I realized this game is even worse than Diablo 3

Jesus, once again for those who can't read -

This is primarily a problem with NEW PLAYERS, not people who play a new league every time one comes out.

This is a problem for someone typical who is going to download the game, play through normal and hit a gear wall around act4 normal - act3 cruel where drops and currency just plain suck and their build is probably something designed for 'fun' not some cookie cutter ranged build.

Regardless of what people say to defend LAZINESS, it is the role of the game to set the rules and boundaries for what players should be focusing on, improving towards, and trying to acquire 5-10 levels down the road. This game does a shitty job of that.

If I had access to the kind of data GGG does it would be trivial to see how many players play for ~20-100 hours and never sign in again. It is pretty dumb that if someone screws up a build and hits about level 45 there is nothing they can really do but start over from scratch, it is against human nature to just abandon a character and start over like that. And honestly new players are not going to know what they are doing, that is to be expected. When this gear band caps drops at a very low item level plus they outlevel the easy zones they can clear and get drop penalties the punishment gets even more silly. All it would really take to fix this is some kind of a minimal boost to item level drops/quality in the 45-60 zones for a first account character.

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mynameisonlyforthegods wrote:

Spoiler

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KorgothBG wrote:

First of all the thread is about the possibility of doing that ... not how fast can be done ... but let's put that aside for a moment...

First of all it wasn't ME who brought up that it's possible for everyone to get into 70's at the first day of a league.

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KorgothBG wrote:

Ok so based on your experience it takes roughly around 24 hours to reach ~level 75 and go into mapping self-found. Let's say that you don't have lots of free time to spend on Path of Exile... perhaps the average player can spend 2 hours every day ( every 24 hours ) ? So that means that you can reach level 75 and start mapping in less than 2 weeks. Solo, self-found.

Second of all, reading comprehension is an ability that you should learn before posting into a forum.

Since you're clearly interested, it took me ~11 hours on a snowflake build. Also yeah, if an "average player" is one who's aware of all the noobtraps, knows to avoid things that have a high chance of death, can maximize the utility of trash rares and is able to clear content with far-less-than-optimal gear, I would say he can easily run a solo self-found to endgame and maps.


I don't consider bunch of forum elitist the "average player", but hey, maybe that's just me.


@Morgoth, not even gonna bother. You clearly lack common sense and I see no gain in engaging further conversation with you. I wasn't planning on commenting here again, but someone went even further off the logic tracks than you did, so... Well, anyway. Not gonna bother with this topic anymore.

VP of the year contender right here. Give that man a tag please. You have my vote.

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themrpid10 wrote:

It is against human nature to just abandon a character and start over like that.

Huh? This is the action-RPG's DNA. As a new player in 2012, I continuously tested the waters with different characters in normal. A lot of these were totally not viable. But with every character you make, you learn something.

Characters can be respecced after every major update to the skilltree.

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themrpid10 wrote:

Jesus, once again for those who can't read -

This is primarily a problem with NEW PLAYERS, not people who play a new league every time one comes out.

hey man if you are unwilling to take the time to learn about the game then you can't complain when you wallow in ignorance. Noobs stop being noobs once they are willing to take the time to learn the system. If you are unwilling. then clearly you did not like the game enough to continue playing in the first place.. so just ... move along...

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Regardless of what people say to defend LAZINESS,

i wonder on whose part yours or the devs? because lets face it that is a drink alot of people like..
some times a lack of information is used to encourage exploration. The souls series is famous for this approach.

you can either dive in and enjoy it or you can just play the game have have all the subtleties pass you by and be lesser for it.

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If I had access to the kind of data GGG does it would be trivial to see how many players play for ~20-100 hours and never sign in again.

I find it funny that you are making assumptions about data you readily admit you dont have as if you did have it in the same sentence.......

You sure it would be trivial ?.. because you um you know ....dont have access to it....



This thread reminds me of someone who is stuck on a difficult boss and instead of trying to figure the boss out they proclaim the boss unbeatable and walk away.

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themrpid10 wrote:

If I had access to the kind of data GGG does it would be trivial to see how many players play for ~20-100 hours and never sign in again.

I would bet that's the lifespan of 90% of the games people play. I know people who didn't play that many hours in D3 before quitting. So even though you pulled those numbers out of your ass, even if they were true they would prove nothing.

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KorgothBG wrote:

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themrpid10 wrote:

This is primarily a problem with NEW PLAYERS, not people who play a new league every time one comes out.

Wait wait wait... are you telling me that people get better if they play the game more and learn about the game in the process?! It can't be!

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themrpid10 wrote:

All it would really take to fix this is some kind of a minimal boost to item level drops/quality in the 45-60 zones for a first account character.

First of all let's be real here ... a "minimal boost" will have zero impact .. what you really want is a "major boost".

So you are saying what ... that the first 60-70 levels should be a walk in the park? Something that a 10 year old player with no gaming experience could do while blindfolded without breaking a sweat? Ok and after those 60-70 levels... what happens next ? The game becomes hard as usual? So you propose the so called "gear wall" to be postponed later on? When players have invested X times more hours in their characters just to find out that they are useless? And you think that this would make those players happier ? Oh and when that item drop boost goes away ... do you think that those players would be happy with that: "I had great drops for the first 10-20-30 hours of gameplay but now the drops are pathetic in comparison... AWESOME!"

Proof people don't understand what they want.

"Gimme more drops for leveling = wtf end-game drops are shit compared to early game."
"Gimme more end-game drops = wtf still can't get GG Tier Equipment."

Gotta agree with OP in many respects, despite the hardcore fanboy opposition, he is absolutely correct on a few things at least.

Stopped playing a while ago because game was advertised as snowflake-style building process, where you can make pretty much anything you want with all the options between the gear and skill tree.

That's just not how it pans out in the long run, though. You end up getting pigeonholed just like any other game and certain things that should make sense to the game just don't anymore because to get past certain levels you have a one-way route for certain characters or you're just going to die and never get any exp or drops.

The position of: "Oh well they should LEARN, then." is very poor. This game was designed to have a shitload of options, not the same old pigeonholing that exists in every arpg in history.

Make a game with a lvl 45-60 and see the zero people that join for your proof. If you're not using a typical cookie-cut build at that point, you will not be making progress even with 600+ hours of grind because of the death penalties and lack of real options.

Things that would seem like an obvious good idea to new players end up turning out awful and you will absolutely see a high turnover because of it, and that's a bad thing for everyone in the long run.

As the game is right now, you basically have 1 or 2 skills that you optimize for damage, some sort of utility, and then stack elemental damage affixes on your gear. It's become just as boring as D3, and I guarantee you 99.99% of accounts on this game are currently inactive due to exactly what the OP suggests whether you personally like the system or not is absolutely irrelevant to the point..

Add on to that the fact that legacy gear at this point is retardedly better and new players dont have access to it and you'd have to be braindead to think that this game is friendly to new players; it's absolutely not, it's a quick bore and there's really no way to catch up without getting a handout from someone (and even then you're still never going to be par).

For a game that was advertised as having endless options, there are 6 absolute deal-breakers for new players, and it only takes a few to see these high turnover rates:

1. Exp penalties on deaths

2. Currencies are worth FAR more than the gear upgrades that they could otherwise use them for to advance because the drop rates are very low for an item that only provides a random affix (I have 600+ hours and still have never seen an ex drop; a consumable that provides a low chance for an upgrade)

3. Snowflake builds become useless if you aren't focusing on a few good skills and stacking damage modifiers on them rather than making something new/different

4. Some things that should seem obviously viable to new players end up being garbage without an enormous investment (e.g. bow duelist)

5. The game isn't eventful enough to encourage the amount of research you would have to do to figure out every little detail about the game to a new player, as opposed to those who have been here for a while and were able to ease into the information as it came through patch-by-patch.

6. Legacy items that new players have zero access to

And the big problem with every diablo-style arpg...

7. No guaranteed progression on gear and no access to concrete goal structures; you can't work toward what you want in a linear fashion.