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Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
21,293
I am probably done with PoE1, I would have to be really bored to play PoE1 before PoE2 comes out.
 

ADL

Prophet
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Nantucket
I was planning on doing a 'canon playthrough' in ruthless where I take my time and absorb all the lore before PoE2 but if they don't exponentially multiply the presence of league mechanics in ruthless mapping, not even gonna bother. The current rates are ridiculous and borderline unplayable.
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
21,293
I was planning on doing a 'canon playthrough' in ruthless where I take my time and absorb all the lore before PoE2 but if they don't exponentially multiply the presence of league mechanics in ruthless mapping, not even gonna bother. The current rates are ridiculous and borderline unplayable.

How is it canon playthrough if you want to get spammed by league mechanics?
 

Zeriel

Arcane
Joined
Jun 17, 2012
Messages
13,965
I was planning on doing a 'canon playthrough' in ruthless where I take my time and absorb all the lore before PoE2 but if they don't exponentially multiply the presence of league mechanics in ruthless mapping, not even gonna bother. The current rates are ridiculous and borderline unplayable.


I don't think Ruthless is in anyway "canon"; it has way too many balance decisions made just to make the game harder and slower, that while may be in the "spirit" of earlier versions is not really aiming in that direction overall. This is one of the drawbacks of a live service game, you can never go back and experience the content as it was originally designed. I do think there are some experiences that were good and better in the original releases. As someone who has played off and on since some of the earliest betas (Act 1 being the end, and Act 2 being the end), there was a merit to the way the game was back then. I wouldn't want it to stay that way forever, but people who only ever knew Vaal Oversoul as trivial, Act 4 as easy, etc, did miss out on something.

I also kinda miss the old Cruel/Merciless difficulties, Act 6-10 sounded like a cool idea when they first talked about it, but the execution was rather lacking. It really could have been a lot more, like showing you more consequences of your choices in the earlier acts. They could have done a lot with bandit choices, for example, and that was what I was expecting before release, but Fall of Oriath's extra acts imo ended up being largely a bust.

I'd actually argue the storyline after Act 5 is pretty fucking stupid and needlessly retcons a lot of the lore that existed before that point. The gameplay is fine, but I'm not a fan at all of how they inserted the "gods" concept into the game post Beast-slaying, it feels like some fanfiction writer came in after the fact and fucked everything up, continuity wise, and there are some huge gaping holes there in terms of what the writing beforehand implied that contradict each other.
 

tritosine2k

Erudite
Joined
Dec 29, 2010
Messages
1,700
Gutting magic find (ruthless) is plain stupid in this game. Game is supposed to turn from chore to breeze.
Almost every league mechanic before map supposed to earn you handful chaos so you can afford some decent leveling unique ( it isn't just tabula or what they showcase in recent videos) . For example in ultimatum they did that in act 9 quarry after overleveled ( you can even farm https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Belly_of_the_Beast there )

Why even showcase leveling gear in QoL videos otherwise?
 

Zeriel

Arcane
Joined
Jun 17, 2012
Messages
13,965
...Are they finally gonna give us an invisible/silent MTX for warcries?

If not, that's gonna become even more than it already is the goblin sound spam. Looking forward to (more) constant warcry spam every time I trade with someone.
 

Kjaska

Arbeiter
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Germoney
Insert Title Here
Another nerf in disguise to almost all builds. Having to reserve mana and give up another socket means you'll just never use it anymore.
 

Jaedar

Arcane
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Aug 5, 2009
Messages
10,141
Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Another nerf in disguise to almost all builds. Having to reserve mana and give up another socket means you'll just never use it anymore.
jesus, didn't even notice it reserved mana. That's a big nerf to every build. So is the socket slot tbh.
Not to mention that having it on lmb is frequently better than having it on pure auto...
 

Kjaska

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With PoE2 being a separate game, they really have no more argument left except "ah well, with twink items you're done with the campaign in only a few hours" while the competition is offering a skip or a partial skip.
 

lukaszek

the determinator
Patron
Joined
Jan 15, 2015
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With PoE2 being a separate game, they really have no more argument left except "ah well, with twink items you're done with the campaign in only a few hours" while the competition is offering a skip or a partial skip.
no more skipping necromancer in the cave, in poe2 it will be mandatory
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
21,293
I am with GGG, no campaign skips, make campaign better instead. Too much focus on engame makes for a boring grindy game. Before PoE I played a bunch of aRPGs and never needed endgame. You finish the campaign on all difficulties and then make a new character. That uses up over 100 hours of playtime, if you want more, you find another aRPG to play. And if the game is boring during campaign (Titan Quest) then I would just drop it.
 

Jaedar

Arcane
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Messages
10,141
Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
I am with GGG, no campaign skips, make campaign better instead. Too much focus on engame makes for a boring grindy game. Before PoE I played a bunch of aRPGs and never needed endgame. You finish the campaign on all difficulties and then make a new character. That uses up over 100 hours of playtime, if you want more, you find another aRPG to play.
I would be 100% fine with having to do campaign once per league, but then being allowed to skip it on subsequent characters. This might actually get me to play more than one char per league.
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
21,293
I am with GGG, no campaign skips, make campaign better instead. Too much focus on engame makes for a boring grindy game. Before PoE I played a bunch of aRPGs and never needed endgame. You finish the campaign on all difficulties and then make a new character. That uses up over 100 hours of playtime, if you want more, you find another aRPG to play.
I would be 100% fine with having to do campaign once per league, but then being allowed to skip it on subsequent characters. This might actually get me to play more than one char per league.
Grim Dawn solved this by actually having some choices during campaign. Diablo 4 lets you roam almost wherever and not just go in straight line. Last Epoch is probably worst one if they forced full campaign runs.
PoE1 would have good campaign if they went through with their idea of making it hard and challenging.
I guess with PoE2 coming they could just let zoomers from PoE1 get what they want.
 

Cyberarmy

Love fool
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Smyrna - Scalanouva
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Actually PoE 1 have already good side activities just for levelling purposes. Delve and Heist can be really good side levelling content once you've completed the campaign.
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
16,259
I too agree that Grim Dawn solution is true answer to campaign / end game problem but it is not that competent in it as huge chunk of GD campaign is dreadfully boring. D4 also tried to fix it in similar way but fell short by being too formulaic which made it worse than GD solution.

The map system and its iterations in other games were answer for limited amount of varied content in campaign that was simply not finished. Basically dev team couldn't produce fast enough good quality campaign content and had to give you quick slop of remixed assets as replacement for campaign content that was not there yet spruced later on with minimal amount of unique content.

In ideal world campaign will give you wealth of content and side activities at any point in your progression so that you DON'T need specific end game. GD approaches it giving you hidden areas, key dungeons, extra bosses and all of them are tied with unique loot that drops only from those bosses and areas that could be critical to your build so it is normal to run for example warden boss few times for his unique loot that is great for necromancer.

If POE was made in vein of GD then Atziri would become part of campaign including her temple as side area and in ideal world her influence would be seen i even at start of game in form of Atziri cultists etc. And she wouldn't even need to be end game area, just middle to high area as side quest with her own unique loot to farm.

The key here is a"RPG". ARPG were always meant to be full fledged RPGs just without too many action stopping gameplay like DnD has. You could have 150 hour long ARPG campaign if it was meaningful but making ARPG is actually harder than RPG as A in ARPG requires also decent amount of skillset and content to make that A shine to already content heavy RPG part.

I really wish Crate would go at GD2. GD suffers immensly from being kickstarter game and new dev syndrome with big ambitions and little budget
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
21,293
I too agree that Grim Dawn solution is true answer to campaign / end game problem but it is not that competent in it as huge chunk of GD campaign is dreadfully boring. D4 also tried to fix it in similar way but fell short by being too formulaic which made it worse than GD solution.

The map system and its iterations in other games were answer for limited amount of varied content in campaign that was simply not finished. Basically dev team couldn't produce fast enough good quality campaign content and had to give you quick slop of remixed assets as replacement for campaign content that was not there yet spruced later on with minimal amount of unique content.

In ideal world campaign will give you wealth of content and side activities at any point in your progression so that you DON'T need specific end game. GD approaches it giving you hidden areas, key dungeons, extra bosses and all of them are tied with unique loot that drops only from those bosses and areas that could be critical to your build so it is normal to run for example warden boss few times for his unique loot that is great for necromancer.

If POE was made in vein of GD then Atziri would become part of campaign including her temple as side area and in ideal world her influence would be seen i even at start of game in form of Atziri cultists etc. And she wouldn't even need to be end game area, just middle to high area as side quest with her own unique loot to farm.

The key here is a"RPG". ARPG were always meant to be full fledged RPGs just without too many action stopping gameplay like DnD has. You could have 150 hour long ARPG campaign if it was meaningful but making ARPG is actually harder than RPG as A in ARPG requires also decent amount of skillset and content to make that A shine to already content heavy RPG part.

I really wish Crate would go at GD2. GD suffers immensly from being kickstarter game and new dev syndrome with big ambitions and little budget
Yes, I remember I would farm that demon hidden area that brought you to cultist den with a boss there and you could get some nice build defining uniques there.

I also loved version of POE1 where you had multiple versions of Eldar fight for white, yellow and red maps and you could have fun doing them even before reaching end of the endgame. It made engame feel more than a pointless grind that only rewarded you with unique content at its end.
They tried to add something similar later with Conquers and shit but those were boring and shit fights and way too many. The Maven witnessing you fighting boring map bosses is also a shit idea and does not compare.
 

Kjaska

Arbeiter
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Actually PoE 1 have already good side activities just for levelling purposes. Delve and Heist can be really good side levelling content once you've completed the campaign.
I use Delve during campaign already to patch up my levels, if I end up too underleveled for a zone.
If POE was made in vein of GD then Atziri would become part of campaign including her temple as side area and in ideal world her influence would be seen i even at start of game in form of Atziri cultists etc. And she wouldn't even need to be end game area, just middle to high area as side quest with her own unique loot to farm.

The key here is a"RPG". ARPG were always meant to be full fledged RPGs just without too many action stopping gameplay like DnD has. You could have 150 hour long ARPG campaign if it was meaningful but making ARPG is actually harder than RPG as A in ARPG requires also decent amount of skillset and content to make that A shine to already content heavy RPG part.
Go play Elden Ring. It has everything you claim to want. If you were to implement this shit in PoE1's campaign, it would be completely wasted dev time as people would just skip Atziri and her cultists. Nobody wants to put in effort during campaign, if the gear will end up obsolete 2 hours later.

Endgame, build variety, itemization, depth, slaughtering hordes of monsters and Leagues is what makes PoE the current king of aRPGs, not the "RPG". If people want RPG, they'll play BG3 or Dragon's Dogma 2.
 

Zeriel

Arcane
Joined
Jun 17, 2012
Messages
13,965
I am with GGG, no campaign skips, make campaign better instead. Too much focus on engame makes for a boring grindy game. Before PoE I played a bunch of aRPGs and never needed endgame. You finish the campaign on all difficulties and then make a new character. That uses up over 100 hours of playtime, if you want more, you find another aRPG to play.
I would be 100% fine with having to do campaign once per league, but then being allowed to skip it on subsequent characters. This might actually get me to play more than one char per league.
Grim Dawn solved this by actually having some choices during campaign. Diablo 4 lets you roam almost wherever and not just go in straight line. Last Epoch is probably worst one if they forced full campaign runs.
PoE1 would have good campaign if they went through with their idea of making it hard and challenging.
I guess with PoE2 coming they could just let zoomers from PoE1 get what they want.

D4 actually lets you skip campaigns FOREVER if you've done them once in permanent league. So every season you can just skip the campaign. You don't skip leveling though. The whole "we have to do it this way because casuals" excuse really doesn't fly when D4 is the most casual ARPG on the market and let people skip the entire thing sooner than any other ARPG. Honestly, PoE devs just aren't very accountable to their playerbase whereas Blizzard IS--ironically because Blizzard sucks and they are desperate to claw back goodwill, whereas PoE feels unaccountable because they have built a quality product that lets them ignore their playerbase due to said goodwill existing.
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
21,293
I am with GGG, no campaign skips, make campaign better instead. Too much focus on engame makes for a boring grindy game. Before PoE I played a bunch of aRPGs and never needed endgame. You finish the campaign on all difficulties and then make a new character. That uses up over 100 hours of playtime, if you want more, you find another aRPG to play.
I would be 100% fine with having to do campaign once per league, but then being allowed to skip it on subsequent characters. This might actually get me to play more than one char per league.
Grim Dawn solved this by actually having some choices during campaign. Diablo 4 lets you roam almost wherever and not just go in straight line. Last Epoch is probably worst one if they forced full campaign runs.
PoE1 would have good campaign if they went through with their idea of making it hard and challenging.
I guess with PoE2 coming they could just let zoomers from PoE1 get what they want.

D4 actually lets you skip campaigns FOREVER if you've done them once in permanent league. So every season you can just skip the campaign. You don't skip leveling though. The whole "we have to do it this way because casuals" excuse really doesn't fly when D4 is the most casual ARPG on the market and let people skip the entire thing sooner than any other ARPG. Honestly, PoE devs just aren't very accountable to their playerbase whereas Blizzard IS--ironically because Blizzard sucks and they are desperate to claw back goodwill, whereas PoE feels unaccountable because they have built a quality product that lets them ignore their playerbase due to said goodwill existing.
No, D4 is just retarded because from all reporting its campaign is much better than its boring endgame.
 

Jaedar

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 5, 2009
Messages
10,141
Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Grim Dawn solved this by actually having some choices during campaign.
Haven't played grim dawn, but poe has choices. Bandits. Optional quests (this one is maybe reaching). Some of the acts let you tackle content in different orders. Who rules highgate in act 9.

None of this really increases the campaign longevity. Bandits are all about what makes sense for your build, seems like no one gives a shit about who gets the feather.
 

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