Am I the only one...

...who would like to play Path of Exile from a 3rd person perspective?



I've recently lost my touch with the game. When GGG announced their "3 epic events" I thought I'd be playing the hell out of them... as things stand now I spent a grand total of 1.5 hours playing Mayhem league and haven't played the game at all since.

Usually I'm a conditionless buyer/supporter, a support pack releases, I buy it - no questions asked. But even with the new core supporter packs I'm noticing a significant lack of interest in the game overall. I figured it was some kind of burnout but considering how little I've played the game overall lately I doubt that's the case.

The only reason I could imagine as to why I'm not enjoying the game is because of 2 key features: the perspective and the control-scheme.
I am aware that most of games like PoE are built around this orbital-point of view (or whatever the actual term is) and the point-and-click movement system, but to me it is a huge turn-off for overall gameplay. The fact that I even reached a 3000+ hour milestone on the game surprises me.
Since I usually play builds with many different skills that require all possible skill-bar slots I also can't just set my movement to, for example, the W key to avoid stressing my finger too much. Especially during Blight league, my most played league by far, I noticed just how many problems this system of movement can cause to my hand as I felt the carpal tunnel syndrome getting closer with every day.

Health risks aside I feel as if a 3rd person playstyle with default WASD and mouse-based camera controls could really fresh up my experience with the game overall and interest me in playing a lot of different builds as for the most part I don't really bother experimenting much as I already know that about 3 days into the league I'm done playing again.

I understand that it isn't easy to turn PoE into a 3rd person game "just like that" since different methods of rendering and a possible rework of skill-binds may be necessary. And obviously certain skills like frost bomb or lightning warp simply wouldn't work the same.
Regardless I would love to see some kind of demo version, a simple playthrough of the standard campain's act 1 in 3rd person.

A 3rd person perspective may also allow for better appreciation of the artists' works as the camera is overall more grounded. I've always felt the animators' and designers' works at GGG go mostly unnoticed as most endgame builds just blast entire screens of monsters in seconds and with how far zoomed out the game is, it is hard to tell any details that went into the monsters and environments.
Playing with the camera zoomed all the way in is nearly impossible with juiced-up maps aswell so there is no real way to achieve the wanted effect.
Visual character customization through MTX or regular equipment would also be positively affected by this as it becomes much more visible and 'significant' in a way.
At the topic of which, a proper character creator or editor may also have a positive effect on the overall satisfaction of designing a custom outfit.


I have seen a few people talk about their wish for PoE to add an optional 1st/3rd person perspective option for those of us who would appreciate such a thing and I feel like it could be a nice challenge and side project for the team over at GGG, if they ever find the time for it.
It may even attract a large amount of players' interests as the 3rd person genre seems rather welcome in the game industry.
As PoE's graphics and rendering are making significant progress with the latest content and of course the upcoming release of PoE 2 I think it could serve as a fantastic opportunity to introduce such a feature.

Umm... we all play PoE from 3rd person. You're either not talking about PoE or you don't know what you're talking about.

1st person is where you see from the vantage of the character you're playing. Doom is a classic example... and Borderlands is typically played that way. You don't see your character so much as you see what your character sees.

3rd person is where you see your character as if it wasn't you. Sometimes it's "over the shoulder", and other times it's from above, like we have in PoE. Both are 3rd person though.

2nd person would be weird... that's where you would see your character from the vantage of the monsters you were killing. I don't think anyone uses that. Maybe!

But what I think you mean is 1st person... and no, PoE will never be 1st person.

1st/3rd person confusion aside. How would you imagine dodging all the things in the game from a 1st person perspective?

Imagine something that is relatively straight forward: the Atziri fight. Would you constantly be looking down at your feet to know if you're standing in a bad place? Or a Volatile Flameblood flying at you from behind. There are countless scenarios like this.

How would you envision handling those situations? Or would you just see people using that modality purely for the immersion, in spite of the futility of trying to play the game effectively?

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Shagsbeard wrote:

Umm... we all play PoE from 3rd person. You're either not talking about PoE or you don't know what you're talking about.

1st person is where you see from the vantage of the character you're playing. Doom is a classic example... and Borderlands is typically played that way. You don't see your character so much as you see what your character sees.

3rd person is where you see your character as if it wasn't you. Sometimes it's "over the shoulder", and other times it's from above, like we have in PoE. Both are 3rd person though.

2nd person would be weird... that's where you would see your character from the vantage of the monsters you were killing. I don't think anyone uses that. Maybe!

But what I think you mean is 1st person... and no, PoE will never be 1st person.

I don't know. If anyone asked me I would call this an overhead isometric view. From a debate perspective calling it 3rd person is probably correct but if you told someone this game was played in the 3rd person they would be really confused when they loaded the game up.

As to the OP, a true 3rd person would not work well in this game. There is to many ground effects and to many enemies for it to play smoothly.

"Isometric" is a used to describe this perspective... it literally means "same sized"... but is used for any game where the camera distance and angle is basically fixed. It's still 3rd person.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

"Isometric" is a used to describe this perspective... it literally means "same sized"... but is used for any game where the camera distance and angle is basically fixed. It's still 3rd person.

I get what you're saying, and it's generically true that an isometric view like that of POE is 3rd-person, but that's not how video games are generally described.

"3rd-person" in video games usually means a view from a bit behind the character avatar, and maybe slightly above. It does not mean the isometric view that POE uses, which is usually contrasted with top-down 2D and 1st or 3rd-person 3D views:

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There are also gameplay advantages to using an isometric or pseudo-isometric perspective in video games. For instance, compared to a purely top-down game, they add a third dimension, opening up new avenues for aiming and platforming. Secondly, compared to a first- or third-person game, they allow you to more easily field and control a larger number of additional units, such as a full party of characters in a role-playing game.

In this thread, it's pretty clear the OP is referring to the common over-the-shoulder meaning of "3rd-person" in video games.

And personally, I think POE is best left with its isometric view.

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AcrylicHercules wrote:

And personally, I think POE is best left with its isometric view.

Also, they would have to model the parts of the world we don't see now, and it isn't just the sky.

They should rather zoom the game out, like, 200 %.

Yea so we already play in 3rd, maybe you meant 1st op, which I would rather not.

But I would like to see the game slightly zoomed out more, man it's just so slightly off.

The zoom is set based on the radius of activation for the mobs. If they zoomed out, they'd also have to give the mobs a larger radius of activation... which would make the game play differently. More "off screen one shots". More stair trapping. All sorts of secondary effects.

So no... they're not going to zoom out more.