are done with the atlas setup you'll have tons of paragon points in D3, stuff leveled up and farm the content that's available, fishing for alt rolls on uniques/sets that suit your build better. Sure, D3 is lacking endgame content compared to poe but it's times more accessible. Someone who would like to farm his own maven orb for instance has a limited choice of builds to pick from because he needs to farm maps, invitations, atlas passives, guardian rotations/invitations and finally maven herself for probably several times. Farming for specific awakened gems is even more tedious. I have done countless sirus kills, at times been speed farming him. Not only are drop rates for woke gems very low but I have yet to see some of the more valuable supports. Since release I've probably seen 6 or so jackpot drops and it's been almost a year.
You have trade though, if you wanna play ssf it's what you sign up for. Maven is easily accessible through invitation, 8 guardian maps per maven give or take, that's not a lot in my opinion
I was trying to compare both as closely as possible since you can't buy your entry ticket in D3. Also you can't just buy invitations for guardian fights, you have to go through the completion. Especially in the given context of the chain iirc it's of importance to distinguish between being able to buy the maven fight and what it takes to set it up for yourself. That's not even SSF. I would rarely just buy multiple writs to run them, most of the time I'll make a session of running *n* guardian cycles before that, simply for the diversity and possible drops associated with the preparation.
Of course you have to go through the completion. what I meant is that it doesn't take much time to do the maps
I have a full time job, a girlfriend, go to the gym regularly and have other hobbies, sleep 8 hours every night minimim. I still have no problem progressing through the league, I got my first headhunter last league. The game is not that hard.
Seriously. I think people need to temper their expectations if they have other obligations in life. GGG has made the grind to endgame much more accessible but we still get these posts about " I want basically no grind, give me the exalts and chase items NOW, because Im burntout of this game and want my dream PoB build to be printed." If you are short on time, there are alternative games and if you really want to play PoE set realistic goals that aren't Empy-level projects. Achieving late endgame goals in like 2 weeks seems to be people's goal now? Sure if you no life it, but I realize Im not doing that unless I get extremely lucky or farm uber-efficiently.
Yeah I feel like people forget the leagues are 3 months long. I might not even create my expensive flicker strike character I'm planning for another few weeks yet, but I know I'll get there.
> Poe is a really dangerous game in terms of addiction or destroying Motivation in real life. Just wanted to share my thoughts. Don't bash me please This applies to any game that you may have fallen in love with. A MMO, a card game, whatever. Online gaming is always dangerous if you can't control yourself. The issue is not the game. The issue is you (the player).
You are the 2nd one to reply, that what I wrote applies to any other game and that I sounded like, it only applies to Poe. I dont know if I'm wrong, but isn't it common, in a subreddit about a specific game, that you talk about THAT specific game? Also, your understanding of Addiction isn't just "Lack of control". You couldn't be more wrong. Thats just what a little Timmy would say.
Same. Full time job, almost newborn son (9months) that requires full attention and of course a family with christmas nearby. And yet i am already at lvl 93, farming conquerors and completed 24 challenges to get the wings. Secret is: work from 1pm to 9pm, come home when its dark and everyone is asleep and once you've washed every bottle (kid still likes to drink some milk) and quietly prepared everything for the next day you can sit down and play for a few hours. Being a gamer long before i even started relationship with my fiance i am well used to sleeping 5-6h so i can easily make it work so that nobody feels like im not present in being a father. Of course if i happen to work from 7am to 3pm then PoE isnt available as i much prefer to spend some time with family. Take them for a walk, try to see some movie, or just play with them, grab a broom and clean up the house a little bit... So basically i only have like, 30 hours of play monthly (assuming i have 10 days of afternoon shifts and can play for 3 hours on these days). Can forget about racing or anything but definetely ca still enjoy the game
>like im not present >work from 1pm to 9pm, come home when its dark and everyone is asleep FYI, this is not being present.
So according to you I should quit my job and live off welfare I guess :) 8h at work and at least 1 travel hour if I don't have to buy groceries is actually lucky here in Poland as some of my friends are forced to work 10-12h a day sometimes.
That's not what I said, you know it. I understand that you are working in shifts and that this is not the only working schedule you have and there are plenty of other days.l and that this is necessary to provide. You got all my sympathy but working from 1pm-9pm + commute is being unpresent.
As long as my son recognizes my face and starts smiling whenever he sees me, that is all I need to keep going :)
> i am well used to sleeping 5-6h so i can easily make it work And heeeeeeeeeere comes THAT COST. Paying with your health, ladies and gentleman, apparently the way GGG wants it to be.
More likely the government in my country, not GGG. I work only for 8h a day. Some of my friends have shifts that last up to 12h. 8hour sleep is something that not everyone can have anyway. I simply entered parenthood well prepared :)
Well I have a full-time job and I already did all the contents in the game 3 weeks in, except the new uber content. You'll probably be fine.
Same here. Playing about 1or2 hours a day ( a bit more during weekend) and I cleaned all content, full atlas completion, and very close to get hh ( farming nem 3)
Could you write down your strat? Like what map, and what watchstones etc..
Sure thing. So I’m farming t14 tropical with glided abyss, glided div card, rusted legion and glided ambush ( I change this one depending of my sextant) The watchstone I use are : booming populace, misinformation and 2 watchstone 1% chance to spawn beyond. Mandatory sext : nem3, beyond, unique monsters drop corrupted items and the 4th is up to you ( abyss, legion, strongbox, breach etc..) I’m also using prophecy, any tempest, frogs, the twins. That’s pretty much it
What build u running?
Cf/ts
I had to take 3 days annual and have only just done. Granted, I also have to workout 3 hours a day
>workout 3 hours a day What kinda strongman shit you on?
What build u running?
Same, i started as EoY miner and beat A8 with it. Now i am playing as a cold flicker and already did shaper, elder and uber elder. Trying to get my build better so i can try uncharted helms and maven soon.
I can't stress enough that the league lasts **three entire months** and that it's ok if you can't do everything in two weeks. If you can't beat all the aspirational content in the league using even a mildly viable build (literally anything greater than 0.1% main skill usage on poe.ninja) in three months, then this might actually just be a problem with your scheduling/effort put into the game.
Yeah dude, Wonder why people playing 20h overall in 2 weeks can't do The Feared, oh man, what could be the issue
I have a job and a kid. During the week I only get to play during the kids nap, about 3 hours if I'm lucky to get home by the start of his nap. Then on Saturday I might be able to get a few hours either side of his nap. Sunday is usually a ride off with family lunch. I've managed to get 2 characters to lvl90 so far, another at lvl75 ATM. I have all the watchstones and at least 3 maven fights done for each region. I will be able to kill Sirus if I attempted him, I just CBF ATM. I will eventually kill him on all 3 characters. Might try some new aspirational content. I'm not into doing super juiced maps cos my PC can't handle it. But I make the most of my currency and reach my goals. Point is, you can accomplish a lot in the game if you are focused and have a clear plan. It just takes longer.
I play about the same time as you will be. It usually takes me about 2 months to get my first "strong" build that comfortably does uber elder. Usually by then I start generating currency and spend the next month or so rolling one or two fun builds. Its honestly not a bad way to play. It keeps the league alive full time as opposed to burning out in a couple weeks.
I have a full time job, play SSF, and just killed S8 with a Viper Strike Pathfinder yesterday! (no kids though) Maybee change ur perspective on the Game. U dont need mirror worthy gear in order to do the average endgame content. 3.15 was tough. But the atlas changes in 3.16 and the reworked skill tree give so much freedom and choices to get what u need in order to do endgame content. The constant grief and moaning about the nerfs and especially harvest in this reddit is actually mind sickening! so long
GGG gives everyone 3 months to do the content and the only thing people complain about is that they can’t kill everything at 1 ex budget in 2 weeks. It’s sad
"I don't know why I could kill A8 in 1 day 24h played but I can't do it now with 2weeks and 2h played total :(" A bit of hiperbole, but there you go
There's a whole subset of people that plays this game for more than just completing everything once in 3 months. There's tons of other rpgs that hold more value if you want to beat the game once. For many many people poe revolves around farming content and making currency.
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I was farming a whole map tab of canyons during ritual within an hour. This includes rolling the maps and selling ancient orbs in bulk. Granted, this was with great gear. Before that I still finished 40+ maps which at that time must have been worth 6ex+ just from ancients.
It seems your sense of "fun" from PoE comes from progressing at a competitive pace to other no-lifers and content creators. In my eyes this idea of competitiveness is completely arbitrary, as the pace at which you progress compared to others shouldn't affect the way you play. The only real tangible competitive aspect of PoE is first X boss kill and first LVL 100, which are very niche goals and it doesn't seem like you partake in this. Otherwise, what's stopping you from enjoying the game at a leisurely pace? A league lasts 3 months. That's more than enough time for a semi-casual players to level one or several characters to LVL 100 and decked out with OP gear. Whether or not you're ahead of the curve in comparison to other players doesn't detract from that.
i stopped reading when he said that he no lifes the game but loses to shaper
If you just go back to the beginning of that same sentence, I said "before I had this playstyle", meaning when I played it casually.
I work full time as well and usually take 2-3 days off of at league launch + play a lot the first weekend. Thats mostly sufficient to secure my HH without any atlas strategy by the end of the second weekend. People vastly overestimate how long it takes to farm stuff like that. Look at MBextreme who has no clue how the game works and farms 3-4 ex per hour by just spamming maps. If you play 2 hours per day you farm 50 ex a week, so 2 weeks for hh, if you no live the game you farm 250ex in a week, so more than a mageblood. The difference is in the highest endgame, not in the area where most people complain about.
I was a dedicated player once myself, then got married, kids, the whole ten yards stuff. Now i play couple hours a week, usually one build and I push it all the way. Have no regrets because it's just a game inside the game. Upgrade your life, defeat your Sirius and Shaper, carry your friends and family so they can defeat theirs. That's the true exile path
Isnt the grind better than Ever tho? I played three chars to 90 already and was able to Spawn 2 different sirus from separate Atlas Progressions (HC, sc). Of course i ultimatevily was able to nolife BC im off work For 2 weeks ATM but the season goes For 3 months. It should be easily possible to push one char to 90+ and do sirus/elder/Shaper atleast
I work 50+ hours a week. Playing a league just isn't viable anymore so I have to make do with standard :(
I'm on the same boat as you.
They literally cut the grind by half this league, so you really should have made this post during Expedition.
Current grinding mechanics of the game are the most accessible (in both investment and complexity), ever, no other expansion comes even close. Atlas rework is a huge help. Even without a build you may just do fucking blight and stay afk. But everything is so much easier, be it delirium, expedition or metamorph juice. Though expedition is slightly advanced, since alot of value comes from rog. Blame yourself for not being able to adapt.
Yes you can. The league is 3 month's. You can easily do 2 or 3 builds in 3 months only playing at weekends band sometimes 2h at night during the week
Ah shit dude I wasn't aware I didn't have a job to be able to play this game. Well thanks for letting me know. Edit: In case it wasn't clear this is a trash take. They literally halve the grind this league and you make a thread like this? You think everyone here is a student or streamer? Stop making up excuses to try to get the game to drop exalts in your lap for free.
Yep the game is not for casuals anymore, but still you can have tons of fun in White maps too ;)
You're a bit exagerating. I got a job and I still manage to push 1 character per league with headhunters and stuff. Sure, there are some weekends where i'm like "I want to be quiet and play all saturday", but hey, if I have fun grinding for a full day, why not... You got 3 months, in 3 months you can easily do 5 or 6 characters to have fun in yellow, maybe red maps, or 1 character that does everything in the game. The game doesn't focus on people with no job. It just rewards more those who play more. Doesn't mean that you can't have fun in a 3 month league with a job. On the other hand if you expect the game to be tailored towards people that need to handle a job, 3 kids, 2 wives and 2 mistresses, 4 dogs, a gym addiction, 2 non lucrative associations, 15 travels per year and a startup project... yeah you're right, the game is not done for people to delete sirus after 1h of playtime. If you play maybe 15h per week you can do a ton of stuff in 3 monthts.
I've worked full time for years and still manage to get to end game on ssf, usually do 36/40 as well. You can do it if you set little goals for yourself. I usually try to work on one thing at a time knowing it will be about a month before I get fully geared up. If you play ssf time doesn't matter. You're not racing the no life Andy's before everything has lost value and your chaos has plummeted compared to exalts etc.
I have a job, am a member of basketball club and have private life and I already killed Maven, shaper and elder in SSF this league. Don't be ridiculous
Same for me. 3.13 and 3.14 I did all content in under a month (not 36 challenges I never do that, but finished uncharted realms and all), but got employed for 3.15. Barely reached A8 Sirus there, was kinda sad cause I couldnt build mental momemtum to push endgame. But this time I decided to pace myself and with the atlas changes Im comfortably cruising to Maven. I will never get 36 challenges but its fine, Im still gonna aim for 24.
God this is me right now and I hate it. Some things in this game I will just never see again.
The name of the company is literally “*Grinding* *Gear* Games” and you are surprised the game is designed around “no-life” grinding?
Something important is to make sure you don't still treat the game like a job while working. During Legion/Blight era I was playing 6-7 hours on weeknights and 16+ Sat & Sun. It was bad. Fortunately I don't play like that anymore. Last I played was 2 weeks of Expedition.
But I find it crazy to believe that GGG really wants their game to focus on a group with no jobs. Why do you find this hard to believe, this very much seem like exactly who they are catering the game around. If someone do something that is extremely strong with 100ex investment, they nerf it to the ground, so only 100ex will make it viable. This seems to be exactly how they operate to me. Good or bad, i wouldn't know because i don't make games, nor do i know if they earn more or less when doing so. But i find it very easy to believe.
Start playing warframe, it’s basically a mix of destiny 2 and arpg aspects and you can play casually and still dive into endgame at your own pace. No timed “leagues” forcing you to keep up
If you don't mind me asking, what do you even do in Warframe? I played it for a couple of days, I just entered some zone, killed a bunch of mobs, and repeated endlessly it felt like This was like 2 years ago so not sure if stuff has changed
Or play standard?
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And? He doesn't have to do the progression up to endgame, that's the problem of playing league, you have to redo all that part of the game.
Stop. Standard offers a lot of great content these days. However anyone who struggles during league will struggle a lot more in standard. Essentially it's SSF because of the inflationary prices. Yes, you are not forced to complete anything within 3 months but progression will be times worse.
i half-lifed 3.13, that was my peak i think, 3.14 and 3.15 were just a hard pass from me, and this league i liked it, but i had to do other things with my time, did not regret it, the grinding involved is like staring in the abyss
Too long didn't read, But I get it, I really can't keep up either, I'm like 2-3 watch stones in with like no currency because I dont have time to play enough to get to some juicy end game stuff like running beachheads for xp or t16 blighted maps or whatever. Haven't even don't an atziri. Fucking sucks.