This Game is not for me, Leaving Feedback/Leaving Game

I'd only accrued eight days of time spent online in-game so far, spread over the course of the three months since I first created this account, but what I've come to find is...
My personal experience was that spending time theory-crafting in order to produce a build that fit me, extensively, was unenjoyable, only of course when I were to come to the conclusion that my build sucked. Mind you this is edited, so this is to enclose more perspectives; I both found difficulty in maintaining the proper items and statistics to make the use out of a build someone (or even I) had developed, as well as disliked the playstyle (sometimes, granted).

Worse off is that I, personally (and as one of many who fall into this category), joined with the perspective of a Diablo 3 player, whose concern is to pick any skill I want, limited to six overall, with six possible pre-determined modifiers to each individual skill. I was never worried that I could not run with too complicated a build, nor was I concerned of a skill's power because I was engaged in the end-game once I'd reached the "maximum" level (more, alternatively rewarding levels were incorporated in order to give veterans a sense of progression, thus I could still technically run endgame before reaching "maximum level").

Then to level a character, acquire proper gems, and another factor that could both benefit and hurt you: (have the temptation to) trade in a player-controlled economy where the traders can be ruthless or where participants might else be clueless, and wherein one such as myself has minimal fortune/luck in acquiring valuable items to trade, or is extremely poor... In my case, I managed never to hold onto too many of any currency that I would have needed for many other things, than to invest in Orbs of Fusing so as to link sockets in a chest. That should have been concern Z in a list of priorities descending, starting from A. Had I not realized via group-play that my investments were getting me nowhere in the end-game material and that I was slow as molasses, I would have changed things sooner and used my wealth to better effect.


Maps can be ridiculous and involve a decent amount of tedium, in having to hunt down the unique monster who may or may not drop you something useful, a task that only becomes a bit easier once you learn the zone layouts. (Again, this is coming from one whose perspective is another ARPG title whose dungeon-crawl ends with a boss spawning on top of you after "x" amount of killing; your main concern is not to explore every crevice you remember to find a boss, but to find every monster-abundant spot and kill for loot, potentially enticing you to SOLELY search for the boss unless you are in dire need of certain other drops such as maps).

Apologies for the consistent reiteration of the point, but I'm a Diablo 3 baby and this makes for a relevant discussion in terms of context, in regards to how it befuddles me when Rare items can be of greater power, with more effort so long as you are prepared to invest materials into crafting it and getting the less-occurring stats to roll on it, whereas uniques have pre-determined stats (mechanically) although varying rolls (numerically) and overall can have specific uses.

Apparently, permanent loot allocation is working all as intended, but personally felt that the below was unnecessary as a mechanic.
My only defense on this is that "permanent" feels as if it SHOULD MEAN "permanent", in this particular scenario:
I was in a permanent allocation group, with permanent allocation active in my options. I had a full inventory, and while my inventory closed, I went to pick up a unique, where it then jumped up and back down as if I'd chosen to drop it (something that happens if you click it with your bag open and click again), thus rendering it "free to grab" by somebody near me.

Why is it in any game like this, that there is a function for (I'll call it) "flipping" an item, as if you grabbed it and immediately dropped it, while your inventory was full? Why can't there simply be a message saying "inventory is full" to alert you to pick it up again?
Admittedly, I agree that, perhaps, it's just another steep learning-curve for those involved in group play. To... be careful about the loot that's yours? Sorry, the message is half-beyond me.


Personal preference is now speaking up here, but none of the abilities are interesting to me.... I hate the mention of the term "Cast on Critical Strike", as it seems so popular amongst a variety of builds, yet from personal experience has been of little use and been ineffective. Primarily it's just been strange seeing how often it's been mentioned, and yes, I am aware of how Critical Strikes were revamped recently, thus making it a point of interest.

On another note, I had the misfortune, right as I began playing, to choose to use a guide for a decent beginner build, without knowing how well it would hold up into late game or that it would become necessary to diverge from it in order to pursue other, better, builds; as a matter of fact, a spell totem & Incinerate combination, which slightly screwed me up when I found out on my own (not via in-game tool-tips) that Incinerate couldn't critically strike, thus rendering the Surgeon affixes on my flasks USELESS, amongst other conundrums relevant to the playstyle of just one exemplary skill whose mechanics are a tad unclear.

The loading screens are, in my opinion, fairly lacking in tips on hotkeys and the like, to the point that I agree with a below post in that it would be good of Grinding Gears to implement a tutorial, as well as, potentially, a "tooltip expansion" for beginners on a variety of items and things of that nature, in whatever forms GGG deems permissible to reveal mechanic secrets.

I, personally, only recently found the tip had begun popping up about forcing instances with the Control Key (a tip amongst others that some might not even see on load screens due to fast loading times), and I had to ask the community for information about splitting stacks (I knew it was a function in other RPGs), as well as how holding shift while applying currencies such as Scrolls of Wisdom prevented their deselection per use.

I haven't had the fortune of making a new build that I could enjoy or have fun with, nor have fun with the game overall when most of the related skills feel, to me, bland or similar...

Someone made a point that the game is about theory-crafting more than hack-and-slashing... And I agree that it must be for most, because I derive minimal pleasure from holding ONE button for ONE damaging ability which blows up enemies, nor much joy in picking up a unique which oftentimes isn't worth much to myself or to the market.

The RNG you would need trying to acquire a six-link on an item, in its own respect, is rewarding but can also be very discouraging (though I have to applaud GGG for allowing us to keep % Quality now).

If I were able to socket another gem for my build, it would add 50% damage. HALFAGAIN MORE DAMAGE THAN I PRIOR DEALT, which I have to say would have made a huge difference for me, where I had 11,000 DPS on my Incinerate tooltip, probably calculated prior to ramp-ups, and with uncertainty as to the casts per second. Put in short, though, with the combination of immobile totems and lower damage than most others at my level, I was discouraged by my progress (or lack thereof) personally. Due to my poor damage-reduction management, I was dying even though I might almost have had enough damage to clear moderate-difficulty maps.

Thus, I should come to the conclusion that while some may say that six-links are commodities... I'd say that, for my build, and those of whom also got the short end of the stick and screwed up build planning, BOTH passive-planning and having, say, 50% damage ARE NOT commodities.

It may well possibly be, though, that I ruined my taste for more active builds when I took up totems, which while immobile, dished out the damage for me. Honestly, I can't even get my head around why I dislike other builds so much (or rather, perhaps, maybe getting over the hump of leveling characters who would utilize full build combinations).

I was driving myself nutty right near the end of my playing, by running a summoning Witch that I was using a one-hand and a shield with. I either had the choice of blowing through more Chromatic Orbs than I'd ever to roll a new two-handed sword to colors which, with the four linked sockets I had, would allow two minion gems and the same two support gems I used for each minion to be socketed into one weapon; unfortunately, due to the nature of Chromatic Orbs, blue sockets (corresponding with the main stats) were the last thing I could roll, and I just gave up before asking if someone with master crafting could net me these sockets.
Long story short, that was the last build I pretty much gave up with, and thus gave away all items for, having subsequently quit the game. Maybe not the straw to break this camel's back, but still. A little bit relevant to feedback on Chromatic Orbs, if I understand how they work correctly.

(Please leave a comment if I misinformed, for correction purposes for others. I was under the impression that if, for example, an item had implicit statistics such as a hybrid Armor-and-Evasion Rating, those would correlate to Strength and Dexterity stats respectively, or rather "Red" and "Green" sockets, rendering it more difficult to roll blue sockets on a gear piece).


On another note, unfortunately, there have been other games which were able to hold my attention longer, maybe also to where they changed my mind from disliking the game to enjoying the heck out of it.
Whether that's a reflection of the quality of this game, or alternatively the possibility that I have a poor taste in games, I cannot say; largely, it seems a matter of opinion.

Here's one anecdote; for some reason, Diablo's individual developers (just saying that so as to acknowledge that different folks worked on their series and thus had different ideas for each game) went from Diablo 2's higher difficulties penalizing you on death via experience loss, to Diablo 3 not reprimanding death at all.
Perhaps that's poor design choice, to have removed penalty, as the game mode "hardcore" suffices the qualities to fulfill that penalizing-gameplay niche.
Maybe Blizzard had gone soft and decided to make the game something of a "gimme", everybody wins and progresses regardless of dying. That doesn't keep us from learning how to avoid death, as nobody enjoys it.

Perhaps, though, experience penalization is a good motivator to learn faster to avoid it. Just an observation.

On another note, as I said, I've had the displeasure of dragging my feet every time I group, watching others run circles around me, for me to come to the realization that I suck and my options remain to either remake my character and hopefully retain the vast majority of wealth accrued in stash tabs, wait for a reset to passive point distribution, or forcefully fix myself by stripping myself of useless items and, via Orbs of Regret, reset my passive point distribution.

Hardcore, in my case, is not interesting to me in any game, let alone this one, especially because experience penalization, as said by many others, can be severe enough a motivator to try, at any rate, to play more defensively.

Perhaps too slow, though, is the experience-penalty learning curve, so perhaps Hardcore might be a good learning tool to get an idea of just how careful you could be whilst remaining efficient.. I've already tried, nothing can convince me otherwise...

At any rate, those penalizations to experience kept me at level 79 for quite a long while, and I was quite frustrated watching friends (some of which played even less as long as I) were advancing farther in the game, their levelling progression much greater than mine. We can say that I was certainly green with envy and, on the other hand, none too motivated to push harder to get better. Five hundred and forty-eight deaths certainly served as a deterrent to trying to level in high difficulties.

Just making observations, once again.

I, personally, dislike ladders, ergo (oftentimes) progression which is lost, worsened with the ordeal of having to adapt to a fresh player-controlled economy...

Personally, I've not come across "godly gear" (and that's surely okay to expect, I suppose, especially not with only eight days of online time, but the adventure to picking up godly gear sure feels like it takes a while, rewards in-between or not)

Eventually, I resorted to a damage-magic find hybrid build (on another note, I've heard from friends that their luck finding uniques outside of maps is fairly poor compared to some of my experiences with this hybrid build), although what uniques I did find qualified typically as "levelling" or rather, low quality uniques of minimal use aside from bartering chips or something worth minimal currency.

On my part, I made a mistake due to my confusion in regards to whether or not loot and experience-gain is handicapped in zones higher or lower level than your character's level. Because of this, I was running Dried Lake; not that I had many other alternatives for looting, being I couldn't run maps efficiently, or fix my build with relative ease so as to be able to run maps.

What I've found is that some builds feel, in my opinion, too similar. Put shortly, the ability variation seems, in some aspects, a bit lacking.

I suppose I should keep in mind that you can potentially use any build to decent effect with any class.

Does that justify making the same skill with minute variations in functions, just to sufficiently fill a version of an ability for a marksman, brawler, or caster?

Here's what I'd say is an exemplary set of abilities similar to each-other:
Blast RAIN, RAIN of Arrows, FireSTORM, Blade FALL, the list might even go on to include other skills fairly similar to these abilities, all involving multiple projectiles falling from the sky.

As of now, I have easily 3,000 hours in Diablo 3 (just to point out that I have experience in other ARPG's, even though not a wide variety and certainly in ones whose playstyle differs greatly from Path of Exile's).

What's odd to me is that more people have spoken poorly of Diablo 3 while playing Path of Exile than the converse. Granted, Path of Exile consists of bartering markets, direct contact, open towns, and being beginner-unfriendly (to a degree) constantly has people chatting in the channels, such as to request price checks and the like (or to group, as with most ARPGs).
And in all of this, you'll find people who CON-STANT-LY rip on (and I mean attack, for the record) Diablo 3, or rant about the superiority of Path of Exile. Obviously, I'm only pointing out what I see to be flaws, and I don't solely have these reservations for Path of Exile... we've all had our taste of dislikeable videogames.

I don't understand, in its entirety, the acidity (though I will also respect your opinions)... Perhaps that is a result of Path of Exile being free-to-play, and I can only make the conjecture that free-to-play games (think League of Legends) have acidity amongst their player-bases, in abundance.

OR, perhaps, Path of Exile and Diablo 3 are like good and bad restaurants, respectively. Nobody talks about the positive service in Path of Exile, but will have horrible things to say about the "rat-iness" of Diablo 3. Maybe it's due to competition between the player-bases I'm not aware of, being there's minimal prominent mention of it in Diablo 3's forums and in-game conversations. Or perhaps because those who didn't enjoy Diablo 3 felt cheated out of their money, being it's buy-and-play, and that thus magnified the consensus of a bad experience.

Sorry for that rant, primarily pointing out that there's something of a ridiculous amount of acidity towards other players trying Path of Exile from (at least one) other ARPG(s); the point wasn't really to defend any other game, nor should that be the point (though I hope I made clear it wasn't in the first place).

Just more food for thought.

Unfortunately, this is the only PROMINENT (yes, GGG, in my books you're fairly popular) Free-to-Play ARPG I've tried.

Which brings me to agree with those about to tell me this awesome nugget of wisdom that I'll abide by, for now:
"So, you don't have any obligation to the game".

You're right, quite right.

Apologies for this post being littered with so much personal information and "Too Long; Didn't Read" text; as it is, I tried to make it as relevant to generalized feedback as I could think to.

Final note:
Maybe I'm a sore loser, maybe the genre isn't my cup of tea, maybe I'm both uncommitted to "getting good" and being a good player...

But, I'm not having fun, hence that's a (fairly good) indicator that, in my case, I should stop playing (correct me if I'm wrong)...

As it stands, I've resolved my own reasons for uninstalling the game... That pretty much resolves my issue, and from all of this I've gathered what I can leave as feedback on my experience.

That's the end of my unorganized feedback rant. Tried to edit it to improve it at any rate.

Thanks for all of your time in returning feedback and the positivity!!! I've come to find that the community here, as a whole, isn't terrible at all or ill-willed in any way, or lashing out at my opinions. That is something I can appreciate. I will miss that aspect, out of any player-base.




Apologies for any typographical errors, lack of clarity, and lack of thought/topic organization; if you've any suggestions on how to better organize the feedback so that certain thoughts pertaining to one another flow better, please shoot them to me.

I also forgot to mention, I dislike following builds for 2 particular reasons, one of which correlates to the choice of skill/support gems, another in theorizing the optimal armor in order to make it work... Maybe I'm too bottle-fed on builds being worked out for me in Diablo 3... Either I'm ruining the game experience for myself, or whatever else I cannot put my finger on is...

So you're saying you don't like the game?

Yeah the game will do that if you can't theorycraft / understand the mechanics. It's best you move on then, And you JUST came from D3 so it's very understandable of how frustrating can it be transitioning from the game.

I technically haven't quite "just come" from another game, I made my account 80 days ago and stretched my minimal amounts of playing across that time. For the record. And yes, essentially... The game went from being somewhat fun (I won't deny it, for the first couple of months it was regressively enjoyable).

And, yeah, theorycrafting/understanding the mechanics on one's own seems a tad difficult.

I, for a time, came under the impression that either a large amount of retired folks, or those who don't have too many real-life commitments, play this game often...

Just making an observation in that respect. I'd probably be more than glad to dink around on this game if I was retired from a job, with steady income, and no major dedication to other things.

Heck, I would even support and donate if that were the case. But unfortunately, not so. Living paycheck-to-paycheck now.

This game isn't for everybody. Play one you like.

I highly doubt there are that many retired people playing. Most are probably in the 20-50 age range.

My apologies, I just meant people in general with plentiful time on their hands. And again, sorry... it was only an observation, I guess you're probably right.


I think the big point here is I've NEVER gotten so burnt out or lost the will to improve in a game as with this one. The opinion of some is that this game is moderately easy, somewhat, some say it takes experience... I'll never really know...

This game is not for you.

But thanks for offering some feedback before you left. You make a good point on something that would annoy/deter new players away from the game:

-Lack of tutorial/path to information about hotkeys (making new instance with CTRL or holding SHIFT to spam use currency)

These functions may appear on a load screen... but I pay little to no attention to the load screens anyway and think this is a bad spot in general for FYI game information. These functions don't appear under the control options and don't appear on area entry/exit's or the currency being spammed (says hold SHIFT to unstack which is different). So yeah I agree with the OP that this 1 thing he/she highlighted could be improved quickly and simply.

1. Expand the settings > controls page to show all the functions each key has in the game.
2. Add a new options > setting called 'Display all tips in game' and enable it by default until turned off. This setting basically provides overlay information about things like hotkey functions, common recipes such as chaos recipe, information that is missing in the game (ie Incinerate gem cannot crit AND/OR What does damage effectiveness mean? The difference between Increased/decreased and More/Less etc etc etc).

Other than that I disagree with a lot of your post OP but wish you luck in finding a game that is for you.

I apologize in hindsight for coming off as.... well, a jerk. Just had my fill of Path of Exile...

I appreciate you guys' understanding on the other side of things, and for hearing me out to any degree.

I understand that there's plenty of my opinion to be disagreed with... my tastes in games must be very different.

Hope the feedback was at least minutely valuable, if not taken with a grain of salt.