I am going to be very honest; I despise this game's lack of respect for self-determination.

Player Agency: The right of a player to determine his or her own choices to their actions and choices made, relying on their own skill to overcome their obstacles.

I've been playing since 2016. I haven't bothered to make a post about it before until now, because I feel it's about time I ranted about this. I don't think anyone will care what I have to say, but I want to be heard regardless.

I have tried, for years and years, to play the game the way I want to, and try to implement my own personal playstyle since Incursion came out, only to constantly fail again, and again. I am very sick of it. I have lost friends over this who've tried to help me, and it crushes me because they think I do not understand nor care what they think. That's not it. I am someone who likes to figure things out on his own, take the advice given to me and work with it.

And yet, despite that, it's never good enough. I have never been able to reach Elder as a end-game boss for instance. Not until this league, with someone's help. I have tried using builds that I worked on and developed myself, and it's always ended in failure in one way or another, sooner or later. Now I am using a build someone dropped into my hands, and perhaps I am beginning to make some kind of strange headway. But it doesn't sit right with me at all regardless.

I don't understand why people think this is normal, or people think this shouldn't be addressed as an issue. There's a fine line between a challenge, and then being forced to play a game to someone else's specifications because, in the end, it's literal meta-power-creep-abuse.

It's honestly discouraging to say the least.

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DeathorGlory wrote:

I have tried, for years and years, to play the game the way I want to, and try to implement my own personal playstyle since Incursion came out, only to constantly fail again, and again.

And what exactly did you try to do?

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DeathorGlory wrote:

I don't understand why people think this is normal, or people think this shouldn't be addressed as an issue. There's a fine line between a challenge, and then being forced to play a game to someone else's specifications because, in the end, it's literal meta-power-creep-abuse.

It's honestly discouraging to say the least.

You are not alone in believing that "this" should be addressed. Im not sure however if you properly understand what "this" is. You dont have to play meta or copy someone elses build. "The problem" is that the game is too complicated/convoluted for a normal human to make their own build - at least without copying and learning from others. If you have good math understanding and good game knowledge you can leverage these to make your own builds. But otherwise kind of no-go. Large part of the reason is that the game design seems to be intentionally going into the direction of convoluted/complicated. Simple fluff based builds basically dont work. And I dont see any good reason for designing it like that. This kind of thing has been brought up many times also. But the ones complaining usually dont properly understand why they (or their builds) fail so they word "the problem" in various different manners.

Also, the game is ruled by "more" multipliers. Due to that min-maxing is critically important. If you dont squeeze out everything on every spot you in the end lose so much that it becomes easily the difference between a working and a failed build. Edit: This is also something which is questionable game design. But unlike the "convoluted"/"complicated" part it does have a clear benefit.

Maybe you made mistakes on those builds? You ever ask on the forums for help with a build? Or just your friend circle? What build never worked out or failed?

Would really need more of a specific example to really see what’s going on

I've never downloaded POB and never followed any build guides (any deeper then "hey, try build around that unique + this skill gem"), so playing poe your own way is definitely possible, although you'll always get the short end of the stick with patches because such players do not exist in GGG eyes. They keep balancing endgame around those who arrive at mirror farming stage at day 3-4 of the league, and around party players.

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Echothesis wrote:

I've never downloaded POB and never followed any build guides (any deeper then "hey, try build around that unique + this skill gem"), so playing poe your own way is definitely possible, although you'll always get the short end of the stick with patches because such players do not exist in GGG eyes. They keep balancing endgame around those who arrive at mirror farming stage at day 3-4 of the league, and around party players.

I regret asking this already, but do you even have first hand experience on challenge leagues?

Because when you say that the game is balanced around people farming mirrors on day 3-4 of a new league it sounds very hyperbolic.

It is true that the Path of Exile endgame requires players to min-max their characters. That isn't some grand revelation. You cannot expect to just blast through the endgame without properly planning & reviewing your character and gear. And if you want to do it without, then you gotta manage your expectations.

The game isn't balanced around the people you describe and also not around party players. It's just that those players will succeed in any situation because using the best strategies and playing in organized parties will always be an advantage versus just 'winging it' and playing solo.

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ArtCrusade wrote:

The game isn't balanced around the people you describe and also not around party players. It's just that those players will succeed in any situation because using the best strategies and playing in organized parties will always be an advantage versus just 'winging it' and playing solo.

"We'd at least like it to take longer than a few days for Tytykiller to reach endgame" and "is it too much to ask that it takes more than a week for the best players to kill pinnacle bosses" - Chris Wilson on why GGG needs to slow POE down, paraphrasing from three different podcasts during his damage control podcast tour around the huge nerfs for Expedition. (back when they were going to slow POE down because POE2 and POE1 were going to be the same game)

Drop rates of specific items and deterministic avenues to earn or slowly work your way into a strategy that obtains things has been continually nerfed due to the excesses of players.

Like:

CuteDog (almost single-handedly got the original breach uniques drop rates from Bosses massively nerfed by running hundreds of stones a night and flooding the market with "Chalupa amulets".

Or how about Empy and Havoc both being the progenitors of multiple group strategies that were removed or made nearly impossible for normal players because of extreme reductions or outright removal of semi-deterministic ways of doing things?

"we had to [gut] Harvest because some players had Mirror tier gear in every slot after a week or two and quit the league" Chris Wilson on why Harvest was gutted, directly referencing the .0001% players dictating balance of the game.

This is despite the fact that Harvest had by his own words "not bad retention" though it was an unpopular league for sure, but it had a surprisingly high "floor" bespeaking players who did play it sticking around for longer due to the agency it gave average players, what was too much for the tiny minority players.(streamers and groups)

"We nerfed the 95 to 100 XP curve because when we asked Racers about it they wanted us to" (they asked Havoc, Nugi and Steelmage if they should make it take longer to get to 100).

The game's history is rife with open citation, obvious unmistakable cause and effect and empirical admissions of GGG balancing the game around Streamers, Groups and elite of the elite players. Its why completely dogshit bosses like Sirus exist.

Leaving the vast majority of the playerbase (invested normal returning players who can't play 10-14h a day) with a game where you either follow a meta herd or you hand til "rough rows to hoe" in a field designed to keep Corporate farmers from growing anything.

I'm not saying its easy being in GGG's shoes. But the OP is essentially correct if hyperbolic. And I tend to agree with their overall sentiment. I wish SSF didn't have "merge" featurs so it could be balanced to be an enjoyable game for a wider use case like Last Epoch is doing.

I can tell you from personal experience the game doesn't feel like or resemble any game that was made and balanced in good faith for players to have a fun experience.

It feels fun when you're giga juicing Abyss spires which they will no doubt nerf because its too deterministic. Because that level of dumb is whats required to compensate for GGG's kinda extreme trade/edge case balancing and exceptional levels of hostility towards player agency.

I'm not saying its easy, but most games balance based on whats fun, what feels good (organically playing the game) for an average player. POE balances based purely on the edge cases, the extremes of meta behavour and trade metrics.

To the OP I'd say: the issue is that Agency is always manipulated by outcome oriented players. This ALWAYS fucks journey focused players such as yourself (and I as well) extreme RNG can keep players playing; theoretically and up to a point where most players will just quit from boredom. IMO GGG long ago hit the point of hard diminished returns on how much RNG can prolong retention.

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ArtCrusade wrote:

...
I regret asking this already, but do you even have first hand experience on challenge leagues?
...

Yes, I had, and I sucked hard back then, being too weak to profit from that league mechanics due to lacking meta knowledge required to jump on this train fast and farm currency at the same speed as league market gets saturated by veteran racer players.

As for global picture, Alhazred70 above already said it all.

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alhazred70 wrote:

"We'd at least like it to take longer than a few days for Tytykiller to reach endgame" and "is it too much to ask that it takes more than a week for the best players to kill pinnacle bosses" - Chris Wilson on why GGG needs to slow POE down, paraphrasing from three different podcasts during his damage control podcast tour around the huge nerfs for Expedition. (back when they were going to slow POE down because POE2 and POE1 were going to be the same game)

This is all very outdated. Current state is that top (solo) players can kill first Pinnacle around 7h played or so IIRC. And #1 to 100 in SSFHC took <40h this league IIRC.

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Zrevnur wrote:

This is all very outdated. Current state is that top (solo) players can kill first Pinnacle around 7h played or so IIRC. And #1 to 100 in SSFHC took <40h this league IIRC.

LOL well of course its outdated its literally game history. Those particulars while true aren't important in the slightest.