Sometimes I feel like I'm playing a VERY different game from everyone else...

We tend to not learn quickly when the teachers get lazy or opinionated.

"

navigator4223 wrote:

OT:

Just checked with Google Maps.

3,087 hours of walking (14,927 km) from Paris to Bejing.

Yes, that is actually a proper comparison. Thats how it would feel to play PoE without 3rd party tools.

PoB is, in reality, a must have.

Interesting. I must sleepwalk, because the only online PoE tool I use is the wiki. =^[.]^=

"

didira wrote:

We tend to not learn quickly when the teachers get lazy or opinionated.

Here you go

"

Baharoth15 wrote:

You are right about the "play" part as much as a hollow argument that is given how you lock yourself out of several core mechanics, but enjoyment is a very subjective thing.
Maybe you can enjoy the game that way but you've got to accept that most people don't.

And this is just plain incorrect and the main problem...the only "core mechanic" I have ever had to look up just to make it function is Doryani's Prototype. Every single other mechanic in the game, even if you don't know the "specifics", can be learned just by observing what happens when you spec into it.

You have precisely the opposite mentality of me, and it is that mentality that is the basis of my post. To say playing the game is a "hollow argument" is laughable to me. Yes, you are absolutely right that enjoyment is subjective and I know that this discussion falls on many deaf ears....but that one single line "Play...hollow argument...lock yourself out" is EXACTLY what I have a problem with. It simply is not true.

*Ed: I lied, the OTHER core mechanic I had to learn outside of the game was CDR breakpoints for Cast on Critical Strike.

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

^yes to the walking thing. But you could also say: of course you don't need to buy wheels for the car, the car COMES with wheels. PoE comes fully formed with everything you need to play it within the game.

It's hard to separate my main argument from the fact that YES ABSOLUTELY there are huge issues with the game. Lack of information, Act 1/2 is just plain too hard post-buff, Trade sucks, Passive tree flexibility is lacking. All these are TRUE. But it is EQUALLY TRUE that, even with all these issues, you do not NEED 3rd party software to enjoy, play, or learn the game. You might NEED 3rd party software LATER for optimization, but you get so much more out of each program by actually learning the workings of the game and playing it.

Drive the car you just bought, and then if you get a flat tire (and you can't fix it yourself) hire someone else to fix it. Unless you are stupid rich, you don't buy yourself a car just to have someone else drive it...

Thanks for your accompaniment. I also wanted to separate your main argument which I basically share the exact context on your first post.

Let me try some more.

I guess the premise of our argument is "the subject of interaction (playing the game) is the recipient".
It doesn't really matter whether if the recipient is critical to a specific object in that regard.

All of the tools featured here have powerful relative evaluation functions (too powerful so that they don't need to match our personal experience).

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

"

Baharoth15 wrote:

You are right about the "play" part as much as a hollow argument that is given how you lock yourself out of several core mechanics, but enjoyment is a very subjective thing.
Maybe you can enjoy the game that way but you've got to accept that most people don't.

And this is just plain incorrect and the main problem...the only "core mechanic" I have ever had to look up just to make it function is Doryani's Prototype. Every single other mechanic in the game, even if you don't know the "specifics", can be learned just by observing what happens when you spec into it.

You have precisely the opposite mentality of me, and it is that mentality that is the basis of my post. To say playing the game is a "hollow argument" is laughable to me. Yes, you are absolutely right that enjoyment is subjective and I know that this discussion falls on many deaf ears....but that one single line "Play...hollow argument...lock yourself out" is EXACTLY what I have a problem with. It simply is not true.

*Ed: I lied, the OTHER core mechanic I had to learn outside of the game was CDR breakpoints for Cast on Critical Strike.

By "core mechanics" i was refering to stuff like trade and item filters. You don't have access to either without external websites. Well, i guess there is the standard filter but you can't even adjust that. Crafting is in a similar boat, how do you plan to get information on what affixes there are, which mod groups they belong to and what weightings they have without 3rd party tools? Simple, you don't.

I am not saying playing the game is a hollow argument, doing so while locking yourself out of core aspects of it is. Sure you can still play it to a degree, we could also make an argument that you don't really "need" a keyboard to "play" the game.
It's like living on bread and water and nothing else, sure you won't die but you won't be living much either, same here. You'll experience a dumbed down highly frustrating version of a game that's plenty frustrating in the beginning even if you don't limit yourself like that.

Honestly, just ask a friend of yours to start playing the game for a test without using any outside info and see how it goes for him. Even you yourself aren't playing without that stuff as you admitted in your first post. Maybe you started using it after the campaign, maybe you don't use as much as some other people but you are using them so i honestly wonder if you even know how incredibly hostile this game is if you don't have any outside information source.

"

Baharoth15 wrote:

Honestly, just ask a friend of yours to start playing the game for a test without using any outside info and see how it goes for him.

Good example. How far into the game does he have to progress, before you consider it a "requirement" to know weightings on mods? How far does he have to come before you consider trading a "requirement"? What about mod groups? When exactly do that become a requirement?

Don't get me wrong here; To craft endgame gear, you do need access to third party tools/sites. To really min-max your build, you do need access to third party sites/tools. But if you for ONE moment stop defining "playing the game" as venturing far into the endgame, you should probably realize that not everyone does, not everyone want to - and no one has to.

How many D4 players do you think are happy with beating the campaign in Diablo 4? I would probably say several hundred thousand, if not millions. The same goas for PoE (well, not so huge numbers), and we even see it in these forums, players with 384573 supporter tags, 0 supporter tags, league after league showcases a very low challenge number, but yet they are playing, league in, league out. Happy with playing the story over and over again.

So before we start making claims like you "need" this and that to play the game, and that the game "requires" this and that, we should probably also mention what requires X, and why you "need" Y - and what kind of players it affects. Because a new player, playing through the story? Well...

@Baharoth: I've done exactly what you just said. I REMEMBER what it was like just jumping straight into the game without any outside info. Even now, I barely interact with trade until well into yellow maps or later. Sure, I have a ton more experience, but basic drops and the crafting bench and the most basic of knowledge of "Capped resists, life, damage" will get you through the entire story and multiple tiers of maps. Essences spell out exactly what they do. A pure novice can craft gear with essences and get to red maps. You're trying to tell me the average person is INCAPABLE of: figuring out that if they die, they might need more life or some kind of defense (doesn't matter what kind...it all works fine until the really tough content)? That they should have capped resistances? That they need more damage somewhere if things take too long to die? Has the average new player you think about NEVER played a computer game before? Are they illiterate?

I feel like you have this weird impression that even a TOTALLY NEW PoE player comes in with ZERO knowledge...that is an exceptionally rare case. More often than not, a player finds PoE and decides to play it because they like arpgs AND HAVE PLAYED OTHERS. There is a certain base knowledge that EVERYONE has...its excellent that this game doesn't tell you outright "By the way...you need LIFE to survive! This boss is throwing around big fireballs, you have 0 fire resist, you die...WHAT'S HAPPENING?!?!?!?!"

For all the complicated mechanics PoE has to offer, for all the skill choices and passive tree choices, the actual learning curve of the game is remarkably linear and clear. There isn't a huge amount of "novelty" in the arpg systems that PoE offers. There's just a LOT of choices. It is only at the semi-extreme ends that I would agree you NEED 3rd party tools. Doing juiced league content and major bosses? They might need help.

@Phrazz Again, yes, if you lower the goal post enough at some point your argument becomes true. As i said, you can play the game without keyboard if you really want to.

If it's just the campaign you can likely go without all of that, i think i actually did that myself when i started out. But the campaign is less than 10% of the total content the game has to offer. Going much further than that, as a new player without any external help, is not realistic in my opinion. Well maybe if he is willing to endure for months or even years he'll get to red maps at some point but the campaign itself is going to be so painful that 9 out of 10 people trying will likely quit long before they finish it.
If you are content to limit yourself to that much AND want the whole experience to be as excruciating as possible then yes you can do that.

But from my point of view that's an entirely hollow and unrealistic argument. Pretty much nobody is going to do that knowingly and willingly unless he has something to prove.

@jsuslak313 a new player without outside knowledge won't know how much life he needs, that valiant 300 life per act rule, he won't know it. He won't know how much armor he needs for it to be useful because the tooltip is entirely misleading. He won't know how to scale his damage, his dps is going to be so low that he'll have to kite any semi tough rare around the globe for hours or just exit the map.
I don't know when you started and how exactly you went about it but i think your memory is slightly "optimistic" to put it politely. I also somewhat remember how i started this game, i also started without using a guide and without using external resources all that much, i am not sure when exactly i made my first trade or when i checked the wiki the first time but even with me doing those things starting out was "tough" to say the least.

You act like all new players are geniuses/veterans of other arpgs with endless patience willing to fight through all the lack of information by themselves. Certainly, those types will manage somehow with enough time. But the reality of new players can be found in the gameplay help forums where people ask if their character is bugged because of the -60 resistances. That's the kind of people you have to keep in mind as well.

"

Baharoth15 wrote:

that valiant 300 life per act rule, he won't know it. He won't know how much armor he needs for it to be useful because the tooltip is entirely misleading. He won't know how to scale his damage, his dps is going to be so low that he'll have to kite any semi tough rare around the globe for hours or just exit the map.

First of all, I have never once heard of this "300 life per act rule"...and I've done just fine for over a decade lol. As far as "how much": The answer is "until it feels good". You DONT ever need an exact amount. You don't NEED to know whether a boss does 4000 damage or 5000 damage. If you die in one hit, you need SOMETHING. That is the whole point! Your entire argument stems on needing every numerical answer, and my argument is that all of that is completely unnecessary. Just play the game and observe and you figure it out. It isn't hard at all, and it's how all games work. Scaling damage? That made me laugh. You scale damage exactly how the game initially tells you to scale damage. If its an attack, you need a high attack weapon and matching attack stats. For spells, you need spell damage and matching elemental modifiers. If you want to go crit, you build crit rate and crit damage. Hell, these things are exactly the same in IDLE games...where the actual game is designed so you don't have to think at all. There are very few skills where damage scaling is actively difficult to figure out to a decent degree. It's not rocket science, it is told to you right on the gem. You might not get as HIGH of numbers as someone with more experience and more optimization but you can continuously improve ANYTHING with a very basic amount of thought.

No, I don't think of noobs as geniuses. I think that they are capable of thought and reading. If you give the game a chance, it tells you what you need a good 80-90% of the time. And the information that YOU seem to require: exact life requirements, exact defense requirements, the ULTIMATE damage scaling, literally none of that is required for the VAST majority of players. And since it isn't required, 3rd party software is ALSO not required.

Talking about goalposts: your goalpost for "newer" players is crazy. I know and play with other people who have put YEARS of time into this game and have never given two thoughts to "Oh, I need x amount of life to tank that hit!". It is SO MUCH more basic than that.

I guess that's another issue I have: people like to THINK this game is far more complicated than it really is...simply because there are so many choices and directions for you to choose. But it just isn't some groundbreakingly complex game to figure out....until you reach the apex of content: t16 juiced maps, full atlas completion, bossing, certain league content.