My experience with the game - from closed beta to now. [Long post]

Hello fellow exiles, first to make a few points, i'd like this thread to stay in general discussion, not feedback, as this is a discussion and not all feedback, but more so my experiences with the game from beginning to now @ GGG. I'd also like to state that GGG is my most beloved company. So please no flaming or trolls here, only civil discussion, now let's begin.

When I first started playing, I contacted Chris directly through his email (spoke to him on MSN for awhile too) to get a CB key. I fell in love with the game, I remember playing a lightning arrow ranger, having tons of fun with the game, I eventually took a break to wait for Open beta to be released so my characters would be permanent. I then rolled a ranger, Voltaxic Rift lightning arrow blood magic ranger. The build was absolutely insane, I slowly acquired mirrored gear by flipping items and crafting, I love crafting and still do, it's so profitable. But there are a few issues that I'd like to bring up.

Firstly, Flipping items is so profitable. Why even bother play the game barely making 1 exalt per hour when you can flip and make 10-20, even upwards of 40 exalts per hour? (I'm sure Ventor or WalmartGirl makes more than that actively buying and selling). It really bothered me, because I felt as though I was forced to flip items, maps felt so unrewarding unless I wanted to run shipyards for 8 hours to level up.

When 1.0 came out, along with muilti-strike, I ended up selling all my gear on my ranger and ended up with something like 100 eternals and 700 exalted orbs. I made a flicker striker and wow, this game felt revived again for me, most fun i've ever had, I didn't have to bother with flipping items, I could play with 70% IIQ/ 369% IIR and actually gain a few exalts per hour. But it's still not enough, After experiencing IIQ / IIR, Maps even feel more unrewarding when you're not running IIQ/ IIR (i'll be buying mirrored IIQ/IIR DPS rings soon after I get more gear sold.)

Then the infamous Vaal Pact nerf with 1.1, my character was unable to do phys reflect maps now and it was very dangerous to play, I know some other characters were now unplayable. Eventually finding the income that was able to made off of Atziri and Uber Atziri, my gosh, the profits were absolutely insane. But who really wants to run Atziri all day, everyone in my guild, "Prosperity" are extremely rich and how? Atziri and Uber Atziri.

All in all, this game is very fun, but i'm very burnt out of unrewarding content, I really wish I could run maps and feel rewarded, because I hate running atziri now with a passion, I simply just can't do it anymore, it's so boring, regardless how rewarding it is. I really wish maps could feel rewarding, even more so with IIQ / IIR, without feeling forced to flip items or only run atziri to make profit.

TL;DR this game feels very, very unrewarding to me, and while I will always recommend this game to someone as I truely do have a passion for this game, i'm very burnt out of unrewarding content when I feel like my time is being wasted simply because I want to run maps. All I want from this is for developers to read it, as I know they will. Will they do anything about it? I'm not sure I have any solutions myself, I don't know how to fix it, I just want to be heard.

Thanks for Readiing all,

May RNG be with you.

EDIT: Also, Desync really killed my leveling experience, I quit leveling a long time ago, as playing a low life flicker striker is bound to desync ALL the time, I've advocated to lowering the 10 second /oos time because I have died before where I have needed it more than once in a 10 second period.

My suggestion to you is: Just don't trade. Play self found only. This way you will feel rewarded greatly when finding better gear for your char and don't need to compete against other people's prosperity.

I used to trade/flip items quite a lot too and eventually stopped playing the game for like a year because I always felt like I needed to watch the trade chat in order to not miss out on good trades. Now that I am back I just want to have fun while grinding and not bother about anything else.

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Tanit wrote:

My suggestion to you is: Just don't trade. Play self found only. This way you will feel rewarded greatly when finding better gear for your char and don't need to compete against other people's prosperity.

I used to trade/flip items quite a lot too and eventually stopped playing the game for like a year because I always felt like I needed to watch the trade chat in order to not miss out on good trades. Now that I am back I just want to have fun while grinding and not bother about anything else.

Honestly, i'd be much more apt to play a self found permanent league. Still waiting for custom paid leagues to come out.

Imagine a permanent official paid self found league?

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Zonfire wrote:

Why even bother play the game barely making 1 exalt per hour when you can flip and make 10-20, even upwards of 40 exalts per hour?

You can make/know someone who can make 10-20 pure exalts (with occasional 40ex) on average per hour by flipping? Sorry but I'm calling bullshit, it would take tremendous effort and you would still need to be very lucky.
Even if you were using bot to periodically scan poexyz, spamming forum with lowball offers, bombing users online on poexyz with PMs, updating and bumping your forum thread while keeping eye on party board and trade chat with autohotkey spamming trade, I don't think you could make average 10-20ex per hour.

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phoenix4dota wrote:

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Zonfire wrote:

Why even bother play the game barely making 1 exalt per hour when you can flip and make 10-20, even upwards of 40 exalts per hour?

You can make/know someone who can make 10-20 pure exalts (with occasional 40ex) on average per hour by flipping? Sorry but I'm calling bullshit, it would take tremendous effort and you would still need to be very lucky.
Even if you were using bot to periodically scan poexyz, spamming forum with lowball offers, bombing users online on poexyz with PMs, updating and bumping your forum thread while keeping eye on party board and trade chat with autohotkey spamming trade, I don't think you could make average 10-20ex per hour.

ask anyone in my guild Prosperity lmao. Some notable people who are not in my guild are fyndel, Ventor, AXN, and Walmartgirl.

But let's be honest, anyone doing uber services easily makes AT LEAST 20 ex an hour usually 35+ and on good a day upwards of 50.

Thanks for the nice read :) I'll just comment on this part:

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Zonfire wrote:

All in all, this game is very fun, but i'm very burnt out of unrewarding content, I really wish I could run maps and feel rewarded, because I hate running atziri now with a passion, I simply just can't do it anymore, it's so boring, regardless how rewarding it is. I really wish maps could feel rewarding, even more so with IIQ / IIR, without feeling forced to flip items or only run atziri to make profit.

It seems to me that you've got the gaming equivalent of many of the rich people in real life - after aquiring way more cash than they know what to do with, spending large amounts on doing all the crazy sh*t they've always wanted to do like buying ten Ferrari's, a private jet and 5 huge villas with 100 rooms, they one day realize they've done and achieved most of what a normal person could only wish for and they don't have anything which could excite them anymore. Money (currency) sadly can't buy happines after all...

Like DirkAustin said, you might also be simply burned out on PoE; there's no shame in changing up games and genres once in a while - in fact, it's probably even good for your mental health. Leave the whole genre for a couple of months and try something totally different (ever played the Stalker series? I can only recommend it, along with the "complete" mod); if that doesn't help or you don't want to switch games for a while, you might feel better by making a new account altogether and just playing self-found for fun, not for getting the best gear, the most currency or steamrolling Atziri with your char.

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Tom7i wrote:

Thanks for the nice read :) I'll just comment on this part:

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Zonfire wrote:

All in all, this game is very fun, but i'm very burnt out of unrewarding content, I really wish I could run maps and feel rewarded, because I hate running atziri now with a passion, I simply just can't do it anymore, it's so boring, regardless how rewarding it is. I really wish maps could feel rewarding, even more so with IIQ / IIR, without feeling forced to flip items or only run atziri to make profit.

It seems to me that you've got the gaming equivalent of many of the rich people in real life - after aquiring way more cash than they know what to do with, spending large amounts on doing all the crazy sh*t they've always wanted to do like buying ten Ferrari's, a private jet and 5 huge villas with 100 rooms, they one day realize they've done and achieved most of what a normal person could only wish for and they don't have anything which could excite them anymore. Money (currency) sadly can't buy happines after all...

Like DirkAustin said, you might also be simply burned out on PoE; there's no shame in changing up games and genres once in a while - in fact, it's probably even good for your mental health. Leave the whole genre for a couple of months and try something totally different (ever played the Stalker series? I can only recommend it, along with the "complete" mod); if that doesn't help or you don't want to switch games for a while, you might feel better by making a new account altogether and just playing self-found for fun, not for getting the best gear, the most currency or steamrolling Atziri with your char.

That's a good perspective, it's kind of funny, I bought a 3rd legacy shavs and a bunch of new gear (equiv to about 500 exalts) just to try out a build, it was okay, to be precise its Tom's shatter chuck build (he's in our guild). but eventually sold all the gear except the shavs because it didn't clear as fast as I wanted it to. And Stalker is a great game, thanks for the recommendation. But POE is also very boring for me playing new leagues, I cbf doing the new leveling experience, it's a waste of time, and not only that, clear speeds are slow as fuck lol. Also, knowing myself, i'd just go right back to flipping items to get my gear instead of playing the game, because let's be honest, if in standard you can average a few exalts per hour by simply playing the game(maps, not atziri), why would you want to average maybe, let's say, 10-15 chaos per hour on rampage or beyond? It's not worth it and it is unrewarding and I refuse to ever touch a 5L in my life, those are for casuals ;) (sorry guys its a joke).

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Zonfire wrote:

Why even bother play the game barely making 1 exalt per hour when you can flip

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Zonfire wrote:

ask anyone in my guild Prosperity lmao. Some notable people who are not in my guild are fyndel, Ventor, AXN, and Walmartgirl.

But let's be honest, anyone doing uber services easily makes AT LEAST 20 ex an hour usually 35+ and on good a day upwards of 50.

I thought you are talking about flipping when you use the word flip, sorry then :)

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That name and shame...

More like just naming.