I Was Wrong, POE 0.3.0 Is Better than I Originally Thought, ... but the problem is the ramp up.

So after posting my thead "I gave the game 12h ..." I was persuaded by some friends to power through. I rolled a blood mage witch and then powered through it. For context I play ONLY controller and I am 54 so not a young reflex handy guy. I figured I could work through the campaign act 1 and then in Act 2 it started to pick up. I got more power and was more at home with the game. Now I picked witch because minions and contagion rolls the first few zones. Now I have gotten through the trial and chosen bloodmage I am happier. But the problem is the rampup.

Without using witch the ramp up is HORRIBLE. You start off getting constantly rolled in Act 1 and I played every char in Act 1. The hardest being killing palm monk with falling thunder and the easiest being witch unearth contagion. This is going to gate A LOT of players as we see from the carnage in the forums including mine. I am a casual player, I will never be top tier.

My advice to GGG is that the builds that you push people into in the start of the game must all be viable. Monk is pushed to falling thunder and naturally you want to slot killing palm but killing palm is shockingly bad. It needs to increase attack speed dramatically. If you roll in contagion you can sometimes get some clear. If you cant clear you get mobbed and destroyed.

With warrior it is even worse. Rolling slam is shockingly bad. The buffs weren't enough. It actually feels worse. Also the changes to shield and parry are frankly very bad. If you parry or if you do melee you will get absolutely crushed. These need to be reworked. Parry should be passive and allow you to parry hits that get through evasion. Currently you cant even parry without being hard stunned. Drop block off the shield if you need to for balance. Raise shield is still useless. Also the spear should be able to stab while the shield is raised.

The visual clarity on the ground is LETHAL to melee. When the hags use their circles that one shot you I can barely see them as a Red Green colorblind guy. My suggestion is that you change the cast animation to have an aerial effect above the battle like a column of red or some sort of lightning or red ray strike the ground first. The projectile users wont notice this, melee gets crushed.

My suggestion is that you really pay attention to the ramp up. Each skill you push off the beach should feel workable. If you are using explosive spear you should help parry and disengage. If you are using killing palm maybe give it some knock back if it culls a target.

If players cant get through the Act 1, without massive frustration, they will just quit.

That is this feedback.

I think for the vast majority of builds/classes when you're doing a league start there is a very large progression disconnect in Act 2 and most of Act 3 (feeling better towards the end of 3).

The bulk of skills at that point are too slow, you don't have enough passive points in the tree to really get anything good going yet, and the speed/damage/health of the monsters out scales basically everything at this point. And every item you have will be bad unless you've gotten extraordinarily lucky.

The game is not in a good spot balance wise for league start. The first three acts were incredibly rough for me. Not in a constant dying way but just general dread from how tedious, clunky and slow everything feels without a working build and nothing much to work with to fix ones problems. From act 4 the game finally started to feel a lot better for me. But that was around 20 hours in if i'm not mistaken. I'd hate to have to go through this every couple months.

Wanting to go against the meta I started a monk this season, so far through the campaign I've found him quite easy, and next to my LA Deadeye I'm also leveling up the monk is a touch stronger and much tankier. However, I'll say the monk was much easier than the Deadeye the first 2 acts, almost too easy. All I played was killing palm to falling thunder up until probably mid 40s, then it did get harder to cull enemies so I just switched to storm wave, although sometimes I still use flurry/bell for some bosses. Bosses in particular I've found quite easy with monk, flurry/bell and they rarely hit you for some reason. I'm now finishing up interludes and have had pretty much zero issue with him, but have yet to see how he does in maps.

My LA Deadeye is in maps so I can compare pretty decently. I'm just an average joe, no twinks and most of my gear is dropped with a few purchased items less than a few exalts each. Only reason I leveled the DE first was they will probably be better for farming at the end of the day, but honestly I'm not sure because they are both doing really well.

20 hours in before you can start enjoying the game... something is off.

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sebzzz#6019 wrote:

20 hours in before you can start enjoying the game... something is off.

That is essentially the thrust of the post.

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sebzzz#6019 wrote:

20 hours in before you can start enjoying the game... something is off.

Some games take some time to get into. For example in Baldur's Gate 3 I spent over 140 hours in character creation before I finally found something I really started to enjoy. And I think there is nothing wrong with Baldur's Gate...

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Sakanabi#6664 wrote:

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sebzzz#6019 wrote:

20 hours in before you can start enjoying the game... something is off.

Some games take some time to get into. For example in Baldur's Gate 3 I spent over 140 hours in character creation before I finally found something I really started to enjoy. And I think there is nothing wrong with Baldur's Gate...

For BG3 that is a choice.

For an ARPG you need to hook the player or it wont matter how good your game is, it will fail.

Every class should have a build as effective as LA/Lightning Rod early on. Only reason I powered through on monk through the early levels was because I saw monk gameplay at later levels and was excited. If I didn't know what it would be like I would have given up early on.

Many of the classes early levels are shockingly bad and not indicative of the great gameplay that the game has.

Respect to you to try it again. From my point of view it is nothing about reflections and age. In fact, older people than you can beat younger people than you in gaming easily, because reflections are a way overrated. It is more about (1) mindset and (2) smartness.

Mindset means don't get frustrated by failing. Failing is actually the fun part of gaming, because you are allowed to fail (something that does not apply to real life very often). Failing is so important to become better and to learn. And after you often failed, you feel more happy about your success, because you reached a point you never did before. The top tier people are not top tier because they're young, but because they failed more than any other to become that good.

Smartness on the other hand means to think and rethink about what you are doing and how you can become better. Even if you think you do it in the perfect way (after hundreds of hours) there is still something you can do better. That's not just on this game with complex skill tree, but in general. And it means, especially on first character you play horrible. I failed 2 hours on version 0.2 on end boss of act 2, because I played horrible. It was VERY frustrating and I was close to give up. But I finally managed it and became a much better player after I killed him. It's also fine to ask for help in such cases (when frustration becomes to huge). Even than you leaned before and have easier fights on act 3 etc.

To make an example you may understand a way better:
Once I saw a professional player (fighting in official tournaments) that started to ask people age 70+ to form a team in counter strike (you know, that shooter game) to fight on tournaments. He was training them. A shooter is the type of genre you probably need most reaction time and these people had worse than you have. But after some training they were on top of many young people teams. Why? Because they learned to play smart and failed a lot before.

What you already do right, you choose a character you can enjoy. Play it to the endgame, play it even a bit further. At some point start one of those characters again, which you could not enjoy, because game was too hard. You will realize you already became much stronger and the first act becomes even too easy. You may even change your mind of your this post again.

And I also think the game already became much easier compared to version 0.2. A bit more easy and I think the first people come and complain about "it is too easy, please make it as hard as version xyz before".

At the end I want to wish you a good travel with your new character. Don't become frustrated when you feel kinda weak for some levels. Rethink your strategies (skills, gear, rotation) and you will enjoy it, I'm sure.

Edit:

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Flowneppets#0528 wrote:

The first three acts were incredibly rough for me. Not in a constant dying way but just general dread from how tedious, clunky and slow everything feels without a working build and nothing much to work with to fix ones problems. From act 4 the game finally started to feel a lot better for me.

For me it was the other way around. Act 4 was that one I died most times. When starting side story after act 4, I became strong again. That's what I mean with "feeling kinda weak on the journey". For everyone it's a bit different, because it often highly depend on your character skills and equipment.