What I Love, Hate, and Loathe about Path of Exile

@op: sorry at derailing.

can we get back to feddback to his arguments please?

I respect your feedback. It's elaborated, paragraphed and contains both positive and negative points. The negative points represented in a non-raging manner that you can understand and sympathize with. Let me have my personal words on your points:

Things you love:

The Feel of the World - I feel that this game has what many games are missing: a sinister world that you actually feel part of while playing.

The Free to Play Model - The main reason I've donated more than $100 to GGG. I don't usually give away my money, but you earn it if you're really nice and generous.

The Possibilities of the Passive Tree - Build diversity is another thing lacking in MMORPGs and even some ARPGs. In PoE it's unlimited because your class doesn't restrict your play style.

Update Schedule - That's another reason why I've never quit the game for good. You will often find me returning after a major patch if I get tired of the game.

Communication - I am amazed at GGG's dedication about keeping the playerbase informed and entertained. The GGG support staff takes no time to reply to your plea for help.

Level 30 to 50 - I agree that the beginning of cruel difficulty is one of the more fun periods in the development of a character. Your build can finally use level 31 gems and breeze through act 1 and most of act 2 after killing Dominus using its own unique offenses and defenses.

Things you hate:

Level 1 to 30 - That's what sucks about being an altoholic. Your build is still not unique at the low level range and you're forced to get the same old offenses and defenses until you can use all skill gems. At that point you also don't have many points allocated, which means your build is less defined.

Trading - PoE.xyz.is is what makes trading bearable to me. There is an option to show only people who are online. I agree about the reasons you hate trading, but in my experience they are not too hard to resolve. Trade chat is an abyss where you can spam, getting the illusion that someone will buy from you or sell something to you. (that happens if you're lucky)

Level 50 to 70 - I disagree, with the exception of gear acquisition. Upon hitting merciless, resistances become mandatory. Who knows what rogue exile or nemesis mod will ambush you?
I disagree with your point about leeching from parties and if not, dying like a crunchy shrimp. Here your theocrafting skills come to test. If your build is good, it will do well even in merciless difficulty without dying often. That's like there is a larger level range, 30-70, where your build is put on trial. Levels 50-70 are the more difficult phase of the trial.

Grouping - I don't have much to say about this, but the groups I look for are mostly there. When I want to farm fellshrine with a party, I either join one or create my own. If the latter, it usually gets filled quickly with people.

Racing - I don't agree with point A you made. Racing is about who reachest the highest level in a given point of time, so expect to need to rush.
I agree with point B. Doing race events over and over is very similar to a previous point you made, about levels 1-30. Alt grinding reskinned.

Zone-Level Gating - Again, not much to say about this. I personally don't find this out-of-place as end-of-act bosses are meant to be walls you need to train in order to be able to climb over.

Things you Loathe:

Level 70+ - At first it's tolerable, you're putting your character to the final trial - that is maps. But once your build is "complete" with multi-ex's worth of gear, running the same high level maps over and over becomes less thrilling than your homework. As for challenges requiring such mammoth levels (90), I don't give a rat's ass about their completion.

Inefficient Build Changes - That's reasoned. That encourages you to reroll rather than spend hundreds of regret orbs on your level 70 poorly-built character. In addition to that, we are gonna get a global total passive respec after Forsaken Masters hits. About pulling out "optimal builds", believe me or not, you can get not-so-popular builds to work, wreck map locations and be fun at the same time.

Randomness in Gear - I agree. In my experience the big wall of gear is act 1 merciless, that's because you suddenly get a -40% resistance penalty. You find yourself scouring XYZ for items with resistances on them. Happily, this is gonna get resolved in Forsaken Masters.
Not to the point that you can get BiS items from your master, though. Those should be reserved for the filthy rich.

Now that is what I call feedback, not all doom and gloom but effect writing.

My 2c, I have to agree with all of the OP's points.

My own are:

Between levels 40 to 55 or there about, the gear one can obtain to "use" is useless. As well as the grinding through all the acts over and over again. Someone suggested in another post, which I feel is a valid point is that "after one has gotten one character to level 80, one should just start the game in cruel with the chance to allocate points and choose gems according to the character of choice. This should be a once off option and you have to choose then and there, allocate all points and pick the bandits quest of choice before being able to progress." Yes there will be abuse of this option unfortunately. But who hasn't made a mule obtained what they have needed and moved on.

The item "rolls" on some of the items are very questionable and shouldn't even be there IMO.

The grid and experience loss from 75 upwards is pathetic. As one can loss 60% in one map, come on guys when you do a map and someone "boss" takes you out, there is always the urge to go back in saying, this time I'm going to take them out, only to end up losing 60% exp. I've done it many a times. Yes don't get me wrong, maps should be hard and not a walk in the park, but the exp loss should be capped at maybe 20 to 30% max that is going solo as one can only die once or twice in parties, seeing that level exp gain is only 1 or 2% when at higher levels.

Things I like and have noticed

With almost every patch or small updates, there is small improvements in the world environment. Small like a log or bench add to this or that area, a new sunken part of an area or the decals on items and gear is awesome.

The skill tree still amazes me as how vast two exactly the same builds can be totally different. One might go element damage and the other crit based.

I do hope the new patch 1.2 is going in the right direction, as I can already see a few of my builds been broken again due to the patch. As Shadow and Witch are my characters of choice, with Archer following close behind.

That said I am looking forward to the new patch but not the "SIM" "SIMfarm" aspect of it.

Good post. You're spot on about the level divisions. 30-60, even, is a lot of fun. Before and after that it's not so great. Which is too bad because I'd wager more people would stick to path of exile if the rest of the game was just as engaging as the middle third.

Whatever happened to feeling ambivalent? I mean, that's kind of how I read your review anyway; I consider the "Things I Hate" section to actually mean "Things I feel numb about, which I wish I could love," while I actually believe you about the things you loathe. We who visit the game forums sure do love to exaggerate.

Still, I feel this is well-presented feedback and should get numerous "good post" pats-on-the-back. In a better feedback forum I might not feel like that, but it's surprising how little people talk about what they like and what they don't around here, and how it instead feels like this became the Wordy subdivision of the Suggestions forum (which I can file under "things I loathe"). Plus, assuming the "numb" adjustment described above, I can at least relate to almost all of your feedback, even if I don't feel a particularly strong agreement; only exception is the hatred of gear randomness, where I disagree rather strongly.

I found myself surprisingly in full agreement as I read through, it was almost as if I had written it.

I've come to the conclusion the game pushes the average player to the conclusions you've described - they become self evident as the hours accumulate.


Path of Exile:

A great game plagued by contradictions and self-defeating limitations.


Examples:

An online only game that is so desperately plagued to the core by that fact. An ARPG dungeon crawling loot finder in which trade is by far the best way to progress. Thousands of possible build variations greatly restricted by a poorly balanced endgame dependent upon spike damage and far too many monsters, ironically of which all those monsters slain will drop nothing of value to your character that might help you slay all those difficult monsters. And my personal favorite - ES is supposed to be unique and different from life yet is completely dependent on utilizing life's mechanics to function.


It's a silly thing to care about a game so objectively flawed. Logically I know I shouldn't but I love her anyway.

Edit: Remembered another contradiction I find totally asinine - int damage is supposed to be related to making smart, high damage critical strikes yet the element and spells related to it, lightning, has dick crit chance. ><

Thanks everyone who has commented positively. As expected, not everyone agrees with all my points, which is just fine and in fact a good thing. I hope no one sees this as a reason to ignore either viewpoint, but rather an opportunity to find a way to keep the things people like while improving to address concerns. The randomness point, for instance, seems to have some changes like this coming in Forgotten Masters. What I've read seems to point to new ways to improve gear in a deterministic way, while the highest-end stuff still requires a good dose of luck.

What I find most interesting is the bits that most everyone does agree with, such as how the mid-levels are much better than the low or high end. I'd think that the repetitive nature of low-end levels could be addressed fairly easily...for instance, an XP bonus during Normal if you have a char on the same account/league who has killed Merciless Dominus. Changes at the high end are tougher, but perhaps new content will be taking a shot at this too.

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geradon wrote:

if you expect feedback on some of your points you need to state wether they address hardcore or softcore league.

Actually, I purposely didn't mention softcore vs hardcore because I feel most of the points apply to both. I did mention hardcore in the level gating section because it's more applicable there.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

Whatever happened to feeling ambivalent? I mean, that's kind of how I read your review anyway; I consider the "Things I Hate" section to actually mean "Things I feel numb about, which I wish I could love," while I actually believe you about the things you loathe. We who visit the game forums sure do love to exaggerate.

Fair point. "Love, Meh, and Loathe" didn't have the same ring, though. :)

"Such a pain to deal with a trade economy that relies on direct person-to-person exchange and works only when both parties are online. The trade channel system is horrible, mostly a bunch of people spamming stuff that I don't care about, can't afford, and/or can't use"

Yes, a 1000 times yes.

Levelling past 70 may have been hard 2 years ago, but now you can level to 85 easily. Just gotta have decent clear speed.

I agree with all of this, especially the part about levels 30-50 being great but the earlier ones are boring and then the sudden spike in difficulty after that.

And yeah, hopefully the patch will fix a lot of the issues you mentioned.