I want to love POE... please let me be a filthy casual.

Ok, I'm done being nice.

First of all, YOU SHOULD BE PUNISHED FOR MAKING A WRONG CHOICE.

All these modern games are crap in regards to that. They don't require you to think or plan ahead because making a mistake is free.

Also, I'm tired of the excuse: "I'm a casual." No, mate, you're just bad at the game. There's a difference.

If you don't enjoy it, feel free to play another game, one that requires you to think less.

Besides, attracting a bunch of players isn't the only thing f2p games are concerned about, because from a business standpoint keeping players playing is equally (or more) important.

"

KAJed wrote:

My highest level character took a long damn time to get him there, FYI. I am an awful player who still loves to play.

It drives me mad when I offer reasons for this to exist and everyone immediately offers options that aren't really options. A reset every 3 months does nothing to alleviate this problem. It is a sorry excuse from a group of people who are simply more hardcore than the group of people that contains me.

The defense of "it makes choices matter" is fantastic, but as a developer myself both in gaming as well as spending a good amount of time in creating tools for the stuff I create I understand that just because I intend a game or tool to be used one way does not mean that everyone wants to use it that way. It's perfectly acceptable for these two styles of game play to live alongside one another.

This is the part I will never understand. I am not asking anyone to sacrifice that option. The regular league is perfectly fine to work this way. I absolutely see the merit of this style of gameplay. That doesn't mean that there can't be a league that I have described as well.

Enough with this "it's only a few hours" because it is not. For a player like me, not only is it unlikely that I'm good enough to level that fast, it is also unlikely I can find that kind of time to play. Please stop trying to defend the game in that way, not everyone plays that way or is able to do so.

Does this make me a sucky gamer? Yes, absolutely! But to argue "YOU SHOULDN'T PLAY OUR GAME" is ludicrous.

You can do it. It just is not fun at all. It is 3-8 hours of kill blue pack, quicksilver flask, move. That is what the game degenerates into for people who play too much.

My question is what are you asking for?

Filthy casual league means nothing. As a developer you should know that players are going to go the easiest route too. So if they introduced a side league with 10x drop rates or any sort of real benefit, everyone would flock there.

I can tell you that keeping players is certainly equally important... but number of players is a HUGE factor as well. I assure you that the numbers support that. But you aren't wrong, keeping players matters as well.

As to "YOU SHOULD BE PUNISHED"... no. There is a reason Hardcore exists in ARPGs. Because there are people who enjoy that style of gameplay. That doesn't mean everyone does. I agree that you shouldn't have your hand held constantly, and there should be some consequences - however, that is more or less covered by the fact that at some point you cannot progress because you are bad at the game. POE already does a good job of that.

I hope that every time in life something didn't go quite the way it was supposed to that you were severely punished for it. Didn't clean your room? That's a paddlin'.

"

Ravenstrider wrote:

Ok, I'm done being nice.

First of all, YOU SHOULD BE PUNISHED FOR MAKING A WRONG CHOICE.

All these modern games are crap in regards to that. They don't require you to think or plan ahead because making a mistake is free.

Also, I'm tired of the excuse: "I'm a casual." No, mate, you're just bad at the game. There's a difference.

If you don't enjoy it, feel free to play another game, one that requires you to think less.

Besides, attracting a bunch of players isn't the only thing f2p games are concerned about, because from a business standpoint keeping players playing is equally (or more) important.

"

Ravenstrider wrote:

Ok, I'm done being nice.

First of all, YOU SHOULD BE PUNISHED FOR MAKING A WRONG CHOICE.

All these modern games are crap in regards to that. They don't require you to think or plan ahead because making a mistake is free.

Also, I'm tired of the excuse: "I'm a casual." No, mate, you're just bad at the game. There's a difference.

If you don't enjoy it, feel free to play another game, one that requires you to think less.

Besides, attracting a bunch of players isn't the only thing f2p games are concerned about, because from a business standpoint keeping players playing is equally (or more) important.

Plan ahead? People just copy metas because they are afraid to experiment/fail due to this shitty system.

So either way punishment does not exist. Elites dont care what repec costs and copy casuals dont fail.

"

KAJed wrote:

How's this...how hard is it to farm regret these days? Honestly it's been a while since I played...and when I did getting them even in standard wasn't cheap or quick in any way.

Well at least 60-65 regrets go for an EX (need about 123 for a full respec so 2 stacks), and an EX hovers at around 80-90 Chaos => 180 Chaos for a respec or 90 full sets unid for the 2 Chaos recipe.

If you got a character >70 you should get at least 5-10 Chaos/hour with the recipe and fortunate drops so you should expect a full respec for a >90 characters in 10-20 hours of playtime, and a bit faster for a level 70 character...

It might kill the creativity of the build, but I'd say that if you know roughly what type of character you want that you can follow some of the skill tree guides that I've seen posted in the character class forum and mimic a setup that follows a similar path so that way running into a wall later on due to 'incorrect point distribution' would be less of an issue.

There's a probable consequence of having a separate Casual league with infinite respecs: Non-casual players switching over just to make things easier on them.

This was hinted at when the bit about testing builds out was brought up, but there's more to it than that. Players will often take the path of least resistance and that can be to their detriment. While there probably are enough fun build variations to last more than 3 months, the skill tree is unlikely to get changed drastically very often and that means more time for people to basically play the same skill tree and that means they're more likely to get burned out depending on how creative they are or how willing they are to do oddball things.

We've barely had any changes to the current tree for over a year now because GGG has noted they get a noticeable player dropoff when the tree gets really revamped.

Free respecs would be a bit of a double-edged sword in the case of tree revamps since it would probably mitigate the issue of players dropping off, but it also means the time to eke out everything from the tree is lessened and then that means GGG needs to refresh things with other new content like items and different encounters in order to keep players around.

Considering new content has a habit of introducing more power creep, I'd be very wary of anything that nudges the game towards needing to keep upping the ante in order to retain players and/or attract new ones. Thankfully there is sideways power expansion instead of upwards, but sideways often has unforeseen abilities to create builds that rocket upwards as well and GGG fully admits they're always surprised at what sorts of things people end up finding with new items and mechanics.

Come to think of it, I wonder if D3's free respecs at basically any time is one of the key contributors to its power creep and current situation of only a few builds being considered viable.

I play casually and the game is completely fine , no changes needed .

Is it too much to request that we casuals not be called "filthy?"

"

Rhata wrote:

It might kill the creativity of the build, but I'd say that if you know roughly what type of character you want that you can follow some of the skill tree guides that I've seen posted in the character class forum and mimic a setup that follows a similar path so that way running into a wall later on due to 'incorrect point distribution' would be less of an issue.

exact opposite. Unlocked tree would open up creativity cuz ppl wouldnt be afraid of messing up experimenting.. Now ppl just play it safe with a build guide by in large. especially noobs/casuals.