Is Path Of Exile too much to handle?

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Terspet wrote:

saw a few people saying its not to much, people are lost etc.
first , i play ssf for 2 leagues in a row now because that way i have a reason to actually play all the aviable content instead of skipping non-profitable ones, that out of the way lets quickly list everything you can do/should do to no have fear of missing out or whatever it is called:


abyss - chance for abyss jewels, chance for abyssal depths


abyssal depths - 100% stygian vise and abyss specific uniques if boss spawns


blight - for oils and free currency/blighted maps


blighted maps - for above said reasons


delirium - cluster jewels duh, simulacrum splinters


simulacrum - op exp if a good build, else massive amounts of currency/ rewards in general plus chance for delirium specific uniques like voices


syndicate - most op currency farming method once board is setup, massive amounts of crafting unlocks, safehouses are better breachstones, safer and faster, catharina worst waifu but decent loot


temple of atzoatle - many only to obtain there crafting recipes, double corruptions, gem corruptions, multi mirror belt drop chances (qual and quant belt for example) must have to also juice maps massively


metamorph - albeit one of the thougher and yet less rewarding mechanics, best way to get catalysts, everyone needs these


prophecy - already gets removed next league because its to complicated for way to little reward (its actually not realy complicated but you know, reward is still to low for it to be worth)


heist - easy currency for normal blueprints, or whatever you are going for


grandheist - replica uniques, specific to heist base types, alt gems, heist trinkets


harvest - already requires you to either get extremly lucky or have crafting bases in your stash, most OP crafting method in the game


ritual - specific base types plus usualy alot of free currency


expedition - logbooks, ward base items, specific unique items, rog, gwenn, tujen


logbooks - a better blight


einhar - although you actually passivly kill the mobs anyways, you get the beasts wich are needed for specific crafts only aviable in the menagiery


delve - aul, fossils, resonators, flickerspiders level 1



essence - all kind of essences


legion - 3way 4way 5way if you are into it that is, specific unique jewels, unique items only aviable in legion (takkakukugaga... amulet for example)


i think this covers all the base mechanics that are constantly aviable, as you can see, its alot and all of them are worth in one way or another...

dont know why i wanted to do it, guess its because i have to wait till friday to get back to ff14 again >.>

I play SSF since 3.1 (abyss) and 90% is trash not worth doing still. Temple unless you need to double corrupt, you dont - no point
Mines worthless compared to heist. Was good back you you could dark farm at 500 MPH and we had Underground mods

and so on. All you need SSF is maps mostly and rest highly overrated bloat not needed. Maybe Harvest but that's in maps.

I watched darkee not even do 1 expedition (among other things) and still win ziz's event. Expedition, Ritual and many other things just slow your roll loot boxes more unprofitble and annoying than OG strongboxes

^^ if content is useless for SSF you can imagine how useless it is for the rest of us.
they balance content around the 1% who repeat everything 100's of times per day and that way you will get something good eventually.

The issue is not the content variety at all. It is how rewarding the content is and what you have to do to make it feel rewarding. Most content layers are extremly straightforward to engage with, however sometimes they are not worth it, sometimes you need to mix them with something else(atlas passives, watchstones, sextants) or with other mechanics(some mechanics have increased returns to be engaged with other mechanics as well) and while you are figuring things out(surviving maps or just balancing what to engage with and how) or playing at your own pace some dudes will be delirious farming, rmters will setup bots, etc and you will feel like playing a uphill battle unless you play the monopoly game like many others.

Nubatron and others have a point about player retention.
When you're in a map and an Abyss spawns - even if you haven't specced Maven or map mods for Abysses - you'll go down just to see if it's a Lich and if you can drop something good.

People end up playing the game more from all the random mechanics that can stack on top of each other. Last map for the night with a Zana Cortex as another classic example.

However as stated in OP I feel there should be some control for the player to "opt in" some mechanics and "opt out" others.
Picking one's "DLC" options.
Otherwise it's just utter chaos.

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Bosscannon wrote:

My personal favourite is: lets just do one map and go to bed, find and abyss depths in there and zana with an abyss depths or some shit in her map too and half an hour passed...

This is the "be careful what you ask for" curse.

I have a hard time complaining about opening a single map and getting 99 side gigs.

One use of sextants/scarabs/watchstones, one map item consumed, but several maps' worth of mob count and league themed drops packed in tidy little lock boxes, holes in the ground, flower pots, red and purple sprinkler taps, formaldehyde vats, and TARDISes. Nearly all of which inherit the parent map and sextant/scarab/ws mods.

Very economical. I love it, and wouldn't want to go back to the days when a map was just a blank canvas unless you actively added 15 separate things to it. You can always choose to ignore lock boxes, steaming vents in the ground, high-fiving hands from outer space, and "Just in time!"

But it can create fatigue when you'd rather have 3x of one thing, and not 1x of 3 different things. And there's definitely a FOMO because GGG gives, and GGG takes away, sometimes in the same hand movement. The breach you skip today might hold the Chayula splints that won't be there tomorrow.

That's the cost of having things given freely - they can be taken away freely and arbitrarily. You can't send Chayula an IOU saying "hifive u later bro i'm chasing the fog". You can't store up abyss vents like master missions. Zana won't be offering you Untainted Paradise tomorrow, it has to be today.

As for the number of types of child instances, yeah I vaguely agree there are too many vaguely similar gimmicks that could be merged. Breach and abyss both have a "step on a crack" and area timer element that seem very mergable. Expedition and Legion both have a "in case you want fire, break glass" thing going on that's not timed, but just a fountain of dudes with raunchy mods and some loot piñata at the end. Merge them a bit. Emblems ~ logbooks ~ blueprints sort of deal. Boxes and gardens sort of behave the same way.

Itemize them in a way that still lets you choose to generate them randomly in maps as now, but instead of going to bed on time wondering what could have been if you went inside the sinkhole, hover and right-click to pack it up. maybe have it save mods like ritual vials do to infuse into a new map.

edit: Maybe it's time for some new Forsaken Masters. Or a new system to guide specialized training. Should Niko now help guide your abyss management as well as delve stuff? Could Jun team up with ITF to help you streamline and manage breaches, mirrors, and beyonders? Does Einhar have what it takes to rule the vegetable kingdom as well as the animal kingdom, taking over for Oshabi to help you get the most out of your gardens? Would inveterate treasure hunters Alva and Gwennen get along well enough to bring you enhanced temple and logbook functionality? Tane and Sister Cassia working together to help you grease up and quality your jewellery?

Slightly fewer total child instances, but each is a combination of like-purposed and similar play mechanic elements that improves the functional utility of both.

PoE's reaching the point I feel like they need to start rotating in old league content and only give us like 5 at a time or something

IMO the game has a tremendous amount of information you need to know. There is way too much information in this game required to compete for newer players. Most of the people at the top have whole teams helping them and feeding them ideas, strategies, doing their skill trees, fixing their builds, and helping them as they go through the game. There are very few streamers that can go it alone and stay relevant.

I feel like this game is similar to an encyclopedia that has had more and more books added. When was the last time a new player ended up competing with the old guard? Yes, it happens every few years someone extra exceptional makes it, but that's becoming super rare. If the game does not keep attracting new players that can compete, one day this game will meet the natural consequences for those decisions.

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Terspet wrote:

temple of atzoatle - many only to obtain there crafting recipes, double corruptions, gem corruptions, multi mirror belt drop chances (qual and quant belt for example) must have to also juice maps massively

Not any more. Incursion crafts have been moved to maps. ='[.]'=

Just speaking for myself as someone relatively new at playing PoE.

There is WAAAY too much clutter. When I was playing, I would play for hours and feel like I accomplished nothing. I didn't know what was worth doing, what wasn't. I felt like I was being pulled in all different directions and nothing ever felt rewarding.

Why?

Because I have no idea how to effectively "juice" maps to make it worth. All Youtube videos have an expectation that you already know mechanics of the game and just tell you how to properly allocate them. Doesn't help new people at all.

I set myself a single goal to unlock all the "Favorite" maps, so I could try to have more control over what I got, because some maps were just... not for me. You know how many I unlocked? 0. I did HUNDREDs if not Thousands of maps before I stopped this league and couldn't even get them unlocked. It took me more time then I'd like to admit to figure out how to increase my Awakened Level, because guides to unlock the atlas contradicted the Awakened Level.

I never even got the damn Hidden passives on the tree! And all this is just 1 aspect of the game! I did Heist for awhile, Tried Delve, Found that the Immortal Syndicate is insane XP to just run, but never truly figured out how to Min/Max the rewards to make it worth it.

I can go on and on. I tend to ramble. But I could Definitely vote for Leagues that had only 5 Legacy content that had a rotation to it. That would definitely be more enjoyable and easier on newer players to digest.

Waay too much clutter, and when you don't know what to do. You either do it all, or do none and log out. That is human nature.

@crunkatog, couldn't agree more.

On top of the retention Bosscannon and Nubatron mentioned, there is indeed a sense of "do it right now because it will be gone tomorrow".

A save-it-for-later feature would help sort out the clutter and help players manage their time better instead of being managed by random real-time events (or ignoring them and regretting it).

And I also agree about merging together mechanics which are pretty much rehashes of each other.
Especially their specific loot so you don't have to hoard 10000 different kinds of keys.

@Valkaneer, I wouldn't say "compete" because many players go SSF, and out of those who do trade and group play, how many can actually compete with Streamers' elite teams?
But a new player going into the game needs to take in exponentially more information than a new player back in Open Beta or 1.0.
And Path Of Exile was a complex game back then.
Now the learning curve is more like a SpaceX launch trajectory.