What I think about PoE1

I want to know why people like PoE1 to the point that they could drown themselves playing thousands of hours each leagues.
I personally only play around a hundred or so hours and a few hundreds at most.
I normally just delete characters after I'm done with the league to clear out slots for the next league.
I never grind for the late game gears because I don't know how to bridge between somehow good gears from Act 10 to the red map ready gears without relying heavily on luck. But I could generally get into T16 maps because my builds were rather decent.
I didn't use any guide because I couldn't understand them properly. I find that following my own intuition and understandings led me to a stronger build.

So this is the kind of player I am, I don't know if I could say I'm casual because I studied all the mechanics in deep level in order to make my own builds. But I don't have the patient to grind that much.
Since my gears were never good enough, every contents were rather sketchy whenever I play.
It's too tiring to always tense while playing like that. After it's reached the limit then I just quit the league.

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Here is the list of what I like in PoE1

-Potential for build variety
The freedom to make build is rather high despite the lack of direct synergy for various builds. The direct synergy is kinda came at later stage.

-Potential to be semi-immortal
The idea of always getting one-shotted, or to be more specific getting rekt by something or many things before you could react, or maybe unable to react, is suck.
This is why PoE1 is rather good comparing to many games which could combo you to death.
The ability to tank enough and leave some room to recover is a good thing to have.
It's a shame that I couldn't do this often enough because the higher contents required too high stats than the normal gears I generally have access to.

-Potential for roleplay
While it's the ARPG genre, the idea of roleplay is different.
Think about that you're choosing a certain build which could make you into someone. Like for example, using a shield skill to become someone like a heavy knight. Or maybe using scorching ray to become a super saiyan.

-Active community for various types of people
I think it's fun when someone is hyping up for the new league. I always feels energetic every new league launch day. It's the tpye of energy which made me feels alive.
Then there is also a nerd community working on builds especially when working on the starting builds.
It's always nice to see whenever there is a potential new starters, because the streamers will play in more variety than just...let's say DD.

-Controversial but I do like running acts
Since I have ADHD, it's hard for me to focus. So when I have a line drawn for me, it's easy for me to know where to go next and what to do next. Which I generally lost when I reached maps, so I just try to complete maps and lost in the void since I couldn't push for end game bosses.
Also I don't like the idea of farming the same map over and over again, or only a few maps.
Pushing for efficiency in gaming is killing the fun for me.
Sure I'd love to optimize my builds, in fact I already optimized so much that I'm running on the edge while playing on T16 risking my life every moment.

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Here is the list of what I don't like about PoE1

-Bloated contents
While the more the merrier and it's nice that people will have their own specialties.
I think it's better to make them more isolated, like heist can be just stay within heist or something like that.

-Town upkeep in Settlers of Kalguur
While I do like the idea of development which add a bit more unlocking and potential to improve beyond just the character. I felt like I was a slave and had to farm enough gold everyday for the very least. This is the very reason I quitted the league.
I mean my work is already hard enough, I don't want to slave away like this.

-Time limit contents
While I understand that it's allowed people to 'zoom', it's not my style.
My builds are generally fast of course, but these time limit contents also tend to have scary mobs which could one-shot me easily. So without investing enough defense from the tree, it'd be impossible to do the contents. Not to mention when investing too much for defense, my dps decreasing so much that it's harder to beat them or even impossible for some contents. It's hard to balance on this.

-Gears progression
As I mentioned several times, I don't know how to bridge from the Act10 and early maps gears quality with the gears for red maps.
I've seen many streamers craft their gears with some methods that I don't understand. I tried but somehow it's so expensive to even craft one. Maybe they played much longer and more efficient than me so they have currencies to burn, but without gears upgrade I'd stuck doing low level contents over and over again hoping for better gears or currencies.

-Trade
The only reason I play trade is because I hate when I want some uniques but they're not drop for me. Of course I'm not talking about Mageblood or HH. Just some common uniques like wasp's nest and stuffs. They're super common but somehow I couldn't find them at all in some leagues.
I'd love if we could just add items to the system and automatic trade, aka auction house with in-game currencies. I have to be more specific because some people thought that I might need RMT which is not the case.
It's tiring to go through the long list of people not responding especially for cheap items.
I understand that people want to play the game, so it's understandable. But you guys are losing to people whom have dediicated traders in their team.
For solo players, it'd be hard to make money through trade.

-Build diversity prevention
This is not by intentional design and I've witnessed GGG trying many times to deal with the problem which people talking about the game doesn't have enough build diversity.
The general problem is that the required level of gears in order to make some builds become viable is far too high.
Some builds would required you to use high-end gears in order to just farm red maps, not to mention it's impossible to fight bosses with these builds unless they're also using full impossible level gears or maybe mageblood.
I hate the idea that you've gotta use mageblood in order to play this build.
The reason for this is easily the lack of power.
I think the power level of characters should be a bit higher at late to end game stage, so that some builds could be possible to do without grinding for who knows how long.

-Ease of use for skills
Somehow I can't bring up a good example for this. But I always feels struggle when using some skills despite they're rather cool. Maybe stormbind and charged dash.
It takes tremendous amount of mana in order to fill the runes for stormbind, so you gotta cheesing out in order to make use of the highest potential. In exchange for such a hassle, you only got roughly 2x higher damage potential than other skills.
Charged dash kinda need rework. I think trying to balance the movespeed and attack speed like this is kinda too strict. I like when charged dash is fast, but it's come with much lower damage. Why not just scale the stacks on just attack speed, so you can have higher movespeed for a faster traversing ?
Oh I see, it'd bee too cheating right? there goes my fun skill.

-Some skills need power in exchange for the ease of use
Let me honorary mention Heavy Strike.
The skill is just the basic attack with slower attack speed, maybe a bit more stunning bonus with some more damage bonus.
Well the problem is the balance line is too relative with other skills, which made this hassle to use skill pointless to use.
If the base damage is 600% and always deal double damage with chances to deal triple damage. Then the heavy strike will be bareable enough for some people to use.
But this wouldn't change the fact that heavy strike is just a stupid basic attack right?
Well we need a skill to represent basic attack in various forms, so I think it's fair to have such a boring skill.
Maybe have alt for heavy strike to deal less damage than the main one in exchange for special effects, like maybe make debuff AoE which also deal some AoE damage on hit.
I know that heavy strike just got buffed, but as I said it's still relative to other skills.
You gotta choose if you want the balance to be relative or you want to push for the uniqueness of each skills.
If it's me, I'd define right away that I want heavy strike to be a single-target heavy hitter. This is when you'd want to see the potential of the skill being shine above others in terms of hitting a single enemy.

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Here is what I want to tell GGG

By writing this post, it's not for the sake of demanding that PoE1 must develop in the way I want it to be.
I merely express what I think about PoE1 and will always respect the design decisions from GGG since it's your game.

I just hope that you can define the policy for PoE1 and the direction we're moving toward.
Personally I want the game especially early lategame to be easier, maybe 30% easier in both offensive and defensive.
I feels like many mods especially map mods are rather too extreme which could disable some builds from entering the map.
I understand that it's the idea of high risk, high reward. But maybe tone some down to prevent the build prevention from map mods.

I do hope that PoE1 will continued to develop and even modernize the engine. Because I feels like PoE2 is focusing on different kind of game that I might want to play.

I do love the control of PoE2 and the idea of each gems have their own sockets. But the difficulty might be far too high for my liking.

If you could express your policies about the direction to further develop PoE1 properly. I think we wouldn't waste each others time in case the direction is different from the way that I'd love to see the game become.

In vice versa, it'd allowed those whom agreed with the direction to looking forward to such a great game in the future.

Many people are in dire state and in great need of hope. Myself included.

It's fine if you don't want to take my words into consideration.

This post is merely my expression for the game I hold dear in my heart and played since Tempest & Bloodline league.

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Finally for fellow players.

I hope you guys don't push GGG too much and be more civil.

In such an era, we need to support each others.

Gaming can also improve your intellect.

Don't just take the act of some entertainment streamers as real.

In fact they're more smart than you might think.

It's just the stage acting. Stand up comedian if you may call.

We're just here to have fun. To enjoy our lives.

Let's enjoy it to the fullest despite all the problems in our ways.

PoE1 is, in my opinion, the only good ARPG around. I've played Grim Dawn, Titan Quest plus other obscure indie games. They either don't compare or they're good for your 1st play through, but any attempt at playing the game from level 1 again feels like a massive chore. It's mainly the complexity that pushes me to replay the game. Even the random layouts entertain me sometimes. The only qualm with PoE1 is the disjointed themeing. This could be nostalgia distorting my mind, but back in say 2013-2016 the game had a focused identity around being an exile. I sort of wish forsaken masters were a thing in an improved way instead of the betrayal mechanic. But then again I missed the heist league.

Fairly TLDR but from what I skimmed I mostly agree.


Regarding build variety: There's a big disconnect between various people's definitions of "viable." For GGG, it honestly seems to be "can you complete acts with this build". Under that definition, the vast majority of builds are viable. For some players, only builds that can do t16s in gear you got from acts are viable. Very few can claim that. And of course other people think everything in between.

For me, the requirement is that the build can do alch and go t16s fairly comfortably with minimal trade or SSF grinding. Unfortunately that means most janky self made builds don't fit that. So I do agree that player power should in general be a bit higher compared to monsters.


GGG seems fairly satisfied making sure casual players can complete the storyline with whatever they choose to do, and that hardcore players get new toys to play with every league. This often leaves people with underpowered preferred builds in the dust, unfortunately. But, oh well.