The irony of Grinding Gear Games.
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It's kind of ironic that the biggest problem with Path of Exile 2 (released by Grinding Gear Games) is... grinding gear.
There are three main ways to get gear upgrades in Path of Exile, but only one of them is reliable: drops, crafting, and trading. Drops are rarely a dependable way to improve your gear, except during Act 1, where almost anything is an upgrade since you start with nothing. Beyond that, finding an item that suits your build and is a true upgrade is incredibly rare and relies heavily on luck. Crafting isn’t much better. It’s almost entirely RNG-based and requires significant luck to get the right results. On top of that, you don’t get enough crafting materials to keep rerolling items consistently, making it an unreliable option for upgrading gear. Trading is the only reliable method to improve your gear, but it’s also the most frustrating experience in the game. Trading should feel rewarding—it’s basically shopping. The hard part of the grind should be over, and this is the moment you cash in and upgrade your character. However, trading in Path of Exile feels like a worse grind than farming for resources, because at least with farming, you’re actually playing the game. Instead, trading requires you to spend a large chunk of your precious gaming time navigating the complicated trade website. You need to learn how to use filters, understand the differences between implicits, explicits, and enchants, and more. While this process can be learned and becomes straightforward once you grasp it, that’s not where the real problem lies. The worst part of trading isn’t finding the gear—it’s acquiring it. Once you engage in trading, you quickly discover that most players don’t respond to your whispers. And why should they? They’re probably busy enjoying the game and don’t want to be interrupted. Please, GGG, fix this. Make grinding gear fun and rewarding. Make drops meaningful, crafting deterministic, and most importantly, ensure that trading doesn’t feel like a boring grind of whispering people over and over again. Last bumped on Dec 28, 2024, 2:34:44 PM
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just anything you have fun with? So much negativity? Come on...
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" Unfortunately, a bad experience usually takes 5+ equally good ones to offset it. It's just normal human psychology. I've kind of stopped playing because of the stated issues. Trade/Crafting being forced. Unable to grind gear. It's not fun because my one character is bricked. And the other requires gear to progress, and when I looked on the trade site, a new weapon was 1-2 divine and I don't have any. So GG. I'm playing Rimworld now. |
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" I'm not trying to be negative for the sake of it. I love Path of Exile and want it to be even better. The issues I highlighted are real frustrations for many players and could be improved to make the game more fun and rewarding. Pointing out problems doesn’t mean I dislike the game—it means I care enough to hope for changes. |
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cool...i didnt mean to offend
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" as a trade is bad for the game andy and ssf player, nah. dont agree, ppl have been spoilt. the frequency i see ppl say ground loot bad, meanwhile their filter hides it all and they just cbf id'ing anything, and they have been so spoilt they dont know what a good item even looks like anymore cuz anything less then 6xt1 is not good to them because crafting got to op and bricked everything |
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" I think we're talking about different things. My critique isn't about being 'spoilt' or dismissing loot entirely—it's about improving systems to make gameplay more rewarding for everyone. Sure, some players may over-filter drops, but even with a reasonable filter, the odds of finding upgrades for specific builds are still extremely low. As for crafting, the fact that it's so RNG-heavy makes it inaccessible for most players, and deterministic options could balance that out. Trading, while functional, feels more like a chore than a reward for the grind. Streamlining this system would improve the overall experience without making things 'too easy.' I think there's room for improvement while still keeping the core challenges intact. |
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" deterministic is bad. always has and always will be, i mad a post earlier tho, ground loot should always be relevant, i think its critical to arpgs, and crafting should not take longer then 5 mins nor should it be required every tiem something drops (d4's worst shit is the chores you gotta do before you can equip anything) i will also say, ive seen ppl say where craft bench i cant fix resists, meanwhile they have sockets and socket currency aswell as runes for resist. it might look different but tahts your campaign bench craft for the moment. my personal opinion is std gear should have std affixes, the basics. they should drop almost ready to go if not already immediately equiapable at a reasonable pace, (gotta figure that out) but the special stuff, the things and affixs we look for to make builds work, they should be on thingsd like cores. cores that can be influenced, creafted, socketd and unsocketed. you get both then, good ground loot, and something to craft and carry power along related to the build. something good drops on the ground, take out your current cores, put them in the new item, put the new item on, didn't even need to leave the map. thats what arpg is about at its core. if you cant equip from the ground a chunk of the time, design is flawed. |
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" That's a design problem with the game. Players should be able to tell fairly quickly if an item is an upgrade or is good or not. In PoE, I have to look up crafting guides to determine that. I have to compare, often 5, 6, 7 different stats on items, across multiple items to make my character work, figure out upgrades. Where I can tweak an item, or replace another. Too complicated. Don't like it. Just want to smash bosses 4 loot. I just think the majority of players just want to play the game. |
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I'm one of those players who would like to see no trade at all. No problem, I only play SSF.
In my opinion and experience (only within the campaign), looting would work as is if, yes, we had good crafting. It should be possible to make material from white parts that helps with blue, etc. etc. The crafting we have produces too little material and is of course not crafting but gambling. |
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