The main source of frustation, especially for new players

Apropriate defense type 5L don't tend to come at 1 chaos. You can find them on ocasion, not normally however.

I don't have a problem to grind for the gear that I need (gear with the good affixes). I have a problem with grinding for links. It's the same as saying, you know you what? You are high level enough actually use this skill but I'll tell you what, why not spend hours trying to find a certain item (or getting enough currency to buy one) that may or may not drop at any given time though it kinda is a rare drop, then I'll let you use the skill. that is the level of absurdity that the link system gives you. It doesn't serves anyone's purposes other than old players getting rich even just selling the most basic of items which are 5L whites.

EDIT: I'm not sure if you realise the full level of absurdity of this but let me put it in another way. I'm saying that with the way links work right now, character progression is a rarity level. That is just how absurd it is!

You bring up the same stuff all the time and dont even know what youre talking about:

defense type? Who freaking cares?
Not 1 Chaos? So What? It might be 10 then thats like 1 hour of efficient farming!
Old players certainly dont get rich by selling 1-10c 5l whites to newer players -.-

You also havent come up with a list of builds that you think require a five link. Aou keep saying that builds usually dont reach enough dps with only 4 links. Give us examples please. You are so talking out of your ass right now just because you are frustrated.

Why would I feel the need to dive into the boards and look at all the builds that need at least 5 links to work properly just to prove a point? You can do that yourself, you're not stupid you know perfectly well that only a few builds actually reach suficient DPS in 4L to be competitive. Stop trying to brute way your point when you know what I'm talking about perfectly.

You don't care about defense type, you care not for defenses other than kiting. Congratulations, I and many other feel a noticable difference in actually having proper armor and thus it is very much important to us, this is even more true for mage types who use either energy shield for defense or in conjunction with EB but still true for the otehr types of defense.

Also just to further prove that point, I put a tabula rasa that i managed to get for 20 chaos after I finally managed to scrounge enough to get one and the only reason I bought it was to test something but I did took the opportunity to test this out as well.

My melee character with her 480 armor (on the chest piece alone) at level 44 jumps in the middle of a pack kills everything, barely notices her life going down. With a tabula rasa she does the same and nearly dies. Don't tell me armor doesn't makes a diference, it's a ridiculous assertion from not only this small experience, but all I've had thus far.

10 chaos is 1 hour of efficient farming»? Efficient farming at what level might I ask? Can you tell which is the new player who reaches level 40 (not to say 35) and has such efficient farm levels? What about when it's time to move to a 6L and no, I'm not even caring about whether you strictly need it or not at this point in the discussion, it's part of the character development after all. Can you tell me how much is a newbie going to need? How many hours of that efficient farming of yours he needs again, at his level 50 or 60?

You know fully well that it is wrong. You don't like your stuff losing value, I can understand that but the fact is that making character progression a rarity level is ridiculous.

Let me give you an example of what sacred 2 does. You find the skills as loot drops as well and use them to learn the skill and improve the skill. then if you want to modify the skill you need to invest points into relative skill related tree which gives you points to customise an abillity/spell/whatever you wanna call it. You don't need to find an armor which needs to have X amount of link sockets and which cost either too much money or is otherwise a very rare drop. As soon as you meet the requirements to progress your character, you progress your character. That is how a good system is designed.

I wont argue this anymore. I think the discussion has thinned to a point where no further arguments are beeing brought forth.

I have fun playing the game the way it is and it would lose a lot of its funnes when 5 and 6 links rained down on us while playing. I like the thrill when finding great gear. And since I can do perfectly fine builds with 4 links that progress twice as far as yours I think everything is ok.

regards

Just lay it off already, man, it's pointless. Devs aren't enforcing that system because they're clueless about what that means to players, it's done by design, in other words on purpose and in full awareness of all the consequences. They do not wish to change it because they have their reasons to keep it this way and it will stay this way until they get a good enough reason to do otherwise.

That said, I'm playing as casual as can be and even I got a number of 5 links. My builds are far from powerful by design because I like to keep some remnant of role playing in them so they need every scrap of power they can get. Still, none needed to use a 5L before endgame and I can't say that any of them especially needs a 6L, as I'm far from being a CoC fan.

As a little tip from a player that has never been especially wealthy: Don't use Vorici for 5 linking, always do it yourself.
- It's cheaper on average, according to community data and personal experience.
- It's possible to boost your chances with scraps if you got extra.
- You never know when you might accidentally link 6.

That fact that so many people have already left the game because of it should mean something to the DEVs. I do am at a point where frankly, I can get 5Ls without too much of a problem even though they are expensive and require me to lose more time looking for them than having fun playing. But either way it's a bad design that hurts the game more than it does good.

As for the tips, yeah I know that Vorici is absolutly abusive in prices. I use him to get 4L cause more often than not it takes me more than 5 fusings to actually get 4 sockets linked. But really getting 5L is hard, I was lucky to get once 5links at something like 30 fusings, but that is tremendous luck. I used over 200 jewelers in a cloak of defiance and the results were obviously disapointing, heck I think I never even got 5 sockets in it. The way the orbs work is just pretty bad.

While market prices are pretty overboard, it's also true that its often cheaper to buy things in the market than actually trying to craft them, vorici or not. This doesn't means it is cheap at all.

To me this is not an isue that will make me quit, not at the point I am anyway. i am not making this point for myself as I'm already ahead of the curve where most players give up, but I am speaking for those who have given up and all of those who will give up in the future because of this very serious problem.

More than a few have left because of this frustration, yes, but who's to say GGG haven't crunched their numbers and deemed it an acceptable attrition rate for a demographic they weren't particularly targeting in the first place?

Hey, whatever makes your day, the Creator knows I also used to think that speaking for those that don't care enough to do it themselves is laudable (or I just used it for an excuse). But still, try not to waste too much time on it, apparently the game has a large enough user base to keep going, some leave, some come back, some still haven't tried it at all.

It doesn't really look like numbers are a pressing issue at the moment, there was supposedly a sharp drop in HC playerbase during invasion league because of overtuned bosses (and probably because Ambush was much more enticing). So they reacted, and kept reacting until it was bearable, they do change things that are deemed to be the problem if they have to. Linking items apparently isn't one, or at least not a serious one.

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Quixote77 wrote:

More than a few have left because of this frustration, yes, but who's to say GGG haven't crunched their numbers and deemed it an acceptable attrition rate for a demographic they weren't particularly targeting in the first place?

While all games have a target demographic, I don't think poE is a game that target a very small player base, this is teh kind of game that prospers from lots of players, not few.

Raics - The reason I do speak for others is because I also felt their pain and to a small degree still suffer but am mostly above it already. It is still not right, it still hinders the game.

Indeed PoE doesn't really has an issue with the numbers of players. They manage to make enough a profit to continue working after all. But the truth is they could have more players with a better system. Better game = more players and that translates in more funding for the company.

More funding for the company translates in them getting more employes and pumping content faster. As I used an example earlier. The 4th act isn't too far now, but how long ago would we have had an act 4 if only they had more employes to work on the game?

All I see are advantages for no disadvantage whatsoever.

The disadvantage would be "more know it all" & "give me everything, now" players. More is not allways better. More players doesnt automatically translate into more supporters.