PoE, my Forever Game lost?

1. Disclaimers up front. I know enough about PoE's mechanics to understand terminology in build guides, low-level crafting, and general currency generating strategies. I do not know enough to craft my own build, play SSF with any level of real end-game success, or how to craft these multi-mechanic uber items. In the scheme of PoE player types, I am average at best.

2. My perceived #1 problem with the game: The bloat in this game is the worst I have ever seen in my gaming career. There are SO many half-baked mechanics from previous leagues that just never really add any depth, only frustrating complexity that requires real research.

3. I realize how much I do not know, and I DO like the fact that someone can spend a lot of time to be truly elite in this game. The problem of late, is that even the truly elite players' complaints about this game are starting to echo the "common-man-scrub" player complaints. I used to think the difficulty was only because I did not truly understand a lot of the underlying hidden mechanics. I no longer believe this to be the case.

4. Yes, I am a GGG fanboi. I have always been a fan of GGG, and I have spent absurd amounts of money because I was confident in their ability to continue developing one of the best games ever made. I was a day one player, but I have always been what some of you would consider a filthy casual. I am a simple man, and I play this game to chase the dopamine release of finding that 20ex legendary.

5. Without watching dozens of hours of videos, reading in-depth mechanic guides, or watching Mathil's every stream, you simply cannot enjoy the game any longer if you value progression and stellar loot drops. What started as an ARPG player's wet dream has turned into a game of frustration. Between the bots destroying the economy, the trade system being a top-tier piece of shit, game development balanced around a logout macro, thousands of specific mechanics that have zero explanation in game, with huge sweeping changes requiring people to constantly be learning, there is no longer room to just log in, kill shit, loot shit, and feel good about it. I am not sure if anyone else had the experience that I did, but every league used to have a tipping point. Once your build got to a certain level, and we're talking a LOT of work to get it there, the game became..... fun. I felt powerful and capable. I was able to harvest the fruits of grind and gear. That is gone. There is no longer a feeling of satisfaction once you hit that point. It seemingly no longer exists.

6. I understand there is a fine line between complicated-but-engaging and complicated-and-annoying mechanics. The bottom line is that GGG has moved this FIRMLY into the latter. I'm tired of spending an evening watching/reading about a specific mechanic, thinking I have a better understanding of said mechanic, and then logging in only to learn that I do not. I'm tired of getting gibbed out of the blue without understanding why. I'm tired of spending time and currency towards a very respectable end-game build only to quit the season after learning that even the most expensive build will no longer protect you from not completely understanding everything in the game. It's a kick in the balls, and I'm tired of it. This game is simultaneously the most cutting edge and outdated/out of touch that exists. What good is a constantly updated game if the player stands zero chance of enjoying those updates? Every Single Thing in this game is complicated, and it can only be explained by one of two things: bad leadership or a self-imposed mandate to make everything complicated simply for complexity's sake.

7. Git gud. Boys, I've tried. I used to be good, and I cannot pinpoint where exactly the tempo shifted. I see extremely high-tier players discussing the difficulty problem, and while it makes me feel a LITTLE better about my badness, it also seems to be signaling the very real fact that the game has lost the core enjoyment that so many of us have not experienced for many leagues. The theme of this post is: I'm tired. I'm tired of chasing. I'm tired of trying to trick myself into thinking this game is as fun as it used to be. I'm tired of the badly implemented league mechanics compounded league after league. I'm tired of being 10x more profitable by playing the shitty market mini-game than playing the actual game. I'm tired of watching the best of our community leave, and I am tired of nothing being done about it.

8. This game means a lot to me. I am not against change, and in fact, fell in love with this game due to the developer's philosophy of change. For the past couple years, those changes have just been poorly executed, not optimized/fixed/updated, and has resulted in a game that is now a chore to play with zero payoff for the effort.

9. Possible reconciliation? What am I missing? For those of you who still love this game, do you have any advice for those of us who have hit the wall? Any specific video/guide that ended up changing your playstyle or understanding of the game in a positive way? For some of you perma-build types that stick with the same build or something very close every league, what build? Are there any specific end-game boss fights that you actually enjoy? Which ones?

10. For my PoE OG's, are there any other games that scratched the same itch this one used to? It does not need to be an ARPG, but I enjoy high-ceiling, progression-based gameplay with extreme payoffs in the end-game.

11. I rarely read general discussion forums. I never post. So, if this post elicits an emotional response, good. Feel free to yell, scream, laugh, insult, or critique anything I said. This is a last-ditch effort for me. I want feedback, GIT GUD or otherwise. I want to enjoy this game again, or put it down for good. How we feeling, boys?

There's no such thing as a "Forever game". PoE will still be here if you want to play it. It's just one game in the stack. Play something else. Come back from time to time to just dick around. Quit thinking of this as an investment.

Honestly, I don't know at what mechanics you refer concerning complexity? You mean like Betrayal and Harvest?

Personally I think the state of the game is the best it has ever been for me, if you don't count archnemesis mods (and even that feels very overreacted by the community). I'm nearing 9000 hours and consider myself a dedicated casual, maybe I fall in the fanboi category and I'm having a great time at the moment.
I don't know if there is a magic formula, it's very personal I feel, but I don't care about boss killing and challenges for example. I do play trade most of the time but the SSF itch is getting really big, I'm pretty good at setting my own goals and especially not caring about economy.
Finding a build you love is the biggest thing though, if you only cater towards the so called meta builds, I can imagine a huge burn after a while. I've literally never played a build that 'everyone' is playing, maybe on accident that's possible.
But yeah my point is that way too many people make themselves feel pressured by economy and profit per hour while it might not even be something they really like doing. I mean some people talk about a failed league start if they can't play in the first 6 hours of the league, speaking about ruining it for yourself, that's probably the main issue there. Not that this is something that concerns you, but it might, I don't know.

But yeah, if I would try to do challenges I'd burn out and quit quite fast as it's doing stuff I don't like, aka that feels like work. I have been there in the past, and luckily I now realise when a game becomes work and stop playing and so something else.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

There's no such thing as a "Forever game". PoE will still be here if you want to play it. It's just one game in the stack. Play something else. Come back from time to time to just dick around. Quit thinking of this as an investment.

Everyone should have a forever game.

I do play other games.

I have quit from time to time, and I don't take any league too seriously.

What do you mean by investment? Isn't anything you put time into an investment?


Thanks for the feedback.

If you are playing in trade, you can always buy what you want/need.

Respectfully, it sounds like you rely a lot on streamers and guides to pilot you through the game.

The two observation's I've made surrounding 3.18 are such:

1) Streamers are complaining even though they are fully capable of succeeding just fine despite the changes. I personally think this doesn't do anyone any good because as you said, you've struggled and when you look around at some of the bigger content creators; they too are complaining and it reinforces your view that something is wrong.

The players with adequate game knowledge are not suffering through an unplayable game state. I think content creators are welcome to express concerns/disappointment relative to whatever their expectations were for this league but to suggest AN needs to be undone (and some have) is rediculous.

2) Again, this is with respect to you and others: There are players who don't have the requisite game knowledge and any time there is a problem, they ask someone to tell them the answer (be it though chat, guides, etc). One person can play this game for 6,000 hours and learn almost everything they need to know and there are those who after the same amount of time still know almost nothing.

What I'm noticing is the latter of those two player types who didn't build up enough game knowledge this whole time and leveraged community content to coast along. Now that the game requires more from the player, it's suddenly GGG's fault and they need to 'revert the game to an easier build so I don't have to learn to play'. (Again, this is not your explicit sentiment but rather a summation of all those I have observed). If the game is tougher, you need to overcome that adversity. When someone says they have no idea where to even begin on that task, it's a sign that they've been cutting corners this whole time.

--

I have a neighbor who is 94 years old. He calls me over from time to time to fix his TV for him. Every time I do, he wants to know what button(s) I pressed so that he can fix it himself the next time it happens. Unfortunately that doesn't help him. My neighbor doesn't have a working knowledge of digital TVs or even modern electronics. When I help him, I go though a checklist of things I suspect the issue might be, confirm all the physical connections and then navigate through various menus until I've resolved the issue. He can't do that even if I told him the 'solution' and it's why he can never fix his TV.


I wish I could tell you there was a guide that could explain everything for you but if such a guide did exist, it would have to be so comprehensive and long that I wonder how effective a teaching tool it would even be.

There's a lot of resources out there; the wiki, poedb, craftofexile, poe.ninja, etc... take it one problem at a time and after solving enough problems and thousands of hours poured into the game, you'll be able to stand on your own two feet.

You really should find out what "investment" means. I can't help you if you think that playing some video game is an investment.

Point one in your post sums up the rest of it quite well tbh.

Solo Self Found Player Views

I'm more or less in the same boat as yourself, to reach end game at an acceptable rate of dps / not dying, requires knowledge of gear that simply isn't: "life, res, with attacks to x". The mods on gear have outgrown this game way beyond what we had way back.

Which brings me to point 2, gearing has become such a complicated process that requires you to use mechanics that "feel" left behind. Timeless jewels as an example. The atlas passive tree has helped tremendously in opening up content, it is a powerful tool with regards to letting you access the content you want. Tho it is much like everything else in the game, it requires you to play alot to get the best out of it, constant respecs.

One of the major issues as far as I can see is that mapping has been opened up so much over the years that is has become easier to get into end-game maps. I still remember when it was celebrated to get a +1/+2 map in higher tier maps, the sustain back then just wasn't there - progression even harder. It's incredibly easy and quick nowadays to progress into high tier maps. This however, has it's downsides where characters which may or may not be ready do them anyhow - splat if not.

I've played a fair amount more this league than I usually would and have been finding a fair amount of success in the constant respeccing of the atlas. One of my major gripes with regards to deaths this league is sentinel empowered exarch monsters - they hit hard (jumping on face deaths). Otherwise the experience has been quite enjoyable - getting myself out of the age old ways that "life, res, attacks to x" just doesn't cut it for end game and that there is alot of game to be played here - to slow down abit and to grab some of that gear through atlas passives. I realise now that the game just needs to be played, alot, alot more than ever to succeed.

Thanks for your detailed write up btw, I have shared alot of your frustrations.

This is a great write up too - essentially the point I was trying to make. We're essentially old and stubborn players (with regards to the games age) who have neglected to move forward with it and lost pace, perhaps over several years worth of content.

I've spent alot of time this league trying to catch back up with said content and feel in a much better place (hence playing far more this league). As per your point number 9, this post is good advice.

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muzein wrote:

Respectfully....

Thank you for taking the time to respond. I agree with everything you have said. I've watched all of Ziz's "PoE University" videos multiple times, along with many other such materials in an attempt to be able to create my own build. Every time I try, it SUCKS. :) The end-endgame is just too demanding. It requires either a stupid op meta build, or multiple hundreds of exalts. I know I threw a lot of specific issues out in the op, but it really just comes down to me being unable to enjoy the game. 1 out of 10 deaths feel 'fair'. Most games also have some sort of mechanism to let you know what killed you so that you can learn from the failure. This game feels eternally punishing with zero mechanisms to learn from mistakes.