Path of Exile, Gameplay Criticism

A really good video. Thank you, OP.

I especially like the way you summed up the "roflstomp annihilation vs instadeath" extremes in that horizontal red bar and showed the small green sweet-spot area. This has been annoying me ever more in POE. They've added so many possible damage multipliers to both monsters and players that I feel that sweet spot gets ever smaller and the game truly becomes what Chris advocated all those years ago in a interview. I'll paraphrase, as I'm too lazy to search for it:

"I want those "oh shit moments". The player is going along mindlessly, watching a TV show and not really concentrating on the game and suddenly -bam! - he gets a wake up call."

I have always heartily hated that vision for a game. To me it means "it's too boring most of the time, but every once in a while, you will run into an unavoidable (and thus extremely frustrating) death". It has become worse and worse over the years: As player power multiplied, the boring roflstomp phases became ever longer and as monsters got ever more multipliers as well, the "oh shit" moments became ever less survivable.

And it's simple math. All told, there are more than a dozen damage multipliers which can apply: Map mods, ailments, curses, nemesis auras, crits, etc... which means if the stars align, one hit can be 50 times as strong as an average hit. 10 times average is kinda common, 20X not super rare. There can be no reliably exciting, tactical gameplay in that case because if you can survive a hit for 20X damage, then you are utterly bored by the X damage you get most of the time. And if 5X damage is edgy for your build, a 20X hit will kill you, no doubt about it. That is daft, as it either forces players into boring grinding or gives them the feeling of the game cheating them.
Couple that with designing around ALT+F4, poor visuals and a death penalty without a combat log and you will alienate a large part of the ARPG player market.

I believe in the balancing goal of the death penalty, but do also see its negative side effects. I like your ideas of looking into various alternatives. Forget the zealots, they will try to interpret anything you say about the DP as "trying to cop out and diablorize the game" just to sound more leet.
Your suggestions are interesting, though I doubt anyone will come up with a more simple method which does the job of forcing at least some defense into players. And so the less imaginative people on this forum will always say "DP is the only way to go". Oh well...

Thank you for your effort, OP!
May your maps be bountiful, exile
Oh, and one more point I forgot: I believe all monsters to be pretty well tuned.

It's just that you're never fighting only a few of them and there is no mechanic which prevents a dozen monsters from flicker-striking you at once. Or for the chaff to block your way in a narrow passage while that hard hitter guns you down at range. I'm thinking of those weird delve-hounds that burst me down within a second or two. Exciting on their own, and make for a good fight. But when the whole screen is full of effects and blocking bodies in narrow corridors, they can cause really unfair deaths. Unless you are geared to the max, abusing some broken FOTM mechanics or only play at shallow depths, which is boring.

There is ever less middle ground in POE.
May your maps be bountiful, exile
The problem with recovering your body for a chunk of xp is you can easily get into a rhythm, sacrificing a few bodies per portion of XP, which effectively allows you to mitigate the game's difficulty spikes and continue to progress when your gear and skill isn't on the level.

Usually when you die enough to lose hours of work the game is telling you A. Your build needs to evolve, or B. Your skill needs to evolve.

Usually it's a combination of both.

The system is beautiful because it slaps you down until you have evolved as a player.



Last edited by PathxofxDante on Jan 16, 2019, 7:13:18 PM
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Usually when you die enough to lose hours of work the game is telling you A. Your build needs to evolve, or B. Your skill needs to evolve.

Usually it's a combination of both.


That is utter bullshit. My deaths usually revolve around stutter and lagspikes -or- getting too tired of grinding XP to pay enough attention to map mods, on-death effects in a narrow corridor or some such BS. There's nothing to learn, either, since you just played the same map for the 20th time with slightly different mods. The grind on levels 95+ is so goddamn boring it makes you wonder why the hell a player can't be allowed to have actual fun in this game unless he makes a tradeoff with leveling progress.

At 60-70 % to next level one is waiting lvl up to actually play the game. Until that moment it's a chore because at highest levels PoE absolutely de-incentivizes trying really hard stuff mid leveling a character. And it gets only worse after level 95+. It's all grinding and anticipation of possible lagspikes. There is no reliability in game to justify it which OP correctly pointed out in his video.

Ironically the lagspikes get proportionally worse the harder content one gets to.
Last edited by vmt80 on Jan 16, 2019, 8:01:57 PM
double post
Last edited by vmt80 on Jan 16, 2019, 7:58:37 PM
Let's grant that the current death penalty has all of the positive qualities attributed to it in this thread.

What makes the current death penalty unique in granting these qualities? Hypothetically, couldn't a completely different penalty, or even a higher penalty like 20% or 30% or 100% also have those qualities?

Are you in favor of somehow preventing ALT-F4 from being used to avoid death?

Are you in favor of making the penalty apply consistently, even to low level characters, and even if it means losing levels?

Last edited by Khalixxa on Jan 16, 2019, 8:28:55 PM
What is retarded in penalty is the regression mechanic: defenders of the penalty can rejoice all day how it gives them greatest of qualities mankind could ever acquire, but at least other half of the playerbase hates regression mechanics -which is also why this other half won't touch HC.

If the intention was to slow down zerging or incentivize good play -as some have pretended the purpose of current system to be- you could still entirely ditch regression mechanic and make it so a character can't zerg on upon death. You could, for example, add a death timer that punishes zerging. There are ways that aren't by design character regressing punishments.

But f*ck that, I'm done with this subject.
"
vmt80 wrote:
"
Usually when you die enough to lose hours of work the game is telling you A. Your build needs to evolve, or B. Your skill needs to evolve.

Usually it's a combination of both.


That is utter bullshit. My deaths usually revolve around stutter and lagspikes -or- getting too tired of grinding XP to pay enough attention to map mods, on-death effects in a narrow corridor or some such BS. There's nothing to learn, either, since you just played the same map for the 20th time with slightly different mods. The grind on levels 95+ is so goddamn boring it makes you wonder why the hell a player can't be allowed to have actual fun in this game unless he makes a tradeoff with leveling progress.

At 60-70 % to next level one is waiting lvl up to actually play the game. Until that moment it's a chore because at highest levels PoE absolutely de-incentivizes trying really hard stuff mid leveling a character. And it gets only worse after level 95+. It's all grinding and anticipation of possible lagspikes. There is no reliability in game to justify it which OP correctly pointed out in his video.

Ironically the lagspikes get proportionally worse the harder content one gets to.


Interesting position. I have noticed big lagspikes in groups of 6 when the screen is overloaded with particle effects. But solo and duo even trios are manageable.

Making the game easier because you get tired while grinding isn't exactly ideal. I think more content for the 90+ grind would be the ideal solution.
Yup, the gameplay is indeed brainless and without a proper death penalty it'll be even more brainless.
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鬼殺し wrote:
"
SisterBlister wrote:


"I want those "oh shit moments". The player is going along mindlessly, watching a TV show and not really concentrating on the game and suddenly -bam! - he gets a wake up call."


I can confirm Chris still feels this way, having heard him say something very similar barely a few weeks ago. I still take him to task for saying 'I want PoE to be a game you can play while watching TV' because out of context, that sure as hell sounds like less of a trap and more of an admission of how brainless the actual gameplay is if you stick to the meta...but it rang untrue with me. There's no way you make this much effort with a game (or a book, or an album, or whatever) and then say you want it to be something people can do half-heartedly or while distracted.


Yeah, that quote has always made me go "Uh, what?" because one would hope he's passionate about the game and wants people engaged with it.

I worry if a game truly is made to be played while having your attention divided that it becomes the worst forms of mundane and routine.
Last edited by Jackalope_Gaming on Jan 16, 2019, 9:54:47 PM

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