Leveling through campaign again and again and again....

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porous2 wrote:

He, of course, thinks I'm bonkers for putting so much time into TQ, PoE and other games. He asks "Doesn't it drive you crazy doing the same monsters and bosses and areas over and over??" And no, it doesn't. If it did, I wouldn't play these games. Not to that extent anyway. If nobody is holding a gun to my head and forcing me to play, and if I find the game to be frustrating or boring, I stop playing it. I guess I'm strange that way.

i think you still didnt get the point. We all like/love endgame in PoE and thats why we all play PoE over and over, league by league. BUT what we really hate is totaly repetitive story mode with totaly no additional value to players, no gearing character, its MANDATORY several hours long torture for each character. In case you are taking gear or anything during campaign, but nothing. After you finish 10 acts, only you get is 65 levels. no end game gear, nor materials, nor new experience, nothing. Got it? one time per league ! enough

Do you think Titan Quest and Diablo 2 players were showered with Grandfathers, Burizas, Apollo's Wills and other bis gear the moment they started the story in Act 1? In all games, the gear that you find is junk early on and gets progressively better.

Nevertheless, you need to go through that early grind because character development is a progression. It doesn't start in the endgame, it starts in Act 1. That is where you start building your character so it can compete in the endgame.

It seems to me that people like eating the steak, they just don't want to have to cook it. Cooking the meal is part of the deal. It's how you get the steak to a point where it's tasty to eat. Likewise, doing the ten Acts is how you cook your character to the point where it's juicy enough to take on the endgame. It's not an enthralling job, everybody prefers eating the steak to cooking it. But it has to be done.

People have called for a mechanism whereby once they've finished the game, further characters can start at level 65 and don't have to do the leveling. That's like a new employee arriving at a company and asking why he gets started in the mailroom, can't they just make him an executive from the get-go seeing as that's where he will likely end up anyway? They can. But it's not generally how life works.

I don't find the ten Acts any more tedious and repetitive than maps. I play the game for fun. I like the challenge and fun of using different ways to kill monsters. I don't play to get x number of Exalts or to get a Demigod's or to reach position y on a ladder. That would be work to me. If accumulating wealth and status was my goal, I'd sink those hours into my real-life business instead. Because that gives rewards which have actual value - money, not MTX bling which is just valueless code residing on my hard drive.

I actually enjoy leveling characters because progress is fast. Within an hour or two, I have a completely different (much better/stronger) character than I started out with. In maps, it often takes me several evenings to get equivalent advances.

I also find the fights early on just as challenging. Taking on Merveil with 20 Cold res and junk gear is just as challenging (often more so) as taking on Conquerors with end-game (or near end-game) gear. Sure, the Conquerors drop better loot. But I also need better loot at that point. I don't need great gear from Merveil. Often, even a junk item she drops will be slightly better than what I'm using. So it becomes valuable. If all it does is boost my life by 20 points instead of the 11 on my current gear, that is progress. It's one tiny step on a long journey towards becoming a solid end-game character.

The main problem here is not leveling the new character, but rather running through the acts to unlock maps.

Once is trully enough, let our other characters start as Zana's cannon fodder exiles that got lost in Atlas even before whole conquerors story. Or some deadbeat miners in delve. Really anything but running the same old zones, doing the same old quests with laughable mob density.

And while we are at the subject of steaks, If i want my meat raw I'll order it raw, and if the restaurant fails to deliver it I might get grumpy and start looking for other places to eat.

I just can't see the functional difference involved with completing an area in an act in order to progress and completing a map in order to... complete a map. They're functionally the same to me.

And yet endless delve event, while heavily flawed had functional and different enough method of leveling that even people who disliked event as a whole took notice.

Delve, maps or even old Mealstrom of Chaos device would be fine with me. Anything to mix things up and provide faster leveling solution to try out different builds.

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respon wrote:

And while we are at the subject of steaks, If i want my meat raw I'll order it raw, and if the restaurant fails to deliver it I might get grumpy and start looking for other places to eat.

Well, good luck finding that restaurant where, after you've eaten there every night for five years, the food doesn't lose a bit of the zing and allure that it had the first time you sampled it.

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respon wrote:

And yet endless delve event, while heavily flawed had functional and different enough method of leveling that even people who disliked event as a whole took notice.

Yes, because it's the first time people were leveling that way. Let them Endless Delve 500 characters and see if they still find it as fresh and exciting. They won't. They will adjust to it, become familiar with it, and familiarity will bring contempt.

Yes, an alternative leveling mechanism would be nice. But I don't kid myself that it transforms the game and turns leveling into an OMGohwowthisisjustsuchfun experience. It won't. Not beyond the first couple of weeks. Then it just becomes routine again and the game feels like it always did.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

I just can't see the functional difference involved with completing an area in an act in order to progress and completing a map in order to... complete a map. They're functionally the same to me.

I completely agree. They are very similar, and if running the acts is boring or repetitive, how is running maps any different? At least when you are running the acts, you actually get to see your build come together. Whereas by the time most builds hit maps, you are typically scaling your build rather than making any key changes.

There is actually a really good post on reddit that captures how players that complain about this stuff actually think.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/khmdfi/i_hate_the_idea_of_insert_mechanic/

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respon wrote:

The main problem here is not leveling the new character, but rather running through the acts to unlock maps.

Why start at maps? The real game doesn't start until you are doing T19 100% delirious maps. We should start at level 100, with a full currency tab and completed Atlas. Then we can really play the game.

i agree that building gear is the fun part and you are slowly gearing up and upgrading gems and so. But there is no need to do it at same storyline all the time, many times per league. thats what i say. We can do it in maps, we can do itr in delve, we can do it in league mechanics (heists, harvest gardens, breach, in zana missions, blight...). Anything but 10acts.
so, AGAIN: we dont hate building a new chars and progress them! its absolutely ok. What we hate is background HOW to get your char and gear to endgame