What do you think about having a POE Classic ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5Hzh43k330

That's what I think of *any* sort of 'classic'.

This video hit me square in the feels and I don't even play WoW.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5Hzh43k330

That's what I think of *any* sort of 'classic'.

This video hit me square in the feels and I don't even play WoW.

Given that I just left Swtor for the second time I can definitely relate. The MMo companies get so focused on the microtransactions they forget about what the player base found so much joy out of in the first place.

I wasn't around for the beginning of PoE, but I really dont see anything really worth going back to from the abyss era when I started. Daily master missions, yes I still hate you Vorici, and am still mostly annoyed with Mr Pvp Arena.

Really if not for choosing to integrate archnem mods into the base game so soon this league would have likely fared way better.

I'd only want to return to the days where it was hard to get greater multiple projectiles but I'd also be bored out of my mind if I played that because there'd be almost nothing to do but grind for quality skill gems

i do miss the original a1n1 lioneye's soundtrack tho

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SeCKSEgai wrote:

I wasn't around for the beginning of PoE, but I really dont see anything really worth going back to from the abyss era when I started.

So I was thinking about this actually, and there is ONE thing I miss from early PoE: hardcore races.

Now, I sucked at HC racing but damn if I didn't give most of them a go. I thought they were a great couple of hours of super intense, super distilled PoE gameplay. This was right before the rogue-like boom, although PoE: Descent was definitely consciously made to feel like a true rogue-like with its isolated design and end-of-level choice of rewards tailored to improve your character. I could have played Descent all day for many days if they'd expanded on it.

Racing was the present and future of PoE back then, and it felt pretty inclusive. You got some neat rewards for clearing certain thresholds, you didn't have to devote much time to it BUT if you wanted to be super competitive, you had to really optimise your run. Leagues, on the other hand, felt more like separate servers: the promise of hosting a 'private league' was for large guilds and people with similar playstyles. It sounds ridiculous now but we had fairly serious plans to run a roleplay league, for example. I was also pretty sure I was going to host one for my own quite large guild. Y'know, back when guilds were assumed to be anything more than a glorified chatroom with a shared stash.

Oh how naïve we were.

In comparison to either racing or what we assumed leagues would be, the current incarnation of leagues kind of...suck. Instead of short, sharp bursts of tense fun, they're a slog in which the fun, at least for someone who likes short, sharp bursts, is over within the first few days. After that you either start a new character (again, simulating that rogue-like feel) or you stick with the one character and it's just the same old crap, maybe with better gear and some more skills/passives under your belt. You might as well be playing an endgame MMO, which at least has better graphics, boss design...open world...complex raid design...but sure, at least here you have oodles of build options, right? Most of which fail in the endgame -- but shine in early game, yet again reinforcing the validity of the racing/rogue-like approach to ARPG design.

ARPGs were never designed to be played the way PoE is played -- we did it to D2 because, well, it was the only way to keep playing D2. I think the advent of the rogue-like is a big part of why ARPGs are so niche these days. People like the repetition; they even like the unfairness. What they don't like is when that repetition and unfairness is a constant. When the game doesn't play fair and occasionally throw them equally unfair advantages over the enemy.

Both races and leagues essentially do the same thing: they put you through the same game over and again just with different conditions. I think the key to the rogue-like is you don't have time to get used to those conditions to the point where they lose their sting. You die, you start over -- but this time your character is a little stronger. That's the rogue-like loop. Leagues, to me, are like rogue-likes that overstay their welcome by roughly 20000%. They're races with all the true speed and thrill stripped from them. Where once PoE's impetus was that time limit, starting from nothing, it's now quite possibly the most boring sort of game impetus around: maximising xp per run. Fucking. Yawn.

So yeah, short-burst racing with cool rewards is one thing I think 'classic' PoE had that I really miss. I get it: leagues are more cost-efficient (by far) and they have more 'wow' factor to flog them support packs every quarter (they're basically expansions, which is why GGG officially calls them that now), but Christ almighty if they don't expose the worst of the ARPG genre with alarming clarity.

Forcing an ARPG to behave like an MMO, that is to say a long-term build-focused GAAS/Lifestyle game, is a crime against everything that made the ARPG genre great in the first place. And compared to the average lifespan of a rogue-like character, 3 months is VERY long term.

edit: And yes, astute readers will note the seeming hypocrisy of me playing Sacred 2, which is probably the closest an ARPG ever got to an open world ARPG where committing to one character for a long time is almost mandatory...BUT I'll point out the key to this: open. world. Hundreds of quests. It's not an MMO; it's Diablo meets Elder Scrolls with a whole heap of bugs, bugfuck crazy dialogue and some Blind Guardian for oomph. It's not even really part of this conversation because, for all its flaws, damn if it didn't try its own thing with a devil-may-care gusto today's formulaic 'oh look it's yet another league gimmick to learn' PoE could only dream about.

As far as D2 goes, I think it was basically the D1 experience but with actual incentive to repeat.

But going back to D2, while I did manage to eventually become "decently" wealthy, the repetition was horrid. I literally had to go niche and solo ubers to finally trade with the big boys because the actual farming hoping for something good to mule meant I got bored long before I found something really nice.

Poe has gotten progressively harder over the years. But instead of a "classic" we really just need a larger variety of builds made viable and still be worthwhile.

The rubber-banding, the crashes.
The somewhat-crappy graphics, the stuttering.

Yeah, no thanks.

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satanttin wrote:

i rather have a offline version where we can test/use everything possible xd

Word. Take my money. Would pay $200 for 1.0 though 3.18 any patch

Why do I have to be online anyways? I'm SSF no trade no guild no nothin needed with a internet connection.

I think I'd play all before lab. Hated that from day 1 and still do..so like before 2.4 ish

Give us a version where you can just choose what content is in the next area.

You don't control what drops, only what you interact with. Including the acts (why are Acts so barren of interesting content?)

And Ritual back and make trade occur instantly instead of a clumsy idiotic 5 to 40 messages per trade.

Would pay a single large fee or a monthly sub for that game.

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Aim_Deep wrote:

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satanttin wrote:

i rather have a offline version where we can test/use everything possible xd

Word. Take my money. Would pay $200 for 1.0 though 3.18 any patch

Why do I have to be online anyways? I'm SSF no trade no guild no nothin needed with a internet connection.

I think I'd play all before lab. Hated that from day 1 and still do..so like before 2.4 ish

mean it's online because of a leaderboard i suppose xd