The campaign is simply terrible

Last time i played poe, meaning i got to enjoy maps and late game, was during ancestor league.

I tracked my time i spent in campaign. on average it was around 40-45 minutes per act, having 10 acts in total that means a little bit less than 7 hours +- spent in a tutorial zone, being able to play a game for 7 hours means for someone who has a job and family means around a week and half of time.

Im aware there are players who dedicated their time to minmaxing and are now able to run the thing in 5 hours, or even less if playing in party, well lets be honest this is not a majority of players. I do believe that 6-7 hours is still above what average/new players are able pull off.

Playing this game pretty much since closed beta i came to realisation that i absolutely despise doing campaign, and the campaign alone is a sole reason why i avoid playing new leagues, or poe in general.

What is even the point of campaign?

- Lore/Story telling?
I'm sorry for being ignorant, but i have not once listened to an npc dialogue.

- To make (new) players familiar with mechanics?
Now thats a funny one, you can get thru the campaign without scaling any defensive mechanics, which is quite the oppossite what you do later to survive in maps.

To learn crafting as a new player you just go to a tutorial, or if you know the tools you go to craftofexile instead. So the campaign wont teach you crafting either.

During campaign you obviously wont have resources to respec often, that means having a campaign as a sandbox to play with different combinations of skills and support gems is not a thing either.

Players wont even use campaign to get familiar with new league mechanic, since its often not balanced well. (On top of that Necropolis suffers again from same balancing issues, but this times, devs had this very bright idea to make the content unskippable, making the campaign not only extremly boring but also absolutely suffering)

At this point im really wondering if ggg even playtests the game.
My bet is they dont, they just balance league content for maps and procedurally scale it down for low level areas. Every league mechanic is nerfed first month after release, over 10 years in development and players are still used as beta testers.

Only thing that remains on a table is that sole reason for campaign is to get players to level 60+ to be ready for maps.

How does early gameplay even looks like? Majority of players just get a movement skill as soon as possible then you leap through maps, skipping 99% of content/mobs and focus only on mandatory objectives. And ggg wants you to do this for every league, for every character.

Why? Why it has been designed like that, what is even the point of this? Just to lock players that have been playing this game for years into a tutorial zone?

The game has enough content to keep you occupied even without the campaign itself.

For fu- Gods sake ggg streamline campaign progression.

Halve the size of campaign areas, drop some areas, make leveling in campaign faster.

+1 Yes

+ add option lvling next characters with something else then campaign.

But CW think this camp. is so unique and fun they never change/do it :(
Thats why they still make it harder/slower

unfortunately campaign is one of those things that will never go away no matter how much people hate it

For me, kalandra league killed the game.
Before it I always reached maps, always killed Sirus, or Shaper, or the Elder before. After kalandra I feel way way slower during leveling. Maybe I do something wrong for sure, but eh.
Sanctum - reached red maps
Crucible - reached red maps
Ancestor - quit mid act
Aflliction - quit mid act
Necropolis - at act 8 and thinking of quitting again.

All the leveling just feel too miserable.

Acts feel worse than ever because they've consistently dialed up the game over the years and keep taking away low end player power in favor of making high end player power so ridiculously high

Not to mention target nerfing entire playstyles out of existence when they feel like it.

So now for the first 20 hours of you playing a new league, you just suck. No resources, no gear, no powr

I felt it right away a few leagues ago after I'd taken some time away from the game. I'm sitting there thinking like no shot did weapons swing this slow when I last played. Hit stun was not this bad. I remember being almost completely ailment immune by this point in delve league as a templar.

We've also done acts probably dozens if not hundreds of times between all of our characters so nobody likes it anymore. Doesn't matter what new little things you change up or tweak/add. I've done this before and I hate doing it. POE is not a game until you finish acts.

Personally I still like doing campaign, because I like the lore, and I like how much your character changes over it. I admit I do run through it fast though, maybe 10-15 hours. The low level are nice to have a chance to try out my build and decide if I want to tweak it some. I often make modest changes to my build based on what I'm finding, sometimes I even change it more significantly. It's nice having a less difficult section where it's more affordable to really try stuff out.

I also really enjoyed the campaign when I was new to the game, lots of fun lore. I've listened to basically every piece of lore in the game, or at least all I've had access to, and every line from every char.

After 7 years and 9200 hours of play, this will be the first league where I will drop out before the maps. I think that says it all on the subject.

"

Paiwman wrote:

After 7 years and 9200 hours of play, this will be the first league where I will drop out before the maps. I think that says it all on the subject.

for me this will be the first league where i most likely wont level a second character. one i have now is enough .

It takes me like a week to do the campaign now because i can only tolerate it for like 30 mins a day. Im honestly considering quitting until PoE2 unless something changes.

"

unfortunately campaign is one of those things that will never go away no matter how much people hate it

Thats understandable. But theres no reason for the campaign to take several hours to complete