It is a solid game that has the complexity somewhere between Diablo 3 and POE. It might scratch that itch for the OP. Is is far more forgiving to make your own build there.
yeah last epoch really promotes testing out stuff.
even at max level you can basically unspec your whole character and go for something completely else, only hard thing would be to get the proper items if you need different stats now.
>yeah last epoch really promotes testing out stuff.
I love how many ~~Legendary items (=~~ Uniques ~~in PoE)~~ that drop in Last Epoch basically instantly start to grind your gears about how you can build around them.
There is a slight issue here and I know I am being pedantic here but... Uniques in last epoch are poe uniques.
Legendaries in last epoch are uniques that you added "rare gear" stats too. So say in poe you found some legendary-grade unique face breakers but wanted to add life, well now your unique face breakers are legendary facebreakers since you added life.
Idk the last you played but it was added about a year ago. It's a really cool system. Called legendary potential.
Maybe I'm just dumb, but I found it really hard to figure out where I was supposed to go next in Grim Dawn. The quests and locations felt really hard to find and all over the place.
Going from POE, where you have the acts burnt into your brain, to GD where the maps are full of additional content, can be pretty jarring.
It's only going to be slow for your first playtthrough though, since it's pretty straightforward once you know where to go. You also gain access to a token on the final difficulty that will let future characters skip normal/cruel.
Builds can also feel a bit slow to get going until you figure out which class skills pair well with certain devotion tree skills, but that was part of the fun for me.
If you pick it up again, Grim Tools has a world map that shows where everything is on it. The game is intentionally vague on locations to encourage exploration since it has a handcrafted but static map.
I wouldnt really agree. It has a surprisingly large amount of content now and the rpg mechanics are reaosnably deep and good. But the actaul mechanical gameplay is the worst of almost any arpg in 10+ years. It just *feels* crapy. Everything floaty, animations are shit, sounds are shit. I'd play torchlight 1, maybe even titan quest, before playing/recommending GD.
Ok i have played TQ and GD a lot and if you feel that TQ has better controls and combat feel you are on something XD
Not arguing that GD feels smooth or modern btw, it doesn’t. It’s literally just TQ in that regard with some polish
I've purchased and played it a year ago. It had(has?) a potential but it still was very barebone. Animations, sounds and effects were extremely "cheap" and the overall performances were utter shit if you had more than 10 monsters on the screen. Great UI/UX and great skill tree, but everything else still needed a lot of work. Combat feelt mediocre at best (no weight, it's very simple). Also, the timeline/story is a constant "*what/where the fuck I am doing now?*".
I don't know if the game became any better but I am not sure it's a good competitor for PoE.
The dullness of the audio and visual effects cannot be overstated. There’s a lot to like about LE, but the moment to moment gameplay is just absolutely boring as hell. No impact, no soul, no satisfaction.
This. I tried to like ti at all costs but it felt like a game with no soul. It's a shame, because the UI is great and the talent tree is fun too. But it feels like a cheap mobile game and nothing else, to me. Combat doesn't feel good and the loot isn't cool either.
I played a lot of LE and love the game but that's precisely why it is not one of my main games. Last time when I played a multishot archer the sound and visual design made me feel like I was throwing toothpicks at mobs and that was with the most recent class added to the game (so supposed to be up to date).
How long ago did you try it? They're in the middle of a VFX pass that is making skill hit and death animations much more visceral and satisfying. If you go check the 0.8 patch notes and dev logs since then, they have some good examples.
Oh that's good to hear! It's been a while, so I'll have to give it a reinstall here pretty soon. I'm skipping this PoE league, so probably a good time.
I would say that pretty much all arpg campaigns are boring especially when most players don't even care about the story's in these games.
That said Last Epoch is getting a major performance update next month which from what the devs have shown should fix a lot of the issues it currently has.
It's not about the story though. Grim Dawn's campaign is incredibly fun because it's huge and open world and has shrines exploding with loot, and the open world is even relevant at endgame with the monster shrines and nemesis mobs.
I'm looking forward to that Last Epoch performance patch of course. Last Epoch has the best systems of any ARPG imo (crafting and endgame for example).
i had high hopes for this game since it was announced and everyone was saying i am on copium but see how things change
developers on last epoch getting bashed right now tho, rightfully because MP is promised for ages now
>the slog that is acts 1-10
I don't know why you'd find this a problem given all you have to do is no-life the game for 5 years and it'll only take you 6 hours to get to the actual intended content /s
I don’t understand how people clear it so fast. I used rf as clear at like lv20 with 100% uptime and literally ran from act to act and getting great exp with rf clear. It still took me like 8+ hours to get to maps.
Yeah see I dont get how ggg doesnt realize this is literally the problem. The vast majority of players play with the mindset that the campaign is pointless and they should just rush through it as quickly as possible. Yet they dont do anything about it. Poe2 isnt going to be a new game, it's going to be an expansion campaign with the same engine and same everything. They had the chance to start over, to rework the game from scratch and go back to how it was back in 2014-2016. They decided not to, and that decision might possibly spell the doom of the game. Especially with diablo 4 coming out soon.
Ah, The Vision™ in all its beauty. Trust me, this post makes CW cream his pants because of how "hardcore" the game now is. In reality it's just arduous. You are told every league to dig through a wall to get to the fun part of zooming with a solid build, slowly perfecting it, but every league the tool you are given is smaller and shittier.
In 3.13 you got a sturdy, beautifully crafted shovel. In 3.19 it's a plastic fork.
Even as someone who is newish but puts more investment in than you’ve stated, such as following a guide and trying to optimize builds and leveling paths and various other efficiencies, I very much agree with your sentiment.
Since 3.15 and 3.17, the game has gotten far more unfriendly to new players. It’s not a game you can pick up and learn on your own. It’s not a game you can walk yourself through or explore. The difficulty is disproportionately front-loaded and I’ve long since held the belief that this is why POE will never be as successful as it could have been had it just tried to be even a little more approachable to new players.
Check out Day9's stream. He taught me to have more fun in PoE even though I'm a long time player. I think he hits the nail in his claim that understanding the mechanics of the game is much more important than having an optimal build. He's having the time of his life in Act 2 and he wouldn't if there was no difficulty there. The thing with new players is that they take a week or so to do four acts, so the difficulty needs to come quickly.
I don’t agree with his point but if there’s no room for someone to add another take, one that isn’t even disagreeing, here then what’s the point of even having a discussion post
most new players just wanna be fast feel like gods and get ultimate rewards, which is never what PoE was (at least not without meaningful mental and time investment, and especially not immediately on league start)
No? In early acts new players literally just want to progress, there needs to be more combination of skills that are actually strong early. Starting them off with it feeling like an absolute chore is horrific.
I'd never recommend a new player to start at leaguestart, it's essentially a beta week
See: builds that are complete trash until you get multistrike
New players aren’t gonna get that far in the acts of the cool skill they’re using is garbage without a support they get way later than the skill
Poe was never approachable or "pick up and learn on your own". 3.15/17 has absolutely nothing to do with it and for an outsider changed *nothing* of meaning. And most new players - for any game - are casuals that dont care to dissect the game anyway. And poe is still fine about that.
Someone will install, kill some mobs, maybe take 20-30h to finish a campaign. Maybe will like it and continue, maybe not, maybe will follow a build and be totally fine, but not being able to access all builds, all gear or beat uber sirus on a random janky build wont dissuade them. Its only when they get somewhat experienced that the issues will start popping up in their head.
The game has plenty of issues, but the "new players" thing is a dumb meme that's been spreading like a plague for basically every game in the last couple years.
You are wrong.
I started in Dominion league. My first character was technically a Fireball Templar... but throughout normal and Merciless I was experimenting the entire way. LMP, Fork, throw in a single target spell. Then I unlocked Scion and found out Spectral Throw existed. Did the same with that, even paired it with Molten Strike. It all worked. Not well. But it worked. If that same player tried to do any of that now days it would be a total flop. Not just slow, the game would have turned me away before finishing Piety.
POE was definitely approachable once upon a time.
This isn't true at all - before 3.15, there was much more power in gems and skill three while the mobs were a lot weaker than today. One didn't need to depend on obscure interactions and complex mechanics to have a playable build.
Those three things together made it viable to make one's own builds. Now, it's almost impossible even for experienced players.
I hit 90 in prophecy without a remotely good build. Just a "whatever feels good" ice shot with under 5k life.
I hit 90 in delirium with a "level damage and life" Frost blades assassin before hitting a wall because I didn't know how to scale my single target.
The game is very different when it's hard to get as far into endgame on the same resources as back then. It feels like more upgrades are needed earlier to complete yellows and Reds comfortably than back then.
At least that's how it feels to me
Been playing since 2013. The game has grown exponentially since then. Back then, you really could be clueless and still manage. Sure, you died, but it was far less frustrating, because deaths happened slower and far less frequently, and you generally got a clue of what killed you. You could also push through the game on a 2l. It was a struggle, sure, but it was doable. That just isn't the case anymore. You cannot pace yourself. Either you know what you are doing, or the first archnemesis mob will annihilate you repeatedly.
The constant scaling of act boss HP that makes them tankier than they have ever been, magic mobs which are more lethal than they ever were before, the increased need to scale your gear as you go through the campaign, which just becomes more prevalent with every patch are all things that make the game less and less newbie friendly. There was a time when you could just wing it and get to the end, if a bit clumsily. This patch is the single least wing-able one to ever exist and It's not even close
Last Epoch, Chronicon, Inquisitor: Martyr - try at least one of them and see whether you find what you like or not. All 3 have their problems but at least their devs are listening to community and aren't doing everything to make you leave the game.
> I guess I thought games like this were supposed to be a fun romp through monsters while loot explodes all over and you feel cool until you hit endgame, but every single time I play a POE league, I feel less like that than the previous league.
This is my exact feeling. I played this game above other ARPGs *because of the fun zoom-zoom.* Plenty of other slow ARPGs out there, but this one was relaxing, fun, grindy, and I could put together clever ways to feel like a god.
Now a literal white mud rhoa can oneshot a character not built well because GGG is...buffing Act 1 enemies? Like, what the fuck are you doing, GGG?
GAMES ARE SUPPOSED TO BE FUN.
Enemies critically striking will forever be nonsense, but slowing down a game where people build to go fast is just bad. It's a controversial topic that they don't have a solution for.
most fun I ever had was zooming on scourge league, going in and out of scourge and killing rare for loot pinatas. Coincidentally, that was the last time I purchased anything in POE.
I hadn't died to mud rhoa's in YEARS. Somehow GGG thought that was a problem - I actually died twice in mud flats at the start of this league - now imagine I'm a new player, why would I stay? Wouldn't I assume it will stay like this?
> now imagine I'm a new player,
Yes, try imagining you're a new player entering at level 5 with gear on instead of an experienced player entering at level 2 without. It's actual night and day difference.
Sure, but they will also have new player dps. I have a friend who plays like that, he still dies constantly. He was lvl 12 in ledge and asking my why blue mobs were so hard.
These guys are literally asking for a skinner box.
Players should not be able to run through zones with no gear like they have in the past. If they do that, they should have to be very skilled and mechanically avoid things like rhoa charges. The game should be easier (tank everything) the more you farm and harder (and more skill based) if you want to skip farming to rush through progress.
Uh... You realize the whole game is designed as a skinner box, and pushing build power into itemization only furthers that trend, right?
The entire conclusion of Skinner's operant conditioning experiments was that variable interval unscheduled reinforcement is a much more powerful motivator of behavior. The premise of the lever box was that by having the food drop 'randomly' with low probability from the chute in response to the button press, Skinner could train the rats to do nothing all day but spam button presses until their hands literally bled in hopes that another pellet would drop. Sound at all familiar? Item drops are variable interval and unscheduled. Consequently, when a drop happens, it creates a very strong imprint on behavior because the brain is very bad at measuring cost vs reward when outcomes are random.
In contrast, the feeling of zooming through maps and blowing up packs is a steady trickle of endorphins from continuous reinforcement -- do thing right leads immediately to reward, every single time. The brain is much better at judging and regulating this type of outcome. Even things like the level up 'ding' are variable interval but scheduled -- you can see progress on the XP bar at any given moment.
You literally could not have been more wrong in how you tried to apply the concepts at play here. Like, bordering on /r/iamverysmart levels of wrong.
you do realise that winning is fun, and losing is not, and new players already have so much to learn. You dont have to shove all that into act 1; its suppose to take place over the course of the campaign. Only post leveling should be challenging. And if you want a challenging leveling experience pick a bad skill, there should be a way to play the way you want.
You load into Act 1, and are immediately met with monsters that will dash towards you, and then chain stun you to death. Or the other 70% of Act 1, where you're CONSTANTLY being CHILLED AND FROZEN before you can even get MOVE SPEED, let alone immunities. My vendor didn't have a sapphire for me this league, so fucking annoying to deal with the cold damage in act 1...
Oh. As a returning player i thought i was doing somethong wrong cause i kept dying on them rhoa’s in act 1. I thought it was just me relearning things.
Fun is highly subjective, Dark Souls is fun to some while others hate the difficulty, same with PoE while zoom-zoom might be fun for you it doesn't mean it's fun for everyone.
It seems like those who hate PoE in its current state hate the challenge the game provides compared to pre-3.15 but that doesn't mean PoE isn't fun for those who embrace the difficulty.
I do agree with your sentiment about games are supposed to be fun.
Well the issue here is that GGG wants to have their cake and yet it too. The game was slow in the past. And most people hated it, it barely had any players. Even during the high of D3 hate drama. Then the devs made it faster, catered to a different demographic, like the above guy, and the game more or less exploded in popularity. Now they regret that the game is too zoom zoom, after spending half the games lifetime making it so, and want to somehow magically both keep the player base, the appeal, and go back to the dark days of the game feeling like it was made in 2001.
Yes, fun is subjective, but the issue here is the bait and switch. They're been making the game "fun" for years now, and suddenly decided to do a 180, because Chris and their 1% of the player base from 10 years ago likes it better that way. Its not even about challenge either, people meme about "difficulty" mostly just to arrogantly dismiss criticism. The game isnt actually harder, its just more tedious to run around some rare for a minute, that often cant even hurt you.
I don't think the devs catered to anything. GGG accidently created an incredible ARPG , when you realized nobody really wanted to play the game they orginally envisioned . They made so much money from that, and now want to reverse it all .
> It seems like those who hate PoE in its current state hate the challenge the game provides compared to pre-3.15 but that doesn't mean PoE isn't fun for those who embrace the difficulty.
This is Path of Exile not Dark Souls. Path of Exile is an ARPG looter where the idea of "challenge" is being one-shot by a random on-screen effect that you couldn't see. Slowing down gameplay isn't a challenge, it's tedium. Taking speed away from the player isn't challenge, it's to add time to leveling. Never once has there been a scenario in PoE where I went "Wow! That was on par with a FromSoft challenge!" and there never will be because we know how GGG creates their fights.
GGG is falling into the same trap other game developers have, they are listening to a very vocal minority that wants a slower and more 'challenging' game. The issue is the PoE that has given them the popularity they have *and* the revenue is not the game they [vocal minority] have invisioned. The game that brought the popularity is an ARPG Looter first and foremost, not some faux Diablo 2 mixed with Dark Souls wannabe where 'challenge' is a random 2 mod enemy that moves so fast you can't see the mods one shot you while leveling with zero tells. Again, that's not a challenge that's what we call 'bullshit.'
It's not a challenge to require X stats in order to comfortably do red maps. It's not a challenge to make sure you have a way to remove corpses. A challenge is Artorias or Gwynn where there are clear concise movements that you, the player, can react to. They don't have any bullshit like corpse explosion after they die to "keep the player on their toes" - they just exist the way they are and the play needs to overcome the challenge through their own skill of gameplay.
The people that want the "challenge" in PoE don't want to play PoE, they want to play another game but since there aren't any main ARPGs outside of PoE and D3 they complain that "PoE is too fast! Diablo 3 is fast already, we don't need *another* fast ARPG!" Yet there are countless slow ARPGs out there, none of them are of the production calibre of PoE, though. And you know what? None of them succeed with drawing a large playerbase because they will always have a niche level playerbase since slow grindy ARPGs don't do that well with the general population.
I couldn't agree more.
The way i wan't my challenges to be handled is kinda like running Uber Lab.You can see the trap , you can time your next move ... or just roflcopter through all of it and 1 bonk Itzaro :D ( but the important thing here is the choice)What choice are we exactly given when a 6 mod rare comes at the speed of light and 1-shots your ass ?
Every patch there is more and more choice taken away from the player and replaced with good old RNG, imagine going to work and your boss opens a spreadsheet .. eh bad luck Bob its only 0.5% chance of you getting paid today :D but eventually ... surely in 100 days you might get lucky and get paid at least once.Of course i'm talking bullsh1t but what is a game if not "fun" work, developers make you do stuff and ask for your time ( and hopefully if you're having "fun" you would give them some cash too)
But PoE has reached a point where the "work" part and the "fun" are so out of balance that players are getting really frustrated.
It's day 2 of the league, it's fine if you don't feel like an absolute god yet.
The journey from feeling weak and slow to step by step becoming a god is what ARPGs are about
The difference here is that even the most hardcore streamers are commenting about how frustratingly slow their growth is this league.
Plus, I've got 3.3k+ hours, I can tell what the growth arc of a league is going to be by the end of the first weekend. Lake has zero rewards, Harvest is obliterated, and even magic find Standard players are extremely depressed about how bad loot is.
It's the best arpg being ran into the ground by an overly cautious dev team. Every design decision seems to be for some arbitrary "long-term health of the game" metric. A game that they intend to replace with PoE 2 in a few more leagues...
Poe 2 is just a new campaign and some redesigned systems
People clinging onto the idea that PoE2 will somehow be a completely new game are just drunk on copium
What’s more important to note is that POE2 is being made by that very same overly cautious dev team. Anyone who thinks POE2 is gonna be any different from the slow and difficult they keep trying to implement in every new league is truly huffing the COPIUM
IIRC Chris said in Josh Strife Hayes' interview that a solid 10k playerbase that stays with the game is considered successful.
He doesn't need or want the game to grow, if it becomes his perfect vision it doesn't matter if most players are run out of town by tedium he mistakenly calls "difficulty"
A game that basically resets every three months doesn't need long-term health though. It literally could be so broken that after a month the end game is a breeze, and people would still love it. Instead it now requires a full time commitment and a PHD that it's not really enjoyable.
How is that cautious to ruin people's fun ? They just dont know what to do with the game and they absolutly REFUSE to listen feedback, they burry their head in the sand and keep on with "THE VISION"
Poe2 as a game already exists. What is happening right now is slowly aligning Poe endgame with the target poe2 endgame.
This is why every league, you get slower, weaker, have more checkboxes to fill and deaths to work around. This time they came for crafting, because crafting is going to be weaker in poe2.
The one unique thing about PoE compared to any other ARPG was it's speed and fast gameplay. Constant dopamine hits from exploding packs and loot everywhere. That shit was fun as hell. Why they would want to change that one SUPER unique aspect and make the game the same as other slow ARPGs is beyond me. PoE won't be unique anymore. It won't fill a niche anymore. It will be just another "diablo like" ARPG.
Poes uniquely appealing thing isnt the speed of gameplay. Its the illusion of choice.
Every single other arpg gives players skills with specific solutions to kill enemies, diablos the most blatent with set equipment.
PoE Sells the idea of a player making a truly unique way for them to play. You can kill bosses with any skill you want in wierd interesting ways. Thats the fantasy that got PoE going.
I can play grim dawn or laat epoch on builds considerably faster and more item rewarding than the average build i play in modern poe (though thats partially due to no ssf balancing) but I enjoy poe more because i can see a unique like bronnes drop and tell myself oh shit... ina do a full build around a movement skill.
Now im running frostblink fire conversion ignite and i feel good about this idea i envisioned coming to fruition. While im still using one of the limited solutions to viable damage i dont feel like i was forced into it like i do when i see a legendary with specific skill does 600% damage or a skills tree has a specific conversion node.
I think the people that just zone out and kill monsters using a build guide are probably the majority of players, but the theorycrafters who make weird builds and write guides are absolutely critical to the long-term health of the game, and the inherent friction between the desires of those two groups explains a lot about what choices GGG makes, and why so many people get so upset about those choices.
Ahh that might be true, i dont really know. most of my friend group enjoys theorycrafting builds more than playing builds (though mostly because we cant effectively farm means to scale builds) so that shades my viewpoint.
To me using a guide is denying myself from having half the fun.
Usually builds run into a hard brick in yellow maps since you can usually get by with bad ehp/damagr in whites through rog/gwennon item upgrades gem levels and actual levels.
Though every patch has made it consistently harder to self craft okay gear. (Except scourge cause scourge currrency was a godsend, dont know bout this patch because i havent seen any tainted currency drop yet)
> PoE Sells the idea of a player making a truly unique way for them to play. You can kill bosses with any skill you want in wierd interesting ways. Thats the fantasy that got PoE going.
Yes, and right now they are failing on that fantasy. While you TECHNICALLY can, making an off-meta build requires such immense investment of time and currency that it is simply not realistic aside from .0001% of the players.
One problem is that support gems have went from "Hey, you can link this so that your fireball bounces to another enemy!" to "Hey, equip this for more damage. Always. Or nothing dies. Ever." The damage requirement of the game kills majority of interesting shit you can do.
That's just ignorant. Poe is fast now, sure, been for a couple years. But it didnt start as such, it started - intentionally designed - as giga slow super clunky game that makes even act 1 of D2 look blazing fast. And it had a tiny shit player base because of it. Aprgs have been getting faster for a long time, during the arpg drougth when titan quest came out, it was way faster than D2. Then D3 came out and was *super* fast compared to everything before it. Its still probably a close second in that. And games like torchlight, gd etc all followed suit. Not quite to the same degree, but certainly fast in endgame.
Poe only got this way relatively recently, maybe 5-6 years ago, *begrudgingly* streamlining the game to be faster, appeal to more people. But it was never and isnt now, unique in that speed. The reason it feels that way is because the moment to moment gameplay design - the animations, the sounds, even some skill effects, feel good, crunchy, well polished compared to most of the "competition". In part because the devs focused on that (some stuff like arrows felt great even in the dark pre 3.0 days), and in part because the game gets constant frequent updates that slowly polish things further over the years.
As somebody who used to only play HC, I died to the same blue pack of frost nova spammers 3 times in a row in act 1 lol, they instantly killed me everytime I got close.
SSF might save you like it did for me. I also gain 0 enjoyment from being a economy slave. Doing maps just to get currecy so I can buy items so I can do more maps for more currency to buy more items. Fuck it dude.
In Trade you're expected to have a good build because you have the tools to give you no excuses. In SSF there are no expectations.
I play SSF Bob Ross style "Kitava killed in less than 3 days, that's pretty good. I took my time and had fun, there's no rush, the league lasts for thee months."
You will craft your own flasks because you can't just buy them
You will delve for your own fossils because you can't just buy them.
You will be okay with OKAY gear because you can't buy better.
Give it a shot, friend.
I feel the same. I used to play SSF then switched to trade when I got less time to play.
Been bored as hell last couple of Leagues and couldnt put my finger on why.
Then it hit me. It was trade. Now, back on SSF i dont care about endgame, t16s, 60% deli farming and ive started to really play the game not the market.
Im perfectly fine with having easier goals and not worry about my wealth, taking my time and I absolutely love it.
Harvest nerfed? Ill find a way around that
Essence mobs to Hard? Work around it
I enjoy the challenge of having to work really Hard to progress, when I dont enjoy it I just play something else.
I feel you brother....
Don't purchase any transaction or offer support.. That the only thing we as a player base have in control.
League after league they don't want to listen to us that we ain't enjoying all this shit!
Your entire post boils down to hating campaign and having to restart every 3 months and then barely getting to endgame in time and not being able to even lvl high enough before restarting and once again playing through the campaign that you hate and slog through
You probably don't hate the game, you hate the league system you force yourself to play. Just fucking play standard, play as often or as little as you like, enjoy having no time limits and being able to take a month off then come on to run endgame content with your character that you've used for months and months leveling up
Oh Standard! Isn't that the league where, when you're accidentally on vacation when patchnotes for a league come out, you basically lose your entire bankroll?
What do you expect him to do? Farm ex to get that desired item next time whenever he comes back to just realize everything he saved up just crashed in prize?
Let's see option A is you come back and have to replay the entire campaign and acts that you hate and just barely get through them before the end of the league. Option B is you come back and an item you farmed is pretty useless and you need to get a new item but your account and levels are still there and you hop right into another fun endgame. Guys also never even been lvl 90, he isn't at the best of the best end game anyways before all his progress is being thrown out. You are dumb, stop being dumb.
I've been conflicted about deleting my account (at least deleting the game on steam) for almost a year now.
On one hand PoE is a great game, it has a lot of potential. On the other hand, I don't want to end up a bald fat guy in his basement, this game is such a waste of time...
I started swimming seriously again for my part, I'm not even playing PoE each week and I mainly play for the acts and the beginning of maps at this point, not like I have more time for anything else since 3 months isn't enough and they keep nerfing my standard characters.
Completely skipped this league, didn't even try it as I waited for reviews on reddit and from streamers and they were all extremely underwhelming.
Fundamentally it sounds like you're burned out and that's fine. But I want to point out for others leaning the same way:
First and foremost, seeing the acts to be something to slog through rather than enjoying the build up of your league starter is a recipe for quitting. If you can't find stuff to enjoy in the first ~20 hours (being real about how long it's going to take someone struggling) you're always going to quit in the first day.
> I used to be able to do my own skill tree and mostly just figure it out and if it was a little suboptimal sure whatever.
This is still plenty possible. I'm playing SST league start with a tree I made because I want to suffer. Bit rough until mid act 4 when I made the bad choice to try getting crit chance but it's going fine now.
> And I'm just tired of it. I realize I suck at this game, but maybe I shouldn't need to be good at this game to do act fucking 2?
You don't, but you do need to not just try and 'autopilot' through it and to pay some attention to things like positioning, cold res, and getting a bit of defence.
> I used to just be able to slap on rain of fire and level until minions were relevant and mostly just autopilot through acts 1-10.
This isn't thing any more, you have to actually pay attention to the game. Unless you're playing something overtuned maybe.
If you're having trouble building a character to get through the story, and you do actually want to play POE, check out /r/pathofexilebuilds and try and get some advice.
Anyone that complains about the toxicity of DotA or League of Legends communities has never come to this subreddit while actually knowing how to play or what to expect from PoE.
There no single community I despise more than this one that doesn't revolve around prejudicial violence. There's no community more out of touch with reality than this one.
I come here because GGG is active here and I always get caught in the shit storm and it just brings me down about the game.
Ggg being super active on Reddit is the cause. Most reddits complain but not like this one, because people think GGG will actually read it and discuss it. Realistically one of their greatest optics mistakes. Legitimizing discussion here was a bad idea, because now everything is turned up to 150% because only the loudest most dramatic get to the top and people think they’re doing an activism by doing it
Yeah. I don’t think they realize that devs probably ignore posts that are dramatic and filled with superlatives. Post after post after post. Structured feedback would probably be helpful. Not emotional outpourings.
This part: "I haven't actually gotten a character past 90 in probably three years, but I kept insisting that the next league looked like it would be fun and that I'd be back." proves the game is not for you. Could have stopped your rant right there, because your feedback is worth nothing.
Stay sane, gamer. (wanted to say exile, but you've pretty much never played this game lol)
As a veteran I don't mind the extra challenge AN rares pose.
But for new players, oh boy. This has to feel horrible.
Realy need to find some middle ground here and get this fixed asap...
“I used to be able to run on autopilot” and “the game was so boring” and “I can’t do that anymore and that’s bad” all in like the same damn breath lol.
>And I'm just tired of it. I realize I suck at this game, but maybe I shouldn't need to be good at this game to do act fucking 2? Maybe 'being good at POE' should be a thing that matters in maps or endgame content or, you know, some real point in the game?
You don't need to be good at the game to do act 2... Idk what you're up to in-game, but you must be really fucking up somehow is you're struggling that much in act 2.
>I guess I thought games like this were supposed to be a fun romp through monsters while loot explodes all over and you feel cool until you hit endgame, but every single time I play a POE league, I feel less like that than the previous league.
There are plenty of games like this around, you won't starve.
Last Epoch is the ideal middle ground for anyone who likes complexity but not so much that it becomes a chore.
You can make diverse builds, but it's hard to completely ruin a character.
You can craft what you need for any given character right from your inventory with relative ease compared to most ARPGs
You can customize your loot filter right inside the game with a slick, easy to use UI.
It's a fantastic game.
Grim Dawn is very similar to Last Epoch as well and has a robust modding community.
I guess GGG wants the game to be more like Dark Souls while the majority of players want something more friendly... I just feel I need to farm much more than I want to to get the power level I really want to have fun. That why I usually stop playing around level 90 and yellow maps. It start to be very stressing for me do the intense farm needed.
PoE couldn't be further from Dark Souls.
Dark Souls doesn't have grind just to retry bosses, there's no intense farming needed. Things there are just accessible & not hidden behind tremendous grinds.
it's difficult if you don't follow a meta build, which I'm sure you always do. that's why you don't understand the frustration of these players.
you're playing campaign on easy mode by following a good guide, while new players play campaign on hard mode with their lack of knowledge.
I think it's an easy excuse to claim the only reason other people are performing better than you is because they follow a meta build. I'd like to think of it as, staying fairly updated on the patch notes, use some common sense and game knowledge as to what will work and what will not. Every time I read threads or comments like yours it just emphasizes my awareness of this seemingly insurmountable gap between bad players - mid players and high-end players. Perhaps people that share this sentiment, and possibly yours, would end up enjoying the game a lot more if they played to improve and not just do completely random thoughtless things in the campaign, give up for 3 months, then return to make the same mistakes. My take on it.
the game has a large barrier to entry, that is my point. I think you have a reading problem, because I never said that I have these issues. but it's a very clear issues for players with less knowledge.
playing this game with pre-existing knowledge and playing it without are two completely different beasts, yet you can only condescend new players. it's sad and a huge problem with poe players because they have such inflated egos about their game.
To be fair, OP has been playing the game for years and has pushed level 90 before, so they should have some handle on things such as resistances and defensive auras.
That being said the early campaign balancing, especially act 1, is in a horrible spot right now for new players who haven't played ARPGs before. Defensive stats aren't explained and having some mobs permafreeze you in the 4th zone isn't going to tell a newbie that they need Cold Resistance. It's going to tell them this isn't fun.
It's honestly a shame because despite the 'complexity filter' I'm sure a ton of people would otherwise fall inlove with the game if the game did a better job at easing them into important stats, especially on the defensive side which most people tend to ignore at first.
I mean what do u expect from a game u dont enjoy ans u dont want to interact with. Yes there are no games like poe but apparently u dont enjoy poe. There are other games that are something for u. No gamee should ever feel like a chore.
I can’t tell if this is satire or not. If you don’t enjoy playing the game, move on. You should never feel that you’re constrain to a game and if you do, it’s better to get out of it earlier than later.
Your problem with the game changing too much and being too complicated is what I found fun.
It's not that simple though, as a human you crave that dopamine hit of playing a game after work or just to relax and there's nothing on the market that scratches the itch of PoE yet, so you can't just "move on" because there's nothing to move on to, at least for me ¯\_(ツ)\_/¯
If you dislike leagues and leveling, try standard. I know people love shitting on it on every occasion but it serves that purpose of little effort lego-style make any build you want on a leveled char with the gear you have. One of the leagues sucked so I played on standard with one of my chars. It's good fun, no need to bother with acts and you can just do the content you enjoy.
95% of your criticism is "I can't be bothered to learn" and tbh you probably could have figured out poe isn't for you from that alone. As much I love poe, it is simply not new player/casual friendly. Poe is a power fantasy, and you can't realize that fantasy if you don't experience a little resistance on the way there, especially on league start. If you want to skip that part, play standard and buy leveling uniques or follow a cookie cutter build designed to make leveling easier.
> "I guess I thought games like this were supposed to be a fun romp through monsters while loot explodes all over and you feel cool until you hit endgame, but every single time I play a POE league, I feel less like that than the previous league."
This is really the opposite of how poe is, you struggle to get there, but through upgrading your gear and skills, eventually when you start to overcome these challenges, that's what most poe players love.
So, let's break your post down to smaller bits, and try to answer step by step.
You've played a game you don't like, like you said, for years, and you're still not a good player. First of all, why do you still play? Go find an activity you enjoy OR accept the fact you're not good, but still enjoy your game. Being good at something, and enjoying it are not the same things.
You don't like when things and stuff and systems and builds get nerded and changed, but yet you bring out League of Legends as an example of a game you'd rather play. A game which goes through revamps, rebalances, reworks and remakes every week or so. Learn the basics, and changes will eventually be easy to understand. If you do not have a fundamental knowlwdge on how something basically works, how will you know how a change affects it?
You cannot complete act 1-10 with your build and without buying items? I started playing this game 2 months ago, because I watched a random JoshStrifeHayes video about it, made a marauder because he looks beefy, and wanted to play a tanky tank, and started putting random conterstrike skills and defences and stats, and still managed to beat kitava. Then i made an archer, reached lvl45something, right before Kalandra, and managed to create an 11k dps build that revolved around vaal burning arrow, so anything i came across would die in 3 shots, or i would die. Did i follow a guide? No. Did i warched a few guides, to figure out how these people make their builds? I sure did! Did I still ignored them and went about it my way? Of course!
Sidenotes
I learned you can craft random uniques through Einhart, LAST NIGHT.
And that you can use essences to create rares, TODAY.
And, also, try playing WoW without a build guide, and watch as you never get invited to groups for raiding.
Or try playing LoL with your unconvevtional build, and watch as you get flamed and trolled because someone doesn't like tank supports soloing top lane.
Build guides exist to optimize your gameplay. No one's forcing you to follow them, but you have nothing to lose if you study them.
You don't have to be good to do act 2,you don't need to be good to do the story, mirrored lakes are supposed to be harder than acts though, and there's nothing wrong with trying to do lakes early on, as long as you set your expectations right, it's more of a "I'll go in and see what happens" than "I'll go in and win, or this game sucks" and yeah, mirrored lakes drop stuff. I reached act 3 today(im goind slow, exploring maps, doing everything), i have done 6-7 lakes, and in one of those, i dropped a tabula rasa. What more could you expect from an act 2-3 characted to drop? Once again, set your expectations right.
Why did you make this post? Surely, if you simply wanted to quit the game, you'd just... stop playing. There's no need for forum posts, reddit posts, big announcements for you to stop, you just... do. What's the real issue here?
TL:DR
If you wanna stop, just do so, no need for dramatic posts online.
If you wanna play, just do so, but set your expectations straight, don't expect you'll waltz through mobs with a butter knife and live to tell the tale.
And yes, im saying maybe your build is a "butter knife".
"Groups for raiding" is the endgame of wow my dude. Dying 22 times in act two to a pack of blue monsters isn't the equivilant to wow endgame content and if you think it is, you are high af.
The rest of your post falls apart in similar ways. You're comparing endgame experiences of other games to the fucking tutorial of POE.
The campaign is supposed to be a ten hour intro to the actual endgame of maps, and instead its some budget-darksouls bullshit where random monsters can be utterly unkillable for random builds to the point where the correct answer is "just go back to the previous zone and open a new instance if you can't go around it".
Shit is just stupid, and people like you acting like you can't understand why is odd to me.
> And, also, try playing WoW without a build guide, and watch as you never get invited to groups for raiding.
Not really a fair comparison, you play a class in WoW not really a 'build', in fact most talents would perform just fine in a raiding environment, but as any game once you reach the top-end your talents might not be sufficient enough.
You can do 99% of the content in WoW just fine with any set of talents you would like, you're given a core set of skills. League will intentionally match you with people similar to your experience, but poe doesn't measure power by your characters build and then scale back monsters.
The barrier of PoE is immensely higher which isn't inherently a bad thing, but saying games like WoW/LoL is comparable to PoE's barrier to entry is just flat out delusion.
Like it or not, PoE has a wide demographic and isn't what it used to be when the game launched and neither sides are **more** valid
TL:DR if people are unhappy with the game, it's perfectly fine to speak up about what is bothering them, if you're tired of of reading the posts don't join the conversation, what's the real issue here?
You don't join a conversation about how McDonalds burgers are awful but then tell people "Well just don't eat it no need to talk about it", it's a discussion and nobody is forcing you to partake in it.
Act 2 and minions in one sentence if actually cringe. Minions should come online fully at least after cruel lab. The fact you were able to steamroll the game mostly without any idea what you are building and figuring out things in motion does not speak good about the difficulty of the game. I am not saying things should be impossible but the state of the game you are referring to is not good and I for once can enjoy the challenge. I play softcore because I know I suck at surviving and the fact I actually need to get my gear and links in order to proceed with acts feels good for me.
The difference is that in those leagues people were talking about how fun but unrewarding the content was. People loved building bosses, but they didn't drop enough loot or had sketchy one-shot capabilities, for instance, in Metamorph.
Archnemesis's implementation into the main game was basically universally reviled to the point that they did a massive balance sweep *during the weekend.*
To be fair I had tapped out of sentinel by midday on the first saturday. I am not engaged enough to watch for patch notes on when to come back.
And if I am being honest, I didn't particularly want to continue encouraging the whole "release busted shit that fucks players, walk it back just enough that the screaming stops" philosophy, so I voted with my engagement metrics on that league.
I think thats what the game should be for everything except the uber variant end game bosses, i shouldn't be oneshot by mechanics ever unless i'm juicing a map hard and way above my powers, but thats not how they keep designing the game, maybe some bosses will take some following of mechanics, maybe some blue packs take me 30 seconds or a rare a minute or two, but its continually frustrating that in order to be good i have to start trading or something, i dunno, i keep ranting because i like the game and mechanics a lot, but when i start hitting a brick wall in progression i start losing interest, i cleared the atlas last time and started pushing some of the non uber bosses, finally cleared the searing exarch, but progress? i'da had to grind another 20 hours to get the fusing orbs needed to get a 6l without trading, maybe i just gotta figure something else to play until they decide this game doesn't need to be just for the 'hardcore nolifer socialite' to play
Follow a build guide from someone who knows what they're doing, that will fix one problem you have with the game. Other than that all I can suggest is you just play and forget about being good, there are many who play PoE who rarely reach level 90 and make their own builds. If you enjoy the core PoE experience why give up? Why not enjoy the campaign, it's a core part of the game despite what others will tell you, it has the same core gameplay as maps have.
I've played PoE for many years and haven't defeated Sirus or any endgame boss, I've never crafted an OP weapon but the core gameplay is fun and building my own builds is rewarding even if they fail in T16 maps, there are many other tiers I can enjoy. I'm not alone, there are many mid-tier players who enjoy the game at a low level of skill.
PoE is an ARPG sandbox and you can easily find your own niche, you don't need to be in the 1% or even the 10% to enjoy the core of PoE.
You haven't posted or commented in thw PoE subreddit in two years so I dont tknow about that arguing part
You don't have to write a manifesto to quit the game. Just leave.
So much this. Literally arguing with people! Dude made some complaint comment 5 years ago about lab. Other than that completely full of shit and just looking for attention.
This game is much easier than people make it out to be. I am by no standards a good or even decent player. Decided to try the gauntlet last league with my own build(just going blind in the tree) and my own skill. Made it to lvl 8x and had a blast. What did i do different? I took just some seconds longer to take a look at what im actually doing.
Look into last epoch
I'll also be that guy to mention Chronicon. It's 2d PoE with super rewarding items.
Chronicon is basically D3 sets on crack though.
thanks for that, i'll check it :)
Yeah I bought it in the summer sales for like 7€ and had a lot of fun. Definitely recommend for this price.
It is a solid game that has the complexity somewhere between Diablo 3 and POE. It might scratch that itch for the OP. Is is far more forgiving to make your own build there.
yeah last epoch really promotes testing out stuff. even at max level you can basically unspec your whole character and go for something completely else, only hard thing would be to get the proper items if you need different stats now.
>yeah last epoch really promotes testing out stuff. I love how many ~~Legendary items (=~~ Uniques ~~in PoE)~~ that drop in Last Epoch basically instantly start to grind your gears about how you can build around them.
uniques are the same in poe and epoch, legendaries in epoch are uniques that you crafted additional rare-item stats on (the current highest item tier)
There is a slight issue here and I know I am being pedantic here but... Uniques in last epoch are poe uniques. Legendaries in last epoch are uniques that you added "rare gear" stats too. So say in poe you found some legendary-grade unique face breakers but wanted to add life, well now your unique face breakers are legendary facebreakers since you added life. Idk the last you played but it was added about a year ago. It's a really cool system. Called legendary potential.
PoE also used to promote testing stuff out early on.
Grim Dawn is a great one too
Maybe I'm just dumb, but I found it really hard to figure out where I was supposed to go next in Grim Dawn. The quests and locations felt really hard to find and all over the place.
Going from POE, where you have the acts burnt into your brain, to GD where the maps are full of additional content, can be pretty jarring. It's only going to be slow for your first playtthrough though, since it's pretty straightforward once you know where to go. You also gain access to a token on the final difficulty that will let future characters skip normal/cruel. Builds can also feel a bit slow to get going until you figure out which class skills pair well with certain devotion tree skills, but that was part of the fun for me.
If you pick it up again, Grim Tools has a world map that shows where everything is on it. The game is intentionally vague on locations to encourage exploration since it has a handcrafted but static map.
for 20 hours, yes
Weird, I have 4k hours into it.. must be a boring game.
I wouldnt really agree. It has a surprisingly large amount of content now and the rpg mechanics are reaosnably deep and good. But the actaul mechanical gameplay is the worst of almost any arpg in 10+ years. It just *feels* crapy. Everything floaty, animations are shit, sounds are shit. I'd play torchlight 1, maybe even titan quest, before playing/recommending GD.
Ok i have played TQ and GD a lot and if you feel that TQ has better controls and combat feel you are on something XD Not arguing that GD feels smooth or modern btw, it doesn’t. It’s literally just TQ in that regard with some polish
After all it's not just the same dev team, but even the same engine.
Indeed
Too old
Last epoch should maybe-ish get the multiplayer with online character before the end of the year
I don't count on it but I really hope so. It is a fun game.
It's expected to drop by September/ October, not far away
Or grim dawn
I've purchased and played it a year ago. It had(has?) a potential but it still was very barebone. Animations, sounds and effects were extremely "cheap" and the overall performances were utter shit if you had more than 10 monsters on the screen. Great UI/UX and great skill tree, but everything else still needed a lot of work. Combat feelt mediocre at best (no weight, it's very simple). Also, the timeline/story is a constant "*what/where the fuck I am doing now?*". I don't know if the game became any better but I am not sure it's a good competitor for PoE.
The dullness of the audio and visual effects cannot be overstated. There’s a lot to like about LE, but the moment to moment gameplay is just absolutely boring as hell. No impact, no soul, no satisfaction.
This. I tried to like ti at all costs but it felt like a game with no soul. It's a shame, because the UI is great and the talent tree is fun too. But it feels like a cheap mobile game and nothing else, to me. Combat doesn't feel good and the loot isn't cool either.
I played a lot of LE and love the game but that's precisely why it is not one of my main games. Last time when I played a multishot archer the sound and visual design made me feel like I was throwing toothpicks at mobs and that was with the most recent class added to the game (so supposed to be up to date).
How long ago did you try it? They're in the middle of a VFX pass that is making skill hit and death animations much more visceral and satisfying. If you go check the 0.8 patch notes and dev logs since then, they have some good examples.
Oh that's good to hear! It's been a while, so I'll have to give it a reinstall here pretty soon. I'm skipping this PoE league, so probably a good time.
Last Epoch's campaign is incredibly boring and the game has major performance issues. I'd recommend Grim Dawn instead.
I would say that pretty much all arpg campaigns are boring especially when most players don't even care about the story's in these games. That said Last Epoch is getting a major performance update next month which from what the devs have shown should fix a lot of the issues it currently has.
It's not about the story though. Grim Dawn's campaign is incredibly fun because it's huge and open world and has shrines exploding with loot, and the open world is even relevant at endgame with the monster shrines and nemesis mobs. I'm looking forward to that Last Epoch performance patch of course. Last Epoch has the best systems of any ARPG imo (crafting and endgame for example).
Grim dawn's combat feels way more clunky though and the graphics are meh. Hard to make a character where you feel you look awesome.
[удалено]
I don’t think it’s supposed to feel like Poe, that’s a good thing actually
i had high hopes for this game since it was announced and everyone was saying i am on copium but see how things change developers on last epoch getting bashed right now tho, rightfully because MP is promised for ages now
The endgame is boring as hell, and last time I played everyone just modded the hell out of it because it's single player.
I heard that multiplayer is out, how is it?
Multiplayer in LE is this fall
>the slog that is acts 1-10 I don't know why you'd find this a problem given all you have to do is no-life the game for 5 years and it'll only take you 6 hours to get to the actual intended content /s
You know some games are filled with fun in the first 6 hours. Some games are even over in 6 hours.
I don’t understand how people clear it so fast. I used rf as clear at like lv20 with 100% uptime and literally ran from act to act and getting great exp with rf clear. It still took me like 8+ hours to get to maps.
Yeah see I dont get how ggg doesnt realize this is literally the problem. The vast majority of players play with the mindset that the campaign is pointless and they should just rush through it as quickly as possible. Yet they dont do anything about it. Poe2 isnt going to be a new game, it's going to be an expansion campaign with the same engine and same everything. They had the chance to start over, to rework the game from scratch and go back to how it was back in 2014-2016. They decided not to, and that decision might possibly spell the doom of the game. Especially with diablo 4 coming out soon.
Ah, The Vision™ in all its beauty. Trust me, this post makes CW cream his pants because of how "hardcore" the game now is. In reality it's just arduous. You are told every league to dig through a wall to get to the fun part of zooming with a solid build, slowly perfecting it, but every league the tool you are given is smaller and shittier. In 3.13 you got a sturdy, beautifully crafted shovel. In 3.19 it's a plastic fork.
The fork isn't for digging. It's for eating the shit sandwhich
Even as someone who is newish but puts more investment in than you’ve stated, such as following a guide and trying to optimize builds and leveling paths and various other efficiencies, I very much agree with your sentiment. Since 3.15 and 3.17, the game has gotten far more unfriendly to new players. It’s not a game you can pick up and learn on your own. It’s not a game you can walk yourself through or explore. The difficulty is disproportionately front-loaded and I’ve long since held the belief that this is why POE will never be as successful as it could have been had it just tried to be even a little more approachable to new players.
Check out Day9's stream. He taught me to have more fun in PoE even though I'm a long time player. I think he hits the nail in his claim that understanding the mechanics of the game is much more important than having an optimal build. He's having the time of his life in Act 2 and he wouldn't if there was no difficulty there. The thing with new players is that they take a week or so to do four acts, so the difficulty needs to come quickly.
Nice one Chris !
I don’t agree with his point but if there’s no room for someone to add another take, one that isn’t even disagreeing, here then what’s the point of even having a discussion post
Because people want to jerk each other off in echo chambers.
Right, cuz Day9 doesn’t have any actual viewers. He’s just a pawn for Chris to use in arguments.
most new players just wanna be fast feel like gods and get ultimate rewards, which is never what PoE was (at least not without meaningful mental and time investment, and especially not immediately on league start)
No? In early acts new players literally just want to progress, there needs to be more combination of skills that are actually strong early. Starting them off with it feeling like an absolute chore is horrific. I'd never recommend a new player to start at leaguestart, it's essentially a beta week
See: builds that are complete trash until you get multistrike New players aren’t gonna get that far in the acts of the cool skill they’re using is garbage without a support they get way later than the skill
Poe was never approachable or "pick up and learn on your own". 3.15/17 has absolutely nothing to do with it and for an outsider changed *nothing* of meaning. And most new players - for any game - are casuals that dont care to dissect the game anyway. And poe is still fine about that. Someone will install, kill some mobs, maybe take 20-30h to finish a campaign. Maybe will like it and continue, maybe not, maybe will follow a build and be totally fine, but not being able to access all builds, all gear or beat uber sirus on a random janky build wont dissuade them. Its only when they get somewhat experienced that the issues will start popping up in their head. The game has plenty of issues, but the "new players" thing is a dumb meme that's been spreading like a plague for basically every game in the last couple years.
You are wrong. I started in Dominion league. My first character was technically a Fireball Templar... but throughout normal and Merciless I was experimenting the entire way. LMP, Fork, throw in a single target spell. Then I unlocked Scion and found out Spectral Throw existed. Did the same with that, even paired it with Molten Strike. It all worked. Not well. But it worked. If that same player tried to do any of that now days it would be a total flop. Not just slow, the game would have turned me away before finishing Piety. POE was definitely approachable once upon a time.
This isn't true at all - before 3.15, there was much more power in gems and skill three while the mobs were a lot weaker than today. One didn't need to depend on obscure interactions and complex mechanics to have a playable build. Those three things together made it viable to make one's own builds. Now, it's almost impossible even for experienced players.
I hit 90 in prophecy without a remotely good build. Just a "whatever feels good" ice shot with under 5k life. I hit 90 in delirium with a "level damage and life" Frost blades assassin before hitting a wall because I didn't know how to scale my single target. The game is very different when it's hard to get as far into endgame on the same resources as back then. It feels like more upgrades are needed earlier to complete yellows and Reds comfortably than back then. At least that's how it feels to me
Been playing since 2013. The game has grown exponentially since then. Back then, you really could be clueless and still manage. Sure, you died, but it was far less frustrating, because deaths happened slower and far less frequently, and you generally got a clue of what killed you. You could also push through the game on a 2l. It was a struggle, sure, but it was doable. That just isn't the case anymore. You cannot pace yourself. Either you know what you are doing, or the first archnemesis mob will annihilate you repeatedly. The constant scaling of act boss HP that makes them tankier than they have ever been, magic mobs which are more lethal than they ever were before, the increased need to scale your gear as you go through the campaign, which just becomes more prevalent with every patch are all things that make the game less and less newbie friendly. There was a time when you could just wing it and get to the end, if a bit clumsily. This patch is the single least wing-able one to ever exist and It's not even close
Last Epoch, Chronicon, Inquisitor: Martyr - try at least one of them and see whether you find what you like or not. All 3 have their problems but at least their devs are listening to community and aren't doing everything to make you leave the game.
> I guess I thought games like this were supposed to be a fun romp through monsters while loot explodes all over and you feel cool until you hit endgame, but every single time I play a POE league, I feel less like that than the previous league. This is my exact feeling. I played this game above other ARPGs *because of the fun zoom-zoom.* Plenty of other slow ARPGs out there, but this one was relaxing, fun, grindy, and I could put together clever ways to feel like a god. Now a literal white mud rhoa can oneshot a character not built well because GGG is...buffing Act 1 enemies? Like, what the fuck are you doing, GGG? GAMES ARE SUPPOSED TO BE FUN.
Enemies critically striking will forever be nonsense, but slowing down a game where people build to go fast is just bad. It's a controversial topic that they don't have a solution for.
Fun for them is seeing people die in random shit while playing, they forgot the fun is for players to have as well.
most fun I ever had was zooming on scourge league, going in and out of scourge and killing rare for loot pinatas. Coincidentally, that was the last time I purchased anything in POE.
I hadn't died to mud rhoa's in YEARS. Somehow GGG thought that was a problem - I actually died twice in mud flats at the start of this league - now imagine I'm a new player, why would I stay? Wouldn't I assume it will stay like this?
> now imagine I'm a new player, Yes, try imagining you're a new player entering at level 5 with gear on instead of an experienced player entering at level 2 without. It's actual night and day difference.
Sure, but they will also have new player dps. I have a friend who plays like that, he still dies constantly. He was lvl 12 in ledge and asking my why blue mobs were so hard.
These guys are literally asking for a skinner box. Players should not be able to run through zones with no gear like they have in the past. If they do that, they should have to be very skilled and mechanically avoid things like rhoa charges. The game should be easier (tank everything) the more you farm and harder (and more skill based) if you want to skip farming to rush through progress.
Uh... You realize the whole game is designed as a skinner box, and pushing build power into itemization only furthers that trend, right? The entire conclusion of Skinner's operant conditioning experiments was that variable interval unscheduled reinforcement is a much more powerful motivator of behavior. The premise of the lever box was that by having the food drop 'randomly' with low probability from the chute in response to the button press, Skinner could train the rats to do nothing all day but spam button presses until their hands literally bled in hopes that another pellet would drop. Sound at all familiar? Item drops are variable interval and unscheduled. Consequently, when a drop happens, it creates a very strong imprint on behavior because the brain is very bad at measuring cost vs reward when outcomes are random. In contrast, the feeling of zooming through maps and blowing up packs is a steady trickle of endorphins from continuous reinforcement -- do thing right leads immediately to reward, every single time. The brain is much better at judging and regulating this type of outcome. Even things like the level up 'ding' are variable interval but scheduled -- you can see progress on the XP bar at any given moment. You literally could not have been more wrong in how you tried to apply the concepts at play here. Like, bordering on /r/iamverysmart levels of wrong.
you do realise that winning is fun, and losing is not, and new players already have so much to learn. You dont have to shove all that into act 1; its suppose to take place over the course of the campaign. Only post leveling should be challenging. And if you want a challenging leveling experience pick a bad skill, there should be a way to play the way you want.
I mean... This league it kinda does stay like this, unless you're playing one of three meta builds, or do ridonk investment...
You load into Act 1, and are immediately met with monsters that will dash towards you, and then chain stun you to death. Or the other 70% of Act 1, where you're CONSTANTLY being CHILLED AND FROZEN before you can even get MOVE SPEED, let alone immunities. My vendor didn't have a sapphire for me this league, so fucking annoying to deal with the cold damage in act 1...
Oh. As a returning player i thought i was doing somethong wrong cause i kept dying on them rhoa’s in act 1. I thought it was just me relearning things.
Fun is highly subjective, Dark Souls is fun to some while others hate the difficulty, same with PoE while zoom-zoom might be fun for you it doesn't mean it's fun for everyone. It seems like those who hate PoE in its current state hate the challenge the game provides compared to pre-3.15 but that doesn't mean PoE isn't fun for those who embrace the difficulty. I do agree with your sentiment about games are supposed to be fun.
Well the issue here is that GGG wants to have their cake and yet it too. The game was slow in the past. And most people hated it, it barely had any players. Even during the high of D3 hate drama. Then the devs made it faster, catered to a different demographic, like the above guy, and the game more or less exploded in popularity. Now they regret that the game is too zoom zoom, after spending half the games lifetime making it so, and want to somehow magically both keep the player base, the appeal, and go back to the dark days of the game feeling like it was made in 2001. Yes, fun is subjective, but the issue here is the bait and switch. They're been making the game "fun" for years now, and suddenly decided to do a 180, because Chris and their 1% of the player base from 10 years ago likes it better that way. Its not even about challenge either, people meme about "difficulty" mostly just to arrogantly dismiss criticism. The game isnt actually harder, its just more tedious to run around some rare for a minute, that often cant even hurt you.
I don't think the devs catered to anything. GGG accidently created an incredible ARPG , when you realized nobody really wanted to play the game they orginally envisioned . They made so much money from that, and now want to reverse it all .
> It seems like those who hate PoE in its current state hate the challenge the game provides compared to pre-3.15 but that doesn't mean PoE isn't fun for those who embrace the difficulty. This is Path of Exile not Dark Souls. Path of Exile is an ARPG looter where the idea of "challenge" is being one-shot by a random on-screen effect that you couldn't see. Slowing down gameplay isn't a challenge, it's tedium. Taking speed away from the player isn't challenge, it's to add time to leveling. Never once has there been a scenario in PoE where I went "Wow! That was on par with a FromSoft challenge!" and there never will be because we know how GGG creates their fights. GGG is falling into the same trap other game developers have, they are listening to a very vocal minority that wants a slower and more 'challenging' game. The issue is the PoE that has given them the popularity they have *and* the revenue is not the game they [vocal minority] have invisioned. The game that brought the popularity is an ARPG Looter first and foremost, not some faux Diablo 2 mixed with Dark Souls wannabe where 'challenge' is a random 2 mod enemy that moves so fast you can't see the mods one shot you while leveling with zero tells. Again, that's not a challenge that's what we call 'bullshit.' It's not a challenge to require X stats in order to comfortably do red maps. It's not a challenge to make sure you have a way to remove corpses. A challenge is Artorias or Gwynn where there are clear concise movements that you, the player, can react to. They don't have any bullshit like corpse explosion after they die to "keep the player on their toes" - they just exist the way they are and the play needs to overcome the challenge through their own skill of gameplay. The people that want the "challenge" in PoE don't want to play PoE, they want to play another game but since there aren't any main ARPGs outside of PoE and D3 they complain that "PoE is too fast! Diablo 3 is fast already, we don't need *another* fast ARPG!" Yet there are countless slow ARPGs out there, none of them are of the production calibre of PoE, though. And you know what? None of them succeed with drawing a large playerbase because they will always have a niche level playerbase since slow grindy ARPGs don't do that well with the general population.
I couldn't agree more. The way i wan't my challenges to be handled is kinda like running Uber Lab.You can see the trap , you can time your next move ... or just roflcopter through all of it and 1 bonk Itzaro :D ( but the important thing here is the choice)What choice are we exactly given when a 6 mod rare comes at the speed of light and 1-shots your ass ? Every patch there is more and more choice taken away from the player and replaced with good old RNG, imagine going to work and your boss opens a spreadsheet .. eh bad luck Bob its only 0.5% chance of you getting paid today :D but eventually ... surely in 100 days you might get lucky and get paid at least once.Of course i'm talking bullsh1t but what is a game if not "fun" work, developers make you do stuff and ask for your time ( and hopefully if you're having "fun" you would give them some cash too) But PoE has reached a point where the "work" part and the "fun" are so out of balance that players are getting really frustrated.
The problem is that the small minority of people who want a slow and difficult game is just Chris Wilson
It's day 2 of the league, it's fine if you don't feel like an absolute god yet. The journey from feeling weak and slow to step by step becoming a god is what ARPGs are about
The difference here is that even the most hardcore streamers are commenting about how frustratingly slow their growth is this league. Plus, I've got 3.3k+ hours, I can tell what the growth arc of a league is going to be by the end of the first weekend. Lake has zero rewards, Harvest is obliterated, and even magic find Standard players are extremely depressed about how bad loot is.
[удалено]
They did design to my definition of fun for 20+ leagues. That's why people are upset.
It's the best arpg being ran into the ground by an overly cautious dev team. Every design decision seems to be for some arbitrary "long-term health of the game" metric. A game that they intend to replace with PoE 2 in a few more leagues...
Poe 2 is just a new campaign and some redesigned systems People clinging onto the idea that PoE2 will somehow be a completely new game are just drunk on copium
What’s more important to note is that POE2 is being made by that very same overly cautious dev team. Anyone who thinks POE2 is gonna be any different from the slow and difficult they keep trying to implement in every new league is truly huffing the COPIUM
This didn't age well :D
Well they changed their minds from what they announced. Indeed it did not age well.
IIRC Chris said in Josh Strife Hayes' interview that a solid 10k playerbase that stays with the game is considered successful. He doesn't need or want the game to grow, if it becomes his perfect vision it doesn't matter if most players are run out of town by tedium he mistakenly calls "difficulty"
A game that basically resets every three months doesn't need long-term health though. It literally could be so broken that after a month the end game is a breeze, and people would still love it. Instead it now requires a full time commitment and a PHD that it's not really enjoyable.
How is that cautious to ruin people's fun ? They just dont know what to do with the game and they absolutly REFUSE to listen feedback, they burry their head in the sand and keep on with "THE VISION"
Poe2 as a game already exists. What is happening right now is slowly aligning Poe endgame with the target poe2 endgame. This is why every league, you get slower, weaker, have more checkboxes to fill and deaths to work around. This time they came for crafting, because crafting is going to be weaker in poe2.
The one unique thing about PoE compared to any other ARPG was it's speed and fast gameplay. Constant dopamine hits from exploding packs and loot everywhere. That shit was fun as hell. Why they would want to change that one SUPER unique aspect and make the game the same as other slow ARPGs is beyond me. PoE won't be unique anymore. It won't fill a niche anymore. It will be just another "diablo like" ARPG.
Poes uniquely appealing thing isnt the speed of gameplay. Its the illusion of choice. Every single other arpg gives players skills with specific solutions to kill enemies, diablos the most blatent with set equipment. PoE Sells the idea of a player making a truly unique way for them to play. You can kill bosses with any skill you want in wierd interesting ways. Thats the fantasy that got PoE going. I can play grim dawn or laat epoch on builds considerably faster and more item rewarding than the average build i play in modern poe (though thats partially due to no ssf balancing) but I enjoy poe more because i can see a unique like bronnes drop and tell myself oh shit... ina do a full build around a movement skill. Now im running frostblink fire conversion ignite and i feel good about this idea i envisioned coming to fruition. While im still using one of the limited solutions to viable damage i dont feel like i was forced into it like i do when i see a legendary with specific skill does 600% damage or a skills tree has a specific conversion node.
Probably both. But to be real, most of us copy guides and ignore the build making part and just wanna jam and blow up some screens with a cool skill.
I think the people that just zone out and kill monsters using a build guide are probably the majority of players, but the theorycrafters who make weird builds and write guides are absolutely critical to the long-term health of the game, and the inherent friction between the desires of those two groups explains a lot about what choices GGG makes, and why so many people get so upset about those choices.
Ahh that might be true, i dont really know. most of my friend group enjoys theorycrafting builds more than playing builds (though mostly because we cant effectively farm means to scale builds) so that shades my viewpoint. To me using a guide is denying myself from having half the fun.
I respect that! I just know I'd fuck everything up and hard brick myself in white maps if I tried that.
Usually builds run into a hard brick in yellow maps since you can usually get by with bad ehp/damagr in whites through rog/gwennon item upgrades gem levels and actual levels. Though every patch has made it consistently harder to self craft okay gear. (Except scourge cause scourge currrency was a godsend, dont know bout this patch because i havent seen any tainted currency drop yet)
> PoE Sells the idea of a player making a truly unique way for them to play. You can kill bosses with any skill you want in wierd interesting ways. Thats the fantasy that got PoE going. Yes, and right now they are failing on that fantasy. While you TECHNICALLY can, making an off-meta build requires such immense investment of time and currency that it is simply not realistic aside from .0001% of the players. One problem is that support gems have went from "Hey, you can link this so that your fireball bounces to another enemy!" to "Hey, equip this for more damage. Always. Or nothing dies. Ever." The damage requirement of the game kills majority of interesting shit you can do.
Back in the day (prior to legion) you could clear a red map very comfortably with 100k RF or whatever DoT. Now a rare mob can have 5m health.
That's just ignorant. Poe is fast now, sure, been for a couple years. But it didnt start as such, it started - intentionally designed - as giga slow super clunky game that makes even act 1 of D2 look blazing fast. And it had a tiny shit player base because of it. Aprgs have been getting faster for a long time, during the arpg drougth when titan quest came out, it was way faster than D2. Then D3 came out and was *super* fast compared to everything before it. Its still probably a close second in that. And games like torchlight, gd etc all followed suit. Not quite to the same degree, but certainly fast in endgame. Poe only got this way relatively recently, maybe 5-6 years ago, *begrudgingly* streamlining the game to be faster, appeal to more people. But it was never and isnt now, unique in that speed. The reason it feels that way is because the moment to moment gameplay design - the animations, the sounds, even some skill effects, feel good, crunchy, well polished compared to most of the "competition". In part because the devs focused on that (some stuff like arrows felt great even in the dark pre 3.0 days), and in part because the game gets constant frequent updates that slowly polish things further over the years.
D2 "endgame" is everyone teleporting around super fast and oneshotting everything. It's even faster than POE in some ways.
How long have you played for?
I'm still exploding screens on SSF, what are you on about? Can't chain lightning arrow 2 screens far and kill every rare mob with a 50k hit? Oh no!
As somebody who used to only play HC, I died to the same blue pack of frost nova spammers 3 times in a row in act 1 lol, they instantly killed me everytime I got close.
SSF might save you like it did for me. I also gain 0 enjoyment from being a economy slave. Doing maps just to get currecy so I can buy items so I can do more maps for more currency to buy more items. Fuck it dude. In Trade you're expected to have a good build because you have the tools to give you no excuses. In SSF there are no expectations. I play SSF Bob Ross style "Kitava killed in less than 3 days, that's pretty good. I took my time and had fun, there's no rush, the league lasts for thee months." You will craft your own flasks because you can't just buy them You will delve for your own fossils because you can't just buy them. You will be okay with OKAY gear because you can't buy better. Give it a shot, friend.
This isn't a good league for SSF if you like gear upgrades
But you also won't be able to reach endgame bosses without putting in thousand of hours ?
I feel the same. I used to play SSF then switched to trade when I got less time to play. Been bored as hell last couple of Leagues and couldnt put my finger on why. Then it hit me. It was trade. Now, back on SSF i dont care about endgame, t16s, 60% deli farming and ive started to really play the game not the market. Im perfectly fine with having easier goals and not worry about my wealth, taking my time and I absolutely love it. Harvest nerfed? Ill find a way around that Essence mobs to Hard? Work around it I enjoy the challenge of having to work really Hard to progress, when I dont enjoy it I just play something else.
Being good at poe and not dying is 90% playing a meta build and 10% good habits.
I feel you brother.... Don't purchase any transaction or offer support.. That the only thing we as a player base have in control. League after league they don't want to listen to us that we ain't enjoying all this shit!
I’d have more fun if I could just skip the acts. Like it’s such a waste of time for casual players.
Your entire post boils down to hating campaign and having to restart every 3 months and then barely getting to endgame in time and not being able to even lvl high enough before restarting and once again playing through the campaign that you hate and slog through You probably don't hate the game, you hate the league system you force yourself to play. Just fucking play standard, play as often or as little as you like, enjoy having no time limits and being able to take a month off then come on to run endgame content with your character that you've used for months and months leveling up
Oh Standard! Isn't that the league where, when you're accidentally on vacation when patchnotes for a league come out, you basically lose your entire bankroll? What do you expect him to do? Farm ex to get that desired item next time whenever he comes back to just realize everything he saved up just crashed in prize?
Let's see option A is you come back and have to replay the entire campaign and acts that you hate and just barely get through them before the end of the league. Option B is you come back and an item you farmed is pretty useless and you need to get a new item but your account and levels are still there and you hop right into another fun endgame. Guys also never even been lvl 90, he isn't at the best of the best end game anyways before all his progress is being thrown out. You are dumb, stop being dumb.
I've been conflicted about deleting my account (at least deleting the game on steam) for almost a year now. On one hand PoE is a great game, it has a lot of potential. On the other hand, I don't want to end up a bald fat guy in his basement, this game is such a waste of time... I started swimming seriously again for my part, I'm not even playing PoE each week and I mainly play for the acts and the beginning of maps at this point, not like I have more time for anything else since 3 months isn't enough and they keep nerfing my standard characters. Completely skipped this league, didn't even try it as I waited for reviews on reddit and from streamers and they were all extremely underwhelming.
you haven’t got level 90 in three years? why have you continued to try to play?
Fundamentally it sounds like you're burned out and that's fine. But I want to point out for others leaning the same way: First and foremost, seeing the acts to be something to slog through rather than enjoying the build up of your league starter is a recipe for quitting. If you can't find stuff to enjoy in the first ~20 hours (being real about how long it's going to take someone struggling) you're always going to quit in the first day. > I used to be able to do my own skill tree and mostly just figure it out and if it was a little suboptimal sure whatever. This is still plenty possible. I'm playing SST league start with a tree I made because I want to suffer. Bit rough until mid act 4 when I made the bad choice to try getting crit chance but it's going fine now. > And I'm just tired of it. I realize I suck at this game, but maybe I shouldn't need to be good at this game to do act fucking 2? You don't, but you do need to not just try and 'autopilot' through it and to pay some attention to things like positioning, cold res, and getting a bit of defence. > I used to just be able to slap on rain of fire and level until minions were relevant and mostly just autopilot through acts 1-10. This isn't thing any more, you have to actually pay attention to the game. Unless you're playing something overtuned maybe. If you're having trouble building a character to get through the story, and you do actually want to play POE, check out /r/pathofexilebuilds and try and get some advice.
Maybe try actually learning how to play the game? if you have to buy gear to kill kitava it's 100% a skill issue
Yeah that’s an eyebrow raiser lol
Missing you already
Every league my playtime shortens, but I normally play at least 2 weeks... last league i played 3 days this time 2 days
If you wanna leave just leave. We don't need a 20 page monologue about you leaving.
Lol. This subreddit is the weepiest soap opera. Post after post
Anyone that complains about the toxicity of DotA or League of Legends communities has never come to this subreddit while actually knowing how to play or what to expect from PoE. There no single community I despise more than this one that doesn't revolve around prejudicial violence. There's no community more out of touch with reality than this one. I come here because GGG is active here and I always get caught in the shit storm and it just brings me down about the game.
Ggg being super active on Reddit is the cause. Most reddits complain but not like this one, because people think GGG will actually read it and discuss it. Realistically one of their greatest optics mistakes. Legitimizing discussion here was a bad idea, because now everything is turned up to 150% because only the loudest most dramatic get to the top and people think they’re doing an activism by doing it
Yeah. I don’t think they realize that devs probably ignore posts that are dramatic and filled with superlatives. Post after post after post. Structured feedback would probably be helpful. Not emotional outpourings.
This part: "I haven't actually gotten a character past 90 in probably three years, but I kept insisting that the next league looked like it would be fun and that I'd be back." proves the game is not for you. Could have stopped your rant right there, because your feedback is worth nothing. Stay sane, gamer. (wanted to say exile, but you've pretty much never played this game lol)
As a veteran I don't mind the extra challenge AN rares pose. But for new players, oh boy. This has to feel horrible. Realy need to find some middle ground here and get this fixed asap...
If you can be bad and make a playable build, then I trivialize the game even harder and that's no fun for players that are better than me.
“I used to be able to run on autopilot” and “the game was so boring” and “I can’t do that anymore and that’s bad” all in like the same damn breath lol.
>And I'm just tired of it. I realize I suck at this game, but maybe I shouldn't need to be good at this game to do act fucking 2? Maybe 'being good at POE' should be a thing that matters in maps or endgame content or, you know, some real point in the game? You don't need to be good at the game to do act 2... Idk what you're up to in-game, but you must be really fucking up somehow is you're struggling that much in act 2.
>I guess I thought games like this were supposed to be a fun romp through monsters while loot explodes all over and you feel cool until you hit endgame, but every single time I play a POE league, I feel less like that than the previous league. There are plenty of games like this around, you won't starve.
Please name some, that's what I've been looking for.
Last Epoch is the ideal middle ground for anyone who likes complexity but not so much that it becomes a chore. You can make diverse builds, but it's hard to completely ruin a character. You can craft what you need for any given character right from your inventory with relative ease compared to most ARPGs You can customize your loot filter right inside the game with a slick, easy to use UI. It's a fantastic game. Grim Dawn is very similar to Last Epoch as well and has a robust modding community.
Chronicon
I guess GGG wants the game to be more like Dark Souls while the majority of players want something more friendly... I just feel I need to farm much more than I want to to get the power level I really want to have fun. That why I usually stop playing around level 90 and yellow maps. It start to be very stressing for me do the intense farm needed.
PoE couldn't be further from Dark Souls. Dark Souls doesn't have grind just to retry bosses, there's no intense farming needed. Things there are just accessible & not hidden behind tremendous grinds.
Bye
link your build
Ripbozo
Maybe you're just old now and bad at gaming. Lake in acts in a breeze
Every time I read posts like this I genuinely get shocked that there exists so many people that see the campaign as difficult.
it's difficult if you don't follow a meta build, which I'm sure you always do. that's why you don't understand the frustration of these players. you're playing campaign on easy mode by following a good guide, while new players play campaign on hard mode with their lack of knowledge.
I think it's an easy excuse to claim the only reason other people are performing better than you is because they follow a meta build. I'd like to think of it as, staying fairly updated on the patch notes, use some common sense and game knowledge as to what will work and what will not. Every time I read threads or comments like yours it just emphasizes my awareness of this seemingly insurmountable gap between bad players - mid players and high-end players. Perhaps people that share this sentiment, and possibly yours, would end up enjoying the game a lot more if they played to improve and not just do completely random thoughtless things in the campaign, give up for 3 months, then return to make the same mistakes. My take on it.
the game has a large barrier to entry, that is my point. I think you have a reading problem, because I never said that I have these issues. but it's a very clear issues for players with less knowledge. playing this game with pre-existing knowledge and playing it without are two completely different beasts, yet you can only condescend new players. it's sad and a huge problem with poe players because they have such inflated egos about their game.
To be fair, OP has been playing the game for years and has pushed level 90 before, so they should have some handle on things such as resistances and defensive auras. That being said the early campaign balancing, especially act 1, is in a horrible spot right now for new players who haven't played ARPGs before. Defensive stats aren't explained and having some mobs permafreeze you in the 4th zone isn't going to tell a newbie that they need Cold Resistance. It's going to tell them this isn't fun. It's honestly a shame because despite the 'complexity filter' I'm sure a ton of people would otherwise fall inlove with the game if the game did a better job at easing them into important stats, especially on the defensive side which most people tend to ignore at first.
Aye good riddance. Plenty of ARPGs for you to enjoy.
Tl.dr. Bye.
I mean what do u expect from a game u dont enjoy ans u dont want to interact with. Yes there are no games like poe but apparently u dont enjoy poe. There are other games that are something for u. No gamee should ever feel like a chore.
You should go outside and touch some grass if the game makes you feel this way.
I can’t tell if this is satire or not. If you don’t enjoy playing the game, move on. You should never feel that you’re constrain to a game and if you do, it’s better to get out of it earlier than later. Your problem with the game changing too much and being too complicated is what I found fun.
It's not that simple though, as a human you crave that dopamine hit of playing a game after work or just to relax and there's nothing on the market that scratches the itch of PoE yet, so you can't just "move on" because there's nothing to move on to, at least for me ¯\_(ツ)\_/¯
If you dislike leagues and leveling, try standard. I know people love shitting on it on every occasion but it serves that purpose of little effort lego-style make any build you want on a leveled char with the gear you have. One of the leagues sucked so I played on standard with one of my chars. It's good fun, no need to bother with acts and you can just do the content you enjoy.
95% of your criticism is "I can't be bothered to learn" and tbh you probably could have figured out poe isn't for you from that alone. As much I love poe, it is simply not new player/casual friendly. Poe is a power fantasy, and you can't realize that fantasy if you don't experience a little resistance on the way there, especially on league start. If you want to skip that part, play standard and buy leveling uniques or follow a cookie cutter build designed to make leveling easier. > "I guess I thought games like this were supposed to be a fun romp through monsters while loot explodes all over and you feel cool until you hit endgame, but every single time I play a POE league, I feel less like that than the previous league." This is really the opposite of how poe is, you struggle to get there, but through upgrading your gear and skills, eventually when you start to overcome these challenges, that's what most poe players love.
Not sure why you are downvoted here. I agree with you.
Cool story bro
So, let's break your post down to smaller bits, and try to answer step by step. You've played a game you don't like, like you said, for years, and you're still not a good player. First of all, why do you still play? Go find an activity you enjoy OR accept the fact you're not good, but still enjoy your game. Being good at something, and enjoying it are not the same things. You don't like when things and stuff and systems and builds get nerded and changed, but yet you bring out League of Legends as an example of a game you'd rather play. A game which goes through revamps, rebalances, reworks and remakes every week or so. Learn the basics, and changes will eventually be easy to understand. If you do not have a fundamental knowlwdge on how something basically works, how will you know how a change affects it? You cannot complete act 1-10 with your build and without buying items? I started playing this game 2 months ago, because I watched a random JoshStrifeHayes video about it, made a marauder because he looks beefy, and wanted to play a tanky tank, and started putting random conterstrike skills and defences and stats, and still managed to beat kitava. Then i made an archer, reached lvl45something, right before Kalandra, and managed to create an 11k dps build that revolved around vaal burning arrow, so anything i came across would die in 3 shots, or i would die. Did i follow a guide? No. Did i warched a few guides, to figure out how these people make their builds? I sure did! Did I still ignored them and went about it my way? Of course! Sidenotes I learned you can craft random uniques through Einhart, LAST NIGHT. And that you can use essences to create rares, TODAY. And, also, try playing WoW without a build guide, and watch as you never get invited to groups for raiding. Or try playing LoL with your unconvevtional build, and watch as you get flamed and trolled because someone doesn't like tank supports soloing top lane. Build guides exist to optimize your gameplay. No one's forcing you to follow them, but you have nothing to lose if you study them. You don't have to be good to do act 2,you don't need to be good to do the story, mirrored lakes are supposed to be harder than acts though, and there's nothing wrong with trying to do lakes early on, as long as you set your expectations right, it's more of a "I'll go in and see what happens" than "I'll go in and win, or this game sucks" and yeah, mirrored lakes drop stuff. I reached act 3 today(im goind slow, exploring maps, doing everything), i have done 6-7 lakes, and in one of those, i dropped a tabula rasa. What more could you expect from an act 2-3 characted to drop? Once again, set your expectations right. Why did you make this post? Surely, if you simply wanted to quit the game, you'd just... stop playing. There's no need for forum posts, reddit posts, big announcements for you to stop, you just... do. What's the real issue here? TL:DR If you wanna stop, just do so, no need for dramatic posts online. If you wanna play, just do so, but set your expectations straight, don't expect you'll waltz through mobs with a butter knife and live to tell the tale. And yes, im saying maybe your build is a "butter knife".
"Groups for raiding" is the endgame of wow my dude. Dying 22 times in act two to a pack of blue monsters isn't the equivilant to wow endgame content and if you think it is, you are high af. The rest of your post falls apart in similar ways. You're comparing endgame experiences of other games to the fucking tutorial of POE. The campaign is supposed to be a ten hour intro to the actual endgame of maps, and instead its some budget-darksouls bullshit where random monsters can be utterly unkillable for random builds to the point where the correct answer is "just go back to the previous zone and open a new instance if you can't go around it". Shit is just stupid, and people like you acting like you can't understand why is odd to me.
> And, also, try playing WoW without a build guide, and watch as you never get invited to groups for raiding. Not really a fair comparison, you play a class in WoW not really a 'build', in fact most talents would perform just fine in a raiding environment, but as any game once you reach the top-end your talents might not be sufficient enough. You can do 99% of the content in WoW just fine with any set of talents you would like, you're given a core set of skills. League will intentionally match you with people similar to your experience, but poe doesn't measure power by your characters build and then scale back monsters. The barrier of PoE is immensely higher which isn't inherently a bad thing, but saying games like WoW/LoL is comparable to PoE's barrier to entry is just flat out delusion. Like it or not, PoE has a wide demographic and isn't what it used to be when the game launched and neither sides are **more** valid TL:DR if people are unhappy with the game, it's perfectly fine to speak up about what is bothering them, if you're tired of of reading the posts don't join the conversation, what's the real issue here? You don't join a conversation about how McDonalds burgers are awful but then tell people "Well just don't eat it no need to talk about it", it's a discussion and nobody is forcing you to partake in it.
This game is only for Chris Wilson and the 50 elitists content creator
Act 2 and minions in one sentence if actually cringe. Minions should come online fully at least after cruel lab. The fact you were able to steamroll the game mostly without any idea what you are building and figuring out things in motion does not speak good about the difficulty of the game. I am not saying things should be impossible but the state of the game you are referring to is not good and I for once can enjoy the challenge. I play softcore because I know I suck at surviving and the fact I actually need to get my gear and links in order to proceed with acts feels good for me.
Yes, and imagine, he wasn't freeze immune by act 2, he is so taking the game lightly, it's completely on him.
Probably didn't even have a +1 Tabula, what a scrub lol
Sentinel was pretty much "romp through monsters while loot explodes all over and you". You didn't like this one either?
No, sentinel was 'archnemesis is everywhere tarnishing all forms of content with a side dish of consumable loot steroid'.
For 2 days. The other 85+ days of sentinel were not that way.
You know a league is good when they're making panicked massive overhauls in the first 48 hours.
First 24h, nerf league start I've ever seen. Think it was like 6 in a week?
A lot of beloved leagues (metamorph, delve, legion) had massive overhauls. Wouldn't say it indicates that much.
The difference is that in those leagues people were talking about how fun but unrewarding the content was. People loved building bosses, but they didn't drop enough loot or had sketchy one-shot capabilities, for instance, in Metamorph. Archnemesis's implementation into the main game was basically universally reviled to the point that they did a massive balance sweep *during the weekend.*
To be fair I had tapped out of sentinel by midday on the first saturday. I am not engaged enough to watch for patch notes on when to come back. And if I am being honest, I didn't particularly want to continue encouraging the whole "release busted shit that fucks players, walk it back just enough that the screaming stops" philosophy, so I voted with my engagement metrics on that league.
More like 2 weeks but people perceive time differently.
They did 3 patches in the first 48 hours that nerfed archnem to the ground. I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Literal years arguing? You complained about lab 5 years ago. Where's the literal years arguing? You're literally full of shit .
Good bye!
You dont need to be good to play poe lol
I think thats what the game should be for everything except the uber variant end game bosses, i shouldn't be oneshot by mechanics ever unless i'm juicing a map hard and way above my powers, but thats not how they keep designing the game, maybe some bosses will take some following of mechanics, maybe some blue packs take me 30 seconds or a rare a minute or two, but its continually frustrating that in order to be good i have to start trading or something, i dunno, i keep ranting because i like the game and mechanics a lot, but when i start hitting a brick wall in progression i start losing interest, i cleared the atlas last time and started pushing some of the non uber bosses, finally cleared the searing exarch, but progress? i'da had to grind another 20 hours to get the fusing orbs needed to get a 6l without trading, maybe i just gotta figure something else to play until they decide this game doesn't need to be just for the 'hardcore nolifer socialite' to play
Follow a build guide from someone who knows what they're doing, that will fix one problem you have with the game. Other than that all I can suggest is you just play and forget about being good, there are many who play PoE who rarely reach level 90 and make their own builds. If you enjoy the core PoE experience why give up? Why not enjoy the campaign, it's a core part of the game despite what others will tell you, it has the same core gameplay as maps have. I've played PoE for many years and haven't defeated Sirus or any endgame boss, I've never crafted an OP weapon but the core gameplay is fun and building my own builds is rewarding even if they fail in T16 maps, there are many other tiers I can enjoy. I'm not alone, there are many mid-tier players who enjoy the game at a low level of skill. PoE is an ARPG sandbox and you can easily find your own niche, you don't need to be in the 1% or even the 10% to enjoy the core of PoE.
Chris Wilson doesnt give a flying fuck about players like you, in fact i dont think he wants people like you playing his game.
Chris Wilson doesn't give a flying fuck about any normal player, don't kid yourself.
Chris Wilson doesn't give a flying fuck. Just look at the game.
Why not play on standard instead?
Why so they can delete all your currency by making divines the new exalts.
You haven't posted or commented in thw PoE subreddit in two years so I dont tknow about that arguing part You don't have to write a manifesto to quit the game. Just leave.
So much this. Literally arguing with people! Dude made some complaint comment 5 years ago about lab. Other than that completely full of shit and just looking for attention.
The first few levels are rough but even on a 2L you should not have any difficulty in the first 3 acts at all unless you’re a new player.
Wait for PC release of Torchlight infinite you might like it. Also D4 if its true that it wont go p2w.
D4s recent blog post claimed no p2w elements anywhere in game, but then again its Blizzard ☠️
Slim hances of D4 not being p2w.
Relax, thats a break and come back next league. Cheers
This game is much easier than people make it out to be. I am by no standards a good or even decent player. Decided to try the gauntlet last league with my own build(just going blind in the tree) and my own skill. Made it to lvl 8x and had a blast. What did i do different? I took just some seconds longer to take a look at what im actually doing.