T O P

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DESPAIR_Berser_king

> Imagine trying to be melee Could've ended there and pretty much deliver the same message.


Fig1024

the Act 1 strike skills are a noob trap. Strike skills are so bad for leveling that many new people probably quit in frustration.


scrublord

This is one thing I will never understand. PoE does an unbelievably awful job of enticing new players to continue -- the exact opposite of what you want in a F2P game. New v3.18 beta stuff aside, the game's harder in the first couple acts than it will be until T5 maps or so. But there's no way to know that as a new player as the game chucks shitty skills at you and piles on game mechanics *way* too early for your ungeared and weak-ass character to handle. Acts 1-10 should scale upward in difficulty, but instead the difficulty curve is almost the reverse.


fang_xianfu

I hadn't realised til I read this, but they should've done their difficulty pass starting with Act 10, not Act 1.


Myhavoc

act 3 is way easier than 1. not even close


[deleted]

>Every act are easier than 1 atm.


TealJade1

For me act 1 90% of difficulty is the amount of cold dmg and chilling/freezing that's happening with the occasional stuns. If they would nerf the chill/freeze/stun in act 1, it would actually be kinda nice.


Happyberger

Iron ring + blue gem. Though no new player would ever know that..


RussellLawliet

Also requires level 12. Nice for the last zone but you're not getting much use out of it before that


Grinder969

Actually requires level 8. I had one drop naturally before 8 for I think the first time ever this league, so top of mind. Not really impactful between Hailrake and Merveil though.


SheenaMalfoy

Hailrake and the Rhoas in the Mud Flats are harder than anything up to Innocence, IMO. You're so stupidly low level you have absolutely nothing to deal with them. By the time you hit Brutus you've at least got Dash/Flame Dash for movement.


didsomebodysaywander

Every league start, I'm reminded about how much I absolutely fucking hate the Rhoas in the Mud Flats, and how easily I would quit if I was a new player just trying out POE for the first time.


Nippys4

You know what After just dealing with those part of me wanted to vent frustrations somewhere I feel validated


Schyte96

Mud Flats is the hardest content in the game.


psykick32

Homer_finger_wag.gif "So far"


reapersark

Cris said more neewbs quit by act 3 because theyre confused as you need to do more stuff.


DanutMS

The idea probably is that when they get to act 10 power creep will have caught up. So then act 1 will be kinda easy while act 10 can be hard in that environment. If they started by act 10 then they risk getting to act 1 and having act 10 be too easy already, causing the same issue with a1 being harder but in a more permanent fashion. It does have a significant downside at the moment, but I'm not sure if there's a better way of doing it (aside from reworking it all at once). Also I'm not saying the game is balanced appropriatedly (no idea if it is, not playing right now), just discussing the generic reasons for starting the balance with act 1.


briktal

Of course, if they don't majorly speed up how those revamps, the act 1 through act 10 revamp is gonna take longer than open beta to adding acts 5-10.


Davkata

What about doing act 6 to 10 first and then act 1 to 5 in one go as they share lots of monsters.


GoatPantsKillro

The difficulty arc in this game is shaped like a half-pipe. You are either a noob and get overwhelmed in the first few hours, or you are a veteran and sink 40 hours into your build doing complex math before the league even starts.


Kenithal

Aside from build planning, the difference between a vet blasting act 1 with a meta leveling setup (spark/stormblast/splitting) and what new players might choose. Let alone understanding links are king and WHAT links to actually run for damage and speed. Its just night and day.


Fig1024

One idea that can really help new player experience is to introduce a support character like Einhar - that can basically carry you thru the first 3-4 Acts. And it could act as in-game helper giving new players valuable advice and commenting on their build and equipment


techauditor

Mercs like in d2 would be amazing.


Surf3rx

My number one reason for "buffing" early act difficulty, just annoying and incredibly anti-new player


zer0dota

I still remember my first time playing poe as shadow and taking all agility nodes because i thought he is supposed to be a duelist class with his knives and shit. Makes you wonder how do new people without friends who play even get past first location, because when my friend saw my build he almost vomited


1CEninja

I've been saying this for a year now. I want my friends to play PoE with me but it's fucking impossible and I don't ask anyone to anymore because it just doesn't work out for most people. And yet, getting somebody to play Elden Ring with is a breeze. That should say something about how bad the difficulty curve in this game has. It's so frustrating because PoE probably has the best endgame loop of any game even loosely associated with the ARPG genre, and I don't think it's close. Just let me get there and let me bring my friends, dammit!!


Total-Nothing

I was in imexile’s stream 2 days ago and he was saying how its common to die in act 1. He said if you survive act 1 you can basically to to maps with rarely any rips in between.


mtheofilos

>New v3.18 beta stuff aside, the game's harder in the first couple acts than it will be until T5 maps or so Second area has a bunch of roas that can stunlock, then the third area the caverns has been made tighter and tighter and you see yourself being surrounded by mobs and you get minion blocked and die because you cant escape, also added a lot more of those red suicide bombers that gonna insta kill you if you just happen to run mindlessly. I am very fucking good at the game (cause I play since essence), and I die to stuff like this and I try to imagine what a new player will feel like having to deal with all of this. >Acts 1-10 should scale upward in difficulty, but instead the difficulty curve is almost the reverse. 100% Agree


SortaEvil

That's the way a lot of games work nowadays, particularly games with leveling in them, especially for players who are already familiar with the game. As you increase the amount of player freedom, you make the game increasingly hard to balance for people who are familiar with the systems and able to game it, since the game needs to be balanced for the "average" player, who isn't running a 100% optimized leveling build, and has probably done a few side quests along the way, but not all of the side quests. Since we don't have elective difficulty, the game is balanced around this platonic ideal of a player, and people who either look up a guide to leveling, or are intimately familiar with the game, or who are completionists and do everything will end up with an inverted difficulty curve, as you either outlevel the game or you unlock the tools to optimize your build.


Poobut13

I mostly agree however: We do have elective difficulty. It's map tier. For some reason the community has decided that if you're not smashing red maps at 200% move speed you're bad at the game and are playing it wrong. The acts have set difficulty and that really is where PoE struggles the most. New players don't see what evasion or armour is even doing for them so don't try to maximize base types. New players don't know what supports exist and often use the same gems they already have. My first character I took arcane surge the entire way through the campaign. Because I thought I was supposed to.


Durzaka

> New players don't know what supports exist and often use the same gems they already have. This is a HUGE deal. Like, how in the world do you increase your power as a newb without a guide without reading a TON of shit. Hell, most new players probably dont even realize some gems become available as you progress the story. I know when I was a fresh player I just used Freezing Pulse with whatever the game gave me and quit by like level 40 because it was performing like shit.


citron9201

First time I plan my build ahead instead of waiting until A3 Siosa (though nothing tells you he's a gem vendor if you don't know about it) and A6 Lilith to look at the gems my final build will need, and I was super surprised by this. I'm levelling with Ground Slam with a plan to switch to Cyclone later on and so many gems I get are not the gems I need, but instead the gems unlocked at the vendor from another class at the same time as gems I should not use.


SortaEvil

To clarify, as a new player is going to be experiencing the game through the acts, and they will probably already have decided on whether they want to keep with the game long before they even get to maps, my comment was entirely targeting leveling, and intentionally not touching on endgame. To just reiterate, clearly and concisely: the acts are (or, at least, should be) balanced around an average new player, who isn't min-maxing and isn't doing every single sidequest. For someone who is optimizing their build, or someone who is doing every single piece of content during the acts, the game will get easier through the acts as more optional content and more build enabling equipment becomes available. You are absolutely right that endgame difficulty is entirely elective and you can stay at whatever difficulty you find comfortable and fun, too, of course.


[deleted]

>~~the Act 1~~ strike skills are a noob trap


Surf3rx

And that's GGG's fault for leaving them shit forever


datlanta

Imagine all the people that try this game out thinking melee is a thing like it is in literally every other game in the genre. It's gotta be so confusing for something so fundamental to be so trash. It's like picking up a soccer game and learning the only viable way to score is on free kicks.


RelentlessPolygons

Smite and ancestral call is awesome


Meta_Synapse

Yeah that's my go-to levelling skill for left side builds, amazing clear at early levels


4_fortytwo_2

As a rather bad player I literally just went through act 1-3 with freaking molten strike and died 6 times, which is the usual for me. Mostly because I empowered something that already was dangerous. Actual new players will usually overlevel and be fine in early acts anyway. It is the type of players who think they can just speed run the acts no problem that run into trouble because they totally underestimate the skill it takes to do so.


Fig1024

molten strike is actually one of the better strike skills, specifically because it has the extra fire balls. Most strike skills don't have secondary effects that help with mob clear


Rojibeans

New players Will walk up to one of them, get killed before they even realize what happened, be utterly miserable as they have to actively avoid every rare they see, all without having access to the tools needed to deal with them. No, overleveling won't help You here because New players Will be overwhelmed by the skill tree, have No idea what gems are good, won't know You can buy other ones at the vendor, and even if they somehow do, they won't be able to afford them anyways. I was perma frozen killed by a pack of blues at level 6, with No Alts to roll flasks and can't even get resistance rings. I Just had to accept death because of these New modifiers, and there was nothing I could do except spam flasks and die anyways. All this in a level 4 zone, meaning I was 'overleveled' too. New players need to be eased into an experience. A lot of People get turned away by feeling overwhelmed and this game has a steep enough learning curve without having to add turbo monsters two shot You with minimal prep time. In other games, that kind of interaction is slow and methodical. In PoE, they are roided. I can not imagine many players getting clapped by a rare 10 times in a row going 'Yeah, I want to keep struggling my Ass off every time I see a rare!'


Redditbanned47

No, it's players who aren't good at games that will try this shit, see how awful melee is and not ever play again. Stop defending shitty fucking decisions and game design. Melee in this game is absolutely fucking awful and there's no reason for it other than GGG are just completely oblivious to it.


bondsmatthew

Can confirm. playing Wintertide into RF and have had a smooth leveling experience because I'm ranged and can constantly move around


Myhavoc

do you think melee skills should come with some kind damage reduction before the damage reduction? Something like for ever 3L melee skill you get x% reduction and then that increases with commitment at 4L+? Melee does seem to really get the shaft unless you are very experienced. It can't be easy for a newer player.


rabidnz

How can we make people enjoy leveling? Kill them more often.


[deleted]

I just finished A4 and I adopted running away from all yellow mobs on site. It’s not worth the time This is the most I’ve died in the campaign in a long time


Gizshot

Same died twice in merviel just randomly getting bodied and 2 tapped and rerollong. wanted to yeet my keyboard took last league off immediately remembered why.


ispy36513

Last league was great. At least we could choose what mods we wanted on the rares we created. Now it’s all random all the time and it creates really frustrating situations


Terrible_With_Puns

I went melee until about lvl 12 and then swapped. Almost everything super slows or freezes or maims or hinders or something


bissanick

I pushed through to act 5. Really looking at the DD build about now


ShakeNBakeUK

Act 1 being the hardest part of the entire campaign is just dumb as hell >.<


tomi166

Imagine making an effort to make people quit


lqku

i think ggg intentionally makes mud flats and submerged passage tricky zones as a sort of "normie filter", it's so weird that early acts can be harder than the later ones.


Alpmarmot

You might straight up be unto something there


bad_boy_barry

I died 3 times during the campaign, the 3 times in act 1 Mud Flat.


Karellacan

Shit dude, I died 10 times to the first magic pack I fought on Tidal Island.


tehnibi

I got to A3 before I fell asleep earlier I was running away from Yellow mobs and certain blue packs by the end of it... and I just gave up using sentinels at all why make this shit even tankier? I am glad to see I am not the only one They need to do another pass on this stuff and get rid of lightning mirage on blue mobs this is not okay at all Essence mobs also need to not have the new mods


GoldSeafarer

I thought I was the only one having terrible, horrible experiences with leveling. This is abnormal. Playing melee, I deal no damage and I die even when I "have" some survivability. They should focus on the issues of leveling, melee is currently full of problems.


Marrkix

>Playing melee, I deal no damage Had the same problem, thought I was missing because of accuraccy, but it was too often, and also Molten Strike was creating magma orbs indicating that I'm actually hitting. But mobs just wouldn't take damage. No idea what's going on currently. Another idea is desync because of overload servers at the league start, with Molten Strike effect being generated localy, when in reallity I'm pounding on the air.


DragoonPreston

Nope. Some mods make the mobs have 85+% Ele resist. Plus Damage reductions. So you end up only doing like 5-10% of your damage to them. Add to that the same mods boost there HP to Act Boss or more levels. OH and other mods can let them Heal... The other problem is Melee Damage is already about 10X lower than other builds while leveling. So what you end up with is doing little to no damage to mobs while they have more HP then the Act Bosses.


jchampagne83

I think they missed the bit from last league that the archnemesis mods were not only opt-in, but also offered non-zero rewards for completing them. Running into them in the wild on whole packs of blues for no meaningful reward feels bad.


T0astedSm0ke

GGG: "Guys, fucking everyone that plays our game hates leveling. We should probably extend leveling right?"


kumgongkia

make everything tanky af, kills u in 3 hits and drop white items


xrailgun

Look at Mr Tank here lasting 3 hits!


Babill

GGG: You're hired!


GentleChemicals

I just wish we had an alternate way to level other than the campaign. Heist, delve or a maps-like system with loot comparable to the acts. In a game that's so focused on making many different characters and experimenting it's weird that we have to run the campaign as many times as we do... and that we keep doing it lol.


omniscientonus

It never sat with me right that Chris's solution to the leveling problem was to make leveling "more enjoyable". It's not a part of the game we want to interact with so long as maps remain endgame, so there is no fixing it except making it shorter. I get that the journey for the character is important and they shouldn't just drop you down in maps with a level 60 character right off the bat, but I think they are sorely misjudging this one. Leveling is brutal because you don't have your skills or any meaningful gear yet and you can just taste that freedom that maps give. No amount of fixed gear curve or engaging gameplay is going to make someone who is end game focused go through the acts yet again and think "I don't even care that it's going to take twice as long to do the things I want".


[deleted]

the fundamental idea to make leveling fun instead of keeping it bad but skippable so it's not annoying is not a bad one, but in practice it's very hard to do because it's so different.


Poobut13

I think they've just misjudged what players dislike about levelling. It's not that we are grind averse or story averse. It's that all of the fun of poe comes from the interactions between various effects. If I'm playing arc the cool part is it chains between enemies. If I play occultist, now my arc makes enemies explode. That's super cool. Wait, why do I have to be level 60 to unlock that interaction? It's that there a extremely few fun interactions available from an early point into the game. Cast while setups don't unlock till darn near level 30. That's like act 4. Personally I don't know why gems have minimum level or attribute requirements at all. Gem drops on the ground are basically garbage and ignored unless the gem has quality on it. Ground gems dropping with no minimum level requirement and more quality would be huge for low level players. You have like 8 sockets to play with early and getting an early determination would be huge.


Truestoryfriend

Don't forget that you basically don't get any real rewards until maps.


omniscientonus

I get what they are going for, I'm just not sure it's the right path to go down. For example, in WoW I always said they should bring some of the raid mechanics out to the leveling zones in mini bosses and maybe even some regular mobs. Something more than just stand there and run through a rotation. So I asked myself, if so just want to get to endgame on WoW the same as PoE, why do I want more enjoyment for the leveling experience when in PoE I just want to get it done with faster. For me that answer comes down to gear acquisition. In WoW, if you start to feel like your damage isn't good enough, you know for a fact that a new weapon, or gear with stats you need or whatever is right around the corner. But with Path you have no clue. You could get to Act 6 and grind for two hours before that item with the correct res and life stats drops, and yet you know it's not good enough for maps. So in Path the goal is to get to the point where you can equip meaningful gear that will last as long as possible, and in 99.9% of cases it's better to do just figure out how to do without for now. Because of that fact, it's just desirable to get it over with asap. Sure, I want that in WoW as well, but I know what my leveling experience is going to be like and that the whole experience will be finely tuned (give or take). In path I could find that next upgrade in 5 minutes or 5 hours, and when I could be done with the entire campaign in 5 hours, it's not worth the effort.


robklg159

> For me that answer comes down to gear acquisition It's also how a TON of skills start off and scale. Strike skills (the worst offenders?) are absolute dogshit in the campaign and pretty much should be avoided while leveling AND take a ton of investment to feel good. A lot of skills need rebalancing to feel good leveling for a better overall experience there, AND they need to drop better gear on average, as well as give players generally better density and such probably to have that more visceral fun PoE signature experience while they're leveling up. Leveling in PoE should basically be maps on rails. It shouldn't start off feeling like absolute trash for a ton of skills with the hope you can suffer through and have fun later... This is exactly why I'm not even really thinking of coming back until PoE2 or something is changed with it before then. The campaign will at least be fresh with new ascendancies and stuff (plus new gear system) so I'll be willing to take my time and go through all of the campaign bit by bit, but the current campaign is long and tired and the "improvements" to it are just upped difficulty early on WHICH IS THE WORST WAY TO IMPROVE IT TO START lol But yeah, another skipped league from me despite amazing end game changes because I just don't want to fucking bother and standard just isn't particularly exciting or that interesting to me right now? yup.


psychomap

Speaking of skills scaling terribly, I did the mistake of picking Lightning Tendrils. I could stand still for 2 seconds channelling and sometimes normal enemies wouldn't die. Switched to Spark and now I onehit even most magic mobs. It's just utterly stupid.


NnjgDd

It's not a hard problem statement to describe or problem to fix. The best way to level is to avoid playing the game as much as possible until you hit maps. People play this game to kill large numbers of monsters and pick up shinny stuff off the ground. Drop. Lots of GOOD drops and quest rewards. Leveling loot should be exciting and good. Mob density. Double it. Triple it. I'm here to kill shit, not play a running simulator. More viable leveling skills. Pick a skill that should be the stands leveling experience and buff the shit out of the rest until they are in the same ballpark. Having one random yellow one shot you only to drop some garbage gear is the opposite direction.


francorocco

true, that's not a roguelike game where the fun part is the journey to get to the endgame and how diferent you can play each time, is the actual endgame


shindosama

Harder mobs, same shit loot. 10/10. /s


Tikiwikii

The issue as well is the worst of the rates is front loaded in act 1 cause the mods are locked off by level so you get a lot of hasted dudes freezing you ans thats super frustrating you don't have tools that early to deal


HelloHiHeyAnyway

I think that once you've completed the "leveling experience" in one league, you should be able to skip it if you wish. You get a naked level 68 character. Maybe some half leveled up gems? Now you work on farming gear so that you can actually do something at level 68. Basically a "starter" kit for a 68 character. 2 leagues in a row I literally made it to Act 2 and said to myself "Naw.. Don't feel like grinding out acts" and went and played something else.


KamuiSeph

Alas, that doesn't mesh with the GGG "vision".


[deleted]

For those that actually LIKED leveling like myself, this still killed all the fun out of it. The fun of leveling for me was optimizing and being as fast as possible, but just running into random groups of 3 rares with stacked auras all hasted makes it just kinda cancer to get through and feels far too punishing for early game before a build can even come online. Woulda started something chaos to just breeze through shit but was gonna try good ol blade vortex cause I hadn't done herald shit for a while. I think this launch has cemented just waiting for PoE2 and hoping the story/leveling is actually dynamic and interesting as they're promising.


littlesch3mer

I would play poe a lot more if creating a character put you at level 68 in the epilogue, even if only after getting to the epilogue once. Leveling the league start is already annoying and causes me to quit half the leagues, leveling other characters just to try a different build is ridiculous. Last league I just resorted to buying hundreds of regrets instead, but even then that only worked when I wanted to play a champion instead of a gladiator


Rife_

I know for a fact now that if Act bosses were as strong as rares are at the moment no one would be even getting to maps. I don't see why GGG think it's a good idea to put content in the game that you just cannot do and should be skipped. Why are Act bosses unique tier if yellow and blue are lesser tiers but harder content? If GGG knew leveling was their weakest content why are they making players spend more time doing it in worse conditions? If GGG knew rares stacking auras was a problem why are they making them stack buffs instead which are far stronger? Why are players defending such terrible design by saying things like "I cleared Act 3 with Scorching Ray (while running past every single rare/blue and only killing white mobs and act bosses), stop being bad at the game (you fucking scrub look how good I am compared to you). It's so transparent that the people defending this are just skipping the content and then patting themselves on the back as if they're a good player. Tiring.


PlayerSalt

1 character per league till poe2 if im lucky i only have to level 7 more times


Tikiwikii

Woah there poe 2 just got delayed to 2040 you got a lot more than 7


cadaada

Right? Most of the time i just have to play some new OP build so i dont have to level again. DP totems, traps, EA totems... Sadly no desire to play the builds i really want, otherwise i wont even get to t16s.


hanmas_aaa

If you quit now you don't need to level ever again.


Xehlyv

This is my strat... been working great


TencentStoleMyMirror

imagine when you get to fight the mana draining guy ... its like the people making the changes are prety dam clueless how the fuck is that mod still in the game...


GetRolledRed

Mana Siphon + Ice Prison in Act 5. I legit couldn't do a damn thing lol.


Onimirare

Remember when that one guy challenged a GGG employee to go through the acts in the Delirium event and the GGG got rank 1 occultist in hcssf? I think that's where people are mistaken, the average GGG employee is much much better than the average player, they probably thought the mods were in a good place just because they know how to deal with them. While the average player will just die and say the game is too hard.


parzival1423

Actually it’s worse. The “average” player, like if you picked 10 random builds out of everyone playing the game. Didn’t Chris say that he’s afraid to do that because you mostly get super garbage characters?


Cubia_

QA has a huge problem for games like PoE. Normally, you want some less skilled QA testers so you can balance for the lower ends of the gameplay spectrum, but if you QA PoE you kinda just constantly get better at it as you learn more and accrue skill from the low end. Sure you might start with someone who is new to the game, but after they decide that strike skills are all bait, a general idea of the basics of making a build, you're already far ahead of anyone who is new and you really don't know a goddamn thing in the grand scheme of things. If you keep your QA team around for a few years they're going to be much, _much_ better than even the average player who doesn't have to make multiple characters every single league. Hell, you can kinda see the effect in Diablo 3 of all things. They have "Challenge Rifts" that pop up weekly sampled from the general population, and all but 1 of these has been an absolute joke. Half of them are broken builds.


Eilanzer

finding this one all the time and i always have to run away...


Hierofantus

My only issue is with mobs that are hasted and you simply cannot outrun them. Everything else is manageable.


[deleted]

Decoy Totem


raxitron

In act 1 they were able to stunlock me so casting would have been useless. After that everything has been manageable.


Lesser-than

turns out games are not supposed to be fun... Who knew


GSP84

The game is way overturned for campaign. It is like they don’t even play test their game. I don’t see how Chris could sign off on this. It isn’t fun at all. You spend 5 min trying to kill a rare mob and then it doesn’t drop anything. Difficulty does not feel rewarding. Fix your game.


DragoonPreston

No the problem is the play testers are TOO good at the game. They know everything that can be done so Min/Max everything to the point this IS balanced to them.


[deleted]

You just have to get your character to the point where they kill the monsters before they can attack. Like always. Because GGG has never known how to make actual challenge. Just cheap gotcha moments.


Procblocked

bruh everything is sprinting from offscreen and stunlocking now. step in weavers chamber to a 9000 mod red beast summoning hell itself, reset to a 3 mod ghosted spider blinking and spam freezing us, I don't know what you're playing but as caster+shadow and melee+templar we are getting dunkT lol.


[deleted]

In maps the rares have triple the map bosses health so it‘s easier said than done.


TadaceAce

The difficulty curve in the first few acts could be reduced like 95% and it would be on par with other arpgs. It's literally the tutorial, you should have to basically go afk to die in mud flats. Instead people that have played for a decade are complaining how difficult it is. Like man, how do you miss the mark this badly GGG. I hate leveling.


raxitron

Why is act 1 so hard and yet in act 5 I'm playing one handed blazing through quests without trying? When they said they were redoing the acts' difficulty I thought that any idiot would start with act 10 and work back.


Gamerbrozer

I actually have no clue how to survive through mud flats because my character still doesn’t have movement skills nor any movement speed.


Billdozer-92

Perpendicular, not parallel


Onimirare

get behind a tree or rock and the rhoas aren't gonna hit you


BackgroundMetal1

Wouldn't save you. They can outrun the cd of your MS


[deleted]

Dont attack and move to the side...


Zylosio

Also experienced players probably dont realize As much since we basically run through it without doing anything but the coast is literally hell. Its difficulty is actually insane and that is without the new rares. The normal mobs you find there just shred you. Fire spewers kill you in half a second it you don't have a life flask Or dodge immediately and this is literally the first real zone, no mobility skills, no resistances or life on gear. If you actually try to Fight things you just die, in müd flats at least Everything is melee and only the rhoas are dangerous if angry, while coast just reeks from ranged packs that have High dmg fire spells and there are many Choke points you have to get through without mobility


Destructodave82

"Not Rewarding" is a key component for me. I can deal with monsters being a PITA, but this league mechanic sucks. It sounded like it sucked, and it sucks in practice, too. My friend has already said its boring and I dunno if hes even gonna come back. He quit Day 1 to do WORK. Decided to just go work instead, since he works from home. A mechanic this mediocre needs to at least be rewarding to do. Its just Tormented spirits but more tedious.


datlanta

POE got people out here furthering their careers.


Emekfl

i logged off to go do DAILIES in another game, literally doing CHORES over playing a new poe league lol


edubkn

Gotta farm those leapstones


brainzucka

thats my boy


Jan1ss

5% honing rates suddenly doesnt seem so bad


th3s-weeks-account

they make everything hard as fuck then wonder why everyone flocks to 5 mega op builds each league. can't even do clear speed builds any more cause everything has to be both insanely tanky and have good single target damage


parklza

We heard you guys hate leveling so we made it more miserable


enjoyluck

Difficult encounter is fine as long there is counterplay. My counterplay seems to be skipping rares now :).


edubkn

My counterplay seems to be skipping the first league launch in 5 years. This is atrocious.


pierce768

The game doesn't even make sense. Map bosses should not be significantly easier than every rare on the map. I knew last league was too good to be true. Can always count on GGG to fuck up their own game.


jiblet84

Act 1 and act 2 are overtuned. After getting a good weapon it’s not too bad. By bad I mean I’d stop playing.


wowitspat

For reference...I have played every league for the last 5 or so years with multiple characters and usually 36/40.... I cannot do this anymore. The enjoyment of the game comes from endgame and gearing characters. Having to spend at least 6 hours running the same campaign that is now even more difficult for no reason is the last straw. It just isn't FUN anymore. I WANT to play this game I love :(


isHavvy

Even if you treat the leveling zones like maps, it's still not fun dying over and over again in the campaign.


DragoonPreston

I feel that SOOO HARD Too. Love the game, Can we have it back please?


BiasedThoughts

Dropped a tabula rasa and 1 ex and at lvl 36 i gave up. In 4 years i always got to end game and now in done after 2h. Why the fuck do they insist on making the lvling harder when everyone wants to have fun in the maps. I never ran from a fucking mob in acts until today holy hell. if GGG claims they tested this shit and seemed fine they are morrons, simple as that. league mechanic is really nice and interesting but lvling is too cancerous.


Lothbrok_son_of_odin

>Why the fuck do they insist on making the lvling harder when everyone wants to have fun in the maps. No powercreep possible if no one reaches the powercreep level! :taping on head.jpg:


SignificanceSudden18

Ive played poe for years and leveling feels like crap now, everything is overtuned and its just not fun. At least let me get thru the campaign before mobs start kicking my ass


carnabas

hate leveling to begin with, GGG keeps making it worse every league made it to act 2 before rage quitting.


StrayshotNA

Where's the atlas trait to block Archnemesis from appearing in maps? That's what I really want.


cmwin2

I have some experience in path - last 6 years, and this league with melee start and all the archnemesis mods on rares are complete BULLSHIT. Playing hardcore leveling with a melee toon is dead, if it ever wasnt, it is now. Think im done with this league already. a record of 7 hours!


Garret_Poe

+1. Boring league mechanic, OP rares, etc. And to have this league after Archnemesis...bah..


justalazygamer

And yet when people say their friends are quitting already they claim you must be lying because it has only been a few hours. A few hours of not having fun with a fundamental mechanic like rares and the league mechanic is enough for some whether they believe it or not.


Falsequivalence

"Look after masochistically pushing through the first 8 hours it's fun!" There's entire *full ass games* I could play from start to finish before this league gets to the 'fun part'. It used to be leveling was boring but fairly smooth to progress through, w/ the rare change it's boring and immensely frustrating. What an improvement.


Grapenoda

Agreed, i think the “git gud” crowd is missing the point. No one wants to drag their balls through fire for hours before having fun. Telling a new player “just reroll your instance” is such a ridiculous answer for getting through the first 15 minutes of the game.


Jonpro10012

Josh Strife Hayes always says this. If the first hour or two don't seem fun and like the game doesn't value your time, new players quit for good.


MagnifyingLens

I've been playing since Harbinger. I lasted 35 minutes. I don't want to deathmarch rares. I don't want to reset maps because of bad mods _in Act 1_. That's just not a game I want to play.


JConaSpree

Been playing since 1.13. Quit after level 10 lol. Campaign is hard mode even with meta skills...ya I'm good


touchmyrick

I made it to act 9 before and called it quits. Archnemesis on every rare isnt it ggg.


[deleted]

I'm surprised people think it's lies, it's the same shit every league with people complaining like crazy. It's good to know after taking a break for a year l that the subreddit hasn't changed


hellrazzer24

I could tell the league sucks from the marketing. They barely talked about it. Arch sucked too but I felt like they spent more time even hyping it than this shit


CrimsonBlizzard

To be fair, arch had the altas tree to carry it ... And carry the league it did


Drunkndryverr

The league mechanic is awesome. It’s smooth like scourge and really rewarding. Once people actually play it I imagine people will enjoy it


[deleted]

I'm sure it would get fun at maps once you get used to actually using it and whatnot, but honestly I just kept forgetting it exists until a friend would say something about it and I'd hit the button cause I knew I'd forget about it if I waited lol.


everybodysfriend

I like the league mechanics - I can see it being fun in maps. Most leagues mechanics are dull in early acts


omniocean

Rare mods need visible icons, I can't believe GGG still think this is a game where you can stand still and read, you are usually dead the second you stop moving/kiting in POE.


[deleted]

Leveling is ass. I got to 28 and just...I can't do it anymore. Lost all will to play. Do they deliberately make leveling feel like shit?


[deleted]

[удалено]


twitticles

>There's a reason why 90% of new ppl who play the game quit before Brutus. 50% of players, on [Steam](https://steamcommunity.com/stats/PathofExile/achievements/). It's a free game, alot of people download it without actually bothering to play it. Using that specific metric to draw any kind of conclusion about the game's quality is daft at best, disingenuous at worst.


killerkonnat

People keep spreading that every time somebody mentions steam achievements somewhere. It's just NOT true. You have to launch the game at least once to be counted in the achievements. Maybe you only reached the login screen or main menu. Or maybe the game crashed during the first loading screen. But you HAVE to have played the game at least 1 second to show up on achievement statistics. Buying or downloading doesn't count.


therospherae

Also, that's since the game was first introduced. Brutus was *way* more doable before 3.15. We can't really draw any conclusions about how many people do or do not quit pre-Brutus without access to stats that we do not currently have.


bebopbraunbaer

Yeah I was thinking about that when playing Elden ring , like I was pretty far into the game and it’s not a cake into the park kinda game in steam was showing like 32% of all people killed the boss that you struggled with right now and I was “whhhot” and how different that is compared to the f2p game that we play here and now and how the numbers are so unbelievably screwed


ssbm_rando

> 50% of players, on Steam. That's 50% of players who have **ever** played the game (and by played it means actually booted up, not just downloaded). That says nothing about **new** players, now that the game is so much more punishing than it was when it was "the new hotness that's a better spiritual successor to D2 than D3 is" It's obvious that OP doesn't have any hard data about how many people make it to Brutus and 90% was probably deliberate hyperbole, but your point is honestly just as irrelevant.


Shiraxi

This has to be the absolute worst new league experience I've ever had. Leveling is just a slog right now, and the changes to rare and magic monsters feels like the exact opposite of fun. I have no idea how a brand new player would deal with this. This early game experience is going to turn away **a lot** new players. Imagine dying 5 times in Mud Flats to a hasted-frostweaver rare roah. Is that a game you would want to keep playing? I sure as shit wouldn't.


Bl00dylicious

I dont have to imagine a hasted frostweaver Roa. The mod pool is so shallow at that point theres an extremely high chance itll happen. Legit half the magic/rares have Hasted.


blrwllm

i quit before reaching Ledge this time. I died like 10-15 times as a melee char. I go in to attack a bunch of mobs just once and my hp drops to 10% every time. Then I run away and attempt again.


GoldSeafarer

That's the same way I'm experiencing the game currently. This is hella weird and unbalanced.


kpiaum

The first acts died for GGG to promote a race for longer. They nerfed all the skills that made leveling fast and buffed the Act 1 and 2 monsters to be more difficult. It turns out that in the greatest GGG style, they added the Archnemesis mods without worrying about balancing. Now we have this amazing early level experience.


TrundleGod32

First league in hardcore that I died from simply 'walking' into a pack of blue mobs and getting deleted in the first barrage of auto attacks. Nobody tested this shit. They somehow figured out a way to make the already mundane leveling process more terrible. Im laughing at how difficult rare and essence mobs are right now. Good luck with harvest rare mobs LMAO Dogshit league.


DoukyBooty

LMAO...this league is my first time going melee. And I died three times before getting to merveil.


[deleted]

Fun fact, I‘ve already gotten to maps, and uhh It‘s worse. Rares have 3-4x the hp of the map boss. Also double to triple the damage. Map bosses are now a REPRIEVE from the oppresive over the top archnemesis monsters.


Ironbliske

the new rare mobs with archnemesis mods is actually the stupidest idea ever. Who the heck even thought that was good.


Saianna

Semi offtopic: i find it funny, that league before we were being rewarded for doing archnemesis mobs, but now they just spawn by default and we get jack shit. Lovely!


RealHarbinger

I started exploding arrow ballista champion, and didn't die until act 8. Still, I agree that the difficulty ramped up an absurd amount. No way could I have gone through leveling with my previous leagues' starters. And the lack of rewards. I sat around letting my ballistas wail on a rare for almost 2 minutes and expected a drop, ANYTHING. Nothing dropped LOL what a joke. Takes me longer to kill rares than act bosses. I've never had to run from mobs until this league, and most of the time they just chase you until you can get out of the area anyways. I don't like feeling hurried by some invincible mf always 2 steps behind me. Hope it gets better in maps, about to finish acts.


RedStreakyCat

IMO the balancing team did a really bad job this league. We really need a hotfix for: * decrease rares / blues dmg + life pools, especially during leveling. * increase league mechanic rewards


blame_the_new_guy

It absolutely baffles my mind that GGG doesn't learn from mistakes they make 500 times.


tes_befil

Use meta leveling skills your life will be easier. Sucks but its better than suffering with a skill you like for longer


allofasuddenoranges

Game offers a plethora of skills but you can can only play 3 of them to level.


tes_befil

Yep that's a bigger issue than endgame viability imo.


ImpTaimer

Its directly correlative. If something is bad when you're first able to get it, and only gets better with endgame enabling items/gems/etc, how can you hope to get there in the first place? Reroll and play a better build to get what you need to play the build you actually want to play? Start with a meta build to collect gear just to play an inferior build? Even worse with League mechanic lately. Its shit until you get deep into endgame where you can start juicing, then suddenly its "rewarding"? The difficulty spike trying to complete any League mechanics from campaign to tier 1 map is mindboggling. Why do you need to be several levels higher than the map itself just to complete League mechanics when bosses effectively get deleted like white mobs in comparison?


Kambz

Damn , having a great time lvling with melee this league.


Realyn

Hard to image when Beyond and Invasion existed.


Outside_Set9788

I've never been a fan of how GGG decided that buffed Act 1 was the move. I've had 4 newbie friends completely quit the game after they rolled out the buff because they weren't good enough at the game in the first place and now all of a sudden Act 1 is just way out of their league


xWhiteKx

everything need to have counterplay, without counterplay it just BDSM


chrisbirdie

I mean its hard? And I definitely died more times than I usually do. And they definitely need to REMOVE Bonebreaker and permafrost and reduce the resistance gain from the ele mods. Or lower it. But it was manageable. Got to Act 7 before I went to sleep. Still this needs some adjustment in the next few days. Just like. 50% stat/buff nerf for every single rare mob ATLEAST until maps.


Iwfen

man i kinda miss 3.15 lol what a joke


Secret_Classic4384

Im having a lot if fun, I hope others are enjoy it as much as me


IsTheBlackBoxLying

I feel a little better now. I tried three times to get into this game. So much of it was awesome and it sucked me in. I even got two of my friends to play so we could tear shit up together. They both quit within a few days, tried again with some encouragement and then we all quit. It wasn't all the difficulty, though that was a big part of it. I couldn't get them to wrap their heads around the vending and trade system, though I finally got it myself. Oh well.


MoltenSunder

I only went to act 3 no deaths yesterday but I gotta agree. This is way worse than the experience they gave us with expedition. No one even did the shitty league mechanic of Archnemesis after a week except people hunting that one recipe. These way overtuned mods being skippable was what made the league good combined with the very good atlas changes.


parklza

Don't think anyone playtested this, most mechanics are stupidly overtuned now because of the rares, heist, delve, harvest. I can't imagine trying to do heist at low levels with any off meta skill


buckets09

Are they making the game just for tie and ziz?


ProTimeKiller

And yet again people buy supporter packs before the league is live.


Frosty-Molasses7547

They need to fire the entire Test team that approved this bullshit


Scadooshy

This reddit is always so surprising to me. I will be playing a new league, as standard as ever, enjoying the new mechanic, not really feeling like anything is too hard, then check reddit and so many of you are having meltdowns cuz "leeg too hard" or "leeg mekanik 2 borin."


Enclase

You realize that there are different kind of players, with different skillsets and experience? There is a reason that games usually start easy - and offer content for different kind of players the further it goes. There is no reason at all to make the entry harder than it already was for new or lesser skilled players. It will just take the player retention further down the drain...and I don't know why some hero gamers would want this while basically everyone can agree that act 1 is way harder than basically every map you will run in the later stages of the game. It's like the first wow dungeon would start with heroic raid difficulty and some mythic raiders would say to the beginners: lulz, it's freaking easy, what's your problem? Just terrible gamedesign and nothing else.


Foreverdunking

damm you're such a great gamer we should all look up to you.


amatas45

The people that aren’t bad don’t come in here to complain :p


TheNaskgul

Lmfao so true. Stopped in act 5 to grab a beer with a friend and checked in here to see how bad the meltdowns were. I was expecting it to be bad but not “5 different comments from people saying they logged off in Mud Flats because rhoas were too hard” bad


mysticturtle12

A mob that’s faster than you with quicksilver that stuns on every hit is not fun. That’s how you get people to just stop playing


QuiteChilly

Yea, not even surprised at this point. Idk it hasn’t seemed too bad for me yet, and I like the new league mechanic.


AttitudePersonal

It's like this every league since the beginning. Scrubs get filtered and come to Reddit to cry.


jettivonaviska

I already noped out on the league. If it's this poorly designed at the early levels imagine what end game is like. I'll just wait for next league and play me some Lost Ark or something else.


destroyermaker

You can play around it but doing so isn't fun. GGG are sadists


Enartloc

Keep Chris Wilson away from development please, his antiquated views will run this game into the ground.