POE Heading to D3 Land...please reconsider

"

Alhoon wrote:

"

deteego wrote:

Obviously there were broken classes like Sorcs, and other classes who were less gear dependant than others, but the point being made is you could complete the game with self found gear unless you were being ridiculously retarded in your build

If by "completing the game" you mean kill Piety on Merciless this also applies to PoE, which I know by having personally done so at the start of open beta. Granted I had closed beta experience and planning, and I wasn't particularly lucky with drops either.

Most builds cant go past mercilles selffound. Stop this. If you do something it doesnt make problem to dissapear.
Even if you play cookie-cutter if you are unlucky with drops you can hit a wall in mercilles (for example gg with LA build without good rolled Thicket Bow).
Some build also requires 5 and 6 links.

I play selfound Ground Slam mara in OB and i 'finish the game' (i hit wall on maps because my crappy 2k life) but it was not rly enjoyable experience (not finding upgrades). Getting to lesge/fellshrine/docks and grind levels until you outlvl mobs - that is all that you can do past lvl 60+ in POE selffound. Unless you are rly lucky.

Now i play shadow and this is my gear - ALL is from trade. Just all of them. BEcause i want to have nice items and game dont drop it for me. GG with finding this when you are levelling:

Even more gg if you think that you can earn currency to buy this when you are leveling - you cant. And its not awesome gear. Its good (imho) but its far from godly or endgame one.



Its different game on this char. My char is powerfull, i still can die but its not one-two shotting - i die when i screw things up not because i have to low life, i feel that im progressing and im not forced to grind endlessly 3 easiest game areas.

This is selfound-trade balance in PoE. Maybe trading is not required completely but its just almost moandatory to have fun past lvl ~50 if you are not masochist. Unless you consider farming ledge and then fellshrine 'progress'. Im not.

Well said, Charan.

"

deteego wrote:

Actually I am going by the implication that he doesn't post about the relevant issues in the game

needless to say, that which we were all (except for you, apparently) expecting sort of invalidates that implication.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-forum/dev-manifesto

Enjoy.

"

Charan wrote:

The biggest hurdle is, of course, short term races. If these unique skills aren't properly balanced, everyone will just pick the class/es that give the most useful skills.

Although the overlap of skills makes this strategy less used than a racing fan might hope, some short-term solo race builds -- for example, Krippers' Elemental Cleave Templar -- start the race by playing as another class (Duelist, in this case), quickly killing Hillock, then restarting as the class they actually intend to play. Krippers won more than a few solo races using this method.

Personally, I find this mechanic extremely interesting and think it should be promoted to the maximum extent possible.

I'm not sure about applying your principle to all quest rewards, but I'll agree that each quest reward for the Dying Exile and normal Hillock should be exclusive. I'm actually going to do some more work on this and come up with a specific proposal that would combine increased class distinction for first-time players with significantly increased build diversity for solo races.

The only way is going to work is having separate leagues with different drop rates. Just make a 'Solo' league with trading disabled and drop rates based around solo gameplay.

If you mess in any big way with drop rates in the established leagues the mess will be even bigger and the rants will increase with them, even worse than some of the rants in this thread (some of them from the same people posting here). The problem it's all a matter of perception, and as long as you have something to compare with this will shift perception one way or an other. If you add that player population has increased dramatically and that leagues are now permanent -there are no ladder resets in this game! people keeps forgetting- (no legacy etc.) situation gets even worse.

Hell, you can already listen to plenty of people crying about how bad the 'default' league economy is and this is with the current awful loot tables, and the game has been in open beta barely little more than a couple months.

So yeah, separate leagues with separate rules and drop rates. Don't mess too much with the current leagues unless you want to break them and the outrage will be even worse.

P.S: You can beat cruel difficulty with almost all blue items, you can beat merciless with mediocre rares. Some claims that 'trading' is mandatory for progressing are clueless. Even when you start doing maps you can do with self-crafted/found gear. The real problem comes in really endgame when you try to do higher and more difficult map affixes and you need really good gear.

Personally I find drop rates are quite balanced until then and I barely have traded anything and wouldn't have made much difference anyway (I'm not using a single traded piece in any of my characters). There can be that odd case of bad rng etc. but that's something else entirely which has notthing to do with the general drop rates and has to be addressed some way else.

It has always been the case that GGG wanted the game to be hard, and unfortunately when it comes to this type of game difficulty is a big function of gear. How much grinding they want it to be to get good gear is something else.

"

Alhoon wrote:

"

deteego wrote:

Obviously there were broken classes like Sorcs, and other classes who were less gear dependant than others, but the point being made is you could complete the game with self found gear unless you were being ridiculously retarded in your build

If by "completing the game" you mean kill Piety on Merciless this also applies to PoE, which I know by having personally done so at the start of open beta. Granted I had closed beta experience and planning, and I wasn't particularly lucky with drops either.

Completing the game in PoE means getting to Ac3 merciless and the start of lower level maps

There are plenty of builds that cannot get to that point without trading (or pooling from other characters)

"

Charan wrote:

"

deteego wrote:

Actually I am going by the implication that he doesn't post about the relevant issues in the game

needless to say, that which we were all (except for you, apparently) expecting sort of invalidates that implication.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-forum/dev-manifesto

Enjoy.

That was created after I made that comment, glad it finally came out

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

"

Charan wrote:

The biggest hurdle is, of course, short term races. If these unique skills aren't properly balanced, everyone will just pick the class/es that give the most useful skills.

Although the overlap of skills makes this strategy less used than a racing fan might hope, some short-term solo race builds -- for example, Krippers' Elemental Cleave Templar -- start the race by playing as another class (Duelist, in this case), quickly killing Hillock, then restarting as the class they actually intend to play. Krippers won more than a few solo races using this method.

Personally, I find this mechanic extremely interesting and think it should be promoted to the maximum extent possible.

I'm not sure about applying your principle to all quest rewards, but I'll agree that each quest reward for the Dying Exile and normal Hillock should be exclusive. I'm actually going to do some more work on this and come up with a specific proposal that would combine increased class distinction for first-time players with significantly increased build diversity for solo races.

Perhaps some overlap at higher levels would be fine. And yeah, the first thing I did when I played this game was run 3 of each class to Hillock to maximise available gems for my alts. :)

"

KarraKurri wrote:

Most builds cant go past mercilles selffound. Stop this. If you do something it doesnt make problem to dissapear.

Most builds in Diablo 2 can't finish the game with self found gear either.

"

KarraKurri wrote:

Even if you play cookie-cutter if you are unlucky with drops you can hit a wall in mercilles (for example gg with LA build without good rolled Thicket Bow).
Some build also requires 5 and 6 links.

Same applies to Diablo 2 also, but it's even more extreme there. Some exceptional single target melee builds (Smiter, Zealot, Fury Wolf etc.) are perhaps the best at killing ubers, but they can't do anything without great gear. Try to take any character with bad gear to act 1 Hell and have a first Zombie you come across hit you. Don't do that on HC though.

"

KarraKurri wrote:

I play selfound Ground Slam mara in OB and i 'finish the game' (i hit wall on maps because my crappy 2k life) but it was not rly enjoyable experience (not finding upgrades). Getting to lesge/fellshrine/docks and grind levels until you outlvl mobs - that is all that you can do past lvl 60+ in POE selffound. Unless you are rly lucky.
This is selfound-trade balance in PoE. Maybe trading is not required completely but its just almost moandatory to have fun past lvl ~50 if you are not masochist. Unless you consider farming ledge and then fellshrine 'progress'. Im not.

The same happened to me. After I realized my original idea of Arc Flame Totem Witch with Elemental Equilibrium was ruined by the changes GGG made to EE at the launch of Open Beta, I quickly planned a Firestorm tanky no minion Witch build. I didn't plan it enough though, and didn't Excel it correctly so it ended up being unoptimal. Not bad, just not perfect either, and a bit too costy to Regret in correct shape. Then I realized I just needed that 5link to do enough damage to have enough Lifesteal for maps. The prices for those were far out of my reach as everyone wanted them and despite the best of efforts, I never found one. At that point I quit playing for a good month or so, and just recently came having perfected the build and I'm ready to take it to HC as a Templar.

Then why am I not mad at GGG for drop chances? Maybe it's because I realize that in a game where trading exists, the drop chances are good. If the game didn't have trading, I'd say the chances were too low but it does.

Now, what can be done to this that pleases the no-trade folks without flooding the market for the pro-trade folks, apart from the aforementioned Solo League? And without resorting to absolute retardation like Diablo 3 with craftable BoP rares.

I think we need to stop comparing this game D2 which was the best ARPG ever made big shoes to fill id be happy if this game was 1 tenth as good.

The basic problem with POE atm is the progression rate of your character.Due to there being very little content almost every drop is either not as good as an item you pick up 30 levels previously or its a minor upgrade with the wrong socket lay out with would be fine if orbs dropped enough for you to make it usable.

GGG know this they made the game after all.But its a strange design choice to nerf skills and the passive tree and drops AND crafting options the main reason this game is a misery to play as atm there is no way to be powerful and no hope and ever improving your character unless you have 100+ people grinding for you (looking at you kripp).

So GGG really dudes you are going to have to throw us a bone here either buff the hell out of passive tree/skills or up the orb drop rate by a factor of ten or like D2 did reduce difficultly and add a LOT of content(read unique items) to keep people playing.

TLDR Are characters are too weak tobe fun to play without gear that dosent drop/exist.

The grind in poe is so crazy, and it punishes build variance to a certain aspect, especially to a solo player.

After my first HC char GS mara died in mercy fellshrine I realize melee as a first farmer is nearly impossible, so I reroll a LA ranger.

I farm through lv65-71 at mercy ledge and shrine but got NOTHING to replace my gear except a self-craft decent thicket by putting almost all my chaoses into it. Felt utterly bored running all the same area again and again and try to move to A3, then got stunlock gibbed in chamber of sins by multishot spark mages.

Not gonna whine or ragequit but I need to rest for a while to recover from the loss and frustration, and my next roll will be a summoner dedicated to safe farming, which never fits my playstyle :p