New player feedback, reasons I stopped playing

I think you are just taking it all on abit to quick. You have good points, but PoE is abit like that too. It's not gonna hold your hand much. And alot of the games excellent feautures don't show till you are more experienced.

Another note about trading. This is just a personal thing, you can trade alot if you want or not at all if that's your thing. Don't be fooled by anyone who says trade trumps anything else in this game, because it doesn't. Over the last few leagues I've lost my passion for trading, and make the wealth I want by playing the game. I wouldn't throw trading completely out of the window, but you can def keep it to a minimum.

My advice would be to slow down abit. Don't try and digest this whole game on your first char. Messing up your first char isn't as bad as you might think it is. And for the record, I'm pretty sure I messed up my first 5. Then again, I had tons of fun on those characters, so I guess even though I messed them up viability wise, they still taught me alot. I'm really glad I never started with a build guide right away.

I hate flasks so I never make builds that rely on them. I'm honestly baffled by your perception that it's required that you need to constantly cycle through them.

And the amount of trading you participate in is entirely up to you. Many people don't trade much at all. Unless you expect to be able to easily do all the endgame content, you can easily get into mid to high tier maps with very little trading.

Honestly, it seems you are basing your arguments on what you see streamers doing. They use flasks and they trade a lot so therefore it must be required. My advice would be to stop watching other people play and just play the way you think is fun. Save the watching videos for boss fight mechanics.

"

mark1030 wrote:

I hate flasks so I never make builds that rely on them. I'm honestly baffled by your perception that it's required that you need to constantly cycle through them.

And the amount of trading you participate in is entirely up to you. Many people don't trade much at all. Unless you expect to be able to easily do all the endgame content, you can easily get into mid to high tier maps with very little trading.

Honestly, it seems you are basing your arguments on what you see streamers doing. They use flasks and they trade a lot so therefore it must be required. My advice would be to stop watching other people play and just play the way you think is fun. Save the watching videos for boss fight mechanics.

I agree with this. I too don't like spamming flasks. I reserve them for the boss fights and the occasional heals.

Reasonable options for trading is to only trade the amount you want to. For example, only selling higher price items or only responding to buyers if you are in your hideout. Another example, when I'm reading I'll bring PoE up just to wait for the alerts from buyers, you could turn on DND when playing.

Regarding the labyrinth, I will probably play standard next league to reduce the loathsome content somewhat by avoiding trials.

1. Flasks

Welp, don't use them then. I don't like to use too many hotkeys in PoE cause it's normal to play moba for 40m and use a lot of them, but people usually play 2-5h of PoE per session and this might be quite intensive. So i prefer to play characters which can farm perfectly fine with just onehanded control - w/out flasks. Few extra key presses once per map to burst boss and that's it.

2. Trading

I trade like once or twice per character for an hour total while drinking coffee. I do it to get crucial uniques or allrounder rare. it is also a rest from grinding maps. Also i don't flip or sell junk. You can choose to go SSF (plenty of streamers do that too) which leads us to...

3. "Location exclusive" items

...only way to farm for specific stuff. If you know how to design it differently, feel free to add your ideas to feedback.


4. Labyrinths

Ehhh... Just do it once. Nothing much to it, i like lab, some people not. Some people like only farm shaped linear maps with bisco's, i'm not. Also i am not complaining that it is most profitable thing ingame and profit gives power.

"

Xavderion wrote:

"

EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

Methinks I'm stating the obvious here, but the OP is saying that one factor leading him to quit is that lab gameplay is not enjoyable and it seems odd and immersion-breaking that your character progresses and actually comes to be defined by playing a mini-game instead of the main game.

If this still doesn't register, then think about this for a bit. Pantheon is distributed throughout the main game and you defeat a gaggle of gods to earn a relatively small bump in power. And, progression in building up pantheon abilities and map-related modifiers requires no repetition of any previously cleared content. And yet, in some corner of the game world there's this way of getting far more power for your character, to actually define your character, and it's locked behind a repetitive mini-game that doesn't look or feel like any other part of the game.

I don't find the OP's objection to lab at all strange and it's actually rather clearly worded. I'm confused about others' confusion, vis a vis the OP's concerns about lab.

More generally, you're getting feedback from a player who enjoys the main game quite a bit, but who isn't fond of all the interruptions needed to make continuing to enjoy the main game possible, when moving deeper into the game.

Great showcase of cognitive bias.

You're generalizing when you expect that somebody who doesn't enjoy lab (ie: me) cannot or does not understand why somebody else might not enjoy lab. That's a pretty irrational generalization, though. In short: kettle, pot, black.

I could, of course, be wrong in interpreting what the OP doesn't enjoy about lab. That's not necessarily the same thing as cognitive bias, though, which has a very particular meaning. I doubt the OP thinks of lab as a highlight of the game, though.

"

EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

"

Xavderion wrote:

"

EnjoyTheJourney wrote:

Methinks I'm stating the obvious here, but the OP is saying that one factor leading him to quit is that lab gameplay is not enjoyable and it seems odd and immersion-breaking that your character progresses and actually comes to be defined by playing a mini-game instead of the main game.

If this still doesn't register, then think about this for a bit. Pantheon is distributed throughout the main game and you defeat a gaggle of gods to earn a relatively small bump in power. And, progression in building up pantheon abilities and map-related modifiers requires no repetition of any previously cleared content. And yet, in some corner of the game world there's this way of getting far more power for your character, to actually define your character, and it's locked behind a repetitive mini-game that doesn't look or feel like any other part of the game.

I don't find the OP's objection to lab at all strange and it's actually rather clearly worded. I'm confused about others' confusion, vis a vis the OP's concerns about lab.

More generally, you're getting feedback from a player who enjoys the main game quite a bit, but who isn't fond of all the interruptions needed to make continuing to enjoy the main game possible, when moving deeper into the game.

Great showcase of cognitive bias.

You're generalizing when you expect that somebody who doesn't enjoy lab (ie: me) cannot or does not understand why somebody else might not enjoy lab. That's a pretty irrational generalization, though. In short: kettle, pot, black.

I could, of course, be wrong in interpreting what the OP doesn't enjoy about lab. That's not necessarily the same thing as cognitive bias, though, which has a very particular meaning. I doubt the OP thinks of lab as a highlight of the game, though.

His response really makes no sense to me, maybe his problem is that he misunderstands what cognitive bias means?

"

A cognitive bias refers to the systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment, whereby inferences about other people and situations may be drawn in an illogical fashion. Individuals create their own "subjective social reality" from their perception of the input.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias

Or maybe he wanted to demonstrate his own cognitive bias on the subject! :-)

I fully understand where the OP is coming from, as I feel the same.

When I heard about SSF, I did expect them to actually fix the drop rates and crafting, but nothing happened. It´s the same game I played before without trading...

To me it is not understandable, why GGG is not doing anything about that. Either, make trade a part of their game, with an AH or some other system, where you can list items that others buy, or they have to offer SSF players a better gaming experience.

Each time a new league kicks in, I level to the high 80s and then give up, as I can not progress without a certain item. This league, I did not find a Baron and a Mace for my zombies, good luck playing a summoner without that...

The game is super fun, but once you meet the dead end, it stops being playable, also due the fact that the XP penalty is holding you back and red maps super rare. I have yet to find a shaper guardians map and I did lots of T15.

Six links are another example, so important to progress, but so hard to come by. I wasted thousands of crafting attempts and not a single six link. If we now consider that it takes weeks to even get a few hundred of these orbs... it is just a waste of time to even try.

Lab is a nuisance, that I do once and never again - I always hated such games where you must dodge traps and if you fail, you must start from scratch again. Savegames were a blessing at Tomb Raider, so why can´t we have save points for the lab?

Flasks I also agree with, I would just straight-out remove them or limit them to the basics of health and mana.

POE has so much potential, but it´s not used properly to make the game better. I wish I could ask the Devs why, why they are not going forward, but always backwards.

Not wanting to get sucked into the lab discussion or the rest of the stuff being said here.

While the OP does have some valid points for the most part, I want to address the one thing I disagree with:

The game does not need to be any easier than it already is. When I started out in PoE, nobody complained about the inexistence of handholding or the fact that you needed to read up on external resources. By downloading this "hardcore" (not so much anymore) game, you implicitly agreed that there would be things (many things) that you would have to google and hope or ask and hope would be clarified.

I do not like the shift to accommodate new players, and many other players who have been around as long as or even longer than me did not like it either. In fact, the vast majority of the old playerbase has been phased out - and to be honest, I'm also feeling the effects of all the things GGG did to alienate us and drive us away myself. I was driven from hardcore to standard long ago by the shift in focus of this game (instead of surviving, the point became to farm currency, harcore offering no additional challenge unlike the way it used to be). And now, the game does not change as much as it used to - no passive tree changes, no culling of the clearspeed meta, no new build paradigms being introduced (old ones still getting nerfed to oblivion though), nothing to make the game refreshing to someone who's been playing for more than 4 years. I've heard so many people say that they've played "every build" (which is exactly what I've been saying) and while that may not be strictly true, it certainly feels that way - I've played every build that offers a playstyle I enjoy, and there is nothing left.

The game caters TOO MUCH to the new fresh playerbase and TOO LITTLE to those of us who were here when things were dirty and ugly. It's like a fat woman who loses weight, gains confidence, and forgets all the people who liked her just the way she was in favour of those who like the way she looks on the outside now. And I say the outside, because the new playerbase, the people like you, don't ACTUALLY like what Path of Exile really is once you play it (you've proven that with this rant), you just like what it looks and sounds like on the outside.

So no, no more handholding is needed. New players will not be satisfied unless they can install and the game plays itself for them, and I hope that this will never happen to Path of Exile, although it seems to be getting closer every day.

Nice feedback OP, sorry that some of the usual lab haters somewhat derail this thread.

Flasks: I basically agree.

Trading: It's not that bad imo. Flipping is very profitable but selling decent drops and buying some strong/build defining items here and there is enough if you don't want to compete in ladder races.

"Location exclusive" items
I like that part and wish more bosses had loot tables like D2's.

Lab:
Map trials can be a pain without /global 820 but aside from that I like running the lab here and there. Brainlessly chaining maps always gets tedious after a while for me, lab is a nice change of pace.

PrimordialDarkness: I was here from open beta and I remember from personal experience the period you're talking about. It was a far, far simpler game back then, with a learning curve that was much easier and quicker to negotiate. The new player experience is fundamentally different than it was back when those of us who've been around for a while started playing.

I think the OP's feedback about bring frustrated with the complexity associated with learning POE is wholly understandable and the OP's perspective is likely to be shared by a lot of other new players.