A small thought on what is wrong with the game's development vision

I think a very big problem is gear progression being very confusing and non-deterministic.

Consider this in other MMOs, usually how we play it are as follow:
1.We encounter a boss we can’t get through
2.We had an CLEAR aim/goal on getting what could help us to go through this boss
3.We kill the boss and move on to a HARDER boss
4.Circulation of process

However, in POE, there is no CLEAR way of which I perform an ACTION which can DEFINITELY help me to progress. This indirectly contributed to how players look at builds. Everybody look at it in a MIN-MAX perspective, instead of gear progression perspective, which is where all the problems emerged, you can’t go directly into end-game builds. You can turn from a poorman into billionaire in just few days realistically.

It is also because of the game structure that causes this. In other MMOs, we have plenty of time, if not for years and years to progress, to farm the gears, to dedicate enough available time into the game to become strong. However, in POE, being a THREE months league, a casual or normal player couldn’t had dedicated too much time into the game to help them reach the END GAME content which is the additional stuffs every league!

This caused people to want END GAME gear FAST so that they could experience the NEW content every league, which however the way GGG balances the game are completely not at the perspective of normal, regular, casual players, which time are limited. GGG trying to balance the game by making it more difficult for the veterans, trying to delay their footsteps in reaching the END GAME too soon. This makes the life of normal, regular, casual players to fall more and more behind trying to catch up to the top tier players.

Please stop trying to balance things around the top tier players, give more love into casual/regular players. Instead of 1% top tier players contributing 20 hours per person to the game, why not put more care for the other 99% of players that could contribute few hours to the game?

Another very serious problem is with these TOP TIERS items only available IF YOU INVEST IN MAPS. If you don’t invest in your maps, you are 99% not going to get any good results from running them!

The current mapping meta is:
1.Look for streamer recommendations on which map to farm what
2.Do preparations on the map/region
3.Spend 60 minutes trying to gather all the maps/scarabs/fragments/etc
4.Run the map in and complete it in 3 minutes (not to say some death griefs)

Come on GGG, who wants to spend hours if not days trying to setup for a map which I just want to kill for 3~5 minutes?

Please admit a majority of us are grown-ups, and time is a very scarce. If the game continue to balance in this DEDICATE YOUR WHOLE LIFE INTO THE GAME OR YOU WILL GET NOTHING style, in the end there will only be 100 person only, with each person have 10k viewers on their stream channels.

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Anthoson wrote:

However, in POE, there is no CLEAR way of which I perform an ACTION which can DEFINITELY help me to progress.

Framed in the way you initially listed for an MMO its exactly the same, play better or get more gear so you don't have to.

Honestly I wouldn't compare with MMOs as they have a very similar design involving ensuring players have to meet arbitrary playtime requirements in order to access content. Its the same model with better gameplay.

Also in the case of get more gear its nice that wait until next week isn't one of the common answers ;)

that's the thing though, even the top tier players want less grind and more deterministic crafting and loot systems. like im a 1%er in poe. i generally earn 2-5 mirrors each league and have made around 30 mirrors total since i started playing poe. im not anywhere near the average gamer in terms of knowledge and time spent playing, but im exactly where you're at. the game is wayyy too grindy.

the thing is anyone can say the game is too grindy, but most people dont actually grind for much. those of us that have done the grind know firsthand how bad it's become. i used to craft all the time but now just getting your base item setup, grinding for enough currency, getting materials, and planning your craft takes weeks. it's ridiculous

poe is not an mmo, and therefor have an entirely different approach to character progression.
poe is an arpg which at its core is about randomized items, and grinding for said items by pulling a slot machine 10 million times a day.
this is what its always gonna be

The problem with the game's development vision:

"Let's add more RNG on top of more RNG, because everyone loves gambling right? Right?"

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jewdas12 wrote:

poe is not an mmo, and therefor have an entirely different approach to character progression.
poe is an arpg which at its core is about randomized items, and grinding for said items by pulling a slot machine 10 million times a day.
this is what its always gonna be

I agree with you this is their vision, except that the slot machine is so worthless that it is pointless to pull. Your chance of getting good mods on a random drop are beyond astronomical. You might getting something you could level with sure, or a junk 6 link, but nothing you want to keep.

The 1/246,356,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance that something hits multiple useful mods has made deterministic crafting the only thing worth pursuing.

Somehow GGG does not understand this, hence the idiotic comment from Chris "Close your eyes and slam an exalt!".

I don't know if I have ever seen developers seem to understand their game less than PoE.

MMO gear progression is set in stone for the most part until extreme end game.

White > Green > Blue > Purple > Orange (typically).


The itemization in POE is completely different as there are synergies and non-homogenized gear at any given point in the game. You will never exactly be wearing 2 blues and 6 greens.

You will have one gear slot that adds 30% power and one other gear slot that adds 20% of your EHP/Defense, etc.

This variation in gear slots doesn't allow to create a "feels good progression" as RNG changes what feels good at that specific moment in time.

If I drop a headhunter the first day of the league, I know that gear slot in my mapping character will be locked and is basically the equivalent of dropping a high-tier raid item in an MMO in the leveling area. It doesn't happen.

Standard is the place for people that want to take their time getting through the end game and progressing at a more controlled pace. Leagues, also coined CHALLENGE leagues, are meant to be challenging and thus the expectation should be that not all players will reach the ultimate end game. This is okay, imo, and adds to the excitement of how your build ends up by the end of the league.

I don't think looking at POE through the lens of an MMO is framing what POE is correctly. It will never be this and frankly I wouldn't want it to be.

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trixxar wrote:

I agree with you this is their vision, except that the slot machine is so worthless that it is pointless to pull. Your chance of getting good mods on a random drop are beyond astronomical. You might getting something you could level with sure, or a junk 6 link, but nothing you want to keep.

The 1/246,356,000,000,000,000,000,000 chance that something hits multiple useful mods has made deterministic crafting the only thing worth pursuing.

Somehow GGG does not understand this, hence the idiotic comment from Chris "Close your eyes and slam an exalt!".

I don't know if I have ever seen developers seem to understand their game less than PoE.

Chris for some reason thinks it's the gambling that's fun and what motivates the players.

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Prizy wrote:

MMO gear progression is set in stone for the most part until extreme end game.

White > Green > Blue > Purple > Orange (typically).

Or the awful EverQuest gear progression that's been repeated for the past 10 or 15 expansions: Group Tier 1, Group Tier 2, Group Tier 3 ... etc. Raid T1, Raid T2 ... Raid T5. Hopefully they've found a way to get away from that, but I doubt it.

That would never work for PoE, haha.

The sad irony is this thread is exactly why GGG is better off sticking to their vision than catering to any of the complaints and solutions you people have. Players in general are terrible game designers. We are self-serving, we don't step back and consider the nature of the problem, and we jump on bandwagons blaming things we don't like.

RNG is the prime example. It's always blamed by some players for the lack of value found in randomized drops and the inevitable player solution is to ask for more deterministic options and/or outcomes. However, the fact is PoE has had most of this RNG in the itemization since inception. What it didn't always have was a crafting bench, harvest, beast crafting, etc... You couldn't block, copy, split, and meta craft to get something that was so far outside the norm of what could drop naturally. Deterministic crafting has inflated item power past what RNG can compete with and that's why GGG wants to reign it in so it can restore value to drops.

The OP's complaint about the accessibility of end-game content is another really common one. It's the "ought" mentality of today's gaming generation who all think they deserve to be able to see and do everything in the game at any level of commitment and understanding. It's the anti-thesis of pinnacle content and is the single most important ingredient in a dead RPG.