PoE Pitfalls

[MonTy]

Hail all,

I've played a lot of PoE recently and I'd be interested in hearing how many of you still play it, and your thoughts on the game.

For myself, it's a love and hate relationship. While it's exciting seeing all these new Uniques implemented into the game every few weeks, the currency and item drop rate is so low that I've given up hope of finding something great. I've made a lot more currency playing the trading game than I have from finding stuff.

Even if you do find a Unique you like, you have to have the currency to socket, link, and chrome it. Then you have to assemble the correct gems, which require even more currency to quality them.

Mana is also a huge factor in being able to use skills. Even if you have the links, it's probably tough to sustain even four or five links. Then you also have to worry about balancing life/es and armor/eva/resistances. It's absolutely exhausting getting a character geared to do end-game maps, and then it's a huge currency sink to even run those maps. I've spent about 20 exalts worth of currency running enough maps to get to 90, which was my goal level to get to.

After all that, can't say I'm too excited to play more characters. I've been planning out a lot of different builds, but whenever I think what will be needed in terms of gems, sockets, links, and gear, I get discouraged.

Sorry about the mostly negative post. There are a lot of positive points to the game. I've met a lot of interesting people from trading and grouping and it's something I'm not used to having to do, with other ARPGs. When you do get those amazing drops in a new league you can really catapult ahead with trading smart, but without doing that I don't find much of the game accessible.

[shoju]

I am frustrated with the currency / Items portion of the game.

The gameplay, is great, I love it, and for the most part, at this point, I feel like the game is balanced enough that I can play what I want, with a decent enough build, and not feel frustrated.

But. I'm not sure if I'm going to be dropping more money on the game. I still play, I still enjoy the game (outside of the Vaal Fight), but I just can't stand the way that drops, loot, orbs, "crafting", etc... are handled.

I shouldn't be able to kill a Rare monster in a level 63 area, and get a pair of WOOL GLOVES. That is just completely unacceptable.

If it's not a scroll, Orb of Transmutation, Orb of Augmentation, Orb of Alteration, Chromatic Orb, it's a damn rare sight to see it drop.

The Current "Slot Machine" Crafting system is incredibly frustrating. I have an ilvl75 Vaal Regalia sitting in the bank. It's taken me 150 Jewelers + X4 Scraps to finally get it to 6s. I'm through 200 Fusings, + X4 Scraps, and I've not seen a 5L. And that's just the part of getting it to the sockets that I want. God, I could have sucked it up and traded for something by now that would have been better.

And that isn't even after I Trans / Aug / Alt / Regal / Ex / Chaos / Divine it to get what I'm looking for.

The current crafting system IS NOT CRAFTING. At least, not in the sense of any game with crafting that I've ever played. The only thing that this game has that is "crafting" by any sense of the word, is when you are trading things to a vendor, when you know the recipe. Past that, it's a gamble, and one that I've failed far too many times, far too terribly. I still want to find an exalt to give back to MonTy to replace the one he spotted me for that GOD AWFUL TROLL ROLL THORNS on my current Vaal Regalia.

Trading is a lost cause. I'm done trying really. I'm treating the game as a single player, that I can chat with people on anymore. I've turned off general, and trade, and if people want to talk with me, they can PM me. I can go from having a fantastic experience (random templar in general handed me a fantastic 5L 2h'd mace and a portal gem, simply for talking to him, and not being an utter tool, to asking for 4 Chaos Orbs for a Damn Fine Necklace, only to get flamed into oblivion, because the guy thought I was trying to rip him off.

He asked how much.
I said I wasn't really good at pricing things, but I thought the neck was worth 4 Chaos.
Insert 5 minutes of screaming, and ranting and raving.
Goodbye general, Goodbye Trade, Goodbye sir, that I've now blocked.

While I understand why people don't like the idea of an AH in this game, something needs to be done to improve the ability to improve gear in game. Trading sucks. Unless you are sitting in town, NOT DOING ANYTHING ELSE Trade chat is just awful to try and watch. Drops are so random, that it's unbelievable, blind luck when you actually have something drop that is usable for a high level character.

Couple the low drop rates of "usable" gear, with the slot machine, and the "solution" to unusable gear while crafting being more expensive than 2 exalts, and it's not surprising.

Now, I can't comment on the map problems that you are having MonTy, as the highest level Map that I've run was a level 70 map. I've honestly not found mapping to be a huge problem yet, but then, I'm not at a point where I would be running the high level maps yet. But, I would assume that you have the same problem with maps at higher levels, as gear. Not only do you need them to drop, but then, because you are in a high level zone, you have to contend with maps dropping at any level from 66 - current level, that you have the slot machine of loot happening all over again.

I'm unsure how I would even go about reconciling my problem in a fashion that would "work" for the playerbase as a whole. Most people who play PoE are so adamantly anti-Diablo anything, they would revolt at the mere mention of my solution.

1.) Cap the "bottom" levels that can drop from mobs.
If you cap the "top level" of items that can drop,
and you cap the level at which someone can get XP from a mob (with deterioration)
Why not just finish it off, and cap the bottom ilvl that can drop as well.

2.) bias drops towards the class. Even, if it's only biased at a magic / rare level, and leave white drops to be random.
Playing my marauder, and seeing an ilvl 68 rare Wand drop as my reward for killing a map boss (Rhoa in the River Bed), is just irritating.

3.) Improve the drops from the random exiles.
Seriously. They shouldn't be dropping terrible loot. They made their presence more "rare" than they were before. They shouldn't be dropping a ton of white crap, and a few blues. Especially not in a Merciless / Map zone.

4.) Improve the Socket / Linking / Coloring process on items.
5.) Improve the randomness of rolling. Nothing like rolling light radius, block and stun recovery, and LGOH on a piece of gear that I just spent a ton of time getting ready.

[LochnarITB]

I'm currently at the stage I get frustrated with the game. I've always played self found ("crafted" ) so I've accepted the loot situation. My frustration, at this point, is pretty much my own fault. I tend to not do a lot of planning. I might find a couple special nodes to work towards but otherwise generally think in terms of "lots of life", "evade", "mana regen", etc. I generally blow through until I hit merciless, especially late act 2 and act 3. Then my less than optimal builds bite back. Right now I'm struggling to gain levels in act 3 merciless with my evasion/armour leap slam/sweep marauder. I will finally either zerg Piety or give up on him and then switch to another class/build from the ground up. My most fun seems to come from the quick building through normal and cruel and then I kinda lock myself into some kind of weird loyalty to the toon to drag them through merciless. I can continue to have fun but have to break myself out of the frustrating toons sooner.

Maybe the current toon's plight is what has allowed Cookie Clicker to get its nails in me so deep.

[Frag]

Just fired it up again yesterday as well as D3 and TL2, and played them back to back to test how they felt after playing a different ARPG. What stuck out to me about POE was just how slow it is compared to the other two. The animations, the walking speed, the combat itself is all slower than its competition, at both the normal, advanced and expert gearing levels. More than that, the animations felt jerky and 'off'. I recall someone streaming at one point stating that POE feels good once you pick up 20% run speed and 30% attack speed. I tested at lower and higher quantities than that and it's a reasonable breakpoint, but even so, it doesn't feel fluid or as natural as the other games.

Lastly, the field of view is the smallest of the three, making it feel claustrophobic.

[MonTy]

I'm treating the game as a single player...

That is usually how I treat ARPGs, but MP is the only thing keeping me in this game. Due to the extremely low drop rate I find it absolutely necessary to trade and team up. It's nearly impossible to try and find a unique that you want, instead you're forced to trade for it. Even a fairly common unique like Facebreaker took me over five hundred hours logged to find it. Yet I can go on poe.xyz.is and find a decent one for one chaos. You can try to make due with what you have, of course, but it limits the game more than others I've played. I played a lot of Median XL before POE, so I guess that spoiled me (you can break down uniques you find to craft the one you want).

Before spending time on trading I had hundreds of hours logged yet no real currency bank to speak of. I had a lot of failed crafting attempts which lead me to at most having a semi-decent 5L. Then I played Onslaught and used the 3rd party trading websites. Bought and sold lots of stuff, flipped some items (biggest gain was 20 chaos flipped to 7exalts). Without doing that I would have most likely been nowhere on gear and currency.

I've been playing Diablo 2 again while waiting for the POE 1.0 patch and it's been a blast. Like seeing an old friend again.

[shoju]

Should have told me you wanted facebreakers

I have a pair. They have a terribly low damage roll, so would need to be divined, but you can have them. I just.... have no desire to play unarmed.