Why I'm done with this game (at least for now)

I've been having a total blast with PoE. I've been playing for a few weeks, and just crested level 60. I was really excited about it - my character build is really coming together, and he's a lot of fun to play. And I think I'm done playing for now.

Two nights ago, I finally felt strong enough to venture into Maelstrom and try to collect some equipment to use... some of my stuff was from the late 40s or early 50s and is starting to get pretty decrepit. I spent about an hour fighting, dying, running back in, dying, etc... a pain, but part of the learning process, and I expected that after I had some of my new equipment it would get easier. At the end of that hour, I had some decent level 60 items for the slots I needed, and got ready to juice them up.

After all, I had been saving orbs since pretty much the beginning of the game, actively hunting and trading for them. I had what seemed like pretty decent stacks of everything I needed to build my gear. I knew I'd have to get really lucky to wind up with, let's say, six-link armor, but I expected that I had enough to build my itemlevel 60 gear to be a significant upgrade from my existing itemlevel 50ish gear.

Instead, a half an hour later, I wound up shutting off the game in irritation. I haven't turned it back on. In the intervening time, I had managed to burn through nearly every resource I'd been carefully hoarding since the beginning of the game... stacks of Alchemy, scouring, chaos orbs, and more than a hundred Jeweller's Orbs. My haul for this? I had replaced my old armor - 3 slots, 1 link - with new armor with WAY more armor on it, about the same mods, and 3 slots, 1 link. My new sword gave me about 8% more overall damage, at the cost of a significant attack speed drop. (Attack speed is key in my build.) All the other mods were worse on the new sword. I didn't manage to make any gloves better than my level 33 ones. The Destroyer Crown I made was better than the Imperial Casque I had... if I was willing to trade a 3-link helm down for a 1-slot one.

Yes, I know that I had a string of bad luck. And I know that other people have had worse luck. That's not that point. The point is that it wasn't just no fun at all to go through the process of failing rolls over and over again, doing so while exhausting the resources I have been putting off using was so frustrating that I lost all interest in continuing the game.

There is a very, very limited extent to which rolling is fun. In fact, if you guys were to consult with psychologists to try to find the system that was most DEmotivational to your players continuing your game, they wouldn't develop one much better than one in which the player must actively choose to risk the mediocre thing that have, hoping to get something which is good, only to wind up with something that is bad. Knowing that I spent my resources trying to do better than four-link armor - and not only failed, but wound up having to settle something worse than I started with - is a big part of why I gave up.

I don't mind grinding - I don't mind it at all. I don't mind large amounts of grinding, and I don't mind the top-quality items being locked off to me if I'm not willing to put in enough effort, or if I'm not a good enough player. But games like this are all about progression - that's the reward for grinding. When my grinding is rewarded with items that are barely arguably better than my existing ones - or when that grinding doesn't give me anything at all, because I got a string of bad rolls - well, then, why the heck am I playing your game?

If I were GGG, I would look at Lord of the Rings online for an example of a somewhat similar system that is motivating, rather than frustrating. Legendary Items in that game are similar build-an-items. You might roll an item which is better or worse than another, but you can grind that item into being exactly what you want for your build. The grind is INTENSE - a new character with no saved-up resources might wind up spending three or four months before their item is totally built, and players who aren't playing at a high level of skill may never have access to everything they need to max out the item's stats. But as they're grinding, whatever the item's end point, it will slowly be getting stronger and stronger. You can see your item's progression... and it certainly never goes BACKWARDS.

I know this is a really long post. But, as I said, I was enjoying the game, and I think it has a lot of potential. But the system almost seems to be designed to drive away hardcore players, and even worse, to drive away hardcore players who have JOBS - IE, money and willingness to spend it, but not an infinite amount of time to play. I hope, for the company and the game's sake, that GGG replaces these systems with ones that reward good play rather than lucky rolling, and ones which incent people to invest money and time into your games, rather than frustrate them.

So you want to replace luck with grind?

That's for an MMOPRG, this is an ARPG, you're in the wrong game.

"

The grind is INTENSE - a new character with no saved-up resources might wind up spending three or four months before their item is totally built,

Uhhhh no thanks. Not really interested in GRINDING for months for a character to catch up to elitists who play all day. It's a hack and slash Action RPG not a MMORPG.

These types of games are designed to be played for years, not days or weeks. We can only hope that you have fun playing the game and that making the best possible character is something very long term to strive for.

100% agree. And its fault the HORRIBLE crafting system that is 100% based on Random Number Generator.

This plus very big item variety plus sockets variety (also RNG based) and most important lack of nonrandom gear customization (like monster charms and relics from Titan Quest for example, this is bigges thing that PoE is lacking BTW) result in:

"ohh look i use my 150 fusings, 300 jewelers and 260 alchemy and all i got is pile of vendor junk. I collect this for one month so i assume now its time to /wrist."
Or simply unnistall game.


Sorry to say but current crafting system caters only to most hardcore players and to people that have very high "failure resist". Bit more important is that current system has not much common with the word "fun" abd PoE as a game is too much RNG based (more than any HnS ever imho).


"These types of games are designed to be played for years, not days or weeks. We can only hope that you have fun playing the game and that making the best possible character is something very long term to strive for."

No kind of game should be designed to punish player in that hard way and to lose in 30 minutes everything that player accumulate in leveling process giving ALMOST NOTHING in exchange. IMHO

My only advice is to not get caught up in micro-optimization.

Also, trade for gear way before you start to craft. There are lots of people and lots of drops all the time, you'd be surprised at how easy it is to trade for the things you want. Crafting right now is strictly the last step in complete optimization for people that already murder everything on the screen with a glance.

nearly all item based feedback ive given has been to help this situation you are now going through. instead of constructive help, most of the time i get flamed lol.

the game is based on redic high odds for end game top tier items, and it has to be that way to lengthen its life. ive been pushing for more lax mid grade mods for awhile now to help with this. i think they have actually lessened some of the weight on mid range mods as i seem to be rolling more and more decent ed/ias/+phy of lower brackets. which is good if so.

this also directly relates to the thread we have about chaos (merc) drop rates going atm. when you take into account that it takes 50-100+ chaos to roll a keeper 2h. 9.5 chaos drop rates dont look so bad anymore do they? its all a fine balance that has to be reached between casuals and power gamers. i think they can do it by separating the mod brackets. nerfing all merc drops was a bad bad move in the wrong direction for power gamers, and will crush casuals.

i think ggg is listening, and will continue trying to better the system. ill keep providing feedback as i see fit. i should prolly make a dedicated thread of my own.

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Chopatron wrote:

the game is based on redic high odds for end game top tier items, and it has to be that way to lengthen its life.

I disagree entirely, and I really think we ought to stop pretending 'endgame' means anything right now.

At least personally, I derive more fun from trying out new characters than grinding chaos on my most powerful character (though that's fun too sometimes). But to say that the only longevity possible in this game is farming is wrong.

I stopped at level 50. I could reach higher levels but found the class I was playing, a duelist (specced as a melee glass canon which is the only build for him imo), unsuited to the endgame design where most of the damage comes from melee attacks in high burst and evasion is not that useful. there is also physical damage reflection auras which I believe is a game breaking mod, but it continues to be included in new games for some reason. damage reflection auras completely breaks dex based melee builds who are already highly vulnerable to damage. I dont believe ANY game has made them viable yet, but it was just to test out.

as for the OP, I use the ingredients I found periodically only to keep my gear up to scratch and was really only tried to saved up on unique orbs. the only time I used unique orbs was on weapons for the higher chance to get a physical dmg modifier whereas I used the magical ones on armour. I only enchanted armour that had the slots+links I needed for my main attack (or gained by using chromatic orbs). I thought later on magicals orbs wouldnt be much use so wasnt conservative here.

I suggested an alternative crafting system in another thread where players can dissemble every item in the game to extract constitute components from which to build new items, but that system might not fit into PoE gameplay. having said that I dont really mind it as it stands atm, since its the basis of the PoE currency system and gels well with the other mechanics of the game. min/maxers will sometimes get slapped hard when the dice doesnt roll their way as is the side-effect of hoarding their points/money for a larger late-game benefit, but its no different to other games in that regard.