The main source of frustation, especially for new players

Yet 5 sockets, thus 5 links are available from level 35 onward. Even if at the edge of level 35 it wasn't so common, it should by the time you are level 40. Of course the best way would be the orbs not being so bloody aweful in the way they work. but the truth remains that at level 60+ you shouldn't be looking for level 35 content. You should be looking for level 60+ content.

"

Elhazzared wrote:

A frend of mine who has been playing for a fw days with me (little over a week) just quit becuase we were near the end of the first act on mercyless and he still had no 5link armor. In fact he had only 4links on things that weren't armor. He was starting to feel the dificulty of the game in it's full brute force by the simple fact that the very essecial things that are the core of the game not droping and everyone knows how stupidly expensive it is to try and buy 5/6 links on the market. Usually never less than an exalt.

White 5L armours go for 2-5 chaos(depending on the level).
Buy it, roll it... reroll it if you are really unhappy with the mods, or craft the hell out of it if you can afford it... and that is it.

If 5L is really that important to you then take the 5L over the armour mods you get buying a specific rare/unique.

As for the cost of vorici, 70 jewelers and 150 fuse to make a 5L as I recall(if you get it already at 5s you can skip the 70 jewelers).

If you have been picking up and selling all the rares you came across between normal and merciless, by the time you get to merciless(Self-found) you will probably have enough alts that you can buy the 150 fuse direct from vendor... If you go through players it is even cheaper(since they need to give you a reason to buy from them instead of just trading it up)...

That being said, for many if not most custom builds 5L or 6L is nice but not necessary. I run entirely self-planned builds, I don't cookie cutter at all... And I also don't usually bother with 5L or 6L till very high levels(when I can afford to craft it, or drop it). My last char(from the one-week race) I never got a 5L. I saved up for it, several times... but kept spending my orbs rolling 4Ls every time I upgraded, because having multiple 4Ls was more important than having 1 5L.

If you quit because you can't immediately drop a 5L, can't put in the small amount of time required to farm the currency, and aren't willing to take the 5L if it doesn't come on an uber item... Well, I don't think the problem is with GGG... It may just be that ARPGs aren't your thing, because pretty much all of them revolve around farming to one degree or another.

"

Blizzisme wrote:

"

Elhazzared wrote:

A frend of mine who has been playing for a fw days with me (little over a week) just quit becuase we were near the end of the first act on mercyless and he still had no 5link armor. In fact he had only 4links on things that weren't armor. He was starting to feel the dificulty of the game in it's full brute force by the simple fact that the very essecial things that are the core of the game not droping and everyone knows how stupidly expensive it is to try and buy 5/6 links on the market. Usually never less than an exalt.

White 5L armours go for 2-5 chaos(depending on the level).
Buy it, roll it... reroll it if you are really unhappy with the mods, or craft the hell out of it if you can afford it... and that is it.

If 5L is really that important to you then take the 5L over the armour mods you get buying a specific rare/unique.

As for the cost of vorici, 70 jewelers and 150 fuse to make a 5L as I recall(if you get it already at 5s you can skip the 70 jewelers).

If you have been picking up and selling all the rares you came across between normal and merciless, by the time you get to merciless(Self-found) you will probably have enough alts that you can buy the 150 fuse direct from vendor... If you go through players it is even cheaper(since they need to give you a reason to buy from them instead of just trading it up)...

That being said, for many if not most custom builds 5L or 6L is nice but not necessary. I run entirely self-planned builds, I don't cookie cutter at all... And I also don't usually bother with 5L or 6L till very high levels(when I can afford to craft it, or drop it). My last char(from the one-week race) I never got a 5L. I saved up for it, several times... but kept spending my orbs rolling 4Ls every time I upgraded, because having multiple 4Ls was more important than having 1 5L.

If you quit because you can't immediately drop a 5L, can't put in the small amount of time required to farm the currency, and aren't willing to take the 5L if it doesn't come on an uber item... Well, I don't think the problem is with GGG... It may just be that ARPGs aren't your thing, because pretty much all of them revolve around farming to one degree or another.

Apparently you haven't been following the thread and just read the original post though I suppose it's quite too long to just read from the begining by now.

My friend quit because he couldn't get a 5L by the end of act 1 mercyless. His build was not going to wrk on any less than 5L, blame the build, blame whatever you like, the fact is you get 5 sockets from levels 35 onwards and thus you should get 5L even if not that soon, at least by 40. the costs, no matter what you say are way too high for a 5L.

Most 5L on the market, if the are specific type tend to be overly expensive too. 6L are just compeltly ridiculous on how pricy they are or even to just craft them.

Perhaps you think that the prices are acceptable for 5 and 6L, that is your perception ,it is not that of a new player with nearly no economy whatsoever and 5L and 6L are not end game gear. They are not that awesome item with tri resistence and life and other good mods that everyone wants. They are only links in an armor that can even be white for all I care. The important thing to bear in mind is that the number of sockets and links are directly linked into character progression or build progression as I like to call it.

Gear progression is another thing entirely and yes, people should have to farm for that awesome piece of equipment that adjusts perfectly or that specific unique. That is fair game, but hindering character progression is no healthy for any game. It leads to frustation and abandonment when you build isn't pumping enoguh damage or isn't getting whatever support gem it needs to make the whole thing work.

You can also say that some builds work on 4l or as some others say, many builds work on 4L. The truth is that very few builds work on 4L, there are very few gems that are designed to be able to have a very high clear speed with only 4L. Many can work on 4L, yeah, but they are not really any good at it, they work but they take a long time and it's very hard to survive.

Again I agree, there has to be some kind of grind, of course there is, but it should be for better gear, not for just being allowed to progress your character development.

"

My friend quit because he couldn't get a 5L by the end of act 1 mercyless. His build was not going to wrk on any less than 5L, blame the build, blame whatever you like, the fact is you get 5 sockets from levels 35 onwards and thus you should get 5L even if not that soon, at least by 40. the costs, no matter what you say are way too high for a 5L.

The fact that level 35 item drops allow for 5 sockets does not mean that you have to have a 5link by level 40. These five levels take appr. 20 min to 1 hour to play through. If we where granted a five link by level 40 and a 6link by level 60 just by getting chars to the respective level, just to progress with our builds, 5 and 6 linked items could be farmed in less than 2 days by any halfway experienced player...

I understand you view on the matter, when I started I thought too that I needed 5linked items for too many builds, but that is just not true. Ive played several builds to the level range 78-85 on 4linked items and was not hindered in my build progression. Its a matter of knowing mechanics and planning a build carefully. If you understand how damage scaling works you can decide which supports to pick first or which are required to make a build mecahnically functnional. Please name builds apart from CoC builds that require more than 4 links. Please. You allways argue about clearspeed and survivability but how can people reach 20-100k AoE Dps on 4links and be survivable at the same time? How do you explain this?
And do you think, that you need any more damage than this to clear maps? Have you actually played maps? It still sounds to me as if you havent got further as act1 merciless and for a large portion of the player base that isnt even a third of the whole game!

You want something to be changed to cater to your inability to overcome certain challanges this game offers and forget that the way this game is designed is aimed at much more dedicated players.

The reason I didn't get further than mercyless is simply because that friend of mine stoped playing and I wasn't satisfied with my current build, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't satisfying me anyway. the build I had was more than capable of pushing through mercyless content anyway. Do not say others are not good at the gme without nowledge of cause. Have you ever seen me playing?

The fact is that there are very few skills that work properly in 4 links. Again you can make many more work on 4 links other than the very few perfect ones, but they will have low DPS and that means things take much longer to kill and that also impacts on your own survivabllity, after all killing everything fast is the best way to survive.

Even if you want to say CoC are the only things that need 6L, I do not agree, there are more builds and in fact any build as I said that relies less on DPS support gems and more of abillity modifier support gems will need 6L to even archieve a proper amount of DPS.

Now about your first point. If you could farm 5L and 6L in the first 2 days of the game (for people who even go that fast, the majority of people getting a 6L would still take a week at least, between having a job and learning the game), then what would be the problem exactly? Would it break the game?

No, it would only mean these people would have the abillity to try out any build they'd like.

It would however mean that the link market would go down the drain, yes. Items would start being judged purely on their affixes value and not on their links if you could easily get extra sockets and links... I don't see that as a bad thing, I see that as an improvement, especially for the new players who have no wealth.

The problem is that people cling to this economy system like their lives depend on it because they don't want to see items go down in value as sockets and links lose all inherent value. This happens because they worked a lot harder than theyshould to amass vast amounts of wealth and they'd have some feeling of loss if suddenly new players could get a 5L or 6L easily.

"

The reason I didn't get further than mercyless is simply because that friend of mine stoped playing and I wasn't satisfied with my current build, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't satisfying me anyway. the build I had was more than capable of pushing through mercyless content anyway. Do not say others are not good at the gme without nowledge of cause. Have you ever seen me playing?

Havent seen you playing, even though I tried to find you online because Im very interested in your playstyle.
All Im saying is that having only played up to merc act 1 limits your experience with major parts of the game. Thus limiting the validity of your statements, you can only comment on a very limited scope of the game.

"

The fact is that there are very few skills that work properly in 4 links. Again you can make many more work on 4 links other than the very few perfect ones, but they will have low DPS and that means things take much longer to kill and that also impacts on your own survivabllity, after all killing everything fast is the best way to survive.

The shadow I posted earlier was a self created build no cookies involved and has 20k AoE and 37k Single target dps. Is it the highest? No! Is it more than enough to clear up to lvl76 maps and is it fast enough that it doesnt hinder my sirvivability? Yes! Does it REQUIRE a 5link? NO!

Start beeing clever with the limited ressources you got instead of demanding everything.

"

Now about your first point. If you could farm 5L and 6L in the first 2 days of the game (for people who even go that fast, the majority of people getting a 6L would still take a week at least, between having a job and learning the game), then what would be the problem exactly? Would it break the game?

No, it would only mean these people would have the abillity to try out any build they'd like.

Yes it would break a major part of the game that is tying character progression to gear progression. It would make the game boringly easy for experienced players in that regard.

"

It would however mean that the link market would go down the drain, yes. Items would start being judged purely on their affixes value and not on their links if you could easily get extra sockets and links... I don't see that as a bad thing, I see that as an improvement, especially for the new players who have no wealth.

The problem is that people cling to this economy system like their lives depend on it because they don't want to see items go down in value as sockets and links lose all inherent value. This happens because they worked a lot harder than theyshould to amass vast amounts of wealth and they'd have some feeling of loss if suddenly new players could get a 5L or 6L easily.

Its not about the economy of the game alone. It would be devaluating the TIME and DEVOTION players invested to get these items.

Ill say it again: As a new player you have far more urgent concerns than having 5links! When I started I allways looked at 5 and 6 links with envy and wanted those too. But beeing limited in ressources also means beeing forced to actually think about what youre doing. The point where you can just try a build because you have the wealth to do it will come sooner or later just by playing and understanding more of the game. It is the same matter as people wanting free respecs all the time. PoE is not D3. The devs want choices to matter, handind out 5 and 6 links and free respecs would allow even the most stupid palyers to just try everything without thinking in advance. And seriously, a game that allows for such mindless playstyles would be effing boring.

I don't feel my experience being that limited. All that i haven't experienced is maps and atziri to all effects and purposes. Even then I kinda have experienced maps in the form of corrupted areas, they are only smaller but they give you an introduction to maps which is nothing more than an area with a special rule set. Atziri is just a map or a set of maps with the atziri special encounter... My scoop isn't that limited. Really it's just ramped up difficulty which is supposed to be overcome with you being higher level and having better items.

Again there are a few 4L skills that work, my current character which I'm playing (slower than I wanted since I'm playing it with another friend and thus have to limit myself to his playtime) works well enough with 4L, I do have my boss killing abillity in a 5L, but I have my AoE in a 4L, heck I even waste a increased area there cause I don't even need extra damage.

Just because a few skills work perfectly well without hindering survivabillity, it doesn't means the majority do.

Now you say it would make the game boringly easy for experienced players... Really? Because they already have such a major difficulty with it! Or maybe not. Not to mention that they are already so wealthy that they don't care about anything. Even if they limited themselves to 4L they are still veteran players, they know all the skills that they can use in a 4L and the ones they can't. It's not like the game will be hard or challenging to them at any point in time. Halting character progression is just plain bad for a game.

While you could say that learning to play is the most urgent thing a new player needs, getting a 5L and a 6L to be able to try any build is very important. Like I said, it's the major cause for abandonment of this game and that says something about it. I agree with the respecs not being handed like candy, choice should have consequences, that is absolutly correct. But character progression is not something that should be stoped.

If players have any attachement to the time and comitment they have put in the game then all they need to do is look at their stash and their 99999999 exalts there which will buy them anything they can ever want. In fact we're talking about people who so long as they have enough money IRL to have enough stash tabs, they can have one to two items of each type in uniques + rares to get the extra bits like tri res and what not, they would still have more currency than they need after that and literaly they have any build imaginary in their stash. It's not like suddenly all the time they put into the game was wasted, in fact they were having fun while doing it were they not? It could have never been wasted in the first place.

The game is designed around the temporaray challenge leagues, so no matter how wealthy any palyer is in the parent leagues he will face the gearing challange every few month. You missed that.

"

it's the major cause for abandonment of this game

care to deliver some proof here? I can see much more obvious reasons why people would stop playing PoE.
But since getting 5links is so easy I dont feel hindered in build progression at all.

Also: Youre allways taking about build progression, for me a build comes together at around lvl75. Sure its fun to level with the skills and mechanics you intend to use in the end game but you allways need to be frank about your expectations. There are things that will get together much later then lvl 53. Also a major point why I advise you to play more instead of demanding stuff here that while relevant in its intent does not grasp the whole perspective of the game.

By temporary you mean 3 months and yes, everyone goes into those but the moment they got their time worth on it they go back to standard where all of their stuff and they can play anything they want because they have the economy for that.

Again, everyone I knew that ever played this game and quit was exactly the same reason, can't get a 5L, GG WP -> uninstall.

No one I knew stoped playing because they didn't liked the game, they did like it but they hated seeying character progression so hard blocked for no good reason whatsoever.

Yes everyone was bothered with the ocasional desync or lag spike that got them killed. the loading time, sometimes even loading time between zone transitions. None of that made them stop playing, not even a boss that would one shot them because they had a bad spec. it was always the same thing. Can't get a 5L.

It's easier to get them now but it's still expensive relatively to a new player's wealth.

And if your build only comes together at level 75, well that's your build I guess, there are many like that. Level with this or that, then change into this. Personally I dislike those builds but hey, to each their own I suppose. For me a good build is one that you stick with from begining to end and always feels like it's getting better, not that it only comes together at a certain point. That is why I never try to go for such builds but that is not a limitation that the game imposes on me. That is a limitation that I impose on myself. See the difference?

I even wrote that I like to level characters the way they are meant to be played at endgame. But I know which stuff i cannot expect to integrate into a build at earlier levels. I cant run all auras that I intend to use later on, I cannot wear certain items. Also having 60 passive points to spend or 95 is a huge difference. Thats what I mean by a build coming together at lvl 75, not playing FB and switching at that level.

I dont think many players who are focused on the temp leagues paly standart/hc at all.

If you have so less fun with this game that you cant stand playing for a five link you are seriously not interested in grinding games. As mentioned before there are 5links in trade for 1 chaos! When I level a character to lvl 60 I will found currency in the value of like 20 chaos easily. The devs want to encourage players to trade. If you trade there is absolutely no argument for claiming 5links are hard to earn apart from beeing just dumb. If you play selffound thats a challange you impose on yourself and that you have to live with but even then its just a matter of time.