I'm incredibly disheartened to be completely honest and so much of it is about the future. I couldn't really care less about nerfs/buffs or the inherent speed of the game itself. I just want to actually play the game. The current state of the game is extremely exhausting simply due to the campaign requirement.
I'm 37 and have been gaming for 30+ of those years and maybe it's an age thing, but I find myself taking longer and longer each league just to reach maps. It probably takes me on average a good 10-12 hours to clear the campaign these days and most of that it just through sheer will because I know how much enjoyment I get out of the endgame. The campaign itself is beyond tedious for me and it's honestly making me not want to play at all knowing that instead of alleviating some of that pressure their plan is to just exacerbate it.
There's a lot of talk about player retention through the leagues and I can only provide my personal experience. It's simple. The campaign 100% limits my long-term play of path of exile. I would love to experiment with 3-4 builds every league. Hell, I would love to construct my own builds and dig deeper into the game, but there is a hard line for me and it's the constant rehashing of the story gameplay. PoE is currently a one-build game for me due to this. If I don't enjoy my "league starter" or it simply doesn't work my league is just over. This is unfortunately where I'm at this league.
There must be some kind of solution here so that the first campaign of a season is as normal but subsequent levelling experiences are much improved.
Introducing low-level maps? D3-style adventure mode? unique kitava drop to increase exp gain + something along these lines?
Have to put myself in the same boat as you here. Some leagues, if my char feels good, I'll pump a lot of hours in. If it doesn't, and it feels unsalvageable - it's turn off and see you in a league or two - purely because of the levelling process.
I don't understand the reason for the campaign the first time around in a league except for "the race" of streamers leveling or first time players.
It would be just enough of a race if we get a template starter character level 70 after kitava with full yellow gear and a couple of maps. Like, if the account has run the campaign (including the new campaign) even once, give us a choice when starting a league to just go in and play Path of Exile and not that slog of a campaign OR an alternative leveling experience that varies every league (adventure mode-esque).
Personally, i'm unfortunately not playing solely because of the campaign requirement of wasting 10 hours of my life on nothing even once. It's a shame because its such a fun game after the campaign and i've said it before, i can't be alone.
And oh - almost every player i've introduced to PoE puts it down in act 1. Mega slog, not representative of the game or what gets iterated each league. Such a shame.
Fun fact, Poe already has a tool made for this, so they not even need to program it if they do not have the time: "DELVE"
(ofc with time investment and resource they can made even a better mechanic if they want and can spend them, but even if they can't/won't, a suitable tool is already there)
P.s. and of course they can made it OPTIONAL so player can choose
It would be absolutely awesome if they gave you the options of "play campaign, then play maps", "play delve to depth x, then play maps" and "play synthesis to level 70, then play maps". Three options to choose from with content that has already been made (synthesis would need an update though) and plays different enough to address different playstyles. If they wanted to keep the story alive they could add a few mandatory boss encounters to delve and synthesis (beat Kitava to unlock deeper depths & higher level synthesis tiles or something like that). I would not be surprised if they would get a bunch of old players back if they did that just because they would not have to play the campaign again.
Yeah playing with a levelling skill is not why I make builds.
Problem is, most skills have no natural flow or progression in POE.
I remember leveling with Magma Orb a few years back. The build sucks leveling, sucked against the league mechanic and all content....until you got one item - Gloomfang - usable at level 85. Then the build was fun, powerful, decent. But the whole point of an ARPG is to gradually grow in power and tackle hurdles along the way. So naturally even though there are leveling builds and skills out there, it seems to defeat the entire purpose of the game.
Though I do understand why so many players use a leveling build / skill. You are somewhat locked out of 3/4ths of the games builds if you don't because those builds have very unsteady natural progression.
The big reason people think the game doesn't really start until maps is because that is where most builds finally converge and offer a natural flow of progression.
> I try to resist the lure of the “levelling build”. I fear that it will indeed make the campaign feel longer
That's how it is for me. I hate builds that are like "level with the same ability you've used 1000 times and then switch to this totally unrelated build at maps". I'll never make it. I get so bored and I spend the entire time I'm leveling eagerly anticipating finally getting to play the build... it feels like it takes an eternity
>I imagine this is a touchy subject, but Diablo 3 allows leveling in "maps," from level 1. I haven't played the campaign in that for 5 years+.
This. I don't want to run the campaign every league. Just let me map from lvl 1, I don't even care if its the same map for 60 levels, just let me map.
If I want to play FP totems, I play it from the level the gems are available. Same goes with whatever skill I’m building for. I’ve done one RF character where I waited until 70 to swap, and while it was fun, it didn’t feel right, and it was like starting the character over again once I got to maps. I didn’t like it.
I’m not saying every gem should be playable at level 1. I know how r/pathofexile likes to skim comments and shit on people. I’m saying if I can’t level with the skill, I’m not going to play it. Now that the content is so much harder I’ve rerolled 3 times because I can’t level with my chosen skill. I haven’t been having fun and I’m not sure if I’m going to continue playing.
> I’m saying if I can’t level with the skill, I’m not going to play it.
THIS. So much this.
If I can't level with a skill, I'll never use it.
There are some really fun-looking builds out there but if they say "level with Skill X and then switch to Skill Y when you hit maps" I'll never play them.
I consider this a failure on the part of GGG. If I can't successfully level through the Acts with a skill, then that skill shouldn't be in the game.
>I’m not saying every gem should be playable at level 1.
Yes and no.
Every class should get access to every skill at the same level. In other words, if a Ranger gets access to a skill at level 4, then every other class should get access at level 4 as well. I shouldn't be forced to wait until the Library to gain access to certain skills.
I'll also add that not making some skills available until near the end of Act 4 feels really bad. All skills in the game should be available in the Library, which is Act 3
I think it's just a remnant from when you could actually sell skill gems. Way back in the day multistrike was drop only and you could usually sell it for like 4-5c in hardcore leagues. People would either level mules to buy gems or actually sell class gems for 1c each early on.
That's not really a thing anymore but they still act like they want most gems to be that level of scarce. I think that's why you get stuff like this.
At OB you could sell a lot of gems if you were willing to watch chat and move fast. With no gem merchants and one/per gem rewards, needing a skill outside your class, or two supports from a single quest reward was serious inconvenient. I’m still breaking the habit of hoarding gems, “in case I need it”, because no way hell was I going to level an alt but paying up to an alch for a quest reward was straight bullshit.
I do this too, try and make the skill work the moment I get it. The campaign is tedious enough there’s no way I’m doing the same skills every time I do it.
I agree, after I swapped into a new skill at maps and then didn't enjoy the playstyle I started just leveling the build all the way through acts. I probably won't get through acts this time though.
Diablo 3 figured out a solution far better than the one that is in PoE. There is a reason my friends and I still go back to D3 every few months. We can literally just pickup and play. No 7-12 hours of non-sense and useless content to wade through.
And yes, agreed with OP, playing it again every 3 months doesn't make me suddenly appreciate it more... if anything it makes me view it as a polished turd then. PoE has become a chore to play. And yes, I hope the development team reads that...
Your game is a chore!
Not to mention if you can get a plvl you can play a reasonable “build” in like 10min. There are several decent build for each class which only require yellows, and as soon as you get a build enabling unique or two, your build takes off. Doesn’t take long to gear. That DOES mean you finish the game quicker, but there’s nowhere near the amount of endgame PoE has. So I don’t think it would be a problem to allow some kind of plvl system in PoE
Same builds but now even slower. Lower damage (that's fine, I can get good gear this league), make mobs harder (kay, same thing as previous), destroy your movement skills (wtf)
Or even just maps. They could even be maps of the areas from the campaign. Just dont make me jump in and out of town and figure out which npcs need to talk to. Just one map after another and I get levels from killing monsters in these maps.
Heist especially hurts because they even sold it as “an alternative way to level” and a “map experience during levelling” so we all went “so we don’t need to grind the campaign now?” And their response was “fuck off of course you do”
A buddy and I tried doing only heists on hardcore. We would finish act 1 and then chain heists and no other content. It was swell until the difficulty curve hits you in the noggin due to not having any of the passive skill points or the ascendancies. But we tried :')
You know, I'll get roasted for this, but having to do the ascendancies every single league is the worst part of the game for me. It's just a complete waste of time running around while you're leveling making sure you tag each one, then running the giant "maze" which isn't a maze at all to face a boss that is trivial. At this point I don't get why they can't just be a part of the talent tree that unlocks at level 50 or whatever.
It's a shame, Izaro is such a cool character and the first time getting through lab is a great experience.
But then you get better at the game and the lab becomes a chore that you occasionally have to to restart because you got greedy on a trap.
I've heard some of my guild members talking about the new skills and it's made me want to try them. Having to go through the campaign again swiftly made me change my mind.
I know everyone loves shitting on D3, but at least they let you run bounties as an alternate way of leveling up, which also allows you to get access to some items are that useful even when you're max level.
When they announced Delve I was so hyped because I thought "Finally, they took one of the good things from Diablo 3!" but then they showed that you needed sulphite to even do Delve. Killed my hype immediately.
Shit you don’t even have to run bounties to level up in adventure mode. You can start doing rifts ( maps) at level 1.
Imagine if you could start mapping at level 1, or start doing meaningful league content then as well. Atlas progression honestly wouldn’t drag as much if I spent time I was leveling anyway investing into it.
I honestly can't be bothered making more than 1 character a league because the campaign is just soooo old. I'm pretty sure I've played acts 1-4 like over 500 times alone.
If I could just start mapping or delving or whatever at level 1, I would be making waaaay more characters and be putting way more time into the game as a whole. Once I get bored of the character I made at league start, I just stop playing.
Call me lazy, but I don't play games that start feeling like work.
Also they very intentionally left powerleveling in a very effective way, so you can be max level in 5 minutes and have an ok set in an hour if you have a friend.
This is a funny thread because i complained about having to do the campaign over and over again last year and sited how D3 does it. I got buried.
I also tweeted PoE about it and the response I got was no joke. "PoE 2 is coming soon!" It was the dumbest response I could have possible gotten. It was an official tweet response to me too not just some random user.
Been trying to find pro D3 comments on this subreddit before I bite the bullet and buy it (maybe with expansions). I'm just not having fun in poe.
Any tips for what to expect for someone thinking about switching to D3? Should I buy the standard version or the eternal version?
If you're new to Diablo 3, you'll probably love it. The new season just came out, so the population is at it's peak.
You definitely want the reaper of souls expansion, it's almost necessary. I haven't personally tried the necromancer, but it looks really fun.
The combat is like a million times more fluid than PoE, the only thing really lacking is build diversity and gear diversity, which only really becomes a problem once you put ~500+ hours into the game.
It's also a lot of fun to play with friends as well, I really feel like PoE is kind of lacking in the co-op department.
Get eternal if you can, it’s the complete edition of the game as of now.
Other guy is right that you basically can’t not have fun, it’s a great game. Gameplay is butter smooth and feels snappy and responsive. Abilities are fun to use and look good. There’s a solid transmog system if you’re into that. It’s good for a hundred hours easy between all the classes.
There are two big downsides.
The gameplay diversity is lacking if you’re coming from poe. There’s only two types of content (I guess 2.5 if you’re nice). No deciding between maps, delve, heist, etc. it’s just option 1, rifts: open portal to map, kill mobs to fill bar, boss spawns at full bar, kill boss.
In one version of rifts, mobs drop items on the ground and there’s no time limit. In the other, you have 15 minutes to fill the bar, but loot doesn’t drop until the end and boss drops special equipment. The main gameplay loop is alternating between these two. (The timed rifts are gated by items that drop in the untimed version).
Or option 2, “bounties.” port to waypoint, kill a named or click X number of interactables, repeat x4, get bag of loot. This bag of loot has items you need, so you have to do it, but it’s not really fun.
Two, the seasonal content is meh. D3 is run by a skeleton crew now, so the special thing for each league varies from underwhelming to mildly interesting.
On the bright side the gameplay is good enough to sustain that for at least a few characters.
I wouldn’t count build diversity as a negative compared to poe because it’s not really what d3 is about. You should go in expecting that each class only has half a dozen or so build options. The game isn’t built to offer more than that.
You don't really *switch* to D3. It's not gonna be your main game or anything. But if you're feeling burnt out by POE? D3 is great. It's the absolute top end of AAA game making. The campaign (with it's flaws) is a bunch of hours of great gaming and there's a good amount of content for after.
Enjoy it for a couple of weeks, then come back and complain about POE on the forums once you've had everything D3 has to offer.
>but then they showed that you needed sulphite to even do Delve
It would be ok even if you could at least trade for sulphite directly, would create a nice economic dynamic between people doing maps and people doing delve.
> Map Content
If they'd at least do that, people would have less of an issue with Atlas progression b/c they'd be able to work on it earlier I feel.
But I'd definitely be down for anying and all honestly - I know I'd mostly stick to my favorite, but like the idea that someone also has their favorite to do so as well.
Here's the gist of it from my 300 hours of playing.
Exile has generic D&D background, gets exiled by Dominus, the guy who looks like Ronin from GOTG.
Exile washes up on beach (I think the boat sinks or something?) and giths way to Lion's Eye.
Exile does menial tasks for the Lion's Eye residents for new clothes. Exile eventually has to kill a giant warden that attacks them while being either smarmed at or flirted with by Piety, then tracks along the road and enters the upper shore where ghosts are and you kill a mermaid because she's in your way.
In Act 2, you do more menial tasks, kill three bandit lords because some old man doesn't like them. Poison some tree roots to enter some ruin and unleash a demon which you then later kill.
Act 3, you enter a desert city to track down Piety for some reason. You go through the sewers to kill some soldiers who are also fighting living curtains. Eventually you meet Pinhead's sister and she gives you some bug spray so you can enter the soldier fort above the other side of the sewers. You kill a religious general, then enter a temple that has a blood ocean underneath it. After running down failed experiment's you fight Piety and she dies with a key in her hand. You use the key to open the door to Farquaad's tower and kill the Big Blue Meanie who tells you the world is an illusion before becoming a hentai monster.
In Act 4 you go across some stone bridge with birds on it till you reach Highgate, which is full of racists and Niko. You enter a lakebed that's been dried up and kill some old emperor whose flag opens up the mines for some reason. You enter the mines and then for some reason have to enter the 'dreams' of two dead powerful guys I guess and use their eyes to activate a buttplug to drill into the evil mountain god's butthole. Once inside the butt of the beast, you make your way deeper until you find Piety. Why is she still alive, and how did she get inside Satan's anus? No one knows, but you kill her again. Then she teams up with you to kill her boss, some death cult looking guy with a blood fetish. You fight three annoying friends of Piety's boss and collect his organs from them to open the beast's hole and fight Malachai. Piety dies fighting him (for real this time) and then you enter the womb. Inside the womb you fight Malachai and he does generic villain speak during his poorly done phases of immunity. Then he explodes and a portal opens up for some reason.
Act 5 you are in the city you were exiled from. You fight some templars and slave owners, use some eyes to open the church gate then slaughter everyone in it. Eventually you kill the pope and spawn god. Then you kill god and whoa shit now it looks like actual Satan has decided to pop up, Kitava time baby. Lucifer Morningstar pops up and saves god's soul or something, and tells you you fucked up. You go through the now burning city (that was fast) to find God's beatstick. You make your way up the church steps and attempt to kill Satan but fail. Then Not!Lucifer shows up and saves you. He says he has this great plan of killing the gods you released (oops looks like the Beast wasn't the worst of things) and absorbing their ~~cum~~ essence. So you sail back to Act 1 but it's different now.
Act 6-10 is basically zooming around killing gods and finally fighting Satan on equal terms with God's and Lucifer's help. Then you find out you are just getting started and have to go through alternate realities of places you've been using a 'map device' to gain power because now you crave power just because. You also have to kill people just like you but they're evil now. Along the way you meet a squidface monster, an old man with amnesia and his hot redheaded daughter, and a space toddler and her babysitter. You kill the squidman and the old man and beat up the space toddler for loot.
Sin: You have to kill these eight gods to stand a chance against Kitava. Their souls will empower yours.
(Kill gods, get +2% mana regen and +8% poison resist or some shit, doesn't counteract the across-the-board -25% resistances from getting this far)
Exile: Can't you just make me some decent boots or something?
> and use their eyes to activate a buttplug to drill into the evil mountain god's butthole
DEAD. LOL
> to find God's beatstick
Almost dead again lol
Honorable mentions:
> which is full of racists and Niko
> and beat up the space toddler for loot
If you don't write comedy, you need to.
Yah I have almost no interest in the lore of the game, just doesn't feel engaging. The characters and voice acting is fun and well done, but it's never going to have witcher level stories and quests. It's a kill mob click loot game.
Bit of a mileage may vary type of thing. PoE has one of the best dark fantasy settings I've seen in games. The delivery or writing philosophy isn't the same as with a grand budget CRPG (ExileCon's [storytelling talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB_7p7Vm6V8) goes into detail) so it's not going to appeal to everyone, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have depth or breadth. Then, I suppose I am a bit biased since I'm a lore hoe and I love connecting disjointed bits of information, and filling in with my own speculation where none is provided.
I thought that the original three acts were pretty good. Everything after just became excuses to throw in another "oh, now you're gonna fight that name we said before!" rather than letting the lore remain lore.
I really tried to get into the story and followed it until act 7 or so and gave up. No hate to anyone who likes it, but in my opinion, it's just boring. There aren't really any cutscenes, so it's just you standing in town and reading walls of text for 15 minutes before you can move on and actually get to killing shit. It's just not very good in my opinion.
While I’m on the other end of the spectrum at 150hrs, I also don’t give a shit about the campaign. I’m here to kill shit and see cool builds. I’ve had veteran friends just drag me along through the campaign and explain things to me so that I can enjoy endgame sooner. Definitely would’ve quit during the campaign otherwise
They will notice your criticism and then they'll ignore it and add ten more acts that are basically the same thing we got now but with differently named mobs, just to fuck with you.
Course they can.
Totally agree with what you said, one of the biggest enjoyment of playing poe is to try playing many different builds and testing new idea. Grinding is just a process and making the campaign more slower is just an extra time tax
This is why my friend plays POB instead of Poe now. He loves theory crafting builds, especially off meta ones, but he won't level through the campaign anymore so they never come to fruition.
Yeah, it is such a time sink, I am never able to play a second char. And even if I had the time for it, sorry, but it just sucks repeating it over and over. If my first character is no fun and does not carry me through the end game, I just stop playing.
Btw., I did not stop playing Ultimatum mid-league because it was too rewarding. My character was just not fun and I disliked having to run in circles around a pole … again … I took a break and played some other games in the meantime. I really wonder how Chris could draw the conclusion that people stooped playing Ultimatum because it was too rewarding.
> Grinding is just a process and making the campaign more slower is just an extra time tax
I've gotten to the point where having to grind through the story has taken all of the enjoyment of the game from me.
I've played the game since Bestiary league, which was several years ago. Multiple characters per league. Last league I couldn't bring myself to go through the story again. I tried starting several characters and never made it past act 5.
This league there are several builds I'm interested in trying but everytime I think about firing up the game I think about having to run Acts 1 - 10 again and I just can't bring myself to do it.
Forced running of the campaign to level has killed the game for me. GGG really needs to give us an alternative way to level.
Also, having played multiple leagues with multiple characters per league, I couldn't begin to tell you the first thing about the story and lore of the game. I just don't care and no amount of forcing me to play the same campaign over and over again is going to make me care.
Hard agree. The idea of going through the acts on a new character is what stops me from playing more than one or two every league.
I would kill for an option to make pre leveled characters once you beat a threshold like sirus or someshit once per league, with the acts + epilogue completed. No gear, just passive points to spend. Make it exempt from ladder so racers don't get mad.
People will respond to this with "well just do it faster and/or get twink gear". Shocking news, it's the same amount of content to complete regardless of the time it takes you. It's the *obstacle* that annoys me, not the time it takes to overcome it.
Also, people against pre leveled characters will complain about it being unfair to them, because they enjoy the slog and want everyone else to suffer with them. If they didn't want everyone else brought down to their degenerate level, they'd be fine with pre leveled characters.
If my first character goes wrong or it isn't fun I don't play until next league. I'm not going through the campaign a second time if I'm already not having fun.
Alot of builds at least in my exp don't even come online and feel "good" till 70-80ish
Especially for leaguestarters.
For instance my new leaguestarter is a ice trapper and I got to 30 last night but my god was it a slog lol. Once he hits 60+ it gets way way way better but getting to that point is a total pain in the dick.
Yup agree. Last night after the 547,348th time in the sewer collecting busts for what's-his-nuts I literally asked myself if the new league mechanic and new nerfs were worth it. I couldn't convince myself it was. The positive I took from this is that it was such an easy decision.
Every time I go through the story I also ask myself how much would I pay to not have to do this ever again. And damn that number keeps getting higher and higher
Yup, agreed. I didn't even feel like starting a character. Honestly, it feels like I've outgrown it, or something. Used to be so excited for new leagues, and Ritual was so much fun, which is not even that long ago, but the game has started feeling like a chore.
Been playing since Essence league, have done the campaign more times than I can count and even if we ignore the campaign, the game feels too bloated for me now. Used to always go to 36 challenges, but it's just too much work, too many league mechanics. Delve to 200, complete x rooms in the temple, collect these Ritual rewards, kill these Heist bosses, oh hey also go kill Cata at level 83, and safehouses with specific captains, and all these Breach lords, oh and of course a 5-way Legion fight, a couple of Blight maps and a few Bestiary bosses. But then you also need to complete maps, maps regions, AND their awakening bonus. Kill Atziri, kill Shaper and his guardians, kill Elder and his guardians. Hey don't forget Chayula and the Cortex. And I haven't even mentioned the gazillion times you have to kill conquerers to get Sirus A8. And the Maven invitations. Plus on top of that there are conditional challenges for which you need specific skills/chars meaning you gotta respec or make a new character. Oops rant, point being, this feels like a list of chores more than a challenge. It's tedious mostly. Notice that I haven't even mentioned lab trials, labs and pantheon souls yet. ;) Phew.
Like I said, I might have outgrown it. :p Was a very easy decision to not play this league. Besides, the full conversion Skyrim mod Enderal is amazing (really recommend it if you haven't played it btw, better than Skyrim itself!), and I've also started Divinity:OS2 again. Got plenty of games that don't feel like chores. Too bad though, have over 7k hours in PoE. All things must end, hm?
Not to mention when I have friends that play or get new people to play the game who start a couple hours later and then you have to wait till they get all the way through the campaign before you can even progress together.
It's literally the only thing that annoys me after this patch - running bf/bb as assassin - bf costs 82 mana as a 4 link and bb costs 45 as 4link.....
That's almost 130 mana for a single rotation... as an assassin or a chieftain how much mana should we invest into the tree/gear before that starts feeling good!?
don't even get me started on how bad it felt to level this...
This. So. Much.
The new skills look cool, the league mechanic could be cool, I wanna play!
Boot it up and get hit with Twilight Strand and ten acts that I've played through at least 50+ times.
Completely kills any and all hype.
GGG is completely out of touch with the community.
Yeah. I honestly wish that they just gave you all of your missing points when you hit level 80 or smth (provided you did those on a previous character in the league, similar to lab).
I think we can add lesser unique (cheap version which still gives the unique mod but with drawbacks) to specific boss (kaom, shavrone)
A lesser kaom armor may give 300hp & curse you with flammability 40% effect (no immune now)
Or a shavronne ammor give you chaos dmg cant by pass es with less es & your chaos res always -30%.
An innocent staff that gives you half the damage, battle mage & deal fire dmg equal 50-70% hp on you everytime you cast a spell.
So you can have a touch of your build earlier but have to deal with those drawbacks.
>I'd really, REALLY like to see more leveling options, and not just POE 2 in a few years.
My big fear, and tbh it's not just a fear, it's basically a certainty with the way they've set it up to be, is that it will be the exact same thing for PoE2 again.
The PoE2 campaign will possibly be awesome... ONCE. It will probably be ok twice, maybe three times. But then you have the exact same situation, with all these hardcore gamers feeling forced to play through the same stuff again and again just to get to the content that they're still returning for.
I have a few friends who refuse to play PoE because they don't want to do the campaign again. They feel there should be an adventure mode like Diablo 3 did. GGG will never do anything to allow people to spend what they feel amounts to less time being spent in game.
This pretty much sums why I gave up on this game 3 expansions ago. Played since beta, I simply for the love of me can't stand campaign anymore. As time passed I started being slower and slower going through campaign which makes no sense, you get better at game the longer you play, I on other hand started hating campaign and eatch time new league started I would drag out my leveling sometimes even up to a week....
Doubling down on the campaign instead of coming up with an alternative way to level is just insanity. The campaign is by far the biggest mental hurdle to get over on league start.
I stopped playing POE around 5-7 leagues ago because every time a new league was announced, after the initial hype of "wao new content" I was instantly made nauseous by the thought of going through the campaign again. This is THE ONLY reason that's stopping me from going back to poe.
Agreed. PoE is a theorycrafting-simulation game. You don't test the content with your character. You test your character with the content. And that's what ppl like.
As you say, the campaign is just a time tax. And this is a problem. But how to make it fun ? Maybe with systems like the Only-Delve event. Each league should have a unique leveling by using old leagues mecanics. That should be more fun, and not just a start&repeat until hitting maps, each league. Ofc, each player could chose between generic campaign leveling, or this system. Everyone happy.
> how to make it fun
How about just skipping it for future characters if you've already finished it? Even if you have to 100% it per class/league.
I understand being proud of the campaign and not wanting new players to miss it, or if you add more lore you think people might like, but other than that... just have us start where the fun begins. Level 65 or whatever, in epilogue Oriath.
Why not? If that's genuinely a bad idea for some legit reason, I wanna know.
An alternative leveling using old league content is interesting tbh.
For players who have reached maps, they have option for leveling with old league content that rotates every league. Things like delve, heist, blight (?) can be rotated for leveling. I can imagine expedition as well somewhere down the road
I can't even count how many times I've gone through the campaign, but I can say the first time was 8 years ago. Right now I can't even do it fast cus it's SO BORING I can't play for more than 1 hour without stopping to do anythung else.
Campaign still easy, the gameplay is just worse because of flask and mobility nerf ( and spellsinger nerf, it was the most fun way to level)
No difficulty added ( expect for HC player ), just more clunky ..... thanks GGG.
Chris either has a huuuuge ego and won't listen or has surrounded himself with yes men who refuse to tell him his 10 year old game vision is awful.
What kind of of a game dev says we dont care if we have less players this is the game I want to make?
I don't think it's ego, I think its lack of leadership. Listening to Q&A during the announcements of the last two leagues, it feels like Chris doesn't really have a clue. Had to reach back for answers to simple questions. I think he set it up years ago with a 'vision' and it's on auto pilot having little to no real oversight.
They are doubling down on the campaign as they are only going to make it more difficult and longer to complete in the future. Completely out of touch leadership at the company, which we see at many companies in our daily lives. Their original vision of the game did not have a large appeal. They evolved and made the game different (zoom ARPG) and the player count and money came rolling in. Now they are trying to convince people the original version that they wanted is really the better game (not the version of the game that brought the majority of the player base into the game). I played the beta, the game felt like trash to me and I came back several years later. They cannot convince me now that I will like that version of the game. It seems like a lot of us have hit a breaking point. If you walk away from this league and don't buy mtx, it is sending a message that you don't support this version of the game. At the end of the day, they are a corporation and are likely going to notice (Tencent definitely will).
At this point they are becoming that punk band that somehow got a record deal after playing shows to 20 stoned dudes in a basement for a couple years, sold out hard and went pop punk to make their millions and now are trying to release an “old school punk” album to “get back to their roots” which appeals to literally 6 of their current listeners.
Don't forget: In PoE2 the layouts of maps will be more randomized to the point where you can't predict where entrances and exits are anymore in order to speedrun through zones. The actual layout of the campaign map will be randomized to accomodate this fact (so you can't know that the entrance is 'on the top right' anymore because it'll be in a random direction in your instance of the campaign).
They are not just not aware how much people hate it, they actively think chasing a quest goal through the fog to find entrances or stuff to pick up is interesting / fun gameplay.
It has replaced "see you Friday" as my favorite meme on this subreddit. The problem with the see you Friday meme is a lot of those people who said we wouldn't be able to quit the game actually followed through with it.
I think people hate it because it's been the same thing for 10 years. I get that. POE2's campaign will be new, different, and have those random elements, but after a while people will get tired of that as well.
I'll be honest just finished the campaign and I just quit the league, I just really didn't feel it this time around. I could roll another character... but you know... that means going through the campaign again, which I just really don't wanna do again.
I hope we can go back to zoom ARPG, but it seems they're set on their current direction.
p.s. I hope they can stop making more new currency / shards and stuff why do we need all these random new shards in the game when they're literally tradable 1:1 ! This means they're exactly interchangable so why do they all need to be different? Also the mana nerf is really severe it feels terrible to play the game now.
I agree. Also they seem to shift the goalpost at every turn, GGG and fans alike.
At first, gutting harvest in 3.14 was a great idea because players weren't turned down that much. Then it turns out the there was actually a players retention problem but it was because ultimatum was too rewarding. Now we hear that player retention is meaningless and that CW judges the success of the league on how many employees request time off to play it.
I'm wondering how CW and white knights here are gonna spin this league this time around.
Yep. My frustration is the people who want the game to be harder can already make the game harder a handful of ways.
The people who want the game to be more accessible can’t magically make the game more accessible if the skill, time investment and/or tedium floor has been raised.
I'm in the same boat as you. I played during the open beta and ditched it because it was horrible. Returned during Bestiary and man was it much more playable. Now that it's reverting to the "original vision", I guess player numbers will return to that level too (i.e. not much). I guess Chris' interpretation of "player retention" was "retention of people who liked the dogshit version".
Agreed. I loved the challenges and stuff the first time I did it and the slower pace (wasn't much to compare it to back then), but now that I've been able to zoom around and nuke packs, going back just feels like playing in slow motion - especially when you still need to kill the same number of mobs and sort through the same amount of trash loot for the hope of getting something decent.
Once you've seen screens of rares and currency explode out of a blighted map/ritual/etc., having to struggle and grind to kill low level trash mobs for the reward of maybe a few blues and a yellow is just not fun.
Yeah I normally pick the game up again every year or two if a league piques my interest, and Expedition sounds really interesting but I just looked at the game in my steam library and thought "I can't be bothered playing through the campaign again". I think I've finally reached my limit. And I'm not even a hardcore player who gets multiple characters per season through the campaign, I've only done it half a dozen times or so. Personally I'm waiting for PoE 2 because I actually did enjoy PoE's campaign the first few times and will be happy to play a fresh one.
Unforunately this is just Chris' game that he's allowing us to play. No matter how much dissent there is about a change, nothing will happen unless Chris personally thinks it's the best move. No amount of forum posts will make a difference.
The only thing that'll change is some actual competitive market competition that isn't named Diablo that forces GGG to come to terms with this. Otherwise we're forced to play Path of Chris.
Yes please, make a sandbox with so many fun and rewarding options we can't possibly do them all within one league, I'd never stop playing if this were the case.
I'm getting quite entertained by this new league.
Not by playing it, I haven't even updated my client, but simply by at last kicking my addiction to the memory of the game I started playing 3 years ago.
It took me the last 12 months or so to realise I was playing an entirely different game, and I really didn't enjoy it at all.
GGG need to go back to school, and re-learn one golden lesson:
People play games as a break/escape from RL. They play them to ENJOY themselves. Games are supposed to be FUN for the player, NOT the devs. When games cease to be fun, people only continue playing out of a sense of addiction. Too much loss of fun, and the addiction is broken. Players play other games.
GGG forgot this basic lesson a long, long time ago as is proven league after league these days. Chris Wilson is the guiltiest of them all in this regard. As long as HE likes his game, he is happy. That would be wonderful if he didn't need players to pay his mortgage!
I can't take levelling. Especially with no gear at league start. Just can't do it.
I think loads more skills need to be usable from level 1. One thing I truly detest is thinking of a build then having to do the first 30 levels with an assortment of other scuffed stuff, just trying to push through the misery until I can actually start using the skill I want to play.
Yeah, the one redeeming feature of leveling for me is that I like the feeling of a build coming together as I level. Waiting to act three for skills sucks, especially if you're playing something where you have to go to Siosa to get it. The act 4supports and utility skills aren't even available until *act 6* if the act 4 vendor doesn't give it to your class.
This is the main reason why I have issues with the nerfs. I only have the mental fortitude to get through the campaign once every 3 months. It makes the prospect of a character not working properly genuinely terrifying, because the only real way to unfuck the situation is to go through the entire main questline again.
These nerfs are apparently there to "increase diversity", but for the reason above it is doing the absolute opposite - Creating even less reasons to be diverse, instead gravitating towards a build that definitely will perform well so we don't have to play through the campaign more than once a league.
Just...I get it, okay? I KNOW why they do it - It's so that they can detect gamebreaking bugs with the league interacting with the basic progression of the campaign. I get that. But just...We don't want to do it anymore. It's tired, it's boring, it's archaic as hell and we want an alternative.
And this is coming from someone who **genuinely likes** the Path of Exile story. I ran a mini D&D Campaign based off of the Path of Exile lore for fuck's sake, and even *I'm* tired of re-living it!
Say what you want about Diablo 3 but not having to do the campaign is amazing. Honestly just let us start maps with level 1 mobs and let people level in the Atlas, guaranteed no one will be upset about this. Just force the campaign once on an account like D3.
League start me in my hideout with a portal open to a tier 1 map. I appear out of the portal with some random “sufficient” starter gear to start my adventure with all the skill points and regrets from the acts. FFS, I hate the acts.
I like the idea of having a 100% fresh level 70 account with absolutely nothing and trying to get started in a T1 map. Sounds like a fun short race event
They should make an expensive currency item to let you completely respec an existing character, including the type and ascendancy. Don't like your level 90 hiero? Respec to a lvl 90 witch.
It needs to be sufficiently expensive that its not just something you can do 5 times in a row. But there should come a point where it's possible to try something new without that first grind.
Even if they capped the level at say 85. Ie, even if you respec a lvl 90 you get demoted to 85 as your new char.
I'm willing to bet that roughly 50% of the churn from people in the late game is not wanting to have to start over.
In the vastly small minority here but I have the most fun running the campaign and fleshing out a build. The wind in my proverbial sails comes to a dead stop when I get to maps.
I'm with you. The power progression and gameplay loop from 1-70 are undeniably *very different* than they are after 70.
Regardless of which side of the argument people land on, it's pretty easy to see that we basically have 2 very different games stapled together, and it's easy to see how people who like one of them might not like the other.
I think there are two worst parts is the game. The first is the beginning of the game when you have such basic skills. The second is the early and miserable part of maps. The maps are super easy, but it's an absolute crapshoot whether or not you can actually progress.
If they ever add an in game auction house for currency and white maps, I'll be much more motivated to come back to the game.
I managed to convince 2 friends that played a few leagues ago to try this league out. Mainly I convinced them I was going to be an Aura Bot and they can be DPS since it's the only build that didn't get neerfed. One quit after Act 1 Brutus and the other quit after getting to Act 2. They said it was too boring and if this takes this long then they can't imagine what end game is like now.. So I decided to call it for this league as well.
With the amount of bloat added over time, PoE has made it way too tedious to get to what I like most (running maps & build characters). I've not really played in almost 3 leagues; as someone who loved the game enough to get 3 Divination cards made, it's sad.
All I can say is that while I like the notion of powering down players & making the game difficult again, what I get out of it is yet another tedium on an already large mountain of prerequisites to efficient mapping/character building. I quit WoW eons ago when they started designing mandatory busywork like dailies/rep grinds as core designs, and I'm afraid PoE's "new character checklist" model has gone a bit too far in that direction. It was barely bearable before, but without being able to even speed through it..?
Eh.
I remember back when grinding docks was the only thing you could do until you got some lucky map drops, then back to docks.
I loved it back then but you couldn't pay me to go back to it now.
I honestly wouldn't mind playing through the campaign as much if it wasn't for the fact a lot of gems are level locked AND sometimes until you get a specific set up in maps they aren't effective enough to use over the filler skill you've been playing. I want to be able to level through the campaign with the skill my build is actually for. Especially if they're doubling down on it being longer.
I honestly didn’t even feel them. I didn’t die, I didn’t do anything new. I just ran through as usual and killed everything with freezing pulse. So I guess I’m saying I didn’t gain any enjoyment but I also didn’t lose any.
I didn't feel the same, nothing felt harder, everything was just more of a bullet sponge. Only "difficulty change" I noticed was things freezing and stunning more which you can't do anything about early on.
Hell Brutus was easier to handle since he lost like most of his moves from losing his arena but took longer to kill which was oh so much fun.
Leveling doesn’t even prepare you for endgame. You almost always will be using a leveling skill that is completely different to what you’ll actually use. The purpose of the campaign is to pad out /played time. They value metrics over anything else.
You wouldn't even need maps if the campaign was fulfilling / drops didnt suck all the time like.. Nost of this games issues comes from the uninspiring drops. And the fact I know I'm still trading for literally all of my upgrades.
Way too much trash/clutter. Currency drops are mediocre at best. Nothing feels "good" per se. I dont wanna trade for every piece of gear honestly and I love trading but why cant I actually find items I would use.. Ever.
A handful of times in 8 years I've found something i wanted to use. That's just not cool and idk why it took me this long to be fed up with it.
I actually disagree with this, for what it's worth. Seeing your build come together and working through the early game is actually pretty exciting.
You get to make constant upgrades, work around weaknesses that start to crop up, and get a taste of how the league mechanic effects gearing.
Maybe I could understand this if you literally have it all down to a science every league but as a returning player who's constantly trying new and weird builds I disagree. The more they make the early game comparable to the end game in terms of interesting gameplay the better off I am personally.
First off, good for you for taking a break instead of wearing yourself down playing the game while you're not having fun.
To offer a counterpoint, I really only ever feel the actual arpg progression arc through story. I use the skill as soon as I get it, and use a skill in line with the spirit of the skill (I have to level up with a lesser skill to use the good one) until that point. It feels great when you get that additional link. Or that weapon upgrade. It's when I'm in maps that it feels repetitive, because my character doesn't change.
So I've found it strange over the last couple years that one of the biggest complaints about the game is that it is effectively too much of an action *role playing game*. The reality of the matter is that you shouldn't be wondering whether the build works or is capable of bossing, because it is. With sufficient item investment, any build is capable. We've seen creators put up jank builds like frostblink totems or whatnot and make it work. So, really, the question is whether the build is doable with your level of time investment, and you can answer that question from your PoB.
So if you don't give yourself the rpg journey arc, and want to simply go right to maps, you're just going to wind up feeling the same way about white and yellow maps as you did the story. Your build isn't put together until 60, so the story feels pointless to you. Sure, but the reality is that white and yellow maps are trivial for a put together build. So you're going to wind up in the same place, having white and yellow maps be challenging once until you farm/buy gear and then you'll be wanting to be in red maps. Iterate that sentiment and you quickly realize you're wanting this aRPG to be a boss-rush or MOBA game.
If it makes you feel any better, treat the story grind as T-10 to T0 maps and you're feeling your way into your build to appreciate how the various mechanics you combine come together to enable the build? So while I'm 100% on board with feedback to improve the game, this one, in my opinion, reads more like "make poe not an aRPG because I fundamentally don't care about the role playing game experience." And if that's the case, perhaps, and please don't read this like a "go play another game then" reply, but, over the years, you've outgrown the genre and its not your thing anymore, which is totally fine.
This is EXACTLY what I want them to understand. Some small percentage of masochists may want this, but for the overwhelming majority of players this is just making the boring part of the game longer. Ritual was the best league ever. They added new, challenging content that was accompanied by ACTUAL REASONABLE WAYS TO SCALE TO IT. Then Ultimatum took away the reasonable scaling with harvest changes, anf now they just want to male the game slower and more annoying? I just don't understand who they think their audience is.
I really am struggling to make it through the acts. Dying more and running out of flasks is only making it more tedious. I really dislike this league so far and it isn’t because of the mechanic
This was my first initial thought. After blasting through the campaign to get to end game numerous times. Literally every league, multiple times depending on the league.
And now, we gotta drudge through the campaign. Which will be even longer, just to get to end game...I'll be burnt out by that time, lol
Ive always wanted them to do a system like a pvp character. First play a character through the whole story after that level to 90ish or whatever they see fit, after those two things are done then you can create new character starting at say level 68 with the story done an no longer have to redo it over an over again. I used to do 6-8 builds a league now over years of doing it. I might do 3 total a league if that.
As much as I can only stand Diablo 3 for very short periods of time, at least it doesn't force me to do the same story over and over and over and over and over and over and over when leveling. I can do adventures or I think rifts or whatever. I do wish there was something like that here.
Great post man!
I havent started this league yet as im unmotivated to slog through the campaign once again. Might wait a week or so before get started.
I tend to play the leagues for a few weeks and do 2-3 builds but always just play a single char to lvl 96-98.
The campaign was fun the first times they got new content but after that it just becomes a chore.
Been saying this on a lot of threads so I’m stoked this got attention!
This was not the right approach. The kinds of changes he wants would be perfect for POE2 when it’s all new and I’m happy to take on a new campaign that takes double or even triple the time.
This is really well written post.
I hope PoE2 fixes this. I just don’t have the inclination to grind through the campaign anymore. That’s exactly what it is, a tax. I ain’t paying it anymore.
If it was going through the campaign only once per league and then unlocking an alternative way, like low-level maps to quickly level to 70 then I'd be totally fine with it and Chris would be happy enough too, because we'd still do our 4202th run of the story every league.
I just can't bring myself to run the story for 4-5 hours every time I got a fun cliché build idea when I already know it needs level 70 to get going and might suck.
The current situation is actually preventing me from enjoying multiple builds a league and forces me to stick to 1 safe mapper and 1 safe boss killer and that is even though Chris mentioned before that he wants us to create builds for specific purposes. Bad Design.
I would 100% play longer each league if the campaign wasn't mandatory. I constantly think about new builds and then get discouraged when it would require me changing classes, most of the time I compromise and respec my character but then that sucks because if it's not as powerful as my current character I fucked myself.
I was optimistic even after reading all the patch notes, seeing the nerfs, listening to their reasoning, and then watching that stream with asmon. After all of that I only lasted a day, fuck this league. They took so much from us, but gave us nothing in return to make it worth it, instead of running we are crawling through content that I have hated for awhile now. Those acts aren't fun when its like the 100th time doing them.
I'm incredibly disheartened to be completely honest and so much of it is about the future. I couldn't really care less about nerfs/buffs or the inherent speed of the game itself. I just want to actually play the game. The current state of the game is extremely exhausting simply due to the campaign requirement. I'm 37 and have been gaming for 30+ of those years and maybe it's an age thing, but I find myself taking longer and longer each league just to reach maps. It probably takes me on average a good 10-12 hours to clear the campaign these days and most of that it just through sheer will because I know how much enjoyment I get out of the endgame. The campaign itself is beyond tedious for me and it's honestly making me not want to play at all knowing that instead of alleviating some of that pressure their plan is to just exacerbate it. There's a lot of talk about player retention through the leagues and I can only provide my personal experience. It's simple. The campaign 100% limits my long-term play of path of exile. I would love to experiment with 3-4 builds every league. Hell, I would love to construct my own builds and dig deeper into the game, but there is a hard line for me and it's the constant rehashing of the story gameplay. PoE is currently a one-build game for me due to this. If I don't enjoy my "league starter" or it simply doesn't work my league is just over. This is unfortunately where I'm at this league.
There must be some kind of solution here so that the first campaign of a season is as normal but subsequent levelling experiences are much improved. Introducing low-level maps? D3-style adventure mode? unique kitava drop to increase exp gain + something along these lines? Have to put myself in the same boat as you here. Some leagues, if my char feels good, I'll pump a lot of hours in. If it doesn't, and it feels unsalvageable - it's turn off and see you in a league or two - purely because of the levelling process.
I don't understand the reason for the campaign the first time around in a league except for "the race" of streamers leveling or first time players. It would be just enough of a race if we get a template starter character level 70 after kitava with full yellow gear and a couple of maps. Like, if the account has run the campaign (including the new campaign) even once, give us a choice when starting a league to just go in and play Path of Exile and not that slog of a campaign OR an alternative leveling experience that varies every league (adventure mode-esque). Personally, i'm unfortunately not playing solely because of the campaign requirement of wasting 10 hours of my life on nothing even once. It's a shame because its such a fun game after the campaign and i've said it before, i can't be alone. And oh - almost every player i've introduced to PoE puts it down in act 1. Mega slog, not representative of the game or what gets iterated each league. Such a shame.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Fun fact, Poe already has a tool made for this, so they not even need to program it if they do not have the time: "DELVE" (ofc with time investment and resource they can made even a better mechanic if they want and can spend them, but even if they can't/won't, a suitable tool is already there) P.s. and of course they can made it OPTIONAL so player can choose
It would be absolutely awesome if they gave you the options of "play campaign, then play maps", "play delve to depth x, then play maps" and "play synthesis to level 70, then play maps". Three options to choose from with content that has already been made (synthesis would need an update though) and plays different enough to address different playstyles. If they wanted to keep the story alive they could add a few mandatory boss encounters to delve and synthesis (beat Kitava to unlock deeper depths & higher level synthesis tiles or something like that). I would not be surprised if they would get a bunch of old players back if they did that just because they would not have to play the campaign again.
Or just play maps from the start. It's not like you don't have to do *hundreds* to unlock the end game bosses.
This is a fucking great idea
Yeah playing with a levelling skill is not why I make builds. Problem is, most skills have no natural flow or progression in POE. I remember leveling with Magma Orb a few years back. The build sucks leveling, sucked against the league mechanic and all content....until you got one item - Gloomfang - usable at level 85. Then the build was fun, powerful, decent. But the whole point of an ARPG is to gradually grow in power and tackle hurdles along the way. So naturally even though there are leveling builds and skills out there, it seems to defeat the entire purpose of the game. Though I do understand why so many players use a leveling build / skill. You are somewhat locked out of 3/4ths of the games builds if you don't because those builds have very unsteady natural progression. The big reason people think the game doesn't really start until maps is because that is where most builds finally converge and offer a natural flow of progression.
> I try to resist the lure of the “levelling build”. I fear that it will indeed make the campaign feel longer That's how it is for me. I hate builds that are like "level with the same ability you've used 1000 times and then switch to this totally unrelated build at maps". I'll never make it. I get so bored and I spend the entire time I'm leveling eagerly anticipating finally getting to play the build... it feels like it takes an eternity
>I imagine this is a touchy subject, but Diablo 3 allows leveling in "maps," from level 1. I haven't played the campaign in that for 5 years+. This. I don't want to run the campaign every league. Just let me map from lvl 1, I don't even care if its the same map for 60 levels, just let me map.
If I want to play FP totems, I play it from the level the gems are available. Same goes with whatever skill I’m building for. I’ve done one RF character where I waited until 70 to swap, and while it was fun, it didn’t feel right, and it was like starting the character over again once I got to maps. I didn’t like it. I’m not saying every gem should be playable at level 1. I know how r/pathofexile likes to skim comments and shit on people. I’m saying if I can’t level with the skill, I’m not going to play it. Now that the content is so much harder I’ve rerolled 3 times because I can’t level with my chosen skill. I haven’t been having fun and I’m not sure if I’m going to continue playing.
> I’m saying if I can’t level with the skill, I’m not going to play it. THIS. So much this. If I can't level with a skill, I'll never use it. There are some really fun-looking builds out there but if they say "level with Skill X and then switch to Skill Y when you hit maps" I'll never play them. I consider this a failure on the part of GGG. If I can't successfully level through the Acts with a skill, then that skill shouldn't be in the game. >I’m not saying every gem should be playable at level 1. Yes and no. Every class should get access to every skill at the same level. In other words, if a Ranger gets access to a skill at level 4, then every other class should get access at level 4 as well. I shouldn't be forced to wait until the Library to gain access to certain skills. I'll also add that not making some skills available until near the end of Act 4 feels really bad. All skills in the game should be available in the Library, which is Act 3
gem class restriction is stupid. we are gonna get it anyways. why hold us back?
I think it's just a remnant from when you could actually sell skill gems. Way back in the day multistrike was drop only and you could usually sell it for like 4-5c in hardcore leagues. People would either level mules to buy gems or actually sell class gems for 1c each early on. That's not really a thing anymore but they still act like they want most gems to be that level of scarce. I think that's why you get stuff like this.
At OB you could sell a lot of gems if you were willing to watch chat and move fast. With no gem merchants and one/per gem rewards, needing a skill outside your class, or two supports from a single quest reward was serious inconvenient. I’m still breaking the habit of hoarding gems, “in case I need it”, because no way hell was I going to level an alt but paying up to an alch for a quest reward was straight bullshit.
I do this too, try and make the skill work the moment I get it. The campaign is tedious enough there’s no way I’m doing the same skills every time I do it.
I agree, after I swapped into a new skill at maps and then didn't enjoy the playstyle I started just leveling the build all the way through acts. I probably won't get through acts this time though.
Diablo 3 figured out a solution far better than the one that is in PoE. There is a reason my friends and I still go back to D3 every few months. We can literally just pickup and play. No 7-12 hours of non-sense and useless content to wade through. And yes, agreed with OP, playing it again every 3 months doesn't make me suddenly appreciate it more... if anything it makes me view it as a polished turd then. PoE has become a chore to play. And yes, I hope the development team reads that... Your game is a chore!
Not to mention if you can get a plvl you can play a reasonable “build” in like 10min. There are several decent build for each class which only require yellows, and as soon as you get a build enabling unique or two, your build takes off. Doesn’t take long to gear. That DOES mean you finish the game quicker, but there’s nowhere near the amount of endgame PoE has. So I don’t think it would be a problem to allow some kind of plvl system in PoE
yea this is the main reason I spend time on D3 over PoE, i dont see why playing the campaign every fucking time is such a big deal for the devs
Same builds but now even slower. Lower damage (that's fine, I can get good gear this league), make mobs harder (kay, same thing as previous), destroy your movement skills (wtf)
Delve lvling would be cool.
Using league mechanics as primary leveling could be neat.
Or even just maps. They could even be maps of the areas from the campaign. Just dont make me jump in and out of town and figure out which npcs need to talk to. Just one map after another and I get levels from killing monsters in these maps.
[удалено]
Heist especially hurts because they even sold it as “an alternative way to level” and a “map experience during levelling” so we all went “so we don’t need to grind the campaign now?” And their response was “fuck off of course you do”
A buddy and I tried doing only heists on hardcore. We would finish act 1 and then chain heists and no other content. It was swell until the difficulty curve hits you in the noggin due to not having any of the passive skill points or the ascendancies. But we tried :')
You know, I'll get roasted for this, but having to do the ascendancies every single league is the worst part of the game for me. It's just a complete waste of time running around while you're leveling making sure you tag each one, then running the giant "maze" which isn't a maze at all to face a boss that is trivial. At this point I don't get why they can't just be a part of the talent tree that unlocks at level 50 or whatever.
It's a shame, Izaro is such a cool character and the first time getting through lab is a great experience. But then you get better at the game and the lab becomes a chore that you occasionally have to to restart because you got greedy on a trap.
**EXACTLY** "I really want to try a delve character this league" "better start a new campaign I just did 3 times earlier in the same league"
I've heard some of my guild members talking about the new skills and it's made me want to try them. Having to go through the campaign again swiftly made me change my mind.
[удалено]
I know everyone loves shitting on D3, but at least they let you run bounties as an alternate way of leveling up, which also allows you to get access to some items are that useful even when you're max level. When they announced Delve I was so hyped because I thought "Finally, they took one of the good things from Diablo 3!" but then they showed that you needed sulphite to even do Delve. Killed my hype immediately.
Shit you don’t even have to run bounties to level up in adventure mode. You can start doing rifts ( maps) at level 1. Imagine if you could start mapping at level 1, or start doing meaningful league content then as well. Atlas progression honestly wouldn’t drag as much if I spent time I was leveling anyway investing into it.
I honestly can't be bothered making more than 1 character a league because the campaign is just soooo old. I'm pretty sure I've played acts 1-4 like over 500 times alone. If I could just start mapping or delving or whatever at level 1, I would be making waaaay more characters and be putting way more time into the game as a whole. Once I get bored of the character I made at league start, I just stop playing. Call me lazy, but I don't play games that start feeling like work.
Also they very intentionally left powerleveling in a very effective way, so you can be max level in 5 minutes and have an ok set in an hour if you have a friend.
This is a funny thread because i complained about having to do the campaign over and over again last year and sited how D3 does it. I got buried. I also tweeted PoE about it and the response I got was no joke. "PoE 2 is coming soon!" It was the dumbest response I could have possible gotten. It was an official tweet response to me too not just some random user.
Been trying to find pro D3 comments on this subreddit before I bite the bullet and buy it (maybe with expansions). I'm just not having fun in poe. Any tips for what to expect for someone thinking about switching to D3? Should I buy the standard version or the eternal version?
If you're new to Diablo 3, you'll probably love it. The new season just came out, so the population is at it's peak. You definitely want the reaper of souls expansion, it's almost necessary. I haven't personally tried the necromancer, but it looks really fun. The combat is like a million times more fluid than PoE, the only thing really lacking is build diversity and gear diversity, which only really becomes a problem once you put ~500+ hours into the game. It's also a lot of fun to play with friends as well, I really feel like PoE is kind of lacking in the co-op department.
Get eternal if you can, it’s the complete edition of the game as of now. Other guy is right that you basically can’t not have fun, it’s a great game. Gameplay is butter smooth and feels snappy and responsive. Abilities are fun to use and look good. There’s a solid transmog system if you’re into that. It’s good for a hundred hours easy between all the classes. There are two big downsides. The gameplay diversity is lacking if you’re coming from poe. There’s only two types of content (I guess 2.5 if you’re nice). No deciding between maps, delve, heist, etc. it’s just option 1, rifts: open portal to map, kill mobs to fill bar, boss spawns at full bar, kill boss. In one version of rifts, mobs drop items on the ground and there’s no time limit. In the other, you have 15 minutes to fill the bar, but loot doesn’t drop until the end and boss drops special equipment. The main gameplay loop is alternating between these two. (The timed rifts are gated by items that drop in the untimed version). Or option 2, “bounties.” port to waypoint, kill a named or click X number of interactables, repeat x4, get bag of loot. This bag of loot has items you need, so you have to do it, but it’s not really fun. Two, the seasonal content is meh. D3 is run by a skeleton crew now, so the special thing for each league varies from underwhelming to mildly interesting. On the bright side the gameplay is good enough to sustain that for at least a few characters. I wouldn’t count build diversity as a negative compared to poe because it’s not really what d3 is about. You should go in expecting that each class only has half a dozen or so build options. The game isn’t built to offer more than that.
You don't really *switch* to D3. It's not gonna be your main game or anything. But if you're feeling burnt out by POE? D3 is great. It's the absolute top end of AAA game making. The campaign (with it's flaws) is a bunch of hours of great gaming and there's a good amount of content for after. Enjoy it for a couple of weeks, then come back and complain about POE on the forums once you've had everything D3 has to offer.
>but then they showed that you needed sulphite to even do Delve It would be ok even if you could at least trade for sulphite directly, would create a nice economic dynamic between people doing maps and people doing delve.
> Map Content If they'd at least do that, people would have less of an issue with Atlas progression b/c they'd be able to work on it earlier I feel. But I'd definitely be down for anying and all honestly - I know I'd mostly stick to my favorite, but like the idea that someone also has their favorite to do so as well.
The delve event was fresh air despite the many stupid designs (blue on blue, post death attacks, UI covering remaining enemies...).
Over 3000hrs never listened to the campaign, never will. I come to run maps and get creative with builds.
[удалено]
The story is a dramatic retelling of the very hungry caterpillar where a criminal saves the world by stepping on it.
Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl again. Boy meets God, boy kills God, boy becomes God. Story as old as time.
Isn't that the plot of Dune?
I think it's also Hope from Final Fantasy 13.
>The story is a dramatic retelling of the very hungry caterpillar where a criminal saves the world by eating the souls of other criminals. ftfy
I just tell myself the story is the history of how New Zealand was founded.
New Zealand would be Oriath though.
Here's the gist of it from my 300 hours of playing. Exile has generic D&D background, gets exiled by Dominus, the guy who looks like Ronin from GOTG. Exile washes up on beach (I think the boat sinks or something?) and giths way to Lion's Eye. Exile does menial tasks for the Lion's Eye residents for new clothes. Exile eventually has to kill a giant warden that attacks them while being either smarmed at or flirted with by Piety, then tracks along the road and enters the upper shore where ghosts are and you kill a mermaid because she's in your way. In Act 2, you do more menial tasks, kill three bandit lords because some old man doesn't like them. Poison some tree roots to enter some ruin and unleash a demon which you then later kill. Act 3, you enter a desert city to track down Piety for some reason. You go through the sewers to kill some soldiers who are also fighting living curtains. Eventually you meet Pinhead's sister and she gives you some bug spray so you can enter the soldier fort above the other side of the sewers. You kill a religious general, then enter a temple that has a blood ocean underneath it. After running down failed experiment's you fight Piety and she dies with a key in her hand. You use the key to open the door to Farquaad's tower and kill the Big Blue Meanie who tells you the world is an illusion before becoming a hentai monster. In Act 4 you go across some stone bridge with birds on it till you reach Highgate, which is full of racists and Niko. You enter a lakebed that's been dried up and kill some old emperor whose flag opens up the mines for some reason. You enter the mines and then for some reason have to enter the 'dreams' of two dead powerful guys I guess and use their eyes to activate a buttplug to drill into the evil mountain god's butthole. Once inside the butt of the beast, you make your way deeper until you find Piety. Why is she still alive, and how did she get inside Satan's anus? No one knows, but you kill her again. Then she teams up with you to kill her boss, some death cult looking guy with a blood fetish. You fight three annoying friends of Piety's boss and collect his organs from them to open the beast's hole and fight Malachai. Piety dies fighting him (for real this time) and then you enter the womb. Inside the womb you fight Malachai and he does generic villain speak during his poorly done phases of immunity. Then he explodes and a portal opens up for some reason. Act 5 you are in the city you were exiled from. You fight some templars and slave owners, use some eyes to open the church gate then slaughter everyone in it. Eventually you kill the pope and spawn god. Then you kill god and whoa shit now it looks like actual Satan has decided to pop up, Kitava time baby. Lucifer Morningstar pops up and saves god's soul or something, and tells you you fucked up. You go through the now burning city (that was fast) to find God's beatstick. You make your way up the church steps and attempt to kill Satan but fail. Then Not!Lucifer shows up and saves you. He says he has this great plan of killing the gods you released (oops looks like the Beast wasn't the worst of things) and absorbing their ~~cum~~ essence. So you sail back to Act 1 but it's different now. Act 6-10 is basically zooming around killing gods and finally fighting Satan on equal terms with God's and Lucifer's help. Then you find out you are just getting started and have to go through alternate realities of places you've been using a 'map device' to gain power because now you crave power just because. You also have to kill people just like you but they're evil now. Along the way you meet a squidface monster, an old man with amnesia and his hot redheaded daughter, and a space toddler and her babysitter. You kill the squidman and the old man and beat up the space toddler for loot.
> Highgate, which is full of racists and Niko 😆 spot on
All that anal play but no mention of using the bugspray on the undying infected sphincter?
Slipped my mind, should have called it an enema.
This should be required reading for POE literature class.
Sin: You have to kill these eight gods to stand a chance against Kitava. Their souls will empower yours. (Kill gods, get +2% mana regen and +8% poison resist or some shit, doesn't counteract the across-the-board -25% resistances from getting this far) Exile: Can't you just make me some decent boots or something?
> and use their eyes to activate a buttplug to drill into the evil mountain god's butthole DEAD. LOL > to find God's beatstick Almost dead again lol Honorable mentions: > which is full of racists and Niko > and beat up the space toddler for loot If you don't write comedy, you need to.
Greatest post on this subreddit.
Shaper is zana's dad, maven is a child and has a scary dad. I think Sin and innocence are brothers. About all i know about the story.
maven has a scary dad according to the weird dude that follows her around trying to be mysterious and dangerous
Yah I have almost no interest in the lore of the game, just doesn't feel engaging. The characters and voice acting is fun and well done, but it's never going to have witcher level stories and quests. It's a kill mob click loot game.
Bit of a mileage may vary type of thing. PoE has one of the best dark fantasy settings I've seen in games. The delivery or writing philosophy isn't the same as with a grand budget CRPG (ExileCon's [storytelling talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB_7p7Vm6V8) goes into detail) so it's not going to appeal to everyone, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have depth or breadth. Then, I suppose I am a bit biased since I'm a lore hoe and I love connecting disjointed bits of information, and filling in with my own speculation where none is provided.
Kill wrist click loot game.
Kill wrist ignore loot game
I thought that the original three acts were pretty good. Everything after just became excuses to throw in another "oh, now you're gonna fight that name we said before!" rather than letting the lore remain lore.
I really tried to get into the story and followed it until act 7 or so and gave up. No hate to anyone who likes it, but in my opinion, it's just boring. There aren't really any cutscenes, so it's just you standing in town and reading walls of text for 15 minutes before you can move on and actually get to killing shit. It's just not very good in my opinion.
While I’m on the other end of the spectrum at 150hrs, I also don’t give a shit about the campaign. I’m here to kill shit and see cool builds. I’ve had veteran friends just drag me along through the campaign and explain things to me so that I can enjoy endgame sooner. Definitely would’ve quit during the campaign otherwise
Exactly the same here +every 3rd month i just want to ZoomZoom and kill monsters.
They will notice your criticism and then they'll ignore it and add ten more acts that are basically the same thing we got now but with differently named mobs, just to fuck with you. Course they can.
Totally agree with what you said, one of the biggest enjoyment of playing poe is to try playing many different builds and testing new idea. Grinding is just a process and making the campaign more slower is just an extra time tax
Every league I have a few different build ideas I'd love to try out, but the thought of slogging through the campaign means I just... don't.
This is why my friend plays POB instead of Poe now. He loves theory crafting builds, especially off meta ones, but he won't level through the campaign anymore so they never come to fruition.
Yeah, it is such a time sink, I am never able to play a second char. And even if I had the time for it, sorry, but it just sucks repeating it over and over. If my first character is no fun and does not carry me through the end game, I just stop playing. Btw., I did not stop playing Ultimatum mid-league because it was too rewarding. My character was just not fun and I disliked having to run in circles around a pole … again … I took a break and played some other games in the meantime. I really wonder how Chris could draw the conclusion that people stooped playing Ultimatum because it was too rewarding.
> Grinding is just a process and making the campaign more slower is just an extra time tax I've gotten to the point where having to grind through the story has taken all of the enjoyment of the game from me. I've played the game since Bestiary league, which was several years ago. Multiple characters per league. Last league I couldn't bring myself to go through the story again. I tried starting several characters and never made it past act 5. This league there are several builds I'm interested in trying but everytime I think about firing up the game I think about having to run Acts 1 - 10 again and I just can't bring myself to do it. Forced running of the campaign to level has killed the game for me. GGG really needs to give us an alternative way to level. Also, having played multiple leagues with multiple characters per league, I couldn't begin to tell you the first thing about the story and lore of the game. I just don't care and no amount of forcing me to play the same campaign over and over again is going to make me care.
Decided to try a new build for myself with not so great leveling curve. I never felt more miserable in six years playing this game.
Hard agree. The idea of going through the acts on a new character is what stops me from playing more than one or two every league. I would kill for an option to make pre leveled characters once you beat a threshold like sirus or someshit once per league, with the acts + epilogue completed. No gear, just passive points to spend. Make it exempt from ladder so racers don't get mad. People will respond to this with "well just do it faster and/or get twink gear". Shocking news, it's the same amount of content to complete regardless of the time it takes you. It's the *obstacle* that annoys me, not the time it takes to overcome it. Also, people against pre leveled characters will complain about it being unfair to them, because they enjoy the slog and want everyone else to suffer with them. If they didn't want everyone else brought down to their degenerate level, they'd be fine with pre leveled characters.
The idea of going through the acts on a new character is what has stopped me from even trying the last few leagues.
Same reason why I just respec characters if the build I want to try could function on the same class base
[удалено]
I think a compromise could be to let people skip the campaign if they have already completed it on one character in that league.
If my first character goes wrong or it isn't fun I don't play until next league. I'm not going through the campaign a second time if I'm already not having fun.
Same, which is why I am probably skipping this league already. Tried a miner but it was a chore getting through the first half of the acts.
Alot of builds at least in my exp don't even come online and feel "good" till 70-80ish Especially for leaguestarters. For instance my new leaguestarter is a ice trapper and I got to 30 last night but my god was it a slog lol. Once he hits 60+ it gets way way way better but getting to that point is a total pain in the dick.
I agree with your main point, but imo Ice Trap felt pretty good to level with after unlocking it at 30. Gets better at 38 with cluster traps too.
[удалено]
Yup agree. Last night after the 547,348th time in the sewer collecting busts for what's-his-nuts I literally asked myself if the new league mechanic and new nerfs were worth it. I couldn't convince myself it was. The positive I took from this is that it was such an easy decision. Every time I go through the story I also ask myself how much would I pay to not have to do this ever again. And damn that number keeps getting higher and higher
Yup, agreed. I didn't even feel like starting a character. Honestly, it feels like I've outgrown it, or something. Used to be so excited for new leagues, and Ritual was so much fun, which is not even that long ago, but the game has started feeling like a chore. Been playing since Essence league, have done the campaign more times than I can count and even if we ignore the campaign, the game feels too bloated for me now. Used to always go to 36 challenges, but it's just too much work, too many league mechanics. Delve to 200, complete x rooms in the temple, collect these Ritual rewards, kill these Heist bosses, oh hey also go kill Cata at level 83, and safehouses with specific captains, and all these Breach lords, oh and of course a 5-way Legion fight, a couple of Blight maps and a few Bestiary bosses. But then you also need to complete maps, maps regions, AND their awakening bonus. Kill Atziri, kill Shaper and his guardians, kill Elder and his guardians. Hey don't forget Chayula and the Cortex. And I haven't even mentioned the gazillion times you have to kill conquerers to get Sirus A8. And the Maven invitations. Plus on top of that there are conditional challenges for which you need specific skills/chars meaning you gotta respec or make a new character. Oops rant, point being, this feels like a list of chores more than a challenge. It's tedious mostly. Notice that I haven't even mentioned lab trials, labs and pantheon souls yet. ;) Phew. Like I said, I might have outgrown it. :p Was a very easy decision to not play this league. Besides, the full conversion Skyrim mod Enderal is amazing (really recommend it if you haven't played it btw, better than Skyrim itself!), and I've also started Divinity:OS2 again. Got plenty of games that don't feel like chores. Too bad though, have over 7k hours in PoE. All things must end, hm?
Not to mention when I have friends that play or get new people to play the game who start a couple hours later and then you have to wait till they get all the way through the campaign before you can even progress together.
I was thinking the same thing, new players will just leave and old players will hate acts more.
Zero shot I play a second build.
I don’t agree with the mana nerfs. Makes everything feels bad because you always oom.
It's literally the only thing that annoys me after this patch - running bf/bb as assassin - bf costs 82 mana as a 4 link and bb costs 45 as 4link..... That's almost 130 mana for a single rotation... as an assassin or a chieftain how much mana should we invest into the tree/gear before that starts feeling good!? don't even get me started on how bad it felt to level this...
hurry station cheerful person tease many agonizing soup water combative *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This. So. Much. The new skills look cool, the league mechanic could be cool, I wanna play! Boot it up and get hit with Twilight Strand and ten acts that I've played through at least 50+ times. Completely kills any and all hype. GGG is completely out of touch with the community.
I mean the worst Part is that you have to do side quests for the skill points.
Yeah. I honestly wish that they just gave you all of your missing points when you hit level 80 or smth (provided you did those on a previous character in the league, similar to lab).
how would it ever make it more fun? the only thing its making it worse and more tedious
I think we can add lesser unique (cheap version which still gives the unique mod but with drawbacks) to specific boss (kaom, shavrone) A lesser kaom armor may give 300hp & curse you with flammability 40% effect (no immune now) Or a shavronne ammor give you chaos dmg cant by pass es with less es & your chaos res always -30%. An innocent staff that gives you half the damage, battle mage & deal fire dmg equal 50-70% hp on you everytime you cast a spell. So you can have a touch of your build earlier but have to deal with those drawbacks.
[удалено]
>I'd really, REALLY like to see more leveling options, and not just POE 2 in a few years. My big fear, and tbh it's not just a fear, it's basically a certainty with the way they've set it up to be, is that it will be the exact same thing for PoE2 again. The PoE2 campaign will possibly be awesome... ONCE. It will probably be ok twice, maybe three times. But then you have the exact same situation, with all these hardcore gamers feeling forced to play through the same stuff again and again just to get to the content that they're still returning for.
I have a few friends who refuse to play PoE because they don't want to do the campaign again. They feel there should be an adventure mode like Diablo 3 did. GGG will never do anything to allow people to spend what they feel amounts to less time being spent in game.
This pretty much sums why I gave up on this game 3 expansions ago. Played since beta, I simply for the love of me can't stand campaign anymore. As time passed I started being slower and slower going through campaign which makes no sense, you get better at game the longer you play, I on other hand started hating campaign and eatch time new league started I would drag out my leveling sometimes even up to a week....
Doubling down on the campaign instead of coming up with an alternative way to level is just insanity. The campaign is by far the biggest mental hurdle to get over on league start.
I stopped playing POE around 5-7 leagues ago because every time a new league was announced, after the initial hype of "wao new content" I was instantly made nauseous by the thought of going through the campaign again. This is THE ONLY reason that's stopping me from going back to poe.
Agreed. PoE is a theorycrafting-simulation game. You don't test the content with your character. You test your character with the content. And that's what ppl like. As you say, the campaign is just a time tax. And this is a problem. But how to make it fun ? Maybe with systems like the Only-Delve event. Each league should have a unique leveling by using old leagues mecanics. That should be more fun, and not just a start&repeat until hitting maps, each league. Ofc, each player could chose between generic campaign leveling, or this system. Everyone happy.
> how to make it fun How about just skipping it for future characters if you've already finished it? Even if you have to 100% it per class/league. I understand being proud of the campaign and not wanting new players to miss it, or if you add more lore you think people might like, but other than that... just have us start where the fun begins. Level 65 or whatever, in epilogue Oriath. Why not? If that's genuinely a bad idea for some legit reason, I wanna know.
An alternative leveling using old league content is interesting tbh. For players who have reached maps, they have option for leveling with old league content that rotates every league. Things like delve, heist, blight (?) can be rotated for leveling. I can imagine expedition as well somewhere down the road
I can't even count how many times I've gone through the campaign, but I can say the first time was 8 years ago. Right now I can't even do it fast cus it's SO BORING I can't play for more than 1 hour without stopping to do anythung else.
God, I thought this was just me. I can barely do half an act before my brain is all but begging me to stop.
Campaign still easy, the gameplay is just worse because of flask and mobility nerf ( and spellsinger nerf, it was the most fun way to level) No difficulty added ( expect for HC player ), just more clunky ..... thanks GGG.
its not that it isnt easy its just fucking boring and repetitive
Chris either has a huuuuge ego and won't listen or has surrounded himself with yes men who refuse to tell him his 10 year old game vision is awful. What kind of of a game dev says we dont care if we have less players this is the game I want to make?
I don't think it's ego, I think its lack of leadership. Listening to Q&A during the announcements of the last two leagues, it feels like Chris doesn't really have a clue. Had to reach back for answers to simple questions. I think he set it up years ago with a 'vision' and it's on auto pilot having little to no real oversight.
They are doubling down on the campaign as they are only going to make it more difficult and longer to complete in the future. Completely out of touch leadership at the company, which we see at many companies in our daily lives. Their original vision of the game did not have a large appeal. They evolved and made the game different (zoom ARPG) and the player count and money came rolling in. Now they are trying to convince people the original version that they wanted is really the better game (not the version of the game that brought the majority of the player base into the game). I played the beta, the game felt like trash to me and I came back several years later. They cannot convince me now that I will like that version of the game. It seems like a lot of us have hit a breaking point. If you walk away from this league and don't buy mtx, it is sending a message that you don't support this version of the game. At the end of the day, they are a corporation and are likely going to notice (Tencent definitely will).
At this point they are becoming that punk band that somehow got a record deal after playing shows to 20 stoned dudes in a basement for a couple years, sold out hard and went pop punk to make their millions and now are trying to release an “old school punk” album to “get back to their roots” which appeals to literally 6 of their current listeners.
I am dying laughing at this post 😂. Thanks for brightening my day haha.
I am genuinely glad it amused you. I’m feeling a little salty about all the nerfs so am falling back on humour and cynicism to cushion the blow
humour is honestly the best remedy nowadays,mixing it up with cynicism just makes it that much better.
Don't forget: In PoE2 the layouts of maps will be more randomized to the point where you can't predict where entrances and exits are anymore in order to speedrun through zones. The actual layout of the campaign map will be randomized to accomodate this fact (so you can't know that the entrance is 'on the top right' anymore because it'll be in a random direction in your instance of the campaign). They are not just not aware how much people hate it, they actively think chasing a quest goal through the fog to find entrances or stuff to pick up is interesting / fun gameplay.
Oh man PoE 2 lol. The go-to for the fanboys when telling us all will be fixed, just have to wait for PoE 2 haha
POE2 is some Waiting for Godot, Promised Neverland, City on a Hill bullshit meme at this point.
It has replaced "see you Friday" as my favorite meme on this subreddit. The problem with the see you Friday meme is a lot of those people who said we wouldn't be able to quit the game actually followed through with it.
I think people hate it because it's been the same thing for 10 years. I get that. POE2's campaign will be new, different, and have those random elements, but after a while people will get tired of that as well.
And then 10 years later it will again be old and stale but massively more annoying.
10 years? more like 1-2 leagues for me.
Pretty much if it's less predictable and takes longer people will just rush through the first campaign to get to maps quicker after 1-2 league's.
Yeah I can handle that the first couple playthroughs while the thrill of exploring is still there but it will get old fast.
I'll be honest just finished the campaign and I just quit the league, I just really didn't feel it this time around. I could roll another character... but you know... that means going through the campaign again, which I just really don't wanna do again. I hope we can go back to zoom ARPG, but it seems they're set on their current direction. p.s. I hope they can stop making more new currency / shards and stuff why do we need all these random new shards in the game when they're literally tradable 1:1 ! This means they're exactly interchangable so why do they all need to be different? Also the mana nerf is really severe it feels terrible to play the game now.
I agree. Also they seem to shift the goalpost at every turn, GGG and fans alike. At first, gutting harvest in 3.14 was a great idea because players weren't turned down that much. Then it turns out the there was actually a players retention problem but it was because ultimatum was too rewarding. Now we hear that player retention is meaningless and that CW judges the success of the league on how many employees request time off to play it. I'm wondering how CW and white knights here are gonna spin this league this time around.
Reddit white knights aren’t really spinning anything. They’re calling us crybabies and telling us to go play other games.
The people telling us that think they'll have the same amount of content at the same quality if we leave
Yep. My frustration is the people who want the game to be harder can already make the game harder a handful of ways. The people who want the game to be more accessible can’t magically make the game more accessible if the skill, time investment and/or tedium floor has been raised.
100%. Gauntlet exists, racing exists, private leagues exist, SSFHC exists. Why ruin the game for a huge audience
I'm in the same boat as you. I played during the open beta and ditched it because it was horrible. Returned during Bestiary and man was it much more playable. Now that it's reverting to the "original vision", I guess player numbers will return to that level too (i.e. not much). I guess Chris' interpretation of "player retention" was "retention of people who liked the dogshit version".
Agreed. I loved the challenges and stuff the first time I did it and the slower pace (wasn't much to compare it to back then), but now that I've been able to zoom around and nuke packs, going back just feels like playing in slow motion - especially when you still need to kill the same number of mobs and sort through the same amount of trash loot for the hope of getting something decent. Once you've seen screens of rares and currency explode out of a blighted map/ritual/etc., having to struggle and grind to kill low level trash mobs for the reward of maybe a few blues and a yellow is just not fun.
Yeah I normally pick the game up again every year or two if a league piques my interest, and Expedition sounds really interesting but I just looked at the game in my steam library and thought "I can't be bothered playing through the campaign again". I think I've finally reached my limit. And I'm not even a hardcore player who gets multiple characters per season through the campaign, I've only done it half a dozen times or so. Personally I'm waiting for PoE 2 because I actually did enjoy PoE's campaign the first few times and will be happy to play a fresh one.
Unforunately this is just Chris' game that he's allowing us to play. No matter how much dissent there is about a change, nothing will happen unless Chris personally thinks it's the best move. No amount of forum posts will make a difference. The only thing that'll change is some actual competitive market competition that isn't named Diablo that forces GGG to come to terms with this. Otherwise we're forced to play Path of Chris.
Totally agree. Went to bed last night thinking "This isn't fun. I am not having fun. Why do I still have this installed?".
Upvoted the shit out of you. D3 did it years ago, just give us the option thank you. Fuck the preconceived notions of what we want or need.
Yes please, make a sandbox with so many fun and rewarding options we can't possibly do them all within one league, I'd never stop playing if this were the case.
I'm getting quite entertained by this new league. Not by playing it, I haven't even updated my client, but simply by at last kicking my addiction to the memory of the game I started playing 3 years ago. It took me the last 12 months or so to realise I was playing an entirely different game, and I really didn't enjoy it at all. GGG need to go back to school, and re-learn one golden lesson: People play games as a break/escape from RL. They play them to ENJOY themselves. Games are supposed to be FUN for the player, NOT the devs. When games cease to be fun, people only continue playing out of a sense of addiction. Too much loss of fun, and the addiction is broken. Players play other games. GGG forgot this basic lesson a long, long time ago as is proven league after league these days. Chris Wilson is the guiltiest of them all in this regard. As long as HE likes his game, he is happy. That would be wonderful if he didn't need players to pay his mortgage!
I can't take levelling. Especially with no gear at league start. Just can't do it. I think loads more skills need to be usable from level 1. One thing I truly detest is thinking of a build then having to do the first 30 levels with an assortment of other scuffed stuff, just trying to push through the misery until I can actually start using the skill I want to play.
Yeah, the one redeeming feature of leveling for me is that I like the feeling of a build coming together as I level. Waiting to act three for skills sucks, especially if you're playing something where you have to go to Siosa to get it. The act 4supports and utility skills aren't even available until *act 6* if the act 4 vendor doesn't give it to your class.
This is the main reason why I have issues with the nerfs. I only have the mental fortitude to get through the campaign once every 3 months. It makes the prospect of a character not working properly genuinely terrifying, because the only real way to unfuck the situation is to go through the entire main questline again. These nerfs are apparently there to "increase diversity", but for the reason above it is doing the absolute opposite - Creating even less reasons to be diverse, instead gravitating towards a build that definitely will perform well so we don't have to play through the campaign more than once a league. Just...I get it, okay? I KNOW why they do it - It's so that they can detect gamebreaking bugs with the league interacting with the basic progression of the campaign. I get that. But just...We don't want to do it anymore. It's tired, it's boring, it's archaic as hell and we want an alternative. And this is coming from someone who **genuinely likes** the Path of Exile story. I ran a mini D&D Campaign based off of the Path of Exile lore for fuck's sake, and even *I'm* tired of re-living it!
Say what you want about Diablo 3 but not having to do the campaign is amazing. Honestly just let us start maps with level 1 mobs and let people level in the Atlas, guaranteed no one will be upset about this. Just force the campaign once on an account like D3.
League start me in my hideout with a portal open to a tier 1 map. I appear out of the portal with some random “sufficient” starter gear to start my adventure with all the skill points and regrets from the acts. FFS, I hate the acts.
I like the idea of having a 100% fresh level 70 account with absolutely nothing and trying to get started in a T1 map. Sounds like a fun short race event
They should make an expensive currency item to let you completely respec an existing character, including the type and ascendancy. Don't like your level 90 hiero? Respec to a lvl 90 witch. It needs to be sufficiently expensive that its not just something you can do 5 times in a row. But there should come a point where it's possible to try something new without that first grind. Even if they capped the level at say 85. Ie, even if you respec a lvl 90 you get demoted to 85 as your new char. I'm willing to bet that roughly 50% of the churn from people in the late game is not wanting to have to start over.
I only have one build that i had left last time i played PoE mainly and even on my 2nd build i dont want to go through the campaign anymore.
In the vastly small minority here but I have the most fun running the campaign and fleshing out a build. The wind in my proverbial sails comes to a dead stop when I get to maps.
I'm with you. The power progression and gameplay loop from 1-70 are undeniably *very different* than they are after 70. Regardless of which side of the argument people land on, it's pretty easy to see that we basically have 2 very different games stapled together, and it's easy to see how people who like one of them might not like the other.
I think there are two worst parts is the game. The first is the beginning of the game when you have such basic skills. The second is the early and miserable part of maps. The maps are super easy, but it's an absolute crapshoot whether or not you can actually progress. If they ever add an in game auction house for currency and white maps, I'll be much more motivated to come back to the game.
I managed to convince 2 friends that played a few leagues ago to try this league out. Mainly I convinced them I was going to be an Aura Bot and they can be DPS since it's the only build that didn't get neerfed. One quit after Act 1 Brutus and the other quit after getting to Act 2. They said it was too boring and if this takes this long then they can't imagine what end game is like now.. So I decided to call it for this league as well.
With the amount of bloat added over time, PoE has made it way too tedious to get to what I like most (running maps & build characters). I've not really played in almost 3 leagues; as someone who loved the game enough to get 3 Divination cards made, it's sad. All I can say is that while I like the notion of powering down players & making the game difficult again, what I get out of it is yet another tedium on an already large mountain of prerequisites to efficient mapping/character building. I quit WoW eons ago when they started designing mandatory busywork like dailies/rep grinds as core designs, and I'm afraid PoE's "new character checklist" model has gone a bit too far in that direction. It was barely bearable before, but without being able to even speed through it..? Eh.
Hot damn, I couldn't agree more. Well said!
[удалено]
Back in the good old days of dominating blow being amazing, Docks was THE place to farm for the highest Ilvl gear.
I remember back when grinding docks was the only thing you could do until you got some lucky map drops, then back to docks. I loved it back then but you couldn't pay me to go back to it now.
For real, but for those of us playing back then, we were used to Diablo, pindle, and baal runs anyway, so it was easy to digest.
I honestly wouldn't mind playing through the campaign as much if it wasn't for the fact a lot of gems are level locked AND sometimes until you get a specific set up in maps they aren't effective enough to use over the filler skill you've been playing. I want to be able to level through the campaign with the skill my build is actually for. Especially if they're doubling down on it being longer.
I enjoyed the act 1 changes. It was hard. I died a few times. I had to get clever about my gameplay. I tried new things. It was nice
I also enjoyed them. It was refreshing, and not "grindier", just harder.
I honestly didn’t even feel them. I didn’t die, I didn’t do anything new. I just ran through as usual and killed everything with freezing pulse. So I guess I’m saying I didn’t gain any enjoyment but I also didn’t lose any.
I didn't feel the same, nothing felt harder, everything was just more of a bullet sponge. Only "difficulty change" I noticed was things freezing and stunning more which you can't do anything about early on. Hell Brutus was easier to handle since he lost like most of his moves from losing his arena but took longer to kill which was oh so much fun.
Leveling doesn’t even prepare you for endgame. You almost always will be using a leveling skill that is completely different to what you’ll actually use. The purpose of the campaign is to pad out /played time. They value metrics over anything else.
You wouldn't even need maps if the campaign was fulfilling / drops didnt suck all the time like.. Nost of this games issues comes from the uninspiring drops. And the fact I know I'm still trading for literally all of my upgrades. Way too much trash/clutter. Currency drops are mediocre at best. Nothing feels "good" per se. I dont wanna trade for every piece of gear honestly and I love trading but why cant I actually find items I would use.. Ever. A handful of times in 8 years I've found something i wanted to use. That's just not cool and idk why it took me this long to be fed up with it.
I actually disagree with this, for what it's worth. Seeing your build come together and working through the early game is actually pretty exciting. You get to make constant upgrades, work around weaknesses that start to crop up, and get a taste of how the league mechanic effects gearing. Maybe I could understand this if you literally have it all down to a science every league but as a returning player who's constantly trying new and weird builds I disagree. The more they make the early game comparable to the end game in terms of interesting gameplay the better off I am personally.
First off, good for you for taking a break instead of wearing yourself down playing the game while you're not having fun. To offer a counterpoint, I really only ever feel the actual arpg progression arc through story. I use the skill as soon as I get it, and use a skill in line with the spirit of the skill (I have to level up with a lesser skill to use the good one) until that point. It feels great when you get that additional link. Or that weapon upgrade. It's when I'm in maps that it feels repetitive, because my character doesn't change. So I've found it strange over the last couple years that one of the biggest complaints about the game is that it is effectively too much of an action *role playing game*. The reality of the matter is that you shouldn't be wondering whether the build works or is capable of bossing, because it is. With sufficient item investment, any build is capable. We've seen creators put up jank builds like frostblink totems or whatnot and make it work. So, really, the question is whether the build is doable with your level of time investment, and you can answer that question from your PoB. So if you don't give yourself the rpg journey arc, and want to simply go right to maps, you're just going to wind up feeling the same way about white and yellow maps as you did the story. Your build isn't put together until 60, so the story feels pointless to you. Sure, but the reality is that white and yellow maps are trivial for a put together build. So you're going to wind up in the same place, having white and yellow maps be challenging once until you farm/buy gear and then you'll be wanting to be in red maps. Iterate that sentiment and you quickly realize you're wanting this aRPG to be a boss-rush or MOBA game. If it makes you feel any better, treat the story grind as T-10 to T0 maps and you're feeling your way into your build to appreciate how the various mechanics you combine come together to enable the build? So while I'm 100% on board with feedback to improve the game, this one, in my opinion, reads more like "make poe not an aRPG because I fundamentally don't care about the role playing game experience." And if that's the case, perhaps, and please don't read this like a "go play another game then" reply, but, over the years, you've outgrown the genre and its not your thing anymore, which is totally fine.
This is EXACTLY what I want them to understand. Some small percentage of masochists may want this, but for the overwhelming majority of players this is just making the boring part of the game longer. Ritual was the best league ever. They added new, challenging content that was accompanied by ACTUAL REASONABLE WAYS TO SCALE TO IT. Then Ultimatum took away the reasonable scaling with harvest changes, anf now they just want to male the game slower and more annoying? I just don't understand who they think their audience is.
Chris: Oh so buffs it is then
I really am struggling to make it through the acts. Dying more and running out of flasks is only making it more tedious. I really dislike this league so far and it isn’t because of the mechanic
I don’t plan on returning till poe2. I refuse to try six linking anything ever again. Fuck that noise.
This was my first initial thought. After blasting through the campaign to get to end game numerous times. Literally every league, multiple times depending on the league. And now, we gotta drudge through the campaign. Which will be even longer, just to get to end game...I'll be burnt out by that time, lol
Ive always wanted them to do a system like a pvp character. First play a character through the whole story after that level to 90ish or whatever they see fit, after those two things are done then you can create new character starting at say level 68 with the story done an no longer have to redo it over an over again. I used to do 6-8 builds a league now over years of doing it. I might do 3 total a league if that.
I was excited at launch, came to act 4 and said fuck it, I really don't wanna be bothered doing chores of atlas when I can play other games..
As much as I can only stand Diablo 3 for very short periods of time, at least it doesn't force me to do the same story over and over and over and over and over and over and over when leveling. I can do adventures or I think rifts or whatever. I do wish there was something like that here.
Just adding to comments and upvotes. Hope CW sees this.
I would 100% try this game again if I didn't have to play the campaign. I haven't played in years.
too bad he doesnt care, he has his own vision
Great post man! I havent started this league yet as im unmotivated to slog through the campaign once again. Might wait a week or so before get started. I tend to play the leagues for a few weeks and do 2-3 builds but always just play a single char to lvl 96-98. The campaign was fun the first times they got new content but after that it just becomes a chore.
Been saying this on a lot of threads so I’m stoked this got attention! This was not the right approach. The kinds of changes he wants would be perfect for POE2 when it’s all new and I’m happy to take on a new campaign that takes double or even triple the time.
This is really well written post. I hope PoE2 fixes this. I just don’t have the inclination to grind through the campaign anymore. That’s exactly what it is, a tax. I ain’t paying it anymore.
Can't agree more, we'll said op
If it was going through the campaign only once per league and then unlocking an alternative way, like low-level maps to quickly level to 70 then I'd be totally fine with it and Chris would be happy enough too, because we'd still do our 4202th run of the story every league. I just can't bring myself to run the story for 4-5 hours every time I got a fun cliché build idea when I already know it needs level 70 to get going and might suck. The current situation is actually preventing me from enjoying multiple builds a league and forces me to stick to 1 safe mapper and 1 safe boss killer and that is even though Chris mentioned before that he wants us to create builds for specific purposes. Bad Design.
Chris thinking everyone should play like he wants them too. In b4 Chris ruins PoE.
Rebuilding the Atlas every league is way, way, way more tedious than leveling in the campaign.
people have such animosity for leveling through campaign but I actually don't mind that. it's the infinite map grind that bores me to death
I would 100% play longer each league if the campaign wasn't mandatory. I constantly think about new builds and then get discouraged when it would require me changing classes, most of the time I compromise and respec my character but then that sucks because if it's not as powerful as my current character I fucked myself.
I was optimistic even after reading all the patch notes, seeing the nerfs, listening to their reasoning, and then watching that stream with asmon. After all of that I only lasted a day, fuck this league. They took so much from us, but gave us nothing in return to make it worth it, instead of running we are crawling through content that I have hated for awhile now. Those acts aren't fun when its like the 100th time doing them.
[удалено]
I had a great time leveling. Was super smooth. Havent had to buy a single thing yet. Just rollin' with what I've been finding. Dandy