No meat and potatoes

So I just jumped back into the game begrudingly, and I did a run and i'm looking over the handful of rares I picked up at random... and something hit me about why I find this slog so unrewarding and tiresome.

And I know it's been said a billion times but it bears repeating.

There is just mechanics overload.

When it comes to great works of art, there's a thing known as "negative space".

It's the area of a painting where your eye travels over to focus on some great detail of importance. It's a means of telling if someone has developed in their craft to the point that they understand where to fill in finer detail, and where to allow the audience to relax and just rest.

We never get to "rest" in path of exile, the ONLY way to get a decent item is to maximize the same TIRED AND MUNDANE AND OVERDONE 6 slotted item.

Like FFS would it kill you guys to add some more "dense" type items that only have a prefix and a suffix.

I am so SICK AND FRIGGIN TIRED of having to look over a slew of item mods for each and every single item in this game, to fit into my overly complex and niche build setup that invalidates 99% of items I find.

I miss so much the thrill of getting a unique drop. Just KNOWING that the item that just dropped is going to be good and usable.

POE 2 is like some kind of sick joke, some inversion of fun where every single item you get is broken and wrong is some shape and form.

And rather than getting some one or two crazy rare drops per play session that you can take the time to look over, instead we get 500 rare drops an hour, and it's just SO MUCH NOISE!

Like is this an action game, or is it a number sifting simulator?

I just want a small handful of items to look over.

I love theory crafting, I love making complex and deep builds, but I DO NOT enjoy having to look over 5000 trash items just for that infinitesimally small chance to find something of any value whatsoever.

And all the while, we've got that auction house just mocking us, throwing perfect items in our face showing what other players have access to and we're just languishing wondering how the heck are we ever going to get items anywhere near that good.

Yeah it's probably hard to balance, and it throws things off some how if players are able to just equip things right from off the flour and goes against the "vision".

But the truth is, that's what's fun.

People want to slay the big boss, get a unique drop, identify it, and see that unique item is better than those thousands of trash yellow items that had to arduously look over.

Does ANYONE talk shit about the unique items from diablo 2? They were friggin' awesome.

I get this sense that POE 2 takes its design too seriously, that it thinks that "meat and potatoes" are peasant food. That simplicity and something easily consumed and enjoyable is low brow and beneath them.

I just wish there was room for both in this game. Because I am so SICK TO DEATH of looking over 6 friggin' item mods item to item and having to stress about maxing resists over, and Over, and OVER, AND OVER again.

Good god am I sick of this tired exercise.

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crazyfingers619#3901 wrote:

"

When it comes to great works of art, there's a thing known as "negative space".

100%

I don't want to shit on the game too much there is SO MUCH POTENTIAL here.

But there are some overarching design philosophies that really take its toll on playing this game for the majority of players.

The game works on paper, all these systems are so well planned and executed it's impressive.

But moment to moment game session to game session something about the tone of all of this just feels off and over designed.

We just don't get that piece of mind while playing where those big value bursts of loot drop take place, we might get this great currency item here or there and eventually we can trade it in for some item someone else made, but the thrill of getting something random and unique off the ground just feels gimped in this game.

And that thrill of picking up that rare unique item and identifying it and equipping it, THAT is the heart of the fun ARPG experience. And currently that's dead in late game POE 2 for the vast majority of players, and the early game is marred by a quest heavy repetitive grind to go through tired dialogues and fetch quests and having to click the maps and the quest items, and the waypoints and all that repetitive stuff.

There's just no point in this game where we get to enjoy mindless map clearing while enjoying the thrill of getting items.

Great point. I think Diablo II did this as well, where you can have 2 mod items, where the mods are extra strong.

I personally like 6 mod items of Path of Exile more than the 4 mod items in Last Epoch, but I also dislike the 50 mod items in Torchlight. So, I get where you are coming from.

Also, I just want to note, No Rest For The Wicked does fewer mods, and it's pretty cool/impactful.

FYI in last epoch, most of your items end up with 6-8 affixes actually at endgame via crafting and what not.. heck I think you can even add affixes to legendaries if you get a legendary with LP ( up to a max of 4 LP)

so you can maybe even have a unique with 6 affixes and 4 LP affixes

its actually pretty insane, but unaltered dropped rares are capped at 4 affixes, this is true.