PoE for casual players

its not casual friendly

Hi,

1 hour a Day is enough to reach the absolute endgame like fully juiced tier 16 maps and defeat bosses like sirius or maven. Problem is that you have to understand the game first and that takes a lot more time.

So if you have the time to spend a couple of weeks/months to realy understand the game than you can play as a casual afterwarts every league and stil clear all content.

Just my 2 cents.

Path of Exile is simply not meant for casual play. Even if you have a deep understanding of the game mechanics, a new league or an expansion could flip things so hard it would require another learning and deciphering session(s).

Even with so many characters that I have played and the different leagues that I have experienced always reaching the end-game boss whatever that may be (Maven, Sirus A9, The Feared...etc) Even with all this experience, I tend to skip POE completely whenever I am not on vacation, there is much work to be done at work, or life is too busy for such a game.

Whenever I am that busy but still would like to play a video game, I play Diablo 3 OR Diablo 2.

It's a free game. Just download, install and start playing.
You'll like it or you don't, just like all other games.
You find an obstacle, you google for answers.

Easy? yes

"

Skibbi wrote:

Hi,
I've been following PoE development since the beginning but I've never had time to dive into the game. Recently I've got some free time so I decided to give it a spin. Unfortunately after few hours I realized that the mechanics are far more complicated than in Diablo or Titan Quest.

After reading some guides I've got some doubts if this is a game for casual player like me, who can play few hours per week. What I'm most worried is that I will not be able to finish the game as my character is built without any tutorials or guides and that I might not be lucky to get some rare gear that is needed in the end of the game. I just like to experiment and not follow some meticulously prepared builds that every second PoE player uses.

Are my doubts justified? I know that PoE is not focused on P2W, but I'm afraid that I will have to spend hours on grinding to get finally a good gear or currency. I'm not really interesed in trading - I just want to start the game, slain some monsters and get some nice gear :)

So it's a tad complicated when it comes to guides. I wouldn't call the majority of guides ' meticulously prepared builds', as they almost always can be better honed. However, they do offer a very valuable baseline template for new players / those who haven't tried and tested their own builds.

And that should be some good news, because it sounds like we agree on 'experimenting and not following a paint by colors', and most builds aren't actually that. So I'd personally recommend finding a skill first that you think looks cool, then browsing potential builds around it. You'll eventually realize what makes or breaks a build and will end up crafting your own.

You absolutely will however end up 'spending hours grinding to get finally good gear' as is the nature of the genre. But that's the fun part. I've been SSF for a long time now, and yes there are some 'builds' that require specific items (realizing that a ''build' is the combo of a main skill, ascendancy and defenses), but the vast majority of builds can survive without anything specific, only getting better as you find better items.

The TLDR; Find a skill within an archetype you want to use, see what general guides you can find, level it up and play for awhile learning what your character is going to need (such as defenses / leech / attack and cast speed, ect), and then eventually adjust and make your own build. There's always room for improvement in anyone's builds, especially if you are SSF, and you can absolutely end up with your own unique overall build after you've gained enough game knowledge.

If your goals are self-contained, you're not in a rush, you're just enjoying the journey, and you like a system which will always have waaaay more involvement possible than you have time to go into... then PoE would be a brilliant game for your sort of casual play.

If you like being ranked/resource competitive with players who've got thousands of hours experience & who regard playing the game 10-20 hours a week as 'casual', then it would be literally impossible & this is not your sort of casual play game.

You could totally just roll a character for a league, vaguely level it to wherever, transfer the stuff back to a main standard-league character at the end of the league, meanwhile working on getting nice pieces of gear to pimp out your primary standard-league character. Maybe try something a bit different ability-wise as the mood takes you each league.. all that could be loads of fun for a certain 'self-contained' personality type.

But yeah, if you want to keep up with people around you, remembering that most of the most visible players are experienced + time rich/ultra-efficient... then forget it.

"

TreeOfDead wrote:

its not casual friendly

Yes it is.

These days with all the league mechanics you can pick one spell, slam your face on the keyboard to see the rainbow of loot and ease fly everywhere and clear about 90% of the game in less than 2 weeks just playing a couple hours a day.

If you want to min-max the full potential of the most expensive builds and do 100% of every possible corner of content then it just becomes a timesink, not a brainsink.

The bulk of the fun, maps, decent gear, the core end-game bosses anyone can do with how everything is done for you.

"

Skibbi wrote:

Hi,
I've been following PoE development since the beginning but I've never had time to dive into the game. Recently I've got some free time so I decided to give it a spin. Unfortunately after few hours I realized that the mechanics are far more complicated than in Diablo or Titan Quest.

After reading some guides I've got some doubts if this is a game for casual player like me, who can play few hours per week. What I'm most worried is that I will not be able to finish the game as my character is built without any tutorials or guides and that I might not be lucky to get some rare gear that is needed in the end of the game. I just like to experiment and not follow some meticulously prepared builds that every second PoE player uses.

Are my doubts justified?

Yes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WMVoLw8gl8

PoE has unfortunatly become a overcluttered mess changig so much so often, that even community driven supporting tools can´t keep up.

Me reading title : "PoE for casual players"
My first reaction : *Oooch...*

POE is really good when you can play 12 hours a day casually.