A returning player's F2P, zero research experience: a VERY 'casual' attempt at Sentinel league
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Experience in a nutshell:
With a completely fresh start on a free to play account, I really enjoyed Path of Exile in its current state for the first half of the campaign, but feature creep, performance issues, troubles keeping my character’s gear up to spec and a loss of momentum to Part 2 very quickly depleted my desire to keep going. It was obvious from the start that this is a ‘love it or hate it’ game that knows its audience (hardcore ARPG players looking for a permanent ‘home’) and gives that audience everything it could ever want. It seems to have little interest in any other sort of player, which is a strange deviation from how most free to play games work. But since PoE is clearly very successful, I concluded it wasn’t for me and moved on before finishing the core campaign or feeling the need to spend any money to enhance my experience. Introduction This is a pick up and play attempt at going through the Sentinel League, SSF, on a free to play account with no prior research. I am not new, but I haven’t played Path of Exile in a few years, not since Legion or Metamorph, so I have some muscle memory for the basics of PoE but anything added since then is new to me. The goal is simple: install game, make a character based on my tastes, see how far I get. Make observations along the way. I will google a few things here and there but I am specifically avoiding looking up builds, boss guides, crafting guides, and so on. I simply wanted to know how ‘pick up and play’ Path of Exile is in its current state. This is not a request for build advice, as I do not plan to keep playing. I’m not interested in going any further than I made it with my planned approach. Similarly I don’t need explanations for anything I didn’t understand as I played through. The whole point is I didn’t understand it despite my previous PoE knowledge, not that I want to. I am more than capable of looking stuff up. I am writing this primarily for the devs in the interest that they might take some of my sadly brief experience into account. If there were a more private, official way of submitting feedback I’d do that instead but it seems this is it.
Disclaimer
Yes, I have another account here. Yes, it has mtxes – not many, but enough to ruin this experiment. Yes, I’ve ‘quit’, quite vocally, repeatedly. And yes, I reserve the right to change my mind and do my due diligence as an outspoken critic of the game. My approach here gives TencentGGG zero money, so my personal morals haven’t been compromised. ‘I thought you quit’ responses are not necessary – believe me, I thought I did too. And I will again after this, most gratefully.
Overview of build and approach
Since he’s my favorite class, I started with a Shadow and built as intuitively as possible with a simple goal: stay with a dagger to fit the theme but be as durable as possible. This meant focusing on life passive nodes as well as some mana management. Cobra Lash as a dagger skill but with range seemed an obvious choice for trash clear, with Volley adding a lot. Nightblade introduced me to ‘elusive’ which struck me as a good layer of defense, so I took that first idea of dagger+tanky and added Elusive as a passive tree priority, which I noticed has some new nodes. To trigger Elusive, I needed critical hits, so Increased Critical Strikes was my third support. For utility skills, I went Clarity until I had passive mana management and Herald of Agony as a natural buff to Cobra Lash. Despite that, I haven’t really focused on chaos damage or Damage over Time. It’s just a nice addition. I added grace once I could and took the clarity off. I tried Assassin’s Mark but find Poacher’s Mark more useful. Finally, I picked up Pestilent Strike and socketed Faster Attacks, Increased Critical Strikes and Chance to Poison for some much-needed single target boss attacks. Cobra Lash can still clear trash but by level 30 I definitely saw its damage dropping off against tougher enemies. (Speaking of, I like the change to marks. The reduction to single target and removal of a duration makes them an excellent tool for tougher enemies. Smart change!) Finally, I threw on a riposte with whatever else I had lying around for a little extra incidental damage. Why not? Because I’m using crits not just for damage but also defense, I went Assassin, choosing the Elusive-buffing Mistwalker as my first notable. At level 38, I added Ambush to give Pestilent Strike a nudge and swapped Volley for Greater Volley. Neither of these really changed the core build. By level 50, I was doing far too little damage due to an outdated dagger and probably some poor passive skill choices. Character retired and game uninstalled, for that reason and others I will now provide.
PART 1: an absolutely awesome ARPG experience with a few hiccups
Act 1 I hate to start off on a bad note, but this was my very first reaction to the game: the transition from the stark, grim starting area to the first town is really shocking. Bright, cheap-looking, out of character Mtxes in Lioneye’s Watch are out of control. When I last played, they were everywhere in town but nowhere near as distracting. Giant horses, apparitions, huge wings, luminescent armour and auras made it hard to negotiate basic town activity. It was the only time I was actively, forcibly reminded that I was playing a free to play game. I did not feel encouraged to spend money on the game when I saw all that. I thought it strange that I could be playing this game on a free account and not notice it and yet so many people in town clearly had spent a lot of money on their visual appearance, an appearance I generally found gaudy and unpleasant. The overwhelming number and intensity of mtxes made me worry that further down the line the ‘free to play’ aspect would be tossed aside, that I’d have to spend money on something because otherwise, why are these people doing it? It added nothing as far as I was concerned. The first town was a visual headache and I just wanted to get out of there and back ‘into the game’. And once I did, Path of Exile confirmed itself as a great no-nonsense ARPG early on. Quests are just there to keep you going in a direction, and thankfully don’t send you back to town too often. The gameplay from area to area can be either monotonous or compelling, but I found it mostly to be the second one. Progress through act 1 was very smooth but probably as hard as the game gets until late act 4. Burning damage is everywhere and chews through a new character. You learn to keep moving very early! I encountered the Sentinel cache almost immediately. For the league itself, I went in completely blind and figured it all out in-game except for the upgrade process. The quest uses an arbitrary term for it (filament) and I think this could have been better explained. Overall, I often forget to activate a sentinel for an area because of the momentum of the game itself. The difficulty spike is fair for the rewards so far. Noticeably better drops whenever I do activate a sentinel. I wish it weren’t more keys to manage but it’s not a deal breaker so far. I do it if I remember to. Act 2 Despite some close calls, my first death was in act 2. I thought it was the ‘echoist’ rare mod, but it was probably the spriggans (If they’re the ones doing the exploding spores) being out of tune for the area/level. Not sure really. This was my first indication that I might want to give chaos resistance some consideration. Act 3 Probably my favourite portion so far. No real difficulty spikes, good payoff with the Piety arc, far better looking areas than the previous two acts. I tackled the Labyrinth around level 34. I know the normal version is a cakewalk these days but I still remember it being much more of a threat, so an easy Ascension was very welcome. Act 4 I found Niko and Delving distracting and the extra keys for dynamite and flares overwhelming in conjunction with the Sentinel league. His appearance and quest chain also breaks the flow of the act progression. I wish the path behind Crawler stayed lit so I could go back and grab any missed loot. I crafted the dynamite and flares as he requested but returned to the main game. Delve has no comfortable, unobtrusive place in the core campaign. It seems to me that acts 1-3 are very smooth to play, but acts 4 onwards slows right down by adding too much stuff that needs to be googled, and even then you’re not sure what to google for. For example, Barkhul dropped a sword with a blue glow and a powerful mod, and I had no idea what it was. Searching for ‘PoE glowing blue item’ lead me to the PoE wiki page about Influenced items. I didn’t see the symbol there, so I had to dig a bit deeper to learn about fractured items. This is all the result of feature creep. It’s a shame that it kicked in so early into my run. I was really barrelling along nicely. Oh, there are some excellent aesthetic upgrades in the Belly of the Beast. I am very impressed. That ground looking (and sounding) like living membrane is nightmare material. The bone walls are a nice touch too. The Godless Three gave me some trouble. Both Maligaro and Doedre forced me back to town due to low chaos resistance and bleed damage respectively. I know that Doedre in particular is designed to teach players the importance of removing curses but that fight was just long and uninspired. Or maybe it was a sign of my flagging DPS. Malachai himself was no real problem. Act 5 This act has easily the best music and area design in the core campaign. The whole thing feels like the story’s climax, with higher stakes than ever and a series of events that, for the first time in the game, really seem to matter to the world at large. Boss-wise, Avarius was no problem but Innocence kept me on my toes. Had to portal a few times to avoid death. Felt like a very fair, well-designed boss encounter. I died a few times to Kitava. I’ve never been good at reading his moves. It’s always to the same thing: dodging the homing-in cross attack, then a slam. He’s an act boss and I’m not in any way tuned or built to kill act bosses with no deaths. A few deaths are more than acceptable. It would have been nice to know what sort of damage he’s dealing, since the updated rare mod descriptions are mostly easy to understand. I honestly thought I had decent defenses but I was both hitting him like a wet noodle and getting smacked around like a ragdoll with huge hits and very nasty DoT. Still, I’ll chalk this one up to a ‘me’ problem.
BUT AT THIS POINT I WOULD HAVE QUIT THE GAME
Because what wasn’t a me problem was the increasingly bad performance of the game. The stuttering and texture load-in grew too dangerous. I had to google (again) to see what was going on. Found some long dead threads from early 2021 explaining my issue perfectly. Tried switching to Vulkan and running the x64 version of the client as an administrator. Removed the stutters, texture load-in remained, but loading times themselves between zones increased dramatically. Good thing there’s a grace period. At this point, had I been a new player and invested no money, I’d have quit the game and not looked back. It’s been fun so far but not ‘I need to google and fiddle with the settings just to make the game playable on my decent computer to play it’ levels of fun. Too many other games to occupy my time that don’t have these issues. I understand if you’re an invested player that you’re willing to work through it, but from a ‘normal player’ perspective, this is a big black mark against Grinding Gear Games.
PART 2: You want feature creep? Oh, we got feature creep. Do we ever.
Act 6 Heist almost made me quit too. When I re-entered the Twilight Strand, ready to dive into this new Wraeclast paradigm of killing gods, I immediately found ‘rogue markers’ and was told to return to town. There an NPC said some cryptic stuff and told me to go away. Okay. My PoE awareness at this point is strong enough to know that I’ve just encountered another past league’s feature. I click on the markers, get teleported to a whole different town with a bunch of new NPCs with a lot to say. Seems they’re a band of thieves who do ‘heists’. I’m given a job and it’s all very interesting. But guys, I have a story to play through…can we maybe not? Still, I gave it a go. The NPC lockpicker was interesting if a bit too chatty, but the rest just seemed like a different game, one I had no intention of playing. This sort of thing is more familiar and comfortable in an MMO, not an otherwise singular purpose ‘kill loot kill’ ARPG. There was an ‘alert level’ which amusingly didn’t move despite me making quite a lot of noise. And then it did move, no idea why (opening the lockers maybe? I was admittedly skimming dialogue at this point because I couldn't tell flavour chatter from important game information). I also had no idea what would happen if the Alert level hit max. THERE WAS FAR TOO MUCH LOOT. I don’t like leaving rare items behind but I did before long. Okay, so I’m not meant to open these lockers because they set off alarms (when murdering everyone in sight, most of whom have very loud death screams…doesn’t?), which is why I had too much loot. I retrieve the urn and…then the alarm goes off and there are mobs EVERYWHERE. Okay, so that’s the alert system. I barely made it out, gave the stolen item to the dude and got…MORE MARKERS. Wow. Also, Kurai said to sell him ‘the items I found for more markers’ and that was a lie: most of the items I found just sold for currency shards. I get the feeling this league was kind of rushed even when it came out. It was all just too much to incorporate into my already complicated PoE experience. I decided then and there to never touch Heist again. It wasn’t fun. It wasn’t interesting. It felt out of place. It was probably good as a stand-alone league feature but directing a player to Heist right in the middle of the core campaign is a huge mistake. The feature creep and its extremely poor integration to the core game was getting worse and I was definitely less inclined to keep going. I even looked at the ‘help’ screen and saw nothing about Heists. It’s such a shame because it was very well produced. Lots of voice work. Great visuals. I was wondering the whole time, do these devs just want to make a different game or something? Is this their cry for help after being forced to work on an ARPG for years? I would love to play a game like Heist, just not when I’m also trying to play through Path of Exile. And then it was over, just like that. Because while Heist didn’t make me quit, the seeming fix to that stuttering issue did. Now instead of micro lag and texture load in, my framerate was dropping like a rock in early act 6 and it was no effort at all to hit escape, quit and delete the game. After five acts of really fun ARPG gameplay and a pretty good ‘end boss’ I was numb and bored by what Act 6 offered. Everything after Oriath just felt like busywork with no real story other than ‘oops, that final boss wasn’t the final boss’ which is a tired trope I can do without IF the gameplay isn’t compelling for me. I know from prior experience that I still had several former leagues’ worth of added content coming in the core campaign, and I was already ignoring the current league’s feature. The issue a lot of people raise with 3.18’s rare monsters was only just peeking around the corner but I could feel it coming. And the game wasn't running smoothly at all despite me bothering to try to fix it. So barely halfway through the core campaign, I'd encountered a damning number of issues that would have make me quit any other game. It’s for these reasons that I’m uninstalling Path of Exile again, and probably until ‘Path of Exile 2’, whenever that might be. And now just some stray thoughts I had along the way.
New things I did like
Spell suppression is a really good update to spell dodge. I did not miss Acrobatics+Phase Acrobatics at all. Resistances and life on gear are easy to keep decent once you unlock the crafting table. I didn’t understand the passive ‘mastery’ system at first. I allocated a notable passive in the area but couldn’t activate the mastery. The game doesn’t specify that you need to spend another skill point to do so. But once I did, I was really happy with the options and felt more incentive to focus on certain clusters on the passive tree. Good change. I love Orbs of Binding. An easy and early beast altar recipe to make them takes a lot of the pain out of spending currency while progressing through the early game. Regarding changes to rare monsters: for most of Part 1, I appreciated the change to rare mods a lot. The condensing of a list of attributes into a single word or two seems inspired by Diablo 3, which uses keywords to hint at what a rare monster will do. Most of the mods had been self-explanatory so far, and those that aren’t I learned through repeated exposure. I understand that comparisons to Diablo 3 aren’t always fair or welcome but in this case, I think simplifying rare monster information was a good move. This isn’t a game where you want to be reading several sentences in the heat of the battle. By the time I reached Part 2, however, the rare mods were being significantly augmented by other difficulty factors and I started to see why people have been very upset. It seems to me that GGG came up an excellent way to update their rare and magical monsters but did not take into account how that way would interact with a game that already has a lot going on. So, overall, I LIKE the change to magical/rare monsters from a design perspective but by Part 2, rare encounters were less challenging and more discouraging.
Neutral observations
Regarding Challenges: I had a browse of the list but most of them made no sense to me. I have resisted the urge to look things up like vendor recipes or what all these words mean but since I am not playing to collect challenges, only to experience the game as a new player, I won’t. They are distracting but not so distracting that I can’t just play the game. I will revisit them after (if?) I finish the core campaign to see if I want to continue. Spoiler: it was if. Regarding currency and free-to-play storage: I sell anything I don’t plan to use unidentified and just ctrl-click the currency into the stash. I found myself lacking wisdom and portal scrolls for most of the first three acts, before I remembered that armourer’s scraps and blacksmith’s whetstones sell for wisdom scrolls. At this pace and without engaging with player trade, I don’t think I would have needed all four pages to finish the core campaign. I was not being really thorough but I was consistently 2-3 levels higher than the area for all of Part 1. Beast hunting is still unusually difficult. I didn’t go out of my way to complete the mission, but was happy to add to my collection as I went. As with essence rares, I think bestiary monsters don’t need basic rare mods to be sufficiently challenging in core campaign. The default item filter was fine for campaign. Didn’t really notice its effects until act 4.
Things I didn’t like
Right from the start I wanted to adjust the camera angle (down) and zoom (out). I’m not used to Path of Exile’s unique camera perspective and don’t think I ever will be, since I am always playing other ARPGs on and off. But it isn’t a deal breaker, as some camera options are in other games. It’s just weird. It feels very artificial when you have to backtrack and even story bosses with dialogue have come back to life. I don’t like that you can’t change equipment while selling to the vendor. This is something I take for granted in other ARPGs and it’s annoying when I go to do it in PoE but can’t. The quest tracker is too minimal to be of much use. I just turned it off once it started to take up too much screen space. I was still using a level 39 dagger in act 6. Too many ‘rune dagger’ variants made it very hard to upgrade. It’s very easy to make passive tree pathing mistakes that don’t become obvious until mid-campaign. Two respec points per book wasn’t enough for me. Four respec points per quest reward instead of two would have been perfect since I had to move from one cluster to another a few times, which meant removing some basic +10 nodes as well. I feel this is a bigger issue now than before because of the mastery system adding incentive to spend more on specific clusters. Something to consider for future versions of the game perhaps. As I said before, by Part 2, I was neglecting the Sentinel mechanic altogether. I had enough going on. This is fine, since it is very much optional as a league feature. Still, as a new/returning player, I probably could have played this on Standard and been sufficiently entertained/challenged. By act 6 I was fairly convinced that in the current state of the game, leagues are not the best place for a new player to start. Yet again, this is all down to poorly-managed feature creep. Essence monsters probably don’t need regular rare mods, at least not in campaign. The potential for strange combinations that quickly turn a basic encounter into a frustrating game of hit and run is too high. I faced a Temporal Bubble+Sorrow rare in act 6 and found the fight very unbalanced. Admittedly I did activate a Sentinel beforehand because I felt I was neglecting the league specialty too much. I think I will neglect it for anything but trash mobs going forward. Conclusion So overall, PoE in its current state has a lot to like early on, and a lot to dislike later. I know I didn’t get far into the game by regular player standards, but as long as the game is free to play and has a big ‘download now’ button on the website, I don’t think it’s unfair to test its immediate playability for a non-regular, uninvested player from time to time. I also know from my own earlier experiences that whatever issues I had with early Part 2, they were only going to get worse as I moved out of Wraeclast and into the Atlas. It’s all such a shame, because you can feel a confidence in design and balance to Part 1 that is just absent from Act 6 onwards. Even if I didn’t know it, I’d have a strong feeling that Part 1 was years in the making and progresses very smoothly, but Part 2 was much more rushed and doesn't benefit from those years of tweaking and revision. Rather than being augmented by a constant cycle of added content, Part 2 just seems to get more and more cumbersome and exhausting. In short, Part 1 is all about quality, while Part 2 and onwards is all about quantity. The former compels, the latter repels. They don’t always cancel each other out, but it’s much easier to notice a lack of quality than a lack of quantity. And that lack of quality also makes the quantity seem all the more unimpressive and unenticing. I wrote another book. It's better than the first one, and those who liked the first so far agree. Can't really ask for much more than that. Last edited by wjameschan#7276 on Jun 9, 2022, 7:37:11 PM Last bumped on Jul 11, 2022, 5:50:09 AM
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I completely agree with most everything in the OP. A most excellent post. Thank you very much!
I'm not a returning player, instead I'm a quitting player. I thought it might be useful to post my experience to this thread. Here's my 3.18 story. I started in the league and played a character to level 9. It seemed a drag, not very much fun. Now this was before any of GGG's AN mod nerfs. I switched to playing my Archnemesis league level 94 character in standard. That was better but still the map level T16 old league mechanics like Blight, Harvest, and Delve were screwed. I saw Chris's claim that the release was extensively tested. I thought well maybe I'll try to have fun playing my guess at the GGG "test mode". That is leveling a character that has access to almost unlimited resources. So I started a new character in standard. I played thru the 10 act storyline to level 68 and did have fun. It was the same build I'd played last league, Explosive Arrow Hierophant Totem. I thought I'd retry my level 94 character to see how the GGG changes impacted things. I really didn't see it being much better. I then gave up on PoE and bought Elden Ring. That really needed a controller. It looked like a fun game but I lost interest while trying to get used to the controller. So now I'm playing Lost Ark. It's been years since I played a game other than PoE. Hopefully, PoE will be a more fun to play game again in the future. Here's my suggestion. GGG probably needs to seriously take a hard look into their test methods. The game balance was broken at release. Even worse, GGG seemed surprised by this fact. I believe GGG needs to make sure they do some testing in SSF mode with an empty stash and no access to outside non-dropped items. Over 430 threads discussing labyrinth problems with over 1040 posters in support (thread # 1702621) Thank you all! GGG will implement a different method for ascension in PoE2. Retired! Last edited by Turtledove#4014 on Jun 9, 2022, 8:50:46 PM
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I agree with a lot of your post. Especially the concerns about "out of loop" gameplay mechanics.
I do a lot of delve and heist because I am am annoyingly completionist and perfectionist and can't stand not doing everything there is to do while it is clear that a focused aproach is far better. I am sure a lot of new players see these things as quest lines that have to be interacted with and they do just feel extremely out of place. If some content should be culled from the game that is where I would start. Everything that requires you to stop the main progression and gameplay loop to progress some side loop just doesn't feel great. I also do feel like it would be better to not dump this in to the main story line. It is confusing and distracting for new players and experienced players don't bother interacting with it until after the campaign anyway. Just introduce them at different stages of end game content. It makes the core game easier to grasp for new players and experienced players won't miss it during the campaign. Beasts and essences do also indeed have their own mods so extra AN mods just make them over the top early on. Maybe just having them not have AN mods until in the endgame is a good idea. |
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I have tried to get countless friends to play POE, and they all quit because they dont want to follow a build guide, they want to experience the game for themselves. However it is just too punishing at early levels (when act1 is harder than t16 maps were the previous league, you know you have a problem), building a character is too overwhelming, and when you try to explain how trade works, and they should be browsing a website to find some levelling items, I can feel their eyes glazing over and they go back to a game with a proper learning curve.
They always say that they shouldn't balance the game around SSF, but it is my experience that new players basically play SSF, even when they are in trade leagues. |
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" Excellent point! As a minor example, the first few acts have gotten really stingy with life and mana flask drops. This is a change apparently made a year ago or so? Anyway, to me it is just slightly irritating but it could be a game killer for a person just starting PoE for the first time. I think it would be smart for GGG to pander to new players a bit more in the first two or three acts especially. Over 430 threads discussing labyrinth problems with over 1040 posters in support (thread # 1702621) Thank you all! GGG will implement a different method for ascension in PoE2. Retired! Last edited by Turtledove#4014 on Jun 10, 2022, 3:12:20 PM
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I agree with so many points OP mentioned...
I have played 5+ builds in Sentinel, getting to Red maps with only one of them because it gets so punishing and extreme at high end, it just simply is not as much fun. The game feels great through Acts 10, but as soon as you get to maps, level 70+ stuff, Delve, Heist, Incursion, Blight, all the stuff I love to do is just WAY too over-tuned. A love / hate for this game because I want to do so much more. I still play because I like to experiment with new build philosophies and earn / craft new gear for each build as I go. To me this is the most fun. I have always wanted a more casual server during League launches, one that is a LOT more toned down, heck even easier, so I CAN do all content and enjoy myself even more. Not sue why they cant cater to casuals and keep as is for hardcore folks. Puzzles me. Last edited by Pyye_007#3564 on Jun 10, 2022, 11:11:51 PM
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This game simply doesn't care about generating new players. GGG should have had a wake up call with Lost Ark release. They just got lucky that that game screwed everything up. Once a good ARGP is released that can keep the player base PoE is going to be hurting.
GGG obviously doesn't want new players for whatever reason or they wouldn't be going the direction they are going. Old players are going to leave eventually and without new players the game will eventually die. The writing should have been on the wall for GGG last league when Lost Ark was released, instead Chris throws a baby rage tantrum and decides he's going to "punish" the player base by not shaking up the meta. That's the kind of egotistical maniac you have running PoE, and that's why the game will continue to suffer and eventually go on life support once that next best ARPG is released. |
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i've been playing many leagues and its refreshing to see how a "new" player experiences things.
one of the things you mentioned stood out a lot. the introduction of niko. delve is one of the game mechanics i have great disdain for. the only reason why i dont complain about delve is the same reason why i refrain from complaining about heisth : they're both easy to ignore. i have been playing many leagues where my standard leveling systems involves me IGNORING niko so much so that i actually forgot how it would impact on a new player. introducing league mechanics need to happen at some point but really there's just too much going on. how does ggg want new players to stay focused when there's so much distraction? [Removed by Support]
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I deeply appreciate these responses. I'm not a fan of self-bumping but GGG have implemented a subtle means of doing so since last I played so I suppose a little nudge here and there can't hurt, especially if what I've said resonates with some other players. :)
I enjoyed Delve when it was a league feature. A lot. I'm a big fan of dungeon crawling and high risk ventures but once it went core, I sort of ignored it. The same is true of most of the significant league features, and you have read that by Heist I had largely checked out. This isn't to say that all league features should be left out of the core game. They were fairly simple in the early days. For example, I imagine some newer players wouldn't know that the following were originally league features added to the core game after their time in the sun:
All of these integrated perfectly with the core game because instead of trying to reinvent the game, all they did was add a facet that enriched the experience. Compared to Heist, Harvest, Betrayal, Incursion and so on, early league features were elegant and unobtrusive. The more complicated they became, the more trouble GGG had finding a place for them in an increasingly bloated core game. This is not news to anyone who plays regularly, but once I took the stance of a new player with some lapsed experience, I truly recognized just how out of control it had become. By Act 4 of 10, we have a past league feature (Delve) outright competing with the core game and core campaign for the player's time and attention. And by Act 6, we have a past league feature that genuinely outshines the core campaign in terms of aesthetics, polish and depth, but feels distinctly out of place. To put it into another light, Path of Exile fails to stay on-topic. And that might be fine for someone who can lose themselves in the micro and cares little for the core campaign (i.e. someone who has done said core campaign dozens of times), but expecting that of a new gamer barely halfway into the core campaign is...unfair, I think. I have trouble not seeing this conflict of interests between the core campaign and the league features as inherently bad, possibly even lazy design. What works as a stand-alone league feature might not work at all in the core campaign. And GGG know this because we can see from the past list of league features that they dropped quite a few. Understandably they kept the ones on which they seems to have worked the hardest, those that had the most obvious impact. Unfortunately, those league features tend to be the ones that don't play nicely with others. The result is disharmonious and uncomfortable, like ten people yelling their genuinely great ideas at you all at once. The undercurrent to this cacophony to me is a sense that the devs don't have the confidence to know what to keep, and what to discard, to ensure their game remains on-topic and sure of its foundations. They seem to have lost their way and the victim is, inevitably, the coherence of their game. A game with a single, simple track to follow is superior to a game with three complicated tracks that don't connect or worse, conflict with each other. I imagine a lot of less-than-committed gamers would find this confusion of messages really unpleasant and just quit to play something less helter-skelter. I certainly did. I wrote another book. It's better than the first one, and those who liked the first so far agree. Can't really ask for much more than that.
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Great post mate. I disagree with a lot of your conclusions but I think it's probably correct that there's so much feature bloat that someone that has not had proper time to learn each new interaction when it was added it feels overwhelming and some of the difficulty might feel cheap as well. I don't think it's going to be fixed anytime soon though.
There is indeed this limbo where mechanics start becoming stronger but your character is not caught up yet in late campaign and early mapping. I always assumed everyone just skipped everything since that's what you end up doing naturally if you are playing hardcore and you are bad at the game like me. Maybe skipping it is fine like you mentioned, maybe it need a do-over. And all those side mechanics being introduced during the campaign really do the game a disservice, most friends were super overwhelmed by anything that did not take place in the "main" story path, such as bestiary heist and so on. While we are at it, lots of mechanics had their quests removed so they could be better enjoyed in a league system. Unlocking all of heist and getting all those contracts you can't store gets really annoying over time. |
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