Screw ten acts.

you do know you only have to do 9 of them to make it to maps right in the new system?


I have NEVER NEVER NEVER EVER done merciless act 4 (except skill point duh)

and we gotta do 12 now or did you not realize that?

like THIS_IS_A_BUFF

"

I have NEVER NEVER NEVER EVER done merciless act 4 (except skill point duh)

haha, same shit. After clearing ~130 acts (12 chars x 3 diff.levels x 3-4 acts) its little boring. I know every phase and skill of every story npc\boss, i know exactly what they il say when i click them... I want one difficulty =_=

Yes, GGG never put a difficulty slider into PoE so we're all stuck with a "one size fits all" in terms of overall content difficulty which as time goes on (October 23rd PoE will be 3 years old) the gap between new players and veterans grows ever wider. Today this gap is at least Grand Canyon wide and just like a fault line that player skill gap is always increasing.

For GGG to throw out Cruel and re-balance Normal and Merciless so the end of Normal act 5 matches up to Merciless act 1 is doable but that still means that Normal will still be a sleep race through for veterans. If GGG ramps up Normal acts 3, 4, and 5 quickly as required so the transition to Merciless Twilight Strand is a smooth progression in difficulty is going to mean a lot of new players will hit the difficult wall sooner and quit sooner. Definitely not a good thing for GGG to do. This will just lead to more game imbalances and more players will say "goodbye" and probably "FU GGG and your F'd up arpg".

I see act 5 as the perfect time to split PoE and make new players start in Normal difficulty and allow all other players (anyone with a level 68 or higher build that has played at least 1 map) to completely skip Normal and start in Cruel difficulty. Here is my post:

Act 5 should leverage the 3 times through levels of difficulty for both new and veteran players

By splitting up the new and veteran players GGG can make Normal even easier for newbies so they don't get killed out early and never come back and everyone else gets to start with a better challenge. Obviously, passive points will have to be shifted around and those passives earned in Normal will mean the veterans will have to backtrack some but this is a hell of a lot better than forcing us to play the whole of Normal... UGH!!!

Naturally I expect GGG to stay with the "one size fits all" model to the bitter end and then wonder "where did everyone go?" Hey GGG, we quit because there is no Goldilocks "just right" mode in PoE anymore, it's either "too hard" or "too easy".  :(

Troll response #357

As the title of this thread states if GGG screws up act 5 with more imbalanced content and shafts us more we are going to bolt and quit. Nuts if GGG does this.

It's been a long workday for me and I just want to bash mob packs and not have to use my brain to min/max my build to kill bosses.

The end.

Ehhh...kind of predicted this kind of threads (see my signature for a long rant about this).

Forums are the salt of life.

The Atlas should show that maps can have story/lore, and a baseline progression system. So the real question is: why have Acts at all? If you ask me, a game which feels like it starts at maps should literally start at maps.

Maps are the tumor that ate the main body. It's kind of an unintended consequence. Good luck fixing that too. There is a lot of people to piss off changing stuff.

If so I'm rooting for the tumor.

If I was making an ARPG, first "combat tutorial" area would spawn you near two locked doors. Fighting to the end of the area (perhaps multiple zones), you find a boss to complete the tutorial, which always drops a key the first time, and a "Tier 1 map" every time - plus a chance to get them off normal monster drops before that. Near boss is a locked door, unlock with key to be back where you started. Unlock other door with same key, "town" with map device. Story mode - or more accurately, combat tutorial mode - complete. Then some explanation on maps. Straight Atlas-style nonlinear gameplay from there.

TL;DR: I'd literally start maps after beating Normal Hillock. Although I might also buff Normal Twilight Strand.

Ehhhh, you forget how tricky is to learn all the systems. I don't think that tutorial would be near sufficient. Having a lot of playtime until maps eases the blow. I do love the variety of the endgame but the underlying mechanics are too brutal to exist that early.

It's not like the game has any reasonable tutorial system currently. I believe in tutorial minimalism - as my suggestion implies - but GGG is far more extreme about it than I am. I find myself in the strange position of arguing for more, better tutorials because GGG's design goes full Tropic Thunder as far as that goes.