A somewhat new player's review of Path of VexOhmIstDol

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IlyaK1986 wrote:

So I finally bit the bullet and picked up PoE around a month-ish ago and am now rolling my first toon. So, I'm finally at maps, and I suppose now is as good as any a time to give my opinion about the game.

First and foremost, for any of the "Stop Having Fun Guys", remember this is my opinion, so if you feel like replying with anything hostile, please exit stage left.

About me: I work at a Silicon Valley asset manager (a tiny one) and have a master's in statistics (and a bachelor's in optimization), so I'm no newbie to the idea of min-maxing. In fact, looking at different ways of min-maxing financial assets is what I do for a living.

Now, onto the review:

In my opinion, PoE is a decent standalone ARPG, created, seemingly as a send-up of games such as Diablo 2, FFVII, and FFX, as elements from all three are clearly present. However, even after more than a decade since those games' release, PoE still does not hold up to those games, and I hope my review will shed light as to why.

First, the good:

The amount of different builds that are possible between the vast passive tree and the different ways to customize gems is truly astounding. The skill tree has me constantly nerd-sniped to see different builds, as well as the different gem combinations. Furthermore, for those who are veterans of Diablo 2, this game delivers a very similar atmosphere, so a kudos for keeping with the dark fantasy theme that got people liking D2.

Also, for a F2P game, it has miraculously stayed away from directly selling power (so far--but the pay-for-stash-tabs is definitely toeing the line).

Now, for everything else:

Where to even begin?

I suppose I'll start off somewhere--and on an overarching theme, it can be summarized thus: this game sacrifices the "casual" (note the quotations--if you're going to play a loot-finder ARPG, especially PoE, which is the "hardest" of the current three, the other two being TL and D3, then you're not just some random schlub) on the altar of the hardcore grinder.

Before anything else, let's establish something:

The point of a GAME is to be FUN.

So let's start off with one case of anti-fun in this game--the variance in difficulty, both on a macro and on a micro scale.

On a macro scale, the pace of the original content is all well and good--but then act 3x is just obnoxiously overtuned, to the point that the game in the next difficulty is a hell of a lot easier until you get to Vaal Oversoul (or if you'd like, the giant spider boss--damned chaos damage).

On a micro level, most of the difficulty isn't from good AI, different clumps of monsters with differing abilities to challenge any build equally, but from edge-case types of damage that screw you over differently depending on your build--which while not present always, are present enough to make the game go from an enjoyable mob-blaster to table-flipping frustrating. That is, lightning thorns/reflects/chaos damage/physical spells (this is the biggest drawback of evasion, not necessarily variance in damage taken)/absurdly high damage/and I'm sure I'm missing a few.

I don't think anybody is averse to a challenge. However, I think a lot more people would have a better experience if every time they died, they could say "I died because I screwed up", rather than "sigh, edge case death".

Basically, for the D2 veterans here, remember gloams and their bugged damage?

Well, now there's a different type of gloam for everyone! What fun...


Next criticism:

For a game that's (in theory) a loving send up to the most famous loot finder in the history of ARPGs, PoE's loot system is flat out horrible.

Most items are basically worth less than the cost of the town portal it takes to even carry them back and sell them to NPCs. Unless you find a 5L or a 6L white, it's worthless already. Just about all magic items are inherently worthless. Most rares are next to worthless but can at least be pawned for alteration shards or saved for the chaos recipes. And even with the chaos recipes, the ratio of weapons and armor to accessories is obscene. Essentially, if you find 2 rare rings and a rare amulet, congratulations, you have 1-2 chaos, depending on if you chose to identify the items or not.

And if an item is actually good? Good luck affording it.

Here are my questions:

1) Where are the sets? In Diablo 2, the high-end sets weren't as strong as being fully-geared out in runewords and uniques (i.e. a Barbarian with Immortal King's set wasn't as strong as one dual-wielding Beast and Ebotdz with an arreat's face, a fortitude/chains of honor/enigma, gore riders, etc...), but nevertheless, sets gave a lot of players an affordable way to explore the vast majority of the content in the game without frustration. For instance, a Tal Rasha's sorceress could clear just about all of hell with her merc.

2) Where are the cost-effective options to welcome players new to PoE? That is to say, where are PoE's equivalents to Insight, Spirit, Honor, Leaf, Harmony, Wealth, and Rhyme runewords? Some of those may have been "best in slot" items (spirit, insight), but many weren't. But for those that could get the better stuff, did these items make their experience in any way *worse*?

3) Where are the safely-farmable zones for a player on his first character to actually find gear? Once again, going back to Diablo 2, what is this game's equivalent of Hell Mausoleum/Crypt? Yes, those two houses by Blood Raven in hell--equip a 4 perfect topaz plate and a 3 perfect topaz helmet with a goldwrap and chanceguards, have merc tank the few skeletons there, blow things up, collect loot. Other similar locations (but better known, I suppose) include the ancient tunnels (especially for pure ice sorceresses), the pit (not safe per se, but a stimulating clear for any dual-source-of-damage character), and so on. And of course, let's not forget the moat trick at Mephisto. Did these elements make Diablo 2 a *worse* game, because newer players could actually find decent loot? I very much don't think so. After all, a new player finding loot didn't affect a veteran's ability to go solo uber tristram.

4) Why is there no good, steady progression in itemization? Diablo 2 had cheap-but-effective-for-their-cost runewords at the beginning, a whole panoply of mid-range uniques and runewords, and once you got to the later stages, you could trade for some very solid gear with just pgems, such as the character-specific sets. Contrast that in PoE, in which everything is junk unless it's worth multiple chaos orbs or even exalts.

5) Where is the crafting system? And no, I don't mean the "use material on item and pray" system that is PoE's sad excuse for a "crafting" system. I mean the "take this piece of junk, that piece of junk, and that piece of junk, and out comes something beautiful and useful". For instance, say you were rolling an amazon and needed gloves that gave you knockback. There was a recipe that gave you that guaranteed knockback. And if you were particularly lucky, you also got +2 to bow skills along with 20% increased attack speed. And once again, while the elite players had no need of these lowbie crafting recipes, for those just rolling their first character, these methods were a godsend.

In short, while there's a whole heck of a lot devoted to making sure the hardest of core players are happy with map-only drops, the Voltaxics, the Kaoms Hearts, the Shavronnes, etc... of the world, where is the pacing for anyone else to get *to* those items?

Trading?

Ah yes, trading. Balancing the drops around the "economy"...except that the trading system...doesn't work! I mean, isn't it sort of stupid that in order to actually get decent trades, that one has to go outside the game, because the trade channel is so full of spam?

Furthermore, while I haven't played the travesty that is Diablo 3, I believe Blizzard stated that they're shutting down the auction houses because they took away from the spirit of the game in terms of farming loot by killing mobs. Shouldn't an action RPG be about finding your loot, not grinding forever to get currency to trade for it? Even though there's no explicit auction house in PoE, what exactly is poe.xyz.is and the trading forums? Oh yes, basically an auction house. Granted, one with no streamlining whatsoever (i.e. if I'm looking for a bow, but looking to pay no more than 20 chaos, why can't I filter by that?). As of the moment, there is no trading system in PoE itself. If you have an item, you can link to it in chat and pray that someone sees it.

In short, the trading system is a travesty in PoE, and for the game's drops to be balanced not around a character's kill speed, but around other characters' kill speeds is a much larger one.


Next:

Where is the basic math in this game?

That is--if 2 fusings is a chaos, and 25 chaos is an exalt, and it takes 100 fusings (on average) to get a 5-L, well, basic math says that just to use and sustain a basic freaking lightning arrow and an aura, you'd need to throw 2 exalts worth of fusings just so you can run lightning arrow-lmp-pierce/chain-blood magic-LGoH/lifeleech.


Next:

The damned desync. When you're running for your life because even following a guide, you still can die in ten seconds to normal mobs and desync is either a loss of character (hardcore types) or a loss of half an hour's worth of experience, desync is just a sign of a second-rate game development company. And this isn't just an "oh every RPG has these issues". Somehow, blizzard's forums aren't full of "FIX THE DAMN DESYNC!", and weren't even in the days of 56-freaking-k modems. In short, this seems to have been a problem that was solved long ago, maybe through some compromises that allowed some injections to get through, but it created a more enjoyable experience for most.

And now in the days of "ping a compute once to see if it has an injection going, if so, delete and ban", this is either A) a severe case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater or B) a severe case of incompetence in terms of the quality of programmers that GGG employs. And, considering that this game is already spambot infested as D2 was in its waning years (spambot entries are as different as night from day compared to regular human chat), well, what's there to say, besides "grow up"?

Continuing:

The stuff not related to the core ARPG gameplay--that is, the fluff that makes a game, well, a game rather than a skinner box--the plot and music.

IMO, both suck. Period.

Now some might say "ARPGs generally don't have good plots", and while I agree, the Diablo series did have a plot. And it was a cohesive one. With PoE, the plot is exactly the opposite. While I can buy Act 1's plot (you're an exile, so you decide to start your attempt at scraping by through helping a few good-natured folks), act 2 basically has no plot to speak of (oh hey go on some fetch quests for us. Why? No particular reason.), and act 3 is more a disjoint and incomplete history lesson aside from the "those guys are obviously evil, go kill them please" parts. Also, why exactly were Dominus, Piety, and Gravicius in Wraeclast? Why exactly was Piety trying to replicate Shavronne's work? (For that matter, what ever the fuck happened with Shavronne? Did Brutus bop her while she was writing her that journal, which is why it cuts off?) Will we ever see some sort of possessed immortal Kaom? Why were we given this giant history lesson of the place when whether we know said history or not has absolutely no impact, one way or another, on the current events at hand?

Onto the music:

It's epic elevator music. The whole excuse of "it's supposed to be atmosphere-setting music" is a cop-out to me. Years after I've last played The Last Remnant, I can still distinctly remember its opening theme, the epic music of Nagapur, some of the kicking battle themes, the theme of Athlum and Melphina, the music of Elysion, and some of the boss battles (press to victory is an aural orgasm waiting to happen).

Or, if you want to go even further back in time, Seiken Densetsu 3. There are some very distinct, memorable, and atmosphere setting themes. Meridian Child. Walls and Steels. Powell. Left-handed wolf. Female Turbulence. Another Winter. Sacrifice Part 3.

Or, even if you want to say "fine, we're not on square-enix's level", how about the soundtrack of a game produced by two people? That is, epic battle fantasy 4--which is basically a complete parody of all things single player RPG, yet will remain in my mind a massively memorable game, particularly because of its music.

Or if you'd like, I still remember parts of the Tristram theme, the rogue encampment, the act 1 wilderness, the act 5 outdoor music, the WSK music (mainly because that track was the game startup track =P), and Harrogath.

For PoE's music, I can't remember the melody of a track even half an hour after I stop playing.

The idea that music can only be atmosphere-setting or memorable is a major cop-out. Because that's patently false, considering that I've forgotten the particular names of some of the music tracks I listed above, but haven't forgotten the actual music, because I associate it with a certain place.

In other words: what gives, GGG? Why the lazy writing and the skimping on the music, when single independent indie artists are doing better?


Lastly:

Certain parts of the community. While there are indeed some helpful people out there, there are also those that are textbook examples of the "Stop Having Fun Guys", who seem to be so paranoid that any compromise in addressing the above problems would suddenly rip the heart and soul out of Path of Exile, and who think that there exists absolutely no happy medium between this and the idea of having everything instantly handed to every player who decides to create a character, even if such happy mediums have been successfully implemented in the past to greater success!


So in conclusion:

PoE is a game with a hell of a lot of depth--perhaps the most for any game with the three letters "RPG" anywhere in the description. That depth is a masterfully-innovated merciless nerd-sniper that should be seen as what can happen when someone decides to combine a labor of love with innovation of that which was already established.

Unfortunately, most of that depth is locked away behind blatant and far more sadistic than necessary Skinner Box elements, poor difficulty pacing, spikes of frustrating gameplay, and an item acquisition system that's a massive regression from what existed a decade ago, and is only less frustrating than the by-design pay-for-power systems of eastern skinner-box F2P MMO RPGs (and not by much, either). And a particularly troubling fact is that a small but vocal minority actually supports keeping these aspects of the game out of a misguided paranoia that addressing these issues would be worse than the current state of affairs.

The game is also plagued by poor software implementations which manifest themselves far more viciously in this particular game than any other of the genre, including those which existed many years ago that were constrained by vastly inferior network hardware as compared to that of today.

Furthermore, the non-gameplay aspects of the game show a clear lack of effort compared to even some of the better indie flash games produced by an independent developer and one dedicated music composer. (And those two games would be RPG Shooter Starwish and Epic Battle Fantasy 4. For any of you hardcore grinders, play them both. You may do a few less map runs, but you'll have lasting memories). They are especially inferior to games developed in the Super Nintendo era (then again, so are most).

In its current state, it is this reviewer's opinion that PoE is not even as good as Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction at the height of its content (which, I suppose is not saying much--no current generation ARPG is), and still feels very much like an incomplete labor-of-love rather than a professional AAA production that should be mentioned in the same breath as the productions of other more well-known game studios.

The sliver of hope, however, is that PoE is relatively new, and nothing is yet set in stone. All of these issues can be addressed. Of course, the big question as to when they will be properly addressed, is of course, very much non-trivial.