Serious question: Why does Act 1 have to be grueling and miserable?

"

mrrick1781 wrote:

I honestly have no idea how a new player goes through the base game. Just on the basic front of the first skill, you get on the beach. None of the characters should be getting a strike skill. Even some of the "AOE" skills need to be changed out for better starting skills.

Some of the level 12 skills could be brought down to starter skills.

To start the Ranger with a flame arrow is just silly at this point. I don't know I think it's an issue they could change easily and make it much better for new players.

I am not even against giving players some 10% movement skill boots as a quest reward at the start.

With the late game getting much harder (for some) and drawn out I don't think it would be a bad thing.

iirc the ranger's starter skill on the strand used to be Split arrow ?

Which was great for packs, but not very useful against hillock, idk.
Maybe the box skills for strand should be re-assessed once in a while to make sure they're useful where it counts, and for strand and acts 1-3 that's going to be decent single target.

You're not likely going through act 1 and clearing packs. (fetid pool is an exception really) Fire arrows let squishy rangers deal damage while they are scooting away from much larger melee bosses like brutus and hillock. At this point you're manually dodging because your defenses are crappy to nil. DOTs rule.

One thing I recall from some other games is an NPC might have a special cameo appearance or voice line that plays "Hey, you've found yourself something really special. This gem grants a skill that does damage over time. Patience is a virtue, innit?" or "Hey, looks like you've picked up a friend. Go ahead. Socket it and cast it. Why cast your own spells when you can summon an army to do it for you?"

You can disable some parts of that or dismiss it but it will always have some sound cue or a vignette of a particular npc/advisor will appear on your HUD quietly waiting for you to be undistracted and check out what they have to say. Like in Civ games, where your science advisor's smug mug appears in your HUD and you click on them and they say "Hail godslayer friend. That pile of yellow turds over there ain't no ordinary pile of, well, you know. Might want to check it out!"

Imagine you entering a3 say it's your first time in the Imperial Gardens and an Einhar face appears and a voice line passively plays "Ahh Exile. Fair warning. Porcupines shoot quills on death which deal a lot of phys damage. Don't get caught in the crossfire!"

Or you're in lab and there's a strongbox in a tight space (or anywhere in lab, really) and you're about to pop it and a voice says out of nowhere "I'd think twice about accepting any free cookies in here, it could be a nasty end to your lab if you can't back away" or Haku's voice "I love me some boxes, but not even I am stupid and greedy enough to pop an unID'd rare box in lab. If you value your offerings and your life, walk on by."

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

Chris has admitted this was a mistake, and they have stopped all planned "revisions" of difficulty in the subsequent acts.

It remains to be seen if they will somehow revert what they did to act1, but at this point I doubt it is worth the resources to do so.

Additionally PoE sucks for new players generally speaking, so perhaps this weeds out the folks they dont really want anyways. I dont think it's a smart strategy, and I was one of the many people saying the Act1 rework made no sense, but here we are.

No shit. I totally missed that.
If that's the case they will certainly revert the difficulty.

"

mariox1011 wrote:

Act 1 literally takes less than 20 minutes. How is that Grueling?

Takes to you after 10y of playing PoE and without exaggeration you did it prob 1000 times considering there was period of only running 3 acts.

For a new player, especially if they pick something like Glacial Hammer or pretty much any melee skill will be quitting before the end of it, and horrible with everything else.

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

Ugh I cant remember which podcast or Baeclast this was.

I'm VERY interested in seeing this, as Chris usually don't really "go back on his words" in public. Thought I watched all these casts, but apparently not.

Please? Pretty please?

"

Phrazz wrote:

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

Ugh I cant remember which podcast or Baeclast this was.

I'm VERY interested in seeing this, as Chris usually don't really "go back on his words" in public. Thought I watched all these casts, but apparently not.

Please? Pretty please?

Baeclast #83. Actually the the entire few hours is worth listening to if you have the time.

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

"

Phrazz wrote:

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

Ugh I cant remember which podcast or Baeclast this was.

I'm VERY interested in seeing this, as Chris usually don't really "go back on his words" in public. Thought I watched all these casts, but apparently not.

Please? Pretty please?

Baeclast #83. Actually the the entire few hours is worth listening to if you have the time.

I think remaking acts was just on pause the last league.

From Baeclast #83:

Chris Wilson: I mean it's tricky because it's not really like remaking the acts per se it's more a matter of like just getting a balance right but to do that involves putting skills on monsters and re-evaluating stuff and our intention is to work through the acts and do it it's just that i would rather be spending some attention at the moment on making sure we deliver high quality leagues getting like players of us for new skills after the central release fair enough right like as soon as we see opportunities to do skills that add to the game we'll definitely be working on those and getting a skill right is like half the effort it takes to get the balance right in an act at the moment just because skills have so many interactions so it's pretty much any question you ask on the podcast could be answered with this is a question of time and resources and so it could be phrased as why do you choose to prioritize this and i think that's a great discussion point for some of these things where maybe we're not prioritizing something that would actually benefit players and choosing whether to prioritize the actuary works is is a good question right i personally feel it's kind of a second priority to some of the important things right now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0lofp2c-8E

You can go to the 3 dots to the right of Save and click on Show Transcript. Then hit Ctrl+F and search the transcript for "campaign".

Chris quote above starts at 16:11.

One day more
Another day, another destiny
This never-ending road to Calvary
These men who seem to know my crime
Will surely come a second time
One day more
I did not live until today
How can I live when we are parted?

One day to a new beginning
Raise the flag of freedom high
Every man will be a king
Every man will be a king
There's a new world for the winning
There's a new world to be won
Do you hear the people sing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv-BxH3SVS8

My confidence in my English is getting brutalized here, as I seriously cannot find or understand where Chris says that making the acts harder was a mistake.

I don't understand how act 1 with the buffs could be considered "hard". I've never read a guide, i exclusively play only SSFHC, i use garbage skills and won't play anything considered "meta".

I have never had any problem or come close to dying in act 1. I would say some of the starting skills and hillock are probably the only part where you could go wrong.

Where are players going wrong here?

skills i've taken to maps recently that havn't even been relevant to my build:
- frost blades.
- any of the steel skills.
- eth knives
- any trap
- minions are good with no investment for at least 60-70% of the campaign.
- most totems.
- spectral throw.
- split arrow, ele arrow, caustic arrow.
- glacial hammer, doublestrike, smite.

genz gamers - google OP broken build guide the moment they download the game. Play trade and buy OP gear asap. Rage quit when GGG nerf the 400 mil dps all screen hitting build to 300 mil dps oh noes :o

"

AmpegV4 wrote:

I don't understand how act 1 with the buffs could be considered "hard". I've never read a guide, i exclusively play only SSFHC, i use garbage skills and won't play anything considered "meta".

And you play this game for 9 years.

Whatever you do, something's gotta give, either the perceived grind needs tweaked downward, or the perceived reward value needs to be tweaked upward. And if you hold your economy sacrosanct but have no comprehensive way of weeding out botfarms, it looks like you've chosen to adjust grind.

For those who play SSF, the botfarms are a non-issue and the drops should reflect a truly SSF economy.

For those who play trade leagues, the botfarms will probably always be an issue and the target in that league should be make things less grindy when possible in required leveling areas. Side content can be grindier, but make sure there's actual rewards in it to get players to try it out.

Ideally you want to make competing content actually desirable enough so the player is choosing which content they like more, rather than which of dozens of similar options is least malicious and cancerous.

At least for me, early acts is not that bad - I tend to screw around a lot and try out the league mechanic so I'm actually having a little fun between fits and starts of pubby rush party - but it was a lot more interesting when you could get key rewards related to the league mechanic before maps. It makes you want to keep at it, even if your build sucks real bad for the new acts monsters or the mechanics.

Starting in Betrayal, I understood right away what crafting recipes might mean and how valuable it was to find a way to make my own items even in act 1. Getting meaningful progress on veiled crafts from the start made dealing with setbacks like Kitava -res and stacking curse debuffs in Doedre fight something I could handle. I played with some mates and we shared crafts. Same with Harvest, which I played ssf. Crafting my own leveling items as a melee phys bonker felt RIGHT.

But if my first league started out the way say scourge did, or sentinel, with no meaningful self-improvement rewards until maps, I would never have bothered past about act 2. And if next league is any indication, there will be items dropping mirrored and you can't craft on them, or maybe you can dip them in the lake for them to get scourged, or something entirely RNG driven. Not really fun when you are a person who normally avidly takes responsibility for your own progress and seeks ways to be the captain of your own rowboat.

I think Act 1 should be more of a playground for new players. Not something that should be brutal and miserable (for new players). With GGG changing up starting skills or even more options for reward gems.

I'm not for the rest of the game getting easier etc. Just more new player balance in Act 1. Or even more options for them to try skills out.

I think GGG put Tutorials at the start of the game and is happy enough with that. So not demanding change and screaming for change or anything.