What PoE has become to me

Hey there Forums,

Yesterday I mused over my time with this game and came to some conclusione for myself that I wanted to share with you.

I was a long time D2 player, starting as a total noob and slowly worked my way to being efficient in laddering in a fresh season, getting better at the endgame challenges like getting my own torches, building characters etc.

I started playing PoE almost exactly 4 years ago, still in closed beta, only two acts, no scion, no multistrike etc...
And for a long time PoE gave me the same experience as D2 did: learning and achieving more with every new started character and season. Finishing Merciless, getting to maps, getting to higher maps, building own characters without guides etc. I just felt that my growing game knowledge allowed me to go further in the game.

But it changed. There was stuff long time unavailable or to hard fo me like some of the unique maps but I tackeld those eventually, with the introduction of the Vaal expension however my personel progress began to stall. I atempted Atziri once or twice but fell to the trio.
I have never finished Atziri god forbid Uber.
Then there where Encounters like some Vaal bosses I began to skip.
Some Map bosses I began to skip, which has increased drastically in the last expansion with extremely small end stages, super hard hitting bosses etc.
Then Rigwald came along, never saw him.
Shaper? Nope.
Maps above T11? nope.
Labyrinth is a crushing chore for me while leveling in a new league and 50% of my rage quits in this game come down to Izaro crit slashing me with his stupid super giant sword wave from offscreen.
Even Act4 has become a chore for me, its a steep jump in difficulty and a giant letdown in the next difficulty, where you breeze through content just to brickwall against act 4 and the labyrinth again...

The underlying problem for me is: Everything that has been added to the game after act3 came out, was targetet at people with far more time and resources to put into this game. My personal progress has stopped, I neither have the time nor the connections (Like in being a streamer and everyone wanting to trade with you :)) to get me to reach those goals GGG set out there. Also I'm not willing to just adopt other players playstyles and builds just because some combination is broken atm.
I want to build my own characters and keep my game knowledge growing.
But as the game stands for me right now, I cant see it happen.
The demands of even normal leveling have become very high, regarding defences as well as offence.
There are so many ways of damage avoidance and mitigation and they are available to practicaly every build that GGG keeps cranking monster damage and densitiy to pose a threat to players who have all those mecahnics working for them. And even those players get killed occasionally.
The tools for players to obliterate whole screens in clicks, whole maps in seconds, have grown even more.
GGG tries to adopt as well, resulting in for example Breaches, hurray.
Its another feature I wont touch because its basically a gear/dps check for those up there.

I feel more and more like a peasant in this game. All thats left for me is playing the story three times and maybe map up tp T6 or something. And thats basically what ive been doing for three years now. So while the game has gotten denser and denser, the content more and more, my personal playing experience hasnt changed much.

At the moment I dont even want to do that. The thought of playing and struggling through it again to still be disconected by a mile to whats even going on is just lame.

Im totally ok with content concepted for hardcore gamers and that this content is not for me. Since I just dont put as much effort in. But the game needs to grow on the lower end to I feel.
Because thats what brings players like me to this game and to support it.
Growing on available instead of high end content also keeps leveling experiences and starting new characters interesting.

I dont want the game to be easy, I dont want the game to pose no challange to streamers or whatever. I just would like to have challenges lower down the line. And I think there are quite some players who would like to have those challenges too.

Also I absolutely dislike putting such a huge part of character progression as the Ascendency points behind an artificially punishing thing like the labyrinth. I dont care if I will never drop an Aziri unique, I can buy those eventually, but I cant trade for ascendency points, so I have to go through lab and it A bores the s*** out of me, B enfuriates me or C seems plain unfair at times.

So I had to get this off of my soul and maybe you guys feel the same or different, feel free to discuss.
And I still hope there will be more content for people like me in the future. I even might support GGG again then (Its allready easily the game I spent most money on but I stopped supporting pretty much when I felt the disconnection between the developer and the crowd of not-so-high-end-players getting out of hand)

regards

Good thing there will be Act 5 in less than 3 months! :D

Maybe can't relate that much, started exactly one year ago and i like Act4 and the Lab. The Malachai fight is exactly the thing i enjoy, first time took over 30minutes and it was a blast.
But also still get some nostalgia in Act 1+2 from when i played PoE very briefly 3-4 years ago.
Actually i don't really understand why Act4 is considered so difficult by a lot of people
(if you skip Triskeriatix or what he's called, ripped two chars to him in Cruel before ..)

Right now i think Lab and Breaches are exactly the thing you also wish for, cool and optional challenges on a lower level than endgame.

Only doing my own chars and playing HC and almost ssf (not forced, may change), too.
Just in the process of reviving my Stun-Zerker, so i haven't played Melee-Breaches yet, only self-cast Flameblast-Chieftain with Ancestral Bond and Scorching Ray totems to get things to burn, so maybe that's a bit strong for huge groups of enemies right now and i played self-cast Flameblast before, didn't know it will become meta, just like the mechanics..

Pretty exited to try Breaches with Berserker, though.

I'll give this league one more shot.
I'll try a ci blade flurry cast while channeling bladefall assassin.
Maybe there is enough dps in that concept to carry me to a more satisfying point in the game :)

"

Antaiseito wrote:

Actually i don't really understand why Act4 is considered so difficult by a lot of people
(if you skip Triskeriatix or what he's called, ripped two chars to him in Cruel before ..)

Builds that can cruise-control through Acts 1 and 2 and find a decent fight in 3 will get curbstomped in 4 due to the sudden increase in mob tankiness and damage output. It's the act where gear really starts to matter because the developers assume that by now you'll have a good flask setup, capped resistances, and a big pile of defense. For people who only want to invest in their gear once, this makes Act 4 a wall because they don't want to buy gear to get the recommended levels of whatnot (gear they'd just have to shelve or sell later) and haven't found the prerequisite caliber of gear on their own.

Then there are the bosses. Kaom is rough because of the fact 75-80% of the arena is a no-go zone at any given time because of the huge number of poorly-telegraphed fireballs from the sides (their telegraph is hard to see if you're focused on dodging Kaom) not to mention Hyrri's Sisters (early), SRS spam (later), and Kaom himself. Then there's Daresso with his stunlocking whirligigs of death that he can and will drop on your face, plus his later-stage near-teleporting around the Arena. And I hope you have Cold resist or he'll chill and freeze you. And Malachai just fills the entire arena with crap, some of which homes in on you later in the fight.

Doing all of this without very sharp reflexes and a good knowledge of when certain things will happen will rack up a lot of deaths compared to the previous acts.

Thanks for the answer.
I always try to have resists as high as possible even while leveling after getting my first Duelist fried by Dominus lightning beams.
+ having Bleed and Freeze Flasks.
If not possible have some rings/amulets to switch for certain Boss fights.

But i guess i'm not as super-fast when leveling as others, while still trying to stay 2 levels above area level.
Right now Act 4 bosses are actually a nice switch up from cruising and then Act 1+2 in the next difficulty are a relaxing nostalgic reward for this with some new resist and gear-challenges to solve self-found until later Act 3 ^^"

Mostly doing lab after Dried lake or Dreams, depending on tankiness and when there's time for a run without breaks, so there's also the ascendancy power-up before the Beast...

I do understand the op. Few moths ago i started playing with my friend, we had quite alot of fun till the start of act 4, then it became quite hard. And then there was a labyrinth. He died there and didnt want to restart, and i personally too. So we just dropped the game. Its a big problem i think.

They don't give a crap anymore. Once something is "fixed" in a way(not too many people are complaining about it) they move on to something else. Trials are the perfect example. Who likes doing them every time a league starts? They are all the same, they are all annoying and they are all pointless. I know the next character in this league will skip this chore but if you decide to play in the next one? Here they are again! Its mind boggling but since there is not enough outcry about it it'll never change.

Meanwhile they are hard at work when it comes to designing new microtransactions, I assure you that.

Very good and candid feedback.

That is the one big thing with POE. It'a game that requires time to become engrossing. Leveling and mid-level power is always in a weird spot. It makes it very difficult to keep people playing this game. I've introduced 8 friends to this game and only 1 stuck with it...oddly he also proclaims that this is "the greatest game he has ever played". BUT it took him two years of constant fucking up and learning to finally come to the conclusion.

POE is a mountain. Once you conquer and understand it, it feels amazingly rewarding. Starting the climb, however, is extremely daunting.

New features (especially the labyrinth) has turned away many players. The power creep in the game is designed around the labyrinth so those once "elective points" are pretty much mandatory now. Compound that with Breach being the first "rippy" league we've had in quite some time AND server issues being an all time high? Not good news for new player retention.

Us oldschoolers will play through desync and bare the Lab and other content like it, but it is a huge ask for new players.

I hope GGG can come up with something creative that will keep players playing into mapping. To be fair, i've racked my brain on this for a long time and I can't really think of how to present the game to new players so it's more attractive at younger character development stages.

The game has so many mechanics, uniques, and passives. Not to mention currency/economy related information. It is very overwhelming but I also see it as a necessary evil for a player to learn to overcome these things.

This game requires patience so it attracts a lot of people, but retains few of those.

I casually play my builds, most of them melee and quite slow, I trade a bit, but I always know that half of the game is locked away from me. Still enjoy it. Most of the times.

What I really dislike is that every single league is stuffed into the core game. There's so much shit going on now in every zone and map, so many mechanics... I'd prefer if they locked all this behind Zana.


And I personally hope this new Act 5 will be more like "Act 2.5" (put in between 2 and 3), not after 4. Both in terms of difficulty and theme.
We basically walk through hell in act 4, I don't need to further scale this up.