Another long-term player signing off.

On the flip side, if they change the item drops and map drops you may come back for a bit, but I will be gone. I'm here for the grind personally.

It may be a good change for GGG overall getting some players back for however long but this would be the nail in the distrust coffin for me if these were to happen.

However the middle ground for both our parties would be increasing drop rates of crafting orbs so that it isn't limited to the 1%. The market would eventually adjust to compensate.

"

f3rret wrote:

This game works by only rarely giving the player what they want, that is how they keep you playing.
Now, I will agree that after a while the your stimulation might get saturated and the conditioning will start being less effective.

Most players are not laboratory rats and eventually tire of Pavlovian attempts to manipulate their behavior. Once you realize that Rare drops are little more than Chaos Recipe fodder, it's a short leap to conclude that the good stuff is effectively gated behind RMT-fueled paywalls.

"

Fatalflaw wrote:

I just read your key points and have at one time or another raised concern over each of those same issues.

The entire design of the end-game just contradicts itself:

-RNG gated experience gain.
-No respecs so choice "means something"
-Don't expect to level 100 without a lot of currency
-Hundreds of unique items but the average player will never obtain most of them
-Massive skill tree and "build options" but stacking life is essentially required.

There is no contradiction. The whole design is for boosting economic activity.

-RNG gated experience gain. => makes people willing to trade maps

-No respecs so choice "means something" => makes people willing to trade for regret orbs

-Don't expect to level 100 without a lot of currency => Encourages economy

-Hundreds of unique items but the average player will never obtain most of them => Encourages trading

-Massive skill tree and "build options" but stacking life is essentially required. =>
Gear checks (which is the reason why people stack life/es) mean people are more willing to trade for the gear needed to pass those checks.
----

It is all following the same plan.

"

f3rret wrote:

As it stands now, you could simply play 24/7/365 and eventually you would have all items (at least the unique items), that's just a consequence of these sorts of games - put in the time, get the items.

No, lol, you are missunderstanding or intentionally lying about how this RNG-based system works.

There will never ever be any guarantee that you will have all uniques or even all uniques you want dropped/chanced for/by you even if you play for 100 years 24/7. That's how the RNG system works, there are absolutely no guarantees.

"

Worldbreaker wrote:

On the flip side, if they change the item drops and map drops you may come back for a bit, but I will be gone. I'm here for the grind personally.

It may be a good change for GGG overall getting some players back for however long but this would be the nail in the distrust coffin for me if these were to happen.

However the middle ground for both our parties would be increasing drop rates of crafting orbs so that it isn't limited to the 1%. The market would eventually adjust to compensate.

I'm of the belief it's the continued tweaking of the gambling/crafting system and work on low end recipes rather than drop rates that would most likely be best for everyone.

I don't have that much problem with finding gear that has potential to become usefull and rolling another 10-20 odd orbs on it most likely won't change the outcome of the gamble.

I like the work GGG did on linking and added recipes not long ago and it pretty much proved to me that this is the area to work on.

=)

Agree with the OP.

I hardly play anymore, was excited for the last update but once it went live and I saw that it was just another RNG layer atop the RNG cake... I just lost all hope.

"

Wittgenstein wrote:

Agree with the OP.

I hardly play anymore, was excited for the last update but once it went live and I saw that it was just another RNG layer atop the RNG cake... I just lost all hope.

Man threads like this make me feel sad. I started playing right when open beta launched. And enjoyed reading lots of threads on the forums, game mechanics, builds discussions, ideas for content and items. Many threads were filled with numerous closed beta members sharing game knowledge, having discussions and people excited for the games future. Now I see less and less and less of all you 'old timers' from closed beta posting/playing.

Many of the Unique Item creators from closed beta are hardly around anymore, at least I don't see them on the forums much anymore and I'm pretty most like you are hardly playing.

I wonder where the game went in the wrong direction, that so many of you guys/gals from closed beta have left. All of you 'old timers' helped make this game but now don't enjoy what it has become.

Seeing a string of threads from closed beta members quitting for good, is really depressing.

"

bchan wrote:

"

Wittgenstein wrote:

Agree with the OP.

I hardly play anymore, was excited for the last update but once it went live and I saw that it was just another RNG layer atop the RNG cake... I just lost all hope.

Man threads like this make me feel sad. I started playing right when open beta launched. And enjoyed reading lots of threads on the forums, game mechanics, builds discussions, ideas for content and items. Many threads were filled with numerous closed beta members sharing game knowledge, having discussions and people excited for the games future. Now I see less and less and less of all you 'old timers' from closed beta posting/playing.

Many of the Unique Item creators from closed beta are hardly around anymore, at least I don't see them on the forums much anymore and I'm pretty most like you are hardly playing.

I wonder where the game went in the wrong direction, that so many of you guys/gals from closed beta have left. All of you 'old timers' helped make this game but now don't enjoy what it has become.

Seeing a string of threads from closed beta members quitting for good, is really depressing.

where it did went wrong? it is not a GAME anymore. it is a tedious grind - and it is so BY DESIGN.

when lead designer of ARPG game states 'the economy is the most imporant part of this game' you are worried. but when ENTIRE expansion they release is a gigantic RNG check you just donate another lump to Grim Down boys.

i play poe (barely) because i like the monster slaying mechanic. but the entire 'ecosystem' that this game is centered about repulses me. also im not quite sure that ggg understands their own game if they introduce Crown of Bad Balance or MOPnjor and feel it is ok to do so. windripper? how can a rare ever beat that bow? HOW?

it is no longer game with a vision when all small actions contribute to grand plan. these are just 'actions' and some look more like crazy experiments (invasion, exiles+vaal skills, some uniques) based on risky prospect that people will accept and agree to everything

and.. the desync/gfx. the big elephant in the room that people are NOT getting used to. they are leaving because of that

steam chart (ofc not a valid source, blaah blah blah) today reached just the level before SoTV release. so we are doing just fine.

"

bchan wrote:

"

Wittgenstein wrote:

Agree with the OP.

I hardly play anymore, was excited for the last update but once it went live and I saw that it was just another RNG layer atop the RNG cake... I just lost all hope.

Man threads like this make me feel sad. I started playing right when open beta launched. And enjoyed reading lots of threads on the forums, game mechanics, builds discussions, ideas for content and items. Many threads were filled with numerous closed beta members sharing game knowledge, having discussions and people excited for the games future. Now I see less and less and less of all you 'old timers' from closed beta posting/playing.

Many of the Unique Item creators from closed beta are hardly around anymore, at least I don't see them on the forums much anymore and I'm pretty most like you are hardly playing.

I wonder where the game went in the wrong direction, that so many of you guys/gals from closed beta have left. All of you 'old timers' helped make this game but now don't enjoy what it has become.

Seeing a string of threads from closed beta members quitting for good, is really depressing.

Personally, what killed it for me, was the moment I realized that the orb system was nothing but a wasted idea. The orb system is what got me really excited for PoE, and I should have realized sooner that it wasn't what I thought it was going to be - a great crafting system, and instead turn into what it has - a gold system. I thought early on that with the orbs it would make the game - less - of a trading simulator because we'd have all of these great ways to make and tweak gear, but I was wrong.

Another blow was the dumbing down of the web to only 2 paths and the systematic elimination of viable builds due to the super harsh difficulty scaling that this game has. Sure, you can use a build perfectly well through normal and the next playthrough but then, unbeknownst to you (if you're new) you'll be destroyed later on because you didn't invest enough into defensive passive skills or hp. I understand that the game needs to be challenging and am fine with a learning curve, but it doesn't really feel like a curve to me more of a cliff that you drive yourself towards blindly and before you know it you're in free fall to an inglorious demise. All of my RL friends went off this cliff and quit. Moreover the web seems largely superfluous now. You could get the same effect with a much simpler tree system that allows you to pick offensive and defensive passives every X level and big improvements every Y... the web serves no real purpose other than to enthrall new players and then crush their creativity.

Lastly, the RNG in this game is just.. absurd. I can't put it a kinder way. I get that ARPG's are luck based, I played D2 for over a decade as well as TQ/NOX and a bunch of others. But never, never never did I ever feel in any of those games that my investment was a waste. I always felt that I was moving towards something in all of those games. But in PoE I feel - and that is the keyword here, feel - that I can play for 10 hours and never obtain anything. That to me is enough to snuff the spark of interest that I ever had for the game. No game should be like that. I have a real job and I have enough RL insecurities to deal with. I play games to -escape- that feeling. I do not get excited when an orb drops, I just put it in the stash for some unknown high level item that I'll probably never find anyways and even if I did the orb would probably not give me anything that I want.

I truly hope they can alleviate some of these issues, but it seems like what I find an issue they call a 'feature' and what I find absurd they are striving towards as a goal. So, it is pretty evident that this is not the game for me and I wasted a thousand+ dollars.. I guess I am glad to have helped support a great group of people that have brought a game to people which some quite enjoy, I just wish I enjoyed it. I really don't.

Orbs are gold in this game. It's never been anything else.

Anyone who thinks the "orb" idea was some new thing that removed gold (or real money trading) from this game is fooling themselves. Even GGG admits that orbs are essentially re-skinned gold.

GGG doesn't care, as long as people keep buying useless MTXs. If people would get together and stop purchasing those things, GGG might then be forced to fix their game.