A somewhat new player's review of Path of VexOhmIstDol

@RagnarokChu, here is a hint. GGG have been consistently adding new content, and self found has been getting harder, not easier, over time, and this is without any significant drop changes. In fact, they have vastly improved things like map drops, and it still made no overall effect on self found.

GGG can throw in as much content as they want, but its not really going to fix the self found problem unless they do something else. I have no idea how long you have been playing, but PoE self found was strongest in CB, when there was no economy and there was even less content then there is now

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deteego wrote:

@RagnarokChu, here is a hint. GGG have been consistently adding new content, and self found has been getting harder, not easier, over time, and this is without any significant drop changes. In fact, they have vastly improved things like map drops, and it still made no overall effect on self found.

GGG can throw in as much content as they want, but its not really going to fix the self found problem unless they do something else. I have no idea how long you have been playing, but PoE self found was strongest in CB, when there was no economy and there was even less content then there is now

The extremely overtuned new act 3, nerfs too many builds and all of the crazy mods in nemesis has made the game challenging for everyone that isn't a super hardcore player. It's just a byproduct of releasing this still incomplete game, hell act 4 isn't even out yet.

I'm not attempting to challenge or dismiss the fact that self-found could use improvement, I just find it more beneficial to use feedback from self-found, normal min to average trading party players to improve the game in general. Just segregating the game into basically two different modes encourages the company to be sloppy in their product as oppose to making a sound game to begin with.

If people don't want the game to cater to only the super hard-core 500 exalt guys, why do they expect the company to also cater to another group only? (Only casual, only self-found, only hardcore, only softcore ect)

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deteego wrote:

@RagnarokChu, here is a hint. GGG have been consistently adding new content, and self found has been getting harder, not easier, over time, and this is without any significant drop changes. In fact, they have vastly improved things like map drops, and it still made no overall effect on self found.

PoE self found was strongest in CB, when there was no economy and there was even less content then there is now

Not like it's not obvious, but the main culprit for that are actually item mod pools and since CB we had a lot of troll mods added. Someone would say 'two or three new mods aren't that much of a difference' but probability is a bitch, if you added three new mods in a couple of strength levels to the pool you increase the number of possible combinations on an item more than you think. If we draw 5 affixes out 100 that's 75 million or so combinations, but if you add 10 mods to the pool that becomes 125 mils, not 10% more but 66% more. Of course, all those additional combinations have a bigger chance to be crap, troll mods add to those 2/3rds of total mods that are useless by strength by the time you reach endgame.

Drop quantity is pretty much the same or a little higher than in CB but the chance to actually drop something decent is way lower. Now, I realize it had to be done because of userbase swelling since OB, but it made playing self-found much harder.

Crafting recipes might be a good fix, you'd be able to skew rolls towards stuff you need, not 100% predetermined of course. For example an alch orb and puncture gem would guarantee you life leech on your rare, but it could be 1% or 5%, so still plenty of RNG involved. Also, you'd have to be unable to roll top rolls, maybe if they were to be limited to 2/3 of item level or something like that, so dropped rares would have the potential to be much better and retain their price.

This game is simply not rewarding enough.

If you don't play around trades ( cause you don0t want or you don't have much time to do so ) or if you're not lucky you won't get anything, pretty simple.

A friend of mine chanced a Soul Taker on his first try ( I'm not even joking about it ).
I'm wearing a BoR only because my mates dropped it on a map run and since they don't need it they gave it to me.

This game deserves better end game content ( repeating maps all the way if fun just for a while ) which rewards the efforts people put in with items, crafting mats, anything which can be collected and reused later.
Yes, crafting system, real and touchable.

I'm rarely playing these days cause I get boring soon enough. Log on, join parties, put chisels on maps ( we actually do 74+ content every day during the week ) kill stuff, sell trash pieces for a couple of alts/alch shards/chroms, wait for other to get ready again, rinse and repeat.

The funny thing is no one @ GGG gives answers about that and the forums are full of these kind of requests.

Crafting, trading, currency, end game, loot system. All I see are new microtransactions and a couple of minor changes and 1.0 was a sort of big patch, not a release.

Yes, I'm pretty disappointed nowadays.

Elevator music!? What the hell?

I love the music in poe and I listen to everything from jazz to death metal to drone.

They've done a really good job with the music. I can agree that some parts are a bit repetitive but overall it's great the mix of ambience into each musical piece is exactly what I want in this type of game.

New area music themes are really good too, I even thought of putting them in my matt uelman playlist cause they flow really well.

Again, with the "it'll ruin the economy!" arguments.

For those that talk about "the market", "the economy", and trading in general...

World of Warcraft and other MMOs are *that-a-way*.

To me, the critical difference between MMOs and ARPGs is that an ARPG should be designed around being able to be solo-cleared.

SOLO cleared. No trading. No partying. Just from level 1 onward, soloed.

IMO this combination of lovechild of MMO and ARPG is the worst of both worlds, since the whole partying/trading aspect takes away from the core of an ARPG, while the whole instancing and few players aspect takes away from the core of an MMO.

D2 was enjoyable because it was enjoyable for just about anyone.

What the heck is the point of having a game with massive depth if all the enjoyability is gated behind a giant gear-gate, along with trash netcode, and every single monster having nominal damage equal to 25-50% of your entire health pool in merciless?

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IlyaK1986 wrote:

Again, with the "it'll ruin the economy!" arguments.

For those that talk about "the market", "the economy", and trading in general...

World of Warcraft and other MMOs are *that-a-way*.

To me, the critical difference between MMOs and ARPGs is that an ARPG should be designed around being able to be solo-cleared.

SOLO cleared. No trading. No partying. Just from level 1 onward, soloed.

IMO this combination of lovechild of MMO and ARPG is the worst of both worlds, since the whole partying/trading aspect takes away from the core of an ARPG, while the whole instancing and few players aspect takes away from the core of an MMO.

D2 was enjoyable because it was enjoyable for just about anyone.

What the heck is the point of having a game with massive depth if all the enjoyability is gated behind a giant gear-gate, along with trash netcode, and every single monster having nominal damage equal to 25-50% of your entire health pool in merciless?

+1!!

also add to this - this game is outright hostile to new players. the players that are providing heaps of MTX money if.. if they stay long enough with the game to not get gear-blocked and progress-gated by stuff outside their skill influence (RNG)

game complexity is one thing (however obscurity and convoluted mechanics are not cool - DoT changes say hi!) gating game content behind something that requires no skill but only time tax.. is another

currently when people say 'when you get everything youll stop playing as it will get borring' are saying only this: 'this game is borring, but i havent realized it yet because i HAVE TO play for following 300 hours'. time tax.

good games, and i mean GOOD games, can have everything available from get go, cheat codes galore and people would STILL play them for years. just because these are fun.

sign of a game that is afraid of being judged? include SEVERE time tax to pay and call it 'longevity'

Also funny that PoE got game of the year from Gamestop (or was it PC game of the year?).

In any case, the interesting quality about Skinner Box games is that they start off wonderful for long enough that reviewers think that rate of progress will continue, and thus give it this amazing review.

But for anyone who sticks around, the fun quickly washes out.

I mean right now I'm taking a hiatus simply because the grind has just become so dull, and odds are, going acrobatics/eva on my first character was a terrible idea, especially in light of how ZiggyD builds his EK scion (iron reflexes despite not even having any eva gear!), so maybe that may affect my enjoyment of the game, but considering the general consensus of "progression is too slow at upper levels" and the rebuttal being "but you'll get bored and leave!", well, all I have to say to that is:

I didn't even complete my first character and I'm bored enough to decide to sit out until GGG gets its shit together and makes the game less boring.

I mean put it this way: whether you get bored because you plowed through all the content, or whether you get bored because you're repeating the same exact routine long after it lost its novelty (read: got boring), you're still bored just the same. No amount of Skinner Box mechanics will change the fact that doing the same content over and over will be boring, regardless of which content it is.

At the end of the day, making someone play longer to get the last 15 levels than they did the first 85 is a cop-out. Making players run the same areas over and over is a cop-out. Anything done to hide the fact that "oh hey, we were developing this game for seven years and still only managed three acts with one memorable track and no plot" is a cop-out.

And for those that watch Extra-Creditz, those cop-outs are really freaking easy to spot.

Honestly, IMO, the best thing that GGG could do is have the progression be a lot quicker. If someone reaches endgame with one build, well, heck, make another build, and a third, and a fourth, explore the skill tree from all angles.

I just feel like a lot of this grind-gate/gear-gate actually keeps people from seeing more of the game--that is, how would it feel to play through the game from a melee or caster perspective, if rolling a bow ranger? How would the game feel by progressing from the Scion start instead of the ranger, and after that, try templar.

Instead, it's "nope, you stick with one character for months doing the same. Exact. Thing."

Why the sadism on GGG's part? Because if it's to retain players, in this one case, it probably had the opposite effect.

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IlyaK1986 wrote:

I just feel like a lot of this grind-gate/gear-gate actually keeps people from seeing more of the game--that is, how would it feel to play through the game from a melee or caster perspective, if rolling a bow ranger? How would the game feel by progressing from the Scion start instead of the ranger, and after that, try templar.

Instead, it's "nope, you stick with one character for months doing the same. Exact. Thing."

Why the sadism on GGG's part? Because if it's to retain players, in this one case, it probably had the opposite effect.

Well, what you said is all fine and good but this one is more of personal outlook thing. Grinding is boring and map system managed to get me bored in CB already and since then they haven't done a single thing to make me want to start heavily mapping again. Fortunately, I don't really need wealth, as long as I got enough to get some build enabler now and then I'm perfectly fine.

So I just amuse myself with building stuff. Can you clear the regular content with shockwave totem? How about melee Puncture? Can Goddess Scorned be an endgame weapon? Exploring stuff like that is pretty interesting and worth sinking time into, some turn out bad and some are actually pretty damn good. So I do some lower maps, if it rolls fine I call it quits and build something else. Sure, if it can do low maps with crap gear it will probably be able to do higher ones with good gear, and if it doesn't, again, who cares... not like I'm missing anything.

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IlyaK1986 wrote:

Also funny that PoE got game of the year from Gamestop (or was it PC game of the year?).

In any case, the interesting quality about Skinner Box games is that they start off wonderful for long enough that reviewers think that rate of progress will continue, and thus give it this amazing review.

But for anyone who sticks around, the fun quickly washes out.

I mean right now I'm taking a hiatus simply because the grind has just become so dull, and odds are, going acrobatics/eva on my first character was a terrible idea, especially in light of how ZiggyD builds his EK scion (iron reflexes despite not even having any eva gear!), so maybe that may affect my enjoyment of the game, but considering the general consensus of "progression is too slow at upper levels" and the rebuttal being "but you'll get bored and leave!", well, all I have to say to that is:

I didn't even complete my first character and I'm bored enough to decide to sit out until GGG gets its shit together and makes the game less boring.

I mean put it this way: whether you get bored because you plowed through all the content, or whether you get bored because you're repeating the same exact routine long after it lost its novelty (read: got boring), you're still bored just the same. No amount of Skinner Box mechanics will change the fact that doing the same content over and over will be boring, regardless of which content it is.

At the end of the day, making someone play longer to get the last 15 levels than they did the first 85 is a cop-out. Making players run the same areas over and over is a cop-out. Anything done to hide the fact that "oh hey, we were developing this game for seven years and still only managed three acts with one memorable track and no plot" is a cop-out.

And for those that watch Extra-Creditz, those cop-outs are really freaking easy to spot.

Honestly, IMO, the best thing that GGG could do is have the progression be a lot quicker. If someone reaches endgame with one build, well, heck, make another build, and a third, and a fourth, explore the skill tree from all angles.

I just feel like a lot of this grind-gate/gear-gate actually keeps people from seeing more of the game--that is, how would it feel to play through the game from a melee or caster perspective, if rolling a bow ranger? How would the game feel by progressing from the Scion start instead of the ranger, and after that, try templar.

Instead, it's "nope, you stick with one character for months doing the same. Exact. Thing."

Why the sadism on GGG's part? Because if it's to retain players, in this one case, it probably had the opposite effect.

Because Path of Exile is an illusionist's dream game. It looks big, scary and complex on the outside but the more you swim around you begin to see that there is not a lot of depth. This is masked helpfully by making you commit to one character for a ridiculous amount of time (which is amusing considering that GGG stated Path of Exile should be about rerolling and trying new combinations) and by that point you become disillusioned with the game and the draconian gameplay mechanics for progression. If you got to the end game goal quickly, you'd reroll and begin to see that the massive skill tree is taking Diablo II's attribute tab and spreading it all over the place. Sure, there are occasionally skills that look interesting you can acquire but they make up about 5-10% of the overall volume. Can you *really* get excited about rerolling characters that will take the same nodes the previous ones did before?

Maybe the days of, "1% Critical Strike Chance Increase" would be feasible if the game world was actually fuckin' engaging but I feel like the one-man delivery service here with the ridiculous amount of fetch quests I'm told to do. But there is nothing here. I don't care I'm an exile, I don't care who is screaming in pain in this dungeon, I don't care if I need more resistances, I don't care if I get another Orb of Fusing, I don't care.

That's the problem at the end of the day: I stop caring and move on.

PoE has this huge momentum to capitalize on in advent of Diablo III's disappointment but so far it is undeniable to say that they have squandered every opportunity. With the mass exodus, they could have used that time to truly catapult themselves into the same league as Diablo II and possibly beyond if they simply built off those concepts. But they got arrogant and cocky, and the toxic vocal minority doesn't help either.

Now D3 is coming back with RoS which looks to solve the core gripes many people have had with recent ARPGs like a Path of Exile and not to sound like a walking advertisement but it looks good. Sure, it may not have the same depth of customization that Diablo II had but at the end of the day this is why I put in my login information:

To kill shit, and get shit.

D3 is going to be allowing me to do that come RoS. Now, it may be a "week-long ARPG" because you will possibly hit the top tier echelon quicker but with some endgame-only perks added in that will help to rectify the situation. Of course, there is just one thing Blizzard needs to do and that is a Ladder system to give people incentive to log back on and play all over.

If RoS comes out with a Ladder system, Wraeclast is becoming the next Atlantis.

Say hi to Ariel for me.