Path of Exile or Path of progressively one-dimensional playstyle? A history lesson

Disclaimer : The following article or analysis (take it as you like) is from the perspective of an HC player (an oldschool HC point of view to be even more precise ). While some of the following might apply to standard leagues too, the main focus is HC environment. Its also going to be long. Its purpose is to provide some entertainment, a lesson and food for thought.

First of all some info and gaming backround to understand the process of thought and the experiences leading to this. I love RPG games, tabletop or video, and ive spent countless hours on those kind of games. Dungeon and Dragons (from 2nd edition up to 4th plus some videogames based on it like Dragonshard and D&D online), Planescape : Torment, Elder Scroll series (mainly Morrowind and Oblivion), Diablo series (mainly D2) , Baldur's Gate series (mainly all of them repeatedly), Pathfinder, Gothic (I-II and a bit of III), Mutants and Masterminds, Icewind Dale series, Heroes of Might and Magic III (my most played game by far), Might and Magic (you know which ones), Divinity : Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity, Wasteland 2, WoW(vanilla only), World of Darkness (both classic and new), Sacred, Warcraft (II & III), Grim Dawn, Age of Decadence, Titan Quest. Those are just some of them that left a huge impact on me, the older people out there surely question, "where is Ultima or EverQuest? why no Warhammer or even FF?" Unfortunately "fate" (close environment), age and choices never led me to get my hands on those and i missed them. And except Ultima series (which i still try to motivate myself to start) i dont regret missing them, after all there is not enough time to try all of them and still have time for adventures (point & click mainly), strategy, arcade/platform and other various games. Im sure i miss many others as well, but this is just an intro to help see things from my corner.

I started playing PoE like 4 years ago, i dont even remember how it caught my eye, but it did, and it was magic. I remember the first clip i saw was the Templar's trailer when the game was still in closed beta if i remember correctly. I quickly searched for more and i was determined when the game was launched to give it a try, and i did (as a templar still influenced by that initial video), and to this day i still cant accurately describe the feeling. It was some kind of sweet melancholia, combined with awe, nostalgia, admiration, reverence, very mild inebriation, visual and audio pleasure, some very primordial delight and enjoyment i only felt for some few truly great games, and i mean all time greatest.

The more time i spent trying to figure out different compinations the more astonished i was that even more existed. The harder i was trying to understand mechanics the harder the ones i was not aware of seemed to be to comprehend. I couldnt help, no, i couldnt prevent myself from playing it more and more, the game in front of me was simply brilliant and extremely captivating. Thats when i felt the need to support it, and i did, and by doing so, i felt even more connected to it, and proud to help even by that tiny bit the company that had already offered me so much entertainment.

I had purposely skipped Onslaught since i found/thought the Haste effect was not worthy of a new league and i was really comfortable in perm HC. Then Nemesis hit the deck and i had the time of my life. It was still a time when 20k dps was considered ridiculously high, and anything in the range of 10-15k was (more than) enough to do the highest level content. Sacrifice of the Vaal came shortly after bringing Invasion (and Ambush which i tried a bit since league rewards were still different at this point, as i did with most of the other leagues too). Atziri and her Uber version were victims to Havoc's block/aurora build with 15k dps in Invasion, and mathil's Ele ST with 14k dps in Ambush (im not kidding and keep those values in mind). The expansion was marvelous, from many aspects.

It didnt take long for GGG to realease their second expansion later that year, Forsaken Masters, and it didnt take me long after trying it and playing Beyond, to buy another supporter pack. It was also shortly after that i got accepted into the Alpha realm of the game, for testing purposes, i couldnt be more glad and happy at the time. Little did i know. Shortly after Bloodlines (and Torment) was released, but something had changed, or actually continued to get out of control since the previous league. The damage, the dps, the tooltip and everything related to them started getting extravagant. In a three months' time the top dps tooltips were reaching the hundred's of thousand or even millions. Ofcourse that was happening in standard. But the seed had been planted. And soon there were HC focused builds with 30, 40, 50 and some critical based reaching 100k+ dps. The damage was already done.

Later that year Awakening was introduced, bringing new air to the game with the new act and the two leagues, Tempest and Warbands as well as 100+ uniques, jewel system, LOCKSTEP, item filters an many other improvements. But it also brought a disease with it, or maybe the virus/parasite was already inside the game from the latest content and it just transformed. Bosses had enourmous life pools and certain ones insane damage. It was the first era of "kill before even getting hit". Since i was already in the alpha and tested the game, i opted not to buy a supporter pack ( definately something to think about when you see how many ingame improvements the expansion brought), that (not buying packs) would become a short of a tradition, but lets not get ahead of our story.

And while i had some pretty good memories from Tempest, the league as a whole wasnt something TRULY memorable. And thus we come to Talisman era and ANOTHER big hit for the game in general. It was the first time the temp Leagues were the same. Yep. No more different mechanics and playstyle for each kind of player, everyone would from now on move on the exact same way. While i truly enjoyed Talisman and exctatic with the Rigwald fight, i kept noticing the same trend in GGG's design. Damage was everything. Suddenly it hit me, i wasnt playing PoE as i wanted and started playing in the beggining, but as the game made me do it. I was trying to maximize my damage while in the same time raising my effective HP to counter the 1shot scenario. Nothing else mattered. And when there was a time i was playing themed, lore based, or really bound-bending builds now i was a dps monster that was highly resistant to 1shots. When there was a time i was outplaying or slowly outlasting the game's hardest content, now that wasnt even possible. There was no scenario that an average build could OUTLAST and not simply outdamage a boss fight. Playing differently was simply not possible, you had to get as much damage as you could and as much HitPoints as you found for a simple task. OUTDAMAGE everything while keeping yourself out of the 1h range.

Ascendancy expansion was later revealed and hyped, and was promising, new tools, some especially designed for that old playstyle of mine that i was badly missing. Finally i could make builds as i used too, builds that are there to have high defences, that will help with leech/regen/pots and whatever else to outlast the hard enemies and not just play the game of who hits first. Alpha testing was enough again to dissapoint me. Izaro (pre-double-nerfed) was the exact reason why bosses could not longer be outplayed and outlasted. Even traps inside his dungeon supported this playstyle i so much hated, be super fast, with just enough EHP to avoid 1shots and enough damage to bring down the whole labyrinth with one click. Perandus ride along with Ascendancy. What Perandus was? A glorified Ambush league with the occasional lottery ticket. It ofcourse had a very big impact in the game's player numbers. It was reportedly the best expansion GGG had released up to that point and a clear indication that the other kind of playstyles are not longer welcome. Its the point where you are literally FORCED to play the game GGG wants you to without any further thinking, or dont the choice is an illusion.

Prophecy was once again the same thing. While i thoroughly enjoyed it (and became unimaginably rich during it), while i had some serious fun doing the different "mini-quest" the prophecies were, there was that one thing that kept infuriating me. The new boss fight (the pale council) had the exact same design, outdamage/avoid 1shot in the clusterfuck vomit-inducing particle effects that the boss arena was. Another really fascinating fact about this league was that it had its own supporter pack (which ofcourse i didnt buy). Quite interesting if you ask me, either the company was in dire need of money or their ethics and tactics had changed drastically.

Anyway we finally reached today. And the exact same rule applies. Damage, damage everywhere. Get it or never get to try the highest of the content. Defences ? Nah, you can wear 3 uniques with no life and abyssus and do t15 and t16 because you kill everything before it can react. You dont have dps? Unfortunate, you are gonna struggle and die far more often.

Dont get me wrong the new content every time is great and kudos to the design team for the ideas, it just kinda forces players to get the damage path almost every single time. When once 15k dps was considered godly and you could face the hardest of content toe to toe with a balance in both defence and offence build nowdays 15k is considered like the lower threshold/entry point and the defences are almost always a good offence. When once the build of the week was (the now novely) ice spear totems or glacial hammer proliferation now its barage with so much damage that its viable for aoe clear too. When once the skill bar was filled with 7 different skills offering all kinds of utility, nowdays it has 1 damage skill, 1 movement skill and some aura or a golem. When once Kaoms Heart was 10-15exalts in HC leagues, now its hardly 3, when LC was 6-8 now its hardly 2. When once defences really mattered now the best one is to have huge damage output. When once leagues promoted different playstyles now we all play the SC game with a dose or two of HC here and there. When once support gems were intriguing and trully unique now the most used have a MORE modifier, and others that should have never existed in the first place enlarged the already huge gap between melee/ranged/spell because said majorities wanted MORE damage.

And i cant but compare this with some of the games i mentioned before in the intro, why even if it had the same design and basic principles as them has PoE changed so much? Is this a result of another problem? Is the hype train and the short attention spawn reasons that GGG blatantly incentivizes going full damage? Is that playstyle of killing as fast as possible the only way to enjoy or even get to try the new content? Isnt tanking 5 or 6 hits from the boss giving the same joy as killing the said boss in less than 20seconds? Isnt effectively controling or countering the boss' abilities as thrilling as killing it in one barage of air dropping/swirling knives? Cause PoE offered all of those options once upon a time, and with expansion after expansion and patch after patch all options were toned down with only one prevailing and thats damage.

Like another "The Bruce Dickinson" adressing "Gene Frenkle", GGG somehow says "i have a fever and the only perscription is MORE DAMAGE" to their players. At this point you could as well play D3 to also see those big numbers.

p.s. Exclude any mention of pathfinder, acuities and in a lesser extent juggernaut from any conversation.

maybe in act5 the things change
edit: idk

TL:DR?

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Hunwulf wrote:

TL:DR?

More gameplay strategies used to be viable. Now it's all about that dps.

Why is this in gameplay help, shouldn't it be in general or feedback? Makes no sense.

I agree with OP and would like to add that the devs should think more about hardcore play when adding new content. Not everyone wants to play in the dps lala land.

"

Pyrokar wrote:

Why is this in gameplay help, shouldn't it be in general or feedback? Makes no sense.

Gameplay help and discussion. It's not out of place here.

Could be in feedback too though, I agree.

Arpgs is all about maximizing damage and clear speed. Before we.just had fewer tools to reach these goals.


If you want to be a tank and run a gorge in 12 minutes, no one is forcing you not to.

Gotta say it's a good post, worth the time.

Unfortunately, don't expect a discussion. Those that agree with you already stated so on many occasions, are equally disappointed and more than a little tired. Those that don't will just say 'fuck you, play slower' without grasping the core of the problem.

"

ArniQQ wrote:

Arpgs is all about maximizing damage and clear speed. Before we.just had fewer tools to reach these goals.


If you want to be a tank and run a gorge in 12 minutes, no one is forcing you not to.

except you know for .. everyone