Long time no see. State of PoE in 2023.

I decided to come back to PoE after I took a long break after 3.15 for reasons remarkably unrelated to the actual game itself (unironically, I wanted to try to play the game in a language I am studying for practice), a decision which sucked me in initially, and then over the course of the league was reminded acutely of why I really don't play much anymore. Pretty much all the feedback regarding noob traps, mechanics, reliance on 3rd party APIs and resources, loot, damage and power creep all very closely reflect my experiences. Felt like I'd chuck in my two cents because it's hard to find reasoned discussion about the state of the game where people aren't being extremely angry or overly emotional.

PoE currently feels a little bit like being a toddler at a preschool where you get to play with all these really cool toys, but if you don't pick the right toys and play with them in the right ways then eventually a gorilla will to break into the building, grab you by the throat and throw you through the T.V. I try to avoid it myself, but man, I can't blame anyone for wanting to follow a build guide given the current state of the game.

Bluntly, I think GGG has painted themselves into a corner with regards to balance.

The vibe I get is that it feels like historically the devs just added stuff into the game iteratively league after league as long as the idea sounded cool and could fit on the back of a napkin, realized that they had sleep-walked in a direction they really didn't want to go, and are now desperately trying to claw their way back.

Paradoxically, I love that PoE is this incredibly complex and systems-rich game, yet it is also frustrating and demotivating that avenues for exploring these systems have only become narrower and more restrictive thanks to the ever-escalating arms race GGG is locked in with their playerbase regarding power creep, especially in the realm of defenses and monster damage. I believe that it's this arms race that is the root of the most of the problems with the game today, and it is a function of just how much mechanical bloat has been allowed to slip in league after league. I get that I sound like a hypocrite here, but there is just too much stuff, too many opaque, unclear, yet busted mechanics, and the game seems balanced around players layering those mechanics in the most efficient manner possible, to the point where they practically become prerequisites. The outcome is that only those exceptional builds that can squeeze those mechanics into their design excel, and everything else is relegated to the toilet dimension.

Honestly, this is way more complex than just 'nerf monsters' or 'buff players'. In my view, GGG needs to perform the equivalent of open heart surgery on the game's spaghetti ball of systems and mechanics, set clear, tangible and achievable goals, and very carefully pick and choose what to keep, what to tweak, and what to cull. Given their track record of sledgehammer balancing, I have to admit that I'm a little skeptical they'd be able to pull it off. I'd absolutely love to be wrong about that, though.

Who knows? Maybe PoE2 will fix it?

The loot is a massive problem that GGG is refusing to address. 95% of the trash loot needs to be culled

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auspexa wrote:

The loot is a massive problem that GGG is refusing to address. 95% of the trash loot needs to be culled

Problem with that is all of that loot is actually important at the beginning of the game, and at end game everyone wants to tailor their experience to the items they want to find, some people want to identify everything on a map a t16 map early in the league, it's not so simple as 'dumb down what you see', and to change the entire system to have deterministic outcomes would essentially make it diablo, there's essentially no better fix than what the devs have offered, create your own loot tailored experience.

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auspexa wrote:

The loot is a massive problem that GGG is refusing to address. 95% of the trash loot needs to be culled

trash loot needs to exist to give value to good loot.

culling trash loot i think is somewhat done via lootfilters.

i think the bigger issue is loot quantity/quality.


the game rewards you for being good and punishes you badly for being weak.

this also bleeds into item drops.

the game encourages you to juice up. many "good"/meta players juice up and get rewarded.

what if you're a newer player who fell into a noob trap?

i m pretty sure "base loot drops" are balanced around juicing. to make sure juiced content are not too "overly rewarding". base loot drops are nerfed hard.

so what you get is, if you run normal or magic maps because your build is weak. you get shitty drops most of the time.

these players will fall into a rut. cant do harder content coz weak. weak coz maybe bad gear. no good gear coz no good drops. no good drops coz cant do harder content.

also to combat players running low level content, we have penalties implemented on areas that are lower leveled.

so imagine this, you're a new player, dont follow a build. going in blind. you keep leveling but your gear tends to be outdated as you level. the content gets harder and the drops are just shit.

you kill bosses and rares but sometimes they only drop shitty gear.

why are you still playing?

where is the fun.

you're stuck in a cycle.

its one reason why i never introduce poe to new people anymore. unless they dont mind following a build guide and told how to play.

in retrospect, i played this game for 10 years. i got to experience "exploring" the game.

heck, the build i m using is me being stubborn and going anti meta all these 10 years. i still havent cleared the feared or any uber aspirational content. but i m fine with that. i've tempered my expectations.

i cant imagine a new player who loves self expression/exploration enjoying the game as it is now. if you suck, you are severely punished. loot being bad is also a form of punishment

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exsea wrote:

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auspexa wrote:

The loot is a massive problem that GGG is refusing to address. 95% of the trash loot needs to be culled

trash loot needs to exist to give value to good loot.

culling trash loot i think is somewhat done via lootfilters.

i think the bigger issue is loot quantity/quality.


the game rewards you for being good and punishes you badly for being weak.

this also bleeds into item drops.

the game encourages you to juice up. many "good"/meta players juice up and get rewarded.

what if you're a newer player who fell into a noob trap?

i m pretty sure "base loot drops" are balanced around juicing. to make sure juiced content are not too "overly rewarding". base loot drops are nerfed hard.

so what you get is, if you run normal or magic maps because your build is weak. you get shitty drops most of the time.

these players will fall into a rut. cant do harder content coz weak. weak coz maybe bad gear. no good gear coz no good drops. no good drops coz cant do harder content.

also to combat players running low level content, we have penalties implemented on areas that are lower leveled.

so imagine this, you're a new player, dont follow a build. going in blind. you keep leveling but your gear tends to be outdated as you level. the content gets harder and the drops are just shit.

you kill bosses and rares but sometimes they only drop shitty gear.

why are you still playing?

where is the fun.

you're stuck in a cycle.

its one reason why i never introduce poe to new people anymore. unless they dont mind following a build guide and told how to play.

in retrospect, i played this game for 10 years. i got to experience "exploring" the game.

heck, the build i m using is me being stubborn and going anti meta all these 10 years. i still havent cleared the feared or any uber aspirational content. but i m fine with that. i've tempered my expectations.

i cant imagine a new player who loves self expression/exploration enjoying the game as it is now. if you suck, you are severely punished. loot being bad is also a form of punishment

You only need to get the best loot all the time if the game demands it to be fun, does poe require it to be fun? or does it just make GG items you'd never be able to achieve a little bit more expensive?

PoE is a non-competitive game (unless you're talking about racing but that's whatever), therefore there is no meta.

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valarias wrote:

You only need to get the best loot all the time if the game demands it to be fun, does poe require it to be fun? or does it just make GG items you'd never be able to achieve a little bit more expensive?

PoE is a non-competitive game (unless you're talking about racing but that's whatever), therefore there is no meta.

i understand that item drops need to be rare in order to have value. but we've gone a far away from how poe USED to be. my issues is that the baseline droprate in the game is abysmal.

the weak will find it extremely hard to progress.


different people have different goals.

for me my goal is to demolish/clear all content. im at around 98-99% completion (ignoring deep delve).

i m doing my own thing and struggle through. meta doesnt exist? sure you can debate that something isnt meta. but to me some skills simply outperform others.

a very simple example is one of my friends trying out flicker strike. he swapped out flicker for a totem and the dps jumped by leaps and bounds. he then proceed to just play totems.

theres a lot of "gaps" in this game and the gaps we have are huge.

this game can no longer be played by new players without a build guide. unless theyre a special kind of player.

Long time no see for sure (I seldom come to those forums to be honest)

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gibbousmoon wrote:

I encountered multiple basic and easily reproducible UI bugs, some of which had clearly been around for some time. I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to assign someone to fix some of them. They won't be hard to find or reproduce, I assure you.

Not sure about which ones you are referring to, but GGG's GUI have been pretty bad since ... the beginning honestly.

I personally lost all expectation regarding GGG doing proper GUI designing work quite a long time ago.



Honestly, GGG have been all about focusing the vast majority of their resources making PoE 2, as an example this league content has been incredibly shallow.

Of course I would never expect PoE 2 (as it will use the same engine, mostly philosophy, assets, etc ....) to address all of the issues you mentioned, but it seems that they are planning to lead players with this carrots and pay little attention to the rest now.


PS : there is PoE Ruthless now btw, if you are interested.

It is probably a much "healthier" to play the game from scratch, although it realistically offers little content compared to the "normal" PoE

Hey man, you still in Japan?

鬼殺しtold me about Ruthless, but honestly it seems like a pretty shit solution, even for a band-aid.

The problem with PoE isn't "There isn't enough grinding, please gib me MOOR!"

Rather, it's ridiculously massive differentials among character builds (let's assume optimally built ones so we are comparing apples to apples), along with the concomitant baggage to the rest of the game.

Then again, I think I was complaining about this back when I played regularly in 2019 or so. Fuck me for thinking they might do something about it in the intervening four years. ;P

Yep, haven't moved from my northen island :)

For sure ruthless isn't a perfect solution or anything, but it kind of forces the game back to a more reasonable speed for the most part, with less monster density too.


Regarding build disparity, I think that GGG has gone too far down the complexity slope at this point. Unless a massive overhaul of the whole skill/passive system, they cannot fully control it.

That said, power creep does help lower end build to tackle most of the content, so if you can adjust your expectation regarding how fast you will get where you want to get, you can probably play pretty much any skill (assuming knowing that many other builds will be much easier to play will not undermine your enjoyment of the game)