POE Heading to D3 Land...please reconsider
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Agree with the OP. Until something is done about it me and a couple friends have decided to put POE on the back burner. We love the game and have played hundreds of hours but its just not fun atm.
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" Yes, its a wall of text, but is one of the best feedback I read on this thread, devs have to read this, thousand of times. ♠RaGoN♦ Last edited by RaGoNXIII#1248 on Apr 14, 2013, 3:58:41 PM
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I'd like to comment that in my experience, it's very possible to take characters through all the story content with little or no trading. It's only when you start trying to grind the endless treadmill of maps and map-tier equipment that trading really seems to be come crucial.
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" This is very true. This game is actually very easy until act 2 merciless, and doesn't become silly difficult till maps. Alteration Orb Union Local #7 "Alts are 16:1 Chaos. You got that tough guy? Last edited by Obsidus#7533 on Apr 14, 2013, 6:48:10 PM
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" Well it depends on the build If you do the FOTM builds, then yes you can easily go through the content in the game all the way up until late game maps But if you do any other build, then you can be screwed as early as Act 3 Cruel As an example, I have glass cannony CI cold witch who is basically stuck at level 54. I had to put her on the backburner, its not possible to progress with her without getting gear with ES +500 mods on it, and the only area she can safely farm is pretty much fellshrind which gives her shit all HP This is what happens when you randomly bump mob pack density (amongst other things) for no reason. Unless your build path is 50% tank (bare minimum) its not really possible to progress unless you have ridiculous gear |
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" My main happens to be a glass cannony CI cold witch. Maybe I just got lucky? |
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" More like: "devoting more time in D3 I couldn't get as well geared as devoting less time in PoE to complete content", you can acquire the gear you need to complete content in PoE as you go (important disclaimer: NOT for every build possible, but yes for a lot of the builds possible) until really late endgame (higher level maps with difficult affixes) -in addition, while we talk about it, getting the currency to trade for it is also easier than in D3 release, as much more people has access to farming that gear-. You can get gear to get stared in maps in Act 3 merciless and/or craft it. In D3 release, if anyone says you could do that at a reasonable pace is lying, because: a) you pretty much had to use higher ilvl items (well rolled) to complete the same content (in contrast, you can do 66 maps in PoE with ilvl 61 gear); and b) the drop ratio for such gear in lowers acts was ABYSMAL, like really terrible (don't remember the exact ratios but I believe in the beginning was like the chance to get an ilvl 62 in Act 1 inferno was below 5% and the same for ilvl 63 gear in Act 2). --- Anyway, the problem of trading based drop ratios vs. single-player based drop ratios can only be solved by structuring the gameplay in different ways, ie. by different leagues with different rules. I believe this would be the right move and I would have no problem creating characters in an alternative "no-trade" league (in fact would probably work better for me given my current play time). |
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" Unless you are doing a LA/dual spark totem/EK/FP based build, you are not going to survive in 66 maps on level 61 With the new change to lightning thorns, LA might not even be in there |
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" I just counted my defensive nodes as well, out of curiosity. At 83, 103 points used, HP/ES hybrid witch: - I have 13 life nodes of various kinds, 1 +30 Str node, so we can say 14 Life Nodes. - I have 15 ES nodes, some with +resi on them, some just ES regen, so no +ES. -------------------------------------- 29 Defensive nodes out of 103. That's a rather amazing 28% defensive nodes :) The rest are all +crit, +elemental/cold damage, +spell, +mana/regen. My gear is quite crappy, all self-found, no 5Ls, no build-enabling uniques (no uniques at all...), I don't have life or ES on each piece... What can I do with my build? Play solo maps up to 72. My arch-enemy, chaos damage, makes me advance one totem at a time when there are enemies using it in a map, so I always hope I will get lucky and the map will have something more palatable for me. It's pretty annoying and I come close to dying from one bomb hit. So, in all honesty, PoE is playable, even at high levels, as a (semi) glass cannon build and self-found. But it's damn risky, you have limitations so be prepared to roll those maps quite a bit, you won't feel 10% as OP as in other ARPGs, gear upgrades are rare as fuck (actually I didn't find anything usable in the "endgame"), and sometimes it's a huge chore advancing a totem length at a time. So the enjoyment factor it's rather meh and the game feels very slow and sometimes quite tiring because of some trash mobs being able to 2-3 shot you out of existence. But it's still WAY better to me than playing a damn tank, never did, and find it offensive it's the most viable solution in PoE. I would be quite happy with this slow and cautious style of playing - if at the end of the road somewhere, a good rare (for my build...) would be waiting - I would say "Hell, I worked my ass, but it was worth it!". But we all know how rewarding running maps actually is... placeholder for creative sig Last edited by Undon3#5633 on Apr 14, 2013, 10:33:04 PM
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Rares are overwhelmingly jank, ye that's no argue there. Let's break down the reasons why:
The Socket System If it doesn't have four linked sockets at the least, and it isn't damn near perfect, throw it in the garbage. Nobody loves you. Poopy Suffixes Diablo 2 had the "of Evisceration" affix. We don't have that here. Suffixes include: Cast/attack speed, Resist, and Critical Stuff. If you're not using a critical character, then pretty much everything you want is a prefix. Damage%, added damage, life, move speed, +armour stat, +armour%.... good luck getting what you want, when you have to try and squeeze all that into three slots. All Rares Are Basically One Item Essentially, it's like you're finding the same unique item over and over again. But! It's always at some level of crapitude; some subset of power from the item you really want. Three types of armour, with three annoying hybrid armour in there to cut your chance of getting what you want in half. (Now tell me, each primary armour is supported by three regions in the tree. Hybrid armour is supported by one area in the tree. Does that make sense?) Really only three types of weapons, for the types of builds in the game: * Physical Attacker: Uses support gems to get an enormous multiplier off of their Physical Damage% stat. This isn't really close to weak (and is absolutely fantastic to get around mana issues, I wouldn't recommend anything else to someone who wants to have fun); people simply don't understand that the increased physical damage% mod on a weapon is absolutely essential. A high level blue item with ~170% increased physical damage and IAS% will out perform just about every single rare you find on the ground. Alteration orbs are essential if you don't have luck with the uniques. * Elemental Attacker: Goes the reverse of the physical attacker; tries to build up a massive base of damage instead of getting a lot of multipliers on their damage. Easier to actually use rares, since there are more possible elemental damage mods on well, just about every slot. Pretty much has the most flexibility in how many rares are actually passable. * WizarD: The +skill gem and increased damage% mods are just about all you need. Since you don't have to worry about accuracy at all, as well with better support for it in the skill tree than attacks, feel free to actually use those critical chance/damage affixes you find. Item Level The one thing no amount of crafting can fix. Wizards, and to a lesser extent, Elemental Attackers, don't care much about the base level type of an item. So the staff does 5-11 physical damage, who the hell cares? Searing Touch = Best in slot. It's a lot better than Diablo 2 was about this. But combined with the socket system, it's rng in your rng before you even get to rng how powerful your armour is. Item Find I want a Tabula Rasa more than anything. Why? Is it because I really want a six linked skill? No. It's so I can use the Item Rarity and Item Quantity support gems whenever I feel like it. If you have +100% magic find and +100% quantity, does that quadruple the number of uniques you find? So if I play an entire 8 hour work day, that's equal to the guy puttering around for the length of a movie? Pst, here's a secret: those resist nodes in the Marauder tree? They're not resist nodes at all. When you've got crap gear, they're magic find nodes. Potential Adjustments Personally, I would have had the physical damage affix be a suffix. More substantial ideas: Some item find normalization ---------------------------- Create a gear slot for charms on the paper doll. Create some graphics for charms, like a severed chicken leg. A lucky rhoa's claw. Yeah that works. The stats on it? NO COMBAT STATS. Charms are for luck, not +life%. Like duh. Besides quantity and rarity, you can have bias in the drop chance of various stuff. Like a +100% chance of finding swords would double the number of swords you find, +100% chance of finding Energy Shield armour, stuff along those lines. This grants some base level of item find (a core game component) even to the schmucks struggling to survive. It would feel really, really good to climb this additional stat treadmill. This should have been industry standard twelve years ago imo. eXtreme Raresssss ----------------- If the "every rare is the same item" issue is actually an issue, there's always the old "add an additional item type that can spawn with a random unique-only affix on the thing" canard. tldr: Zazz up the generic affix pool. Give us some baseline find%. |
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