I think GGG is overestimating it's userbase by a lot

I've played this game for a decade by now. Never cleared an uber pinnacle boss before, never cleared the feared, never cleared ravaged blight map nor level 30 simulacrum.

I stubbornly refuse to play meta and i do my own thing, but i do that with full knowledge that i wont be clearing all these "harder content".

but you know what? i m not complaining about that. in fact i've tempered my expecatations and am fine with not clearing all those content.

back when uber pinnacles were revealed i already knew i wouldnt be able to clear em. but i wont complain about that.

but what i am complaining about today is that there is so much emphasis on "END END" game content that it really feels as though POE is only for the top 0.001% playerbase.

i see a lot of people ranting about not being able to unlock their 5th map device slot.

there definitely are people who would say stuff like "just pick a decent build and follow it and you'll be able to clear everything". theyre not wrong for saying that.

it is a very valid argument where there definitely are ways for players to excel at the game if they follow builds.

that said, i come from the mindset of making your own build, playing what you want to play. i will still highlight how GGG marketed POE back in the day saying that the game was a "classless" game where you could be a melee witch etc.

as josh strife hayes mentioned. the harder the content you create, the less options players have as theyre forced to be increasingly more efficient in order to clear said content.

I remember when uber pinnacles were released chris mentioned how it's aspirational content and how not all players were expected to clear it.

i remember accepting it as the uber pinnacles truly were optional back then. you DIDNT have to kill them to get their uniques. they didnt give you atlas passive points. they didnt unlock anything.

now GGG has gated uniques behind the uber pinnacles as well. on top of that 5 ways are also gated behind them.

i would argue they are no longer "optional". its so "not optional" that players are paying tons of divines for the unlock.

i remember bitching about how maven and uber elder/shaper were unreasonably difficult compared to eater/exarch and that many players would usually only be able to get the first 2 voidstones themselves.

GGG was fine with that.

and now things have escalated to where we are today.

things are not as optional as it seems. carry services are lucrative.

as someone who enjoys "doing their own thing". i know i will not be able to clear a lot of things myself. but seeing things that used to be aspirational/optional content become "mandatory". it just feels that GGG only wants to challenge the very top players and doesnt care about the rest.

i do not forsee my self ever going back to temp leagues and will remain on STD.

tbh, this is one of the times where i give feedback on something that does not affect me. i've already got the stuff i need on STD and i m just chilling and enjoying the game for myself. i only play temp leagues to enrich my std wealth and seeing how things are i dont feel the need to play temp leagues anymore.

i m fine with this but i do hope that GGG does take all the feedback to heart.

I run most leagues without the slot and often end up giving away money to random people so i don't think its "required" so much as perceived as a requirement.

Sad to see all the outrage when imo it could easily be avoided with some small changes.

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SilentSymphony wrote:

I run most leagues without the slot and often end up giving away money to random people so i don't think its "required" so much as perceived as a requirement.

Sad to see all the outrage when imo it could easily be avoided with some small changes.

Keep in mind, sextants dont exist anymore, and scarabs are the main source of juice along the atlas

That means the 5th slot is more important than ever, its basically the 4th voidstone for juice purposes

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SilentSymphony wrote:

I run most leagues without the slot and often end up giving away money to random people so i don't think its "required" so much as perceived as a requirement.

Sad to see all the outrage when imo it could easily be avoided with some small changes.

just because it doesnt effect you doesnt mean it doesnt effect others.

currently i am unaffected but i care enough to voice out my concerns about it.

and as feike pointed out, it's much more important now compared to before.

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exsea wrote:

just because it doesnt effect you doesnt mean it doesnt effect others.

currently i am unaffected but i care enough to voice out my concerns about it.

and as feike pointed out, it's much more important now compared to before.

Very true, RNG as well comes into play i can just be getting very lucky.

Not against anything you're saying just a bit frustrated with the mass-frustration :P

I always play whatever I feel like playing and still managed all the content you mentioned. Not with all builds or even every league but none of my builds are "meta". That term is overused in this community anyways. There are meta conditions. Not so much builds.

The meta conditions are caused by flaws in design. Enemy Density, difference in move speeds, no clue how to design melee, defense mechanics designed to intentionally fail and so on.

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as josh strife hayes mentioned. the harder the content you create, the less options players have as theyre forced to be increasingly more efficient in order to clear said content.

This is not correct. More difficult content does demand more efficiency however that does not directly translate to less options. Only when notably flaws are present does this happen.

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Xzorn wrote:

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as josh strife hayes mentioned. the harder the content you create, the less options players have as theyre forced to be increasingly more efficient in order to clear said content.

This is not correct. More difficult content does demand more efficiency however that does not directly translate to less options. Only when notably flaws are present does this happen.

when poe first released 200k dps was considered "damn a lot of damage"

we had tons of janky builds and me myself i fell for the noob trap of using 3 main skills, 1 for melee trash mob clearing, 1 for melee single target and 1 for melee projectiles for super hard enemies that required kiting.

but that was fine. we didnt NEED to be too good.

build diversity was at it's peak at this point. especially before ascension came out.

but everytime GGG added harder content. build diversity was pruned by build viability.

if your build is not viable, it is no longer a "valid" build. everytime GGG added tougher content, more builds became less viable.

if you're not efficient, you will be punished by not being able to do content. your options become less as a result. no real way around it. even on poe ninja we can see heatmaps and see how certain nodes or certain pathing is utilized less. theres a reason for it.

i would disagree and say it directly translates to less options. the easier the content the more inefficient the player can be, and that would translate to having more options. a marauder could play traps as a support or main skill. a witch could be playing melee. we rarely see them coz they simply arent really viable.

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SilentSymphony wrote:

Not against anything you're saying just a bit frustrated with the mass-frustration :P

... Why? Just to be contrarian?

People also were frustrated when the 4th voidstone was gated behind uber elder and what is happening now is basically same bull of very important content being gated behind content average players have a tought time tapping. Even now many people just pay to get that step cleared, only now is even worse as the definition of "average player" with T17 being the bar is basically everyone not at least playing one of the top builds

The 5th slot on the map was indeed no big deal and i also never bothered to unlock it on affliction, but that was then, now that the value of sextants was moved to scarabs, its a whole nother beast

It woudnt be an issue if the content locking it was reasonable, but its totally not: T17 atm are harder than most uber fights, wich were straight up said to be optional, aspirational content when they were introduced. T17 maps plain cant be done on the majority of the builds out there

Its 40c to get a t17 carry. 40c.

If you cant make 40c, chances are you are not going to be able to make much use of that fifth slot anyways.

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exsea wrote:

if your build is not viable, it is no longer a "valid" build. everytime GGG added tougher content, more builds became less viable.

if you're not efficient, you will be punished by not being able to do content. your options become less as a result. no real way around it. even on poe ninja we can see heatmaps and see how certain nodes or certain pathing is utilized less. theres a reason for it.

i would disagree and say it directly translates to less options. the easier the content the more inefficient the player can be, and that would translate to having more options. a marauder could play traps as a support or main skill. a witch could be playing melee. we rarely see them coz they simply arent really viable.

Even back then PoE had meta conditions. Totems and Ground Slam became very popular since they didn't allow the enemy to hit back. Current PoE uses about 90% twitch mechanics and 10% telegraphed. It can't really do anything else because they've screwed the game up.

Efficiency comes in different flavors. In a well designed game at least. It can be cooldown management. Damage intake / output management, flat TTK or in case of PoE spam speed. Nothing in the game is more efficient that clearing a map fast as possible. This isn't some ARPG design. This is an evolved flaw of Diablo 2's design. A flaw Diablo 1 did not share I might add.

So now that clear speed is most "efficient" by a large margin over anything else. Now we start to trim what's viable. How fast does the character move. Does it stand still to use skills? Channeling? How many AoE Damage layers can it output? Last one being a huge flaw.

GGG has defined the "meta conditions" and players define the builds that fit this. It doesn't have to be that way and shouldn't. I've manage to make a class-less system (which is by far the hardest to balance) for Divinity OS2 you could play right now and see. Every single build you might be able to think up is viable. Yes, there's variance. It's impossible for there not to be but it's close and will still be much harder than the base game who's existing meta conditions I removed.

I know I can do the same with an ARPG but the concepts players now have implanted in their heads of what and ARPG actually is will be very confused because the first thing that gets brought in-line is clear speed being the only method of efficiency. Enemy Density will drop like a rock.