Probably quitting til (at least) next league and heres why

1. The state of the game. The tooltips that have been broken since closed beta are still broken, this is inexcusable. The current league is horrible with vastly overtuned mobs, completely broken builds, mechanics designed to deliberately waste my time, and RNG so steep it makes winning the lottery sound easy. Arbitrary other things like the game ignoring my system power settings, PoE is the only application I have ever used where if I leave it up, despite having my system set to never enter sleep mode, it will enter sleep mode anyways because for some reason PoE overrides system power settings.

2. A trade system from the 90's. Trade is so bad that I have to remind myself that I'm not in High School anymore every time I go to buy an item. Constant fake offers to buy because people feel they need to whisper 20 people at once to be able to buy any given item. Constant price fixers who list an item on multiple accounts at half its value and ignore all buyers so they can trick others into listing for that price as well. Constant scammers who will ignore three whispers over 30 minutes from you on an ultra-specific rare roll so they can pretend they were afk (even though AFK mode wasn't active on them) and "just happened to change the price" to 3x what it was listed at before. Constant impatience during trades where if I don't click at the speed of light people just ditch and find another seller. Failing maps because I have to leave my map to sell an item and run out of portals between 3 sales and encountering one bad rare roll.

3. No QoL of any kind. Every other MMO on the planet, (including games notorious for their lack of QoL like Mabinogi) has realized that QoL and consistent communication with their players is essential to player retention, meanwhile GGG seems to think that deliberately bad game design is a valid way to make game balance. (Spoilers: it isn't) There is no official Discord or regular community streams or anything of the sort that most devs in the modern era use as tools to gather feedback from their community and improve the game. This makes it feel like the only thing GGG cares about is how deep our wallets are. They would rather the game be deliberately inconvenient to play to add "friction" (whatever that means) then be fun for most players.

4. The community. Most of this games community is, bare minimum, unhelpful. At worst they are elitist and narcissistic. "What's that? You aren't playing meta? Time to make fun of this lame little scrub, lol!" "What? You've been playing for five whole minutes and you don't already know this and that and this and the other thing and all of these things? Why don't you try LEARNING something?!" On top of that, the TFT mafia is so rampant that all the problems caused by the games disturbingly inadequate trade system are made 10x worse by the existence of this horde of price fixers 450k players strong and counting. Also, the only group content anyone ever cares to do (5way) is almost exclusively done on a pay to play basis where people will charge several divs for a profoundly un-fun carry where if you don't follow all their rules to the letter they kick you and keep your divs because apparently wanting to actually PLAY the game is a mortal sin. Then when you dare to question anything and suggest that the game might be better if things were improved you get flamed by droves players pointing you to an old forum post from Chris from freaking 2017 that is so out of date that it doesn't even know what the currently used high-end trading currency is. (repeatedly saying exalts instead of divs)

Unfortunately I will probably eventually come back to this dumpster fire of a game because despite all its flaws its super unique and because most other devs aren't really making ARPGs anymore (or at least aren't putting real effort into making them *cough* Diablo *cough*) it will probably continue to be the only name in the game worth its salt. Fingers crossed that the next major update for PoE fixes anything at all and isn't just another poorly executed new crafting mechanic to add to the already overcomplicated mess we have now. So yeah, quitting the game for now the 4th time. TTFN PoE, do better.

Quit #1: Way back in the day, game had no content

Quit #2: When the atlas first came out it felt boring and repetitive, so after act 10 it felt pointless.

Quit #3: Got REALLY into the game during Harvest because it finally made endgame accessible in any capacity to the laymen, they they gutted it and I could no longer play.

Quit #4: I learned a lot and can now reach endgame, but that's exactly the problem because the game is so profoundly un-fun when you actually know what's what that I spend more time irritated by one bad design choice or another then I spend enjoying my time and its solely due to GGGs anti-QoL philosophy wherein deliberately frustrating and inconvenient design choices are somehow seen as a good thing.

Honestly I agree with most of your gripes/points/rants whatever youu want to call them.

we need better tooltips
we need smoother trade
we need other forms of qol
and we should be nicer to each other.

Every league I kind of want to play the game more, and once I get to red maps and I see the grind wall, and the entire lack of progression I find something more fun too do.

I don't what it is for me, I like arpgs, just not the endgame of poe. The atlas is boring, with no clear goal in sight. I could farm 30 maps for pinnacle bosses and get nothing. I could do league mechanics (they need a better name then that since most have been core for years now) and lose my items in the crafting gambling system.

Honestly it comes down to GGG relying on 3rd party tools made by... players? I know TFT is lead by an rmt mirror guy. POB guys and neversink are cool. I don't like poe.trade.awakened or the lab website. I think GGG needs, really needs to look at what streamers recommend new players download and just slap it into the game. It may take a billion dollars, but they should do it.

Hopefully a break makes the game fun for you again, or GGG actually changes things.

Ya, I looked into changes to Mabinogi since I played it last and I may play that. They have changed literally everything the devs used to claim would destroy the game if they changed that thing and it has only made the game better. Imagine...

Wanna see a loot-driven MMO where player upgrade items are tradable that has an Auction House that is a button on the toolbar but has figured out some sorcery GGG cant comprehend (trade tax, limited listing count, and expiring listings) where doing that IMPROVED its economy? Join me!

Its a sad day when it is a legitimate suggestion for ANY dev to take a page from Nexons book of all things.

It's quite concerning that you try to compare the MMO genre with the arpg hack and slash genre.
There's not a single arpg out there with many or any QoL patches or whatsoever.

But the best solution is to play something else if you don't enjoy a game that much. It's not that hard

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Pashid wrote:

It's quite concerning that you try to compare the MMO genre with the arpg hack and slash genre.
There's not a single arpg out there with many or any QoL patches or whatsoever.

But the best solution is to play something else if you don't enjoy a game that much. It's not that hard

This is an MMORPG Sandbox game, I just cant see the hack'n'slash bit given the state of melee for all this time.

Now skyrim there's a definite action rpg/hack n slash and with each iteration they grow closer and closer to being purely action games instead of the sandboxes they once were.

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SilentSymphony wrote:

This is an MMORPG Sandbox game, I just cant see the hack'n'slash bit given the state of melee for all this time.

The game is focused on slaying hundreds of mobs in maps. there's your hack and slash aspect.

a mmorpg? definitely not. Or where is the immense player mass you interact with at the same time. Cause you trade with one individual at the time, maybe play with a small group of players limited by 6. or encounter at best 10 randos in a town once you log in. Where exactly do you play with a massive amount of players at the same time? mmorpgs are games with a large open world and interactions between multiple players at the same time.

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Pashid wrote:

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SilentSymphony wrote:

This is an MMORPG Sandbox game, I just cant see the hack'n'slash bit given the state of melee for all this time.

The game is focused on slaying hundreds of mobs in maps. there's your hack and slash aspect.

a mmorpg? definitely not. Or where is the immense player mass you interact with at the same time. Cause you trade with one individual at the time, maybe play with a small group of players limited by 6. or encounter at best 10 randos in a town once you log in. Where exactly do you play with a massive amount of players at the same time? mmorpgs are games with a large open world and interactions between multiple players at the same time.

The core of this game lives and breaths off player counts and their interactions on the trade api, Once the player counts drop its basically enjoy SSF or find something else to play.

SSF being a vanity gamemode definitely isn't the point of the game as a whole so i rest my case with all of that.

We also don't have to agree especially because i'm not changing my mind on that one xD

Opened forums to see and immediately first post confirmed what I just experienced, GGG introduced Cluster Jewels and there is NO WAY that I can see from outside the game how is the order of skills on the jewels like. I dont want to spend few D and found out the skills are in the wrong order. and the person that I am talking to does not understand english. It is already frustrating trying to find the item, now I have to find the item with the right order from that item. seriously the RNG on RNG stacking is getting ridiculous.

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Pashid wrote:

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SilentSymphony wrote:

This is an MMORPG Sandbox game, I just cant see the hack'n'slash bit given the state of melee for all this time.

The game is focused on slaying hundreds of mobs in maps. there's your hack and slash aspect.

a mmorpg? definitely not. Or where is the immense player mass you interact with at the same time. Cause you trade with one individual at the time, maybe play with a small group of players limited by 6. or encounter at best 10 randos in a town once you log in. Where exactly do you play with a massive amount of players at the same time? mmorpgs are games with a large open world and interactions between multiple players at the same time.

You don't even know what hack and slash means or what MMO means, your opinion is invalid. PoE is NOT a hack and slash. Devil May Cry is hack and slash, God of War is hack and slash, Vindictus is a Hack and slash MMO. PoE is NOT hack and slash, its an ARPG, but not just an ARPG, its an MMOARPG. Other ARPG's don't have QoL because they're primarily single player focused and don't have a system which makes trading mandatory to progress past mid tier end-game content. MMO also isn't a genre, its a term to refer to any game where the community at large freely interacts with one another and there exist zones where you don't need to be in a group to see other players. Where is the mass player interaction in PoE? How about all the towns? How about the global and trade chat? How about the trade site that contains listings from the entire player base at once? PoE IS an MMO and it needs QoL like every other MMO that exists. Other ARPG's lack QoL because they aren't also MMO's, plain and simple.

Also, other examples of MMOs that have limited use of ambient player interaction include Warframe, Grand Chase, Elsword, Lost Ark, and so on. Having limited instances of unrestricted player interaction does not equate to no unrestricted player interaction, limited instances DO count. Also, the classic example of an MMORPG, World of Warcraft, only really includes mass player interaction in towns and chats. When you're questing you're doing it alone and you see MAYBE one other person once in a while and you sure af aren't playing WITH that one other person, they're just there. When you're doing content that isn't solo content you form groups made up of a limited number of players. You form groups of 5 for dungeons and groups of 10 or 25 for raids, and the majority of the games players never touch 25 player raids meaning that 90% of WoW players never see a group size above 10. Are you gonna try to tell me that World of motherf***ing Warcraft isn't an MMO because you only ever see large scale unrestricted player interaction in towns? Don't make me laugh.

I am in complete disbelief at the number of people who argue AGAINST QoL for this game, which literally means MAKING THE GAME MORE FUN TO PLAY. You are legit arguing against making the game you play more fun, you have got to be kidding me!

You keep coming back.. in their eyes it's working as intented then.

They are getting away with alot still over the years because people still think ggg is a "small indie company" unlike other big companies, every single little thing gets checked and if anything has been found it's hell on earth for that company.. meanwhile here a slap on the wrist and maybe some words here and there but all they have to do is write a "sorry" thread and another promise that they will comunicate and do better..

it works everytime.. and not much changes.

As I mentioned before as long you keep coming back despite all you write here it wont matter, you will be another +1 to increase on the counts everytime a new league opens to boost the ego on twitter/forum post.