How many acts/bosses are there? Length?

Is everything open in the closed Beta? I saw the stat tree and was like :-O what's huge... (I swear it was the stat tree I looked at)

Still debating... I know I shouldn't and should just get it over with and play it but yeah.

Length?
Difficulties?
Bosses?
Acts?
Sidequests?
Level cap?

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CultOfPersonality wrote:

Is everything open in the closed Beta? I saw the stat tree and was like :-O what's huge... (I swear it was the stat tree I looked at)

Still debating... I know I shouldn't and should just get it over with and play it but yeah.

Length?
Difficulties?
Bosses?
Acts?
Sidequests?
Level cap?

Length: well, it takes a few hours per act if you know what you're doing just like in D2, but at the moment we only have two acts. We do, however, have 4 difficulty levels and an endgame dungeony-thing called the Maelstrom of Chaos. However, a new endgame is coming in the next patch. It'll take you quite a few hours to get through everything. Put it that way.

Difficulty: The first difficulty was recently nerfed, but later difficulties were buffed to an extreme. Merciless is very very hard, especially if you're soloing as a melee character. Balancing isn't complete yet, but it's playable for sure.

Bosses: Umm... ok... Hillock, Brutus, Merveil, plus a bunch of little uniques here and there in Act 1... Oak, Alira, and Kraityn in Act 2, but the Act 2 boss is also being added in the next patch.
Act 3 is coming with Open Beta (mid-August)

Acts: 2 acts, soon to be 3, with a new act being added every 6-9 months.

Sidequests: Yes, there are a good amount of optional sidequests but I think more will be added in the future. Fetid Pool was only just given to us, as I recall.

Level Cap: 100, but there's a "soft cap" around level 70. At that level, monsters don't get any higher level, so leveling past that point becomes slower and more difficult, though not impossible (up to a point). I think I've heard of someone in their 80s already.

Yeah, you should try it out, but I think at this point I'm going to recommend people start waiting for the open beta and instead start reading the beta manifesto, watching interviews on youtube, checking out the mechanics thread, etc., because the game really isn't complete quite yet.

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CultOfPersonality wrote:

Is everything open in the closed Beta?

well, everything that's in it so far is open. They're still adding and changing things with updates.

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CultOfPersonality wrote:

I saw the stat tree and was like :-O what's huge... (I swear it was the stat tree I looked at)

Passive skill tree, actually. But yeah, it's mostly stats and things like that, with a ton of passive abilities thrown in. And yeah, it's big.

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CultOfPersonality wrote:

Still debating... I know I shouldn't and should just get it over with and play it but yeah.

do it. do it.

"

CultOfPersonality wrote:

Length?
Difficulties?
Bosses?
Acts?
Sidequests?
Level cap?

length: erm...didn't time it. Just finished act 2 for the first time.

difficulties: check. finish one, go to the next.

Bosses: yeah, they exist. Probably to be tweaked in the future, but they're definitely there.

Acts: 2 so far. More to come.

sidequests: I think so, I found a few quests in odd places. I assume they were optional.

level cap: I think its 100. If not 100 then like 99 or something crazy like that.

It's a stat tree yeah, about half or so of the nodes are pure +Dex/Str/Int. The other nodes are for more focused specializing though.

The closed beta is not open. I mean, it's closed. It'll be open to the general public sometime this July or August.

In the closed beta, two acts of gameplay are available. When OB starts, all current CB characters will be wiped clean and a third act will be added.

Length: The length of this game varies a lot. People who have mastered content can speedrun it with select builds, beating about 40-50% of the game in about 3 hours. If you're a new player, it may take you a week or two, perhaps more, to run through it - depending upon your playstyle, build, and schedule. There is a lot of incentive to make alt characters though, and if you're playing HC, you have to play a lot slower/safer.

Difficulties: Default/HC are the true difficulty slider in this game. Otherwise, everyone starts at normal difficulty and works their way up to Cruel/Merciless. Cruel/Merciless aren't really difficulties, they're basically Act 1 and 2 with stronger monsters, designed for players to continue leveling their characters. In essence, difficulty levels exist right now to pad the length of the game.

POE can be immensely difficult or fairly managable depending upon your skill, level, playstyle, build, etc. I can say that from a competitive standpoint, POE has a lot of room to grow in terms of balance, difficulty and challenge - but this game is probably harder than the likes of D3. There is a significantly less amount of "artificial difficulty" in POE - if something is difficult, it's usually not because an elite enemy has tons of health or elemental resistances stacked on it.

There are really only two major bosses currently, about half a dozen mini-bosses. Depends who you call a "boss". More bosses are being introduced - please understand that POE is really in a beta, it's not like your standard commercial beta, where 90% of the content is done and finished. POE is made by an indie team, so there's a lot more content for them to add. A new major boss will be unveiled sometime this month.

There are only two acts. A third act will be arriving with OB. There are about a dozen side quests, usually related to an optional area in the game. The rewards are pretty nice, though quests can only be completed once per character per difficulty per act.

Level cap is 100.

If you're interested in playing, I would suggest waiting for OB. Not that POE doesn't deserve $10, it's just... with a character wipe so close to arrival, I couldn't really ask people to put money down to lose everything a few weeks later :p