Does PoE's design successfully trick its players?

Or do you acknowledge the sneaky design and like the game despite it?




GGG sets you up for smooth sailing so you can enjoy your character and have fun. But they're afraid that you'll get bored, so they force you to die every now and then, deliberately. That way, you can't feel like you've finished your character! Clearly you need to work on it some more. Or maybe some enemy takes 100 years to kill, so you have to work on your DPS now!... But then it's back to the smooth sailing again. Back to enjoying yourself. Back to reminding you that, hey, don't worry, look over here! There's still fun to be had, it's not a brick wall, don't be discouraged! Just a friendly reminder that you still need to waste a bunch of time getting little tiny upgrades!! Keep playing our game!! Play our content!!!




Like... we all see through it, right? This surely doesn't trick anyone? The game flow is just so inconsistent. Some white enemies are stronger than bosses. Some bosses are stronger than Shaper, or whoever the current power creep end boss is. Sirius, Ruiner of Computers.




It makes no sense to go through a map and feel like, "Is this really a t16?" And then, randomly, after spending 30 minutes playing maps where your health never moves, a couple of white skeleton archers snipe you from offscreen aggro somehow and one-shot you. Then you return to that location, and have no such problem again, and you're back to hours of smooth sailing gameplay.

Or you encounter some enemy that removes your ability to leech from it. Okay, cool, that was my chosen method to replenish my health, guess I'll go F myself. Hey maybe I should go regeneration instead! Then what? This other enemy stops regeneration. Guess I was supposed to maximize both things all along! OOPS, I have to keep playing, because I haven't mastered my character yet!!!

Like, what purpose do such mechanics serve? Is it FUN to have your chosen build path randomly turned off? Is it engaging or challenging, for the game to decide your chosen skill points will do nothing in a random situation? It's just unnecessary and stupid. It's not even a test of your build strength. It's just an obnoxious obstacle. Like damage reflect. You either arbitrarily pick up methods of negating it, or you avoid the map mod entirely. That's it. So what's the point??? (Play our content!!!)




It's so obvious, all of these tricks and gotchas. Why does this community defend this kind of design?




And with how they've done other sneaky things throughout the years, like ghost nerfing drop rates before eventually admitting it... how do you defend them??? How do you trust them???

Is it just that the crimes don't outweigh the fun of the other moments, I guess???

79 views and not even the expected "get good" post, lol.


"Thread - does - not - compute!"


Sorry, guys, what I meant to say was... "Let's talk about the direction of GGG! Will we still get Poe1 updates?! When will the next Poe1 league be added?! WILL THEY SHUT DOWN OUR SERVERS?!? Tune in next time to find out!!!"

... LMAO! I just ran into "drains flask charges" today.

What is the POINT of this???? Why can EVERY part of a character just be turned off??? That's not "difficulty."




Hey guys, play Dark Souls, but only with your thumbs!!!!

Just because it's difficult doesn't mean it's "game difficulty." It's just obnoxious and unnecessary. Might as well make a map affix that turns the screen completely black the whole time, cuz hey, it would be difficult!!




Absolute farce.

To summarize this nonsense; ShadyC#1006 wants to play a character that can do all content without ever dying.

I'd personally like to see a trailer for the next league.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Do you want to play a character that does die? I didn't realize I was the only one that didn't want to die.

I'm such a bastard!

PoE1 or 2? ;)

1.

But I'm sure 2 does it, too. (Perhaps that was even your joke!)

This is some schizo posting if I ever seen it. That said, I empathize with the emotion behind it, no so much the direct skill issue at hand

Well, thanks for meeting halfway-ish, I guess, lol.


But what do you mean? You don't think any of these mechanics are just grief mechanics? Like, what's the point of death effects? It's one of those things where it is designed to kill you simply for not knowing it's about to come (like the spike exploders). But then once it kills you the first time, now you know what's gonna happen every other time. It's just a cheap +1 death mechanic.

And my point is that this is just one example, among a sea of others.

Like, why is there a map mod for reflected damage? It's just a +1 map reroll mod. Waste some currency, but forcibly. No reward, just dodging a punishment for simply trying to play the game.

Players cannot leech? Players cannot regen life, mana, energy shield??? Why??? +1 reroll.

Oh, I insta died because 5 enemies all happened to crit at once? "Skill issue," because I didn't get anti-crit damage taken in my build, for a problem that individually shows up less often than once per day. But since there's 10,001 of these little issues, and a specific way to counter it, they add up and you need all of them so you're not running into 10,0001 problems all the time.




It just doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel REWARDING to counter these things, either. It just feels like exactly what it is. It feels like buying volcano insurance from the Family Guy door salesman... and then a million other insurances for all these other ridiculous things as well. And then the moment I say I cannot afford any more insurance coverage, I'm told "SKILL ISSUE!"




It's just ridiculous. Defending this game design is insane to me.

You're just disheartened with evasion. if you used Armour you'd see more deterministic results.