I'm Unhappy I Put As Much Money As I Did In This Game

I've put $120 and $220 into the supporter packs that hover around my name, and I feel like I've wasted my money. I've played many hours of this game, more than most games even, but it's continually getting worse with the latest updates. I like the idea of 4 month leagues, heck, it's what made me want to spend more money in the first place. I even like the business model and the support staff are all wonderful to deal with, I've never had a bad run-in and they're all very nice people to deal with. I cannot, however, enjoy my time spent in Wraeclast lately.

There are a fair share of similar threads, so if you ignore this one, don't feel bad, I totally get it, it gets tiresome to read them, as such I'll be as brief as possible. This game is generally compared to Diablo II, and is claimed to be the "true successor", however, I've never seen it, it's always been a very different experience, and I believe Torchlight 2 is what a traditional successor to that game. Path of Exile is and should always be considered it's own thing. It incorporates things far differently from other action RPGs. So, what was the point of me saying all this? I feel like it shouldn't follow a traditional trade based economy that was similar to Diablo II. Now, this becomes an issue for two reasons, in Diablo II, you could kill certain bosses and they had a chance to drop great items, loot tables, this worked because if you had no trade value, you had something to farm to potentially get the item you're trying for anyway. And the other reason is that nothing good drops, ever. With no serious crafting or trade recipes, there's no guarantee to get something good, blocking progress.

I believe that's a huge reason why this game is unappealing, it just blocks your progress. Generally speaking, you can get to Cruel Act 2 before really worrying about your resists. If you don't have max resists by then, then you're at a standstill. The proper approach to this is to farm or trade for new gear so you can move forward, however with the drop rates the way they are, and progressively getting worse by nerfing increased item quantity, you're in a bad situation and most importantly, not a fun one. I get that you're expected to farm and work for progress, but when the experience isn't rewarding, it's not something that I personally want to do. This also hurts build variety, there are a few players that flip trades on trade chat and get lucky to get some of the best uniques or game changing ones in the game, but these have not been and seem like they never WILL be distributed to the rest of the players. I do think it should be earned, but it's just that, it should be EARNED, not having a lucky streak or do the non-fun farming methods.

New content has been released and it's got great intentions, adding new bosses with new mechanics and new areas that are like mini-maps before the end game. However, with the current balance of things, and how they have always been, there are bosses that can outright 1 shot you. This is an on-going issue, that has never been fixed. They've had map bosses that are just a huge number and devour your character. Beyond this not being fun, it's bad design. There ARE fun bosses, Vaal Oversoul comes to mind, but there's no reason to kill him beyond progressing through the game with the current farming methods, and no reward to do so. Most people skip the bosses to progress, as they don't provide anything special for taking up extra time.

The biggest issue with the game is one that has been in the game since the beginning. You will farm Merveil for quick alt orbs or Piety for chaos recipe and a few good uniques. What you can do after this is even more tiresome, you can run maps, which have a cool design idea, new every time, has a boss, has increased loot that drops. However, when you get there, you have to deal with overtuned bosses that can one shot you, increased but poor loot drops and that's about it. I've see no improvement towards the formula, I've been playing since closed beta, I've seen it get better as it came along, but it has never addressed a lot of the issues that has plagued the game since certain mechanics get released.

TL:DR
-No good, varied or fun loot drops.
-Best progressing method is to farm low level boss for alts or easy boss for chaos recipe.
-Balance is not good and shows no signs of improving.
-No workaround trading, for a lot of people, trading isn't fun.

Sorry for the wall,

I'm upset I put money towards a game that seemingly goes in the wrong direction. It can be a fun game, there's potential in a lot of areas, but I'm sadly having no fun with the game and haven't for awhile. These issues either aren't considered relevant by the company, they don't know how to fix them or don't care to. I truly hope they address a lot of the issues with the game.

Thanks for listening.

thank you for your post.
your feedback is extremely valuable to GGG, and will be treated just like the rest.

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I've played many hours of this game, more than most games even

Then you already got what you paid for so stop complaining. You spend that money because you felt it was worth it and probably played for multiple hundred hours already. Thats a pretty reasonable amount of time you got entertained, dont you think?

[Removed by Support]

But at the end of the day we already got what we paid for, so you shouldnt be unhappy about the money you lost, after all you got quite some enjoyment out of it.

Good feedback.

What I don't understand though, why do you feel your money is wasted? You probably have a couple of hundred hours of play time, wasn't that worth your money?

I just wanted to point out that the fact that bosses can 1 shot you is not an issue (to the developers). The logic behind this is that, if they were not capable of 1 shotting you, then you could just alt+f4 and avoid death every time. That's the explanation Chris gave, at least.

I also find it strange that you didn't mention the biggest problem in the game, desync.

i think you need to post your build and link your gear for the community to help you out!

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johnKeys wrote:

thank you for your post.
your feedback is extremely valuable to GGG, and will be treated just like the rest.

I'm surprised/happy I got 4 responses, no surprise there wasn't one from GGG though haha.

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nynyny wrote:

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I've played many hours of this game, more than most games even

Then you already got what you paid for so stop complaining. You spend that money because you felt it was worth it and probably played for multiple hundred hours already. Thats a pretty reasonable amount of time you got entertained, dont you think?

Dont get me wrong, I personally think that GGGs balancing team consists of the most incompetent bunch of developers I have ever seen. No one comes even close to this amount of failure.

But at the end of the day we already got what we paid for, so you shouldnt be unhappy about the money you lost, after all you got quite some enjoyment out of it.

No, that's fair, I'm just unhappy to where I feel my money is going. It's going into new content, sure, but the content and issues seem to be making the game worse. Value wise, yes, I have easily made my money back from hours logged in.

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Xavderion wrote:

Good feedback.

What I don't understand though, why do you feel your money is wasted? You probably have a couple of hundred hours of play time, wasn't that worth your money?

Mostly due to bad wording on my part, the quote above this one explains why I feel the way I do. Sorry for the confusion!

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Deankar wrote:

I just wanted to point out that the fact that bosses can 1 shot you is not an issue (to the developers). The logic behind this is that, if they were not capable of 1 shotting you, then you could just alt+f4 and avoid death every time. That's the explanation Chris gave, at least.

I also find it strange that you didn't mention the biggest problem in the game, desync.

That's...sad to hear, especially when they are so prevalent in the new content. Desync is an issue, but it's not a fixable issue. The ones presented are, and there's more! I just didn't want to ramble on for even longer. Lightning thorns comes to mind...oh my lightning thorns.

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THEHORNEDRAT wrote:

i think you need to post your build and link your gear for the community to help you out!

I have many, many builds, and I'll be happy to post them, but I'm not sure you want a post longer than my original haha. I will though, feel free to ask.

bump, I agree

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johnKeys wrote:

thank you for your post.
your feedback is extremely valuable to GGG, and will be treated just like the rest.

;-)

@OP: I feel similar, but I guess it will never change. Why an Arpg (A!) needs such massive trading is beyond me.

Well, I particularly am enjoying the new content, what I enjoy the most is the leveling... ...whenever a league ends and all the items are dumped to the parent leagues, that's actually the worst part for me, I wish I could have a button to erase a tab, with remove-only items..

Emptying them and merging the items is inventory hell...

I have not spent as much as you on the game, so my return of enjoyment is big.

But taste is a personal thing, I do enjoy the tree changes and new leagues because you can imagine new stuff, and draw new builds.

I particularly don't like to just copy+paste builds, I tend to do my own thing, after lot's of hours now I'm better at it.

In this league, different from last time, I'll try to have one char in each league, and focus on them. I party play with friends and sometimes in public parties, but mostly solo it.

The thing I learned, playing as much as I have, is that all your lack of item problems can be overcome with the passive tree, I always had problems in HC with the resists, so I found the spots in the tree with resist nodes and got them, solving my problem, since we can always respec those points later, I find that it is valid. You sacrifice your overall build around the resists so that if later you get better items, you can switch tree points with good items, and I do think that might be a way GGG designed the nodes.

I remember when there where no 4 month leagues and I was playing HC exclusively, and I found a great unique item, and I started a new char, just to use that item.

Well, I'm crowding your thread with a lot of what I like. Having said that, I can agree it gets boring after a while, and the challenges system could be better worked to have a much better motivation in having fun in the game.

Thanks for your thread and thoughts, I hope GGG can see what we write, just to think about it at least.