Partly unfair and frustrating game design

I have rarely played a game with such weaknesses in the game design and because its not a generell problem, but happens only sometimes, its even more frustrating.
There are several situations build into the game, which result in a 100% chance to die and to lose the accomplishments of hours of playing.

There are sudden appearances of super mobs which can not be killed with your skills nor can you outrun them or do anything about it to escape. The situation is out of hand, doesnt depend on the skills of the gamer anymore. Its like an admin pushes a "you are dead" button. These mobs often have unique skills, which simply cause you to die, regardless of your personell skills.
I wonder, why so much frustration is build into the game.
From a psychological point of view the result is, that, when you get frustrated within a game (and a games purpose is fun, not frustration), the chances that you are willing to pay for it by buying stuff in the shop drastically decrease.
At the end of the day a game should make you feel as if you have accomplished something and not just lost your experience points and found nothing of value. This way it feels just like a waste of time, which is the worst experience a game can offer.
The receipe of the success of Diablo was the constant progress the gamer experienced within the game. Finding constantly something of value, a bit better than what he already had, was one of the reasons.

Part of the game's longevity and player retention revolves around making it hard to get to level 100 so you keep buying stash tabs despite loot being generally worthless and the number of collectables increasing each patch.

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soloman_kane wrote:

I have rarely played a game with such weaknesses in the game design and because its not a generell problem, but happens only sometimes, its even more frustrating.
There are several situations build into the game, which result in a 100% chance to die and to lose the accomplishments of hours of playing.

There are sudden appearances of super mobs which can not be killed with your skills nor can you outrun them or do anything about it to escape. The situation is out of hand, doesnt depend on the skills of the gamer anymore. Its like an admin pushes a "you are dead" button. These mobs often have unique skills, which simply cause you to die, regardless of your personell skills.
I wonder, why so much frustration is build into the game.
From a psychological point of view the result is, that, when you get frustrated within a game (and a games purpose is fun, not frustration), the chances that you are willing to pay for it by buying stuff in the shop drastically decrease.

Also chances are,you don't know the game well enough to know why some mobs can't die(aura,shrines etc)and your willingness to learn what you can do to each situation.

Also,chances are if you gonna spend some nickel and dime,such matters won't matter.You would spend anyway if you wanted to or nothing at all.

So,are you willing to stay awhile and learn,or you will hit the road?The mechanics you are referring to are not even issues for most playerbase

Edit:Will you go repeatedly hit in diablo an immune to fire mob with fire?Cause its the same analogy.You don't know wtf you are doing

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elwindakos wrote:

Also chances are,you don't know the game well enough to know why some mobs can't die(aura,shrines etc)and your willingness to learn what you can do to each situation.

Also,chances are if you gonna spend some nickel and dime,such matters won't matter.You would spend anyway if you wanted to or nothing at all.

So,are you willing to stay awhile and learn,or you will hit the road?The mechanics you are referring to are not even issues for most playerbase

See, its very likely that I played these kind of games before you were even born and I played them all successfully and I am always willing to learn the mechanics of the game, which is why I am already level 86 in this one. From my considerable experience I can tell you, that this game has some serious design flaws which result into frustration. Dont frustrate your playerbase and the guys with the money - the customers - and dont just dismiss what I have sad, as if every bad experience with this game is all just the players fault.

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soloman_kane wrote:

I wonder, why so much frustration is build into the game.
From a psychological point of view the result is, that, when you get frustrated within a game (and a games purpose is fun, not frustration), the chances that you are willing to pay for it by buying stuff in the shop drastically decrease.

You realize that this "frustration" is a reaction from you and not something that is an end goal. If you find the game frustrating, then by all means play something else. Dangerous situations and scenarios arise that can get out of hand, and sometime its good fun, like entering map with mods that you REALLY shouldn't do but fire up anyways.

But yeah basically don't play if it frustrates you, everything in the game can be learned about and analysed to determine just what killed you, when and how to avoid that kind of thing as best as you can. I agree that this game is much more explosive than diablo but that's okay, it shouldn't all be the same.

Actually, everything that is mob based can be countered either with strategy or gear these days. The only thing that used to mess people up back in the day were Devourer mobs where they would burst out of the ground and if you were ES or Evasion, you were dead.

GGG redesigned Devourers so that you get a warning scout to let you know they are in the area (this is a cue to pop a flask, start moving and get ready to defend), and also massively lowered their burst damage. Nobody should die to these at later levels now.

If you're dying to mobs now it either means you do not yet fully understand the mechanics of them (Bearers of the Guardian, Necrovigil http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Monster_modifiers#List_of_bloodline_modifiers), your gear requires an upgrade, or your character has not invested adequately in Defence yet.

Strategy wise, the hardest lesson I had to learn with this game is that it's not only OK to run away from a fight, it's actually the smartest thing to do. The game rewards you for being fast. Dying is bad, but wasting time on hard mobs that increase the risk is bad strategy. Good strategy is to run past them and kill the next easy thing.

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soloman_kane wrote:

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elwindakos wrote:

Also chances are,you don't know the game well enough to know why some mobs can't die(aura,shrines etc)and your willingness to learn what you can do to each situation.

Also,chances are if you gonna spend some nickel and dime,such matters won't matter.You would spend anyway if you wanted to or nothing at all.

So,are you willing to stay awhile and learn,or you will hit the road?The mechanics you are referring to are not even issues for most playerbase

See, its very likely that I played these kind of games before you were even born and I played them all successfully and I am always willing to learn the mechanics of the game, which is why I am already level 86 in this one. From my considerable experience I can tell you, that this game has some serious design flaws which result into frustration. Dont frustrate your playerbase and the guys with the money - the customers - and dont just dismiss what I have sad, as if every bad experience with this game is all just the players fault.

Oh savage.Do you also assume my age now?Whatever, have it your way,hit the road jack

Let me give you an example.
You enter an arena and directly at the entrance, there is a perandus box within the arena and you get instantly attacked by all of them the moment the loading screen is over and the result is also instant: death.

Or another one. There is a beyond mob which causes these fire rings, several at the same time, but these rings expand across the whole screen and the mob is outside of your visibilty range. - beyond the screen, maybe thats why they call them beyond. Within these rings you are definitly dead, but you cant see the mob and you cant leave the area of the fire rings, cause they are across the whole area, there is nowhere to run. So you are dead again.

Or another one. You get bleeding, stacked. So you bleed like hell and you even have an anti bleeding potion, but because you have a firebuild there is just pixel mush on the screen and you cant see the bleeding grafic nor can you hear under the fire explosions the bleeding sound. But you only have a second to react. So you are dead again.

These are forced death of the player and unneccessary.

"Oh shit" is by far BEST part of the game.

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soloman_kane wrote:

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elwindakos wrote:

Also chances are,you don't know the game well enough to know why some mobs can't die(aura,shrines etc)and your willingness to learn what you can do to each situation.

Also,chances are if you gonna spend some nickel and dime,such matters won't matter.You would spend anyway if you wanted to or nothing at all.

So,are you willing to stay awhile and learn,or you will hit the road?The mechanics you are referring to are not even issues for most playerbase

See, its very likely that I played these kind of games before you were even born and I played them all successfully and I am always willing to learn the mechanics of the game, which is why I am already level 86 in this one. From my considerable experience I can tell you, that this game has some serious design flaws which result into frustration. Dont frustrate your playerbase and the guys with the money - the customers - and dont just dismiss what I have sad, as if every bad experience with this game is all just the players fault.

Replace Frustration with Feature and Game Design Flaw with Game Design Mechanic and you'll have a considerably better time.

Frustration is what you get when reality doesn't meet your expectation. For you, your expectation was based around mechanics getting along with one another. For PoE, this isn't the reality. The game is complex enough that mixing mechanics may yield very favorable gains, or may not play nicely and insta-kill you.

Navigating these mechanics in a fast paced environment isn't just some side note, it's the driving feature behind what makes PoE so great.