XBOX becoming unplayable - why a dedicated player is putting POE away,

For the first time in my life I rage quit a game. Smashed the controller to the ground in fury.

FOUR deaths in the last hour owing to XBOX glitches, adding to the two yesterday,
The glitches in order:
1- total game crash in middle of huge delirium fight, when I logged back in, I found I had been killed
2- console freeze in middle of another large fight. It unfroze time display the death screen
3- in delve, I was randomly teleported into the darkness. I did panic leap slams back in direction of crawler, on final slam (maybe 2nd or 3rd) I was teleported bAck to the same spot where the darkness And monsters overwhelmed me
4- further in delve I was in the darkness under flare light and finished for the night, rather than navigate back to the crawler, I did my usual and did a game exit, =Y. Nothing happened, tried again, nothing, a third time nothing, meanwhile flare had extinguished and trying the 4th time, I died,

And so did the controller...

Add to this the two xbox -related deaths in the previous two days (another crash and another freeze, plus the Xbox-assisted death owing to the button shuffle when coming out of delve ) I find myself at about the same level I was on SUNDAY (it is now Thursday night ) and utterly, profoundly aggravated. I do not have the time for my precious hours to be wasted this way,

I have been playing this game on the xbox since harbinger, and I have never had such a bad experience. Even in blight - where the blighted maps were completely unplayable ( and in the last league this appears to have been fixed) I wasn’t nearly as frustrated as now.

When factoring in other elements which are consistently ignored by the GGG dev team, I feel my loyalty has been stretched past its breaking point, and I feel my dedication not to mention $100s I have voluntarily spent has been disrespected.

To aid you in not driving other loyal - even fanatical - customers like me away, please address several critical issues with the XBOX implementation of the game:

1/ performance and reliability. Nuf said,

2/ the trading system is aggravating in the extreme. While there are good aspects to the blind trading method, the UI makes trading insanely frustrating, Of course search filters are essential, even if only to remove items which don’t match the filter so I don’t have to painstakingly scroll through 100+ screens. Even simpler quality of life improvements such as a “back” button takes me back to the category of items rather than back to the top level (exercise for you: get price checks on 6 different catalysts. Count the user actions, it is pretty obvious.

Far more in this matter than has been covered by numerous people, it is long last time this matter was addressed.

3/ total lack of “social” experience. You can not underestimate the impact this has on the playing and enjoyment of the game, I played a few weeks on a PC last year, and in that time I learned more about POE than 2.5 years on the XBox. This is because I was able to chat to fellow players over the various channLos, notably trade. In 2.5 years on xbox I have communicated with two people. If you need further evidence of the social vacuum look at the POE club in the xbox. You might get one posting a day, (and THAT limited to ridiculously small character limit -- not your design of course but it all further detracts from the multiplayer experience). And let's not even talk about guilds,...

I watch YouTube video by PC gamers andi am still largely lost - no matter how good the help files, the videos, etc, nothing promotes learnjng better than "showing the ropes".

There is a LOT more I could add - down to the nitty gritty But that better done off line.
(I am a 40+ years of experience IT professional with a background in user interface design so I get nerdy about these things)

Given my experience I am in awe at what GGG has accomplished here, and this has been the best game I have ever played (and I started on Zork :-), but I really do feel you have gotten behind the curve on the XBOX . For the good of my sanity - not to mention blood pressure! - I will be putting it aside, but I hope I am going against the trend and not a “harbinger” of things to come.

Thanks for 100s (1000s? ) of hours of great gaming.

-Gordon

I have exactly all the problems reported. it seems that they just don't care about the xbox

Dude ur so right , my english is not that perfect cuz im not a native but i have to add and agree to you to 120%. I was not ready to put the game away since harbringer but now espially after the latest patch im finally as far as you are. Nothing to add big thx for your post and efforts.

I feel like the death penalty should be 5% instead of 10% for console, the performance and lack of controls causes a lot of deaths.

Having stayed away a couple of weeks, just tuned in to see any responses. Thanks at least to these two supporters... 5% death penalty an awesome idea.

Tried playing again, new character, absolutely fine. Died like only 3 times all to my own stupidity until the end of the storyline. It is only when I get up to T14 and so that things go south.

So between my lack of skill and expertise and technical issues, I have NEVER in 2.5 years gotten to enjoy the real end game content. (Don't get me started on the Sirus fight. 12 deaths last league on a screen where you can't even SEE the boss and other obstacles being black-on-black, and the inability to precisely control movement, esp leap slams etc meant that I would frequently leap slam into those deadly whirling black clouds)

Given all the commitment, I feel a bit cheated.

I would add one more technical glitch that has killed me a couple of times -- most recently when, following my post above, I was showing the game to a friend. Still raving about it (although I was advising he play on the PC!). Went back to my favourite delve, and got nailed by the 'weapon swap' glitch. If you don't know what this is, the awkward combination of RT-RS is sometimes interpreted not as a weapon swap but an instruction to change your action buttons (RS). Needless to say once in THAT dialog when in a fight, you are a dead man. Maybe an issue with my controlled, dunno; but the missing feature here is a user ability to change the control mappings (like you can on PC)

Major embarrassment as you might imagine in front of my friend. When I explained that I had just lost several hours of progress owing to the death penalty. I think that pretty much blew my case!!

Anyhow, I suspect I will be back as I am an addict; but happy to slow down as the stress and frustration were starting to get to me!

Enjoy nonetheless!

"

Anton__Chigur wrote:

I feel like the death penalty should be 5% instead of 10% for console, the performance and lack of controls causes a lot of deaths.

Absolutly agree with that point !!
+1000

I can't remember how many times i've died, just while delving, because of roll-back in the darkness...