So, I just uninstalled PoE today.

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鬼殺し wrote:

Meanwhile every other significant up-and-coming ARPG (all two of them) has clearly defined class skills and passive skill progression logical to the character's development because, surprise surprise, those devs play PoE too.

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Nosferat wrote:

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andreicde wrote:

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Shagsbeard wrote:

I agree with many of your complaints, and quitting is always an option.

If you find something that replaces PoE, come back and tell us about it.

Grim Dawn. They are also releasing a new DLC in 10 days. It will not be free like POE's league, but it will certainly be worth more than the MTX from POE.

Grim dawn for me is....a sort of MEH. As in yes, it works for a while, I did play it, I don't even know, 150 maybe 180-200 hours over the years?

Thing is it does not have the same replayability as poe, I like that it does not go for the sonic CLEARSPEED meta that poe lately implemented, but unfortunately it needs to add more and more content.

I don't need new content every 3 months, but I do need it at least once or twice a year.

Titan quest was one of my main diablo alternatives back in the day, together with sacred 1 and 2 and who could forget NOX or Loki?, but those times have passed, grim dawn even if it wants to be "grim" still has many titan quest elements in it, if the dev team would go for even grittier and darker content+more frequent content releases, I would quit POE this second.

In all honesty I would want more a sacred revival than a titan quest renamed grim dawn resurrection. Yes I know ,the sacred series was not "grim" or "dark" but it had a lot of satire in it, and something that somehow made me play not hundreds but thousands of hours.

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Ghai wrote:

When I started in open beta, I remember I called a friend who used to play with me D2. I told him that I found a game that took D2, and took it to the next 2 levels.

No more need to transfer stuff. No more need to join a room (trade 1) and open a trade screen with "WUG".

You can in theory play a melee "sorceress" or a magic "barb".

at least in theory. It was fresh. well thought of.

But what was truly inventive was the idea of Trade Offs.
Trade offs were limiting your character. They forced you to specialize, and suffer the consequences of it - forcing you to ease on damage to deal with these weaknesses. This is why people partied and played together. This is why solo game was rare. This is why people played slowly and thought every step they took, because this game was unforgiving if you didn't.

I will address 3 issues that served as the basis for the death of POE. They were all different sides of imposed trade offs, that were removed. When these removed, power-creep went in. WIth it, damage buff to monsters. The game became polarized, 1 hit KO for both sides. Making this game into a Path of Energy blasts.

The areas that by removing them, the meta-clear speed game was born are:
1. Removing limiting weaknesses from "archetypes"
2. Removing mechanics that made you think carefully
3. Making defenses obselete.

A short sighted thinking ignored the main idea of this game - trade offs. Want something? pay the price.


Removing all limiters.

Limiting mechanics were inherent to each "type".
Trade offs defined your character. You could sacrifice erratic damage output in favor of a more stable but more limited one (RT). Why it was necessary? accuracy was hard to get by. So people were forced to go RT if they played on the left side.

You had only strength? you had Mana issues. Wanna go around that? OK no mana and mana problems for you. But, you have no auras. want Auras? enjoy your small life pool. So, people went blood magic, knowing that they gonna have a huge life pool, no mana problem but very limited number or auras (back then 4 auras were not a dream).

wanna play CI? great choice my friend. But if you will not have certain uniques, you will most certainly stun and freeze to death. So, you had to have a "Dream Fragments" and Eye of Chayula. Taking your ammy and a ring slot away.

Wanted high damage? crit is your ally. But, you'd better start on the right side of the tree. And if you do that, you would have to deal with the following:
lower life pool
Lower reach (E.G daggers and claws) forcing you to get closer to monsters due to low weapon range
And low physical damage mitigation (no strength for armor).

wanna deal with that? stack defenses and play wisely. You had mechanics to help you get close and survive, but not for long. So you had to be agile, and smart. Engaging a pack carefully. Maybe set a "smoke mine" hit and escape. HHAHAHA today only to think about smoke mine makes me laugh.


Wanted some cool magics? great. Please go down to the right side of the tree if you want to pierce in a consistent manner. Wanted more defense? life? go down to the left please. Those forced you to plan carefully and leg go of many damage nodes.

But the most important limiting factor thing was AOE vs Damage.

In the beginning, lasers were not very good for parties - the main way people played.

I remember melee guys (don't remember when melee splash got into play), would hit very few monsters, with high damage, as you could see the Lightning Arrow people (that is what everyone played back then), hitting everything while doing minimal damage in parties. so they were not the meta.

You could not eat the cake and leave it whole. You had to choose. One way people dealt with it, was parties. Another, choosing their own battles.

But slowly they removed these limiters. They made it easier to tackle these weaknesses, without much or without any investment.

Items
It used to be very rare to have a BIS item.
This was THE game of strategic choosing. No more OP runewords.
want a good item?

1. Rares had the potential to be better than any unique (today it only applies probably to rings and belts (the one with the jewel socket only)). and we all know RNG is a bitch.

2. Wanted to overcome a weakness? or a certain power? you had to pay the price in a different area. More damage? you had to deal with a vulnerability due to the item. Wanted a mechanic like ignore freeze (important to CI back at the day), no life or anything else to you buddy - sacrifice your slot my friend.

The MUST uniques were a must and a limiting force on builds. They forced you to sacrifice slots, limiting your damage and life among other things. Without them, CIs would freeze 80% of the time for example.

But soon, ignoring this strategic thinking - they were rendered obsolete. Those uniques, which were important to keep certain characters at check died.

With new things, like ascendancy or new uniques and jewels, the inherent weakness of each specialization could be easily circumvented. like ascendancy points (E.G accuracy or aliments). When weakness could easily dealt with, one limiter was removed. SO you can have 100% accu, AND 95% cirt!! hurray.

Not only spells have 100% pierce, they are like homing missiles. And you could kill something from like 3 screens away.

Smart game - Timers, death of defense and removing limiting mechanics.

Limiting mechanics
The most notorious mechanic that forced people to stop off screening everything - was reflect. People bitched, now it is a joke. People were set free to clear speed.

Can someone explain to me why it is possible to hit anything beyond the screen at all? why is it needed? what is it good for?

But what truly killed melee and made this game into a Halo 3, was the death of defenses.

Defenses were everything.
They made it much much harder to stack defenses over time - the only thing that allowed melee players to shine. When defenses were obsolete, only 1 way to play was left. Laser Tag.

I remember a guy killing uber-atziri (when she was THE boss) with like 2000K life, stacking dodge, block, and eva. Cleverly utilizing Lightning strike and positioning, relying on def to rescue him if he made a mistake.

without ascendancies. This had obviously cost him damage, but also required him to have an extremely expensive gear (mirror dagger to make his damage high enough).

Defense was a must. It was an unforgiving game. I remember Krip said that he would never go into The Lunaris Temple without curse remove, as the monsters did tons of damage + applying unalienability. If you were hit 3-4 times in a row (which could be instantly), you would have died. But it was not a 1 hit KO mechanics, it was stacking "dangers" which could have been avoided while playing carefully.

The only pain in the ass regarding 1 hit OK was Kole. And many people just skipped it, or just ran around throwing Bear Traps - which took forever.

Kole today? who cares. Piety? I remember full parties rip to her in 2-3 bow attacks when she was the final boss of the game. people would join groups because she was too dangerous to farm alone. People leveled together. people played together in maps.

What I truly believe killed "defenses" were two things.

1. Malachai. He was a boss that obliterated eva - dodge mechanics with physical spells. It was hard to stack spell dodge (only Atziri's boots I think), and eva did not help with spells. add to that low physical damage mitigation, and people just ripped to him so hard. They nerfed him, but it was the last straw regarding the viability of eva-dodge builds.

Second thing that killed eva-dodge and with this defenses as a whole, was a single nerf to one passive key-stone. You could get 1 hit KO and spells were tiresome, but projectiles? not a problem. With a single key-stone you would almost never get hit with a projectile. Which allowed you to focus on positioning and spell dodge - making this build viable. nerfed that? game over.

With the limiters on damage gone monster were buffed. With this buff armor was gone. Because armor cannot deal with massive hits, only small ones. So defenses were dead.

Timer
today you CANNOT PLAY SMART because if you play carefully you will never achieve any league mechanics. Abyss, perandus, Breaches, betrayal, incursion, delve are ALL timed engagements. Not only some has an actual timer, but the way monsters spawn in huge waves, makes it a must to kill fast. If you are slow on killing but a tank, you will eventually die by the swarms. This encourage one type of game play.

So we ended up with infinite power output without any weaknesses or limiting mechanics. What did GGGtencent did to counter that? new stupid bosses was one. But two, buffing monsters. But only via damage output. Making the 1 hit KO mechanic way more probable. No defense can deal with that, join the laser tag gang.

You can still see the evolutionary atrophied things in this game. Like huge stone golems which were suppose to be tanky, form up into shape. Giving you few hits in advance. Today they die instantly. Zombies go out the ground? the same. Uniques that nobody understands why they are part of this game. Skills that nobody understand why they are still part of this game. Key-nodes that nobody understand why they are still on the tree.

This game lost it's character. I do not know why I'm still playing it.

The clear-speed meta makes me restless. It makes it hard for me to focus and I need that for my thesis. I used to zone out by playing a few maps. Now If i do that I become restless. I probably gonna delete it soon too.

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Ghai wrote:

I'm sorry it had to be long, and not so well executed. But sometimes you cannot articulate anything of value with a tl:dr.

And thank you, I was thinking about that for a long time, mostly reading "Oni-goroshi's posts and remarks in various places. It made me think of some other stuff...

I cannot find a way for GGG to save their game without destroying it.

Meaning, the player base mostly got hooked on this speed, it will be impossible to slow it down without a massive deflection of players.

So they probably chose to accelerate it further, giving the people what they want with more bread and circus.

The beautiful, well thought of game which they had created, is gone. I wish I could reinstall 1.3 or even 2.0 and just play that until I had enough. But it would never be possible again.