Your first thoughts when you began to play ?

I played the open weekend awhile back and was hooked. This game keeps my hopes up that certain devs actually care about making a good game and not a quite buck!

"why he gets up so slowly?!"

I had heard about Path of Exile while researching Torchlight 2 and other similar ARPG's, and it looked interesting enough and I was happy to see that I could pay $10 for beta access (it's better than having to wait for an invite, that's for sure).

I am a little ashamed at how I first reacted to the game. I dont think I even made it to the mud flats, I thought the combat was clunky, everything felt slow, and wasnt sure what to think of the skill gem system.

Then I saw the skill tree. That was pretty much it for me, I didnt give it much of a try but knew it was still a beta and it would change, so I wasnt too down.

Now I play a stupid amount, despite the game not changing all that much from my first impression. I absolutely love it, but I am not sure why I got such a negative impression when I played for the first time. I feel like lots of people will experience this, let's just hope they stick it out long enough to really get into it.

Game was good

I really enjoyed it. I remember the skilltree having volatile possiblities and skills without cooldowns being awesome. That was then

I didn't really like it. After all, there's a reason everyone skipped the early game in D2. This is that reason.

Once I got past that it became considerably more interesting.

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SpectralSlice wrote:

I didn't really like it. After all, there's a reason everyone skipped the early game in D2. This is that reason.

Once I got past that it became considerably more interesting.

Many of you have raised this point : the beginning is hard to bear for a new player. Because of the passive tree, the gem system and because of the difficulty too. A lot of people die at Hillock in normal.

It's not a bad thing, because you have a great feeling of power when you gain some levels, as you started from really low.

I just fear that many people won't have the courage to pass through it.

While I can't really agree with the claims that the beginning of the game is dull or boring, I think one piece of info GGG should distil from this thread is that the early game needs some major changes to keep new players from quitting before reaching the mud flats.

Personally though, I find the rocky climb and prisoner's gate areas to be a much greater chore than the start of the game in terms of blandness.

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Triliock wrote:

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SpectralSlice wrote:

I didn't really like it. After all, there's a reason everyone skipped the early game in D2. This is that reason.

Once I got past that it became considerably more interesting.

Many of you have raised this point : the beginning is hard to bear for a new player. Because of the passive tree, the gem system and because of the difficulty too. A lot of people die at Hillock in normal.

It's not a bad thing, because you have a great feeling of power when you gain some levels, as you started from really low.

I just fear that many people won't have the courage to pass through it.

It's not about the beginning being confusing or hard. Just very very slow paced. Much like starting D2 where you have one skill and auto attack, and not really enough resources to sustain it.

Sure there's ways around it - I found the level 1 bow, and level 1 quiver and so my next character (Ranger) could just happily spam away using an array of different abilities I had saved up.

I'm not especially offended by it - after all, almost all RPGs have the first few hours slow and boring due to the limited range of abilities available, and all ARPGs have a strong first character tax (where your first character, no matter what it is will suck due to limited resources available and your future characters will be better because you won't have to pay startup costs twice).

One of the few things that other game did get right is making the early game not incredibly tedious. It was still pointless - no avoiding making non endgame not pointless in an ARPG, and I don't think we need to get over how badly they screwed up the real game in that other game but people less patient or generally knowledgeable about games are going to see this as their first experience with PoE and lose patience and interest before it gets interesting.

There's always going to be that "Hurr durr D3 sucks" and "Hurr durr PoE sucks" crowd but one of the main complaints I see from intelligent people about PoE is this.

better than expected