Being a mediocre player gets you nowhere in POE

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I agree on that, to certain degree (actually, playing HC properly in PoE just means you should stay out of any dangerm because taking risk is never worth it. But not all players can accept hardcore mode, where you lose character with a single mistake, RNG coinscience, IP lag, PC hangout, electricity shutdown, etc. I like playing PC games exactly because i DONT LOSE EVERYTHING from a single mistake. It discourages risk and experimenting, and i like to take risks with significant chance to fail, it's far more interesting than 100% safe gameplay without any risk involved, that makes you fall asleep after 1-2 hours.

This is not entirely true. Many HC players take risks - I'm for example running Atzoatls lvl 82. That is by no means entirely safe and I include kills of Omnitec.
It's just about assessing which risks you can handle and having skill to try to somehow rescue yourself when you start failing - e.g. boss fight goes badly. And I even don't use log out macro.

And I'm pretty sure that many HC players do the same. As when you reach certain gear lvl it's time to test it against hard content.

Playing HC is certainly not risk free, we just don't go against contents headlessly.

About boss runs: Atziri is still profitable. So is Shaper. So are the guardians. So is Elder. It is because of the specific items they drop and you can find nowhere else.

Now, why are map bosses skipped so much? You got it right, because their loot is not special in any way! Even the exclusive +2 map drop can now drop normally because of atlas bonus. If you want the 150+ map bosses to be farmable you must introduce boss specific rewards for them, something which is very hard to achieve and honestly is it even needed?

Besides, when Breach came out GGG said it was their most popular league. Why? Certainly not because of the breachlords(which are also very farmable by the way) but because of the feeling of killing dozens of monsters and looking at the loot dropping everywhere. Its not like everybody hates clear speed.

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Johny_Snow wrote:

Its mostly looking for pity or justifying their own ineptitude at the game. Why else bring achievements to show that the average player doesn't even reach maps? Then bringing up age like old folks are disabled and cant play or something. The whole charade is an insult to gamers tbh, I am pretty sure we can do better than what the "6%" guys are insinuating.

See, reading comprehension should not be this difficult if English is the primary language of those involved.

Earlier, I was trying to tell someone they probably underpriced their lvl 4 empower. Even after specifically stating 5c or 4.5ex the only response I got was my ho.

It wasn't until I actually put 5c in the window that they were like what, albeit tho the first item in the window was something completely different before putting in the empower. Frankly I'm not sure if they were trying to rip someone off or just misclicked.

I had no expectation of actually making the purchase, I was simply trying to ask someone if they mispriced their item. Even after asking twice it wasn't until the 5c was in the window that it clicked for the player. Even if there was a language barrier, 5c vs 4.5ex is easy to read between the rest of an indiscernible language. Instead it was just a glaring reminder that people don't read.

Aside from maybe the OP, no one was actually looking for pity or justifying this glaring ineptitude. The reality is that you'll find players at both ends of the spectrum in any game, whether its poe, or even minesweeper. The insult is that people lack the comprehension skills to realize that when other people are explaining how they enjoy the game, the former fail to accept that not everyone plays the same.

Instead they assume "your fun is wrong".

I'm currently mapping in incursion, but I have little motivation to do so. In comparison to the same time in league in beastiary I was much farther along and already had plenty of currency to work with. After both beastiary and flashback, there's simply not enough in incursion to motivate me to push hard - that's not ineptitude, its a lack of desire.

Some people totally enjoy the game, but their time is limited so they don't have the luxury of restarting after 4 days, let alone grinding said 4 days straight. Doesn't mean they aren't gamers, they just have things to do.

The thing poelitists don't seem to understand is when they make "declarations of superiority", in reality they're just making themselves look foolish in front of the rest of us.

I think it's easier to simplify like this. The truly elite recognize that there is a spectrum of players and that for there to be top players means there's an opposite end of the spectrum.

Most of these elite have no need to put down less accomplished players since they don't have to prove their superiority.

If there's an opposite end of the spectrum, then that leaves everyone else in between.

The "poel33tist" is a negative reference to people narcissistic in nature and choose to ignore the experiences of anyone else but their own little niche. You'll see "regular" elitism come out anytime a player posts in gameplay how they're struggling. Poelitist folk on the other hand tend to believe the game should revolve around what they want, all the while unwilling to accept that people can enjoy the game in ways they would not.

Getting to maps in SC doesn't say anything about skill. In Diablo 2, if you failed a boss fight it reset, In PoE you can just bumrush till its done. Indicating that such a low percentage makes it to maps isn't about skill, but how much of the populace is motivated to progress to that point.

Some people get bored and go back to standard. Some people get bored after running through the acts. Some people make new characters. Some people like quantity over quality.

If you're going to comment over a conversation - it really helps to understand the actual topics at hand.

Understand what? That you are making assumptions for everybody? That you try to throw terms around you are making up definitions for on the fly? That apparently having no idea how to play the game is the norm and average?

Ok, let me give you an example and settle this once and for all because at this point it is getting ridiculous.

Lets say I and a newer player follow the same build, a build where leveling, gems and gear are clearly outlined. What the difference is going to be? I am going to level up slightly faster and get better gear through trading, all because of experience. But the difference isn't going to be something huge. It'll be very easy for everyone to follow instructions and reach the end game if they are committed enough to learn.

Now lets use league of legends or overwatch in the same example. There are plenty of guides out there, plenty of videos teaching the basics of a chosen hero/champion, plenty of streams to show what playing at the high level is like. So lets suppose you put someone "elite" as you call them and a newbie at the same hero and watch them perform. The newbie of course would have learned the basics and would know what build to go for. What is gonna be the difference? Chances are its going to be massive, someone who developed their gaming skills would have a clear advantage over someone new who has the theory but lacks the reactions/judgement to apply it properly. They'll need months, perhaps even years to perfect it and most of them wont even reach the high level because their skills simply wont reach this far.

Now why is that? Why the massive difference in player experience? Why one genre offers coaching while the other doesn't?

Simple, one game is PvE and by the nature of PvE is very predictable and linear. The other is PvP, a dynamic gameplay environment where you need to constantly keep your skills fresh while adapting to the meta.

This is why I consider your stance and definitions of average players and elites in PoE a joke. There are 2 things elites have - they know how to flip items/currency and they most likely have more time on their hands. This is it, there is no huge skill advantage to prevent a new player from reaching and playing at the highest level. Even knowledge is eliminated by the numerous guides and educational videos floating around.

Thus the whole argument that the average player is some complete scrub who knows nothing is false. Its their own fault they know nothing much like the OP and how badly he build his character.

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Filousov wrote:

This is not entirely true. Many HC players take risks - I'm for example running Atzoatls lvl 82. That is by no means entirely safe and I include kills of Omnitec.
It's just about assessing which risks you can handle and having skill to try to somehow rescue yourself when you start failing - e.g. boss fight goes badly. And I even don't use log out macro.

And I'm pretty sure that many HC players do the same. As when you reach certain gear lvl it's time to test it against hard content.

Playing HC is certainly not risk free, we just don't go against contents headlessly.

"

Destructodave wrote:

I can honestly say the most fun I've ever had in this game is when running Dominus was viable. I cant remember the exact league, it was early on, but out of all my years playing PoE, that was the most fun league/time I had.

Because it offered choices outside of mapping. Mapping was for character progression, plowing Dominus was for gear/relaxation.

Just having the option to go farm him and it not be a complete waste of time after I was burned out of running my 100th map ad nauseum was a nice feeling.

I had a jacked up shadow I made I converted into a Magic Find guy. Stacked to the gills with Magic find and cast on death portal. I just ran in there, beat on dominus until he managed to land something through Acrobatics/Dodge/Block, got 1 shot, took portal till dead. Collect loot.

It was incredibly relaxing and kept me playing the game far longer than I've played any other league.

Now you dont have that choice. Lab is too convoluted and annoying. Its like its made just to piss you off cause you want to do boss runs, and they don't want you to do boss runs, and if you do, you are gonna deal with this bullshit of Lab to do it.

The end-game needs options like that instead of just grinding maps ad nauseum or wiping you ass with 60 grit sandpaper, which is what he Lab is like.

Both of these show people enjoying the game a "different way".

HC regulars have a different mindset, and "semi-perma death" increases their enjoyment to offset the downside. Even SSF players have a different perspective and thus would rather find things on their own and forego the "convenience" of trade.

A lot of people are not fond of lab. Some people completely specialize in it. I think it's a fair trade-off for ascendency where others wish it was completely gone.

I mean the reason boss running was a thing in games like D2 was because anything less had such a low drop chance for anything of value there was no point. I still remember teleporting around Act 3 Hell just to nuke Meph repeatedly just hoping to get something reasonably worthwhile. Baal running was a thing but you still had to clear several waves after hitting the throne room - he could drop almost everything in the game, but unless you were motivated to get in the high 90s plus, there were other targets more farmable and less time-consuming.

Oh I see... you're basically taking offense that not all gamers are created equal.

I'm guessing you were never an mmo player or you wouldn't assume this high level of competency for the average player.

Since you are familiar with league, we can go with league classes.

EDIT - I've also included a MMO reference to PVE content to show why pve predictability is invalid. Experiences fellow mmo players are likely familiar with - End Edit

The percentages are according to leagueofgraphs.com soloque 6-15-2018


Bronze - 17.16
Silver - 47.41
Gold - 25.10
Plat - 8.33
Diamond - 1.94
Master - .03
Challenger - .02

Notice that there is no "equal" distribution across the ranks, with almost half falling somewhere in silver and over 60% of the populace is silver or LOWER.

Gold is just barely above silver yet just barely a quarter of the populace qualify.

Plat players are the top 10%, and by the time you're at master and challenger less than 1 percent of the populace qualify.

There are hundreds if not thousands of guides with videos and other tools available. And while there are clearly more variables in LoL, they alone aren't the reason that such a small percentage of players are ranked higher than the masses.

As far as MMO players go, the skill gap and basic competency levels tend to more blatant as one person failing horribly is hard to miss when teamwork is required to complete an objective. In MMOs the difficulty level or rating dictates the minimum competency level for all members, in which the easiest content you can often carry several unskilled players and the hardest requires every member to be extremely proficient in their role as one mistake could wipe the entire party/group. Even with guides/tools, not everything clicks as easy from person to person. I still remember having to stop a raid to explain to two separate guildmates a basic rotation as they were doing so poorly that the rest of the team couldn't compensate despite the fact we were doing the easy faceroll content. (In faceroll content, as long as folks are "capable", there's plenty of room for people to make mistakes or intentionally screw up.)

Going back to the OP of this thread - being a mediocre player means you never finish 40 challenges and you don't have a stash full of goodies to trade for mass currency. It doesn't mean you can't have expensive stuff, but the more invested one is in certain items, the far less they invest in others. The biggest challenge of being mediocre is simply not having caviar tastes on a burger king budget.

I mean, I rather type out lengthy responses to mostly people that don't actually care just to avoid farming for currency.

But to end on a "happier" note - A video of someone failing to follow a very simple instruction.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/G6pfD29s-FY

There is a big difference between a MMO and Path of Exile. MMOs have raids and other high level PvE content which requires teamwork, PoE doesn't. MMOs have strong PvP content, PoE doesn't. Both raids and PvP raise the complexity and entry requirements but since PoE doesn't have them it cant be compared.

"

Going back to the OP of this thread - being a mediocre player means you never finish 40 challenges and you don't have a stash full of goodies to trade for mass currency. It doesn't mean you can't have expensive stuff, but the more invested one is in certain items, the far less they invest in others. The biggest challenge of being mediocre is simply not having caviar tastes on a burger king budget.

Not entirely true. Even a mediocre, hell even a bad player can luck out and get a ton of currency.

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SeCKSEgai wrote:

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Filousov wrote:

This is not entirely true. Many HC players take risks - I'm for example running Atzoatls lvl 82. That is by no means entirely safe and I include kills of Omnitec.
It's just about assessing which risks you can handle and having skill to try to somehow rescue yourself when you start failing - e.g. boss fight goes badly. And I even don't use log out macro.

And I'm pretty sure that many HC players do the same. As when you reach certain gear lvl it's time to test it against hard content.

Playing HC is certainly not risk free, we just don't go against contents headlessly.

"

Destructodave wrote:

I can honestly say the most fun I've ever had in this game is when running Dominus was viable. I cant remember the exact league, it was early on, but out of all my years playing PoE, that was the most fun league/time I had.

Because it offered choices outside of mapping. Mapping was for character progression, plowing Dominus was for gear/relaxation.

Just having the option to go farm him and it not be a complete waste of time after I was burned out of running my 100th map ad nauseum was a nice feeling.

I had a jacked up shadow I made I converted into a Magic Find guy. Stacked to the gills with Magic find and cast on death portal. I just ran in there, beat on dominus until he managed to land something through Acrobatics/Dodge/Block, got 1 shot, took portal till dead. Collect loot.

It was incredibly relaxing and kept me playing the game far longer than I've played any other league.

Now you dont have that choice. Lab is too convoluted and annoying. Its like its made just to piss you off cause you want to do boss runs, and they don't want you to do boss runs, and if you do, you are gonna deal with this bullshit of Lab to do it.

The end-game needs options like that instead of just grinding maps ad nauseum or wiping you ass with 60 grit sandpaper, which is what he Lab is like.

Both of these show people enjoying the game a "different way".

HC regulars have a different mindset, and "semi-perma death" increases their enjoyment to offset the downside. Even SSF players have a different perspective and thus would rather find things on their own and forego the "convenience" of trade.

A lot of people are not fond of lab. Some people completely specialize in it. I think it's a fair trade-off for ascendency where others wish it was completely gone.

I mean the reason boss running was a thing in games like D2 was because anything less had such a low drop chance for anything of value there was no point. I still remember teleporting around Act 3 Hell just to nuke Meph repeatedly just hoping to get something reasonably worthwhile. Baal running was a thing but you still had to clear several waves after hitting the throne room - he could drop almost everything in the game, but unless you were motivated to get in the high 90s plus, there were other targets more farmable and less time-consuming.

Also, I hate the concept of spending currency or having to trade just to run a boss like Atziri/Uber/Shaper.

They may exist, but they have artificial layers in front of you causing you more work just to do them for a chance at something. Gambling.

I guess its just how tedious it all is, like leveling masters for the 100th time. In my previous example, when I was done doing the tedious stuff, mapping for levels, I could just jump on my Magic find guy, have no barrier to entry besides running to him, killing him, seeing what dropped, repeat. It was different than mapping, was more like Fishing. I just did it to wind down, basically. Now? Oh you wanna do Lab? Lets go trade for uber keys and spend tons of time in there with traps and junk, lets go trade for atziri fragments, lets go get map frags for shaper, etc. Its annoying.

You would think with how shitty the entire trade system is in this game they would stop making you participate in it so heavily just to do anything.

I mean if I was to describe this system to someone outside the game, they would just laugh. You have to "gamble" to do anything. Then, you have to use their antiquated trading system that is pure shit to get the stuff to do it.

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鬼殺し wrote:

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Destructodave wrote:

I mean if I was to describe this system to someone outside the game, they would just laugh. You have to "gamble" to do anything. Then, you have to use their antiquated trading system that is pure shit to get the stuff to do it.

Give it a go though. It's pretty hilarious. And then they'll ask 'so why do you still play this game?' and you'll either lie through your teeth or admit you just haven't figured out how to stop.

Well, if only they kept interesting & challenging gameplay content, build diversity, good itemization and progression, and optimized game engine - then i might forgive them even antiquated trade system and total RNG reliance.
1. I cant accept that PoE allows (and encourages) so ridiculous clearspeed, that enemy abilities (except "on-death" ones) no longer matter, and players dont bother picking up even quite valuable loot like Orbs of Alteration. I enjoy slower gameplay, not some "oneshot-fest".
2. I cant accept, that rare items arent worth time to be picked up and identified, even despite with PROPER rolls they can make god-tier item. The odds for that are so low, that players simply dont bother. If they TRULY want to make a game with superior clearspeed (like i said in 1.), then "junk" shouldnt drop at all, or should be easily "filtered out" by itemfilters.
3. I can accept, how unoptimized their game engine is. Even modern gaming PCs can experience FPS lags in parties, or using certain builds. It's completely unccaptable considering online naature of the game (so enemies dont "lag" with you) and its total reliance on clearspeed, where even the smallest delay can be fatal.
4. I cant accept, that enemies are far too slow and clunky for "clearspeed game", and rather look like "XP globes". There are other games, where you are meant to oneshot enemies, or be oneshotted - Super Mario, for example. But Super Mario isnt an easy game (even though you oneshot everything), and you have to dodge tons of crap even from trash, to survive. In PoE, you just shoot before enemies react, and kill them.
5. I cant accept, that all interesting content is locked behind boring grinding of lower-level content and massive currency usage. Instead of using your currency on upgrading your gear, you have to spend it over and over again simply to have access to content (even if you faceroll it). Other say it's locked behind RNG, but it isnt really true. Over LONG RUN, you have to grind tons of ~T10-T13 maps to get some T14-T16 maps, even if you spend a lot of currency (or just buy maps from others, paying them for farming those lower-level maps). Same (or even worse) with Shaper, Elder, Atziri, and so on.

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Johny_Snow wrote:

There is a big difference between a MMO and Path of Exile. MMOs have raids and other high level PvE content which requires teamwork, PoE doesn't. MMOs have strong PvP content, PoE doesn't. Both raids and PvP raise the complexity and entry requirements but since PoE doesn't have them it cant be compared.

"

Going back to the OP of this thread - being a mediocre player means you never finish 40 challenges and you don't have a stash full of goodies to trade for mass currency. It doesn't mean you can't have expensive stuff, but the more invested one is in certain items, the far less they invest in others. The biggest challenge of being mediocre is simply not having caviar tastes on a burger king budget.

Not entirely true. Even a mediocre, hell even a bad player can luck out and get a ton of currency.

See, you've been arguing that the average Poe player is skilled, and then in this response you're saying you can't compare poe to other games because they require more "skill"....


The complexity of an MMO isn't all that different, mechanics are mechanics regardless of game. The better you understand mechanics, the better you perform. The better one understands mechanics, the better decisions said player can make.

Pvp is generally considered a different dynamic, especially given that some games have different rulesets just for pvp while others are the same for pvp or pve.

But as far as complexity.... the best way I'd some up raiding is dps following a rotation, healers helping sustain and saving people from mistakes while tanks hold agro and swap as needed while dealing with fight mechanics.

Ultimately, Poe isn't any different than solo play as damage. You spam skills over and over as the situation requires and try to avoid taking damage that would put you down. Both game types are heavily invested in gearing, and damage mechanics are similar in complexity. I still get annoyed that more/less is vastly different from increase/decrease in this game.

But let's go back to that league chart. Just because a player is silver doesn't mean they can't kill a diamond - it's the fact that the diamond has a better understanding and is able to consistently use the knowledge to his/her advantage. A silver player can play like a diamond some games, and as bad as a bronze in others, but over time is effectively at a "silver" level.

It's not that the average poe player isn't capable - it's just unrealistic to think the average player in the same light as someone who earns money from people watching them play a video game. Just because the percentage hitting maps is low doesn't mean that all who fail to can't beat the bosses - this game allows you to die virtually endlessly in an act boss fight.

It's more a reflection that with so many players, some may spend hours at a time and progress smoothly, others will struggle horrendously while some will simply play sporadically when they manage to have free time.