PoE feedback and why I decided to quit the game for now (updated)

Last update: 15 July 2013


This is going to be a bit of a rant and it's going to be negative so if you don't like it then please don't read it.

I'm a veteran D2 player and I started playing PoE very shortly after Open Beta had just begun and had been playing it for nearly half a year. My highest level character is a level 90 EK marauder, and I have five characters over level 80. I'd tried most of the builds and I think I know the game well enough to give some genuine feedback.




Gameplay


1) One-skill-spam

When my friend tried to persuade me to try out PoE, I said the gameplay looks very boring because everyone just spams one skill most of the time, but I did try out PoE nevertheless.

My impression hasn't changed since then. People do spam one skill most of the time because it's the most optimal in most cases, and only occasionally use curses, enduring cry, lightning warp/leap slam or other skills if they even have them. This is pretty much it: left-click to move, right-click to spam your 6-linked skill, q/w/e/r/t if needed and repeat. No or little skill is required.

Sometimes I nearly fall asleep when I'm doing maps because it's just so dull and uninteresting.

Edit: I can't but stress I'm not suggesting you can only have one skill on your skill bar. It's about the frequency, variety, effectiveness and efficiency


2) Auras mandatory

Since auras are so good and become mandatory, 4-linked items are pretty much reserved for auras, all the more so the more auras you use. There's no diversity in it whatsoever. The only question for players is not whether I should use auras but what and how many auras I should use and how auras should be reserved.


3) Skill gems suck

90% of all skill gems are rubbish for different reasons. Most of them are just not viable in end-game. If you remove those gems from the game completely it wouldn't have made a difference to the game at all which just shows how redundant they are. The remaining 10% of skill gems become the 'OP' skills not because they're OP in itself but because they're OP when compared with the other rubbish skills.

Edit: many people mistakenly assume I was talking about tweaking numbers, but it's more than that. More often than not it's the skill effects, handicaps and the interaction with other support gems that matter.


4) Skills not fun to use

Skill animation, sound and effect matter. They're part of what makes a skill fun to use. But these elements are entirely missing in 95% of all gems.

Skills I find fun to use out of all gems is lightning arrow. That's it. Though with multi-strike support gem some skills suddenly become very fun to use, such as flicker strike if you can keep your frenzy charges up.


5) Skill tree illusion

PoE skill tree is the most complicated skill tree there is in the market. With more than one thousand nodes it does seem you can make your own build and make your character unique. But actually there're only a few ways to optimise your character due to different restricting factors, resulting in 90% of all players taking the same or very similar nodes throughout the entire skill tree. The idea that you can make your own unique build is an illusion, unless you don't set out to optimise your character in the first place.


6) Playing self-found close to improbable (drops, crafting and trading)

99.9% of the drops are rubbish, no matter whether it's unique, rare or otherwise. Crafting is a joke because of how it works, that there're so many potential mods and levels of mods, each mod and level with different success rate, and most of the time you can save a lot more by just buying the items you want from other players. None except one of the items my marauder is wearing is found or crafted by myself.

The only realistic and reliable way to upgrade your gears is by buying them from other players. But when drops are rubbish there's no way you can earn enough currency to buy some decent upgrades unless you have some lucky drops which happens rarely and doesn't happen to everyone.

To trade you must stalk the trade chat. You can literally spend hours or days stalking it and not find a deal. The other option is to use the forum, but it's where the competition is the most fierce and you're expected to pay a much higher price than you would've done had you used the trade chat.


7) Solo players at a huge disadvantage compared with party players

When partied up, you can generally clear monsters faster and safer, have more loots and share resources. For solo players the opposite is true.

Nothing really drops when you play solo; you can clear the entire map without getting a rare item at all. Most solo players like myself also lose their net wealth very quickly by doing maps because you get less out of maps than what you've invested in them, especially when your wealth is already very limited. Forcing a level 90+ player to do low level maps like 66s and 67s is very very depressing.

It's partly due to the fact that higher level map drop sucks or is too RNG-oriented. I'd seen people get no map drop at all, not even a 66 map, after about 15 73+ maps with good mods and high quantity, and I'd seen people get 8 maps in a single map.


8) Everything too RNG (items, currency, maps, crafting)

I used up all the fusings and jewellery I'd been collecting and buying for nearly half a year which should be around 1k fusings and still I didn't get a single 6 link. I know getting a 6 link is a long-term goal, but I didn't expect it's that long. Now new leagues have already started, but I still haven't reached that goal. Time to give up.

The best drop I had after playing for nearly half a year is Astramentis. I didn't have any other drop which could be sold for more than a few gcps. On the other hand, I'd met a lot of new players who got koam's, shavronne's, lioeye's glare, etc as drops several times and they hadn't even played PoE for more than a week or two.

Yes, it's RNG. I just feel very very unfair because your time investment is, as opposed to what most people would assume, not proportional to your rewards whatsoever. Their first week in PoE already earn them the currency to buy all the gears I'd put so much time and effort in collecting over nearly half a year.

I wish 'RNG' functioned in a way that is similar to how 'evasion' in PoE works if you know what I mean.


9) Lag, fps drop hell, desync and crash

They speak for themselves.

I just want to let you know that, since I'm forced to play in a party to optimise my wealth and progression, my fps in maps is 0-10 with no sound, graphic settings below what is allowed in the in-game panel, and I can tell you it's not fun whatsoever. By the way my laptop can handle all other games with high settings without any problem at all.


10) Stash tabs pay to win

Not a serious complain, just pointing it out for the record. Though I think it's a legitimate way of having a stable income stream for the sake of the financial stability of the company.

You can make tons and tons of mules if you don't want to pay, so long as you don't mind logging on and off dozens of times transferring currency, items, gems and maps between the stash and the inventories.

Edit: stash tabs - more space to store things to sell to both players and vendors - more currency - buy better items - stronger characters.


11) Gradual in-game animation withdrawal

Also not a serious complain, just pointing it out for the record. The good old auras's animation were withdrawn and replaced by those little circles. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the future someone told me GGG was planning to sell different aura animations as part of its micro-transaction business.


12) PvP

Play it just for the lol and see what PvP in PoE is like. Usually a one-off for most players. Very formal in the sense that it's an arena system. Would prefer some casual PvP like in Diablo 2.

It's funny though that although GGG doesn't want those pvp-related griefings in PoE, it does allow item ninja-ing happen by setting the default item allocation to short allocation.

The only fun I'd be having recently is by getting other players killed intentionally with all sorts of tactics (e.g. try bandits or try elemental proliferation with conversion traps and frost wall lol...) without their knowing that I was doing it and ninja their loots when they leave the map so preferably my target is the map maker. Yes, it's pretty evil, but it was the only way I could have fun in the game at this stage when the PvP system is so silly.


13) ES > HP

There's nothing inherently wrong with one option better than the other. The problem only emerges when there's outright no competition whatsoever which is becoming clearer and clearer with the introduction of new unique items.

If you go ES, you can have higher survivability and higher dps. All the advantages that HP users used to have are pretty much negated by new mods in flasks, items and changes to the skill tree.

So if you have the currency to buy those items, it's a no-brainer that you'd want to go ES.


14) Uniques becoming legendaries

One of the funniest development of D3 is when people don't bother to pick up rares at all and just farm legendaries because they're just so much better; they're BiS. GGG is well aware of this issue and most unique items are handicapped in one way or another. However, some do go through the radar and make it into the game.

The best recent example is Soul Taker unique Siege Axe. Pretty much a must-have for all those whose builds can make use of an axe. It has high damage, high attack speed, chill and most importantly you don't need mana or hp to use your melee attacks. What it means is for most people you don't need blood magic gem and can replace it with other gems whilst the value of life regen and hence survivability increases significantly. Even if you've two of the best axes in the whole game you'd still want to use Soul Taker because the benefits are just so good. To balance it out perhaps a 'cannot use resolute technique' mod might be suitable, and it can at the same time make accuracy on gears more valuable.


15) Blood Magic > Mana

Mana and mana regen can't even be compared with blood magic because the mana pool is usually very small and mana regen is so low. Eldritch Battery, mana nodes, mana regen nodes, mana and mana regen on gears, pots and mana leech gem can help, but that'd be a totally different build and requires a lot of investment when you can just solve the problem with a blood magic gem, node or unique.

Of those who do go for mana to use their skills, they probably all use ES and they've no choice but to use mana; it might require a mana pot or two and mana is not good in half-regen and no regen maps because you'll have difficulty spamming your skills.


16) Spell > attack

Spell has 100% chance to hit and therefore casters have no need to use resolute technique or any other accuracy gear, and in general it has pretty good fixed damage range and can crit and is range.

Players who use attacks almost all use resolute technique unless they can't get it or playing a crit build. Attacks are especially horrible in enfeeble maps because you're pretty much missing half of your attacks. Accuracy gears can help to an extent. Though attacks become very very powerful when you have the best weapons in the game.


17) Elemental damage > physical damage

It's easier to get elemental damage on gears, and the damage range is a lot larger. For example, on a ring you can get over 100 combined elemental damage whereas for physical damage it's below 20.

Also crit with elemental damage creates all sorts of good effects on monsters such as shock stacks, burning and frozen, whereas crit with physical damage does nothing at all.


18) Totem OP

Tank + dpser in one.


19) Range > melee

In terms of survivability and sustained dps.



20-x) Reserved for later editions










To sum up PoE: endless grinding for exponentially diminishing rewards.

In D2 I could farm, do cow levels and PvP for thousands of hours and I still didn't get bored of it. In fact, it was exciting every time I did it. PoE is just missing that element.

If a new player asks for my advice so as to optimise his leveling and item progression, I'd genuinely just tell him to get a decent job and buy virtual currency or items off those real money traders, because he'll gain more in that way in terms of time and effort, because the whole system is just pathetic.

I can imagine those who read this thread will say something along the line 'So why do you still play the game if you don't like it'? I wish at several points PoE developers would act purely in the player's interest, but I know at the same time that there're also conflicting interests which can't be ignored. So to save myself from having more anguish by playing PoE, I decided to quit it and play other games that are actually and mostly importantly fun for me.

While your write up was in depth, and non this game sux ROAR. I'm curious which supports you find non viable end game. The one skill spam is simply min maxing, but most of my builds tend to have several different skills for different situations. With one main primary skill.

And yes, gear does become exponentially harder to acquire, that's simply because as ones gear gets better, theres less gear better than what you have. That's normal.

"

If a new player asks for my advice so as to optimise his leveling and item progression, I'd genuinely just tell him to get a decent job and buy virtual currency or items off those real money traders, because he'll gain more in that way in terms of time and effort, because the whole system is just pathetic.

That's the worst advice you can give.Discovering a game and working out stuff for yourself will give you more gameplay value than using methods that skip game content.A game is for playing.

"

Kavlor wrote:

"

If a new player asks for my advice so as to optimise his leveling and item progression, I'd genuinely just tell him to get a decent job and buy virtual currency or items off those real money traders, because he'll gain more in that way in terms of time and effort, because the whole system is just pathetic.

That's the worst advice you can give.Discovering a game and working out stuff for yourself will give you more gameplay value than using methods that skip game content.A game is for playing.

Not this one.

sadly...I have to agree with OP. He explained it well...sadly again: there is no decent competition yet...I am hoping for GRIM DAWN and LINEAGE 3 or maybe SACRED 3

"

Kavlor wrote:

"

If a new player asks for my advice so as to optimise his leveling and item progression, I'd genuinely just tell him to get a decent job and buy virtual currency or items off those real money traders, because he'll gain more in that way in terms of time and effort, because the whole system is just pathetic.

That's the worst advice you can give.Discovering a game and working out stuff for yourself will give you more gameplay value than using methods that skip game content.A game is for playing.

It also destroys the game's economy when you support RMT. This, in turn, destroys the game's funding when people quit due to the economy being ruined.

"

Sodomee wrote:

"

Kavlor wrote:

"

If a new player asks for my advice so as to optimise his leveling and item progression, I'd genuinely just tell him to get a decent job and buy virtual currency or items off those real money traders, because he'll gain more in that way in terms of time and effort, because the whole system is just pathetic.

That's the worst advice you can give.Discovering a game and working out stuff for yourself will give you more gameplay value than using methods that skip game content.A game is for playing.

It also destroys the game's economy when you support RMT. This, in turn, destroys the game's funding when people quit due to the economy being ruined.

still: it doesn't negate all other points mentioned....

"

Freemasonary wrote:

This is going to be a bit of a rant and it's going to be negative so if you don't like it then please don't read it.

I started playing PoE very shortly after Open Beta had just begun and had been playing it for nearly half a year. My highest level character is a level 90 EK marauder, and I have five characters over level 80. I'd tried most of the builds and I think I know the game well enough to give some genuine feedback.




Gameplay


1) One-skill-spam

When my friend tried to persuade me to try out PoE, I said the gameplay looks very boring because everyone just spams one skill most of the time, but I did try out PoE nevertheless.

My impression hasn't changed since then. People do spam one skill most of the time, and only occasionally use curses, enduring cry or lightning warp/leap slam. This is pretty much it: left-click to move, right-click to spam your 6-linked skill, q/w/e/r/t if needed and repeat. No or little skill is required.

Sometimes I nearly fall asleep when I'm doing maps because it's just so dull and uninteresting.


2) Auras mandatory

Since auras are so good and become mandatory, 4-linked items are pretty much reserved for auras, all the more so the more auras you use. There's no diversity in it whatsoever.


3) Skill gems suck

90% of all skill gems are rubbish for different reasons. Most of them are just not viable in end-game. If you remove those gems from the game completely it wouldn't have made a difference to the game at all which just shows how redundant they are. The remaining 10% of skill gems become the 'OP' skills not because they're OP in itself but because they're OP when compared with the other rubbish skills.


4) Skills not fun to use

Skill animation, sound and effect matter. They're part of what makes a skill fun to use. But these elements are entirely missing in 95% of all gems.

Skills I find fun to use out of all gems is lightning arrow. That's it.


5) Skill tree illusion

PoE skill tree is the most complicated skill tree there is in the market. With more than one thousand nodes it does seem you can make your own build and make your character unique. But actually there's only a few ways to optimise your character due to different restricting factors, resulting in 90% of all players taking the same or very similar nodes throughout the entire skill tree. The idea that you can make your own unique build is an illusion, unless you don't set out to optimise your character in the first place.


6) Playing self-found close to improbable (drops, crafting and trading)

99.9% of the drops are rubbish, no matter whether it's unique, rare or otherwise. Crafting is a joke because of how it works, that there're so many potential mods and levels of mods, each mod and level with different success rate, and most of the time you can save a lot more by just buying the items you want from other players. None except one of the items my marauder is wearing is found or crafted by myself.

The only realistic and reliable way to upgrade your gears is by buying them from other players. But when drops are rubbish there's no way you can earn enough currency to buy some decent upgrades unless you have some lucky drops which happens rarely and doesn't happen to everyone.

To trade you must stalk the trade chat. You can literally spend hours or days stalking it and not find a deal. The other option is to use the forum, but it's where the competition is the most fierce and you're expected to pay a much higher price than you would've done had you used the trade chat.


7) Solo players at a huge disadvantage compared with party players

When partied up, you can generally clear monsters faster and safer, have more loots and share resources. For solo players the opposite is true.

Nothing really drops when you play solo; you can clear the entire map without getting a rare item at all. Most solo players like myself also lose their net wealth very quickly by doing maps because you get less out of maps than what you've invested in them, especially when your wealth is already very limited. Forcing a level 90+ player to do low level maps like 66s and 67s is very very depressing.

It's partly due to the fact that higher level map drop sucks or is too RNG-oriented. I'd seen people get no map drop at all, not even a 66 map, after about 15 73+ maps with good mods and high quantity, and I'd seen people get 8 maps in a single map.


8) Everything too RNG (items, currency, maps, crafting)

I used up all the fusings and jewellery I'd been collecting and buying for nearly half a year which should be around 1k fusings and still I didn't get a single 6 link. I know getting a 6 link is a long-term goal, but I didn't expect it's that long. Now new leagues have already started, but I still haven't reached that goal. Time to give up.

The best drop I had after playing for nearly half a year is Astramentis. I didn't have any other drop which could be sold for more than a few gcps. On the other hand, I'd met a lot of new players who got koam's, shavronne's, lioeye's glare, etc as drops several times and they hadn't even played PoE for more than a week or two.

Yes, it's RNG. I just feel very very unfair because your time investment is, as opposed to what most people would assume, not proportional to your rewards whatsoever. Their first week in PoE already earn them the currency to buy all the gears I'd put so much time and effort in collecting over nearly half a year.

I wish 'RNG' functioned in a way that is similar to how 'evasion' in PoE works if you know what I mean.


9) Lag, fps drop hell, desync and crash

They speak for themselves.

I just want to let you know that, since I'm forced to play in a party to optimise my wealth and progression, my fps in maps is 0-10 with no sound, graphic settings below what is allowed in the in-game panel, and I can tell you it's not fun whatsoever. By the way my laptop can handle all other games with high settings without any problem at all.


10) Stash tabs pay to win

Though I think it's a legitimate way of having a stable income stream for the sake of the financial stability of the company.


11) Gradual in-game animation withdrawal

The good old auras's animation were withdrawn and replaced by those little circles. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the future someone told me GGG was planning to sell different aura animations as part of its micro-transaction business.


12-x) Reserved for later editions





To sum up PoE: endless grinding for exponentially increasing diminishing rewards.

If a new player asks for my advice so as to optimise his leveling and item progression, I'd genuinely just tell him to get a decent job and buy virtual currency or items off those real money traders, because he'll gain more in that way in terms of time and effort, because the whole system is just pathetic.

I can imagine those who read this thread will say something along the line 'So why do you still play the game if you don't like it'? I wish at several points PoE developers would act purely in the player's interest, but I know at the same time that there're also conflicting interests which can't be ignored. So to save myself from having more anguish by playing PoE, I decided to quit it and play other games that are actually and mostly importantly fun for me.

I agree, and it seems many people are starting to see this.

^ put this in spoiler.

"

Kavlor wrote:

That's the worst advice you can give.Discovering a game and working out stuff for yourself will give you more gameplay value than using methods that skip game content.A game is for playing.

But this game is not for playing, it is for currency farming and currency farming is the only way to progress. Honestly, for all their efforts in creating a game that they would want to play themselves, GGG has basically made an economy simulator, and the most important thing in this game is the exchange rate of chaos and exalted orbs.

Why would I want a new player spending months learning that the most important way to survive end game is hoarding currency from level one and not 'wasting' it on crafting, so by the time you get to mid and end game, you have enough 'money' to buy gear ?

Before I started playing PoE, I believed (and stil believe) that RMT does not belong in gaming and that progress in a game should be decided purely on skill and game mechanics and design. I would not spend money on any form of in game currency.

But now, I understand those that do. Why waste days or weeks farming against RNG when a few dollars makes you a king in trade chat ? The design of this game itself is what is driving RMT sites.