What Holds Your Game Back?

So yeah, the game should be awesome when Ascendancy goes live. For a month. Then it'll start petering out again after players get used to, or bored with the new content. It's a normal process that can't be avoided. Happens in all games, but with the amount of new content released in POE it shouldn't happen at all.

Getting bored of content isn't the only reason people lose interest.

I've been playing since CB and my summoner is the first character I rolled, the highest level character I've ever had. Every time I get 3/4 of the way through Lvl 86 I encounter a hyper fast group of mobs, or a blood curse I don't notice until I'm history and I've dropped back to 85.5 .... Again.

I know, if you remove the death penalty you open the door to zerging. I've never been into zerging so I don't understand the mindset. Hell, I play just as cautiously in the first 10% of a level as I do in the last 5%. That's mostly because I only play solo and can't depend on 4 or 5 auras coming from party members. Maybe I'm an online game anomaly?

I'd love to see the exp penalty on death changed. Give us an option. Either an exp penalty like we have now, or a number of chaos orbs.... or an equivalent amount of other orbs. You choose which penalty you'd like to pay, and if you don't have enough to pay the currency penalty you get the exp penalty automatically. I can handle giving up currency as a penalty. I can't handle loosing a percentage of my exp if my character dies.

That summoner has been between 82 and 86 for over a year. Long enough that I constantly roll new characters, play them to 70 or 75 and abandon them. Or I get so frustrated and pissed off that I quit playing for a couple months, just to come back, build up to almost 86 and die again. I've quit buying Micro-transactions out of frustration. I don't want to financially support the game when it makes solo progression so difficult for me, and I only play solo because arthritic fingers and other problems associated with age make group play impossible for me unless I go the route of leaching my way through. That's even less rewarding than dying.

There are loads of players that come and go because of the exp penalty. Players that have left don't buy Microtrans. It's that simple.

I don't mind the death penalty when I'm playing hardcore, but I don't play HC much because playing that way is so damn stressful, especially when you're an old fart. Stress isn't the same thing as excitement, and playing HC is more stressful than playing through the last 2% of a normal level. Just go back to docks and grind for an hour or four... you'll get there eventually. Hell, playing that way in Standard at high levels it'll take more like 2 weeks to make up the last 2%.

So please give us a choice in the penalty for dying. I couldn't afford to pay for as many deaths as others, but if paying for just one will help me get to the next level I'd open my bank for withdraws.

Now the thread can fill with players calling me a casual who doesn't deserve anything over level 75, that I should be grateful for the last 10 levels I've managed to coax out of the game... the responses from "hardcore" gamers are ridiculously easy to predict. But the number of hours I put into the game on a daily basis (when I come back to die one more time or surrender to the common practice of building low level characters again and again) removes me from the ranks of the casual player.

Just sayin.

Interesting compromise... but they're not going to go for it. The experience penalty is there for a reason. You will have to stop dying to progress. They don't want to give that up. They don't want level 100 to be inevitable for anyone who simply plays a lot.

You need the right build, half decent gear and game knowledge to progress to and past level 90. With all these things anyone can reach 90 with minimal deaths.

Issue is vast majority of builds and skills are sub optimal.

Generally it'd be a lack of emergency defenses.

♦ Cast on Damage Taken with Phase Run for an escape when things go bad.

♦ Cast on Damage Taken with Immortal Call for dealing with more than one spike of damage at the same time.

♦ Cast on Damage Taken with temporal chains and/or enfeeble for added survivability.

It could also be that the character just needs a close look or some tweaking.
Maybe there's a gem that had the level-up option dismissed up a while back because the character didn't have the stats for it and we never realised that things were getting harder because of that one gem.

Levelling is also much slower when you're playing solo than it is in a team.
Try partying up. If you already routinely join parties, then I apologise for the assumption.

Ultimately though, the thing that holds my game back is me.
I don't want to burn out on Path of Exile so I play other games and take breaks and such.

"

Boneshaka wrote:

So yeah, the game should be awesome when Ascendancy goes live. For a month. Then it'll start petering out again after players get used to, or bored with the new content. It's a normal process that can't be avoided. Happens in all games, but with the amount of new content released in POE it shouldn't happen at all.

Getting bored of content isn't the only reason people lose interest.

Snip - re: XP loss perspective.

For some, the game itself is fine, but R/L and other things beckon, or demand our attention. I don't find the XP loss to be something that drives me away - even when it does hold my characters back. I would like to see the map 'adjustments' rolled back, as that seemed to suck a lot of wind out of the game's sails from a multiplayer perspective.

As for a pay to not lose XP option - I'd hope they never consider that. If they do allow private leagues, then I would expect there would be some adjustments to various aspects that applied league wide and no mixing with the regular leagues.

fuck me and I thought I was bad

For me it is combination of:
1. IIQ factor - Having to run with insane amounts of it to have a slightly better than
    no chance of getting a better drop.
2. Trade Chat sucks donkey (always has and always will) so I play self-found.
    If GGG will ever deliver us a way to buy gear without having to hunt down the damn seller
    (wow, it that a pain in the arse or what!) then I could buy better endgame gear.
3. Grind factor - I can only take playing 10 to 12 maps a day before burnout.

We all know that the xp death penalty is here to stay, that at any time we can get one-shotted by some champion, rogue, or other elite from off screen, and the server/client lags that can cause us to not move in time to avoid death. These and other things that affect QoP and thus increase our chance to die are big obstacles on the road to level 100. Elimination of desync has most definitely helped but there are still (and always will be) many times that frame rates drop to single digits from their custom game engine which leads to another death. If I play super conservative then zone clearing speed suffers too much so achieving a build that balances killing speed vs. safety is always the challenge for high level builds.

"

raxleberne wrote:

fuck me and I thought I was bad

lulz. seriously 86? I don't need to tell you guys make 86 in HC first day right? get better.

"

Aim_Deep wrote:

"

raxleberne wrote:

fuck me and I thought I was bad

lulz. seriously 86? I don't need to tell you guys make 86 in HC first day right? get better.

There are people that fly from N.Y. to L.A. and back on the same day for business. That doesn't mean the people who fly out from NY and spend a week of vacation Disneyland, Magic Mountain, etc are wasting their time.

If someone can get to 86+ in a day, why even bother playing the game? There's obviously no challenge at all in it for the way they are playing. IMO, it's like a 500 mph roller coaster ride that lasts 0.8 seconds.

"

DalaiLama wrote:

"

Aim_Deep wrote:

"

raxleberne wrote:

fuck me and I thought I was bad

lulz. seriously 86? I don't need to tell you guys make 86 in HC first day right? get better.

There are people that fly from N.Y. to L.A. and back on the same day for business. That doesn't mean the people who fly out from NY and spend a week of vacation Disneyland, Magic Mountain, etc are wasting their time.

If someone can get to 86+ in a day, why even bother playing the game? There's obviously no challenge at all in it for the way they are playing. IMO, it's like a 500 mph roller coaster ride that lasts 0.8 seconds.

you can always improve. I'm almost level 90 with only about 26 hours play time. Ascendancy encourages you to have multiple chars because classes will be meaningful.