Partly unfair and frustrating game design

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soloman_kane wrote:

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.

This is wrong, there is a grace timer of like 30 seconds where nothing happens unless you move/click/etc. So no, this never happens unless you start moving.

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soloman_kane wrote:

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.

Yes I've encountered him a few time, each day actually. You just have to use some movement skill or potion and GTFO out of the rings in any direction available, or jump in his face.

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soloman_kane wrote:

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.

Weird I have no problem taking flask when bleeding.

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soloman_kane wrote:

These are forced death of the player and unneccessary.

I think the real problem is that you are playing too fast and not paying attention. You should start by not trying to make a metabuild or something superfast and take your time with the game, slow down a bit, till you get used to these things and then you can start getting faster and faster.

What you're complaining about is just like, for example, if I started to play counterstrike and complained that everyone is shooting me too fast and killing me. Of course it would be the case, and so I would need to learn the game and play in a slower game mode (or league? I don't really know the details here) till I'm actually ok.

Talking about losing several hours of gameplay is pure false, because that 10% can be several hours only at level 99 probably.

And in 99% of the cases you're dying not because of strong monsters, but because of overconfidence.

I just had a look at your gear and tree and things are relatively solid although there is some room for improvement:

First let's look at your flasks. This is one area where a lot of newer players really underestimate how important they are. First cab off the rank: get rid of that life flask. You're an ES player so this has no place here. Literally any other flask would be better for you but I'd recommend a Basalt flask of staunching for the extra defence. You appear to have no defence against being frozen: get a flask of heat.

Edit: this is where you're Bleeding problem is coming from. Your flask dispels the bleed but because you have 1 life the effect is instant and complete. Any subsequent bleeds immediately after cause you to bleed again. So Corrupted mob will destroy you in seconds. Get that Basalt Flask of Staunching and not only do you remove the bleed, but you become immune for the duration of the flask - 5 seconds should be enough time to kill what hurt you and almost refill your flask.

Reconsider your other flasks, do you need both a QS and Onslaught flask? I personally love shield charge as a movement skill, so much that I don't even care if I have move speed on my boots any more. I certainly don't need a QS any more. Do you really need that mana flask?

Onto skills. You have too many sources of damage skills. At end game you should only be looking at two active skills, one for map clearing and one for bosses (typically good map clear skills are not great at large single target damage but this is not always the case. Some only require the substitution of a IAOE gem with a Conc Effect gem). Fireball is your main skill so obviously you want to keep that, but you also have Firestorm, plus Flame Totem, plus golems, plus Ball Lightning. I get the last two, golems for Liege of the Primordial (although your Lightning Golem is not Optimal, I'd go with Ice for the increased Crit chance myself). I also get your Ball Lightning set up as being more about Defence than damage and that's fine too.

You don't need both Flame Totem and Fire Storm though so ditch Fire Storm. Your Flame Totem setup is poor and needs a rethink. You're not a Strength character so Iron Will is not a good choice. Also Totems are not Minions, so that Minion Damage support is doing nothing for you. For support skills look at Fire Penetration, Increased Burning Damage, Faster Projectiles (increases the range of FT - very good QOL gain).

You also don't need both Lightning Warp and Shield Charge so decide on one movement skill. LW takes too long for my liking so I'd go SC. Add Fortify in there too and with careful use you can reduce incoming damage further.

You have no curse. This is a major oversight and needs to be corrected immediately! Either an automated set up (linked to Ball Lightning is effective) or self cast but just get something. There are so many options here that will help either your damage output (Flammability) or your survivability (Enfeeble, Temp Chains).

Soon you're also going to need to consider about getting stun-locked to death. As an ES character this is a major risk and you either counter it with gear or accept the risk. Anyway, something to think about after the rest of the stuff is dealt with.

You're on the right track, but the above does help to illustrate that there are improvements you can make. Additionally, there are a lot of very knowledgeable players here that are willing to help out with problems but you need to be receptive to them.

Thanks Aldora, I will take your advices into consideration.
But the game design stil can be improved, dont you think.
For example, at least a log would be great, so you can look up what killed you.

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soloman_kane wrote:

For example, at least a log would be great, so you can look up what killed you.

After thousands of hours, you'll know why you die. It's not really like other Arpg I played, you need to play a lot to understand all the mechanics, and even if you read all those nice guides that must be around, playing is still the best way to improve.

And the stun for an ES Build is a nightmare, do something for it, It will change your life !

I started PoE a long time ago and still learning every league but I can understand that for a recent player the game must be overwhelming sometimes.

ps: sorry for my english, I try my best =P

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soloman_kane wrote:

Thanks Aldora, I will take your advices into consideration.
But the game design stil can be improved, dont you think.
For example, at least a log would be great, so you can look up what killed you.

The game designed could be improved by not having it to a game based off of D2 ladder which is ancient. In a game with extreme almost unchecked diversity, you will eventually run into hard counters that will check your build.

Part of a successful build isn't doing better what you can already do, it's having a method to not get rekted by weaknesses in your build.

It's one of the biggest things that newer players have to outcome in this game because they think that if they kill monsters 5% faster that they could always 100% kill all of the time they are stronger while not addressing anything that could actually beat them.

The game is not designed in such a way that your choices have no effects on the outcome. Other games give you the illusion of choice, but when what ever you do will work, there's really no reason to bother choosing.

PoE is a game where if you make bad choices, you'll find out quite quickly that you're in need of change. If you're dying to random events, you haven't designed your character correctly. You need to emphasize defense more... or possibly even tone up your offense so those nasty mobs don't have the chance to kill you.

You're likely coming from games with 'balance'. Balance is a two edged sword. You want it, but once you get it you realize how boring it is. When everything is in balance, nothing really exciting happens.

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soloman_kane wrote:

... 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, doesn't 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 personal skills.
I wonder, why so much frustration is build into the game.

You need to understand the history of GGG and how they went from 4 fresh out of college arpg fans with an idea and deep desire to make a better arpg (better than D2) with very little startup capital to today's PoE 2.6.0x. From these 4 founders they incrementally worked their way to 95+ full time employees and many part time hired talent (such as voice actors) today and from then to now that must easily be 10s of millions of dollars so keeping in the black has had to give the founders many sleepless nights worrying about making the next payroll. The fact that GGG has survived and flourished is pretty frick'n amazing in my opinion. So with very few resources (financial and human) and a bazallion build combos possible there is no way PoE can be balanced properly.

From your post I definitely get the feeling that you didn't start playing in CB or OB. If you had you wouldn't be complaining about mob death squads as PoE:The Desync Years (pre-lockstep) was murder to play with a fast moving build. I had a ranged exile that had 86% increased move speed and the leaper mob packs in Lunaris Temple caused so much rubberbanding that I finally had to quit that build and roll a slower tankier build. So movement today with lockstep is light years better than desync was. I don't know what one-shot death mobs that you can't outrun are. My level 86 Legacy FB Champion has 50% increased move speed (achieved with very little effort and I'm playing SSF) and I use Whirling Blades to move over vast distances quickly and so far no monster can keep up the pace with this moderate speed build (some builds top 100% inc. speed) so you'll need to explain what death mob or single creature is able to hound you to death.

PoE definitely has some 5K+ single hit damage death trap bosses (uber Izaro for example) and only through playing and reading enough will you know what content you can take on and what you must skip if your life/ES/armour isn't high enough (Merc Malachai for example... I now have a level 86 build and will soon... when I reach level 87, I'm as 71% now... kill him for the challenge point. I shouldn't have any problem but even if I have a brain fart or lag out and die I won't lose 10% because I just leveled up. That's the way to keep from losing many hours of xp.)

Update (2017-04-25): Reached level 87, portaled to The Harvest, killed the 3 BotB bosses to gain access to merc Malachai fight, and killed him without dieing (5 portals to town to refill flasks). Now I have 1% xp at level 87 so even if I had screwed up and not portaled out in time and died I wouldn't lose 10% xp (always put up a portal in a tough boss fight to escape death). This strategy always works. Now to see if I can kill uber Izaro with under 5K life (argh!!!... why won't a rare jewel drop with 6% or 7% increased life... RNGesus is not liking me).

The one thing that everyone hates is reflect damage and we all would be happy if GGG removed the reflect mod completely.

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soloman_kane wrote:

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.

GGG wants PoE to be the hardest arpg to grind out a max level build and have adhered to that philosophy from the beginning. To that end they have succeeded even though you view this as endgame frustration and "I quit this shit" anger. If you really can't view endgame content difficulty spikes as a "how can I figure a way to beat this next difficult boss" then maybe PoE isn't a good fit for you and you should go back to D3 or any other "less challenging" arpg. You do know that for some maps you run them with an AoE offence setup and then at the end map single boss switch over to single target damage skills and maybe a different aura/curse setup, right?

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soloman_kane wrote:

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.

Here you do have a valid point in that gear progression stops somewhere in the lower 70s levels and except for the super rare high level unique drop (I got my first Bino's Kitchen Knife drop last fall... no Headhunter yet) the likelihood of a better drop is near nil. In fact I think that the formulas are coded such that the higher above the map level/tier (3+ levels) the less likely better gear than what we currently use will drop (more and more mountains of trash).

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soloman_kane wrote:

See, it's 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. Don't frustrate your playerbase and the guys with the money - the customers - and don't just dismiss what I have sad, as if every bad experience with this game is all just the players fault.

This criticism has been leveled against GGG many times such as "don't bite the hand that feeds you" (free-to-play game financial model) or "you can get more mtxs with honey than with vinegar". To that end uber grind from level 90 to 100 is definitely too extreme for my taste (my highest build is 91) but some love it and this is a double sided coin in that if reaching level 100 was easier then the no-lifers full time players wouldn't like that and they are the ones most likely to buy expensive supporter packs or high end mtx. For the 90+% that would like less grind to the top we all know that GGG isn't changing the xp needed from 90 to 100 so either accept this and find a way to cope with PoE reality, figure out how to generate more xp per hour (like just grind shaped Strand maps forever), make level 90 your goal and then start a completely new/different/fun build, or quit playing as you'll never be happy here.

The single game element that has kept me from buying any more mtx for a couple of years now (I desperately need a few premium quad-stash tabs in Standard League) is the lack of any change in trading since the beginning. GGG has needed to code asynchronous trading to end the "hunt the seller" (I played "Hunt The Wumpus" on my HP41C calculator way back in 1981 and that's enough) subgame bs crap just to buy anything.

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Bookeater49 wrote:

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soloman_kane wrote:

For example, at least a log would be great, so you can look up what killed you.

After thousands of hours, you'll know why you die.

While I agree to an extent, this is something GGG needs to fix. Not all of us have played for thousands of hours. I've even seen some experienced players on twitch die and have to replay the video over several times to figure out why they died. It would be nice for new players and old to know when they die to know where/how they fucked up so they can fix it.

Often I think new players die mysteriously then stare at the screen having no clue why then go make a thread on the PoE forums complaining about it. I mean that's why this thread exists, right ?

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Shagsbeard wrote:

PoE is a game where if you make bad choices, you'll find out quite quickly that you're in need of change.

Not sure if this is true. Majority of builds work fine while leveling up. It's when you finish the game and start getting into Maps where you find out if you planned your build correctly or failed miserably. By time you reach this point you have invested several hours (at least for newer players) into the game already.

case in point: this thread

There is only issue about losing efforts of hours. it is performance issues, server issues.

And i saw your reasoning, and i dont like to say this but i guess i have to; git gud noob.