The grind was too much, I'm done

"

CliveHowlitzer wrote:

It is something of a conundrum for me. On the one hand, I can't wait to get to maps to find out how well my build works out. On the other hand, once I get there, I realize how boring the game is from then on.

Completely opposite here.

Level 1 to 80: zzzzzzZZZZZzzzzz. 3 seconds to attack/cast. Miss every other attack. You're playing with no idea what your build will really look like later on. No leveled gems. Crap gear. It's almost embarrassing to call it a "build", at this point.

Game starts when you hit maps.

"

DnAngel wrote:

I feel your pain. Hopefully someday GGG will realize that the most important thing in the game should be the combat, not the economy...

They actually did, they gave a lot in recent times to players and it came at the expense of the economy. Mastercrafting. 10000000000000% buff to unique drops. On top of things like boxes, and league features like spirits that buff drops. At this point, I almost feel sorry for them, they're probably trying to think of what can they do for the next leagues, how to buff drops even more - and when the time comes, players will blast them for it, just because every time you kill a monster it doesnt drop a Mjolner.

GGG's problem is not realizing what a 6 year old should know - no matter how much you give, they'll complain because you haven't given them everything, right now, and served on a silver platter.

Player: Drops suck!!!
GGG: We buffed uniques by a million percent now.
Player: I dropped Alphas and I thought I was rich. I hopped onto xyz and learned that it's cheap now. This game sucks, I never drop 5k exalt items!!! WTF, GGG?!?

"

toyotatundra wrote:

"

CliveHowlitzer wrote:

It is something of a conundrum for me. On the one hand, I can't wait to get to maps to find out how well my build works out. On the other hand, once I get there, I realize how boring the game is from then on.

Completely opposite here.

Level 1 to 80: zzzzzzZZZZZzzzzz. 3 seconds to attack/cast. Miss every other attack. You're playing with no idea what your build will really look like later on. No leveled gems. Crap gear. It's almost embarrassing to call it a "build", at this point.

Game starts when you hit maps.

I consider all of that a failure of the game. Leveling doesn't have to the snoozefest it is but it is. Maps don't have to be the snoozefest that they are...but they are.

Each area of the game fails for different reasons.

Just play POE a few short times a week and the game is fine. I like the end game and I like the leveling of a new character. I like both.
But dont waste your life on it. Dont play POE fulltime, because the end result is depressing.

"

toyotatundra wrote:

They actually did, they gave a lot in recent times to players and it came at the expense of the economy. Mastercrafting. 10000000000000% buff to unique drops. On top of things like boxes, and league features like spirits that buff drops. At this point, I almost feel sorry for them, they're probably trying to think of what can they do for the next leagues, how to buff drops even more - and when the time comes, players will blast them for it, just because every time you kill a monster it doesnt drop a Mjolner.

GGG's problem is not realizing what a 6 year old should know - no matter how much you give, they'll complain because you haven't given them everything, right now, and served on a silver platter.

Player: Drops suck!!!
GGG: We buffed uniques by a million percent now.
Player: I dropped Alphas and I thought I was rich. I hopped onto xyz and learned that it's cheap now. This game sucks, I never drop 5k exalt items!!! WTF, GGG?!?

To be honest, I don't really give a toss about unique drop rates. Most unique items aren't useable at end game anyway. I have 9 stash tabs full of uniques, and it's nice to collect them, but the reality is that 95% of them are just vendor food really. Most builds will use one or other unique item at end game, but I can't imagine that (m)any would use uniques only. If uniques aren't the ultimate goal, because rare items tend to be better (which is true, rare items do tend to be better), then the best thing about unique drops is the possibility of selling them. However, the amount of effort that would be required to sell them is not proportional to the amount of currency I could get for them in most cases. Trading is generally a pain in the ass. Ergo, the drop rate for uniques isn't really a material issue.

The real problem is the drop rate of orbs. The orb crafting system is innovative and amazing, but the super low drop rates for any crafting orbs beyond regal just means that there's no point in even trying to craft. Think about it:

If you want to craft a GG item from scratch, first you'll spend 1000 alts getting the first 2 mods on it right. That's okay, because alts are super easy to get. But then you have to regal it, and regals are much less common than alts. Regals are common enough that you probably don't want to eternal at that point, but rare enough that it still hurts when they don't work out. If you're fortunate enough to get a good regal, which has probably required ~10ex equivalent currency investment unless you've been pretty lucky, then you have to start using exalts.

The drop rate for exalts is so low that even people who have played a thousand hours have almost certainly not seen more than 5 drop. Worse, if you want to craft effectively at this point, you've pretty much gotta use exalts 1:1 with eternals. Eternals are even more rare than exalts.

By the time you start using exalts, you've got 2 or 3 mods on your crafted item. That means that to finish it you're going to have to exalt 3 or 4 more mods onto it. Depending on the item, you can expect chances as low as maybe 4 in 60 for the top tier mods you want, possibly even lower than that for some items like wands. In short, finishing an item with a top tier set of mods will probably cost you well over 100 exalts, and you'll be using them 1:1 with eternals.

With the current drop rates of orbs, if you play self found for 12 hours a day, 365 days a year, then you can play a total of 4380 hours per year. In that time you might have about 20 exalts drop, and maybe 4 eternals if you're lucky. So, being generous and assuming that you're only going to need 100 exalts (and therefore also 100 eternals), if you can spend 12 hours a day playing, you would only need to play this game for 25 years to get enough eternals to be able to actually craft 1, just one, GG item. Therefore, it's just not worth it to try and craft an item. Ever. The only exception is 6 socketing and 6 linking an item which just happened to drop with a set of good rolls already on it. But you may as well forget about ever trying to craft good rolls onto an item.

The totally ridiculous thing is that even though this is the state of the crafting system, GGG expect that their entire player base will simply throw in the towel and start another temporary league every 3 - 6 months. The crafting system is the thing that prevents me from ever bothering to play in any of the temp leagues. I would play in the temp leagues every time if GGG arranged things so that I would have, say, 300 eternals and 300 exalts drop over the course of the leagues. Then I would actually have a hope of crafting some GG shit.

"

toyotatundra wrote:

Level 1 to 80: zzzzzzZZZZZzzzzz. 3 seconds to attack/cast. Miss every other attack. You're playing with no idea what your build will really look like later on. No leveled gems. Crap gear. It's almost embarrassing to call it a "build", at this point.

Game starts when you hit maps.

^This. And this is why playing in the temp leagues feels like such a huge waste of time.

"

CliveHowlitzer wrote:

I consider all of that a failure of the game. Leveling doesn't have to the snoozefest it is but it is. Maps don't have to be the snoozefest that they are...but they are.

Each area of the game fails for different reasons.

It seems to me that the reasons that each area of the game fails are basically the same. Endgame maps fail because gear progression is way too slow and it's impossible to grind enough currency to do any crafting. Levelling fails to be appealing because everything that drops at lower levels is ultimately just trash and can't be used for crafting anyway, may as well just play the characters you've already levelled - at least there's the possibility that something good might drop. Both of these problems could be solved by making exalts and eternals as easy to get as chaos. People would finish crafting gear for their endgame toons and then, because the endgame would be finished, they'd have a good reason to go and start a new toon in the new season's temp leagues. It would also make the amazingly innovative crafting system something that people actually used, rather than just an alternative to gold which people use for trading.

"

CharanJaydemyr wrote:

Actually I think the builds that work best in maps/end-game are snoozefests until then because you're not yet at full power and you're just doing whatever to get there. You're waiting for gear that doesn't activate until 60+, combinations that don't work until you're all but done with the core game.

This is, right now, a 'good character'. It sleepwalks through the core game with twink items or cheese skills, facerolls maps and uses Atziri's boobs as punching funbags.

The builds that are the most fun before maps/end-game but then falter likely peak too early. These builds hit stride by mid 30s and are a blast to play from then until the mid 60s, after which point they're thrown into the Map pool with builds dedicated to nothing but whatever Maps demand of a character.

This is, conversely, a 'bad character' by the current metrics.

The core problem is we have two games going on, each appealing to very different players, BUT those two disparate camps are forced to play both games -- the players who seek engaging, tactical playstyles feel like they're missing out if they can't/won't Map, and the players who just want to stomp everything in endgame are forced to get there in the first place.

As usual you are able to sum up a lot of my thoughts quite nicely. I really should be paying you.

"

CliveHowlitzer wrote:

"

CharanJaydemyr wrote:

Actually I think the builds that work best in maps/end-game are snoozefests until then because you're not yet at full power and you're just doing whatever to get there. You're waiting for gear that doesn't activate until 60+, combinations that don't work until you're all but done with the core game.

This is, right now, a 'good character'. It sleepwalks through the core game with twink items or cheese skills, facerolls maps and uses Atziri's boobs as punching funbags.

The builds that are the most fun before maps/end-game but then falter likely peak too early. These builds hit stride by mid 30s and are a blast to play from then until the mid 60s, after which point they're thrown into the Map pool with builds dedicated to nothing but whatever Maps demand of a character.

This is, conversely, a 'bad character' by the current metrics.

The core problem is we have two games going on, each appealing to very different players, BUT those two disparate camps are forced to play both games -- the players who seek engaging, tactical playstyles feel like they're missing out if they can't/won't Map, and the players who just want to stomp everything in endgame are forced to get there in the first place.

As usual you are able to sum up a lot of my thoughts quite nicely. I really should be paying you.

Luckily quite some options exist to counter that issue. So who knows, maybe things will change in the future to unite both camps.

Thankfully the game already offers quite some freedom in these area's so both sides can choose to participate in whatever they enjoy the most.

Peace,

-Boem-

I am at a point now that I don't even feel A4 will get me back in the game.

Hopefully I'm wrong, but I think I really got fed up with low drop rates and lousy end game.

"

CharanJaydemyr wrote:

The core problem is we have two games going on, each appealing to very different players, BUT those two disparate camps are forced to play both games -- the players who seek engaging, tactical playstyles feel like they're missing out if they can't/won't Map, and the players who just want to stomp everything in endgame are forced to get there in the first place.

this is very true. but its to be expected in most arpgs to be fair. in other arpgs you hoard points, process with mundane skills until you get right items, and then get your endgame build.

I think poe's problem in this aspect, is that the 'cheese' leveling skills and twink leveling gear are making the leveling game much more of a chore than other arpgs, because it removes sense of class-specific skills (you get a flameblast, you get a flameblast, EVERY CASTER gets a flameblast) AND sense of real danger (once you have good alt gear and skill like flameblast, you are good till merciless, easily, with only exception maybe cruel dom)

in turn, the endgame aspect penalizes quirky builds because endgame is balanced towards endgame contingent.

"

"So I reach endgame and can farm, but what's the point?"

That's not only true, but indeed built in, to every MMO and ARPG out there. The game, by design, is a hamster wheel. Some people find running on the wheel fun, some don't.