A somewhat new player's review of Path of VexOhmIstDol

diablo 2 had pretty bad desync issues, and you could do things to exploit desync even more. pvp was a mess because of this. not to mention the lag; you'd be going up to kill monsters and nothing would acknowledge you, then you'd die.

most of you haven't played diablo 2, or you didn't get very far, or your nostalgia glasses are too thick.

edit: forgot to mention lightning enchanted monsters where their lightning-when-damage-taken would be invisible.

diablo 2 had plenty of stuff you couldn't conquer, except blizzard toned it down so they could keep their whiny players.

this isn't about the flaws diablo 2 had. of course we now idolize that game and poe is in some regards an improvement, but poe is for quite a few people still a very flawed game. and i actually liked the game and what it tries to achieve, but the problems op mentioned just have alienated me. i hope at least some of them will maybe get fixed, but for that we need an open discussion instead of kthxby.

one thing though, desync issues weren't that bad back then, diablo 2 didn't have skills that would desync you every single time you use them, cough cyclone, cough whirling blades ...

Awesome post!!!
Pretty much everything what's wrong with the game.

Just wanted to post a few things. One, 39 is designed to be more difficult that even the following act in next difficulty. You're reaching the climax of the game. Is it slightly over tuned? Yes. But the end of act 3 is supposed to be more difficult compared to the next difficulty starting point.

There are places to farm. Ledge, church grounds, city of sarn, docks, lunaris. That's where you go to get gear in a quick and painless fashion.

Edit. And personally, if I have to desync on occasion to prevent dupes, I'm fine with that. The lesser of two evils, if one must be had.

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SL4Y3R wrote:

Just wanted to post a few things. One, 39 is designed to be more difficult that even the following act in next difficulty. You're reaching the climax of the game. Is it slightly over tuned? Yes. But the end of act 3 is supposed to be more difficult compared to the next difficulty starting point.

There are places to farm. Ledge, church grounds, city of sarn, docks, lunaris. That's where you go to get gear in a quick and painless fashion.

Edit. And personally, if I have to desync on occasion to prevent dupes, I'm fine with that.

That is the main issue though right there. The fact that you are fine with the desync. It is that attitude that is not really helping the game in the end at all. Why should we be fine with the desync when it has caused countless deaths and many times at no fault of the player.

I have had a few really bad desync deaths. Thankfully only one was on a toon that I was contemplating to continue playing. The others were just builds I was trying out. The issue I have is that if GGG is going to offer hardcore leagues they need to address the horrid desync issue. I enjoy hardcore and if I die from my own stupidity, I got that, no problem. But it is the deaths due to desync and even when I am spamming /oos and nothing is getting fixed, then BAM, in the middle of a bad mob and not enough time to react to save myself....dead. Hours wasted. Honestly that is not fun. The beginning of the game is a bit of grind in and of itself anyway and I don't know about you, but I don't enjoy watching clunky attack animations in early levels. Just not that fun IMO. The fun comes when you are able to run around and kill shit quickly and also find certain challenges.

Those challenges have become overwhelming overshadowed by the vast amount of desync.

I think that GGG needs to seriously step back a bit and ask themselves, "what makes this game fun and in its current state is it able to do *insert what makes game fun here* on a consistent basis with the least amount of complications?" If the answer to that is a resounding, NO, then changes need to be made. Not small tweaks, but major, major overhaul changes.

The player's position within the gaming world should be sacrosanct. The server should never assume where the player is going to be. I understand the difficulties behind that, trust me I do, but that is just the way it should be.

One other thing I'd like to add:

Most good, professional companies have a process of testing their product before shipping it. Google calls it "dogfooding" (as in "eat your own dog food"), and any company serving clients usually tests its products to make sure they don't have massive, obviously visible flaws.

I've seen in some threads that in some game development companies, the employees do not actually play their own game.

If this is indeed the case for PoE, that really shows that GGG is a bunch of amateurs creating a labor of love, not a AAA production game.

I mean let's be blunt here:

The best parts of this game are when GGG stuck to formula.

The skill tree is an innovation on FFX's sphere grid.
The gem system is an innovation on FFVII's materia.
The ARPG gameplay is an innovation (or a copy/paste, if you will) of Diablo 2.

But when GGG went out on a limb with the loot system and the balancing around that ridiculously poorly thought out loot system, as well as with its music and its complete lack of a plot (yes, Diablo 2's plot was derivative from the Bible--but that's sort of the kitschy appeal of it--to take some of the most well-known but boring content on the planet, put a dark twist on it, and make it fun), the quality just takes a complete nosedive.

In other words, it doesn't take much skill to copy and paste wonderful things from the most wonderful games. But the moment someone has to get original...

Uh oh.

And I suppose this is to be expected--GGG is a young company (relatively) that rushed into this production with full gusto driven by trying to recreate the joy of Diablo 2 all over again. The problem is that, well, eventually, a company has to grow up and make sure there aren't any gaping chasms for so many to just fall through.

Furthermore, even if forum opinion may be "divided" as to whether or not the current loot system is fine or not, keep in mind that from a 100% player base population, you may have a sizable minority reading the forums, and a tiny minority actually posting to them. Odds are, most people quit long before they even get to maps. If I recall correctly, the lady that did the only PoE cosplay (Lyz Brickley) put the game down after getting through normal with her Scion.

Compare this to League of Legends, which just grows and grows.

Diablo 2's economy may have had flaws because of the duping loopholes, (i.e. sorcs just became starter characters because everyone else could get the sorc's signature skill), but the game was nevertheless very possible for someone playing self-found.

PoE, by contrast, is balanced around trading. Meaning that self-found is basically a one-way ticket to inviability.

Blizzard even realized this and now are removing the auction houses. So why is PoE a game that literally depends on trading forums and poe.xyz.is, which is exactly a rudimentary auction house?

Runnin, I never said I was fine with desync. I'm saying, I'll tolerate it if it means no dupes. Which, AFAIK, haven't made their way in.

Notice how any time the client is trusted, hacks are released? This leads to hacks in game, and hacked accounts from people trying to download hacks with spy ware built in.

I consider it the lesser of two evils. Doesn't mean I'm fine with it.

Edit. Changed my op a bit to help better get my point across.

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SL4Y3R wrote:

Runnin, I never said I was fine with desync. I'm saying, I'll tolerate it if it means no dupes. Which, AFAIK, haven't made their way in.

Notice how any time the client is trusted, hacks are released? This leads to hacks in game, and hacked accounts from people trying to download hacks with spy ware built in.

I consider it the lesser of two evils. Doesn't mean I'm fine with it.

Edit. Changed my op a bit to help better get my point across.

this is cheesing your/ggg way out of it - empty excuse

trusting client can be not universal - trust it with movement/monster data, dont trust it when generating world objects. it is already done with mines/traps. each time you throw a trap this is done server side etc etc.

to 'fix' desync (or in reality alleviate it) ggg needs only to increase number of re-checks significantly. but (probably) due to economical reasons they are not ready to do it. btw these were done years ago. go play world of tanks where EVERYTHING is done on server, game is much more dynamic than poe, has a lot more than 6 players at the same time and yet gameplay is very smooth (given good ping, but this is obvious). it can be done. poe combat is not fast enough to lag impact it with any visual consequences on <100ping. hell, you can play q3 with 100 ping without ANY issues and that is extremely dynamic game (200k$ tournaments back then were held with artificial 100ms ping to even the odds as LAN plays different).

we are not in 90's anymore, dont look for excuses in games that were released when 56k modem was a luxury and my PC was less powerful than watch i wear now. times had changed.

btw dupes.. dupes are only important if your game is first -economy simulator, second -arpg. some of us dont give rats ass about 'economy' in this game nor any other. im really anxiously awaiting how will d3:ros turn out. after some testing it seems that it might be 'it' - game with trading (Rares only right now) but with gameplay first, trading distant second.

ive played d2 for around 7 years. dupes were present. and really noone gave a damn about that. game was extremely fun and if someone had some duped stuff? so what? but it seems that ggg is hell bent on preventing that in a game that isnt really competetive (ladder is a joke - this is 'how much time youve wasted' type of competition, not skill based one - and recently some guys from Dom ladder disappeared because it is not only real time you have to spend on it)

anyone want to talk about 'skill' in this game? make me a wander without UBER wand. there is no skill - it is only gear check: do you have a) 250pdps+ crit wand? b) v.fast, h.crit ele wand - if (a) select phys wand build, if (b) select ele+auras build else gtfo. skill, yeah right

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One, 39 is designed to be more difficult that even the following act in next difficulty. You're reaching the climax of the game. Is it slightly over tuned? Yes. But the end of act 3 is supposed to be more difficult compared to the next difficulty starting point.

says who? so you say that unlogical and broken difficulty curve is BY DESIGN? that beating level 30 is suposed to be harder than level 40 because of some artificial 'climax'? make it harder by requiring SKILL not GEAR then

"

SL4Y3R wrote:

Just wanted to post a few things. One, 39 is designed to be more difficult that even the following act in next difficulty. You're reaching the climax of the game. Is it slightly over tuned? Yes. But the end of act 3 is supposed to be more difficult compared to the next difficulty starting point.

There are places to farm. Ledge, church grounds, city of sarn, docks, lunaris. That's where you go to get gear in a quick and painless fashion.

Edit. And personally, if I have to desync on occasion to prevent dupes, I'm fine with that. The lesser of two evils, if one must be had.

Actually... while duping would not influence me even slightly... desync does. Duping would just kill the economy not noticable for people who don't participate in it.

Yeah items I would like to sell would be worth less... but items I would like to buy also. And since a lot of players don't participate in trading at all or to such a low degree that they won't notice it desync is by far worse than some idiots duping items. Also I'm pretty sure that you can prevent duping by other means, actually they both have nothing in common. Items don't move and there positional placing is irrelevant. So handling items server-side can't even cause any trouble even when they desync. Player-position is the problem and if the player isn't at the right position mobs are most likely also desynced.

"

But when GGG went out on a limb with the loot system and the balancing around that ridiculously poorly thought out loot system, as well as with its music and its complete lack of a plot (yes, Diablo 2's plot was derivative from the Bible--but that's sort of the kitschy appeal of it--to take some of the most well-known but boring content on the planet, put a dark twist on it, and make it fun), the quality just takes a complete nosedive.

Actually D2 had a good plot... D3 kinda ruins it. PoE is more like the D2 approach. You are an exile and you don't know shit about the world around you and what is actually happening there. In D2 you cluelessly followed a dark-wanderer. It actually is pretty similar to PoE. And the diablo universe has nothing to do with the bible (well except that there is heaven and hell). The idea that heaven and hell united to create mankind is as far off from the bible as you can get since this would mean that mankind is naturally evil (although only half of course), which is totally against any christian believe. I really like that PoE doesn't serve you the plot on a tablet. The worse incarnation of this was D3 with enemies that actually told you there plan so that you could stop them... that's just plain stupid. Piety never told you anything and you didn't even see Dominus before you kill him. D1 was even crazier and told the story primarly with some books and a bit of hinting during the quests (although the story changed a bit between D1/2 and D3... since Leoric had only one son and they changed it later that the Mage in D1 was the summoner in horazons sanctuary, the ranger was bloodraven and the warrior was the dark wanderer and the second son of leoric).

D2 and PoE both give you the feeling of being unimportant and meaningless (one of the few things D3 did at least partially good). In all of the diablo games you are a hero out of many in PoE you are an exile.

I agree with the OP on all of his points! My priority of fixes I would like to see:
1. Make self-found a possibility
2. fix desynch
3. make trading less of a headache (At least do this part if you refuse to make self-found possible)
4. The rest of the issues the OP brought up