Endgame vs. levelling

I enjoy PoE and never will be salty about it. I'm in a guild I like, even if I don't come back so often (ppl are great in it, even if some are a bit too much money centric). So be sure that I'll be there next season even if I'm not happy with everything. (yes I'm not a funder or anything but bought like 80+e of stashs and shits so ok...)

I won't argue with OP tho, doing 3 difficulties in a row sucks because as he said: it's bad for people retention, unfun and has no real meaning except increasing artificially lifespan for extreme casuals.

Maps, well, these get old quite fast and are not a challenge anymore, average value is extremly decent and prices are cheap for the unlucky ones who know how to manage their shit.

And about labirinth: imagine someone asks you to write an essay about gardening and you write magnificently about korean philosophy. Even if it's extremly well done it is not what was asked and will get you the weakest grade possible. Good job but no.

Players wanted end game content: They got strongboxes
They asked for end game content: Masters but ok... (p-p-p-powercreep from the side)
They asked for end game content: Random ghosts haunting wraeclast (????, abusers got mirors congratulation during a small era ^^)
They asked for end game content: Act 4 stuff: 30mn/1h content*3 with nothing remotely close to piety/dom runs and a huge grinding map. Div cards is a nice addition that diversify things smoothly but...
They asked for end game content: They got amazing un-HnSesque punishing content AND extreme powercreep.


So yes, my feelings are mixed still :)

@Galuf: here is a simple truth: endgame is achieved by a minority in this game. It's not cost effective to center too much around it, it's better to put features for the whole game. The only way you are seeing a better investment in the endgame is sharing a lot of those resources with the rest of the game.

That's always going to be the problem with the leveling-endgame dichotomy; one tends to make the other feel like shit easily.

I say, blur the lines between both and be more effective with development resources.

Also, the labyrinth was a legit attempt at diversifying the game (see the interview with the new level designers), but the implementation was flawed and a lot of players too conservative to accept it anyway. I expect GGG to at least try to improve it before giving up on it, specially because it's the new level designer's baby.

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鬼殺し wrote:

Interesting resurrection. I won't say necro, for there's vitality in this discussion yet.

Rereading the entire thread now, post Ascendancy, is quite fascinating. Although I cheated. I knew prestige classes i.e horizontal progression was coming. ;)

It's always hard to say how horizontal something is, :P (there is not such a thing a purely horizontal improvement to player power, but you can get near that). Overall, Ascendancy has been an interesting experiment. What it's dead can never die.

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Entropic_Fire wrote:

I think most complaints about endgame in PoE stem from people overplaying and burning out on the game overall, then trying to blame the devs for not building an infinite entertainment machine. No amount of 'endgame' content will keep everyone entertained infinitely, but nothing short of that will keep people from complaining about the endgame.

It's fairly psychological. It's like hamsters trained to like everything over area level 68 and hate the rest.

The game has a lot of content, but any addition to leveling is a chore in many people's eyes because of that training. The complaints about trials and the labyrinth are partially (there is a lot more of course) related to the fact that makes the path to the endgame longer. Now people have to go to the Hedge Maze and the Crypt! 18 trials! 3 labyrinths per character! Waste of time!

But putting more at the endgame is still absolutely a developer's waste of time (else they would have done so already). Hence the need to destroy the idea somehow.

PS: bah, there is a good reason: builds tend to get relatively complete at that level, but at that point there is no extra content so people complain (although maps are nice in my limited opinion).

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Entropic_Fire wrote:

I think most complaints about endgame in PoE stem from people overplaying and burning out on the game overall, then trying to blame the devs for not building an infinite entertainment machine. No amount of 'endgame' content will keep everyone entertained infinitely, but nothing short of that will keep people from complaining about the endgame.

Personally, I would just like to have something challenging. I was hoping for the lab, but its level is too low.

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Char1983 wrote:

Personally, I would just like to have something challenging. I was hoping for the lab, but its level is too low.

To be fair, level and difficulty are weird in this game (see the old Orchard, Apex of sacrifice, Merciless' Malachai, etc.).

There is a need for some sobering nerfs here and there, and maps and Merciless could have less of a difference in area level (at least in the future, see Diablo 2's Hell difficulty for some examples of that). The whole thing has too much difference in levels so adding stuff to Merciless tends to make the whole thing pointless.

Why there is 15 tiers of maps in first place when most white maps are going to be ignored eventually?

I tough I am in end game, but PoE has no endgame to be honest. PoE is rather to learn game and go through it to lvl 90 and repeat. U are learning lore and trying to get max out of game to max ur character in every aspect, just to find out, that some mechanics doesnt have solution at all and to have 150k dps is fun only for few minutes unless u going to play "one or two" builds if ever.

When u get gear, only what u can do is to go to level 100.

Fun about arpg is get items and look how ur character is getting better and better and see ur affords are paying back. In PoE there is no such meta. It looks like there is in the start but in the end u find out its not true.

It is because in fact u dont have to respectively u can not get better gear for damage or to craft op items because u get punished by reflect or other game mechanics.

In Diablo 1 or 2 u could rise character for whatever achievement u wanted: for damage or stats or level. Same in Torchlight 2 where Boris was golden boy. In PoE there is no meta to achieve. Maybe get perfect items just to have good feeling to have them or to grind ex and buy legacy uniqes or better yellow items. But after some time u gonna realize that in real u dont need them because with experience u know u cant use them unless u r level 100 already.

But why to use best items after lvl 100 when the game in fact is in its playable end?

Totally agree on how Hell in D2 was entirely farmable as end game content. I will never understand why GGG did not want to do this with merc.

It seems that they fell into the blizzard WoW trap of making old content obsolete in a hurry. That works for a MMORPG that releases new content every 6-12 months. Seems like a bad choice for a ARPG though.