One month of POE and I'm done... here's why

Can I just clarify that I LOVE the complexity of the game. Although it seemed over-complicated at first, I like that there is actually some skill to creating viable builds and it does allow for variation in the game.

My biggest gripe is that it is just SO TIME CONSUMING having to grind for hours on end, with an extremely small amount of quality drops and an experience bar that just doesn't seem to move no matter how long you play. THIS is my biggest frustration and begged me to ask the question 'what's the point'? It's not fun grinding for hours for seemingly very little. It made me realise that I have better things to do with my time rather than play a game that eventually lacked any real reward.

The solution for this thinking in your limits. Why do you have pressure to reach this or that in a certain point of time?


I myself have waited half a year to be able to just find and buy almost exactly the manaleech amulet that I wanted for my build. I was using other things that come close to what I wanted inbetween. How great is it when you after all get this item then?

The same way it is great to reach level 90 after a certain point of time. If it was easy and fast it would be pointless at all.

I myself am lvl 90+ for over 9 months now with my main charackter. I made 6 levels within 9 monthes.

Is this fast progress? It is the speed that I want to and can play the game without getting bored and while not focusing too much on it.

Would the game be more exciting if I hitted lvl 100 already 9 months ago? No it wouldn't be.

Some others RMT and play lvl 100 within 4 month leagues. What do I care?

"

brunowa wrote:

I think you're missing the point Slayer. Yes, I could have gone on to maps using a 4L, but it would have been a heck of a lot less enjoyable. I think your point just reinforces the fact that the game relies to heavily on getting your skill points/equipment exactly right to make it fun and effective.

Actually, early game isnt as grimdark as you described it... Probably, you made several mistakes, that beginners often do:
1. You didnt invested into life (both with your gear and gems). Low HP pool is a certain way to die from oneshots. Game assumes your maradeur should have 2k HP when facing Cruel Dominus. I bet you had much less.
2. You didnt invested into life recovery. High HP pool alone wont save you from death, it just gives you buffer to recover. Recovery is performed with flasks, life regen, life on hit and life leech. Again, game assumes you will upgrade flasks up to max level, and roll them with alteration orbs to get nice mods. But if you will use life on hit as well (this gem is granted to duelist at the very early stage), with dual/double-strike and multistrike you can turn Dominus fight into a joke. You probably missed usefulness of life on hit (skipped it early, for example), and game punished you.
3. You didnt invested into damage properly. You know, there are vendor recipes that allow you to craft a decent weapon. Without one, it will really take ages to kill mobs...
4. You didnt knew, that Granite flask exists...
And so on...
I also made all of those mistakes on my 1-st walkthrough. Game dont explains, what is really useful early, and what isnt, and most builds dont bother with proper leveling as well...

In the end, yes, it's supposed to grind. It's what all ARPGs are about. However, PoE covers grinding and even ability to grind (maps) behind too much RNG, which isnt acceptable even for a farmer like me.
Oh, btw, game assumes you will use Item rarity/quantity gear, if you want to find decent loot.

"

brunowa wrote:

It's not fun grinding for hours for seemingly very little.

Top players who know what they are doing can reach level 90 in one week starting from nothing.

"

brunowa wrote:

It made me realise that I have better things to do with my time rather than play a game that eventually lacked any real reward.

what would count as "real reward"?

"

LSN wrote:

The solution for this thinking in your limits. Why do you have pressure to reach this or that in a certain point of time?


I myself have waited half a year to be able to just find and buy almost exactly the manaleech amulet that I wanted for my build. I was using other things that come close to what I wanted inbetween. How great is it when you after all get this item then?

The same way it is great to reach level 90 after a certain point of time. If it was easy and fast it would be pointless at all.

I myself am lvl 90+ for over 9 months now with my main charackter. I made 6 levels within 9 monthes.

Is this fast progress? It is the speed that I want to and can play the game without getting bored and while not focusing too much on it.

Would the game be more exciting if I hitted lvl 100 already 9 months ago? No it wouldn't be.

Some others RMT and play lvl 100 within 4 month leagues. What do I care?

I have to agree here; sometimes it's good to GIMP yourself and focus on part-goals and pieces of something larger, especially in softcore where you don't really reach an "end" even if you die.

+1 here

This game desyncs... A lot.

"

LSN wrote:

I mean this is an interesting debate, I edited in some example of games from the 90s and SC2. Let me cut them out and put them in here.

"I don't wanna flame you (topic creator), the game is difficult. But why in god damn hell EVERY game nowadays needs to be easy? All other games are. PoE is the lone survivor from a generation of games in the 90s that require in fact some trial and error (just thinking of great games like Jagged Alliance 2 and all its hard mods). Why do you playstation guys wanna change the last lone survivor for those who enjoy it to be the way it is and just don't move ahead to play playstation or wow then?

It is the same reason for why Starcraft/sc2 never gets as popular as lets say wow or LoL. The game is just difficult. Players get frustrated because they see their insufficiency in skill. In LoL you can blame the team and mechanics are easy, you just have to control one guy instead dozens + economy + . Therefore all the noobs play LoL even tho it requires alot more in endgame too but is not as visible and the mechanics are just way easier. Should SC2 become command and conquer therefore? No it does not. The same applies to PoE. Should chess become an easier game because it is too difficult and frustrating for the noobs?

I remember games on the PC like Duke Nukem 1 and 2 where when you died you had to start off from the beginning and losing hours. You are seriously telling me when you die during dock runs at about lvl 65 in merciless you lose half an hour? A dock run gives you 20-33% xp during this time and takes 10 minutes (in groupplay, which you should do at this point). Dieing takes away 10%. This is a loss of 5 minutes. Still this is too much for you? The game just can't be blamed for this."
(quoted myself and removed this from the wall of text above)."

Do games need to be all the way easy?

I never played or would play crap like WoW what is for the masses and gives about every player the exact same experience. I rather like struggling in SC2 and use all my knowledge and creativity to make things work the way I want them to work.

The same I can do in PoE. If you die you can find a reason and try fixing it. If you would not die there would not be a need to do this (evolution pressure), thus the game would get boring. Same applies to all the other issues he stated.

Is the playstation generation right when demanding easy to play through and throw away call of duty games? I disagree strongly.

Who knows, I think a big part of the difficulty of very old games was you often had to do all of it in one sitting, which was also enforced by technical limitations of old consoles. The games were also pretty simplistic which required them to also be less forgiving in order to achieve some sort of difficulty. Take super mario, megaman or something, let's say there was a tricky jump somewhere, it's not much of an obstacle if you think about it, it just takes a bit of timing, if you had unlimited lives you'd nail it sooner or later. It's worth noting a lot of games had no difficulty setting either.

The point is, games back then had difficulty tuned to the type of challenges they posed, and that goes for games now. If you think about it, if you played CoD on hardest difficulty without checkpoints you'd take a week to complete one mission and hundreds of hours to complete the whole campaign, a pretty big step up from 8-10 hours it takes now. That's a notable thing too, the games were generally shorter back then, they just seemed long because of all that backtracking and repeating.

Content is also of note, it used to be much more static and there was usually a pattern to memorize which made possibility out of impossibility. Remember old beat-em-ups? At some section you'd have three bandits come in from the right, then they would roll some barrels from the left, boss first does a combo then lunges, then jumps twice, on half health it call three monkeys and one snake...
Games are more dynamic now and content is more randomized so it's impossible to fully anticipate everything, that's probably the reason for the death of 'hardcore' gaming of old, if anyone thinks we had nimbler fingers and more brains back then than kids these days he's sorely mistaken... ok, maybe just a little bit more brains :)

That said, PoE is a perfect example of an old school game in the sense knowledge is power, if you know what you have to do the game becomes easy, the game itself isn't difficult, what's difficult is making yourself do what you gotta do in order to win. Some lack patience, some lack motivation, and some flat out refuse to do it and play the game with no trading, no exploits and heavily roleplayed themed builds. For such the game can be hard but that's as much self-imposed as already mentioned playing CoD on hardest difficulty with restarting the whole mission on every death, the difference is CoD makes itself easy and PoE leaves barndoor-wide openings to make itself easy.

"

brunowa wrote:

Can I just clarify that I LOVE the complexity of the game. Although it seemed over-complicated at first, I like that there is actually some skill to creating viable builds and it does allow for variation in the game.

My biggest gripe is that it is just SO TIME CONSUMING having to grind for hours on end, with an extremely small amount of quality drops and an experience bar that just doesn't seem to move no matter how long you play. THIS is my biggest frustration and begged me to ask the question 'what's the point'? It's not fun grinding for hours for seemingly very little. It made me realise that I have better things to do with my time rather than play a game that eventually lacked any real reward.

it's because there are players out there who have nearly unlimited time and good skills.

just look at people playing this game since release with 2-3 hours average daily playtime, 5-6 characters in the high 80's are normal at a minimum level.

the game being easier would make that around 10-20 or even more characters but i must say i'm quite challenged keeping the overview of my 7 high level chars on my playing account.

and finally having to grind endlessly for gear improvements gives you more time thinking about how to optimize your current character or play style. poe stands for endless grinding for gear, that's why i'm loving it.

"

brunowa wrote:

17) Again, I was dying in 1 sec from bosses or mobs... this time, I realised I was losing experience every time I died... ohh FUCCKKK THAT. What a WASTE of time... spending 30 minutes progressing and then dying and taking it all away is just oh so piss me off factor I hate you game.

this made me fucking loll soooo much hahahaha


+1

"

brunowa wrote:

17) Again, I was dying in 1 sec from bosses or mobs... this time, I realised I was losing experience every time I died... ohh FUCCKKK THAT. What a WASTE of time... spending 30 minutes progressing and then dying and taking it all away is just oh so piss me off factor I hate you game.

this made me fucking loll soooo much hahahaha


+1