POE not new player friendly

I find it kind of funny, how many people will come in here and smash people that would like a few simple explanations to make the game easier for new players... but take a quick jaunt over to the labyrinth thread and suddenly people aren't so hardcore about having to work at something.

While I disapprove of handholding and dumbing down the game, perhaps making some mechanics more transparent would help new players avoid the common mistakes. For example:

When hovering over damage numbers on the character sheet, show a tooltip with details of how it is calculated. X base damage, +Y from supports, Z% increased from tree, W% increased from gear and so on. The quickslot tooltips should have a line telling to look at the character sheet for more details.

When hovering over accuracy, evasion and physical damage reduction percentages on the character sheet, show a tooltip that tells what the value is calculated against. X% chance to evade an average monster of your level with an accuracy of Y. Z% physical damage reduction from armour against an average hit of 1000 points. They could also show examples for normal, rare and unique enemies.

When you die, show details of the last few hits or other damaging effects. This could clue players in to whether they are lacking life, resistances or some other form of mitigation.

I'm sure there are many experienced players who wouldn't mind these improvements either.

I think that most of you who are saying stuff like: "They don't have the resources to make videos" or "I don't want a game that holds your hand" are completely missing the point. First of all, I don't think anyone is suggesting a huge video tutorial list because that already exists... It's called "YouTube". What people want is a more intuitive and informative interface.

For example, vendor recipes. Why on earth aren't those in the game? There is no good excuse, it would be absolutely trivial to include them in any number of ways such as: by hitting a box/button and putting an item in the trade window and displaying any possible recipes. Or as a straight menu in the UI, or even as a hot key when hovering an item that would display a tooltip.

Another example, why can't we hover items and see what possible outcomes there are for chance orbs? I shouldn't have to go to the wiki, go to the armor page, select the slot, click on the type then click on the item after locating it to see if there is a unique version. We are talking extremely simple stuff here that would tremendously increase QoL for very little time/effort.

Another thing, why don't we have an in-game skill tree planner? It's on their damn website, why can't I plot out my levels and save it so that when I level it highlights my path? For that matter why don't we have a build planner that lets us select what skills, supports, gear types and so forth to prioritize? Even better would be an adaptable loot filter based on a planned build instead of having to spend an absurd amount of time customizing them for each one. (I know that's a much more complex feature, just tossing it out there).

There are plenty of other things I could mention, simple stuff shown on the travel/world map like "hey, this zone is focused on X element". Speaking of maps, how about a map that isn't pseudo-3D and instead make a nice clean and easy to read 2D one?

The things people really want don't change the experience of the game at all, and it doesn't make it easier to play. It just makes it more accessible and therefore less frustrating to new players. I shouldn't have to go to my second monitor several dozen times per session to trade, to look up recipes, to look up affixes, to check gear bases, etc. All those things should be part of the core game and having a "viable" 3rd party option isn't an excuse, it's a cop out for bad utilization of development hours. If they can't afford the time they need to hire more people, and don't give me the NZ hiring nonsense either, they could hire remote employees.

@aithosrds

You got it all wrong. All stuff you mentioned is done (or not done) purposefully by GGG. They have philosophy and reasoning behind the way certain game parts are presented and done.

And I wouldn't recommend you to claim: "The things people really want..."

why does a game need to be a new-player friendly ?

if it was up to me, no game would even have so much a tutorial (and in process totalbiscuit would be out of job, kill two birds with one stone, glorious)

See to me, this is one of the things that keep me playing. Been playing this off and on for some time now and every time something hit's me that I didn't know it is that much cooler. I am an ultra noob on some things and seasoned on others but it's when "I" find it out that I a: feel like a complete idiot, and b: feel like there is still so much game to learn.

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Sidad wrote:

@aithosrds

You got it all wrong. All stuff you mentioned is done (or not done) purposefully by GGG. They have philosophy and reasoning behind the way certain game parts are presented and done.

And I wouldn't recommend you to claim: "The things people really want..."

I wouldn't recommend you blindly defend GGG when what you're suggesting doesn't make any sense. I mean are you really saying that they want a map that is intentionally hard to read, is physically painful to look at and is generally awful? Or maybe you're suggesting that they think you should have to waste a ton of time to find out basic information that doesn't impact the challenge of the game in any way? Or maybe you're suggesting that people enjoy having to use a 3rd party trading site that is frequently broken, has numerous issues and also causes more in game problems than it solves...

I don't think so. In fact, I've seen plenty of interviews and posts about trade and QoL changes and the answer is *ALWAYS* the same: "we are working on it but there are X challenges" or "we would like to do that but we have to prioritize our development time and we thought X was more important".

The problem here is that GGG is a new studio and they have had serious growing pains because of their location relative to the majority of the "gaming world" when it comes to employees. They are extremely isolated and that means they aren't getting an influx of talent and experience from other companies like they would if they were located in another country.

If you want a parallel the closest example I'd use is Riot Games, they aren't isolated but they exploded virtually overnight and have had many similar types of growing pains as GGG. Namely they made poor development choices early on due to inexperience and it tied their hands for a significant period of time. For example: replays, out of game settings modification, chat rooms, the countless problems with their league system and MMR implementation, etc. There isn't another company to really look to when you grow that fast in a new-ish genre, so mistakes will be made.

It's not that I don't understand, or that I fault them for it... it's just that I think the answer of "well you can do X" is a BS cop-out when it comes to simple QoL changes that don't have larger implications.

@aithosrds

I have no reson to "blindly defend" GGG. I'm active on this forum for quite some time and if you search my comments you'll see for yourself how I "blindly defend" GGG. Especially when it comes to QoL changes. We used to have topic on forum where pretty much ALL QoL changes request to GGG where made. A lot of these requests were fulfilled by GGG. Go search forum if you don't believe me.

Other than that I think that you are partially right. I say partially because they want changes but changes done in a right way. Listen to Cris last pre-Christmas interview when he answers to some streamers questions and in one instance talks about trade for example. From what I understand new QoL implementations must not hurt game play GGG envisioned for PoE or create new problems like trade or AH. On other hand PoE will never tell you what crafting recipes are since discovering recipes is part of game play. Or possible chance orb outcomes. Just that idea itself sounds silly to me.
I agree with you about skill tree planer but I know as well that free skill build planer available on forum Is semi-supported by ggg so its not big issue for me but it would definitely be nice to have that future in game.

And the problem GGG has that you mentioned is simply ridiculous, imo. GGG follow's their game philosophy from beginning and that's what makes this game popular and somewhat hated at same time.

funny didn't realize there wasn't a forum section for each class with shit loads of builds in each section.

I think the way PoE is fine. It's not meant to be new player friendly. it's catered to players who are willing to put in the time, or smarter players who can adapt very quickly.

If you want easy play D3. It's a solid game but with a different approach than PoE.

Once you start spoon feeding "new players" (The type of new players that cannot find easy to answer questions that are available not only on the forums but like you have mentioned google and youtube).

I play this game very casually but i was able to easily find a wonderful guide that I have exclusively followed in the witch build forums, with minimal use of google and youtube. Being a new player that literally started to play only a week ago (i played shortly a few seasons ago but lost interest due to d3).

I pretty much knew shit about the game, found the answers I needed on the forums. Cleared normal and cruel. Working on merciless right now, then onto uber lab farming and mapping once i grind out dried lake. Stuck on cruel lab right now because I blow at dodging one shot mechanics from Izaro but I'll get him done.

Being a new player is not a valid excuse. I'm a new player and I don't use that as an excuse for being extremely bad and lazy. It doesn't take that much work I promise you.

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HammerofNatsu wrote:

Working on merciless right now, then onto uber lab farming and mapping once i grind out dried lake. Stuck on cruel lab right now because I blow at dodging one shot mechanics from Izaro but I'll get him done.

Being a new player is not a valid excuse. I'm a new player and I don't use that as an excuse for being extremely bad and lazy. It doesn't take that much work I promise you.

The trick to Izaro at any level is to make him use Leap Slam and Sword Slash on totem or Golem instead of you or dodge using Flame Dash skill (in your case) else you will die unless your lvl, defense and dmg makes fight trivial. Main principle is: Use skill - move. Don't stay in one spot, kite him around. Rinse and repeat. Are you using Flameblast build?