Path of Exile just plain sucks

This game does a terrible job explaining literally everything.
You need like 10 different programs/tools/resources just to kind of understand how to not die in white maps.

Every item you find is rubbish.

The list is actually a bible so i'll stop here.

If there was actually a creative appeal to builds I would probably be more patient, but the bare minimum requirements just keep inflating every patch.

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ArtCrusade wrote:

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate wrote:

OP is definitely making a pretty good point completely by accident though. If you think you're gonna learn anything about anything, just by watching YouTube videos, you are definitely setting yourself up for a bad time. There's no qualification standard for making a guide video for this game or anything else, and a lot of the ones you will find contain misleading if not blatantly incorrect statements.

Maybe it's a generational thing, but nobody I know trusts random people from the internet just because they own a webcam. Like... why would you ever assume they know what they're talking about? Play the game, use your brain, figure stuff out.

That's not really something you can criticize the game for tho

Well, I'm certainly not criticizing the game for the fact that youtube doesn't let you flag videos for falsely stating facts.

It would be far less of a problem, though, if GGG would spend some time on actual proper in-game tutorials so that clueless newbies wouldn't feel forced to jump blindly into youtube and twitch to learn the basics needed to get through the campaign, hoping the algorithm happens to guide them to the two percent of content creators who bother to get their facts straight instead of just posting clickbait.

Because the sad truth is that it's now 2024, and nobody knows how to read. There's a lot of good information hidden in the Help panel, but nobody is ever going to see any of it when they start playing the game. There need to be actual tutorial quests in the game which will actively educate new players in various game systems. Heist is an example of this done properly: you NEVER need to read a single tutorial or watch an internet guide video to understand how Heist works, because the player is coached through it by quests and in-game dialogue.

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate wrote:

It would be far less of a problem, though, if GGG would spend some time on actual proper in-game tutorials so that clueless newbies wouldn't feel forced to jump blindly into youtube and twitch to learn the basics needed to get through the campaign, hoping the algorithm happens to guide them to the two percent of content creators who bother to get their facts straight instead of just posting clickbait.

Oh yea for sure. They make an effort pointing towards good content creators like Zizaran who actually put out good beginner content instead of highlighting "bad actors"

The new player experience is one of Josh Strife Hayes' biggest criticism of PoE and he brings it up whenever he can, even to Chris Wilsom himself. I guess they decided at some point that every player needs to be baptized by fire to be 'accepted' into the ranks of the PoE veterans.

That, or already have friends playing who can explain the game and its mechanics to them.

Kinda like outsourcing the problem.

100% agree with you there

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GenerallyClueless wrote:

I have dedicated a good bit of time planning PoE, watching videos, and reading to learn more about the game... but unfortunately have come to the conclusion that the game is just poorly designed. Random crafting, overload of loot, failed offense / defense design, shite reward quality for most events.

I hope this game is vastly simplified in PoE2, which I will explore. [Removed by Support]

You GGG staff had better start figuring out your audience, because if you design this only for streamers, you will continue to fail.

I think one of the things a lot of people do is come into a game thinking they're supposed to do top down meta gaming (i.e what you seem to have done; look up all the strats and guides and try to be a pro min/maxer right out of the gate) instead of just figuring things out and enjoying that process (AKA gaming) and it occurs to me that could be partially your (and maybe many others) main issue with POE. I think a lot of gamers who would enjoy the journey get wrapped up in an outcome oriented mindset and burn themselves out, also many of them seem to miss whats beautiful in POE. Also a ton of players seem to completely miss why some of the things in the game are actually so important.

The game makes a lot more sense design wise, and is IMO a lot more fun when you're trying to make use of your present gaming choices/opportunities (ground up perspective or grass roots) than it is when you're trying to "top down" brute force it. (to for example craft something that has a 1/40,000 chance to give you the exact mod you want)

IMO its a lot more fun and sensible design when you're trying to figure out what to do with a cool drop that just happened than it is when you trying to figure out how to force the game to give you the exact gear you need to fulfill the hard gear requirements of a build guide you're trying to strictly follow; before your mind and your wrists burn out. Or before your patience runs thin for trading for each and every specific high demand high cost item in the meta strategy you're following.

There two basic assumptions the outcome oriented (meta) players assumption:

I am meant to find the (near) exact items (or buy/RNG craft them) to make the build in my guide I'm following work correctly, and thats how POE is meant to be played.

And the developer assumption:

Players will play the game make use of what they find, and try to struggle to go deeper into endgame by adapting and improvising based on the items they find and can manage to craft, maybe they will trade for an item or two if they can "luckily) find someone with the rare and hard to trade for item they need. (note the trade assumption more or less obviously failed by GGG's own words).

The developers assumptions are the actual design intent of POE. Most of POE's design only make sense when viewed from that perspective. Which is why so many meta players view POE is a seemingly incomprehensible mine field of head scratching obstacles. (i.e. how does GGG not know about auction houses!!!1???)

Me personally I'd love to see them fix the couple most severe pain points of the game (As I see them from either perspective are the same problems). extremely poor bounding (what i like to call confluence of bullshit) that makes "dynamic range" of the game completely farcical and blown out (i.e. too extreme). (so this is everything from instant spike deaths to trash visual clarity to extreme loot pinata clown fiestas (such as what Empy and CuteDog do on stream) that make the game look dumb af).

That said your last sentence makes no sense whatsoever. POE is one of the few games in existence that has had a consistent upward growing trend in popularity and concurrency among online games. 99% of which do nothing but slowly die over time.

Just because you don't like some things about the game doesn't mean the game is trending badly in fact quite the opposite. So it would much more effective to just state your (criticism perhaps more specifically) as making up very incorrect assumptions about the games health wont make your argument stronger and just feeds the usual suspects of the feedback forum.

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GunHammers wrote:

This game does a terrible job explaining literally everything.
You need like 10 different programs/tools/resources just to kind of understand how to not die in white maps.

Every item you find is rubbish.

The list is actually a bible so i'll stop here.

If there was actually a creative appeal to builds I would probably be more patient, but the bare minimum requirements just keep inflating every patch.

This is not even close to true. PoE existed for YEARS without ANY outside tools and players did just fine. Those same players are now the most popular streamers and crafters and builders. Why? Because they actually sat down and LET the game teach them. At a fundamental level, the game is no more complicated than it was way back then. There are more things to use, but they all interact together in much of the same way that everything worked from the outset.

It isn't hard at all and the game gives you plenty of info. The problem is that people have no interest in experimentation. Instead, they jump into the game following what OTHER people tell them to do. This is not the way to learn. Or at least its not enough.

There is a lot of information that should be in the game itself, that much is true. But NOTHING is necessary to play and even succeed at the game apart from a general knowledge of video-gaming and some ACTUAL interest in playing the game rather than following a simulator.

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GunHammers wrote:

This game does a terrible job explaining literally everything.
You need like 10 different programs/tools/resources just to kind of understand how to not die in white maps.

Every item you find is rubbish.

The list is actually a bible so i'll stop here.

If there was actually a creative appeal to builds I would probably be more patient, but the bare minimum requirements just keep inflating every patch.

Cohhcarnage, Preach, Josh Strife all can be watched experiencing the game as completely blind first time gamers and more or less successfully (for first time player expectations) grappling with how it works without ever looking up a guide or meta gaming at all.

No one needs any third party tool or discord. At all. this is a narrative that some outcome oriented players insist on believing is true. Mostly they think this because of an incredibly shallow understanding of the games design intentions and their view being polluted by high level meta-play expectations of other games.

Now that said I do think the game can be more user friendly the UI is literally 1990's tier and many of the early UI designs are backwards and seem to be the result of really inexperienced developers working on their first game.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

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GunHammers wrote:

This game does a terrible job explaining literally everything.
You need like 10 different programs/tools/resources just to kind of understand how to not die in white maps.

Every item you find is rubbish.

The list is actually a bible so i'll stop here.

If there was actually a creative appeal to builds I would probably be more patient, but the bare minimum requirements just keep inflating every patch.

This is not even close to true. PoE existed for YEARS without ANY outside tools and players did just fine. Those same players are now the most popular streamers and crafters and builders. Why? Because they actually sat down and LET the game teach them. At a fundamental level, the game is no more complicated than it was way back then. There are more things to use, but they all interact together in much of the same way that everything worked from the outset.

It isn't hard at all and the game gives you plenty of info. The problem is that people have no interest in experimentation. Instead, they jump into the game following what OTHER people tell them to do. This is not the way to learn. Or at least its not enough.

There is a lot of information that should be in the game itself, that much is true. But NOTHING is necessary to play and even succeed at the game apart from a general knowledge of video-gaming and some ACTUAL interest in playing the game rather than following a simulator.

This person gets it.

Grass roots gaming vs top down meta gaming. Do you want a game to play, to figure out and adapt and resolve challenges?

Or do you want a paint by numbers print to unbox, and follow instructions?

If you think POE was made for the latter its perfectly understandable why you might consider it completely bewildering and confusing and "needs" 10 third party programs to get to white maps" or whatever. But it is incorrect to assume thats the intent.

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GenerallyClueless wrote:

I have dedicated a good bit of time planning PoE, watching videos, and reading to learn more about the game... but unfortunately have come to the conclusion that the game is just poorly designed. Random crafting, overload of loot, failed offense / defense design, shite reward quality for most events.

I hope this game is vastly simplified in PoE2, which I will explore. [Removed by Support]

You GGG staff had better start figuring out your audience, because if you design this only for streamers, you will continue to fail.

Please do us all the favour of not playing then and let us enjoy the game in peace.

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https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3472457

For the most part these are really good comments and I believe many players even more experienced than myself can see things from my perspective.

Even grauthrim

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https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3445902

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https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3444685

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https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3441319

Yes, I followed build guides in poe-ninja, maxroll, as well as those listed in YT from several streamers. The problem is when you are new, and something gets fucked, then its very costly to unfuck it.

I don't understand why my 87 boneshatter slayer is equally soft in delve as my 53 caustic arrow / toxic rain ballista pathfinder.

It's late in the season, and gear still seems expensive for 6 link. I try to mod my builds a bit to add impale to bypass some physical... add more a rmor, elemental resist, chaos resist, and spell suppression... but cannot match the build guides that have this stuff in gear.

It's crazy. There is no need to call it crafting when it's all random. Just call it all gambling and be honest.

In a lot of ways I think you're right yeah. Defense design absolutely is bad. Overload of garbage loot has been a problem for years. Loot is supposed to be exciting, yet absolutely noone is excited when finding a rare or unique, because 99.999% of them are trash, and even the rares that seem decent will still be worse than what you can find on the market for 1c. XP during the whole campaign is way too high, probably to further cater to the zoom-zoom players who skip 90% of mobs, but it ruins the campaign for everyone who plays normally. Difference between a reasonable self made build and a meta build is like a factor 1000 in DPS, which it shouldn't ever be. List goes on.

There's definitely an argument to be made that this game went to shit, especially for those of us who played in the early days, before all these problems existed. If it wasn't for the fantastic lore and atmosphere, I wouldn't be here. I'm definitely not here for the gameplay anymore.