PoE for average players?

The Average Player should follow build Guides from famous Streamers as they otherwise get lost in the complexity of the Game.
I wouldnt call any Player who doesnt do that an "Average" Player.
An Average Player also should know the basic Principles of the Game like being ResCapped and getting Life on Gear and how to use the Trading System .
The Average Player should be palying Trade League.

All in all ... i disagree with your first Argment in this Post that the Average Player will quit because he cant progress anymore alreadyi n yellow Maps.
These Players you cna not call Average Palyer they are below that.

If you follow a Guide its pretty easy to reach T16's without dieing too often. uber Content is a different Story ...

"

Felix44 wrote:

Not gonna comment on the player retention/league presence/time when players quit the league because that's a very vast topic that's way more complex than you're currently picturing it. The only thing I will point out on the matter is that you are overlooking the fact that most POE players have been playing for years. New leagues are fresh and fun (some more than others) but in the end you still go back to doing the exact same things you've been doing for the past 2-3-6-10 years. Older players get bored, have less time as they age up and this contributes greatly to retention, more so than anything else I'd say.

Everyone tends to think they are the average player, but that might not be the case.

Anyway, the point of this post was to actually help you because I think you're very mistaken in regards to crafting. High end gear crafting is for pros, yes. But if you're just looking to craft gear that can take you through red maps and the normal bosses, it's very easy to get.

It varies from build to build, but if you're playing something that's noob friendly/very viable (like SRS or EA and others you can easily find), you can get gear by simply doing the following:

* For your armor slots (body, helm, boot, gloves) buy a good fractured base (top 1-2 tiers of armor/evasion/ES stats) with T1 either life or resists depending on price. T1 resists are stupid cheap, like couple C. Then you spam a few Essence of Greed (one is around 10c max) until you get a 3rd useful stat (either another resist, MS or something else you need).
* Weapon is more complicated, if you have a divine you can buy something decent. If not, you can look up early crafting guides - this can also be done as described above (fractured + essence spam)
* For rings/belts/amulet it really depends what you need but again you can craft something decent just by following the above method.

This is how I get my early red map gear every league. I rarely buy until T16, and when I do it's mostly to avoid having to buy essences which used to be a chore (but thankfully will stop being so as of next league thanks to the currency market).

If you need more detailed help on this, you can look up some youtube vids, or feel free to PM me and I'll be happy to help you. But honestly it is SO incredibly easy to get this kind of gear even if you are the unluckiest RNG-cursed person in the world.

That is always the escuse, oh they are leaving cause they are already bored of doing the same things over and over but that is an escuse that doesn't holds any water. If you were to be talking about extremely good players who in 1 week have already experience everything new and don't care anymore then sure, but the average player takes bare minimum 2 days to even get to maps and that is assuming a lot of free time, if we're assuming the normal working guy he is probably going to take probably the better part of the week to be in maps.

This is why that argument doesn't holds water, because the simple fact is, the number of players that in 1 week experienced everything are probably less than 1 in 100.000. The average player has barely had any time to get bored of doing the same. If they are getting bored of anything being the same is them not being able to progress at all.

And yes, everyone thinks they are average when it isn't always the case but if I'm not average I'm at least above average. That said I try to keep a fair dose of self criticism so I don't really consider myself better than the average player.

I've done essence crafting before and the investment necessary to get anything decent is more often than not fairly high, many times far higher than what those things sell for in the market so I don't do that, it's a waste of currency gambling, currency that I don't even have to begin with.

Let me give you an example of what is the absolute bare minimum acceptable boots. 30% movement speed, 30% fire res, 30% lightning res, 30 cold res, 80 life. You can swap one resistance with 50 dex/int/str.

For belt, gloves and helmet it's the same minus the movement speed.

Your chances of crafting that with essences or really through any means are very low and it always results in far more currency spent than they cost on the market.

For a weapon is actually easier. I can almost always find a weapon that is a big boost to whatever build I'm doing for less than 10c, in fact often I find great stuff at 1 or 2c so weapons are hardly ever a concern.

That said, this is bare minimum starting gear, it's gear that hardly offer offensive capacity and doesn't gives significantly strong defenses which means you need even better gear for red maps but that starts requiring some serious investment.

This kind of start mapping gear however is already in the order of half a divine per piece (belts are usually cheaper). So if you then have to consider the gear required for red maps, we're talking multiple divines worth of gear and where is the player to make all that currency? The player already needs something like a couple divines just to start mapping and that is a dead investment, mapping isn't returning anything until you are doing red maps, in the case of white maps it's already lucky if they pay for themselves. You may get like a chaos per map on profit average which is not really good enough. Sure you may get really lucky with the ocasional item, especially with expedition, but realistically, currency isn't coming at a rate that allows you to break through the gear wall.

One thing I will say to you. If you get to red maps that alone already puts you on the top 1% of the playerbase. People don't understand how impossible the gear wall is for the average player because they aren't the average player and they compensate with skill.

@askreet

If you can craft gear to get to t16 maps, you are crafting gear that sells probably for half a divine at least in most cases. Profit crafting doesn't actually generates a lot of profit from extremely expensive items, they actually make most of their money from the 10c to 1 divine items that they craft in mass. Of course, they also know exactly what to craft and when to craft it and when to switch to other items.

@derhealman

Your rethoric clearly has no purchase here because I am talking exactly about players like that.

I follow guides and i know how resistances works and I know I have to be capped and all of that basic stuff. Of course I play trade league too otherwise I wouldn't be able to say that it's impossible to buy stuff due to how expensive it is.

However these players, players like me which are perfectly average are being filtered by a gear wall and have been being filtered by a gear wall for many years now. Prior to Delve this gear wall didn't exist.

I think the gear wall is quite high. Crafting (even though they've said they want more crafting to occur) is, as you stated, mainly for the really rich. 2 Divines (after finding a really rare map) just to be able to add more than one mod seems quite expensive/stingy (especially when you take into account the available crafting mods are already nerfed/capped at low levels/tiers).

Allowing the default ability to add one Prefix and one suffix without the huge cost and wasted mod slot would go a long way in lowering that gear wall.

I'd also like to mention/ask why does 84+ilvl gear still drop with Tier 9+ mods? Typically, unless you already have a 100d build, getting 84+ilvl drops isn't trivial...so why would they drop with trivial mod tiers? "+1 Maximum Life" makes a great meme because it's such a horrible experience.

"

krampusgrumpus wrote:

I think the gear wall is quite high. Crafting (even though they've said they want more crafting to occur) is, as you stated, mainly for the really rich. 2 Divines (after finding a really rare map) just to be able to add more than one mod seems quite expensive/stingy (especially when you take into account the available crafting mods are already nerfed/capped at low levels/tiers).

Allowing the default ability to add one Prefix and one suffix without the huge cost and wasted mod slot would go a long way in lowering that gear wall.

I'd also like to mention/ask why does 84+ilvl gear still drop with Tier 9+ mods? Typically, unless you already have a 100d build, getting 84+ilvl drops isn't trivial...so why would they drop with trivial mod tiers? "+1 Maximum Life" makes a great meme because it's such a horrible experience.

I think we both know the reason is to make crafting more inaccessible so that only the people with lots of currency can make good gear.

"

Elhazzared wrote:

This kind of start mapping gear however is already in the order of half a divine per piece (belts are usually cheaper). So if you then have to consider the gear required for red maps, we're talking multiple divines worth of gear and where is the player to make all that currency?

This is absolutely not true and has literally never been true at ANY point in PoEs history.

If you can't clear white maps with under 5C invested per equipment slot your build is unbelievably bad, full stop.

Here's the gear I had when I hit level 90 in HCSSF, when I was clearing tier twelve and thirteen maps to test out SRS Guardian before recommending it to some friends who are playing the game for the first time this league:



And this is HARDCORE. You could use far worse gear than this in a softcore league and be fine.

Does this look like multiple divines of gear to you?

"

Elhazzared wrote:

That is always the escuse, oh they are leaving cause they are already bored of doing the same things over and over but that is an escuse that doesn't holds any water. If you were to be talking about extremely good players who in 1 week have already experience everything new and don't care anymore then sure, but the average player takes bare minimum 2 days to even get to maps and that is assuming a lot of free time, if we're assuming the normal working guy he is probably going to take probably the better part of the week to be in maps.

This is why that argument doesn't holds water, because the simple fact is, the number of players that in 1 week experienced everything are probably less than 1 in 100.000. The average player has barely had any time to get bored of doing the same. If they are getting bored of anything being the same is them not being able to progress at all.

And yes, everyone thinks they are average when it isn't always the case but if I'm not average I'm at least above average. That said I try to keep a fair dose of self criticism so I don't really consider myself better than the average player.

I've done essence crafting before and the investment necessary to get anything decent is more often than not fairly high, many times far higher than what those things sell for in the market so I don't do that, it's a waste of currency gambling, currency that I don't even have to begin with.

Let me give you an example of what is the absolute bare minimum acceptable boots. 30% movement speed, 30% fire res, 30% lightning res, 30 cold res, 80 life. You can swap one resistance with 50 dex/int/str.

For belt, gloves and helmet it's the same minus the movement speed.

Your chances of crafting that with essences or really through any means are very low and it always results in far more currency spent than they cost on the market.

For a weapon is actually easier. I can almost always find a weapon that is a big boost to whatever build I'm doing for less than 10c, in fact often I find great stuff at 1 or 2c so weapons are hardly ever a concern.

That said, this is bare minimum starting gear, it's gear that hardly offer offensive capacity and doesn't gives significantly strong defenses which means you need even better gear for red maps but that starts requiring some serious investment.

This kind of start mapping gear however is already in the order of half a divine per piece (belts are usually cheaper). So if you then have to consider the gear required for red maps, we're talking multiple divines worth of gear and where is the player to make all that currency? The player already needs something like a couple divines just to start mapping and that is a dead investment, mapping isn't returning anything until you are doing red maps, in the case of white maps it's already lucky if they pay for themselves. You may get like a chaos per map on profit average which is not really good enough. Sure you may get really lucky with the ocasional item, especially with expedition, but realistically, currency isn't coming at a rate that allows you to break through the gear wall.

One thing I will say to you. If you get to red maps that alone already puts you on the top 1% of the playerbase. People don't understand how impossible the gear wall is for the average player because they aren't the average player and they compensate with skill.

@askreet

If you can craft gear to get to t16 maps, you are crafting gear that sells probably for half a divine at least in most cases. Profit crafting doesn't actually generates a lot of profit from extremely expensive items, they actually make most of their money from the 10c to 1 divine items that they craft in mass. Of course, they also know exactly what to craft and when to craft it and when to switch to other items.

@derhealman

Your rethoric clearly has no purchase here because I am talking exactly about players like that.

I follow guides and i know how resistances works and I know I have to be capped and all of that basic stuff. Of course I play trade league too otherwise I wouldn't be able to say that it's impossible to buy stuff due to how expensive it is.

However these players, players like me which are perfectly average are being filtered by a gear wall and have been being filtered by a gear wall for many years now. Prior to Delve this gear wall didn't exist.

And I'm telling you, as an old player (started in 2013) whose IG friends are mostly older players (5+ years) that all of us play less than we used to. Unless the league is something extremely fresh (like ToTA was for me for example) I'll sometimes not play further than clearing normal bosses and maybe an uber. Not because I'm "gated" by anything but simply because there are very few new things in the game. I know every map layout by heart, every creep, every piece of gear, and if the league mechanic (the part that is new) isn't at least 50% of the gameplay (like TOTA or Sanctum), I do get easily bored. If I were playing the exact same game in my 1st or 2nd year of playing it, I'd play for months. That plus the fact that I was in my 20s when I started, now I'm in my 30s and IRL doesn't give you half as much free time as it used to back then.

It's hard to judge what is a "majority" in POE because a lot of people playing this game simply refuse to try and gain some knowledge of the game mechanics, which leaves them stuck in the campaign or low tier maps. However, a player that isn't that invested I'm not sure should be entirely counted, considering that POE is a game where research is sort of a requirement.

When Mark is referring to the "average" player, they aren't necessarily referring to the majority, but rather the relevant majority - i.e. not counting the players who quit after act 1. The relevant majority are people who play a fair chunk of the game, and likely represent around 50% of the playerbase. Most are at the level of red maps-endgame bosses (not ubers). That's where the "average" player stays for the majority of their playtime.

I'm definitely not part of 1%, I can tell you that for sure. Top 25%, maybe. Top 1% absolutely not lol. I think you have no idea of the distance between someone like me and a 1%-er. They get more divines than I get chaos in a league.

Your issues all stem from a skewed perspective - that you are operating at a currency loss by crafting things you cannot sell, but that's the mistake most noobs (no offense intended) do. You craft so you can progress, and by progressing you get more currency. You buy fast for the same reason. You don't wait until you have 50 divines for a major upgrade that will raise your build value 5 levels up. You buy the minor upgrade as soon as you can afford it, so you can do harder content. Because harder content = better value, always.

You need AT MOST 2 div worth of gear to breeze through red maps. At MOST, and that's only if you're playing a finicky build which has very specific requirements to come online.

To start mapping you barely need a few c, like 5-10. Your "requirements" for red maps are hardly necessary since you don't need double T1 res on all your gear to cap - you need way less than that. So on your boots you can have life, MS and one resist and be perfectly fine - those kind of boots sell for 10c if you make it to maps early (first 2 days of the league). After that they are 5c or less. Priority is to have T1 or at least T2 life on all your gear (assuming non ES/LL build ofc), MS on boots (25 is fine you don't need 35 and the price difference between them can be huge) and a good weapon. That's it. Your weapon is the more expensive piece, almost always, because that's what gives you most of your dmg, whereas defense is spread across multiple pieces of gear.

Give me any normal/viable build, I'll craft red maps gear in under 50C using only essences and bubblegum currency. No knowledge required besides using the trade search engine and reading the mods off essences. The fact that you don't believe it proves you've never really tried it. If you want to progress, this is what you'll need to do - it is guaranteed to work, there are multiple guides on it, you can look it up or ask people for help.

If you're not interested in progressing and just like to whine about how hard mid game crafting is without ever trying it, keep at it I guess.

"

Elhazzared wrote:

I am under no illusion that PoE is for average players.

I feel for you.

I share some views on your described problems, especially the player withdrawal due to lack of progress perspective. Im not so sure about the solutions.

But I have to say, poe was never about the "average player". Elitism was right from the start a core identity for poe, its devs and players.

... just look here, ...lol.

"

derhealman wrote:

All in all ... i disagree with your first Argment in this Post that the Average Player will quit because he cant progress anymore alreadyi n yellow Maps.
These Players you cna not call Average Palyer they are below that.

"

Felix44 wrote:

When Mark is referring to the "average" player, they aren't necessarily referring to the majority, but rather the relevant majority - i.e. not counting the players who quit after act 1.

Combined with "heavily moderated" communication (eg forum here and reddit), it leeds to some sort of a filterbubble and undermining the capabilty of understanding existing problems.

Its all about the "challenge players". (Good luck finding here some sort of a role playing person, in a action role play game.) The trouble is, those challenges are not only about skill. Its about playing skill + ingame knowledge + game accessibility (third programs) + time.

... and at least: trying to avoid any deviation from a efficent game play. Those things are multiplicative and ignoring them, result in a heavy disadvantage.

So you better dont care about: your immersion, ease of gaming, emotional relating to a characterclass, the ugliness of a skill animation, the dullness of a game style and better install any third programs you can get. Because: we are in a challenge.


See you then.

Maybe.

"

ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate wrote:

This is absolutely not true and has literally never been true at ANY point in PoEs history.

If you can't clear white maps with under 5C invested per equipment slot your build is unbelievably bad, full stop.

Here's the gear I had when I hit level 90 in HCSSF, when I was clearing tier twelve and thirteen maps to test out SRS Guardian before recommending it to some friends who are playing the game for the first time this league:

And this is HARDCORE. You could use far worse gear than this in a softcore league and be fine.

Does this look like multiple divines of gear to you?

Admitedly no, but I doubt I'd be clearing red maps with that kind of gear. The SRS are only on a 5L (granted a cheap corrupted 6L isn't hard to get) and with that kind of gear I expect your ability to survive is mostly limited to your minions drawing aggro because you have low HP, around the 3K and capped elemental res. What that would mean for me is that if the enemies chose to ignore all my minions and attack me, I'd die very fast. If the enemy has AoEs or attacks with penetration and so on, good chance they will be hitting me too which means I will die rather fast.

Maybe it's ok for you to die every now and then or maybe you're good enough of a player that it never happens, in my case I'd be dying every now and then at very least and that is not really fun, it definitely saps the will to keep playing if I keep dying. The occasional but very rare death is fine, dying every now and then isn't. This is why I used to love playing freezing pulse totems, they would freezing everything they attacked if not outright oneshot anything they attacked and since i had a combined mana and HP pool I could still take the ocasional hit which would make the build very sturdy. Of course that is now in the trash with all spell totems save for ice spears which has horrible clearing and even then that requires archmage.

@Felix44

The fact that you can get bored of the "same thing" very quickly as you say only proves that I am right. The average player isn't getting bored of the same old mechanics because the average player has never even got to experience what it is to have a budget build. Even I on the best leagues back when the game was accessible only managed to get to have a mid tier budget build with maybe one or two high budget pieces.

And I know what Mark is refering to but what he is refering to is by no means the average player. The average player has probably never seen 5 divs in his life and probably never will. The average player does not progress to red maps and if he somehow finds and runs a red map, he's gonna die a lot. He may be able to finish it, but it won't be a pleasant experience with the kind of gear he has.

You may think you are not in the 1% and that is probably right if you are taking all the average players out of the equasion like you were earlier but here's the thing. I was the type of players who ran red maps and did most content in the game except for the pinacle content back prior to delve and even a few league after Delve when they started making things harder until it was finally impossible to progress. Right now if i start a league, I may not even reach maps cause it just feels like a lost cause to get gear and currency. I may reach maps and then quit because I don't even have the currency to start mapping or I may have been extraordinarely lucky in that I found a divine, spend the next 2 or 3 days in the HO trying to get the gear at a low price competing with all the bots and then finally start mapping, only to hit the gear wall around yellow maps and no longer be able to progress. All of this is the fault of the direction the game development took, not really the fact that I am not invested in the game. I know a lot more about mechanics than the average player because I learned them over the years and yet my skill is merely average and it's not going to get any better. This all to say, I'm perfectly average or just above average. Should I not be counted due to the content I run which may vary from not even reaching maps out of feeling there isn't any point because I won't be able to even progress to reaching yellow maps and then be filtered by the gear wall? According to you I shouldn't count but the fact is, this is the average PoE player. At best he'll reach yellow maps and then is filtered by the gear wall. You can either recognise that is a problem or you can continue to stick in your lane of nothing is wrong with PoE. Fact is, all these perfectly average players like me are perfectly capable of playing most other ARPGs and be successful, but just to mention a few good and well known ones, games like LE or GD because these games don't hit you anywhere nearly as hard with a gear wall and when they do hit you with a gear wall they still manage to allow you to farm within what you can safely run and overcome that wall. PoE doesn't lets you farm to gear up unless you are doing red maps and even then you want to be doing the t15/16 for anything that is even mildly worth your time.

And my perspective might be skewed, since in fact, no one can stay perfectly objective when their experience also influences things. But still, I disagree about crafting to progress. No one crafts to progress. Again crafters are a tiny number of people who have ungodly knowledge of how crafting works (and even then still need external tools to help them with how convoluted PoE is) and with ungodly knowledge of the market and what sells and won't. They are also incredibly good players who can make loads of currency very fast so they can make a base to start crafting (or they are teamed up with someone who can make loads of currency like extremely gfood players or flippers).

And I know exactly when to upgrade and I will disagree with you to some degree. You don't do a tiny upgrade because you have the currency, nor do you wait until you have 50 divines for a big upgrade. You push your build as far as it can currently go. Once it starts struggling, you look for whatever upgrade will give you the most power for the least currency and you do that. That way any investment is being made purely for getting better returns. Now this is all pretty and theorical of course. It works if you are a good player. For the average player however, more often than not, one piece cannot be replaced without replacing multiple pieces, this has to do with resistances falling. If I am going to say, replace my gloves in say a minion build or even a totem build. Odds are, the new gloves are not really giving me more damage unless it's now a unique item that will increase my damage. What that does means is that I lost resistances, maybe stats and even HP. The rest of the gear now has to compensate for that. This is generally true for any piece of gear. You aren't looking for a piece that just has higher HP and higher res, you are looking for a piece that increases your DPS and that will almost certainly put stress on your resistances and possibly life elsewhere. It's rare that you can just do a 1 for 1 trade.

You can say you can craft gear with almost no currency to start mapping. I am telling you that the average player can't and I certainly cannot either. Also bear in mind that skill plays a huge factor which you are disregarding. A good player needs less gear to do something. The higher the skill, the lower the gear barrier becomes. But we're talking about average players here. Not average by your or ~Mark's interpretation of average, those are literally the top players, their skill is leagues ahead of the average player. The average player needs MUCH better gear in order to compensate for that.

What you need to understand is that POE always was and always will be a game that requires investment (research into game mechanics) in order to be playable. The difficulty floor/ceiling has been fluctuating and over the years it's opened up more to casual players and this is fine. But it will never be a game that you can play without investing into game knowledge.

This is important because it's the reason why a certain chunk of players are excluded as non relevant. If you're not willing to make the investment this game isn't for you and you will very soon realize this and move on to another game. So you are essentially not relevant because you are not the target audience. The "average" player is the majority of the target audience, and this is true for any game not just POE.

You personally are a different case because you are willing to invest to some degree, but you are a minority of the target audience, not the majority. Again, your perspective is skewed and untruthful simply because you lack knowledge of the game and imagine difficulty that isn't there. Skill has nothing to do with it - POE requires a ridiculously small amount of mechanical skill. RIDICULOUSLY small. A 70 year old guy with cataract could play it successfully from a mechanical pov. This isnt a MOBA.

What you call "skill" is in fact game knowledge. Like the knowledge that you would absolutely be clearing red maps with the gear in the picture below. UNLESS, of course, your build is absolute shit, which is why you should be following a build guide if you don't want to invest enough time into game knowledge to make your own. If you're not following a build guide this entire conversation is completely pointless.

If you are following a decent guide you really do need minimal gear to clear red. And crafting is, again, extremely easy. You do not craft for profit because you are not at the level of crafting for profit. You craft because it's cheaper than buying. And crafting for red maps is, again, very easy and cheap. You can argue with me all you want, difference is I've done it and you haven't, so I would actually know, unlike you.

Go to Craft of exile, take a T1 lightning resist fractured helmet, spam greed essence on it, see how many tries it takes to get a decent helmet for red maps. I guarantee it's less than 5. So you need to buy the base - that's gonna be about 10c for T1 resist, 5 greed essences worst case (you could get them for ¬20c if you're willing to go T2) and a regal orb. Plus whatever the cost of the benchcraft if you still have a slot. So the absolute maximum cost of this craft is 25c ASSUMING you have none of these resources to begin with.

Repeat for all slots until you are resist capped. You can swap resists with harvest.

If you have a good weapon you don't need additional offense on your gear for red maps. But judging by your "weapon is the cheapest" and "can get an upgrade for 10c" I'm guessing you don't really know what a good weapon should look like. Or you're playing some weird thing that's really non dependent on weapon.

A 5L is enough for red maps, you don't need a 6L (I don't think I've ever cleared bosses on a 6L except when I had a tabula). Some builds can only do with a 4L even.

I don't really know where your problem is, but I can tell you for sure it's not where you think it is. You're talking about performance pre-delve, but there was hardly any content to clear back then. The endgame boss was what, Dominus? Pretty sure you can still beat Dominus.

If you a follow a good build guide it will tell you exactly how to get your midgame gear (how to craft it that is) for a very low budget. To give some examples - SRS can clear red comfortably for 1 div budget. EA can do the same. Frostnova FB archmage - same I played it last league. LA - same. There are probably many others that I'm not remembering.

If you have a specific case - build, skill, gear - that you can show me that we can discuss on, I'd be happy to help you. This was genuinely the reason for my initial post. I have no interest in having the 100th "game is too hard/only rich no lifers and cheaters can play it" argument. I am interested in helping players make the game easier and more enjoyable for themselves.

Fact is, there is no average player for which you, that as only a player of games, can suss out a legitimate meaning. The poe team may have their own idea of avg but looking at retention and whatever else BS stats you can gloss from the internet tells you nothing of value of the game owner's situation and important metrics.

Want to waste more time trying to figure out what's important and who might be "average?" Read the pages of responses to patch and update notes by all the shills and fanboi gamers who just want to play and gladly give money to the company like they're buying backstage passes to the resurrection. That'll tell you more than cryptic pseudodata from largely unreliable sources.

So play or don't play but why waste so much of your life's time, the only thing that really matters, trying to figure what GGG "should" do with their game?