PoV new player: trade-reliant gearing is not fun

Hello,

I picked up PoE2 and I have been enjoying the game. There is so much variation with the skills and passives. I thought acts 1-3 were fun and then mapping was kind of interesting for a while too, in fact I like the concepts that PoE2 has for end-game content and I WANT to enjoy it, but...

I don't want to utilize a trade website to gear up, just so I can avoid being one-shot in a map. I have watched a few youtube videos on gearing and optimizing for end-game and there is just too much non-gameplay work involved. I am clearing maps and getting loot my character can't use 95% of the time, then vendoring it or trying to use an external site to see if it has trade value. The process of gearing is too detached from the gameplay.

Example: I am playing a witch and I have NEVER found a passive jewel that buffs my minions.

Gameplay mechanical skill =/= progression any more, so I think I've got my monies worth and I'll be moving on to another game now. I'll check back when the rest of the game goes live.

I don't know if posting this will make much of a difference, but I thought I'd put my 2 cents in here just in case it could have some impact.

There's 4 game modes in Path of Exile 2:

Soft Core / Hard Core
Trade / No Trade (Solo Self Found)

I completely agree with you that trading sucks, and I would never engage in that personally, so I only ever play SSF.

I also only play HC. And I never follow any build guides. And I can do T15 maps.

So there is nothing that makes trading a requirement in this game.

Regarding your example about the minion jewels, if you don't want to trade, you can do Trial of the Sekhemas, you get tons of jewels there so when I'm looking for jewels that's what I do :)

"

Chacruna#2474 wrote:

There's 4 game modes in Path of Exile 2:

Soft Core / Hard Core
Trade / No Trade (Solo Self Found)

I completely agree with you that trading sucks, and I would never engage in that personally, so I only ever play SSF.

I also only play HC. And I never follow any build guides. And I can do T15 maps.

So there is nothing that makes trading a requirement in this game.

Regarding your example about the minion jewels, if you don't want to trade, you can do Trial of the Sekhemas, you get tons of jewels there so when I'm looking for jewels that's what I do :)

The thing is that the game really is designed for you to trade a lot and the answer of play SSF is "just don't trade" it doesn't actually make the game less trade reliant, it's just "ignore the design problem"

PoE wants you to trade early and trade often, it's part of the core design of the game, they just don't want to make that experience not suck, because they want you to find upgrades, but don't want to make the experience not suck I guess?

"

j33bus#3399 wrote:

The thing is that the game really is designed for you to trade a lot and the answer of play SSF is "just don't trade" it doesn't actually make the game less trade reliant, it's just "ignore the design problem"

Yep.

"

j33bus#3399 wrote:

PoE wants you to trade early and trade often, it's part of the core design of the game, they just don't want to make that experience not suck, because they want you to find upgrades, but don't want to make the experience not suck I guess?

If EVERY single player quit the game and notified GGG that it was due to their abysmally terrible trading system and that they would all return should GGG fix it, GGG WOULD RATHER GO BANKRUPT THAN IMPLEMENT AN AUCTION HOUSE.
I'm nearing the point where I would rather get my nuts caught in a bear trap than continue tolerating this sadistic powertrip.

+1
Trading sucks in this game, and it is intentional. Artificial difficulty and adds fraudulent statistics. I spent almost FOUR HOURS trying to get the right gear the other day and only had one more to actually play.
And in game auction house would have given me back three of those hours easy