Forums are very quiet....

I've explained enough elsewhere over span of weeks. But if you wanna be scientific about it, ill bite. I mean you perceived this as so-so and I one of the worst. How come you give yourself a pass?

I did 40 without trying hard. Only thing I tried was asking a delver friend to look out for boss, doing stupid vendor recipes and about 50 conq maps on top of the 50 that I already had done. I sold archnem challenges, made profit there while getting mine done. But there isn't really much to try.

Doesn't matter how integrated they are, there are problems. I'm gonna talk about some -- First, the trivial issue, say I wanna switch between alva and jun back and forth because I get bored doing the same shit over and over.. do I need to use orb of unmaking all the time? In some ways, I prefer the old atlas. But no doubt however, old atlas needed changing, it was too unfriendly towards beginners -- IF there's still fresh blood. Of course they had to make early acts harder... so beginners can suffer more and then just give up. The main issue however is, what are you gearing yourself strong for? Are you gonna farm some cheapo splinters? or cheapo scarabs? Or boss killer? Or lmao Archnem. I wouldn't mind so much spamming 100's of new bosses. I'm sure they make profit, what I don't wanna do is buy 100's of eldritch fragments. So you get your 5 mirror gear going... to do what? Get trash rewards? Third -- Eldritch crafting is the sort of trash crafting I hate. For the most part, you're chaos spamming and waiting for RNG to do its thing and then you won't be able to say "I made this".

I'm bored. I feel stupid for playing this game.

"

LiMA6 wrote:

I'm bored. I feel stupid for playing this game.

See you next league then

"

Nubatron wrote:

Grinding 40 in "the worst league ever" is beyond my understanding.

Is it though? Like, is it really? Or is it simply something you'd never do? There's a really big difference between knowing you'd never do something and not genuinely understanding why someone else would. Very few things other people do are genuinely beyond our understanding once you stop thinking of them as anything but human.

You don't have to like it. You can even despise it. But I think you can and do understand it.

More importantly, even if you claim not to understand this seeming contradiction between revulsion and compulsion, this almost paradox writhing in helplessness, GGG sure as fuck do, which is absolutely key to their success at this point.

But I guess no one likes their masochism thrown in their face...well, except the truly honest masochists, eh. ^_^

So I'll respond to 40/40.

So I've done 2 leagues of 40/40, this being the second. In past leagues I never even opened challenge tab. Friend told me to look into it at least to make profit. I know better now.

Scourge league it was hard, well, not hard but grindy. I was told I get a totem (i never bother equipping it). Thought i'd just give it a try for once anyway. Certainly not rewarding.

As for this league and as said , I mean I just played and most of them just got finished on their own. I was more focused on getting fancy gear and selling challenges for profit as I had already said. It's a way to make currency. By the time I had all my gear, I was close to 40/40, most being something like 4/5 3/4 so might as well just get em done. Didn't take long at all.

As to GGG's success, I make it a point to spend as little as possible, while encouraging everyone to do just like me. I buy minimal stash tabs and sure as heck won't spend any $ on MTX / supporter packs. They don't deserve it, and yet, I think they make a heck lot of money still. I do think they have a good business model, I'll give them that. It's beyond me however why they like annoying their customers. I mean you have mechanics like archnem, a real facepalmer, definitely doesn't deserve funding. Then there's also moderation duties, it doesn't make sense to me to fill their pockets.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

"

Nubatron wrote:

Grinding 40 in "the worst league ever" is beyond my understanding.

Is it though? Like, is it really? Or is it simply something you'd never do? There's a really big difference between knowing you'd never do something and not genuinely understanding why someone else would. Very few things other people do are genuinely beyond our understanding once you stop thinking of them as anything but human.

You don't have to like it. You can even despise it. But I think you can and do understand it.

More importantly, even if you claim not to understand this seeming contradiction between revulsion and compulsion, this almost paradox writhing in helplessness, GGG sure as fuck do, which is absolutely key to their success at this point.

But I guess no one likes their masochism thrown in their face...well, except the truly honest masochists, eh. ^_^

Like I said, beyond my understanding. That doesn't mean people won't do it. I don't pretend to understand people who join cults or people who watch the Kardashian show. That doesn't mean I don't realize people do it, just that I don't understand and to be quite honest, I don't see value in engaging with them either.

If I had to pick the one thing I do that is beyond me, it's ironically coming to General Discussion. There are a few people that are worth it, but someone who gets 40/40 and then claims worst league ever isn't someone that I would lump into that group. Life is too short, that level of self-loathing or cognitive dissonance isn't worth my time.

Sometimes you gotta play it for a few weeks before realizing how trash a league is. In the beginning I didn't like scourge too much. It was only around week4 or so i appreciated it a lot more. Here I thought oh, archnem, but bad stash but maybe some combo would yield insane rewards... but its all trash in the end... was also hoping they'd improve stash later on, but bad and bad

scourge was my favorite league so far. it feels like GGG isnt putting money into engaging content and when a league feels great you are just lucky. PoE 2 is eating up all of their resources

"

LiMA6 wrote:

I've explained enough elsewhere over span of weeks. But if you wanna be scientific about it, ill bite. I mean you perceived this as so-so and I one of the worst. How come you give yourself a pass?

I did 40 without trying hard. Only thing I tried was asking a delver friend to look out for boss, doing stupid vendor recipes and about 50 conq maps on top of the 50 that I already had done. I sold archnem challenges, made profit there while getting mine done. But there isn't really much to try.

Doesn't matter how integrated they are, there are problems. I'm gonna talk about some -- First, the trivial issue, say I wanna switch between alva and jun back and forth because I get bored doing the same shit over and over.. do I need to use orb of unmaking all the time? In some ways, I prefer the old atlas. But no doubt however, old atlas needed changing, it was too unfriendly towards beginners -- IF there's still fresh blood. Of course they had to make early acts harder... so beginners can suffer more and then just give up. The main issue however is, what are you gearing yourself strong for? Are you gonna farm some cheapo splinters? or cheapo scarabs? Or boss killer? Or lmao Archnem. I wouldn't mind so much spamming 100's of new bosses. I'm sure they make profit, what I don't wanna do is buy 100's of eldritch fragments. So you get your 5 mirror gear going... to do what? Get trash rewards? Third -- Eldritch crafting is the sort of trash crafting I hate. For the most part, you're chaos spamming and waiting for RNG to do its thing and then you won't be able to say "I made this".

I'm bored. I feel stupid for playing this game.

Let's take the perspective difference.

You bring up switching between jun and alva. I was there when it was ONLY alva. I was also there when it was ONLY Jun. You talk about getting bored, yet don't seem to fathom just how many quality of life changes were made. If you're burning out now, imagine not having so much to choose from. (Technically you could do incursion and probably had to for challenges its been a while i don't remember, let alone what order they were in. But I'm pretty sure the missions thing wasn't added for at least a few.)

You feel bored and stupid for playing this game, where I'm enjoying myself - again the difference is perspective. If I did the zoom zoom with the strict filters I'm not even sure I'd make it to mapping before losing interest. If building virtual wealth was my goal then I too would get bored after the first month since most leagues slow down from there.

But as for why to me this is "so-so" - because I was around for most of the leagues that actually make up the brunt of the mechanics available now. On top of that, I was also a D2 player, so I knew just how much "worse" the arpg could be as far as repetition, boredom and all that jazz.

One of the best lessons I learned in D2 is that the wealth only goes so far. There's no point in investing all that time and effort to build it if you aren't enjoying it along the way.

It's not so much that I think you're "wrong" for thinking this is a terrible league, but that your setting your expectations so high that before you know it you'll wonder why you bothered wasting your time at all.

Abyss = breach in a cracked line
Incursion = breach with a visible timer
delve = side-scroller breach in darkness
delirium = side scroller breach with a timer
legion = breach with prep phase to pick and choose

you could probably interchange strongbox for breach too.

Basically, what I'm saying is there's only so much creativity possible when the idea is to kill waves of stuff in the pursuit of loot. As far as I can remember, the most popular leagues were led by specific builds that almost always took a nerf beatdown so hard it ruined them for later use.

Ultimately, I'm just amused reminiscing about the complaints back then vs yours now and thinking man you have no idea how much better you have it. To think how longs its been since the old master missions...

Look I'll tell you perspective. All I wanna point out is it's just a pain in the ass to do stuff these days. I don't wanna be respeccing my tree all the time. It's annoying. It's also just wasteful to not put points into your mechanic.

Once I'm geared, I wanna keep playing. I don't wanna buy sextants, deli orbs all the time. I just wanna play. We had fractured fossils for that in the past. People had to have fancy gear to farm fractured fossils back then. Was pretty end-game content. Delve's not for me, but I at least respected that business. Now? People sit in hideout rolling sextants all day until they get their gear. It's pretty much 'chaos spamming'. When I'm poor, I should be putting more effort. When I'm rich, I want an easy life.

My expectation isn't high. We had ritual. Things were good, not perfect, but not gonna complain. But you know, isn't their vision. Look at how ultimatum and expedition turned out.

If I wanted to take it slow like you, I might as well play hc, but nah.. slow is boring. 200-300movespeed is more fun, if only rewards were so also..

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Nubatron wrote:

"

Foreverhappychan wrote:

"

Nubatron wrote:

Grinding 40 in "the worst league ever" is beyond my understanding.

Is it though? Like, is it really? Or is it simply something you'd never do? There's a really big difference between knowing you'd never do something and not genuinely understanding why someone else would. Very few things other people do are genuinely beyond our understanding once you stop thinking of them as anything but human.

You don't have to like it. You can even despise it. But I think you can and do understand it.

More importantly, even if you claim not to understand this seeming contradiction between revulsion and compulsion, this almost paradox writhing in helplessness, GGG sure as fuck do, which is absolutely key to their success at this point.

But I guess no one likes their masochism thrown in their face...well, except the truly honest masochists, eh. ^_^

Like I said, beyond my understanding. That doesn't mean people won't do it. I don't pretend to understand people who join cults or people who watch the Kardashian show. That doesn't mean I don't realize people do it, just that I don't understand and to be quite honest, I don't see value in engaging with them either.

If I had to pick the one thing I do that is beyond me, it's ironically coming to General Discussion. There are a few people that are worth it, but someone who gets 40/40 and then claims worst league ever isn't someone that I would lump into that group. Life is too short, that level of self-loathing or cognitive dissonance isn't worth my time.

Ah, naturally engaging with them is a WHOLE OTHER LEVEL of attempted sympathy that I am dead sure is beyond most of us. But to say the actions of others are beyond basic understanding just because you wouldn't do it? I think that's intellectually lazy. Please note I don't mean that as an insult: we have to be intellectually lazy sometimes or we'd all just sit around thinking all day and then who'd make the toilet paper?

Besides, you just gave your own example of a thing you do that is beyond you (and it's absolutely the one I was thinking of bringing up, so thanks for that! :)). It's a bad habit, isn't it? So surely you can extrapolate your feelings towards your own bad habit and then apply to someone else's. The circumstances might be different but the core feeling and motivation might not be.

Also, I don't think it's self-loathing at play; it's self-satisfaction being poorly pursued and met. 'I hate it but I do it anyway' for something entirely voluntary (at least compared to, say, basic life needs by whatever standards are set by whatever society of which one is a part) might be masochistic but masochism isn't self-loathing. It's literally finding pleasure in pain (OR TEDIUM, apparently -- appropriate!). And those who make the effort to actually talk about their masochism, to lament publicly? My guess would be the whole thing is tinged with a healthy sprinkling of martyr complex -- myself being no stranger to that mode.

Understanding is not the same as sympathising. And here we can substitute 'understanding' with 'empathy' BUT only in a literal sense, since people often understandably (teehee) confuse the two. Empathy is simply when you understand someone else's situation but don't necessarily feel it yourself. Sympathy is what you're talking about: feeling as someone else to understand it, which is...dangerous, in my opinion. Sympathy is the fast track to losing objectivity and rationality.

And to engage with others is absolutely how sympathy begins -- it takes a very careful approach to retain empathy when confronted with others' extreme feelings. Thankfully you don't have to to merely understand them.

Just because you can grasp the understanding of what makes a person do things you never would doesn't mean you have to engage with them. Shit, half the reason we seek to understand others through a lens we consider safe and sane is precisely so we DON'T have to engage with them, because to do so is to lose that safety and sanity.

The ONLY reason I can engage with Exiles here is because I have been one. This whole thing, this ridiculous show of futility and self-flagellating, would be utterly batshit to me otherwise. I know because when I glance at any other game's forum and see zealous ranters that is my initial reaction. Red alert! Red alert! Game junkies detected! But then I *empathise*: oh, that's right, this is how I acted on the PoE forum. And act, to a degree.

Is that empathy or sympathy? Sort of an in-between. I don't feel that way anymore but I remember feeling something like it.

Similarly, I remember feeling like I was wasting my time with PoE, that the game was 'making me feel stupid'. My breaking point was obviously well below 40/40, but I still found it and confronted it. And it took years. Tens of thousands of words. And dollars. But mostly words. Is there that much difference between someone getting 40/40 and then feeling like they've wasted their time (but obviously planning to do it again next league) and someone writing more feedback on a forum that is largely ignored by its owners than anyone else...knowing it's a waste...and then coming back to do it again, all the while throwing money into a fire? I don't think so.

So when you say you it's beyond your understanding, again, I think you're a wee bit in denial there. And that's fine too: we don't *want* to understand that which we find repulsive or monstrous or wasteful or without value. That challenges our own ideas of what is not those things. That's unpleasant.

And the kicker is I'm not even saying any of those to empathise OR sympathise with you. I'm just using what I perceive as an intellectual dishonesty in your stance to go off on a rant that doesn't seem like it has anything to do with PoE but of course is 100% about what PoE really is, which is an activity I enjoy deeply. Thank you for that. :)