POE not new player friendly

Someone posted a picture of the Chinese version a few days ago. It had nifty tutorials in it. Lots here thought they would be cool. So do I.

The typical problem is the NERFING of many gem skills. You really have to goto the forums and look up builds to see what works. That can be a little hard since many builds require uniques to work.

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I_NO wrote:

I remember when I first stepped foot in this game I was like oh it's basically FF X passives and FF 7 materia system combined with diablo alright I can dig it.

This literally this is how I was easily able to get into this game and stay hooked.

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SilentStorm625 wrote:

Another thread from me; I promise it is the last for this month

Have been playing for 8 months or so (feel free to check my history) and thought it would be a good idea to introduce the game to 11 new players total; all fans of this type of games, age 22-35, with jobs and stuff, gamers at their core.

All of them, literally all of them complained about 1 core thing: there are no in game guides, demos, videos, information about how to do stuff. You have to google stuff, check youtube, ask other ppl, etc.

GGG, what is your view on this?

Let them play ... Hm... what do you want ... your friends to be meta experts after one day? Where are those days gone when people played/enjoyed the game not watched/read about min/maxing the game ... Old man comment :(

Play the game and have fun!

I think there's a differenze between being new player friendly and being a game for casuals.

I like to have to do some research to get the max out of my skills, and I like to try and learn things by myself, that said I think this game could and should be presented in a better way to new players.

There should be in game tutorials of at least the fundamentals of the game.


I also think it would be cool if forsaken masters, with each new level of experience reached, unlocked bits of info regarding various aspects of the game, stuff that is hard to figure out in game without reading external wikis or guides.
For example... you reach level 3 Vagan and he explains you the difference between "increased damage" and "more damage"... or you reach level 4 Catarina and she tells you that curses on map bosses are less effective.

PoE is incredibly easy to play. Kill things before they kill you. Spam one button for kills. But PoE is difficult to understand. If GGG want the game to grow they need to help new players understand their game. Otherwise more people will be alienated than not. Needing so much knowledge to play a simple game is strange. And they way GGG keep adding new stuff will just make it a lot harder to help new players, which are the future of PoE.

This game isn't too hard to understand, max resistances, get good numbers ina few health and mitigation stats, use the op gem of the week, link your gems, use auras.

That's about it.

The biggest problem it has, that people are vehement against changing, is that total respecs should be free. Being able to mess around with builds and skills without having to be among the currency moguls goes a long way into learning the game for yourself and not having to look up extensive guides. This is why lots of games tend to have the ability now.

The second is how damage mitigation works, and having it be more straightforward. For example, armor stacking doesn't matter because the more damage you take the less armor protects, practically no one in game knows this. New players also don't understand that ES is basically the best and only way to reach end-game, and that the defensive traits aren't well balanced.

Thirdly, overall damage is all over the place because of buffs and nerfs, but it's generally easier, and more rewarding to play anything but melee. The dps tooltip isn't always a reliable indicator of good dps either.

I have played this game since beta on and off. Cant agree more with OP tho. The problem with not having any guides ingame or explanations for anything really is this. You limit the playerbase by a very large margin. Im fine with the way it is and so are most ppl that are gonna read this but literally all my friends that i introduced to this game quit becouse they feel there is no way they will ever learn. I love this game but i wouldnt mind having some irl friends to play with now and then.

I remember when i first started this game. Went in blind and i think my first 7 chars that i got to 70+ hit a wall where i either had to little dmg to kill ANYTHING or to little hp to not get 1 shoot by anything other then white mobs.

Since i am a grinder that did not dissuade me and i just kept on making chars until i got 1 that actually worked.

To me that is all fine and dandy and part of the fun but to any normal person that shit is just crazy. I dont think i have a single friend that would not stop playing after that first char got rekt.

I get that most of the ppl that play poe now are pretty hardcore fans. But like some of u guys said. GGG is a small studio and i can only presume since they are a business that they want to grow.

Sadly having a game that does not cater to new players is not the way to grow. Loyal fans like you and me will stay but new players will simply play for a while and quit once they hit a wall.

You cannot say "this game is super easy to learn" couse its just not. The linking of skill gems to make a completely new skill in itself is not EASY to understand if ur going in blind.

And lets not even talk about the skill tree. If u press P as a new player ur jaw literally hits the floor.

being thrown in at the deep end and left do figure shit out through experimenting and research is exactluy what got me hooked on this game. If it had spoonfed me everything like most games do, I would have probably moved on to another game by now, so all just depends on the individual and GGG doesn't seem to be a big fan of the hand holding approach, which suits people like me but I can understand that it would put a lot of people off too... Whichever way they do it, they can't suit everyone.

So I don't agree that the game doesn't cater to new players, it just doesn't cater to players that like an easy introduction to a game... everyone here was a new gamer at some point....

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blubbber wrote:

being thrown in at the deep end and left do figure shit out through experimenting and research is exactluy what got me hooked on this game. If it had spoonfed me everything like most games do, I would have probably moved on to another game by now, so all just depends on the individual and GGG doesn't seem to be a big fan of the hand holding approach, which suits people like me but I can understand that it would put a lot of people off too... Whichever way they do it, they can't suit everyone.

So I don't agree that the game doesn't cater to new players, it just doesn't cater to players that like an easy introduction to a game... everyone here was a new gamer at some point....

As I said earlier... there's a difference between being a game for casuals that holds your hand step by step and being a little more friendly to new players.

I like POE for the same reasons you do.
I like to try... fail, learn and then do better.
but still I think the very basics of the game should be explained in game in a form or another.