poor design choices

in the last 4 years, POE has gotten worse and worse imo. here's why i think that is:

- they remove fun mechanics from the game (cast on crit, shotguning)
- every patch they add something new, never removing anything. The game has gotten to a point where it's impossible to keep up with the changes unless playing POE is all you do, and it would take years and years for a new player to get the most basic of understandings of the game
- one of POE's signature features was that classes did not mean much, anybody could become anything. Not anymore, we now have specialized classes
- also balancing has gotten worse and worse with time, there are skills that are completely useless, and almost every patch there is a skill that's better than anything else. also energy shield used to have advantages and disadvantages over life based builds, but after the last nerf i really don't see any point in using ES

i'm really curious if anybody else feels the same way, or if it's just me. what are your thoughts?

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SwagBoss wrote:

in the last 4 years, POE has gotten worse and worse imo. here's why i think that is:

- they remove fun mechanics from the game (cast on crit, shotguning)
- every patch they add something new, never removing anything. The game has gotten to a point where it's impossible to keep up with the changes unless playing POE is all you do, and it would take years and years for a new player to get the most basic of understandings of the game
- one of POE's signature features was that classes did not mean much, anybody could become anything. Not anymore, we now have specialized classes
- also balancing has gotten worse and worse with time, there are skills that are completely useless, and almost every patch there is a skill that's better than anything else. also energy shield used to have advantages and disadvantages over life based builds, but after the last nerf i really don't see any point in using ES

i'm really curious if anybody else feels the same way, or if it's just me. what are your thoughts?

No doubt you are not alone in this. I mean, your list of "fun" skills pretty much corresponds with things changed because they were overpowered by GGG, so I'm absolutely certain the same folks complaining about the loss of double-dipping damage boosts, and the changes to vaal pact, etc, would agree with you.

"They never remove anything" is trivially false: harbinger orbs, for a start. League stone functions. If you mean simply skills, then yes, it seems like they made some decisions not to remove them.

However, your claim that new players would take "years and years" to get the "most basic of understandings of the game" sure seems wildly exaggerated. There isn't that much real complexity in the game and, despite the claims of the folks who can't do anything without their OP whatevers carrying them, you can complete plenty of the game and achieve many things without strictly following "the meta" or whatevs.

Your claims WRT balance, ascendency purpose, and ES changes seem to be special cases of the rest of your complaints.

Anyway, while I disagree with you, I'm sure others agree with you.

Now that we said that, was there a point to your question?

i was curious if this is a popular opinion or not, cause if it is, maybe there's a chance some of these things will be addressed. The years and years part was a bit exaggerated, i apologize. I'm only saying there are too many things overall that distract from the game. i don't really mean the game's getting worse, i dunno about that, but it's less fun for me.

They should have added league stones to stdard zana 8 and erase any artefact of old leagues in the story acts.

Imo there is too much shit around even in temp league.

"

SwagBoss wrote:

i was curious if this is a popular opinion or not, cause if it is, maybe there's a chance some of these things will be addressed.

Ah. Generally speaking, no, the things that have changed are very unlikely to ever change back.

If nothing else, people don't like going back to the way things were, if that was bad, and they changed it to make it better. Even if the new way is worse, they are much more likely to try a third option than go back to the original one.

So, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that all. :)