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

"

chipninja wrote:

You missed the point. You were making a comparison to "speed runners"

YOU missed the point. I wasnt talking about professional speedrunners. The endgrind of resident evil is around speedrunning, you need to complete the game under certain timers to get higher ranks that unlock special stuff. It is literally an enforced mechanic that creates replayability to a game that would otherwise be finished already
From the perspective of a player that got rank S, the whole story ALSO feels a tutorial, in a sense, you are just getting aquainted with the track you will run, but thats obviously a very elitist view, and no different from dissmissing everything below red maps as tutorial

"

chipninja wrote:

I didn't say the story is complicated. And it is slow... when you don't know what's going on and how things work. I mean, one of the things new players isn't thinking is "this is a game about killing monsters, so I should skip these ones" but that's exactly one of the major things that slows it down. A lot of things are just plain counterintuitive.

You keep coming back to the story, but the story is just world building and justification for the underlying mechanics in a game.

Sorry, i though the whole point was how the game is overcomplicated(and MY point is its just complicated if youre a dedicated player, wich if thats the chase, complexity is no longer a bad thing), yeah, story is slow and yeah, its just justification for gameplay, but again... outside visual novels and exceptional instances like ashura wrath, EVERY GAME is like that, its why its a videogame and not a movie yo know... so reducing story to "filler" is kinda like saying everything on any game before the higher level is also "filler"

"

chipninja wrote:

Ok, so let's put the information into perspective. Tooltip DPS isn't accurate. Is it smarter to take a + or % gain? Does the order of things matter? When a new player looks at a skill tree, they see all the nodes that do cool things. More often than not, they take what looks cool... and they're missing the life and ES they really need to progress. And they get one-shot.

I never saw a guy brick a character before quite deep into maps because neglect from taking life nodes. Because the passives almost always are multiplicative, the amount of life you have at that point is low, hence, the life passives dont mean as much because multiplying low numbers yield low numbers, its not until you have some decent levels of life affixes that life nodes actually makes difference, yeah you may die a couple of times because of that, but saying it bricks the character is just nonsense
And seriously, does any casual player even look at dmg tooltip? Do you think these players even know whats a good number? Heck, do YOU actually feel any difference in gameplay on most instances when deciding between a single + vs a % affix or you need to put it on pob to "notice" the difference???

"

chipninja wrote:

Can you brute force bosses? Sure. The new players I know didn't have fun doing it. I'm not talking about new to ARPG players either.

Most people i know get bored when the game offers no resistence. If a first timer can complete a whole act and not die even once on a dungeon crawler and he did not actively selected a casual mode, its red flag that game is gonna be garbo

"

chipninja wrote:

That's where you misunderstand the point. Red maps aren't hard unless you've got garbage luck, don't trade, or put together a bad build. Depending on how bad that luck or build is, that extends all the way to gear/skill/build checks in the story. Having taken the time to use third-party resources though, I can't even remember when I haven't gotten to red maps. Even when I made builds for the luls.

None of the things above have anything to do with "hard."

What is this thing you call "hard"?
Poe is on the easy side of gaming spectrum, execution speaking, thats kinda default on the genre. Are fighting games "hard" then? Lots of the difficulty comes from being willing to pratice the timing and play to get familiar with situations, does that makes it "hard"? What about dark souls? Also mostly boils down to recognising enemies patterns and how to react combined with memorizing the enviroment

Outside gaming, what is even "hard"? High math is "hard"? For the average joe is probably impossible, but for the people willing to grind the mental work, what most would consider mind-bogglin hard is trivial

If something have nothing to do with "hard" because it can be made easy with doing the research/grind, then WHAT is "hard"? Literally nothing

Red maps are hard if you dont do the research and put together a bad build/dont bother to check prices before spending currency/dont research what makes good passives or itens. Basically, its knowledge checks. Is it not "hard" just because its almost pure knowledge and little execution?


Mind you, i completely agree that the game does a piss poor job at explaining critical points, and it is annoying that we have to look outside sources or alt-tab to make trades, but it is a deal-breaker? Nope, if you got to the point where you really need these outside sources, you are already on a very particular spectrum of players where its accpeptable to make harsh checks. Having stuff hidden behind absurd conditions that demands outside sources is not even uncommon in gaming, TONS of games hides bosses, skills, even whole endings behind conditions that you would never discover if you dont look on a guide

"

Raycheetah wrote:

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

I'm not even sure if this counts as third party anymore since GGG hosts poewiki.net now.

(Sorry if someone already said this, I didn't read the 10 pages after this comment yet)

"

AdRonZh3Ro wrote:

Quoting him: "There's so many thing i don't understand, not because it's hard, i think this is the interesting thing, it's not clear and they certainly don't work in a logical sense".

I'm old. Back in the nineties, games were hard, and a lot of them didn't come with a guide/instruction manual - and the internet wasn't really a thing. You had to figure shit out for yourself, and it was a sense of beauty in that. A sense of progression. A sense of accomplishment. A sense of exploration.

Should the game become less complex? No. Should the game actively teach you more stuff? No, but maybe passively/indirectly. Should the in-game "encyclopedia" be expanded, so you don't have to seek information outside of the game? Yes.

"

Phrazz wrote:

I'm old. Back in the nineties, games were hard, and a lot of them didn't come with a guide/instruction manual - and the internet wasn't really a thing. You had to figure shit out for yourself, and it was a sense of beauty in that. A sense of progression. A sense of accomplishment. A sense of exploration.

I agree with this, but only if the game itself isn't complex due to layers of information or mechanics that are essential.

Like Souls games for example, drop you into a world, and while they give you some brief explanations, you are on your own for the most part. Games can be hard, with steep curves, without overburdening the player.

Games like PoE are far too mechanically complex in their systems to allow for that. The item affixes and uniques alone are beyond what a normal person could even memorize, let alone everything else it throws at you. Try explaining item influences, their mod pools, elevating those and/or combining influences with boss currency, craft bench blockers before veiled slams, and more. It's completely over the top.

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

Try explaining item influences, their mod pools, elevating those and/or combining influences with boss currency, craft bench blockers before veiled slams, and more. It's completely over the top.

I have explained it, many times :)

My stance will always be: If you show drive, will and a wish to reach the part of the game where you need to know about influences, it shouldn't be that hard for you to understand. It's not like players reaching that point are bambi's. Of course, it should be explained in the in-game encyclopedia, but I'm not sure if it is, as I've hardly ever opened the thing.

"

Phrazz wrote:

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

Try explaining item influences, their mod pools, elevating those and/or combining influences with boss currency, craft bench blockers before veiled slams, and more. It's completely over the top.

I have explained it, many times :)

My stance will always be: If you show drive, will and a wish to reach the part of the game where you need to know about influences, it shouldn't be that hard for you to understand. It's not like players reaching that point are bambi's. Of course, it should be explained in the in-game encyclopedia, but I'm not sure if it is, as I've hardly ever opened the thing.

It isn't.

And it wouldn't even be that hard. LE crafting is like this. You see the outcomes and what you need. But GGG hates information and determinism.

It's not a new arguement or conversation for sure, and clearly GGG has picked a lane. Still a frustration point for many on why things have to be so convoluted. It's just another alienation point for more average gamers.

I'm still getting over the surprise from the other thread on the updated achievement numbers from steam... Over 80% of total players right now never get to maps, and only 1.6% have ever killed Maven. I mean damn. I get it's F2P, but that's super low from a progression standpoint.

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

And it wouldn't even be that hard. LE crafting is like this. You see the outcomes and what you need. But GGG hates information and determinism.

It's not a new arguement or conversation for sure, and clearly GGG has picked a lane. Still a frustration point for many on why things have to be so convoluted. It's just another alienation point for more average gamers.

Average gamers dont reach the point where influenced stuff is in play. If you got that far, youre part of a super select portion of the players
PoE community have one of the greatest chasm between average and hardcore players on steam outside competitive games with ranks, people talking about "average" and influenced affixes on same sentence makes as much sense as talking about strats on grandmasters and bringing up experiences on bronze into the discussion

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

I'm still getting over the surprise from the other thread on the updated achievement numbers from steam... Over 80% of total players right now never get to maps, and only 1.6% have ever killed Maven. I mean damn. I get it's F2P, but that's super low from a progression standpoint.

Thats nothing expectional actually

Just pick a game on steam with achievements and youll be surprised. Even on games people pay large cash for, its the rule that less than half will complete the story, when we talk about the top optional bosses, the kill rate on paid games usually fluctuate around a tiny 5%-and again, thats on games people pay over 50 bucks to download. To give some examples: On DmC5, only 3.5% completed dante must die, on ff12, only 5% took yazmat, on total war shogun 2, only 3.3% beat the game on very hard, on doom, only 2% even tapped ultra nightmare

A clear rate between 30-40% of the story is the standard for paid games, clear rates of 20% is standard for free to play. Only 2-5% of players tapping top content is also the absolute norm even on paid games

If you go to any forum of games with ranks, people talk garbage about how the top ranks matter and the game begins on diamond or something, but the ranks they say matter represent no more than 10% of the active playerbase, in almost every rank system a good 60% of the players are drowning in the 2 lower levels that dedicated players describe as "clownfiesta"

"

feike wrote:

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

And it wouldn't even be that hard. LE crafting is like this. You see the outcomes and what you need. But GGG hates information and determinism.

It's not a new arguement or conversation for sure, and clearly GGG has picked a lane. Still a frustration point for many on why things have to be so convoluted. It's just another alienation point for more average gamers.

Average gamers dont reach the point where influenced stuff is in play. If you got that far, youre part of a super select portion of the players
PoE community have one of the greatest chasm between average and hardcore players on steam outside competitive games with ranks, people talking about "average" and influenced affixes on same sentence makes as much sense as talking about strats on grandmasters and bringing up experiences on bronze into the discussion

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

I'm still getting over the surprise from the other thread on the updated achievement numbers from steam... Over 80% of total players right now never get to maps, and only 1.6% have ever killed Maven. I mean damn. I get it's F2P, but that's super low from a progression standpoint.

Thats nothing expectional actually

Just pick a game on steam with achievements and youll be surprised. Even on games people pay large cash for, its the rule that less than half will complete the story, when we talk about the top optional bosses, the kill rate on paid games usually fluctuate around a tiny 5%-and again, thats on games people pay over 50 bucks to download. To give some examples: On DmC5, only 3.5% completed dante must die, on ff12, only 5% took yazmat, on total war shogun 2, only 3.3% beat the game on very hard, on doom, only 2% even tapped ultra nightmare

A clear rate between 30-40% of the story is the standard for paid games, clear rates of 20% is standard for free to play. Only 2-5% of players tapping top content is also the absolute norm even on paid games

If you go to any forum of games with ranks, people talk garbage about how the top ranks matter and the game begins on diamond or something, but the ranks they say matter represent no more than 10% of the active playerbase, in almost every rank system a good 60% of the players are drowning in the 2 lower levels that dedicated players describe as "clownfiesta"

Hard disagree on pretty much everything you said, and the latter half is flat out statistically wrong. Straight up false, and verifiable. Hell more than double the amount of players get to the end of Elden Ring that open the PoE map device? LOL.

In fact in less than 2 years time, from a percentage standpoint, the amount of players making it to maps has dropped nearly 20% (and that represents hundreds of thousands of players)

Right now only 16% of all players get to the point of running a single T1 map? 1% kill a non-uber boss? That's brutally bad, no matter how someone wants to spin it.

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

I've spent a lot of time on the forums. Perhaps that is my undoing.

Most (keyword: most, not ALL) complaints boil down to "Why do we need 3rd party software to play the game", "Why doesn't the game tell us x", "Where is information y", throws glass at the wall, ragequits, GGG FIX IT.

Is the entire player-base no longer capable of simply playing the game?

When I play this game, even now with a lot of experience under my belt, I learn new things....by playing the game! The only 3rd party software I use is PoB, and that's mainly because after my first few builds of a league I just want to try out someone else's work because its fun and quick. But I've never felt like I NEEDED PoB, NEEDED build guides, NEEDED youtube videos etc. That's such a weird concept to me...

When I pick up a game, the first thing I do is sit down and play the game. I'm not about to read a wiki, or read a guide, or watch someone else play the game. I play the damn game myself. I make stupid decisions, I adjust, I learn, I have a fun time. I hit walls that might last days, but eventually I'll overcome the wall and progress even further and NEVER hit that wall again.

Why has gaming reversed direction? ESPECIALLY within the PoE community. Since when do you read the wikipedia synopsis of a movie before going to see the movie? Since when do you look up all the best strategies before you sit down and play a game? Since when do you feel like you need to know every little thing about a game before you just experience it for yourself? Since when do you ONLY enjoy a game when you immediately have the most power possible right from the beginning? THat's like playing a game for the first time, with all the cheat codes enabled from the very start.

It boggles my mind and frustrates me to no end. I keep coming back for more, but I notice myself always being driven to the same responses to various threads...just play the game! Observe what is happening around you! Feel out your character and gameplay! So what if your build isn't optimized to hell? So what if your underpowered? Are you having fun? Running a PoE simulator just isn't the same experience as playing PoE.

I think people like you and I know how not to ruin our own experience. I understand it's frustrating to see many new games coming out and the only thing you see on twitch and youtube is : 'HERE IS THE BEST WAY TO DO THING'
And then people complain they get burned out from games, well ...
All we can do is just what we do and let other ruin stuff for themselves in this era of 'everything needs to be instant'.

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

Hard disagree on pretty much everything you said, and the latter half is flat out statistically wrong. Straight up false, and verifiable. Hell more than double the amount of players get to the end of Elden Ring that open the PoE map device? LOL.

In fact in less than 2 years time, from a percentage standpoint, the amount of players making it to maps has dropped nearly 20% (and that represents hundreds of thousands of players)

Right now only 16% of all players get to the point of running a single T1 map? 1% kill a non-uber boss? That's brutally bad, no matter how someone wants to spin it.

More than half of players on elden ring get to the end of story? Okay, source? Steam shown that number is actually on less than 40%

On dark souls remastered it also sits on that 30-40% i mentioned: the amount of players that cleared the bed of chaos sits on 40%, that is not the end of the game and both achieves of the endings sits below 30%. Again, dont need to take my word from it, open the steam page and see yourself: https://steamcommunity.com/stats/570940/achievements

Ditto for dark souls 2: the amount of people who saw the ending sits on 33.2%, again, dont need to take my word, just open the steam page: https://steamcommunity.com/stats/236430/achievements

And i gave numbers abour other games, you can talk how they are wrong all you want, but anyone can open the steam page and see themselves