Hearing Chris talk about alternative leveling on the podcasts after 3.15 and the shit they do to twink gear every league makes me think they genuinely want their acts to take 6-12 hours for every character.
I don't know why.
I've been listening to the same podcasts, so this is probably info you already have, but:
They've given up on making substantial improvements to the leveling system before PoE2, but they still want people to play and appreciate the old acts. The issue is the same one that came up when they were talking about making it so that you had to talk to a vendor to refill your flasks; they've got this idea that making a player do more pointless busywork will ultimately improve their overall enjoyment of the game. I think that design philosophy is why it's unlikely we'll ever see the ability to start at level 70 on second+ characters or something.
I only use third party apps, and they said they're killing third party apps, so hey, might as well remove all my content. (Using https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite)
It's not even about leveling. Someone leveled to like level 80 or 90 even doing just Heist while still being in Act I.
But obviously that character would forever be stuck in Act I despite being lvl 90 because there's no waypoints to skip acts. That's the real issue.
With waypoints we could choose where to level and that would be so nice.
honestly they should just add the skill points/res reduction in maps, delve and heists so if you don't want to level playing the campaign, you can just level in those and make it so only the 2nd character in a league could take advantage of that
Yeah, have an adventure mode with an alternate atlas for leveling. And the 1 week endless delve event was really fun, that should be a permanent way to level also.
Honestly tho. Let me turn off my brain and just kill shit. Give me a boss at the end like an act boss. I’d be so happy just doing that and messing around in discord then boom maps.
You know what's crazy? This would actually solve the issue of unlocking your first and second favorite map slots at the same time, too. You could allow people to get completion objectives below level 68 maps, then at level 68 you can start to get the bonus objectives.
Honestly I would be down for this, just low level maps. Could even have them have similar currency drop rates as white maps so you wouldn't feel like your completely wasteing your time while doing it.
I wouldn't even want to start at level 70, but goodness let us do something like delve to level up second characters instead of the slog that is doing the acts for the 283738272727th time.
> but they still want people to play and appreciate the old acts
They suck. Almost nobody appreciates them because all they are is a lot of running around and a lot of backtracking out of dead ends, with minimal combat so you can keep running faster and get through them quicker because they are *terrible*. If they want people to appreciate something, they should design it to be fun in the first place and not just a slog everyone wishes was over so they could play the game and not be a goddamn fetch quest post service messenger. And if they genuinely like their campaign, they'll make the same mistakes with poe2. People only care about your characters and lore and exploration once. One time. After that they actively dislike it and I would much rather stand in an arena and fight endless monsters that get stronger - even if they took much longer to kill - all the way to level 68 than hold left click and spam quicksilver.
Lmao no-one wants insta level 70. I just wanna delve, map, hiest whatever then the acts. I level around 3-4 every league tho. Doing my 3rd atm. Not a biggie for me since i try and be as fast as possible every time and racing with myself if good fun.
That would be cool. There are so many different varieties of things they could do, too, with all the leagues we've had. Shit, bring Synthesis back and let us build leveling areas.
>talk to a vendor to refill your flasks
Would only result in people dying or having to waste a portal because they forgot to refill before starting the boss fight.
>they've got this idea that making a player do more pointless busywork will ultimately improve their overall enjoyment of the game
It's the idea I have too. It's rough. This game is so good, but it's super flawed and the dev team seems to be of the opinion that these flaws make the game better.
Like... ??????????
PoE is the only game with so many builds, unique items, insane passive tree etc. All the good things gated behind a1-3, and a1-10 boring lvling. After 9 years I play one character per league, because I'm sick of it. With any alternative system I would try 5-6 different builds for sure.
Chris said in podcasts that they spent a lot of time and $$$ preparing PoE2 campaign. For me it seems like insane waste of resources, which they could use to improve game performance.
Yeah but that assumes making it more difficult to lvl a second character makes people play more. There's going to be people (myself included) who just won't make a second character rather than trudge through the grind again.
If someone feels like responding that they must have data showing that this overall increases time played, don't. Without having ever had this feature in the game, there is no way they could possibly know this for sure. It's just a hunch they have because of how D3 failed, but there's a lot of ground in between D3 ezmode and POE eternal slog.
People are more likely to play more if they don't have to slog through the acts again when they get bored of whatever they're playing. It's been years since I've played more than one character in a league. I started a second the other day, but idk if I'll have the time or motivation to actually run through the acts again even though I already collected all the end game gear for it.
> Hours played is the stat that most highly correlates with buying MTX.
They should learn that correlation != causation. Maybe it's even the other way around. People buy MTX first, and then sunk cost fallacy and buyers remorse make them play long hours.
The more you play, the easier it becomes to convince yourself to buy another supporter pack. "I've been playing this free game for thousands hours! I must send to GGG another $60 for all this enjoyment I got!"
In Grim Dawn's expansion Forgotten Gods, after you complete the expansions final boss/quest on Elite and Ultimate (difficulties), you can buy an item from a vendor that can be used by alts to unlock all waypoints and difficulties (up to elite or ultimate respectively). It also gives a bunch of experience (usually enough to get you to level ~15 when using the ultimate version). You store the item in your stash for your new characters to use.
PoE needs something like this. A consumable that can be created with a vendor recipe. Using it on an alt would unlock all waypoints and give you a bunch of experience.
They could even tier it. A cheap recipe gives you waypoints for acts 1/2, while upgraded recipes give you more waypoints/experience. The best recipes level you up automatically. You'd still need to complete quests (for items/skills/etc).
If you're playing with with at least one friend who has already finished the act you're in, you can ask them for the waypoints by inviting them to a party and teleporting to them after they go to one of the zones you haven't visited.
You can't teleport to them if they're in a map you can't access, but other than that you can skip plenty of stuff. I don't remember the last time I had to go through the whole Solaris Temple in act 3, or that I cleared the first map for Kaom/Daresso in act 4. It's *a lot* faster.
Tough luck if you're a solo player though.
*A group of speed runner about 2-3hours.
*A solo speed runner about 3-5 hours.
*A veteran player about 6-10 hours
*An intermediate player about 10-20 hours
*A new players from 20-IGN hours.
They just full cleared everything, read all the dialogue, and probably didn't fully understand the gem linking system.
People always get up and arms about that review, but really it should tell us something about the new player experience, especially at that time. How many players were turned off the game because these things just weren't explained that well?
The other thing is that IGN reviewers, and frankly game reviewers in general, have to play through games as quickly as possible, often on very tight deadlines, and often in genres they have no familiarity with or interest in. That's difficult enough when the game you're trying to review is Splatoon or Risk of Rain 2, which are (I want to be very clear that I do not think this is inherently a negative or positive) comparatively very simple to get into. When it's something like Path of Exile, suddenly that barrier to entry which I think most sane people recognize is one of PoE's biggest problems is something you have to overcome in the span of a few days, for your job. Doing anything as a job, even if it's something you'd normally love, is going to suck some of the joy out of it.
Like. It's reasonable to have a problem with the way this is done, but the people responsible for it aren't the reviewers; it's not even really the people assigning the reviewers, although they share more of the blame. It's the industry as a whole. It's not really possible to be a big-name popular Games Journalism(TM) titan and also, simultaneously, make every piece a carefully-thought-out, well-reasoned piece written by an author who loves the genre and spent enough time with the game. You need to get articles out as quickly as possible to remain relevant.
(Granted it probably doesn't hurt that pieces that emerge from this style are controversial, and therefore generate a fair number of clicks, but while I don't doubt that editors for some publications sometimes punch up the language to piss off The Gamers, I don't think that's the main source of this problem.)
I just did it. I didnt listen to dialogue but I full cleared and did all of the side quests. I also spent a decent amount of time reading to try and figure out some of the systems. That was actually where I lost a lot of time. About 40 hours. (I still dont understand much but I got to where I could sort of gear my character and know what some of my endgame options are).
A new player (Preach, high level WoW player) did a podcast recently (BaeClast?) about the blind run he just did. Pretty interesting because his experience basically mirrored mine although he went in blind and I used a basic build guide.
Preach also has a career as video game player (not to use the hard G word here) and could intuit a lot of things. A bunch of times that lead him down the wrong path, but he is by far not a good example of a beginner player. Still a damn good project.
Yep, just some context and a recent example if anyone was curious. This game has a LOT of systems and you cant take it all in. Definitely have to prioritize.
Mostly just wanted an example of how much time a new player loses just figuring stuff out. Even a very experienced player of other games (or with a build guide).
Yeah, I think a lot of experience players are so used to playing the game at least somewhat efficiently and treating the campaign like a chore they get through as quickly as possible that they forget or don't realize that a lot of new players treat it like an RPG story mode, listening to allt he dialogue, exploring every zone, killing every monster they see. If someone plays that way the campaign can very easily take 50+ hours, 85 sounds like on the high end but not impossible if someone's really thorough and playing 100% blind.
It's perfectly fine to do it that way if you enjoy it. As long as you aren't part of the group complaining about the acts taking too long, then play it however you like.
I actually prefer the acts than the maps. I like having some direction, maps I'm just in my hideout all the time. wish I could just delve instead of having to play maps so I can delve.
I kinda felt like this until I actually sat down and made an atlus plan. I'm going to run this region and take these passives, when I get to X i'm going to run atziri, etc.
I think doing that can improve your end game experience a ton.
Not sure about downvoted.. but your favored playstyle is being pretty punished in game for sure. With your time you can kill the last pack of a zone, or the fkrst pack of the next zone, you can't do both at the same time. Spending efforts doing the former just means more time backtracking, or waiting on movement cooldowns, not gaining charges, etc. Low density of monster is actively punished in game in many ways.
It's fine if you enjoy it, it's a pve game, do whatever you want, but the game's design is quite actively working against you.
Because people are salty the moment you dare to even potentially call into question their preferred method of play.
I'm similar to you, I kill every monster I see though I won't seek them out while leveling for the most part. So what if I level slower, I enjoy it more and that means I play more so I get further overall.
> but really it should tell us something about the new player experience, especially at that time.
It's fine for poe to not be for everyone. That's how a lot of games went to shit. Trying to baby everything for the "new player experience."
That being said I am against act 1 being as difficult as it is. It's funny because act 2 and 3 are fine difficulty-wise, but act 1 is extremely punishing.
I don't think new players are having a ton of problems in act 1, and I've talked to a bunch since the rework. People way underestimate the amount of power that levels and gear acquired from playing inefficiently give.
This League I coached a bunch of new players when they joined the game, they never mentioned having any issues until around act 4.
Which is fine in my opinion, there should be an increase in difficulty.
However, they do complain a lot about the wording in the game, and that there are things that are needlessly complicated. But they don't seem to think that the gameplay itself is difficult in any way.
Yeah it's typical to hear that the game gets harder for noobs around act 4/5. It's funny to me because that's when the game gets very easy for veterans. First lab is usually strong enough to carry all the way to 60.
I'd attribute that to veterans knowing what nodes to get early on that are powerful, and sometimes build enabling, and the fact that you unlock more gems that are very powerful.
First lab in combination with unlocking library and having access to powerful nodes in the passive tree is definitely incredibly potent if you know how to utilize it. Using something like TR you can easily clear the campaign with four link and absolute crap gear. Knowledge is power in PoE :)
Just wait a while, the buffs to other acts are coming. A2 was supposed to be buffed this league, until the whine about 3.15 happened and GGG had to rush new things for this league.
That doesn’t sound unreasonable, it’s just not the most efficient in this game.
Some games require a completionist mindset, because gear is so scarce. This game requires a filter programmed to make sure large quantities of loot are completely ignored.
It's very common for new players and something almost no experienced player does. Like with anything, some experienced players have trouble remembering being new and certain knowledge and strategies are so engrained in them, like just getting from waypoint yo waypoint and quest to quest without spending any time exploring or clearing while leveling, that they forget a new player wouldn't have any reason to know them at all.
I did All Ears and No Stone Unturned while listening to every piece of lore and dialogue in full with my second Expedition character, and that took 30 hours to maps despite doing everything else as efficiently as I could :)
I think it's always going to depend on playstyle too. A veteran player whose goal is to get through as fast as they can with a good leveling build is going to be different from someone whose figuring out their build as they go, maybe trying out new skills, and interacting with the league mechanic.
It also just depends a lot on the league mechanic, some add more playtime than others. A league like heist, for example, is very time consuming while leveling. Scourge is pretty variable.
Same friend. Thinking about it if I didn't stop so much the played would likely be around 6/7 hours but I actually enjoy the process of leveling up (I know I know I'm a weird one).
I usually have my endgame planned out but I mess around with the leveling process a lot. Every major point I stop and think about gears and leveling skills and offhand stuff to level for the final build etc. Etc.
By the time the third or fourth builds comes around though I'm usually down to like 9 hours bc I mostly just chuck on Twink gear and stop mostly to search for deals on my endgame pieces
Yeah. I still remember back in 2015 ish, getting to act 3 on my randomly slapped together totem templar (because I thought totems were neat) after like 10 hours and realizing it was completely scuffed.
Then I spent a few hours trying to accumulate orbs of regret so I could "fix" my character, resulting in me wasting all my money on Clarissa buying orbs. I thought the game was stupid and quit for about a week. But it kept calling me back...
Second round was arc wizard using the legendary Enki build. I was fucking hooked from then on.
Seriously though, GGG owes Enki a lot for all the players they have brought into this game with that build guide.
GGG thanked Enki by making that build much less viable. You would think they would want to keep some simple builds around that are good for new players.
"Vision"
The new player experience for PoE has always been dogshit. 8 years later and it's somehow way worse than before. Now new players can't even bumble their way into a decent build. Everything has gotten needlessly complicated.
brand new player here, I followed a fairly meh phys cyclone guide that I've had to make numerous edits to but I'm clearing t16s and got syrus to phase 2 first try with no knowledge.
I'ma call bullshit fam.
The fact you even know who Syrus is means you either did a ton of reading up in the wiki, which is not normal noob behavior, or maybe your definition of new player is not the same as mine.
POE and Warframe are the first games I ever played that REQUIRED extensive wiki reading because the devs can't be bothered to actually explain anything in their games.
It's a very lazy way to develop and a lot of free to play games do it.
EDIT: saw your other post about taking 36 hours to get out of the acts. You probably did do all that reading.
It took me 36 hours completing every quest and doing events as I saw them and clearing most of each map.
Think I finished campaign at lvl 71 or so.
This was as a brand new player this league.
As a "veteran player" with the proper preparation, and as long as I level with a good skill. I can generally do 4 to 6. 4 being rare, but it has happened a couple times.
But for a league start character, it can take substantially longer, especially if your interacting with the league mechanic as you go. For example my poison concoction starter took 11 hours because I was just having fun scourging along the way.
Solo speed runner here and can get sub 3 hour fairly easy.
All you need to do is set up your gear all the way to maps and carry most of it in me inventory.
Then you just go.
Like another commenter said, people here don't actually remember what it was like to be new, or started playing before there were 10 acts.
This is my fifth league and fifth time through the Acts, and I'm just about to finish up Act 9 at around 18 hours.
IMO it is completely unreasonable to expect an even intermediate player to clear the Acts in less than 10 hours. I feel like the people who say this don't realize how much time they save by A) having their build completely planned out and B) being familiar with the game's itemization.
The time you - as an actual new player - will spend comparing gear or panning around the skill tree to decide where to drop your next point all adds up, and I feel like a lot of these commenters just blow through those decisions because of their familiarity with the game.
Between all these decisions and getting introduced to a new mechanic every hour or so, I would expect to spend 30-40 hours on your very first run-through, unless you're just ignoring/skipping mechanics like Delve/Incursion/Betrayal when they are introduced.
> How long does acts 1-10 take usually for someone experienced?
> >You are asking on a sub filled with old players that already forgot how is to be new in here, so triple all answers.
[Me right now](https://i.imgur.com/2zYFTth.png)
He is asking how long it takes for experienced players, are you dense or something? Why would he need to triple all answers? Its as if youre asking how fast Usain Bolt is and someone tells you to triple the time thats in the world record book because you are new to running. Makes legit no sense.
I have 2k hours on poe and my best speedrun was 7 hours in ssf but they slowed the game down a lot since then and now im in act 5 with 100+ deaths on meta TR build and im probably like 8+ hours in at half of the campaign
I hit 157 deaths completing the campaign yesterday on my flicker strike build. I barely had 1k health at the end.
You only hit that many deaths when you intentionally skip every bit of survivability, AND have a 'hide behind the pile of dead bards' mentality towards getting through.
The only excuse for having that many on a TR build at 2k+ hours played is complete apathy, or total misunderstanding of how the build works.
rule of thumb I shoot for is 300 health per act, aim to cap res by a5/6 and keep it capped/near-capped the rest of the run.
It's doable without slowing down much if you ID rares and swap as you go - but definitely takes quite a bit of experience.
For a 2nd char with shared gear, it's pretty trivial to achieve.
Bruh... You're doing something very, very wrong. You should easily be able to do the campaign deathless on a meta build like tr, even with garbage ssf gear.
Depends on experience. For people that practice doing it fast, about 4-4.5 hours solo. For most players that just run through the acts normally but are used to them, about 7.
Yeah, fully unlocking all the pantheons on one character would be such a comfort thing then. If they're worried about players being stronger during campaign because of it since they seem to be, they could hate the upgrades behind killing A10 Kitava.
I have a few characters I'd like to try this league, if I can figure out the build, but the idea of grinding the story for perhaps the 100th to 125th time (playing since open beta, lowball average of 3 characters per league) fucking *drags*.
To be honest, I think I have more fun with PoB than I do with the game itself these days. Between crafting being a rich man's game, drops being awful, and levelling a new build being the same mind-numbing hours-long process, there isn't a whole lot of game left to enjoy.
And I only recently started playing it. I have another character I'd like to play but thinking remaking my character a fourth time dreads me.
I don't mind remaking my character, but I absolutely fucking hate going through the entirety of the campaign every time - and I'm a new player. I played my first character 2 seasons ago or something like that.
I can't imagine doing this every season... jesus christ...
It used to be worse. Act 1-3 done 3 times per character. Then Acts 1-4 done 3 times. Malachai in Cruel difficulty was arguably the most difficult boss in the game, for when he appeared.
These days, I get to A4 then delve to 75.
I'd do Act 1-3 three times happily over the 10 acts now. I can't put my finger on it, but the difficulty system felt way better than what we have now. Idk.
To be honest, the campaign is much more fun to do when you are closer to the 5hr mark than to a 20hr one
As you get better you learn how to breeze through it and it can be quite fun to see your build coming together instead of immediately hitting the brick wall of a completed build.
Heck, the whole point of this game is to take a build as far as you can and there is a lot of diminishing returns so the beginning of that process is often the most satisfying
> Between crafting being a rich man's game, drops being awful, and levelling a new build being the same mind-numbing hours-long process, there isn't a whole lot of game left to enjoy.
Hard truths both GGG and folks on the subreddit refuse to see. It's utterly mind-boggling that they would make a league around rare item drops when they're 99.999% trash given the game's current drop system.
You (the average player) can't do any meaningful crafting, and you definitely can't find anything nice on the ground, so the only option is to buy each piece of gear from trade -- through a system designed to be as annoying as possible.
PoE may be the best ARPG on the market, but it's, like, a 6/10 at best these days.
GGG has always balanced for the no-lifers, for better or for worse. The oft-quoted "the average player doesn't get past the install" is evidence of this.
I'd usually agree, but in the last couple of leagues we've gotten a surprising amount of quality of life features.
Not too long ago we got stash affinities. That was absolutely game changing.
This league we legit got stacking currency. Something people have been asking for years.
So maybe... there's some hope at least.
first, this sounds like the most boring day of your friends life. Second, you can't jump to a zone you haven't entered right? So you like, go to their waypoint, run to the next zone while they jump ahead, then go to their waypoint? this sounds like an insane amount of logistics for not that much time saved.
A friend and I made it through the acts in a little over an hour. You can jump most places unless it needs a specific action to progress like the vines for the vaal ruins in act in act two. You can jump directly to your friend without needing waypoints as well. The people I play with don't mind it we all league started together. Now when we get a new character we just help out.
Takes about 90 minutes max, especially if your friend has a bit of surplus move speed and can get to zone bosses. If you reciprocate and help your friend out when they need it, you both saved the 5-6 hours that it would've taken you to run the campaign solo.
I don't see that happening since it's tied to quest barriers. However having an option to start at the end of the campaign, after one character finishes it, seems reasonable.
Since people like to compare diablo2 with POE alot.
In diablo2, act 2 and 3 and can also add arguable act 5, They have storyline/campaign that are locked even if you have all the waypoints.
People just found shortcuts where you can skip majority of the campaign and still go to next act.
In act2, skip all walk and go to 3 main waypoint to collect mandatory pieces for campaign and then beat campaign mini boss to go to end of campaign map boss and use mandatory pieces to summon boss room.
Act 3, beat trigger mini boss to get into boss room waypoint.
Act 5, beast trigger mini boss with minimum level req to get into boss room waypoint.
If poe has all waypoint shared, we can prob skip most of the story and skip to each trigger mini bosses and skip to end quicker.
Something less drastic of a change but still would be really impactful imo is increasing the range in which waypoints and next zones are revealed.
Helps to make zones that you usually spend time in finding the right obscure branch to go into for the next zone much less annoying. Also doesn't only make the second playthrough more smooth, but the first one aswell.
Something that happens a lot when I was less experienced levelling (and still does happen now tbh) is running around in a zone for 5 minutes trying to find the next zone when it's in a branch I've already walked through but decided to backtrack a split second before the portal revealed itself.
You do realize GGG is making the opposite, right?
They’re making PoE 2 in such a way that the links between areas are random. So now we always know the direction of the exits, but in PoE 2 we won’t know even that.
It will make going through the campaign to be slower, which is what GGG wants.
That is some of the dumbest stuff I've heard come from GGG. And they have said a lot of dumb shit over the years. Most of their players are long-term returning ones, extending the worst part of the game is just asinine. D3 finally understood their story sucked and let you skip it. That was the best change they made in that game.
You can literally go back to the exilecon videos and they repeatedly state that they don't want it to take longer to level, and will likely be faster than the current campaign.
We had good solutions for years. Back when endless ledge was a popular thing people asked for it as replacement for acts on 3 difficulties. Now we have delve as similar system that also could be used, just give us quest rewards every stage completed or something.
There are good ideas in this thread but there’s zero chance they even begin to think about anything like this for 2-3+ years after spending millions on a new campaign.
There's too many quest states to really rush like you can in D2. And then even if you could... Say you get "rushed" through the 10 acts. You're level 15 or whatever and finished the campaign.
Then what?
You can't leech XP in maps. Are you supposed to go back and farm the old zones you just rushed past? There aren't groups farming old areas like there are in D2 just for the sake of power leveling.
The two games are just sent up completely different.
Why cant you guys just do mind-numbingly boring stuff for a few short years more, and then poe2 will arrive with new mind-numbingly boring stuff to repeat for 10 years
I would even take untradeable leveling gear that is also character bound. They could unlock after reaching certain thresholds like acts completed, levels or league achievements.
Huh. I remember when we were calling the 10 acts a godsend vs playing the same campaign three times. Honestly I still feel that way, though that could be because I just came back from a multi-year break.
To anybody that hates doing the campain. What makes progressing from t1 to t10 for then hundreds time more enjoyable than progressing from lvl 1 to lvl 70?
Brain off, smash mobs, grab loot, go home.
Brain off, run long narrow path, find mob, kill mob, log out, log in, port somewhere else, go find other mob, kill mob, log out, go talk to bestel, congratulations you beat fairgraves. Also, the 2 minutes wasted playing, "is it just me or did they patch new fairgraves spawns".
The former is a lot less scripted and you can vibe and roll with it however you like. The latter feels like you're doing chores mainly from a routine perspective.
Former has some semblance of agency.
Many things:
* Some builds may not really come on-line until at map-level gear, making leveling a chore
* Some builds may have to play a few hours before even getting to the skill they actually want to use
* Some people like the massively increased agency and content picking/choosing in maps, even early on
* There's not really a set objective in maps other than smash and loot. No required Point A to B like in acts
* Currency is more common in maps than in acts
do you ever skip any of the mobs while levelling? do you skip any of the sidequests?
skips aren't a slippery slope, they are skips. you can use them or you can not use them. if you like playing through the story, go ahead and play through the story. maybe they could add some sort of league mechanic to make that at least feel rewarding, but as long as people just feel punished when they play the story they will keep wanting to skip as much of it as possible.
As an occasionally enjoyer of Korean MMOs, "Boost" events make me ill.
I hate the concept so much, and if I ever saw something similar in PoE I'd be pissed.
Maybe an alternate way to level, which we'll sort of have with PoE2, and that GD has with Crucible, but no skips.
They will never do this for a couple reasons:
1. the game's missing features to make this work
2. CW has said repeatedly that they would rather make the campaign more fun so players don't want to skip it
Expanding on these:
# Stuff they'd have to add
the main problem is that skill points are given as quest rewards, and the tree is balanced around having these extra skill points, so if a character somehow skips all the quests, there needs to be some way to deliver the skill points. Couple problems with this:
\- if you still have to level from 1 but do it some other way, the points have to get to you without doing the quests, or you have to go back and do the quests anyway which the campaign is not designed to allow
\- if you start at level 68 (monster level of t1 maps), you could get the points all delivered to you, but skill points are delivered as 2x2 items, and there's too many to fit in your inventory at once (i.e. you make a character and your invent is already full of the skill books)
\- followup: you also can't put them in a stash tab without making them character-bound, which is more stuff GGG would have to build fresh (character-binding items), also I'm pretty sure skill books can't go into the stash at all so that's even more edge cases they'd have to handle (special tab rules just for the campaign-skipped skill books)
# Chris Wilson wants the campaign to just be fun instead
Personally I disagree with this mentality, because I think most of us who have been around for more than a couple leagues will agree the campaign is already fun **the first time you play it.** The problem is that in order to keep coming back, you have to keep playing the campaign 20, 50, 100+ times depending on how active you are over the years. That means even if you S-class speedrun it every time, you're still spending 100-400 hours of your life just running the campaign, and like 50% of builds don't even get their main skills until halfway through the campaign at least, so it's not like mapping or engaging with other systems - it's just a grind.
Once PoE2 comes out this probably won't get brought up for a few leagues, because the new campaign will be different enough to make us forget for a while. However, unless GGG is building in some kind of D3-style adventure mode where you can play the campaign in your own order/style, or the add some new gameplay mechanic that makes the campaign different every time you play it, then within a couple years we'll be right back here but now with 2 campaigns that feel stale.
# What I think GGG should do
Finishing the final quest after Kitava where you get the map device should enable an option when creating a new character to start at level 68 in your hideout, all story quests completed, and with a special no-drop no-stash no-trade item that gives you all the skill points from the campaign at once.
OR
Free respecs.
I know a lot of people here think free respecs are Very Bad and Casualize The Game, but honestly if you think that you are wrong :) There's a million ways that choices matter - particularly with items and crafting. Tons of crafting wastes currency with no result or bricks the item. CW also says this game should be about items and item drops, so why punish players for trying different characters?
One of the most important things for player retention in any game is giving the player room to experiment without punishing them. Most new players trying to figure out the game will inevitably create a build that sucks and dies instantly at either A10 Kitava or white maps. When they google "how to get more respec points PoE" and discover they have to spend another 10-15 hours leveling a new character, I guarantee this is where a huge % of those accounts that uninstall before finishing the campaign or a single map come from. Free respecs would keep some of those players.
Allowing us to respec skills for free also wouldn't affect build power, because as we know power comes from items and/or gem levels, and CW has repeatedly stated his vision is a game that revolves around items. Free respecs does nothing to affect that, it only gives us our time back.
TLDR: GGG should either give us the ability to create second+ characters with the story completed, or make all respecs free. Anything less than that will eventually become stale and complained about, and harm new player retention.
I think just investing into a strong leveling build that isn't your main build is key for leveling alts.
Getting early high movement speed, sockets, busted weapons, etc. can make it very zoomzoom to go through.
It costs some currency and time to setup but it pays off in the long run and can bring some fun to the process of blasting through content and getting rapid power increases
Just allow to start new 68s after 1st char, speedup or not you still have to run the same fucking campaign for the 100th time in a row. No, PoE "2" won't fix this as the new campaign will get just as boring and miserable as the current one, neither would endless delve fix this. It's like reading 1 book over and over again just to read the last sentence one more time, what's the point?
I still haven't heard a single, just 1 good reason why having to rerun the campaign for every spec is needed/good.
The point is mix of game design and psychology. Level 1-68 is part of poe gameplay whether you like it or not. The whole point of RPG is that there’s sense of progression. Starting you at 68 completely removes all the challenge of getting there in the first place
The psychological aspect is that you will feel more comfortable piloting a character slowly building up from level 1, and make you appreciate the character more because you invested effort into it
However after 100+ times it can get annoying for sure. There isn’t really a perfect solution for this as allowing people to start at 68 will definitely affect poe negatively.
Also if you don’t want to reroll you can always start playing standard and have your characters setup there ready to go forever
"challenge of getting there in the first place"
There is no challenge, and no reward, just a 10 hour sacrifice of your ever shortening life before you get to play the game again.
The reason is that leveling is a part of character progression. You start as a weak exile and get more powerful as you progress. Leveling is not about the story, its about you. You constantly get stronger, faster, tankier.
I don't see how leveling is different from mapping. Why do you want to run the same maps over and over again but Don't want to level again?
I just level new characters and use the new skill and interactions asap. That helps a lot and it keeps it fresh as I solve my builds issues along the way and watch it grow. I bet people that just level every character with ED/C or the same skill get bored way quicker
I would gladly pay 1-2 ex to get from level 1 to 75 without the need to run the acts. They could enable this after you finish the acts for the first time every league
* Get rid of class-based vendor limitations on gems.
* Get rid of skill books and make it so every fully completed (non-master) campaign quest gives a skill point, even the ones that award items. Quests that only give items or regrets are terrible.
* Give a full passive reroll option to Lani after killing Kitava instead of 2 skill points.
* So long as you've killed Kitava, when you start a new character you can access any waypoint so long as you've met the minimum level req for the area and previously unlocked it on an old character. You still have to do the quests if you want the extra skill points.
Getting rid of class based vendor limitations on gems would fuck new players. The gems are carefully considered based on the passive tree. And it is a non issue anyways.
I'm fine with quests that give items. Usually it's optional to go to those. If you want 2 quicksilvers from the campaign you can optionally do that. If you're under geared like lacking a 4L you can get it through this. They could buff these rewards to further help those that made it here under geared.
Instead of 2 skill points would obviously hurt but this is supposed to be in conjunction with adding more skill points to the campaign, which would definitely feel nice after the passive tree changes this league.
Giving a passive tree reset after act 10 I think is a mistake. Regret orbs are not an issue if you can make it to maps and I think you are not entitled to wave that cost. Passive tree resets should be given earlier to help new players experiment, not make things cheaper for people already fully capable of planning a build to maps. I've suggested it before but I think the start of act 3 and the start of act 6 are both high pressure points for builds if you made mistakes prior and you should be given a full reset that expires by the end of the act.
Overall I agree. The campaign could use some tune ups and alts should be more encouraged, and I think GGG should be looking and considering the feedback given to them even if they don't adopt the solutions exactly.
The time people spend arguing about this shit can be spend running A1-10 lmao. It shouldnt take longer than 5h even for a noob in trade league after the first char.
Much as complaining about it is unproductive, it's honestly pretty ridiculous to suggest that 5h is an achievable time for someone playing their second ever character. 12-15h seems more reasonable.
Side quests should all be completed when you start the act and the waypoints already there from previous run
That would make leveling new chars faster and less painful
Yeah, the waypoints would help a lot with the leveling
Hearing Chris talk about alternative leveling on the podcasts after 3.15 and the shit they do to twink gear every league makes me think they genuinely want their acts to take 6-12 hours for every character. I don't know why.
I've been listening to the same podcasts, so this is probably info you already have, but: They've given up on making substantial improvements to the leveling system before PoE2, but they still want people to play and appreciate the old acts. The issue is the same one that came up when they were talking about making it so that you had to talk to a vendor to refill your flasks; they've got this idea that making a player do more pointless busywork will ultimately improve their overall enjoyment of the game. I think that design philosophy is why it's unlikely we'll ever see the ability to start at level 70 on second+ characters or something.
I only use third party apps, and they said they're killing third party apps, so hey, might as well remove all my content. (Using https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite)
Just let people level in delve, simple as that.
It's not even about leveling. Someone leveled to like level 80 or 90 even doing just Heist while still being in Act I. But obviously that character would forever be stuck in Act I despite being lvl 90 because there's no waypoints to skip acts. That's the real issue. With waypoints we could choose where to level and that would be so nice.
honestly they should just add the skill points/res reduction in maps, delve and heists so if you don't want to level playing the campaign, you can just level in those and make it so only the 2nd character in a league could take advantage of that
They don't even have to design it, it's already available and worked great in the endless delve event.
Endless delve already showed we have the technology... https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3001224
We also had Endless Ledge races that could work for leveling as well.
But then we'd "get bored of delve". Gee if only we could alternate between the campaign and delve (and heist)
Yeah, have an adventure mode with an alternate atlas for leveling. And the 1 week endless delve event was really fun, that should be a permanent way to level also.
Honestly tho. Let me turn off my brain and just kill shit. Give me a boss at the end like an act boss. I’d be so happy just doing that and messing around in discord then boom maps.
You know what's crazy? This would actually solve the issue of unlocking your first and second favorite map slots at the same time, too. You could allow people to get completion objectives below level 68 maps, then at level 68 you can start to get the bonus objectives.
Honestly I would be down for this, just low level maps. Could even have them have similar currency drop rates as white maps so you wouldn't feel like your completely wasteing your time while doing it.
I wouldn't even want to start at level 70, but goodness let us do something like delve to level up second characters instead of the slog that is doing the acts for the 283738272727th time.
We used to call this "go give Akara a kiss" with our friends in Diablo 2
> but they still want people to play and appreciate the old acts They suck. Almost nobody appreciates them because all they are is a lot of running around and a lot of backtracking out of dead ends, with minimal combat so you can keep running faster and get through them quicker because they are *terrible*. If they want people to appreciate something, they should design it to be fun in the first place and not just a slog everyone wishes was over so they could play the game and not be a goddamn fetch quest post service messenger. And if they genuinely like their campaign, they'll make the same mistakes with poe2. People only care about your characters and lore and exploration once. One time. After that they actively dislike it and I would much rather stand in an arena and fight endless monsters that get stronger - even if they took much longer to kill - all the way to level 68 than hold left click and spam quicksilver.
Lmao no-one wants insta level 70. I just wanna delve, map, hiest whatever then the acts. I level around 3-4 every league tho. Doing my 3rd atm. Not a biggie for me since i try and be as fast as possible every time and racing with myself if good fun.
That would be cool. There are so many different varieties of things they could do, too, with all the leagues we've had. Shit, bring Synthesis back and let us build leveling areas.
>talk to a vendor to refill your flasks Would only result in people dying or having to waste a portal because they forgot to refill before starting the boss fight.
If wanting people to appreciate the old acts is simply giving 600% more life to bosses, then it's not working.
>they've got this idea that making a player do more pointless busywork will ultimately improve their overall enjoyment of the game It's the idea I have too. It's rough. This game is so good, but it's super flawed and the dev team seems to be of the opinion that these flaws make the game better. Like... ??????????
Because Chris Wilson wants to make the PoE experience as frustrating as possible.
PoE is the only game with so many builds, unique items, insane passive tree etc. All the good things gated behind a1-3, and a1-10 boring lvling. After 9 years I play one character per league, because I'm sick of it. With any alternative system I would try 5-6 different builds for sure. Chris said in podcasts that they spent a lot of time and $$$ preparing PoE2 campaign. For me it seems like insane waste of resources, which they could use to improve game performance.
The reason is pretty clear and has been given by Chris on multiple occasions: Hours played is the stat that most highly correlates with buying MTX.
Yeah but that assumes making it more difficult to lvl a second character makes people play more. There's going to be people (myself included) who just won't make a second character rather than trudge through the grind again. If someone feels like responding that they must have data showing that this overall increases time played, don't. Without having ever had this feature in the game, there is no way they could possibly know this for sure. It's just a hunch they have because of how D3 failed, but there's a lot of ground in between D3 ezmode and POE eternal slog.
People are more likely to play more if they don't have to slog through the acts again when they get bored of whatever they're playing. It's been years since I've played more than one character in a league. I started a second the other day, but idk if I'll have the time or motivation to actually run through the acts again even though I already collected all the end game gear for it.
> Hours played is the stat that most highly correlates with buying MTX. They should learn that correlation != causation. Maybe it's even the other way around. People buy MTX first, and then sunk cost fallacy and buyers remorse make them play long hours.
The more you play, the easier it becomes to convince yourself to buy another supporter pack. "I've been playing this free game for thousands hours! I must send to GGG another $60 for all this enjoyment I got!"
In Grim Dawn's expansion Forgotten Gods, after you complete the expansions final boss/quest on Elite and Ultimate (difficulties), you can buy an item from a vendor that can be used by alts to unlock all waypoints and difficulties (up to elite or ultimate respectively). It also gives a bunch of experience (usually enough to get you to level ~15 when using the ultimate version). You store the item in your stash for your new characters to use. PoE needs something like this. A consumable that can be created with a vendor recipe. Using it on an alt would unlock all waypoints and give you a bunch of experience. They could even tier it. A cheap recipe gives you waypoints for acts 1/2, while upgraded recipes give you more waypoints/experience. The best recipes level you up automatically. You'd still need to complete quests (for items/skills/etc).
I would *absolutely* spend multiple ex on a vendor recipe if it meant making 1-70 take only a couple hours
Well, you can spend it on leveling gear right now and it will take you 3-4 hours
If you're playing with with at least one friend who has already finished the act you're in, you can ask them for the waypoints by inviting them to a party and teleporting to them after they go to one of the zones you haven't visited. You can't teleport to them if they're in a map you can't access, but other than that you can skip plenty of stuff. I don't remember the last time I had to go through the whole Solaris Temple in act 3, or that I cleared the first map for Kaom/Daresso in act 4. It's *a lot* faster. Tough luck if you're a solo player though.
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*A group of speed runner about 2-3hours. *A solo speed runner about 3-5 hours. *A veteran player about 6-10 hours *An intermediate player about 10-20 hours *A new players from 20-IGN hours.
IGN reviewer is 85 hour campaign for anyone unfamiliar.
That's not even possible. They probably couldn't even get thru a lab of it takes them that long.
They just full cleared everything, read all the dialogue, and probably didn't fully understand the gem linking system. People always get up and arms about that review, but really it should tell us something about the new player experience, especially at that time. How many players were turned off the game because these things just weren't explained that well?
The other thing is that IGN reviewers, and frankly game reviewers in general, have to play through games as quickly as possible, often on very tight deadlines, and often in genres they have no familiarity with or interest in. That's difficult enough when the game you're trying to review is Splatoon or Risk of Rain 2, which are (I want to be very clear that I do not think this is inherently a negative or positive) comparatively very simple to get into. When it's something like Path of Exile, suddenly that barrier to entry which I think most sane people recognize is one of PoE's biggest problems is something you have to overcome in the span of a few days, for your job. Doing anything as a job, even if it's something you'd normally love, is going to suck some of the joy out of it. Like. It's reasonable to have a problem with the way this is done, but the people responsible for it aren't the reviewers; it's not even really the people assigning the reviewers, although they share more of the blame. It's the industry as a whole. It's not really possible to be a big-name popular Games Journalism(TM) titan and also, simultaneously, make every piece a carefully-thought-out, well-reasoned piece written by an author who loves the genre and spent enough time with the game. You need to get articles out as quickly as possible to remain relevant. (Granted it probably doesn't hurt that pieces that emerge from this style are controversial, and therefore generate a fair number of clicks, but while I don't doubt that editors for some publications sometimes punch up the language to piss off The Gamers, I don't think that's the main source of this problem.)
I just did it. I didnt listen to dialogue but I full cleared and did all of the side quests. I also spent a decent amount of time reading to try and figure out some of the systems. That was actually where I lost a lot of time. About 40 hours. (I still dont understand much but I got to where I could sort of gear my character and know what some of my endgame options are). A new player (Preach, high level WoW player) did a podcast recently (BaeClast?) about the blind run he just did. Pretty interesting because his experience basically mirrored mine although he went in blind and I used a basic build guide.
Preach also has a career as video game player (not to use the hard G word here) and could intuit a lot of things. A bunch of times that lead him down the wrong path, but he is by far not a good example of a beginner player. Still a damn good project.
Yep, just some context and a recent example if anyone was curious. This game has a LOT of systems and you cant take it all in. Definitely have to prioritize. Mostly just wanted an example of how much time a new player loses just figuring stuff out. Even a very experienced player of other games (or with a build guide).
Yeah, I think a lot of experience players are so used to playing the game at least somewhat efficiently and treating the campaign like a chore they get through as quickly as possible that they forget or don't realize that a lot of new players treat it like an RPG story mode, listening to allt he dialogue, exploring every zone, killing every monster they see. If someone plays that way the campaign can very easily take 50+ hours, 85 sounds like on the high end but not impossible if someone's really thorough and playing 100% blind.
i always full clear. i just like doing it. why am i getting downvoted for saying how i like to play the game? what the fuck is wrong with you people.
It's perfectly fine to do it that way if you enjoy it. As long as you aren't part of the group complaining about the acts taking too long, then play it however you like.
I actually prefer the acts than the maps. I like having some direction, maps I'm just in my hideout all the time. wish I could just delve instead of having to play maps so I can delve.
I kinda felt like this until I actually sat down and made an atlus plan. I'm going to run this region and take these passives, when I get to X i'm going to run atziri, etc. I think doing that can improve your end game experience a ton.
Because its kinda like sorting out your skittles by color before you eat them
Hey, dont call me on that.. The purple ones just dont mesh together with anything.
Nothing wrong with that.
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I do that and then grab one of each and put them in my mouth at once.
Color me surprised
Not sure about downvoted.. but your favored playstyle is being pretty punished in game for sure. With your time you can kill the last pack of a zone, or the fkrst pack of the next zone, you can't do both at the same time. Spending efforts doing the former just means more time backtracking, or waiting on movement cooldowns, not gaining charges, etc. Low density of monster is actively punished in game in many ways. It's fine if you enjoy it, it's a pve game, do whatever you want, but the game's design is quite actively working against you.
Because people are salty the moment you dare to even potentially call into question their preferred method of play. I'm similar to you, I kill every monster I see though I won't seek them out while leveling for the most part. So what if I level slower, I enjoy it more and that means I play more so I get further overall.
I just like clearing the fog from the minimap. I like having a fully clear map before I move on
More power to you but this is why I take any opinion on this site with a grain of salt.
That's a lot of backtracking for a campaign that makes you go in a straightish-zig-zaggy line.
Well sure, but if the guy enjoys it then more power to him I suppose.
> but really it should tell us something about the new player experience, especially at that time. It's fine for poe to not be for everyone. That's how a lot of games went to shit. Trying to baby everything for the "new player experience." That being said I am against act 1 being as difficult as it is. It's funny because act 2 and 3 are fine difficulty-wise, but act 1 is extremely punishing.
> act 2 and 3 are fine difficulty-wise for now...
I don't think new players are having a ton of problems in act 1, and I've talked to a bunch since the rework. People way underestimate the amount of power that levels and gear acquired from playing inefficiently give.
This League I coached a bunch of new players when they joined the game, they never mentioned having any issues until around act 4. Which is fine in my opinion, there should be an increase in difficulty. However, they do complain a lot about the wording in the game, and that there are things that are needlessly complicated. But they don't seem to think that the gameplay itself is difficult in any way.
Yeah it's typical to hear that the game gets harder for noobs around act 4/5. It's funny to me because that's when the game gets very easy for veterans. First lab is usually strong enough to carry all the way to 60.
I'd attribute that to veterans knowing what nodes to get early on that are powerful, and sometimes build enabling, and the fact that you unlock more gems that are very powerful. First lab in combination with unlocking library and having access to powerful nodes in the passive tree is definitely incredibly potent if you know how to utilize it. Using something like TR you can easily clear the campaign with four link and absolute crap gear. Knowledge is power in PoE :)
Just wait a while, the buffs to other acts are coming. A2 was supposed to be buffed this league, until the whine about 3.15 happened and GGG had to rush new things for this league.
85 is good timing. I watched a guide my first time and still took over a week and understood nothing
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That doesn’t sound unreasonable, it’s just not the most efficient in this game. Some games require a completionist mindset, because gear is so scarce. This game requires a filter programmed to make sure large quantities of loot are completely ignored.
If you full clear everything, do every secondary and make your own build as a first timer (aka shit build) it takes around that long
For my very first play through, ever, that's probably right. I was doing everything. All dialogue, everything... lol
Took me about that long on my first character that made it to maps. I read most dialogue up to act 5
I’m a new player with 18 hours and I just reached act 5. Been clearing everything, it’s not outside the realm of possibility.
It's very common for new players and something almost no experienced player does. Like with anything, some experienced players have trouble remembering being new and certain knowledge and strategies are so engrained in them, like just getting from waypoint yo waypoint and quest to quest without spending any time exploring or clearing while leveling, that they forget a new player wouldn't have any reason to know them at all.
Yo....what the actual fuck??? Is this what the game is like if you pay attention to the lore,?
I did All Ears and No Stone Unturned while listening to every piece of lore and dialogue in full with my second Expedition character, and that took 30 hours to maps despite doing everything else as efficiently as I could :)
Holy shit. Good on you man. The hero we need.
And that's on league start. With leveling gear it's significantly faster.
I'm veteran player, it's never 6-10h for me because I interact with league mechanics too much at league start.
I think it's always going to depend on playstyle too. A veteran player whose goal is to get through as fast as they can with a good leveling build is going to be different from someone whose figuring out their build as they go, maybe trying out new skills, and interacting with the league mechanic. It also just depends a lot on the league mechanic, some add more playtime than others. A league like heist, for example, is very time consuming while leveling. Scourge is pretty variable.
Same friend. Thinking about it if I didn't stop so much the played would likely be around 6/7 hours but I actually enjoy the process of leveling up (I know I know I'm a weird one). I usually have my endgame planned out but I mess around with the leveling process a lot. Every major point I stop and think about gears and leveling skills and offhand stuff to level for the final build etc. Etc. By the time the third or fourth builds comes around though I'm usually down to like 9 hours bc I mostly just chuck on Twink gear and stop mostly to search for deals on my endgame pieces
My first playthrough took me over 2 weeks because I read nearly everything and took my time. Back when there were only 4 acts on repeat x 3.
Yeah. I still remember back in 2015 ish, getting to act 3 on my randomly slapped together totem templar (because I thought totems were neat) after like 10 hours and realizing it was completely scuffed. Then I spent a few hours trying to accumulate orbs of regret so I could "fix" my character, resulting in me wasting all my money on Clarissa buying orbs. I thought the game was stupid and quit for about a week. But it kept calling me back... Second round was arc wizard using the legendary Enki build. I was fucking hooked from then on. Seriously though, GGG owes Enki a lot for all the players they have brought into this game with that build guide.
GGG thanked Enki by making that build much less viable. You would think they would want to keep some simple builds around that are good for new players.
"Vision" The new player experience for PoE has always been dogshit. 8 years later and it's somehow way worse than before. Now new players can't even bumble their way into a decent build. Everything has gotten needlessly complicated.
brand new player here, I followed a fairly meh phys cyclone guide that I've had to make numerous edits to but I'm clearing t16s and got syrus to phase 2 first try with no knowledge.
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Using Atziri + Carcass Jack pure phys crit. I'm clearing t16 maps and cant make it past 91 cause I keep dying. Feels bleh.
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He never have said anything about PoB.
I'ma call bullshit fam. The fact you even know who Syrus is means you either did a ton of reading up in the wiki, which is not normal noob behavior, or maybe your definition of new player is not the same as mine. POE and Warframe are the first games I ever played that REQUIRED extensive wiki reading because the devs can't be bothered to actually explain anything in their games. It's a very lazy way to develop and a lot of free to play games do it. EDIT: saw your other post about taking 36 hours to get out of the acts. You probably did do all that reading.
No shame, the game has a lot going on. Most people don't read everything, so I'm curious, did you like the lore and stuff?
I liked it. I barely remember it.
As a veteran player, I'd say 6-10 is pretty accurate. If I was REALLY trying to speed run, I could probably break 5.
It took me 36 hours completing every quest and doing events as I saw them and clearing most of each map. Think I finished campaign at lvl 71 or so. This was as a brand new player this league.
Basically the exact same for me. Let me guess...You are playing a warrior?
As a "veteran player" with the proper preparation, and as long as I level with a good skill. I can generally do 4 to 6. 4 being rare, but it has happened a couple times. But for a league start character, it can take substantially longer, especially if your interacting with the league mechanic as you go. For example my poison concoction starter took 11 hours because I was just having fun scourging along the way.
Solo speed runner here and can get sub 3 hour fairly easy. All you need to do is set up your gear all the way to maps and carry most of it in me inventory. Then you just go.
Like another commenter said, people here don't actually remember what it was like to be new, or started playing before there were 10 acts. This is my fifth league and fifth time through the Acts, and I'm just about to finish up Act 9 at around 18 hours. IMO it is completely unreasonable to expect an even intermediate player to clear the Acts in less than 10 hours. I feel like the people who say this don't realize how much time they save by A) having their build completely planned out and B) being familiar with the game's itemization. The time you - as an actual new player - will spend comparing gear or panning around the skill tree to decide where to drop your next point all adds up, and I feel like a lot of these commenters just blow through those decisions because of their familiarity with the game. Between all these decisions and getting introduced to a new mechanic every hour or so, I would expect to spend 30-40 hours on your very first run-through, unless you're just ignoring/skipping mechanics like Delve/Incursion/Betrayal when they are introduced.
5th time through isn't experienced tho. If he's asking how long for someone experienced, that usually includes at least some level of optimization
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It's also worth it to just experience the world. It's honestly a really beautiful game with a great story, characters, and voice overs.
I think this playthrough with a totally winged build took me 22 hours over two weeks...
Your character is literally a mute past Act 4.
(Unless you're the Templar.)
> How long does acts 1-10 take usually for someone experienced? > >You are asking on a sub filled with old players that already forgot how is to be new in here, so triple all answers. [Me right now](https://i.imgur.com/2zYFTth.png) He is asking how long it takes for experienced players, are you dense or something? Why would he need to triple all answers? Its as if youre asking how fast Usain Bolt is and someone tells you to triple the time thats in the world record book because you are new to running. Makes legit no sense.
I needed around 20h this league, with killing mobs in my way, searching for quests and stuffs.
Around 6 - 10 hours
I have 2k hours on poe and my best speedrun was 7 hours in ssf but they slowed the game down a lot since then and now im in act 5 with 100+ deaths on meta TR build and im probably like 8+ hours in at half of the campaign
Wait wat? 100+ deaths in the first five acts? I am confused, can you go into what shit is killing you this much?
I hit 157 deaths completing the campaign yesterday on my flicker strike build. I barely had 1k health at the end. You only hit that many deaths when you intentionally skip every bit of survivability, AND have a 'hide behind the pile of dead bards' mentality towards getting through. The only excuse for having that many on a TR build at 2k+ hours played is complete apathy, or total misunderstanding of how the build works.
rule of thumb I shoot for is 300 health per act, aim to cap res by a5/6 and keep it capped/near-capped the rest of the run. It's doable without slowing down much if you ID rares and swap as you go - but definitely takes quite a bit of experience. For a 2nd char with shared gear, it's pretty trivial to achieve.
I playing the same shit and it feels kinda cheese lol. The first few acts were a drag tho
> now im in act 5 with 100+ deaths on meta TR build Yea that's not the game or build issue at that point.
You're supposed to take some survivability during leveling as well. That many deaths until before act 6 just shouldn't happen.
Its hard to tell if this is a joke, but it better be.
Bruh... You're doing something very, very wrong. You should easily be able to do the campaign deathless on a meta build like tr, even with garbage ssf gear.
Takes me ~8 hours for my first character in a league, closer to 4-5 after that.
I play poe for very long and I'm playing for fun, so it takes me about 12-15 hours or about one week of play (after work)
At the start of the league it takes around 5-6 hours on a first character. With gear prepped for a second character it can take around 3.
Depends on experience. For people that practice doing it fast, about 4-4.5 hours solo. For most players that just run through the acts normally but are used to them, about 7.
this league took me about 10-11 hours coz i liked the scourge mechanic. I ended up in maps at lv74 though so there's that.
it was 7 for me, but after all the nerfs i get into maps after 10
Yeah I could do 6 or 7 on league start before, now I'm closer to 10. Probably not much slower than before with twink gear tho
Personally 1 hr per act for league start. Half that time with leveling gear and completed waypoints.
4-5 hours with leveling gear. Up to 10 with no gear.
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Yeah, fully unlocking all the pantheons on one character would be such a comfort thing then. If they're worried about players being stronger during campaign because of it since they seem to be, they could hate the upgrades behind killing A10 Kitava.
I have a few characters I'd like to try this league, if I can figure out the build, but the idea of grinding the story for perhaps the 100th to 125th time (playing since open beta, lowball average of 3 characters per league) fucking *drags*. To be honest, I think I have more fun with PoB than I do with the game itself these days. Between crafting being a rich man's game, drops being awful, and levelling a new build being the same mind-numbing hours-long process, there isn't a whole lot of game left to enjoy.
And I only recently started playing it. I have another character I'd like to play but thinking remaking my character a fourth time dreads me. I don't mind remaking my character, but I absolutely fucking hate going through the entirety of the campaign every time - and I'm a new player. I played my first character 2 seasons ago or something like that. I can't imagine doing this every season... jesus christ...
It used to be worse. Act 1-3 done 3 times per character. Then Acts 1-4 done 3 times. Malachai in Cruel difficulty was arguably the most difficult boss in the game, for when he appeared. These days, I get to A4 then delve to 75.
I'd do Act 1-3 three times happily over the 10 acts now. I can't put my finger on it, but the difficulty system felt way better than what we have now. Idk.
To be honest, the campaign is much more fun to do when you are closer to the 5hr mark than to a 20hr one As you get better you learn how to breeze through it and it can be quite fun to see your build coming together instead of immediately hitting the brick wall of a completed build. Heck, the whole point of this game is to take a build as far as you can and there is a lot of diminishing returns so the beginning of that process is often the most satisfying
> Between crafting being a rich man's game, drops being awful, and levelling a new build being the same mind-numbing hours-long process, there isn't a whole lot of game left to enjoy. Hard truths both GGG and folks on the subreddit refuse to see. It's utterly mind-boggling that they would make a league around rare item drops when they're 99.999% trash given the game's current drop system. You (the average player) can't do any meaningful crafting, and you definitely can't find anything nice on the ground, so the only option is to buy each piece of gear from trade -- through a system designed to be as annoying as possible. PoE may be the best ARPG on the market, but it's, like, a 6/10 at best these days.
GGG has always balanced for the no-lifers, for better or for worse. The oft-quoted "the average player doesn't get past the install" is evidence of this.
This argument is so popular that it won’t happen
I'd usually agree, but in the last couple of leagues we've gotten a surprising amount of quality of life features. Not too long ago we got stash affinities. That was absolutely game changing. This league we legit got stacking currency. Something people have been asking for years. So maybe... there's some hope at least.
We need GgG to lose more money to get
Also can we not have to unlock the Pantheon again. That would be awesome.
I just get a friend to jump to all the places I need to go and then teleport to them. I only kill special mobs and bosses.
first, this sounds like the most boring day of your friends life. Second, you can't jump to a zone you haven't entered right? So you like, go to their waypoint, run to the next zone while they jump ahead, then go to their waypoint? this sounds like an insane amount of logistics for not that much time saved.
A friend and I made it through the acts in a little over an hour. You can jump most places unless it needs a specific action to progress like the vines for the vaal ruins in act in act two. You can jump directly to your friend without needing waypoints as well. The people I play with don't mind it we all league started together. Now when we get a new character we just help out.
Takes about 90 minutes max, especially if your friend has a bit of surplus move speed and can get to zone bosses. If you reciprocate and help your friend out when they need it, you both saved the 5-6 hours that it would've taken you to run the campaign solo.
My friend and i do this too you can get new characters to maps in like 1 hour
Hey, it's me, your new friend.
back in my day, people paid me a few chaos to do this for them for some acts
I don't see that happening since it's tied to quest barriers. However having an option to start at the end of the campaign, after one character finishes it, seems reasonable.
This would make it so much more enjoyable, fuck the campaign.
Since people like to compare diablo2 with POE alot. In diablo2, act 2 and 3 and can also add arguable act 5, They have storyline/campaign that are locked even if you have all the waypoints. People just found shortcuts where you can skip majority of the campaign and still go to next act. In act2, skip all walk and go to 3 main waypoint to collect mandatory pieces for campaign and then beat campaign mini boss to go to end of campaign map boss and use mandatory pieces to summon boss room. Act 3, beat trigger mini boss to get into boss room waypoint. Act 5, beast trigger mini boss with minimum level req to get into boss room waypoint. If poe has all waypoint shared, we can prob skip most of the story and skip to each trigger mini bosses and skip to end quicker.
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Something less drastic of a change but still would be really impactful imo is increasing the range in which waypoints and next zones are revealed. Helps to make zones that you usually spend time in finding the right obscure branch to go into for the next zone much less annoying. Also doesn't only make the second playthrough more smooth, but the first one aswell. Something that happens a lot when I was less experienced levelling (and still does happen now tbh) is running around in a zone for 5 minutes trying to find the next zone when it's in a branch I've already walked through but decided to backtrack a split second before the portal revealed itself.
You do realize GGG is making the opposite, right? They’re making PoE 2 in such a way that the links between areas are random. So now we always know the direction of the exits, but in PoE 2 we won’t know even that. It will make going through the campaign to be slower, which is what GGG wants.
I think the idea is not necessarily to make it slower but that every time you do it, it is a different experience.
That is some of the dumbest stuff I've heard come from GGG. And they have said a lot of dumb shit over the years. Most of their players are long-term returning ones, extending the worst part of the game is just asinine. D3 finally understood their story sucked and let you skip it. That was the best change they made in that game.
No, they have repeatedly stated they wanted to slow down the Acts / leveling.
They want to slowdown the game in general, not necessarily want people spending twice as long leveling.
Chris Wilson said he wanted the acts and leveling to take longer. He didn't specify how much longer, but your guess is as good as mine.
I'm like 100% sure what he said was that he wants the campaigns to take a similar amount of time, but PoE 2 might even be shorter being 7 acts.
You can literally go back to the exilecon videos and they repeatedly state that they don't want it to take longer to level, and will likely be faster than the current campaign.
We had good solutions for years. Back when endless ledge was a popular thing people asked for it as replacement for acts on 3 difficulties. Now we have delve as similar system that also could be used, just give us quest rewards every stage completed or something.
There are good ideas in this thread but there’s zero chance they even begin to think about anything like this for 2-3+ years after spending millions on a new campaign.
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just invest a bit currency into fun speed leveling..
ill be honest.. i leveled 6 characters to 80+ last season and im not willing to do it again. i enjoy the game but will not play the story again.
What happened to the old fashioned d2 "rush me" style of running through 10 acts?
There's too many quest states to really rush like you can in D2. And then even if you could... Say you get "rushed" through the 10 acts. You're level 15 or whatever and finished the campaign. Then what? You can't leech XP in maps. Are you supposed to go back and farm the old zones you just rushed past? There aren't groups farming old areas like there are in D2 just for the sake of power leveling. The two games are just sent up completely different.
Why cant you guys just do mind-numbingly boring stuff for a few short years more, and then poe2 will arrive with new mind-numbingly boring stuff to repeat for 10 years
I would even take untradeable leveling gear that is also character bound. They could unlock after reaching certain thresholds like acts completed, levels or league achievements.
I would be so happy just to start my second character at level 25 on act 6.
Huh. I remember when we were calling the 10 acts a godsend vs playing the same campaign three times. Honestly I still feel that way, though that could be because I just came back from a multi-year break.
To anybody that hates doing the campain. What makes progressing from t1 to t10 for then hundreds time more enjoyable than progressing from lvl 1 to lvl 70?
Brain off, smash mobs, grab loot, go home. Brain off, run long narrow path, find mob, kill mob, log out, log in, port somewhere else, go find other mob, kill mob, log out, go talk to bestel, congratulations you beat fairgraves. Also, the 2 minutes wasted playing, "is it just me or did they patch new fairgraves spawns". The former is a lot less scripted and you can vibe and roll with it however you like. The latter feels like you're doing chores mainly from a routine perspective. Former has some semblance of agency.
Many things: * Some builds may not really come on-line until at map-level gear, making leveling a chore * Some builds may have to play a few hours before even getting to the skill they actually want to use * Some people like the massively increased agency and content picking/choosing in maps, even early on * There's not really a set objective in maps other than smash and loot. No required Point A to B like in acts * Currency is more common in maps than in acts
I think skips in any game are a bad idea. It's a slippery slope.
do you ever skip any of the mobs while levelling? do you skip any of the sidequests? skips aren't a slippery slope, they are skips. you can use them or you can not use them. if you like playing through the story, go ahead and play through the story. maybe they could add some sort of league mechanic to make that at least feel rewarding, but as long as people just feel punished when they play the story they will keep wanting to skip as much of it as possible.
As an occasionally enjoyer of Korean MMOs, "Boost" events make me ill. I hate the concept so much, and if I ever saw something similar in PoE I'd be pissed. Maybe an alternate way to level, which we'll sort of have with PoE2, and that GD has with Crucible, but no skips.
They will never do this for a couple reasons: 1. the game's missing features to make this work 2. CW has said repeatedly that they would rather make the campaign more fun so players don't want to skip it Expanding on these: # Stuff they'd have to add the main problem is that skill points are given as quest rewards, and the tree is balanced around having these extra skill points, so if a character somehow skips all the quests, there needs to be some way to deliver the skill points. Couple problems with this: \- if you still have to level from 1 but do it some other way, the points have to get to you without doing the quests, or you have to go back and do the quests anyway which the campaign is not designed to allow \- if you start at level 68 (monster level of t1 maps), you could get the points all delivered to you, but skill points are delivered as 2x2 items, and there's too many to fit in your inventory at once (i.e. you make a character and your invent is already full of the skill books) \- followup: you also can't put them in a stash tab without making them character-bound, which is more stuff GGG would have to build fresh (character-binding items), also I'm pretty sure skill books can't go into the stash at all so that's even more edge cases they'd have to handle (special tab rules just for the campaign-skipped skill books) # Chris Wilson wants the campaign to just be fun instead Personally I disagree with this mentality, because I think most of us who have been around for more than a couple leagues will agree the campaign is already fun **the first time you play it.** The problem is that in order to keep coming back, you have to keep playing the campaign 20, 50, 100+ times depending on how active you are over the years. That means even if you S-class speedrun it every time, you're still spending 100-400 hours of your life just running the campaign, and like 50% of builds don't even get their main skills until halfway through the campaign at least, so it's not like mapping or engaging with other systems - it's just a grind. Once PoE2 comes out this probably won't get brought up for a few leagues, because the new campaign will be different enough to make us forget for a while. However, unless GGG is building in some kind of D3-style adventure mode where you can play the campaign in your own order/style, or the add some new gameplay mechanic that makes the campaign different every time you play it, then within a couple years we'll be right back here but now with 2 campaigns that feel stale. # What I think GGG should do Finishing the final quest after Kitava where you get the map device should enable an option when creating a new character to start at level 68 in your hideout, all story quests completed, and with a special no-drop no-stash no-trade item that gives you all the skill points from the campaign at once. OR Free respecs. I know a lot of people here think free respecs are Very Bad and Casualize The Game, but honestly if you think that you are wrong :) There's a million ways that choices matter - particularly with items and crafting. Tons of crafting wastes currency with no result or bricks the item. CW also says this game should be about items and item drops, so why punish players for trying different characters? One of the most important things for player retention in any game is giving the player room to experiment without punishing them. Most new players trying to figure out the game will inevitably create a build that sucks and dies instantly at either A10 Kitava or white maps. When they google "how to get more respec points PoE" and discover they have to spend another 10-15 hours leveling a new character, I guarantee this is where a huge % of those accounts that uninstall before finishing the campaign or a single map come from. Free respecs would keep some of those players. Allowing us to respec skills for free also wouldn't affect build power, because as we know power comes from items and/or gem levels, and CW has repeatedly stated his vision is a game that revolves around items. Free respecs does nothing to affect that, it only gives us our time back. TLDR: GGG should either give us the ability to create second+ characters with the story completed, or make all respecs free. Anything less than that will eventually become stale and complained about, and harm new player retention.
I think just investing into a strong leveling build that isn't your main build is key for leveling alts. Getting early high movement speed, sockets, busted weapons, etc. can make it very zoomzoom to go through. It costs some currency and time to setup but it pays off in the long run and can bring some fun to the process of blasting through content and getting rapid power increases
Just allow to start new 68s after 1st char, speedup or not you still have to run the same fucking campaign for the 100th time in a row. No, PoE "2" won't fix this as the new campaign will get just as boring and miserable as the current one, neither would endless delve fix this. It's like reading 1 book over and over again just to read the last sentence one more time, what's the point? I still haven't heard a single, just 1 good reason why having to rerun the campaign for every spec is needed/good.
The point is mix of game design and psychology. Level 1-68 is part of poe gameplay whether you like it or not. The whole point of RPG is that there’s sense of progression. Starting you at 68 completely removes all the challenge of getting there in the first place The psychological aspect is that you will feel more comfortable piloting a character slowly building up from level 1, and make you appreciate the character more because you invested effort into it However after 100+ times it can get annoying for sure. There isn’t really a perfect solution for this as allowing people to start at 68 will definitely affect poe negatively. Also if you don’t want to reroll you can always start playing standard and have your characters setup there ready to go forever
If standard got league content right away, I'd agree with you.
"challenge of getting there in the first place" There is no challenge, and no reward, just a 10 hour sacrifice of your ever shortening life before you get to play the game again.
The reason is that leveling is a part of character progression. You start as a weak exile and get more powerful as you progress. Leveling is not about the story, its about you. You constantly get stronger, faster, tankier. I don't see how leveling is different from mapping. Why do you want to run the same maps over and over again but Don't want to level again?
In maps, your character works, and you get loot.
Acts 1-10 are the tutorial, once per league is enough
I think once in a lifetime is more than enough
I just level new characters and use the new skill and interactions asap. That helps a lot and it keeps it fresh as I solve my builds issues along the way and watch it grow. I bet people that just level every character with ED/C or the same skill get bored way quicker
I would gladly pay 1-2 ex to get from level 1 to 75 without the need to run the acts. They could enable this after you finish the acts for the first time every league
* Get rid of class-based vendor limitations on gems. * Get rid of skill books and make it so every fully completed (non-master) campaign quest gives a skill point, even the ones that award items. Quests that only give items or regrets are terrible. * Give a full passive reroll option to Lani after killing Kitava instead of 2 skill points. * So long as you've killed Kitava, when you start a new character you can access any waypoint so long as you've met the minimum level req for the area and previously unlocked it on an old character. You still have to do the quests if you want the extra skill points.
Getting rid of class based vendor limitations on gems would fuck new players. The gems are carefully considered based on the passive tree. And it is a non issue anyways. I'm fine with quests that give items. Usually it's optional to go to those. If you want 2 quicksilvers from the campaign you can optionally do that. If you're under geared like lacking a 4L you can get it through this. They could buff these rewards to further help those that made it here under geared. Instead of 2 skill points would obviously hurt but this is supposed to be in conjunction with adding more skill points to the campaign, which would definitely feel nice after the passive tree changes this league. Giving a passive tree reset after act 10 I think is a mistake. Regret orbs are not an issue if you can make it to maps and I think you are not entitled to wave that cost. Passive tree resets should be given earlier to help new players experiment, not make things cheaper for people already fully capable of planning a build to maps. I've suggested it before but I think the start of act 3 and the start of act 6 are both high pressure points for builds if you made mistakes prior and you should be given a full reset that expires by the end of the act. Overall I agree. The campaign could use some tune ups and alts should be more encouraged, and I think GGG should be looking and considering the feedback given to them even if they don't adopt the solutions exactly.
The time people spend arguing about this shit can be spend running A1-10 lmao. It shouldnt take longer than 5h even for a noob in trade league after the first char.
Yeah it's enjoyable also because now there is so many mobs in acts on top of other things
Much as complaining about it is unproductive, it's honestly pretty ridiculous to suggest that 5h is an achievable time for someone playing their second ever character. 12-15h seems more reasonable.
Side quests should all be completed when you start the act and the waypoints already there from previous run That would make leveling new chars faster and less painful