My journey and map difficulty problem

Hello everyone.

I will try to write my thoughts on this great game when i first started playing it, and coming back to it after a while.

The beginning

I have been a gamer since my childhood, playing all sorts of games for fun, while also had my share of competitive play during times of Quake 3 and different other games.

Looking back through all the games i played, i actually consider my self very lucky in the regards of playing the best best games of different genres. Of course i still play games, but to much less extent that i used to.

I have also always immensely enjoy playing all kinds of frp and/or arp games like baldur's gate, never-winter nights, torment, diablo series etc etc.. Games where starting weak, then getting stronger through experience, items, while defeating harder and harder content were always fun and engaging.


Diablo 2

I consider diablo 2 as a pinnacle in hack and slash games. Its biggest flaw, imo, was no end game content and a lack of difficulty.

I still remember playing with friends on a lan through a mod which simulated 10 players in game, so it increased the difficulty of the game, even though it was still way too easy. Playing without it for me was a joke. Even then i remember talking with friends about dungeons that could scale in difficulty each time you complete them.

Diablo 3

Moving forward, diablo 3 came. Of course i played the game, and had mixed feelings about it.

It was a fun game, lacking end game content. It was later added in a way of greater rifts, progressively increasing difficultly dungeons. The further the harder, a nice addition.

But problems of no trading, lack of specs, bad itemization... where you could go from "cant kill a mob" to a "killing machine" when equipping an item, became too much of a problem too quickly.

I became bored of it, and i' ve heard a friend talking about poe, a game what diablo 3 should of been.

Poe installed

I started playing poe with introduction of the legacy league. At the time i had no idea what a league actually is, and looking back to me it was the best league i have played until today.

I have never enjoyed leveling my character beyond first few times. To me, it was always a pain. I usually create a character in my mind, and start working towards its completion. When i complete my basic build, having skills and tree i imagined, it actually starts getting more and more fun.

Because of it, end game content for me is the most important aspect of the game. Playing the highest tier of maps and defeating the hardest bosses is the most engaging and fun to me, while at the same time reaping rewards and min-maxing to certain extent i feel is necessary to complete it.

If the build i create have too much difficulty doing T16(bosses) - shaper - uberelder , and there is very little it can improve, goal is done. And by that i mean defeating corrupted high end maps. It was always funny to me people saying "end game viable" meaning it can do white t16.
My self could care less about it.

Problem

And this is actually where the problem i have comes from. In legacy i took on the great beast of learning poe as much as i could, and being familiar with this kind of game play i managed to complete my atlas and defeat all end game quite fast.

I have injected a lot of time in it, ofcourse. Since in most cases i create builds my self, luckily the build i played worked much better then i expected. I defeated guardians, and as my final goal, defeated all the rest of unique maps, and finally, shaper.

I still remember how i was reading that T16 guardians maps and shaper are the final end game. The hardest. I was getting ready doing T11-T15, and finally said ok, lets try T16 map. I think it was phoenix. Alched, and corrupted. My heart was racing. I moved slowly, attacked and.. Everything died instantly..

Well.. Maybe further down the line, it will get harder.. Nop.. I breezed easily like it was tier 5, or tier 10, or tier 15 map. Major dissapointment.

When doing the said map i remembered a post when someone said that he is scared of a certain rare monster affixes. What affixes ? Oh wait, i remember. Monsters actually have affixes, but i never noticed because everything dies so fast anyway.

Moving forward, i completed guardians, and shaper in the end. And stopped playing the league. Bosses were more satisfying, specially shaper.

But my problem is not that much with the bosses, but with monsters in map.

I played bestiary for around two weeks. The league was not to my liking, having a zoo is not to my liking, and catching monsters with nets is not to my liking.

Right before 3.0 came i ve taken some pause and was not around when 3.0 came. I was excited to see new things, but even before bestiary was released i remember thinking to my self - why on earth would they made special HO where you can look your captured beasts ? And more useless crafting.

But the reason i stopped playing was actually because i couldnt sustain map drops they way i wanted and because of uber elder RNG spawn.
Yes i could buy high tier map, but the amount of AFK people on trade made that impossible.

I also like to tackle end game content by my own progression, buying as little as possible. Going back from T14 maps to T10 was no fun. If people like to play it that way, fine. I wont.

After reading how much trouble people have spawning uber elder i am glad i didnt give in and actually tried to progress until end end game.

And there i was, league done in two weeks, not because my build was done, but because i didnt get the tools needed to complete my build like i ve always done. I was already thinking about 3.3.

But then i started thinking. Why would i even play it? Where is the challenge ? That uber-elder fight that is the only one i haven't done yet ? Breezing through the maps over and over again and again, either being T5 or T15 map.

And i am actually considering to stop playing POE unless something about end game difficulty is drastically changed. So

Please consider

* Creating end game that is actually end game worthy, not only few bosses.

* To progress from T11-T16 should be extremely more difficult, especially monsters leading up to map boss. (For example for T16 map, the whole experience of a T16 map should be considered T16 difficulty and not only boss)
Monsters, specially in high tier maps, should be extremely more dangerous with much higher effective health pool.

* Try to reduce speed. Currently everyone is running like maniacs, 1-hitting the whole screen and running like a maniac again.

* Bosses should be more rewarding, and harder as well.

* Consider implementing different scaling solutions to increase monster difficulty, so i can actually stop and check the affixes of the monsters, because they mean something. Current map affixes just dont do much to increase difficulty in general.

* Consider implementing some kind of infinite tower dungeon, each floor is a different map, scaling in difficulty each time you descend further.


Conclusion

Poe is a great game, to me currently the best arpg game out there. But more needs to be done in case of end game difficulty, specially in high tier maps.

And i am actually quite a casual gamer these days..

Special shout to Kelvynn and his posts, great read, recommend everyone to read it as well, about uber elder RNG and maps drops in general.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2111499
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2131008


Thanks for listening!

Too late for that. Too many speed farmers rolling ranger and stacking quantity gear. If monsters become harder their builds will crumble and since they compose a good chunk of the constantly active player base........

Well it seems i have gotten almost no response, which is sad, and thanks Johny for your response.

I can either assume there will be no changes to the difficulty i have mentioned, or players are simply satisfied with current state of the game, which i can respect.

Sadly, time is passing by and i have decided not to play poe further. I see no reason of running maps where monsters instantly die, and i am actually surprised people continue to enjoy this kind of easy content.

Until poe team injects some kind of difficulty curve, farewell.

It is otherwise a great game.

There are different kinds of players. Some people like you or me like killing uber bosses, others like running T11s mindlessly.

PoE is more like game for second category. As for me my only goal remaining is killing Uber Elder, and I'm done with this game too. Top content is not rewarding and these is not enough difficult bosses too. Even drastically increasing T13-15 bosses difficlulty could partially solve this problem. Also bosses drop should be increased in comparison with trash (like 50/50, not 5/95 like now).

I'm disappointed with this game design philosophy.