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

I used to play hc 2014-2017 and just accepted the fact that i always died between lvl 50 ish and 70 ish. Almost never got to "endgame", most vertainly not to endgame bosses. Never watched anybody else play the game. Didn't really know what i was missing out on, so no fomo, just fun playing^^ It was a blast anyway.

If you want to figure out everything yourself just accept the limits and better luck next time.
It is just watching other players and the "I want that, too" attitude that kills the fun for the most part.

"

Strickl3r wrote:

I used to play hc 2014-2017 and just accepted the fact that i always died between lvl 50 ish and 70 ish. Almost never got to "endgame", most vertainly not to endgame bosses. Never watched anybody else play the game. Didn't really know what i was missing out on, so no fomo, just fun playing^^ It was a blast anyway.

If you want to figure out everything yourself just accept the limits and better luck next time.
It is just watching other players and the "I want that, too" attitude that kills the fun for the most part.

Comparison is the thief of joy. I've had to get out of my own head at times over the years. I still struggle with it at times, but for the most part I'm not having fun unless I'm doing what I value which means most of the times the "FOMO" only works to ruin my enjoyment. Sometimes it aligns though and those are usually my favorite leagues.

On this subject though; I am a big believer that a ton of POE's playerbase are so caught up in how they think they're supposed to play the game that they just miss the point completely of the games design (which is why such players always are mind blown why GGG doesn't know about Auction house tech, and then mind blown again when they find out they don't want that), and in some cases burn themselves out and ruin the potential enjoyment trying to monkey-see-monkey-do what some streamer is telling them is the fun or the point.

Specifically if you think CuteDog or Empy are playing the game "correctly" or "how you're meant to play" or some such. The fact is they are playing the popular meta game. An emergent way to play the game that is actually quite divorced from the design intentions. A meta of play thats actually a natural and predictable result of GGG's lack of bounding, a fundamental game design mistake.

Curiously they seem to be making the same mistake with poe2 and seem unaware of it.

"

I despise this game's lack of respect for self-determination.

Going by the rest of the post you despise yourself because your "self determination" sucked.

The game literally lets you do whatever, not all of it is required to be good (nor can it be)

Jesus this is a reddit level thread. Whining about the 1%, defending an outright broken mechanic (abyss spires), even some sprinkles of OG Harvest for some extra flavour.

Not everything needs to be good, not every skill needs to work. The game can never be perfectly balanced. This is just a reality people need to accept.

If you want to play the game your own way, then you should stop comparing your results to others.

It goes for everything in life..

i like the IDEA in PoE that you have a lot of diversity
the first time i saw the passive skill tree, it looked so fun!
and the gems? you can mix and match to whatever you like!

but this is just the surface layer
unless you play the top builds with the strongest skills, squeeze all the damage and defences you can, you won't get far..

i never got to shaper too.
in this league i started playing with Raise Zombie of Falling.
Such a fun skill! i got a blast seeing the zombie just smashing in the ground
i was having a lot of fun until i got to endgame....
had to switch to Summon Raging Spirits because Raise Zombie of Falling was not doing enough damage... :/

and the whale players......ugh.
this part of the community is prettyyy toxic
and as you already notice, they need to defend the game so they can justify their expenses

i went many times on the forum to ask for help
i've got some great help, but some players are just like "WHY ARE YOU USING 'XYZ' IN YOUR BUILD, ARE YOU STUPID?"
like dude, the game is massive, i'm just asking for help.

"

Turtledove wrote:

Third, GGG seems to embrace this situation and uses it to sell the game as very challenging.

it's funny because the top players find the game too easy, lol
the game is balanced around the players that do everything in the game in the first week
i mean... i think those are the players that are expending a lot of money in MTX, so it makes sense to balance the game like this.

"

Pizzarugi wrote:

I can tell you from my own personal experience: Coming up with your own build sucks. It's a colossal time sink even theorycrafting on PoB, but then you have to spend however much currency is going to be required to gear up and test to see if it actually works. By the time you find out that it doesn't, the gear you purchased had already deprecated in value so you have to sell it back at a loss. I've never been rich enough to own a headhunter, let alone a mirror to try blowing it all trying to make a build work. And I didn't even touch on the fact that all your work will be wasted anyway if something gets rebalanced next league which completely invalidates your build..

sounds to me like the game requires you do play a build that is broken, and apparently it's easier to balance the game around broken builds than it is to balance builds (i.e. nerf broken shit).

The ideal state should be that you can be successful with a moderate effort. If that is not possible, the game isn't balanced right imo.

"

nanicow wrote:

it's funny because the top players find the game too easy, lol
the game is balanced around the players that do everything in the game in the first week
i mean... i think those are the players that are expending a lot of money in MTX, so it makes sense to balance the game like this.

Common solution to this (which you can find in almost every game of every genre except poe) would be global difficulty levels. In poe it would be simple "players do X% more damage" and "players take Y% less damage" modifiers. It would be enough to mend community schism, in combination with heavily nerfing MF on items and instead adding more baseline MF to higher difficulties.

...But wait. That would mean that top players would feel less top about themselves, so nooo, no-go here. Vision says there will be top 1% and they will be retained in game by unique ability to gloat and gitgud over the rest who are forced to climb same difficulty. Even if those rest weren't looking for such heavy time and effort investment coming here.

Even though im a very.. very.. new player to this game, i just wanna give my thought to the OP and ye..., i feel ya.., like 100%, ive tried a couple differnet builds, even tried myself, and ive seen streamers do those endgame bosses that looked very cool.

yet.., ive never been able to get there myself, at all the highest i reached is tier 16, and thats purely cuz i had to follow a very very specific build from PoB...

and even that wasn't enough as i got help from others to make sure my experience wouldnt be completely negative for endgame as i just couldnt reach further i just couldnt, first tier 8 was the highest i could with my zombies build, got literally 1shotted at some point....

the game has potential, has a lot.... of stuff in it skill/gem wise gear wise as well etc.., but barely.... to non guide or explenation from the game itself...

we're forced to rely on very min/maxed specific builds, and if you don't go for the Meta build welp..... youll suffer in experience...

sadly enough the better meta builds are crazy expensive for a new player such as myself which i didnt know untill i got towards mapping.. its sad rlly...

"

Echothesis wrote:

...But wait. That would mean that top players would feel less top about themselves, so nooo, no-go here. Vision says there will be top 1% and they will be retained in game by unique ability to gloat and gitgud over the rest who are forced to climb same difficulty. Even if those rest weren't looking for such heavy time and effort investment coming here.

I dont think "top 1%" should be called "top players". The gap between actual top players and someone at 99% is huge. Do any top players actually care about whether SC trade gets an additional easier mode or no?