Why did you or your friend quit playing POE?

I quit because I finally realized the rules of the game/metagame are intentionally shaken up every few months in order to keep no-lifers interested, so the toons I put hundreds of hours into are rendered invalid. It's not a game aimed at people who like any kind of permanent progress - by its very nature, it requires an unceasing and relentless devotion in order to even just keep up and keep your characters alive. I love a good challenge and PoE delivers, but it also demands massive time commitments and then devalues all that time with new patches.

Good for all of you who enjoy that and have the patience for it. For me, it just feels like I'm being jerked around - no game is fun enough for me to have to go through absurd trials like that all the time. I want permanent saves and permanent progress, but I totally understand that PoE is not designed to provide this. That's totally fine and I respect it, but it's just not the game for me.

I gave 1.5k or so hours and bought some stash tabs, though, so GGG is probably perfectly happy with players like me burning out when I did.

P.S. I was always impressed by the community's intelligence, passion, and deep understanding of gameplay. However, I was turned off by the extreme arrogance some people display, as well as a general intolerance for anything less than perfect play from forum posters (I think everyone exaggerates how well they play, how little they die, etc.) and an intolerance for suggestions/feedback that didn't match what the dominant social clique wanted.

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demon9675 wrote:

However, I was turned off by the extreme arrogance some people display, as well as a general intolerance for anything less than perfect play from forum posters (I think everyone exaggerates how well they play, how little they die, etc.) and an intolerance for suggestions/feedback that didn't match what the dominant social clique wanted.

Posts confirming this landing in 3...2...1...

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demon9675 wrote:

I quit because I finally realized the rules of the game/metagame are intentionally shaken up every few months in order to keep no-lifers interested, so the toons I put hundreds of hours into are rendered invalid. It's not a game aimed at people who like any kind of permanent progress - by its very nature, it requires an unceasing and relentless devotion in order to even just keep up and keep your characters alive. I love a good challenge and PoE delivers, but it also demands massive time commitments and then devalues all that time with new patches.

I agree. And I often thought about why GGG doesn't separate the permanent league more from the ladders. It's pretty clear that people playing in a PERMANENT league likes the PERMANENT way of playing.

But every games has its target audience.

I quit because :
- the constant tree and meta changes that hit your build (for good or for worse, most of the times for worse) on a monthly basis
- too much RNG that forces you to trade but the trading tools provided suck badly, this should be an aRPG not a trade sim (time playing should be>time trading)
- endgame boils down to running same few maps (and if you do it efficiently you most likely mash 1 button over and over), gets boring quickly
- no real tactical combat ( although if desync is fixed positioning will be possible, that'll help)
- legacy items ruin the loot hunt for me

With all its issues, game is great, played for more than a year and will give actIV a go, but doubt that'll change my feelings towards PoE...

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demon9675 wrote:

I quit because I finally realized the rules of the game/metagame are intentionally shaken up every few months in order to keep no-lifers interested, so the toons I put hundreds of hours into are rendered invalid. It's not a game aimed at people who like any kind of permanent progress - by its very nature, it requires an unceasing and relentless devotion in order to even just keep up and keep your characters alive. I love a good challenge and PoE delivers, but it also demands massive time commitments and then devalues all that time with new patches.

Good for all of you who enjoy that and have the patience for it. For me, it just feels like I'm being jerked around - no game is fun enough for me to have to go through absurd trials like that all the time. I want permanent saves and permanent progress, but I totally understand that PoE is not designed to provide this. That's totally fine and I respect it, but it's just not the game for me.

I gave 1.5k or so hours and bought some stash tabs, though, so GGG is probably perfectly happy with players like me burning out when I did.

P.S. I was always impressed by the community's intelligence, passion, and deep understanding of gameplay. However, I was turned off by the extreme arrogance some people display, as well as a general intolerance for anything less than perfect play from forum posters (I think everyone exaggerates how well they play, how little they die, etc.) and an intolerance for suggestions/feedback that didn't match what the dominant social clique wanted.

You're comments about the intolerance among the community is all too true. It still makes me shake my head that there are some who constantly try to squash feedback.

I stopped:

1.hate the xp penalty system in this game. Losing xp upon death is 1 thing, trying to gain back that 10% is taking few hours or days. Where is my sense of progression? Good to have challenge but when the challenge becomes over done? Clearly this game is made for hardcore players. I let this game go, doesn't want to play a game and frustrate myself. (Grim dawn also has xp penalty but it's more nicely done, at least I can rush back to my grave and get some xp back)

2.No auction house altho this game rely heavily on trading. Looking for a pc of gear is like hell. takes too much time searching, and too much time waiting for seller/buyer to go online.

3.desync, desync....frozen screen when opening boxes....

Just passing by and saw this thread. No intention of coming back when act 4 is out or pay for this game. ANYway well done GGG, u made a game which only u guys and players with your mindset plays, with no intention of making it big to all.

I come and go from time to time when theres a major update or when i simply miss some PoE action. I came back about a month ago, playing almost daily since then, but already started to lose interest again. I'll wait for 2.0 to see if that will change my feelings towards this game but from what i've seen, it wont.

Basically my main problem with PoE is the same of 90% on the ppl that complained here.

1. Path of Trade, i rly rly rly HATE trading in this game, an over complicated economy for no reason. I know you tried to come up with something different than gold but you failed, you failed pretty fucking hard. If this bizarre currency economy isn't bad already, the trade system itself is also rly bad, online only, no AH... i dont have that much time to play PoE and to make profit out of trading you need a lot of free time to flip items and spam trade chat... so instead of actually play the game i have to play the economy game, sux big time

2. Path of Ungrateful, i dont feel rewarded at all while playing this game in late game... very slow progress and no sense of achievement... like many ppl here i never dropped a 6 link item, i dont even have a 6 link item... all the currency i got so far isnt enought to get a decent 6 link item.

3 Path of Legacy, whoever came up with the idea of legacy must be fired, worst fucking idea ever, never seem this type of bullshit in any other arpg i've played. In a game where loot is the main prize, the fact that the best loots are obtained through trading only, rly kills the fun of the game.

I wont say much more cuz i think a lot of ppl here already pointed the bad aspects of the game better than i did, but i just wanted voice my disappointments with this game.

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Phrazz wrote:

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demon9675 wrote:

I quit because I finally realized the rules of the game/metagame are intentionally shaken up every few months in order to keep no-lifers interested, so the toons I put hundreds of hours into are rendered invalid. It's not a game aimed at people who like any kind of permanent progress - by its very nature, it requires an unceasing and relentless devotion in order to even just keep up and keep your characters alive. I love a good challenge and PoE delivers, but it also demands massive time commitments and then devalues all that time with new patches.

I agree. And I often thought about why GGG doesn't separate the permanent league more from the ladders. It's pretty clear that people playing in a PERMANENT league likes the PERMANENT way of playing.

But every games has its target audience.

This has been one of my questions about the game as well. That is, why not have standard be a more permanent league? Why not have a self-found league that some people have asked for? These leagues do not have to interact with each other in any way. I don't know why people cry about opening up other leagues. It's like crying that you don't want more people to play the game, which means more revenue for PoE, which means more funding for them to develop more content... doesn't take a large brain to understand why that's a good thing.

But it's true that this game has a target audience. I don't think GGG created this game with mass appeal or making a lot of money in mind. They created the game they themselves wanted to play, and they seem content with it filling a small niche in the gaming world. And hey, good for them for doing that - but it is definitely limiting their revenue stream and player base to pander so heavily towards the extreme minority of ultra hardcore players.

I get frustrated with the game at times, because it is so close to being exactly the game I want, but at the same time it's really still quite far. I just have to step back and realize sometimes that this isn't really my kind of game, and I can either enjoy it for what it is or I can walk away from it.

I really want a game exactly like this but with better looting, since farming for loot and gear upgrades is exactly why I enjoy these types of games in the first place. (Wouldn't hurt to have some higher level maps either, but I'm assuming that will be resolved in ~9 days.)

I'm still playing PoE (my Kiwi pet is testament to my longevity in PoE).
My 2 best friends quit after trying for 3 months. Several reasons:

1. Newbie learning curve difficulty (this was PoE in June of 2013).
2. Concept that there is content (ie. rogues) that must be skipped because of difficulty spike.
    My 2 friends were coming to PoE after playing D2, Baldurs Gate,Dungeon Seige II, TQIT, D3,
    TL2, D3:RoS. The thought that there are creatures that 1 shot you and must be skipped was
    a WFT to them. Similarly, the thought that zones must be skipped and then come back to after
    you are leveled up a few more than the difficulty level shows also hampered their enjoyment.
3. No easy way to trade. Trade chat or off-line trading was crap to them.
    They were used to the D3 auction house so anything less easy trading equaled bad to them.
4. Item progression stops after about level 60 to 65.
5. Desync, desync, and more desync + beaucoup rubberbanding.
6. They are much more casual arpg players than I am.

 The combination of content difficulty as a newbie in Act I Cruel (we encountered a Rain of Arrows rouge early in the Lower Submerged Caverns that couldn't get near to attack and they were severely frustrated by getting killed umteen times and hated my suggestion of skipping it). By my/your playing abilities we'd LoL about that rogue and would not think twice about tactics needed to kill her but to them it was a "WTF is this shit so hard for new players" and such. But very early failures by newbies are what sets the overall tone of play and highly influences their mood and desire to want to get past the newbie learning phase and play through all 3 levels of difficulty. We had no problems going through D3 to the end (though we needed patch 1.06 before we could get passed the difficulty wall in the Act II desert). Also important is that while I love the massive passive tree and theory crafting aspects of PoE my casual arpg fiends are happy with an arpg that is more on the simpler side of builds and has a higher "rate of return", meaning more rewards for less time played. That means they are not a good fit for this arpg.

 On the other hand I was just discussing if they would be interested in a go at a summer arpg gaming trio. Summer has always been the best time to get them thinking about a game we all 3 can play together. Since they immensely liked D2, TQIT, and mostly liked TL2 and D3:RoS (D3 was good after patch 1.06 to lower the content difficulty walls a bit). Anyway, I have them thinking about PoE 2.0 and am close to getting them to trio party with me so I hope that DL eliminates desync/rubberbanding and other changes GGG that has made to improve the new player experience (one-shot dieing less often to rogues or end zone bosses is a must for new player retention) will win them over this time around.

Previous posts here:
Good news GGG...
More Good news GGG... plus 1 bad news
More Good News GGG... not quite

I've quit and come back (or taken long breaks, take your pick of terminology) several times now. The major pain points have been fairly consistent over the years. In approximate order:

1) Poor item progression. This encompasses the very low drop rates of decent items, similarly awful chance of crafting something decent, and the terrible trading "system" (trade chat). This has gradually gotten better - Lockboxes and more boss-type enemies mean more chances to find something decent, and mastercrafting helps the crafting situation with predetermined costs and results. Trading is just as awful as it ever was, but there's less need for it. (Which makes me happy, I vastly prefer self-found.)

2) XP progression felt slow. Part of this was killing slowly with terrible gear (see #1), and part was monotony from grinding the same areas over and over. Corrupted areas and the master side-maps help break up the monotony, and the extra XP means less actual grinding is necessary.

3) Desync. Always a problem, still a problem. I'm optimistic about the lockstep mode coming in 2.0.

4) Getting specific skill gems is tedious. Some are far too late - no CwDT until A3 Merc for example. Some you may have to mule from other characters. Most irritating is that "good" skill gems all seem to be lumped on one quest, but you can only take one - particularly Lost in Love Normal and Enemy at the Gate Cruel. The gem vendors in 2.0 will be a MASSIVE QoL improvement.

5) Legacy items, in two meanings. For one, I believe that if an item is nerfed it should be nerfed across the board without any old versions floating around. Purely idealogical since I avoid trading if I can and don't own any high-end uniques this is relevant for, but still. Second, I believe that league-specific uniques should be folded into the base game, not sent to the void never to drop again. I'm glad Zana maps are a thing now, though I think its an excessive hurdle to find these uniques.

In short, I've had a love-hate relationship with this game for a long time, but things have gotten better and I'm really looking forward to 2.0.