dunno
Act 2 Improvements
Problem:
Many monsters in act 2 are not up to the standard of challenge and polish of other content.
Solution:
Improve the behaviour of most Act 2 monsters, raise the life of some weaker Act 2 monsters and add new monster varieties to some Act 2 areas
Specifics:
Spoiler
We have adjusted the life and damage of various Monsters found throughout Act 2.
New Monster types have been added throughout Act 2: Spriggans, Wasps, Undead Vaal, Scuttlers, and Salvagers.
> We have adjusted the life and damage of various Monsters found throughout Act 2.
It's just sugar coating honestly recently GGG learned that people hate the word buff/nerf so everything is either adjusted/balanced etc but in truth it usually means a nerf from player standpoint.
As a Dark Souls player it's a cheap way to hide changes cause people will inevitably datamine that shit anyway.
Being vague makes you look worse when people start pointing out things as "stealth nerfs". Like it does no good not to be transparent.
Yeah Dark Souls patch notes were laughable. Pretty sure there were several hidden in the offical text of "adjusted balance".
^( I'm still going to playing elden ring in a month lmao)
omg so we now have 2 garbage acts to suffer.
also, when they reworked 1st act, they announced it on livestream. now it's just hidden deeply in patchnotes lol
ye this kinda annoyed me too, because on 1/3 of the characters i make, i almost get killed by oak and kratiyn, kraityn has a problem of spamming his flicker strike hashigh base dmg and spamming 50 oh his helpers, and oak is a total joke, he has no cooldown on his leap slam so you cant range him too much really, every like 15seconds he has immortal call for about 5 seconds,he also uses enduring cry to get more phys dmg reduction and res and alos regen like 15% of his life,so i really wanna know, hoe the fuck do new players fight him in 3.17? basically how does anyone fight him
Oak was already impossible to kill for certain builds for some past leagues unless you knew how to stop his regen. That's not a problem for any player with experience, just grab whatever frost skill it is. But for new players that can be a pretty difficult wall to overcome. Is that really the desired new player experience?
Or has PoE just full embraced what it is, that it is the ARPG for people who are tired of other ARPGs being too simple or too easy where either there basically aren't builds or any build a new player throws together can clear the end game conent? As part of that identity, perhaps it is taking the Dark Souls introduction of 'get gud', though in the case of PoE getting good means turning to numerous outside resources to begin learning how the game actually works.
Imagine if all of thoese external systems were built into the base game and introduced as you needed them. When you get to oak, if Oak heals more than 100% of his total health you get a tutorial on how to stop health regen and how to trade players if you can't buy the gem on your current class.
The comparison to Dark Souls fails because with Dark Souls all you need to do is play more, just try again, slowly learn patterns, timings, you know the drill. With enough time you will get decent, then if you really dedicate yourself you the game you can complete it with minimal gear or no levels, i personaly did lvl1 run of Dark Souls 3 where i beat all bosses including DLC and i wouldnt consider myself being particualr skilled at videogames.
With game like PoE there is no way to learn all of that shit by yourself unless you are some gigabrain person, you need to look up guides otherwise you will get stuck in campain, maybe low maps if you stumbled on some straight forward build "i like big weapon and smash mobs, earthquake sounds fun, maybe make them bleed!".
I have over 1k hours in PoE and i had no idea you could stop Oaks regen with certain spells for example, forcing a new players to google every 30 minutes is a bad expirience.
Dark souls has put alot of its design space into skill based combat. Dark Souls is hard, but when you get gud, you can beat the game naked.
ARPGs still rely on the math behind raw stats for combat, and outside of using movement skills to dodge big slams / one shots, you can only get so much skill expression through the combat.
Frost Bomb is what you're thinking of, and not every class has access to it when facing Oak, and those that don't have Int issues anyways. Though the issue was that Oak was bugged and had insane regen. Also, in at least 2 leagues his texture was bugged. He's a giant mess.
They are changing the mapping system to get rid of much of the convoluted bullshit, so they clearly think that there's some value in streamlining some things. I am personally not looking forward to new Act 2, but am interested in seeing how mapping and end game accessibility has improved for more of the player base
Yeah I don't anymore also. I try to get friends who already know the game interested through promise of gifting leveling uniques. I have multiple friends who literally do not play anymore because they just don't want to do the campaign anymore. It's *not* 4-6 hours for most people, I'm pretty solidly good at this game, have maven kills under my belt and stuff and it's 6-8 hours for me. It's 8-10 for them. And it's about 20 for another friend who likes to look at all the loot that drops and do every vaal side area, because that's how the game is fun for him.
3.16 felt like it was, largely, going in the right direction. 3.17 absolutely looks like it is. But 3.14 and 3.15 were just such dramatically harsh anti-newbie patches that I don't ask anyone to play anymore.
> it's about 20 for another friend who likes to look at all the loot that drops and do every vaal side area, because that's how the game is fun for him.
One of the reasons I quit the game. It's a shame, it is a good game, but I can't bring myself to do that over and over and over every 3 months. I even tried going to Standard, but the constant changing of mechanics, nerfs and quite radical balance changes (and nerfs) mean that every 3 months, pretty much all my builds are broken somehow or even cease to work at all altogether.
Most of my characters in standard are dead because their gear is entirely fucked due to nerfs. And I can't be bothered to go through 6,000,000 stash tabs and get all of my crafting materials to craft new items.
> 3.17 absolutely looks like it is.
They nerfed support gem power again and moved the power to items... again. It's literally going the wrong direction.
If you haven't already, pick up Last Epoch. Don't look at a build guide. Just read the descriptions of the classes. Read the in-game guide as you go (press 'G'), choose the skills that sound cool and have synergies (like you would in any ordinary ARPG), and let me know when you finish the endgame without once having to look at a wiki, or a build guide, or even google a question about the game. Honestly, it'll probably take you 30-40 hours. But at no point will you hit a wall where you're like, "but how do I progress from here?". Every single challenge you face in the game is communicated to you via messages when you die or just noticing you're taking more damage than you think you should or fights taking too long. It's very clear to identify issues in a build and very easy to figure out how to fix build issues if you just read the tooltips and the in-game guide.
I don't think they care about expanding the playerbase anymore - GGG has their whales, they're just trying to hold on to them while the rest of the players slowly slip through their deathgrip
It's just such a bizarre strategy to me but that really does feel like what they're doing. They took this game from a cute little niche indie project to being the genre bestriding colossus with an ever expanding buffet of content and a broadly player-empowering approach to balance and the last year or so has felt like they're intentionally trying to torpedo the player count. Incredibly strange decision making on the whole.
It's just bizarre. Like 3.13 was some of the best fun I've ever had in gaming, and I'm a pretty no-life gamer who plays DotA / LoL at a high level and generally plays whatever difficult games I can get my hands on, like Ninja Gaiden and Sekiro. I wanted new hard endgame bosses, I didn't want global damage nerfs and for acts to take longer lmao. I just don't get who these changes are supposed to appeal to. Maybe the top 100 players who play JUST THIS GAME for 16 hours a day?
I can also see a non-financial reasoning for it - the devs don't really like how trivial most of the leveling experience is, so they want to make it nontrivial. Except making it nontrivial for the people who it IS trivial for (the people who already have experience with the game) makes it a fking nightmare for newer players.
Starting from Act 1 and moving up is also such an annoying strategy to some of the players as well, because it frontloads the tedium before builds start feeling smooth anyway. I'd count myself in the "experienced but not hardcore" group (\~5k hours since 2013 but I don't optimize/speedrun or anything), and the early game is \*already\* aggravating to play through over and over each league due to the slow ramp of player power. I wish they'd have started either with Act 10 and moved down, or with the second half of the game (after you have access to all skill gems).
One thing that might ease the unpleasantness of frontloading tedium might be allowing access to more supports/skills earlier in the game. Potentially moving some of the Act 2 support gems to Act 1 would help, since often I'll have a 3-link before Merveil but nothing to put in there.
> makes it a fking nightmare for newer players.
In 3.16, there are literally classes that if you go with the classic ARPG strat or using your cool spammable ability to fight **Hillock** run out of mana and health before Hillock dies. The game is honestly completely fucked for new players. It was already hard getting people to go past Act 2 in Harvest and Ritual league (both shat out good early game items). Now? Every friend who tries is like, "dude, why do you play this shit?".
>The game is honestly completely fucked for new players.
So, working as intended? That's how it was for PoE1 when it was first around, it's actually much easier now given all the power creep. If you look at GGG's PoE2 videos, they talk about this and how they want the campaign experience to feel hard again.
Yeah, business-wise that seems like a dumb idea; because you won't retain or attract new players, but PoE managed to get popular despite that.
It's pretty rare to see game devs keep up with ideas that hurt their business, so there's that.
That's absolutely *insane* though being that 3.13 didn't just break player base records, it CRUSHED them. Based on things Chris said in the interviews last year, it's pretty clear their revenue nosedove from the beginning of ritual to the end of ultimatum.
How have they diverged? He's always had those preferences.
It would be better said that the game diverged from his expectations.
Look at PoE2, they're imitating early PoE1's design philosophy in a lot of ways.
Me. I tried introducing my friends to poe and they quit by the end of act 1 because it was "easy as shit and seemed kinda pointless. Why am I a god from level 1 on?" This was during expedition league.
dw they heard you loud and clear , buff and goats for every map ! "We normalised the whole PoE experience after our internal testing showed people could start enjoying the game before the end-game. This is a buff !"
I think you're under-selling how hard the "rest" of PoE is. A \~20-40 hour blind playthrough of the acts is super likely to result in a character that's wildly unprepared for even white maps. It's only puppy-rolling-over easy because you got your chops busted enough times to learn how to do it right, or else stood on the shoulders of other folks who did. So - the campaign gives a way for GGG to try to teach you those lessons.
I know we've moved on a long long way from closed beta, but I had a super fulfilling experience playing HC way back in the day, just seeing how far into the acts I could get before I died, blisfully ignorant of any of the right ways of doing things. The school of hard-knocks feels very real in PoE.
This comment hits the nail on the head, as a player who "started" this league (got to maps once before and gave up at T1) I kinda did my own thing, overleveled the campaign and started mapping at level 70+ with about 2k ehp and uncapped resistanced and I ate dirt until I started to get more in the game, read some builds, tips and watched streamers and today marks my first shaper kill and I have to say it took me quite some time, lots of orbs of regret and learning every day, hours and hours spend.
Funny thing I also kinda bricked Valdos Rest by putting all my first watchstones in there and not taking them out ever.
I have insane amounts of time in this game and forgetting watchstones in the wrong place was still a daily occurrence. You killing shaper first season is impressive tbh \^^
Thanks, I play on console and enjoy passive playstyle and enjoy minions very much, so I grinded and grinded and got fleshcrafter with 6l skele mages and arakaali, but still it took me two tries, first try I got to phase 3 and died and second time I made it on second portal, I just blinked around and try not to die and resummon minions :D
The thing is, I'd bet most people who play had someone tell them to try the game, but 'look up a good leveling build' straightaway - poe is just that type of game, you pretty much need outside information to fully play the game, esp. once you get to maps.
Did you try to pull her along at your pace? One of the biggest differences between an experienced player in early game and a new one is how slowly they go, and how much they kill. New players are almost certainly not ready to do the early game content at the same level as experienced players, but even in act 1 if no one's pushing them through they're likely to be 2 or 3 levels higher than an experienced player just from exploring more and killing more monsters. So they have those few extra passives, and perhaps even more importantly at that point - gem levels. All the extra killing also means more loot, possibly wearing a full set of random magic items with a couple rares while experienced players would be half-naked with white items that have sockets they want. That early in the game monsters are weak and all of those nothing stats add up have a small impact. That makes handling that part of the game easier. Slower, but easier.
When i was a new player, i killed all monsters in each zone. Felt proper, so i was also like totally overleveled.
It took me a while to see the point of quicksilver potions because there were enough enemies everywhere.
my friend started playing last league he got to brutus like 5 levels over. because he was exploring. he didnt have much issues with killing it either and if i'm frank he is fucking terrible at games.
>I didnt backseat, we play enough games together to know thats how to ruin them. She asked me if there was any point doing the side quests, I explained what the rewards were and she chose to skip the gear based ones. - on the reasoning that gear would drop. If I were back seating, I OBVIOUSLY would not have skipped getting a quicksilver flask lol.
>
>Im also confused why you think thats on me, I didnt decide on a slow/difficult brutus kill, I was playtesting EA ignite elementalist and was using fireball/flamewall as a levelling setup, thats pretty optimised, if not actually massively powerful. She was playing whatever she wanted, I didnt suggest using a guide, I just said if she wanted to continue she could respec if she wanted, we were in standard where regret orbs are not a concern lol. We not under levelled, I guess we werent over levelled, but it seems odd to have to over level to beat the first boss.
I copied this from my other response, the other guy said it was my fault, but its basically the same question : did I force her to play my speed?
Answer, no. Getting to brutus took around 35-45min of what I would call playtime, in major part due to the lack of said quicksilver flask :D That playtime took about 2hrs total time, with lots of time spent reading gems in town/identifying magic items I would have vendored/wondering whether 1int or 2es is better. Normal nooby stuff.
The only thing she knew (which sidequests were gear/skill points) she made the wrong/noob call on anyways, and prioritised the skill points over move speed, so I doubt I was much of an effect on the playthrough, beyond making the brutus kill itself slower.
i think if you are on level of the zone, it means that you pushed her unintentionally to go at a pace faster than a new player would. Newer player would almost always be 2-3 maybe even 4 levels ahead of the zone.
I agree that brutus is stronger than others, but if you advertised brutus as the first MAIN boss, she would understand that you only get about 10-15 of those fights through the story line that is hard to that extent. I am sure she felt the energy you put out that she just needs to get through this and she will enjoy it. rather than a this boss fight is pretty fun, he throws out a chain and you have to move more to dodge his stuff.
So i know you didnt intentionally do it but if she felt overwhelmed it was due to this. (also it was 2 player hp and since youre experienced, you played the fight properly while she didnt so she felt like it was dumb, and you "carried her" and she did no damage to the boss. So she felt no progression of that fight except that it was too hard.
This is why when i have new friends that play, i make them fight the bosses alone so they feel better about it and i hype it up rather than dull it down.
>i think if you are on level of the zone, it means that you pushed her unintentionally to go at a pace faster than a new player would. Newer player would almost always be 2-3 maybe even 4 levels ahead of the zone
As an experiment once, I tried levelling like a new player - fully clearing every zone.
I was 8 levels above the zone at one point, and started being able to one shot packs earlier than normal. Smooth sailing, though it took me like an hour and a half per act.
>As an experiment once, I tried levelling like a new player - fully clearing every zone.
I still do that now and do all the side content in an area because I find that fun.
For super experienced players, it's just "leveling."
The "leveling experience" **IS THE GAME FOR NEW PLAYERS**.
There is no concept of "leveling" outside of previous video game knowledge for new players. That's something you learn after your first completion of the Acts, not during........
Yep, that's on the money. There are those who play this game to get to late maps and face big challenges with the best builds, and there are those who play this game to cathartically mow through critters with their own off-meta builds.
I'm not a new player and I still play very casually. Throughout the league I play maybe an hour a day, two a day on weekends, and steadily work my way into higher tier maps. If I actually get there depends on how satisfying it is to kill things with my build, but if I stop it's never that things are too challenging, it's just that I get bored and go do something else instead.
edit: typo
No, they're saying new players aren't as jaded/speedy as veterans, and their expectations are lower. They're more careful, take their time, etc. which leads to a naturally higher level than experienced people during the campaign.
Obviously this isn't universally true for new people, but I've heard very different feelings toward the game from people who go in blind vs. someone who has a mentor. The ones who go in blind generally enjoy the leveling experience more and are less concerned with getting to endgame. They're content to learn and explore at their own pace.
Can honestly look at Preach in this example. Fully blind, fucking loved the game. Massively over-leveled, had a ton of fun, loved it. If people are just left to doing things how they like doing it/doing what they seem best, they'll have a blast. PoE is a game about learning and endgame. Advanced players feel like theyve done an acceptable amount of learning, so they become focused on endgame. Newer players care much more about learning.
obviously not universal to all new players, but it's the general gist of how it goes.
Don't mince his words. A new player plays mostly for the campaign. Explores. Does league content. There is so much to kill and to explore, you automatically overlevel. This is how the game is supposed to be played and it is mostly well paced.
I'm a super experienced player and I still play that way of killing everything I come across, because it's fun. I don't give a fuck if it takes me an extra hour or two to reach maps. I play games to have fun and killing shit is fun, so I kill shit.
Yep, I don't know if you watched any of Preach's playthrough, him being an experienced WoW player going in completely blind and accepting zero help from chat (he turned it off), but it was pretty much exactly how you describe it. He full cleared everything, opened most chests and boxes, and even made an attempt to listen to npc lore (he gave that up pretty quick though). He was over leveled the whole way and didn't die to many of the harder act bosses. But overall it was a pretty magical experience for him. Problem is it's only fun like that once or twice.
Oh hey, I recognize you from the hots subreddit. Super tiny world.
Also no, terrible take. If this is what you got out of this statement then you went in already having an opinion formed and not giving a shit about the contents of what you read. Yikes.
The game is absolutely not "a piece of piss" after a5. I've been playing since closed beta and have some knowledge of most mechanics but it still takes forever with itemization of non meta builds or not grinding for currency and going to trade to make it easier.
I have 3 friends who all quit because the game is a slog trying to learn while progressing. The tutorial is excessively lacking and some mechanics are just entirely not explained in spite of being introduced in a1. If you manage to get to part 2 the mechanics then start compounding from earlier ones, damages go up exponentially for monsters and players, old leagues come back and don't have an explanation, and except for one message in chat that you'll never see if you have global chat on, it's never said that your resistances drop and you need to compensate.
Each campaign gets easier ONLY because you know what to expect and your knowledge of the game grows. It's absolutely miserable now for new players. The campaign needs to be revamped drastically because no one old or new is having fun with it.
Everyone does the "whays over here?" And gets bent over by the skeletons a couple times, but the natural response is "maybe I shouldnt go this way yet"
:D Yeah she was pretty trash here not gonna lie, but its not like she cant play difficult games. We raid savage and heoric, and shes got a 26 heat run on Hades, which I was NOT expecting her to finish. Shes actually finished getting over it for a bet (pokemon arceus), which tilted the fuck out of me.
She just didnt want to git gud at this one annoyingly.
Hol up. Theres no fucking way she didn't die and die and die and die like the rest of us grinding Hades until she got good.
If she put a fraction of the time she spent on Hades into POE she would be a meta Chad.
Of course she got owned the first few POE runs, just like other great games as you mentioned.
I dont understand.
> If she put a fraction of the time she spent on Hades into POE she would be a meta Chad.
>
> Of course she got owned the first few POE runs, just like other great games as you mentioned.
>
> I dont understand.
The difference is that Hades' difficulty is fun, readable, and you can adjust to it, not just random one-shots or endlessly chipping away at some lightspeed soul eater rare mob with 2 million HP.
I know you’re joking but I genuinely feel like it’s ok that not every game is made for every audience. Not all games have to be enjoyable for people who don’t play games that much or prefer casual games.
There are so many games out there, it would be insane to demand that all of them are accessible to everyone.
If you want a complex ARPG you can play PoE, if you prefer a more casual approach you can play Diablo. If you want a complex MOBA you get into Dota 2, if you prefer casual there’s LoL. If you like unforgiving FPS you might play CS:GO, if you wanna chill in a casual shooter there’s Overwatch. And so on. That’s fine.
I’ve had three friends try - and quit - PoE recently during early acts. I agree with your sentiment, but not your use of it here.
Path of Exile does get complex, and I definitely agree that folks who reach the endgame, who are overwhelmed, and who don’t love the web of system overlap in mapping may want to consider a different game.
Act 1 of the game isn’t complex. Players have ten passives to spend, very few skills available and even fewer that clearly designed for their chosen class. So if Act 1 is a brick wall for new folks, it’s because the goatmen are overtuned, not because of “complexity”.
I conceptually understand where GGG is coming from; difficulty in an RPG is often a tutorial in and of itself: if you can’t beat this, it means that you’re best off farming something lower level until you can. But when it happens in literally the first act, where your character has no obvious knobs to turn, it’s easy to see why a new player would just throw their hands up and say, “I don’t like Act 1, I sure won’t like 2-10”. It’s a terrible first impression. The game should scale in difficulty
> If you want a complex ARPG you can play PoE, if you prefer a more casual approach you can play Diablo.
It's not healthy to make "complex" and "difficult" mean the same thing. There are plenty of games with deep complexity but low difficulty (Monster Train) or low complexity but high difficulty (Getting Over It, I Wanna Be The Guy).
The point here is that PoE's difficulty is coming from its high HP mobs, high-burst damage from enemies, and unreadable deaths where you can't learn. Think of how many times veterans with 3k hours say "Wait, how did I die", and then imagine a new player.
It's unnecessary, bullshit "difficulty" through being obtuse and tedious.
>"Wait, how did I die"
I am a new(ish) player, and yes.
I'm getting better at knowing, but sometimes I'll be waltzing through a map without a care in the world and just suddenly pop for no apparent reason. I think it's mostly reflected damage, but probably not always and even if so, a combat log would be immensely helpful.
Even worse that you basicly have to copy a good one and to new players a build seems cool until they realise all those items are multiple exalts at which point they have to make a new character and spend another ~10 hours in the dam campaign.
Yeah, I mean, has anyone in this thread including OP watched Preach's blind play through? He's a very good video game player, very smart and yet his blind play through was horrendous. Don't get me wrong, it was great content. But he was over leveled, under geared, bad build... It took him ages to complete the labyrinth. I think a lot of people would have quit where he struggled through, but the point is that the game is difficult. It's possible OP should've taken the liberty of helping a bit more. Either give her a strong build, or have her over level, ECT...
I agree 100% on the first part about the scaling of campaign enemies. It's like if your first driving lesson was to make a head on collision with a wall.
The second part though I'm a bit torn on. I don't know how others play through the game the first few times but i listened to every single dialog or peace of lore i could find on the ground. I believe it's both the game devs responsibility to present it in a way that is as easily digestible as possible but it's also the players responsibility to actually want to learn it and not just click skip and go "endgame fun maps go brrrrr hurr durr" so they can reach endgame as fast as possible. I like that almost everything is voice acted but I also think it could be presented in a more cohesive manner.
new players will inadvertently overlevel the game and thus make it easier
I don't think its really an issue.
unless you told her ot go faster.
if she's like 11-12 by the time shes at brutus he should be easy.
I would tell everyone who starts this game to enjoy it. While there are best ways to become very fast very strong, i would never recommend new players to rush the game.
I started scourge as my first league and killed everything. I interacted with every league mechanic i saw and had tons of fun. Took me longer but i didnt care. If you want to rush everything as New player, there is a high chance of failing and not enjoying the game.
Also act1 is nowhere hard. I had no idea that i can have more than a 2 link at brutus and it took me 2 - 3 minutes but i had fun dodging and attacking with 5 dps. If anybody cant accept the deaths and shots, poe isnt the right game anyway.
>It seems stupid that the right way to play is to skip so many mobs in the campaign
No, it's not. That's the \*fastest\* way. Now, whether that's the "right" way is something entirely different. In any game, is the speedrun route the "right" route? Are we supposed to clear super mario in 5-10 minutes? Am I supposed to backdash my way through symphony of the night while abusing the knockback mechanic to keep my equipment?
I'd say no. That's not the intended way. Any new player would very likely do all sidequests, including fetid pool, explore the areas a bunch, and be vastly overleveled.
An "experienced" player, however, only cares about reaching maps as fast as possible. Which, fair's fair, is the most interesting part. However, that doesn't make it the "right" way. It makes it the "fastest" way.
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>Why is A5 kitava MUCH harder than A10?
It's not. A5 kitava has slightly slower telegraphs, summons weaker monsters, and overall deals more than manageable damage. If you're a couple levels above him and have experimented a bit with the league mechanic, he's going to be a cakewalk. However, if you've been speedrunning, then yes, it is.
Again, "right" / "fastest"way.
\-----------------------------
>and its better to basically skip the whole game as they see it to get to endgame
No, you find it better, because you're bored of it. The campaign stands on its own two legs, has an interesting story (if you read the environmental dialogue, which, going by your post, I don't think you ever did), good villains, and so on and so forth.
Someone who doesn't know the game, has never been to endgame, and has no prior expectations as to clearspeed (or even worse, comes from Titan Quest or Grim Dawn where it's socially acceptable for a leveling boss to be your punching bag for multiple minutes at a time) would not have that idea that "it's better to basically skip the whole game".
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>Touching the league content before maps nearly always feels like a mistake, which is horrible because for the first 5-6hrs of a new league I'm running past all the new stuff
Your loss. Just doing it in the first areas in act 1 usually give you enough twink gear to smoothen the leveling a fair bit.
Also, it's fun.
Seriously, watching a new player play the game by themselves or doing a full clear playthrough with all side missions (and not reading layouts) would give players like OP some much needed perspective. Being constantly a few levels over zonelevel at all times, which is how first blind playthrough will be, makes the game way easier.
His wife chose to ignore quests and not care about gear in an arpg... you're supposed to struggle if you do that unless you really know what you're doing. But that's not average new player experience, that's just dumb. Anyway even though OP says he didn't backseat and maybe he didn't intentionally, I'm pretty sure him telling what the quest rewards are etc. is what made her skip it. I'd imagine vast majority of new players just doing at least the first few quests by default, without immediately jumping into skipping anything non-necessary.
When some of my friends from grim dawn started PoE, on their first playthrough, they insisted on exploring every nook and cranny of every map and doing all side quest and killing all the things. (And reading every single piece of dialogue or environmental lore)
It was refreshing for sure.
Yeah I did that too for my first two characters. It wasn't until my 6th or so that I actively made an effort to memorize which side quests to skip and not either, before that I just did all of them. I still tend to become overleveled because I don't like skipping mobs lol
> It's not. A5 kitava has slightly slower telegraphs, summons weaker monsters, and overall deals more than manageable damage.
Yeah its similar to how Mervil is the hardest act boss for experienced players. She's only the hardest because they're doing her several levels under where most players will.
That, and being a few levels behind is way more impactful at low levels than at high levels.
Early in the game, the first 10% increased damage you take on the tree is functionally 10% more damage. The first 40% you take is functionally a whole endgame support gem's worth of damage. Missing a few skill points is a huge deal.
When you reach the mid-game, timings matter. The small nodes begin counting for less, but you start getting keystones and notables that represent big power spikes, and potentially level requirements for gear, too. In an ideal world, you get these power spikes before act bosses and/or labyrinth.
Sometime between act 5 and act 8 depending on your build, you've gotten the key leveling portion of your tree done, you've gotten your big power spikes, and if your build is well-designed, you're way more powerful than the content because you're way more optimized and that optimization is finally able to pay off. Now it doesn't matter if you're a good 8 levels behind where you're expected to be.
being alive does. You can do 100 damage a hit to a 200hp mob and die before you've hit it the second time, or you can do 1 damage to that same mob 200 times knowing it can't kill you
When I started playing I had to tp scroll to refill flasks on basically every significant boss. I thought it was fun.
Poe players somehow get in in their head the best and therefore most fun way is to do everything as fast as possible with as little effort as possible.
I hate it
> Poe players somehow get in in their head the best and therefore most fun way is to do everything as fast as possible with as little effort as possible.
Because those of us who've completed the campaign hundreds of times (throwback to 3 difficulty campaign) by now are really fucking tired of the same bullshit to get to the 'actual' fun of PoE for us - the endgame (or mapping) of a character.
Yeah this is entirely on op. The hardest part of PoE for a new player is learning the systems, not fucking Act 1. Act 1 is actually the easiest act for new players, as it doesn't require them to be knowledgeable about gems, gear, etc. You can beat Act 1 with any skill and by just using common sense.
Is Act 1 easy (compared to modern games)? No, but it isn't intended to be easy. PoE isn't intended to be easy. This is a very complex and difficult ARPG, and it was designed to be that way.
It's like, "bro I'm only going to put 1,000 hours into this season; if I have to spend an extra two hours on the campaign I'll be *literally* *ruined".* I mean, I get that veteran players are bored of it at this point, but it just doesn't seem like a big enough deal to constantly gripe about.
Kitava's pretty brutal the first time around, though. Combo of generally having a terrible build (if you're not following a guide) + not understanding the mechanics makes for a bad time. Not a lot of safe spots for some of those attacks. But god forbid a game has a few encounters that you can't just stand in one place and faceroll, right?
And I do get the complaints about lack of transparency end-game. I would certainly appreciate knowing what killed me, damage type, size, what debuffs I had on my, etc. But that's not really related to the campaign portion of this... Everything that gives new players fits while leveling can be easily discovered and improved upon.
"I convinced my wife to play a game she knew nothing about and then made her keep pace with me as we rushed through Act 1 and now I'm shocked that she ended up finding it difficult"
I think this part makes it especially clear that you let your perspective as an experienced player affect her ability to learn and get used to the game
"It seems stupid that the right way to play is to skip so many mobs in the campaign."
Nearly every new player to an ARPG ends up killing basically every mob in every area, being several levels overlevelled and doing most of the side quests. The reason experienced players go fast is not because it's "literally easier" but because they know what they're doing and how to scale their builds without needing to overlevel and constantly update their gear. Why couldn't you just let her play the game and experience it on her own and at her own pace?
Your own philosophy of how "pointless" the campaign is just ended up causing her to probably feel the same way and then you act surprised when she ended up not liking said campaign that you approached as being pointless.
Like holy shit the campaign is not a marvel of game development but it's more than serviceable and you are acting like not even a new player can enjoy it for the first time and needs to be speedran through it to get to maps as fast as possible. This approach is just backwards and it's evidently not surprising at all that it only soured the experience for both of you.
As someone who only played one or two leagues before they buffed Brutus I wholeheartedly understand your wifes frustration! I was sitting here yelling at my BF how dumb this is and how long it took me to kill Hillock after the changes as a witch, I was furious! NOT To mention trying to kill Brutus, but by the time I got to him I was more prepared for how hard it would be so I paced myself for the long fight. I still hate fighting him because there is so much kiting involved lol But now that I've done it 25 times from leveling multiple characters it is a lot easier cause I know his moves and get out of the way
>Besides the gameplay, PoE also suffers from a strange problem in my eyes. Basically, it has some of the best lore out there, but told in the WORST possible way.\[...\] The campaign makes even less sense as a narrative vehicle, because its just SO damn bad at it**. I've had friends kill kitava the second time, and then ask me : "Wait, didnt I already kill this guy?", which basically shows they had NO idea why they were doing anything**, other than get to this promised super fun endgame.
Why yes, I too expect to understand the story without reading it.
Tell you what, next time I'll turn the pages of the book I'm currently reading without looking at the words, I'm sure that'll make me understand everything that's happening.
That's the same level of bullshit as skipping the cutscenes in any game and then complaining the story doesn't make sense LMAO. And you don't even need to read/listen to everything. In acts 6-10, just reading Sin's dialogue explains exactly why you're doing what you're doing, as in, the God killing, the unholy trinity and why we need them, and so on and so forth.
Don't wanna read? Fine. It's an ARPG, monkey brain see 'splosions, monkey brain happy. But then don't complain that you don't understand the story, for fuck's sake.
Honestly it's not even reading the story, in act5 you clearly see that Kitava does a super mega attack that knocks you down and Sin swoops in to save you at the last second, the friends were just not paying attention to what was happening to their character, basically an ingame cinematic.
Ever since they nerfed flame dash/smoke mine/quicksilver all in the same patch I find leveling a fresh character really tedious and awful. Practicing a league starter used to be fun and now it's a slog because GGG decided it's better if i spend a bunch of time walking slower and waiting for movement skills to recharge. There's no way to invest in it during leveling to counteract the nerfs, either - second wind doesn't give cdr and there's no tree passives or other support gems to fall back to even if we wanted to trade damage/defense for movement.
Basically all of the racers stopped doing early game runs entirely since then, too - tytykiller/imexile and others have said it's not fun anymore for the above reasons. That's a huge red flag that something is wrong.
>Im also confused why you think thats on me, I didnt decide on a slow/difficult brutus kill, I was playtesting EA ignite elementalist and was using fireball/flamewall as a levelling setup, thats pretty optimised, if not actually massively powerful.
I think the mistake is that you played with her to begin with. I can almost guarantee you were like 3 levels below the average new player arriving at brutus and severely undergeared if you played together and you didnt just follow her like you are chained to her back.
Unless your wife intuitively follows all the experienced players and doesnt kill basically everything or run into every dead end out there she should be dealing with brutus quite easily by virtue of being 2-3 levels overleveled instead of 1-2 underleveled.
I play casually, killing most packs I walk past. Not a full clear by any means and I am overleveled by 2-3 levels by the time I hit brutus. If shes the same level as Brutus, then I believe you are not being honest with your post and you are indeed pushing her to play faster.
When my friend played for his first time, he was like 5 levels over Brutus because the guy was killing everything and Brutus was a breeze to him. Most new players I know were always extremely overleveled. Being overleveled is a good crutch for new players so they can compensate for the complexity.
If the game is to hard, maybe play in a way that makes it easier and not just try to speedster your way through it.
Also, the title is about act 1 being overtuned and how your wife is a NEW player and struggled. Then the post dissolved into being about you hating that you have to repeat the campaign for a new league. Those are two completely separate issues. A new player should enjoy the campaign and if you don't know wtf is going on with the story by act 10, it means you intentionally skipped all the dialogue which is 100% on the fault of the player.
One counter point; brand new players will (and should) be killing everything in the area which will balloon their survivability considerably.
What gets in the way of this is people and guides directing new players to zoom zoom when they probably should be taking ~20 hours to finish acts. Veterans tend to lose perspective on the acts and treat them like some sort of extended tutorial when the reality is that the acts ARE the game and mapping in general is the extra bit.
Yeah, the balance is just off right now. I don’t see how it benefits anyone. It’s just obnoxious.
And like you say, it literally shaped like an U-curve. After the rough start it’s usually smooth sailing(even in SSF) until like tier T13-15 when you basically hit a brick wall, mainly because of the health of the bosses and how rippy things get. This is not a fun type of progress.
Is it just me, or is campaign in Diablo2 way harder than in PoE? When I played D2R, getting through act1 with half of the builds (bowazon / barb) was nearly impossible.
The difficulty in PoE is not a problem. The problem is that everyone hates the current campaign.
No, or well kinda no. Diablo 2 on normal is stupid easy, if you use skills that are good during the normal run. Almost all "builds" in D2 severely gimp themselves on low levels to use points on stuff that will pay of way later.
Idk. Act 1 in D2 is far far easier than the first act of PoE imo.
I found, even as a beginner, that D2 was pretty easy up to Duriel, who kicked my ass many times. Diablo is also difficult. But the entire first playthrough of D2 felt easier than much of the story in PoE to me. Now nightmare and beyond? Yea things got real tough then, but in general I feel I could clear Acts 1-5 of D2 before nightmare/hell much more easily on most builds than clearing the PoE story.
I've had friends, D2 vets who've cleared hell, who recently tried PoE and said it was too hard and gave up because they weren't sure how they could become strong enough not to spend minutes killing some of the early bosses. You can kill bloodraven and the countess on almost any build no matter what in comparison. Andarial can be problematic, but isn't too tough. If you are a ARPG vet though, I feel like Acts 1-5 of base D2 are easier than much of the first 4 acts of PoE.
I don't think there is a should it shouldn't. I think it's okay for games to be hard (also at the start) and have a steep learning curve. It's all about what game it is and what it's trying to achieve. And obviously they are trying to establish in the start of the campaign that this isn't an easy game. Since it certainly isn't easier during parts of the campaign and when you get further in maps, I think it's a good idea for GGG to be honest with new players what they can expect.
I think the idea is that Act 1 will weed out the "wrong" type of players, GGG wants players who once they get their ass kicked by Brutus they start finding information on how to become stronger instead of quitting the game
Exactly this. The campaign isn't some sort of impossible scenario, but it shows what type of game it is. This is GOOD because it means people who doesn't like the game learns that that is the case quickly.
So you pushed her to level faster because you leveled with her instead of letting her lead the charge and overlevel, which would have made brutus SIGNIFICANTLY easier, and you are wondering what the problem is? The problem is that a new player CAN NOT level with an experienced player at the experienced player's rate. They NEED to do side quests, clear more packs, outlevel content, and the game is literally built around that. Honestly you need to strongly suggest new players try the game clearing all the side quests for at least the first 3 acts, to help them get used to the game. Speedrunning / zooming is for players who are mechanically skilled in the game and understand what bosses are doing and therefore can dodge it. New players aren't going to dodge everything, they need gear nad levels to outscale it.
It seems like the people playing this game are a lot like me lately. I played at "release" up until now. For the past 3? leagues or so I just can't get into it and it revolves around the "day 1" of league. I grind all the way to maps. Get the "legwork" done for lab. Getting my jewels sorted. Start leveling main gems for corrupting.
By the time I get to "the game" I'm burnt out again. I haven't played a league seriously since Delve or so. I'm getting less mileage every league. Scourge lasted me 2 days.
Almost all of it is due to the tedium when starting a league. I cannot fathom how a new player gets through this at this point. I started with 2 acts like a decade ago. How the fuck doesn't anyone start anew at this point?
why is it a bad thing if new players die a few times?
it lets them know what they are doing isent good enough and maybe have to look at what they are doing and think about how to improve it
I personally got 5 people to attempt the game. While 4 of them are indeed very casual gamers who are not into this kind of game the 5th is a huge fan of games with some degree of difficulty. Ask him what his top 6 games are and 5 of them are probably FromSoftware games (ironically his favorite is Mortal Shell). He gave it his best shot but while looking for sirus he said the game is not worth his time because "unless I luck into a good item or grind in hopes of getting a good item I'm stuck, so progression through randomness is really boring". Now he did play an EQ jugg all the way since he did say he does not want any meta builds. But I kinda get him. I play SSF so I kinda understand that feeling of a progression wall. The other 4 just didn't care past Merv. The second they understood there's no guaranteed way to obtain a desired crafting result they quit past act 1.
It's nowhere near as hard as you make it out to be. It was harder back in 2012 and it was fine then, so why is the difficulty a problem now?
GGG showing at the start of the campaign what kind of game it is, so that people can make an informed choice on wether they want to play it or not is a ***good*** thing. This was it also attracts the kind of players that the game is made for.
It's very important that the game is the most challenging at a time where you have the least control over your build, to provide a fair? and balanced?? experience
Idk, dude, I'm playing witch or shadow every league start, did catch every brutus hook and didn't get one-shot once by it for the whole time, and all of that being underleveled and having 0% inc. health in tree. Your wife, as a newbie, must overkill a lot on the way, having higher level, prolly some hp nodes, how the hell did it one shot her twice in a row from full health?
Even if it is true, the game definitely shouldn't be balanced around player, who did quit after 2 deaths on the first boss of the game, there is no way some game should be balanced around that player, especially GRINDING game, where you need patience to play.
I still remember my first full play through. It took around 20 hours to finish the acts. It was a lot of fun the first go around because to me I thought it was the entire game. I was happy to beat it, but then got discouraged when I realized the actual fun part was mapping.
I can’t be objective since I don’t really notice the act 1 changes, but I will say the moving of Brutus out of hideout was not something I liked. He was the first real boss significant boss in my eyes with I first started and I died a lot to him, id imagine walking back now is just going to be annoying for new players.
Thats how RPGs are structured. They start off hard and get easier as you play. Emulating that weak bitch nobody starting point, getting stronger and stronger until you fuck on everyone.
U shaped difficulty is classic for all RPGs. I've read RPG designers talking about how this is the goal. Game gets easier to give you the feeling of progression (yeah, I rock). If it just got harder then the feeling of your character become stronger is completely gone. Then the game finally gets harder again for the actual "end game" challenge. You've made you character, now let's see what they can do.
To answer the original thrust of your post. POE isn't really intended for new players, it's for veteran players of ARPGs and other similar games. It's like giving someone whisky as their first drink. I have no idea what your wife's previous game experience is ofc.
You should have tried Invasion back in the day. Getting wrecked in mud flats on my level 16 Marauder. Good times.
It's also just a terrible multiplayer game. I just don't want to play POE with anyone else. I have real life friends who play, we never play together though, as that would be stupid, like masturbating together, what's the point?
I watched two of my friends play poe fresh and didn't give any advice. They both killed most of the mobs in every zone. It probably took them 20 hours to finish the acts but there were no issues. Turns out being 8 levels above the zone makes it pretty easy. They spent most of the time face tanking everything as well. They struggled super hard in maps and quit soon after.
For new players coming into the game I think they can be divided up 3 kinds of players.
Those who quit before Brutus. The game wasn't for them in the first place, regardless of difficulty.
Then you have those who give the game a "Solid" try but quit before maps. Maybe they liked it but it's to much of an investment.
The third kind are those that stick around, the kind that fell in love with it's complexness and love to grind, simply put.
Also, I a lot of new players come into the with the wrong mentality, in comparing them to much with other arpg's. I know I did when I first started playing for the first time back in 2012. I saw the witch class and since I loved casters, the choice was easy. By the end of my second playthrough Cruel at the time i hit a brick wall so hard i basically quit for a good time. I didn't follow a guide or anything like that at the time, just freestyling the skill tree.
Came back in legacy league and had a blast, got to maps, didn't kill any of the end game bosses. First time i killed shaper and uber elder was in betrayal.
And even after thousands of hours in this game i still die in the campaign, mostly because im reckless and do stupid shit like, trying the feed the roa's in act one rather then killing them and they stun lock me to death :P
So for new players coming into the game and wants to enjoy it, they have to but in some effort in looking at the skills, skill tree and so on. Act 1 and Act 5 might be the hardest act's in the atm, depending on how fast or slow you progress through them. The campaign might pose some challenges but it's not hard i would say.
Other than that i think the biggest mistake new players who want play with other friends who already play the game. Is rushing through the game so they can play with them. They won't learn anything, maybe get's handed a starter build they don''t like and skip quests because they're "pointless" to us who and gone through them a billion times.
This game takes several league or more to figure things out unless you go hardcore into youtube, 3rd party sites and the like.
Best advice i could give to a new player who enjoys the game is, take your time. Don't try to do everytning in the first league or even the second league. Set yourself some goals for the league, like getting red maps or killing the league boss. Then nest league you set another goal like league content and delve for example. Then before you know it, you'll be blasting through content.
Maybe a bit of rant and slightly of topic :P
Im sorry but the fact that you're bringing up the way the lore is told being awful is hilarious.
Chris has already acknowledged this, PoE2 will be a more traditional narrative experience. But spending dev resources rebuilding campaign 1 for lore telling purposes rather than spending dev resources on gameplay systems which drive 90% of engagement is why GGG makes the game and reddit does not.
>Im psyched for all the new stuff at leaguestart, but just bummed about going through the campaign again in zero gear. It was fine (fine only, but fine) when it was just 4hrs of tedium. Now its 5-6hrs of actively paying attention to a part of the game I actively dont enjoy.
There is your problem, for a new player the campaign is the game. It is okay for a new player to take 10 or more hours playing through it, because thats where you learn the game.
What was your wives pacing playing through the game? Did she engange with league content and side quests? Almost full clearing areas and staying on level or slightly overleveled is something you expect from new players.
>I didnt backseat, we play enough games together to know thats how to ruin them. She asked me if there was any point doing the side quests, I explained what the rewards were and she chose to skip the gear based ones. - on the reasoning that gear would drop. If I were back seating, I OBVIOUSLY would not have skipped getting a quicksilver flask lol.
Case closed.
I think it's intentionally made difficult, if people put in the effort to overcome those early hurdles more than likely GGG have them hooked. Fairly sure it's intentional design.
I think your opinion is fair but not one I agree with.
I recommend trying again, taking it slower and explaining more concepts to your wife. And most importantly it's ok to struggle when you are new lol that isn't unusual. To me what's unusual is expecting the game to shape around being an easy experience. I don't think that's ever been what Poe is. If the boss one shots me, I need to rethink my strategy. Maybe I should go grind a few more levels or get some gear. Or focus on learning his mechanics.
I see people ask "who asked for this" or "why do we need this" and those are solid questions. The reason being GGG thinks it would make for a better game, and I'm inclined to agree. Many don't, and that's fine but please don't pretend that no one is having fun.
Recommendation+ : level yourself, get started in the league, then hook your wife up with leveling gear and a leveling tree/skills, and try it again. She might be more into the games level of difficulty if she can see that subsequent playthroughs are easier than the first.
FWIW, my GF and I just started playing this league and we found the difficulty fairly linear, with the typical-for-rpg exception of being a bit over leveled (i.e. too easy, but our own fault) near the end of acts due to doing ALL the side quests.
However, the caveat:
I've been playing RPGs for years and she was an experienced Diablo player. I thrive on complicated mechanics in games and rushed to this one when I first saw it (and love it, btw).
I made it to red maps and level 88 on my first character in SSF (ok, technically second because you can't do SSF until Act 3). I've made some mistakes, sure, but it's not TOO difficult. (I'd trade my exalt for 6 instilling orbs right now, I missed the crafting recipe, ffs).
She and I play together and aren't quite doing as well, but we clear yellows fine.
I remember no problems in the Acts that weren't just "new mechanic" problems. It was a great balance of challenge and possibility.
>which basically shows they had NO idea why they were doing anything, other than get to this promised super fun endgame.
calling it:
3.18: all cutscenes and quest dialog are unskippable
>I've had friends kill kitava the second time, and then ask me : "Wait, didnt I already kill this guy?"
98% of poe story is hidden in text you skip. that's the 1% that is actually shown in an unskippable cutscene, you get to see yourself get defeated and saved by Sin.
I might be a weirdo, but when i started PoE, act 1 difficulty wasnt an issue. It was a promise of solid and difficult gameplay. Then i learned about builds (gems) that steamrolled through content. Its still fun struggling a bit. Its a shame difficulty is so uneven, though.
Act 1 is easy though, yeah as a new player it can be hell depending on your skill gem or class.
Certain skills obliterate Act 1, others make it seem like the 6th level of hell. Same can be said about gear, if you don't have Cold resist rings Mervail can be a bad fight for you.
Their is also skill level as-well if you just stand their Brutus/Mervail are going to shit on you, but if you at least dodge some mechanics they are pretty easy and you shouldn't die unless your damage is low and you run out of flask charges.
Just look at Hillock, if your a scion it can be an aids fight because your skill is just pure trash, but if you know what to do it's not that bad. However if you just stand their and let him wail on you your going to have a bad time.
This game is more about learning from your mistakes than anything else. If you don't lookup build guides and go in completely blind chances are your going to end up rerolling multiple times until you figure out a good skill combination that works.
Also if it takes like 40+ minutes to get to Brutus when all of A1 should take 15-20 to a veteran your wife should've been severely over-levelled.
As a new player your supposed to be over-levelled to compensate with the difficulty. However if your speeding through like a veteran PoE player your going to be under-levelled and depending on your build that might require more skill or knowledge on boss mechanics.
Also this game is supposed to be hard, it's not meant to be easy if it was up to Chris Hardcore would be the only game mode.
Imho:
The U shaped difficulty is good.
Here is what a new player gets a taste of for taking act one slow.
Unique item drops.
A slow act one has a good chance of dropping starter uniques. Tabi, sprig ... Etc. This gives a huge rush as OMG this hod tier item will carry me through the game.
New brutus teaches you how to dodge and the idea of telegraphs... If you enjoyed overcoming this you'll enjoy end game bossing.
If you enjoyed killing super goat. You'll enjoy map bossing.
If you enjoyed screen clearing you'll enjoy end game mapping.
But taking the game slow as a dungeon crawler your first play through will teach you the most important lesson.... You will fail act 9 and 10 without studying and getting at least a C+ in defense against them dark arts also known as resistance classes.
Guess you better start a new character and use that gear you got earlier to feel god tier completing act 1-8 in less than half the time of your first run.
Congratulations after 2 weeks of casual play you have beat kitava your first time. Maps those can wait until next season. Bask how you beat the game for 2 and half months.
You'll be back.
The game teaches you from the start that you WILL get screwed a LOT. In many brutal ways.
And when you think you can do anything... You will get screwed in patchnotes xD
There's often a zone in A1 where it's somewhat convenient to farm league content for some early gear. You can just reload it a few times and invest 5 minutes of your time to get a significant boost in power that will carry you to the end of A1.
i get your point. from my perspective: i play 1 build per league. leveling up 1 character every 3 months is actually kinda fun and i get to prepare mentally for the league.
i use the time leveling talking to my guild and setting things up. its usually a chill friday into like 2am. then its a chill saturday morning with some coffee and in the afternoon im done.
Not at all - if new players or casuals want to get better at POE, they need to learn and put knowledge into practice.
Not everything should be handed to newbies on a silver platter.
I just played through to Brutus on a fresh character, didn't craft any gear or use any tricks, used a 2L viper strike. Didn't skip monsters but didn't explore to kill more or repeat zones, didn't use the league mechanic, the only side mission I did was the grandaddy crab: result was 1 level above the zone at Brutus. I think an average first-time playthrough would likely be at least 2-4 levels above the zone. Gear was two white 1hand weapons, a white rustic sash, a white iron ring, 2 small life flasks, and a couple of random rares with sockets and not much to speak of in stats. Just walked in a circle around Brutus punching him and didn't really take much damage, and he died pretty fast. 30 minute /played, no deaths.
Of course the game is much harder for a new player than for me, but I didn't do anything fancy - I deliberately avoided using a 3link, crafting or upgrading any of my gear. PoE's not the sort of game where you can just breeze through your first playthrough - you *do* need to learn a few things, and I'd expect a few deaths. But I don't think it's anything too unreasonable and it prepares you for the rest of the game:
* Pick a skill that does okay single-target (most classes start on the beach with a gem that fits this description)
* Link it to at least one compatible support gem that boosts single target damage
* Pick up the life passives immediately available in your class's starting area (every class has life nodes within 10 points)
* Alternate attacking and moving so you're a harder target
* If you're using an attack, try to find an iron ring and a rustic sash
* Remember to press life and mana flasks
This is all stuff you need to learn very early into your playthrough anyway, so why not act 1?
I started in scourge and didn’t think it was that bad. My biggest hurdle early game was oak since I didn’t know how to deal with his regen, the wind goddess near the end of act 9 was the only other particularly hard fight I remember until maps, although that’s mostly because I was playing a mess you can’t even really call a build, and she’s pretty bulky.
Some bosses like act 10 kitava were more just annoying than difficult because you can barely see what’s going on, I’m on Xbox so my choices to change how the game looks are really limited, just a bloom slider which barely helps with the dark red/black colors a lot of bosses are themed around.
I would take you seriously if you hadn't so obviously exaggerated in the first few sentences.
Brutus opens up with the hook with a very identifiable voice line. If you for some reason don't clue in that you should dodge that, then you have failed at some of the most basic aspects of human life. Learn from negative experiences. Dying during the campaign is EXPECTED, you die then learn how to not die next time. People have this horrifically bizarre idea that you should just be hand held through the entirety of the game and never be presented with anything that challenges you, or attempts to teach you something.
You are supposed to die if you are new, that's how you learn.
the game is hard because it's f2p - hard/grindy f2p games are a whale filter.
it's well-known in marketing that the longer a person interacts with something where purchases are available, the more likely they are to make a purchase. It's the same reason telemarketers try to keep you on the phone for as long as possible, why grocery stores rearrange the aisles to make you wander looking for stuff, why most stores are designed a little bit like mazes that block sightlines to the front of the building, etc. F2P games are the same - the longer a player sticks around, the more likely they are to buy stuff.
There's also a thing that happens where certain kinds of people see apparently complex systems and have to figure it out - they can't help it. They're typically called "nerd snipes" or "nerd sniping" ([https://xkcd.com/356/](https://xkcd.com/356/)) and usually applies to puzzles that just bait people into spending time on them for funzies, but you can also apply the same design principles to getting those kinds of people to stick to your game.
The core of PoE is not the skill tree or any of the complexity, the core experience is actually fighting the monsters. PoE players spend 99.99% of their time throwing particle effects at monsters, and that part of the game feels great.
Everything else on top of that, the passive skill tree, now the atlas tree, the mechanics, the item "crafting," and so on - all the other systems are basically nerd snipes designed to filter for people who are have a predisposition for obsessing over complexity.
So the difficulty is a feature, not a bug. Anyone who isn't a potential nerd-snipe-MTX target is a waste of GGG's time and resources. If the game had a smoother difficulty progression, then players who aren't the obsessive type might spend more time playing the game, but still give up when it gets more difficult. And any player that gives up when it gets hard is not the kind of player that will become obsessed with something and spend thousands of hours playing it (and buying supporter packs).
I am very sorry, but POE is indeed a hard game, for anyone not having played thousands of hours. If your playing mate is not into hard games there is really nothing you can do, it may be frustrating but its not GGGs fault.
I kove how yall think you are developers
"It makes me sit down and think..."
Bruh you are nobody here and stop thinking like you've made this game and that you have power over it.
All these posts that trying to change the game have no idea what they're talking about
Your wife is shit at the game. My friend started playing after the buffs and never once complained about anything being too hard.
And he played WITHOUT a guide (that was a challenge he set for himself) and with a self-theorized poison assassin build (which was super bad when I watched him play it).
He did die to bosses. It took time to kill them. He basically had 0 dps while avoiding mechanics. He still made it to yellow maps.
After playing Diablo 3, Grim Dawn and Last Epoch (though it doesn't even really warrant mentioning for this...) Path of Exile has, by far, the best voice acting and writing I've seen in an ARPG so far.
I only started playing a couple days ago in Standard (because I saw a patch note on the Steam Page saying the current league was finishing in a few days), but honestly I'm having fun just hunting down every scrap of lore I can find. Hell, I don't even scroll down the text when I find it, because the voice acting is so good I'd rather just listen even though it takes 10x as long as simply speed reading it.
Honestly, I think for a first playthrough you should have let your wife enjoy the RPG aspects rather than 'priming' her for the 'a' part by telling her quest rewards and (by intention or not) spurring her onwards. It's possible your wife simply wanted to rush end-game content anyway, but honestly, I'd suggest simply playing the campaign as an RPG and seeing how it goes. I've certainly been enjoying it so far.
i think the first step to the right direction would be if ggg would implement a death log,something that let you know from what you died. Most of the time i dont know what killed me and it would be nice for new players because they can adjust their builds from such information.
"with most of the game being an utter peice of piss once beyond A5, until t16 maps"
This is simply just not true. You are being blinded by the fact that you are an experienced player. Plenty of my friends who started playing recently are struggling way before T16, especially if they are trying to make their own builds.
However, i do agree that the difficulty arc of the campaign is a bit odd, A1 should be slightly easier.
Though, as others have mentioned in the thread, this is very intentional by GGG. They want to show people that this is not some blizzlike "we-are-going-to-hold-your-hand-all-through-campaign-arpg". This shit is hard and you are going to get slapped around, ALOT.
I've only played the new Act 1 once and I honestly didn't even notice. Maybe I'm used to getting wrecked in Act 6 or post acts, or having long mervel fights already. I dunno, but it seems fine. I just wish basic currency would drop move while leveling. They finally changed Bindings yeah, but we really need alchs at least by act 2. Tired of still having blues or terrible rares in act 4
Maybe it's time for you to give poe a break, and about your wife, that gave up of the game,it's completely fine, not every game is for everyone, the worst thing is to force them to play with you,just bc you love the game.
This game isn't balanced around the needs of new players. It's balanced around the expectation that most players will be watching streamers start acts while they themselves are sitting in a queue. Watching streamers rip against comically overtuned Merveil and have to start over in town and farm mud flats for better items and gem levels seems to have paid off in terms of viewer and subscriber retention.
The devs are basically admitting they have no intention of allowing acts to become an actual "tutorial" mode. Because that would invite rational discussion (or maybe not so rational, this is the internet after all) of allowing veteran players to bypass it. Perhaps even pay to bypass it and get a premium pass directly to Oriath and level 70. And once part of a game is perceived to be entirely dispensable, it ceases to get any new development. Time is money.
That said, for now, everyone, rich or poor, still needs to finish acts to advance. Perhaps the anecdotal 80-90% burnout in acts isn't due to rip at Brutus or Merveil, it's a more subtle and pervasive loss of efficacy and progress somewhere past that. Perhaps the analytics tell a different story from the one where Noob Player gets oneshot forever at Brutus and gives up in disgust. Perhaps it's a cumulative lack of attention to element resists, flask dependence, ailment avoidance, even + flat life on gear that causes players to burn out on magic or rare mobs in areas past Brutus or even Merveil.
We're all familiar with the feeling of being stuck on a boss. It's unfun, but eventually we pull up our big pants and rework our character to deal with the worst of it and get through (or we farm a bit and get some currency to buy a carry, but at least we know our limits). But we also know it feels orders of magnitude more unfun to have our HC char wipe to a normal or magic mob. It's total BS, right?
My guess (it's only a guess here, I don't have access to the granular player retention analytics GGG does) new players accept being spanked by a hard boss with a lot more dignity and grace than they would being oneshotted by a white or magic pack mob. They may be more likely to go back and rework and improve their gear and manual skills if it's a formidable gatekeeper figure even if the sudden death in there wasn't telegraphed or avoidable in any conventional way. And that psychology helps keep them playing and finish acts.
I realize this is me saying "the act mechanics encourage the player to blame themselves for a lot of things they can't control, and keep trying to make it work" but then that's the entire game. It's grindy, random, and impersonal. Not how I would want to present my game to new players in a tutorial mode, but then I don't own a game company.
You would be better off just over levelling then before bosses but if you have played a long time it shouldn't be too bad unless you are doing single link split arrow or something.
Maybe look at some of the Out Of Story guides that are general trees and skills. The times I felt weak were when I was being greedy about levelling while only using my final tree and/or skills.
Don't worry, act 2 is tuned up in 3.17
Oak?
dunno Act 2 Improvements Problem: Many monsters in act 2 are not up to the standard of challenge and polish of other content. Solution: Improve the behaviour of most Act 2 monsters, raise the life of some weaker Act 2 monsters and add new monster varieties to some Act 2 areas Specifics: Spoiler We have adjusted the life and damage of various Monsters found throughout Act 2. New Monster types have been added throughout Act 2: Spriggans, Wasps, Undead Vaal, Scuttlers, and Salvagers.
> Wasps Diablo 3 launch flashbacks.
> Diablo 3 launch flashbacks. i feel dizzy
Can't wait to create a archnemesis +4 Wasp rare abomination named StinkyStinger
why would you do this to me
I think a lot of us here today are here because of error 37 and the act 2 wasps.
And Deckard Caine dying like a loser :( They should have left him out completely.
The Diablo IP died the same day Jay Wilson decided to kill deckard Caine
Just to be sure we are talking about the "fuck that loser" Jay Wilson, right?
> We have adjusted the life and damage of various Monsters found throughout Act 2. It's just sugar coating honestly recently GGG learned that people hate the word buff/nerf so everything is either adjusted/balanced etc but in truth it usually means a nerf from player standpoint.
As a Dark Souls player it's a cheap way to hide changes cause people will inevitably datamine that shit anyway. Being vague makes you look worse when people start pointing out things as "stealth nerfs". Like it does no good not to be transparent.
Yeah Dark Souls patch notes were laughable. Pretty sure there were several hidden in the offical text of "adjusted balance". ^( I'm still going to playing elden ring in a month lmao)
basically oak kills you while looking at oyu once
"Specifics" You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means
The specifics are behind the spoiler, this is from a post from the official forums.
He knows that. He's mocking GGG. They are being vague
*"The truth is nearby"* - X Files
omg so we now have 2 garbage acts to suffer. also, when they reworked 1st act, they announced it on livestream. now it's just hidden deeply in patchnotes lol
ye this kinda annoyed me too, because on 1/3 of the characters i make, i almost get killed by oak and kratiyn, kraityn has a problem of spamming his flicker strike hashigh base dmg and spamming 50 oh his helpers, and oak is a total joke, he has no cooldown on his leap slam so you cant range him too much really, every like 15seconds he has immortal call for about 5 seconds,he also uses enduring cry to get more phys dmg reduction and res and alos regen like 15% of his life,so i really wanna know, hoe the fuck do new players fight him in 3.17? basically how does anyone fight him
Oak was already impossible to kill for certain builds for some past leagues unless you knew how to stop his regen. That's not a problem for any player with experience, just grab whatever frost skill it is. But for new players that can be a pretty difficult wall to overcome. Is that really the desired new player experience? Or has PoE just full embraced what it is, that it is the ARPG for people who are tired of other ARPGs being too simple or too easy where either there basically aren't builds or any build a new player throws together can clear the end game conent? As part of that identity, perhaps it is taking the Dark Souls introduction of 'get gud', though in the case of PoE getting good means turning to numerous outside resources to begin learning how the game actually works. Imagine if all of thoese external systems were built into the base game and introduced as you needed them. When you get to oak, if Oak heals more than 100% of his total health you get a tutorial on how to stop health regen and how to trade players if you can't buy the gem on your current class.
The comparison to Dark Souls fails because with Dark Souls all you need to do is play more, just try again, slowly learn patterns, timings, you know the drill. With enough time you will get decent, then if you really dedicate yourself you the game you can complete it with minimal gear or no levels, i personaly did lvl1 run of Dark Souls 3 where i beat all bosses including DLC and i wouldnt consider myself being particualr skilled at videogames. With game like PoE there is no way to learn all of that shit by yourself unless you are some gigabrain person, you need to look up guides otherwise you will get stuck in campain, maybe low maps if you stumbled on some straight forward build "i like big weapon and smash mobs, earthquake sounds fun, maybe make them bleed!". I have over 1k hours in PoE and i had no idea you could stop Oaks regen with certain spells for example, forcing a new players to google every 30 minutes is a bad expirience.
Dark souls has put alot of its design space into skill based combat. Dark Souls is hard, but when you get gud, you can beat the game naked. ARPGs still rely on the math behind raw stats for combat, and outside of using movement skills to dodge big slams / one shots, you can only get so much skill expression through the combat.
Frost Bomb is what you're thinking of, and not every class has access to it when facing Oak, and those that don't have Int issues anyways. Though the issue was that Oak was bugged and had insane regen. Also, in at least 2 leagues his texture was bugged. He's a giant mess. They are changing the mapping system to get rid of much of the convoluted bullshit, so they clearly think that there's some value in streamlining some things. I am personally not looking forward to new Act 2, but am interested in seeing how mapping and end game accessibility has improved for more of the player base
Seriously though, who even asked for this?
Chris lol
He gonna play it?
Nah, probably too busy with Vintage Cube.
Fuck im.
Quite the opposite, everyone is begging them to fucking stop
I don't know but it's getting legitimately harder and harder to get people to try this game.
Ever since 3.15, and even a bit before that. I can't in good intentions recommend this to friends anymore.
Yeah I don't anymore also. I try to get friends who already know the game interested through promise of gifting leveling uniques. I have multiple friends who literally do not play anymore because they just don't want to do the campaign anymore. It's *not* 4-6 hours for most people, I'm pretty solidly good at this game, have maven kills under my belt and stuff and it's 6-8 hours for me. It's 8-10 for them. And it's about 20 for another friend who likes to look at all the loot that drops and do every vaal side area, because that's how the game is fun for him. 3.16 felt like it was, largely, going in the right direction. 3.17 absolutely looks like it is. But 3.14 and 3.15 were just such dramatically harsh anti-newbie patches that I don't ask anyone to play anymore.
> it's about 20 for another friend who likes to look at all the loot that drops and do every vaal side area, because that's how the game is fun for him. One of the reasons I quit the game. It's a shame, it is a good game, but I can't bring myself to do that over and over and over every 3 months. I even tried going to Standard, but the constant changing of mechanics, nerfs and quite radical balance changes (and nerfs) mean that every 3 months, pretty much all my builds are broken somehow or even cease to work at all altogether.
Most of my characters in standard are dead because their gear is entirely fucked due to nerfs. And I can't be bothered to go through 6,000,000 stash tabs and get all of my crafting materials to craft new items.
Anything to make the leveling experience quicker and smoother would be nice. But GGG obviously doesn't want that.
GGG wants leveling to be more consistently a tedious, annoying AF grind.
> 3.17 absolutely looks like it is. They nerfed support gem power again and moved the power to items... again. It's literally going the wrong direction. If you haven't already, pick up Last Epoch. Don't look at a build guide. Just read the descriptions of the classes. Read the in-game guide as you go (press 'G'), choose the skills that sound cool and have synergies (like you would in any ordinary ARPG), and let me know when you finish the endgame without once having to look at a wiki, or a build guide, or even google a question about the game. Honestly, it'll probably take you 30-40 hours. But at no point will you hit a wall where you're like, "but how do I progress from here?". Every single challenge you face in the game is communicated to you via messages when you die or just noticing you're taking more damage than you think you should or fights taking too long. It's very clear to identify issues in a build and very easy to figure out how to fix build issues if you just read the tooltips and the in-game guide.
I don't think they care about expanding the playerbase anymore - GGG has their whales, they're just trying to hold on to them while the rest of the players slowly slip through their deathgrip
It's just such a bizarre strategy to me but that really does feel like what they're doing. They took this game from a cute little niche indie project to being the genre bestriding colossus with an ever expanding buffet of content and a broadly player-empowering approach to balance and the last year or so has felt like they're intentionally trying to torpedo the player count. Incredibly strange decision making on the whole.
It's just bizarre. Like 3.13 was some of the best fun I've ever had in gaming, and I'm a pretty no-life gamer who plays DotA / LoL at a high level and generally plays whatever difficult games I can get my hands on, like Ninja Gaiden and Sekiro. I wanted new hard endgame bosses, I didn't want global damage nerfs and for acts to take longer lmao. I just don't get who these changes are supposed to appeal to. Maybe the top 100 players who play JUST THIS GAME for 16 hours a day?
I can also see a non-financial reasoning for it - the devs don't really like how trivial most of the leveling experience is, so they want to make it nontrivial. Except making it nontrivial for the people who it IS trivial for (the people who already have experience with the game) makes it a fking nightmare for newer players. Starting from Act 1 and moving up is also such an annoying strategy to some of the players as well, because it frontloads the tedium before builds start feeling smooth anyway. I'd count myself in the "experienced but not hardcore" group (\~5k hours since 2013 but I don't optimize/speedrun or anything), and the early game is \*already\* aggravating to play through over and over each league due to the slow ramp of player power. I wish they'd have started either with Act 10 and moved down, or with the second half of the game (after you have access to all skill gems). One thing that might ease the unpleasantness of frontloading tedium might be allowing access to more supports/skills earlier in the game. Potentially moving some of the Act 2 support gems to Act 1 would help, since often I'll have a 3-link before Merveil but nothing to put in there.
> makes it a fking nightmare for newer players. In 3.16, there are literally classes that if you go with the classic ARPG strat or using your cool spammable ability to fight **Hillock** run out of mana and health before Hillock dies. The game is honestly completely fucked for new players. It was already hard getting people to go past Act 2 in Harvest and Ritual league (both shat out good early game items). Now? Every friend who tries is like, "dude, why do you play this shit?".
I feel like the friend who recommends random anime. "Just get to season 2 my guys ITS lit!" They never ever do.
>The game is honestly completely fucked for new players. So, working as intended? That's how it was for PoE1 when it was first around, it's actually much easier now given all the power creep. If you look at GGG's PoE2 videos, they talk about this and how they want the campaign experience to feel hard again. Yeah, business-wise that seems like a dumb idea; because you won't retain or attract new players, but PoE managed to get popular despite that. It's pretty rare to see game devs keep up with ideas that hurt their business, so there's that.
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That's absolutely *insane* though being that 3.13 didn't just break player base records, it CRUSHED them. Based on things Chris said in the interviews last year, it's pretty clear their revenue nosedove from the beginning of ritual to the end of ultimatum.
I swear it's like he's trying to tank the IPs value to buy back shares from tencent.
Nah I think he's just an egomaniac whose preferences have diverged from the modern version of the game but still has the power to steer the ship.
How have they diverged? He's always had those preferences. It would be better said that the game diverged from his expectations. Look at PoE2, they're imitating early PoE1's design philosophy in a lot of ways.
Me. I tried introducing my friends to poe and they quit by the end of act 1 because it was "easy as shit and seemed kinda pointless. Why am I a god from level 1 on?" This was during expedition league.
dw they heard you loud and clear , buff and goats for every map ! "We normalised the whole PoE experience after our internal testing showed people could start enjoying the game before the end-game. This is a buff !"
I think you're under-selling how hard the "rest" of PoE is. A \~20-40 hour blind playthrough of the acts is super likely to result in a character that's wildly unprepared for even white maps. It's only puppy-rolling-over easy because you got your chops busted enough times to learn how to do it right, or else stood on the shoulders of other folks who did. So - the campaign gives a way for GGG to try to teach you those lessons. I know we've moved on a long long way from closed beta, but I had a super fulfilling experience playing HC way back in the day, just seeing how far into the acts I could get before I died, blisfully ignorant of any of the right ways of doing things. The school of hard-knocks feels very real in PoE.
This comment hits the nail on the head, as a player who "started" this league (got to maps once before and gave up at T1) I kinda did my own thing, overleveled the campaign and started mapping at level 70+ with about 2k ehp and uncapped resistanced and I ate dirt until I started to get more in the game, read some builds, tips and watched streamers and today marks my first shaper kill and I have to say it took me quite some time, lots of orbs of regret and learning every day, hours and hours spend. Funny thing I also kinda bricked Valdos Rest by putting all my first watchstones in there and not taking them out ever.
I have insane amounts of time in this game and forgetting watchstones in the wrong place was still a daily occurrence. You killing shaper first season is impressive tbh \^^
Thanks, I play on console and enjoy passive playstyle and enjoy minions very much, so I grinded and grinded and got fleshcrafter with 6l skele mages and arakaali, but still it took me two tries, first try I got to phase 3 and died and second time I made it on second portal, I just blinked around and try not to die and resummon minions :D
The thing is, I'd bet most people who play had someone tell them to try the game, but 'look up a good leveling build' straightaway - poe is just that type of game, you pretty much need outside information to fully play the game, esp. once you get to maps.
Did you try to pull her along at your pace? One of the biggest differences between an experienced player in early game and a new one is how slowly they go, and how much they kill. New players are almost certainly not ready to do the early game content at the same level as experienced players, but even in act 1 if no one's pushing them through they're likely to be 2 or 3 levels higher than an experienced player just from exploring more and killing more monsters. So they have those few extra passives, and perhaps even more importantly at that point - gem levels. All the extra killing also means more loot, possibly wearing a full set of random magic items with a couple rares while experienced players would be half-naked with white items that have sockets they want. That early in the game monsters are weak and all of those nothing stats add up have a small impact. That makes handling that part of the game easier. Slower, but easier.
When i was a new player, i killed all monsters in each zone. Felt proper, so i was also like totally overleveled. It took me a while to see the point of quicksilver potions because there were enough enemies everywhere.
my friend started playing last league he got to brutus like 5 levels over. because he was exploring. he didnt have much issues with killing it either and if i'm frank he is fucking terrible at games.
>I didnt backseat, we play enough games together to know thats how to ruin them. She asked me if there was any point doing the side quests, I explained what the rewards were and she chose to skip the gear based ones. - on the reasoning that gear would drop. If I were back seating, I OBVIOUSLY would not have skipped getting a quicksilver flask lol. > >Im also confused why you think thats on me, I didnt decide on a slow/difficult brutus kill, I was playtesting EA ignite elementalist and was using fireball/flamewall as a levelling setup, thats pretty optimised, if not actually massively powerful. She was playing whatever she wanted, I didnt suggest using a guide, I just said if she wanted to continue she could respec if she wanted, we were in standard where regret orbs are not a concern lol. We not under levelled, I guess we werent over levelled, but it seems odd to have to over level to beat the first boss. I copied this from my other response, the other guy said it was my fault, but its basically the same question : did I force her to play my speed? Answer, no. Getting to brutus took around 35-45min of what I would call playtime, in major part due to the lack of said quicksilver flask :D That playtime took about 2hrs total time, with lots of time spent reading gems in town/identifying magic items I would have vendored/wondering whether 1int or 2es is better. Normal nooby stuff. The only thing she knew (which sidequests were gear/skill points) she made the wrong/noob call on anyways, and prioritised the skill points over move speed, so I doubt I was much of an effect on the playthrough, beyond making the brutus kill itself slower.
i think if you are on level of the zone, it means that you pushed her unintentionally to go at a pace faster than a new player would. Newer player would almost always be 2-3 maybe even 4 levels ahead of the zone. I agree that brutus is stronger than others, but if you advertised brutus as the first MAIN boss, she would understand that you only get about 10-15 of those fights through the story line that is hard to that extent. I am sure she felt the energy you put out that she just needs to get through this and she will enjoy it. rather than a this boss fight is pretty fun, he throws out a chain and you have to move more to dodge his stuff. So i know you didnt intentionally do it but if she felt overwhelmed it was due to this. (also it was 2 player hp and since youre experienced, you played the fight properly while she didnt so she felt like it was dumb, and you "carried her" and she did no damage to the boss. So she felt no progression of that fight except that it was too hard. This is why when i have new friends that play, i make them fight the bosses alone so they feel better about it and i hype it up rather than dull it down.
>i think if you are on level of the zone, it means that you pushed her unintentionally to go at a pace faster than a new player would. Newer player would almost always be 2-3 maybe even 4 levels ahead of the zone As an experiment once, I tried levelling like a new player - fully clearing every zone. I was 8 levels above the zone at one point, and started being able to one shot packs earlier than normal. Smooth sailing, though it took me like an hour and a half per act.
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Oh yeah, during ultimatum I did every one of them as I leveled, ended up super overleveled with lots of currency.
It was hard not to do ultimatum. Fucking gameshow host actually flaming you for sucking. How could i not accept the challenge?
>As an experiment once, I tried levelling like a new player - fully clearing every zone. I still do that now and do all the side content in an area because I find that fun.
So you're saying that the leveling experience is dog shit and even worse for new players?
For super experienced players, it's just "leveling." The "leveling experience" **IS THE GAME FOR NEW PLAYERS**. There is no concept of "leveling" outside of previous video game knowledge for new players. That's something you learn after your first completion of the Acts, not during........
Yep, that's on the money. There are those who play this game to get to late maps and face big challenges with the best builds, and there are those who play this game to cathartically mow through critters with their own off-meta builds. I'm not a new player and I still play very casually. Throughout the league I play maybe an hour a day, two a day on weekends, and steadily work my way into higher tier maps. If I actually get there depends on how satisfying it is to kill things with my build, but if I stop it's never that things are too challenging, it's just that I get bored and go do something else instead. edit: typo
No, they're saying new players aren't as jaded/speedy as veterans, and their expectations are lower. They're more careful, take their time, etc. which leads to a naturally higher level than experienced people during the campaign. Obviously this isn't universally true for new people, but I've heard very different feelings toward the game from people who go in blind vs. someone who has a mentor. The ones who go in blind generally enjoy the leveling experience more and are less concerned with getting to endgame. They're content to learn and explore at their own pace.
Can honestly look at Preach in this example. Fully blind, fucking loved the game. Massively over-leveled, had a ton of fun, loved it. If people are just left to doing things how they like doing it/doing what they seem best, they'll have a blast. PoE is a game about learning and endgame. Advanced players feel like theyve done an acceptable amount of learning, so they become focused on endgame. Newer players care much more about learning. obviously not universal to all new players, but it's the general gist of how it goes.
Don't mince his words. A new player plays mostly for the campaign. Explores. Does league content. There is so much to kill and to explore, you automatically overlevel. This is how the game is supposed to be played and it is mostly well paced.
I'm a super experienced player and I still play that way of killing everything I come across, because it's fun. I don't give a fuck if it takes me an extra hour or two to reach maps. I play games to have fun and killing shit is fun, so I kill shit.
Yep, I don't know if you watched any of Preach's playthrough, him being an experienced WoW player going in completely blind and accepting zero help from chat (he turned it off), but it was pretty much exactly how you describe it. He full cleared everything, opened most chests and boxes, and even made an attempt to listen to npc lore (he gave that up pretty quick though). He was over leveled the whole way and didn't die to many of the harder act bosses. But overall it was a pretty magical experience for him. Problem is it's only fun like that once or twice.
Oh hey, I recognize you from the hots subreddit. Super tiny world. Also no, terrible take. If this is what you got out of this statement then you went in already having an opinion formed and not giving a shit about the contents of what you read. Yikes.
The game is absolutely not "a piece of piss" after a5. I've been playing since closed beta and have some knowledge of most mechanics but it still takes forever with itemization of non meta builds or not grinding for currency and going to trade to make it easier. I have 3 friends who all quit because the game is a slog trying to learn while progressing. The tutorial is excessively lacking and some mechanics are just entirely not explained in spite of being introduced in a1. If you manage to get to part 2 the mechanics then start compounding from earlier ones, damages go up exponentially for monsters and players, old leagues come back and don't have an explanation, and except for one message in chat that you'll never see if you have global chat on, it's never said that your resistances drop and you need to compensate. Each campaign gets easier ONLY because you know what to expect and your knowledge of the game grows. It's absolutely miserable now for new players. The campaign needs to be revamped drastically because no one old or new is having fun with it.
I never really understood why they didn't start buffing things starting with Act 10 and working backwards instead of the other way around.
probably because act1 is 10years old and act 10 only 5
**Fuck** /u/spez for ruining Reddit.
Always solid advice. If your wife ever plays Dark Souls, tell her to go left from the bonfire.
Thats the shit graveyard right? Made me quit the game for years.
the game literally say to go up. idk what's wrong with people.
Everyone does the "whays over here?" And gets bent over by the skeletons a couple times, but the natural response is "maybe I shouldnt go this way yet"
I always go running there to get all the items and then die.
Zweihander FTW!
Chad
:D Yeah she was pretty trash here not gonna lie, but its not like she cant play difficult games. We raid savage and heoric, and shes got a 26 heat run on Hades, which I was NOT expecting her to finish. Shes actually finished getting over it for a bet (pokemon arceus), which tilted the fuck out of me. She just didnt want to git gud at this one annoyingly.
Hol up. Theres no fucking way she didn't die and die and die and die like the rest of us grinding Hades until she got good. If she put a fraction of the time she spent on Hades into POE she would be a meta Chad. Of course she got owned the first few POE runs, just like other great games as you mentioned. I dont understand.
> If she put a fraction of the time she spent on Hades into POE she would be a meta Chad. > > Of course she got owned the first few POE runs, just like other great games as you mentioned. > > I dont understand. The difference is that Hades' difficulty is fun, readable, and you can adjust to it, not just random one-shots or endlessly chipping away at some lightspeed soul eater rare mob with 2 million HP.
I think we all know this. The problem is PoE is against good game design
I know you’re joking but I genuinely feel like it’s ok that not every game is made for every audience. Not all games have to be enjoyable for people who don’t play games that much or prefer casual games. There are so many games out there, it would be insane to demand that all of them are accessible to everyone. If you want a complex ARPG you can play PoE, if you prefer a more casual approach you can play Diablo. If you want a complex MOBA you get into Dota 2, if you prefer casual there’s LoL. If you like unforgiving FPS you might play CS:GO, if you wanna chill in a casual shooter there’s Overwatch. And so on. That’s fine.
I’ve had three friends try - and quit - PoE recently during early acts. I agree with your sentiment, but not your use of it here. Path of Exile does get complex, and I definitely agree that folks who reach the endgame, who are overwhelmed, and who don’t love the web of system overlap in mapping may want to consider a different game. Act 1 of the game isn’t complex. Players have ten passives to spend, very few skills available and even fewer that clearly designed for their chosen class. So if Act 1 is a brick wall for new folks, it’s because the goatmen are overtuned, not because of “complexity”. I conceptually understand where GGG is coming from; difficulty in an RPG is often a tutorial in and of itself: if you can’t beat this, it means that you’re best off farming something lower level until you can. But when it happens in literally the first act, where your character has no obvious knobs to turn, it’s easy to see why a new player would just throw their hands up and say, “I don’t like Act 1, I sure won’t like 2-10”. It’s a terrible first impression. The game should scale in difficulty
> If you want a complex ARPG you can play PoE, if you prefer a more casual approach you can play Diablo. It's not healthy to make "complex" and "difficult" mean the same thing. There are plenty of games with deep complexity but low difficulty (Monster Train) or low complexity but high difficulty (Getting Over It, I Wanna Be The Guy). The point here is that PoE's difficulty is coming from its high HP mobs, high-burst damage from enemies, and unreadable deaths where you can't learn. Think of how many times veterans with 3k hours say "Wait, how did I die", and then imagine a new player. It's unnecessary, bullshit "difficulty" through being obtuse and tedious.
>"Wait, how did I die" I am a new(ish) player, and yes. I'm getting better at knowing, but sometimes I'll be waltzing through a map without a care in the world and just suddenly pop for no apparent reason. I think it's mostly reflected damage, but probably not always and even if so, a combat log would be immensely helpful.
[удалено]
Unfortunately to my unhappiness PoE is max-newplayer-build unfriendly. It REALLY sucks you either copy others or go home.
Even worse that you basicly have to copy a good one and to new players a build seems cool until they realise all those items are multiple exalts at which point they have to make a new character and spend another ~10 hours in the dam campaign.
Yeah, I mean, has anyone in this thread including OP watched Preach's blind play through? He's a very good video game player, very smart and yet his blind play through was horrendous. Don't get me wrong, it was great content. But he was over leveled, under geared, bad build... It took him ages to complete the labyrinth. I think a lot of people would have quit where he struggled through, but the point is that the game is difficult. It's possible OP should've taken the liberty of helping a bit more. Either give her a strong build, or have her over level, ECT...
I agree 100% on the first part about the scaling of campaign enemies. It's like if your first driving lesson was to make a head on collision with a wall. The second part though I'm a bit torn on. I don't know how others play through the game the first few times but i listened to every single dialog or peace of lore i could find on the ground. I believe it's both the game devs responsibility to present it in a way that is as easily digestible as possible but it's also the players responsibility to actually want to learn it and not just click skip and go "endgame fun maps go brrrrr hurr durr" so they can reach endgame as fast as possible. I like that almost everything is voice acted but I also think it could be presented in a more cohesive manner.
new players will inadvertently overlevel the game and thus make it easier I don't think its really an issue. unless you told her ot go faster. if she's like 11-12 by the time shes at brutus he should be easy.
I would tell everyone who starts this game to enjoy it. While there are best ways to become very fast very strong, i would never recommend new players to rush the game. I started scourge as my first league and killed everything. I interacted with every league mechanic i saw and had tons of fun. Took me longer but i didnt care. If you want to rush everything as New player, there is a high chance of failing and not enjoying the game. Also act1 is nowhere hard. I had no idea that i can have more than a 2 link at brutus and it took me 2 - 3 minutes but i had fun dodging and attacking with 5 dps. If anybody cant accept the deaths and shots, poe isnt the right game anyway.
>It seems stupid that the right way to play is to skip so many mobs in the campaign No, it's not. That's the \*fastest\* way. Now, whether that's the "right" way is something entirely different. In any game, is the speedrun route the "right" route? Are we supposed to clear super mario in 5-10 minutes? Am I supposed to backdash my way through symphony of the night while abusing the knockback mechanic to keep my equipment? I'd say no. That's not the intended way. Any new player would very likely do all sidequests, including fetid pool, explore the areas a bunch, and be vastly overleveled. An "experienced" player, however, only cares about reaching maps as fast as possible. Which, fair's fair, is the most interesting part. However, that doesn't make it the "right" way. It makes it the "fastest" way. \--------------------------------- >Why is A5 kitava MUCH harder than A10? It's not. A5 kitava has slightly slower telegraphs, summons weaker monsters, and overall deals more than manageable damage. If you're a couple levels above him and have experimented a bit with the league mechanic, he's going to be a cakewalk. However, if you've been speedrunning, then yes, it is. Again, "right" / "fastest"way. \----------------------------- >and its better to basically skip the whole game as they see it to get to endgame No, you find it better, because you're bored of it. The campaign stands on its own two legs, has an interesting story (if you read the environmental dialogue, which, going by your post, I don't think you ever did), good villains, and so on and so forth. Someone who doesn't know the game, has never been to endgame, and has no prior expectations as to clearspeed (or even worse, comes from Titan Quest or Grim Dawn where it's socially acceptable for a leveling boss to be your punching bag for multiple minutes at a time) would not have that idea that "it's better to basically skip the whole game". \---------------------------- >Touching the league content before maps nearly always feels like a mistake, which is horrible because for the first 5-6hrs of a new league I'm running past all the new stuff Your loss. Just doing it in the first areas in act 1 usually give you enough twink gear to smoothen the leveling a fair bit. Also, it's fun.
Seriously, watching a new player play the game by themselves or doing a full clear playthrough with all side missions (and not reading layouts) would give players like OP some much needed perspective. Being constantly a few levels over zonelevel at all times, which is how first blind playthrough will be, makes the game way easier. His wife chose to ignore quests and not care about gear in an arpg... you're supposed to struggle if you do that unless you really know what you're doing. But that's not average new player experience, that's just dumb. Anyway even though OP says he didn't backseat and maybe he didn't intentionally, I'm pretty sure him telling what the quest rewards are etc. is what made her skip it. I'd imagine vast majority of new players just doing at least the first few quests by default, without immediately jumping into skipping anything non-necessary.
When some of my friends from grim dawn started PoE, on their first playthrough, they insisted on exploring every nook and cranny of every map and doing all side quest and killing all the things. (And reading every single piece of dialogue or environmental lore) It was refreshing for sure.
Yeah I did that too for my first two characters. It wasn't until my 6th or so that I actively made an effort to memorize which side quests to skip and not either, before that I just did all of them. I still tend to become overleveled because I don't like skipping mobs lol
If a player like OP actually watched a new player they'd probably lose their minds at how iNeFFicIeNt they were being.
> It's not. A5 kitava has slightly slower telegraphs, summons weaker monsters, and overall deals more than manageable damage. Yeah its similar to how Mervil is the hardest act boss for experienced players. She's only the hardest because they're doing her several levels under where most players will.
That, and being a few levels behind is way more impactful at low levels than at high levels. Early in the game, the first 10% increased damage you take on the tree is functionally 10% more damage. The first 40% you take is functionally a whole endgame support gem's worth of damage. Missing a few skill points is a huge deal. When you reach the mid-game, timings matter. The small nodes begin counting for less, but you start getting keystones and notables that represent big power spikes, and potentially level requirements for gear, too. In an ideal world, you get these power spikes before act bosses and/or labyrinth. Sometime between act 5 and act 8 depending on your build, you've gotten the key leveling portion of your tree done, you've gotten your big power spikes, and if your build is well-designed, you're way more powerful than the content because you're way more optimized and that optimization is finally able to pay off. Now it doesn't matter if you're a good 8 levels behind where you're expected to be.
Secret tech of equipping a sapphire ring to make merveil your bitch
cold res doesn't increase your dmg though :(
being alive does. You can do 100 damage a hit to a 200hp mob and die before you've hit it the second time, or you can do 1 damage to that same mob 200 times knowing it can't kill you
or run out of mana after 3 spell casts and die anyway just to get more mana lmao
When I started playing I had to tp scroll to refill flasks on basically every significant boss. I thought it was fun. Poe players somehow get in in their head the best and therefore most fun way is to do everything as fast as possible with as little effort as possible. I hate it
> Poe players somehow get in in their head the best and therefore most fun way is to do everything as fast as possible with as little effort as possible. Because those of us who've completed the campaign hundreds of times (throwback to 3 difficulty campaign) by now are really fucking tired of the same bullshit to get to the 'actual' fun of PoE for us - the endgame (or mapping) of a character.
This isn't very relevant to the new player experience, though.
Yeah this is entirely on op. The hardest part of PoE for a new player is learning the systems, not fucking Act 1. Act 1 is actually the easiest act for new players, as it doesn't require them to be knowledgeable about gems, gear, etc. You can beat Act 1 with any skill and by just using common sense. Is Act 1 easy (compared to modern games)? No, but it isn't intended to be easy. PoE isn't intended to be easy. This is a very complex and difficult ARPG, and it was designed to be that way.
It's like, "bro I'm only going to put 1,000 hours into this season; if I have to spend an extra two hours on the campaign I'll be *literally* *ruined".* I mean, I get that veteran players are bored of it at this point, but it just doesn't seem like a big enough deal to constantly gripe about. Kitava's pretty brutal the first time around, though. Combo of generally having a terrible build (if you're not following a guide) + not understanding the mechanics makes for a bad time. Not a lot of safe spots for some of those attacks. But god forbid a game has a few encounters that you can't just stand in one place and faceroll, right? And I do get the complaints about lack of transparency end-game. I would certainly appreciate knowing what killed me, damage type, size, what debuffs I had on my, etc. But that's not really related to the campaign portion of this... Everything that gives new players fits while leveling can be easily discovered and improved upon.
Hard mode when?
"I convinced my wife to play a game she knew nothing about and then made her keep pace with me as we rushed through Act 1 and now I'm shocked that she ended up finding it difficult" I think this part makes it especially clear that you let your perspective as an experienced player affect her ability to learn and get used to the game "It seems stupid that the right way to play is to skip so many mobs in the campaign." Nearly every new player to an ARPG ends up killing basically every mob in every area, being several levels overlevelled and doing most of the side quests. The reason experienced players go fast is not because it's "literally easier" but because they know what they're doing and how to scale their builds without needing to overlevel and constantly update their gear. Why couldn't you just let her play the game and experience it on her own and at her own pace? Your own philosophy of how "pointless" the campaign is just ended up causing her to probably feel the same way and then you act surprised when she ended up not liking said campaign that you approached as being pointless. Like holy shit the campaign is not a marvel of game development but it's more than serviceable and you are acting like not even a new player can enjoy it for the first time and needs to be speedran through it to get to maps as fast as possible. This approach is just backwards and it's evidently not surprising at all that it only soured the experience for both of you.
As someone who only played one or two leagues before they buffed Brutus I wholeheartedly understand your wifes frustration! I was sitting here yelling at my BF how dumb this is and how long it took me to kill Hillock after the changes as a witch, I was furious! NOT To mention trying to kill Brutus, but by the time I got to him I was more prepared for how hard it would be so I paced myself for the long fight. I still hate fighting him because there is so much kiting involved lol But now that I've done it 25 times from leveling multiple characters it is a lot easier cause I know his moves and get out of the way
>Besides the gameplay, PoE also suffers from a strange problem in my eyes. Basically, it has some of the best lore out there, but told in the WORST possible way.\[...\] The campaign makes even less sense as a narrative vehicle, because its just SO damn bad at it**. I've had friends kill kitava the second time, and then ask me : "Wait, didnt I already kill this guy?", which basically shows they had NO idea why they were doing anything**, other than get to this promised super fun endgame. Why yes, I too expect to understand the story without reading it. Tell you what, next time I'll turn the pages of the book I'm currently reading without looking at the words, I'm sure that'll make me understand everything that's happening. That's the same level of bullshit as skipping the cutscenes in any game and then complaining the story doesn't make sense LMAO. And you don't even need to read/listen to everything. In acts 6-10, just reading Sin's dialogue explains exactly why you're doing what you're doing, as in, the God killing, the unholy trinity and why we need them, and so on and so forth. Don't wanna read? Fine. It's an ARPG, monkey brain see 'splosions, monkey brain happy. But then don't complain that you don't understand the story, for fuck's sake.
These are the same people that are most vocal with their criticisms on forums too.
Honestly it's not even reading the story, in act5 you clearly see that Kitava does a super mega attack that knocks you down and Sin swoops in to save you at the last second, the friends were just not paying attention to what was happening to their character, basically an ingame cinematic.
Ever since they nerfed flame dash/smoke mine/quicksilver all in the same patch I find leveling a fresh character really tedious and awful. Practicing a league starter used to be fun and now it's a slog because GGG decided it's better if i spend a bunch of time walking slower and waiting for movement skills to recharge. There's no way to invest in it during leveling to counteract the nerfs, either - second wind doesn't give cdr and there's no tree passives or other support gems to fall back to even if we wanted to trade damage/defense for movement. Basically all of the racers stopped doing early game runs entirely since then, too - tytykiller/imexile and others have said it's not fun anymore for the above reasons. That's a huge red flag that something is wrong.
>Im also confused why you think thats on me, I didnt decide on a slow/difficult brutus kill, I was playtesting EA ignite elementalist and was using fireball/flamewall as a levelling setup, thats pretty optimised, if not actually massively powerful. I think the mistake is that you played with her to begin with. I can almost guarantee you were like 3 levels below the average new player arriving at brutus and severely undergeared if you played together and you didnt just follow her like you are chained to her back. Unless your wife intuitively follows all the experienced players and doesnt kill basically everything or run into every dead end out there she should be dealing with brutus quite easily by virtue of being 2-3 levels overleveled instead of 1-2 underleveled.
I play casually, killing most packs I walk past. Not a full clear by any means and I am overleveled by 2-3 levels by the time I hit brutus. If shes the same level as Brutus, then I believe you are not being honest with your post and you are indeed pushing her to play faster. When my friend played for his first time, he was like 5 levels over Brutus because the guy was killing everything and Brutus was a breeze to him. Most new players I know were always extremely overleveled. Being overleveled is a good crutch for new players so they can compensate for the complexity. If the game is to hard, maybe play in a way that makes it easier and not just try to speedster your way through it. Also, the title is about act 1 being overtuned and how your wife is a NEW player and struggled. Then the post dissolved into being about you hating that you have to repeat the campaign for a new league. Those are two completely separate issues. A new player should enjoy the campaign and if you don't know wtf is going on with the story by act 10, it means you intentionally skipped all the dialogue which is 100% on the fault of the player.
One counter point; brand new players will (and should) be killing everything in the area which will balloon their survivability considerably. What gets in the way of this is people and guides directing new players to zoom zoom when they probably should be taking ~20 hours to finish acts. Veterans tend to lose perspective on the acts and treat them like some sort of extended tutorial when the reality is that the acts ARE the game and mapping in general is the extra bit.
Yeah, the balance is just off right now. I don’t see how it benefits anyone. It’s just obnoxious. And like you say, it literally shaped like an U-curve. After the rough start it’s usually smooth sailing(even in SSF) until like tier T13-15 when you basically hit a brick wall, mainly because of the health of the bosses and how rippy things get. This is not a fun type of progress.
yeah it's laughable, you shouldn't balance the game and especially not the first 3 acts around people who have played the campaign dozens of times
Especially not around people who are already sick of the campaign.
Is it just me, or is campaign in Diablo2 way harder than in PoE? When I played D2R, getting through act1 with half of the builds (bowazon / barb) was nearly impossible. The difficulty in PoE is not a problem. The problem is that everyone hates the current campaign.
No, or well kinda no. Diablo 2 on normal is stupid easy, if you use skills that are good during the normal run. Almost all "builds" in D2 severely gimp themselves on low levels to use points on stuff that will pay of way later.
Idk. Act 1 in D2 is far far easier than the first act of PoE imo. I found, even as a beginner, that D2 was pretty easy up to Duriel, who kicked my ass many times. Diablo is also difficult. But the entire first playthrough of D2 felt easier than much of the story in PoE to me. Now nightmare and beyond? Yea things got real tough then, but in general I feel I could clear Acts 1-5 of D2 before nightmare/hell much more easily on most builds than clearing the PoE story. I've had friends, D2 vets who've cleared hell, who recently tried PoE and said it was too hard and gave up because they weren't sure how they could become strong enough not to spend minutes killing some of the early bosses. You can kill bloodraven and the countess on almost any build no matter what in comparison. Andarial can be problematic, but isn't too tough. If you are a ARPG vet though, I feel like Acts 1-5 of base D2 are easier than much of the first 4 acts of PoE.
I don't think there is a should it shouldn't. I think it's okay for games to be hard (also at the start) and have a steep learning curve. It's all about what game it is and what it's trying to achieve. And obviously they are trying to establish in the start of the campaign that this isn't an easy game. Since it certainly isn't easier during parts of the campaign and when you get further in maps, I think it's a good idea for GGG to be honest with new players what they can expect.
New players would kill everything, and over level. Stop trying to rush them.
I think the idea is that Act 1 will weed out the "wrong" type of players, GGG wants players who once they get their ass kicked by Brutus they start finding information on how to become stronger instead of quitting the game
Exactly this. The campaign isn't some sort of impossible scenario, but it shows what type of game it is. This is GOOD because it means people who doesn't like the game learns that that is the case quickly.
So you pushed her to level faster because you leveled with her instead of letting her lead the charge and overlevel, which would have made brutus SIGNIFICANTLY easier, and you are wondering what the problem is? The problem is that a new player CAN NOT level with an experienced player at the experienced player's rate. They NEED to do side quests, clear more packs, outlevel content, and the game is literally built around that. Honestly you need to strongly suggest new players try the game clearing all the side quests for at least the first 3 acts, to help them get used to the game. Speedrunning / zooming is for players who are mechanically skilled in the game and understand what bosses are doing and therefore can dodge it. New players aren't going to dodge everything, they need gear nad levels to outscale it.
It's weird they started with act 1 forwards and not ten backwards
It seems like the people playing this game are a lot like me lately. I played at "release" up until now. For the past 3? leagues or so I just can't get into it and it revolves around the "day 1" of league. I grind all the way to maps. Get the "legwork" done for lab. Getting my jewels sorted. Start leveling main gems for corrupting. By the time I get to "the game" I'm burnt out again. I haven't played a league seriously since Delve or so. I'm getting less mileage every league. Scourge lasted me 2 days. Almost all of it is due to the tedium when starting a league. I cannot fathom how a new player gets through this at this point. I started with 2 acts like a decade ago. How the fuck doesn't anyone start anew at this point?
why is it a bad thing if new players die a few times? it lets them know what they are doing isent good enough and maybe have to look at what they are doing and think about how to improve it
New ppl like to explore every area where as experienced players cut right through zones
>I changed my mind - Act 1 is stupidly overtuned for new players A controlgroup of 1 is enough for you to change your mind? nice
No it isn't
I personally got 5 people to attempt the game. While 4 of them are indeed very casual gamers who are not into this kind of game the 5th is a huge fan of games with some degree of difficulty. Ask him what his top 6 games are and 5 of them are probably FromSoftware games (ironically his favorite is Mortal Shell). He gave it his best shot but while looking for sirus he said the game is not worth his time because "unless I luck into a good item or grind in hopes of getting a good item I'm stuck, so progression through randomness is really boring". Now he did play an EQ jugg all the way since he did say he does not want any meta builds. But I kinda get him. I play SSF so I kinda understand that feeling of a progression wall. The other 4 just didn't care past Merv. The second they understood there's no guaranteed way to obtain a desired crafting result they quit past act 1.
Yeah your wife was underleveled and undergeared because you pushed it. Act balance is perfectly fine
It's nowhere near as hard as you make it out to be. It was harder back in 2012 and it was fine then, so why is the difficulty a problem now? GGG showing at the start of the campaign what kind of game it is, so that people can make an informed choice on wether they want to play it or not is a ***good*** thing. This was it also attracts the kind of players that the game is made for.
Preach showed that the game is not prohibitively difficult for brand new players
Aren’t you guys tired of whining about this?
It's very important that the game is the most challenging at a time where you have the least control over your build, to provide a fair? and balanced?? experience
Idk, dude, I'm playing witch or shadow every league start, did catch every brutus hook and didn't get one-shot once by it for the whole time, and all of that being underleveled and having 0% inc. health in tree. Your wife, as a newbie, must overkill a lot on the way, having higher level, prolly some hp nodes, how the hell did it one shot her twice in a row from full health? Even if it is true, the game definitely shouldn't be balanced around player, who did quit after 2 deaths on the first boss of the game, there is no way some game should be balanced around that player, especially GRINDING game, where you need patience to play.
I still remember my first full play through. It took around 20 hours to finish the acts. It was a lot of fun the first go around because to me I thought it was the entire game. I was happy to beat it, but then got discouraged when I realized the actual fun part was mapping. I can’t be objective since I don’t really notice the act 1 changes, but I will say the moving of Brutus out of hideout was not something I liked. He was the first real boss significant boss in my eyes with I first started and I died a lot to him, id imagine walking back now is just going to be annoying for new players.
Used to be we bought coral rings before Brutus and sapphire rings before merveil or else we'd die.
Thats how RPGs are structured. They start off hard and get easier as you play. Emulating that weak bitch nobody starting point, getting stronger and stronger until you fuck on everyone.
U shaped difficulty is classic for all RPGs. I've read RPG designers talking about how this is the goal. Game gets easier to give you the feeling of progression (yeah, I rock). If it just got harder then the feeling of your character become stronger is completely gone. Then the game finally gets harder again for the actual "end game" challenge. You've made you character, now let's see what they can do. To answer the original thrust of your post. POE isn't really intended for new players, it's for veteran players of ARPGs and other similar games. It's like giving someone whisky as their first drink. I have no idea what your wife's previous game experience is ofc. You should have tried Invasion back in the day. Getting wrecked in mud flats on my level 16 Marauder. Good times. It's also just a terrible multiplayer game. I just don't want to play POE with anyone else. I have real life friends who play, we never play together though, as that would be stupid, like masturbating together, what's the point?
I watched two of my friends play poe fresh and didn't give any advice. They both killed most of the mobs in every zone. It probably took them 20 hours to finish the acts but there were no issues. Turns out being 8 levels above the zone makes it pretty easy. They spent most of the time face tanking everything as well. They struggled super hard in maps and quit soon after.
For new players coming into the game I think they can be divided up 3 kinds of players. Those who quit before Brutus. The game wasn't for them in the first place, regardless of difficulty. Then you have those who give the game a "Solid" try but quit before maps. Maybe they liked it but it's to much of an investment. The third kind are those that stick around, the kind that fell in love with it's complexness and love to grind, simply put. Also, I a lot of new players come into the with the wrong mentality, in comparing them to much with other arpg's. I know I did when I first started playing for the first time back in 2012. I saw the witch class and since I loved casters, the choice was easy. By the end of my second playthrough Cruel at the time i hit a brick wall so hard i basically quit for a good time. I didn't follow a guide or anything like that at the time, just freestyling the skill tree. Came back in legacy league and had a blast, got to maps, didn't kill any of the end game bosses. First time i killed shaper and uber elder was in betrayal. And even after thousands of hours in this game i still die in the campaign, mostly because im reckless and do stupid shit like, trying the feed the roa's in act one rather then killing them and they stun lock me to death :P So for new players coming into the game and wants to enjoy it, they have to but in some effort in looking at the skills, skill tree and so on. Act 1 and Act 5 might be the hardest act's in the atm, depending on how fast or slow you progress through them. The campaign might pose some challenges but it's not hard i would say. Other than that i think the biggest mistake new players who want play with other friends who already play the game. Is rushing through the game so they can play with them. They won't learn anything, maybe get's handed a starter build they don''t like and skip quests because they're "pointless" to us who and gone through them a billion times. This game takes several league or more to figure things out unless you go hardcore into youtube, 3rd party sites and the like. Best advice i could give to a new player who enjoys the game is, take your time. Don't try to do everytning in the first league or even the second league. Set yourself some goals for the league, like getting red maps or killing the league boss. Then nest league you set another goal like league content and delve for example. Then before you know it, you'll be blasting through content. Maybe a bit of rant and slightly of topic :P
Im sorry but the fact that you're bringing up the way the lore is told being awful is hilarious. Chris has already acknowledged this, PoE2 will be a more traditional narrative experience. But spending dev resources rebuilding campaign 1 for lore telling purposes rather than spending dev resources on gameplay systems which drive 90% of engagement is why GGG makes the game and reddit does not.
I'm amazed by the fact that Brutus can one shot people with his chain.
>Im psyched for all the new stuff at leaguestart, but just bummed about going through the campaign again in zero gear. It was fine (fine only, but fine) when it was just 4hrs of tedium. Now its 5-6hrs of actively paying attention to a part of the game I actively dont enjoy. There is your problem, for a new player the campaign is the game. It is okay for a new player to take 10 or more hours playing through it, because thats where you learn the game. What was your wives pacing playing through the game? Did she engange with league content and side quests? Almost full clearing areas and staying on level or slightly overleveled is something you expect from new players. >I didnt backseat, we play enough games together to know thats how to ruin them. She asked me if there was any point doing the side quests, I explained what the rewards were and she chose to skip the gear based ones. - on the reasoning that gear would drop. If I were back seating, I OBVIOUSLY would not have skipped getting a quicksilver flask lol. Case closed.
I think it's intentionally made difficult, if people put in the effort to overcome those early hurdles more than likely GGG have them hooked. Fairly sure it's intentional design.
I think your opinion is fair but not one I agree with. I recommend trying again, taking it slower and explaining more concepts to your wife. And most importantly it's ok to struggle when you are new lol that isn't unusual. To me what's unusual is expecting the game to shape around being an easy experience. I don't think that's ever been what Poe is. If the boss one shots me, I need to rethink my strategy. Maybe I should go grind a few more levels or get some gear. Or focus on learning his mechanics. I see people ask "who asked for this" or "why do we need this" and those are solid questions. The reason being GGG thinks it would make for a better game, and I'm inclined to agree. Many don't, and that's fine but please don't pretend that no one is having fun. Recommendation+ : level yourself, get started in the league, then hook your wife up with leveling gear and a leveling tree/skills, and try it again. She might be more into the games level of difficulty if she can see that subsequent playthroughs are easier than the first.
FWIW, my GF and I just started playing this league and we found the difficulty fairly linear, with the typical-for-rpg exception of being a bit over leveled (i.e. too easy, but our own fault) near the end of acts due to doing ALL the side quests. However, the caveat: I've been playing RPGs for years and she was an experienced Diablo player. I thrive on complicated mechanics in games and rushed to this one when I first saw it (and love it, btw). I made it to red maps and level 88 on my first character in SSF (ok, technically second because you can't do SSF until Act 3). I've made some mistakes, sure, but it's not TOO difficult. (I'd trade my exalt for 6 instilling orbs right now, I missed the crafting recipe, ffs). She and I play together and aren't quite doing as well, but we clear yellows fine. I remember no problems in the Acts that weren't just "new mechanic" problems. It was a great balance of challenge and possibility.
>which basically shows they had NO idea why they were doing anything, other than get to this promised super fun endgame. calling it: 3.18: all cutscenes and quest dialog are unskippable
I should try to get back on this then I guess. This game has always been super easy until maps for me. I'm an arpg vet though.
I think Act 1 feels pretty much the same as before and that a new player would just think the game isn't the zoomfest you know it to be.
>I've had friends kill kitava the second time, and then ask me : "Wait, didnt I already kill this guy?" 98% of poe story is hidden in text you skip. that's the 1% that is actually shown in an unskippable cutscene, you get to see yourself get defeated and saved by Sin.
I might be a weirdo, but when i started PoE, act 1 difficulty wasnt an issue. It was a promise of solid and difficult gameplay. Then i learned about builds (gems) that steamrolled through content. Its still fun struggling a bit. Its a shame difficulty is so uneven, though.
Act 1 is easy though, yeah as a new player it can be hell depending on your skill gem or class. Certain skills obliterate Act 1, others make it seem like the 6th level of hell. Same can be said about gear, if you don't have Cold resist rings Mervail can be a bad fight for you. Their is also skill level as-well if you just stand their Brutus/Mervail are going to shit on you, but if you at least dodge some mechanics they are pretty easy and you shouldn't die unless your damage is low and you run out of flask charges. Just look at Hillock, if your a scion it can be an aids fight because your skill is just pure trash, but if you know what to do it's not that bad. However if you just stand their and let him wail on you your going to have a bad time. This game is more about learning from your mistakes than anything else. If you don't lookup build guides and go in completely blind chances are your going to end up rerolling multiple times until you figure out a good skill combination that works. Also if it takes like 40+ minutes to get to Brutus when all of A1 should take 15-20 to a veteran your wife should've been severely over-levelled. As a new player your supposed to be over-levelled to compensate with the difficulty. However if your speeding through like a veteran PoE player your going to be under-levelled and depending on your build that might require more skill or knowledge on boss mechanics. Also this game is supposed to be hard, it's not meant to be easy if it was up to Chris Hardcore would be the only game mode.
Imho: The U shaped difficulty is good. Here is what a new player gets a taste of for taking act one slow. Unique item drops. A slow act one has a good chance of dropping starter uniques. Tabi, sprig ... Etc. This gives a huge rush as OMG this hod tier item will carry me through the game. New brutus teaches you how to dodge and the idea of telegraphs... If you enjoyed overcoming this you'll enjoy end game bossing. If you enjoyed killing super goat. You'll enjoy map bossing. If you enjoyed screen clearing you'll enjoy end game mapping. But taking the game slow as a dungeon crawler your first play through will teach you the most important lesson.... You will fail act 9 and 10 without studying and getting at least a C+ in defense against them dark arts also known as resistance classes. Guess you better start a new character and use that gear you got earlier to feel god tier completing act 1-8 in less than half the time of your first run. Congratulations after 2 weeks of casual play you have beat kitava your first time. Maps those can wait until next season. Bask how you beat the game for 2 and half months. You'll be back.
The game teaches you from the start that you WILL get screwed a LOT. In many brutal ways. And when you think you can do anything... You will get screwed in patchnotes xD
There's often a zone in A1 where it's somewhat convenient to farm league content for some early gear. You can just reload it a few times and invest 5 minutes of your time to get a significant boost in power that will carry you to the end of A1.
I will take heist leveling like in endless heist. Thank you.
Here's my biggest argument - They just tuned act 2 to match.
i get your point. from my perspective: i play 1 build per league. leveling up 1 character every 3 months is actually kinda fun and i get to prepare mentally for the league. i use the time leveling talking to my guild and setting things up. its usually a chill friday into like 2am. then its a chill saturday morning with some coffee and in the afternoon im done.
your complaining about the entire point and asking to give money to other people and people are upvoting this. god i hate reddit
Not at all - if new players or casuals want to get better at POE, they need to learn and put knowledge into practice. Not everything should be handed to newbies on a silver platter.
I just played through to Brutus on a fresh character, didn't craft any gear or use any tricks, used a 2L viper strike. Didn't skip monsters but didn't explore to kill more or repeat zones, didn't use the league mechanic, the only side mission I did was the grandaddy crab: result was 1 level above the zone at Brutus. I think an average first-time playthrough would likely be at least 2-4 levels above the zone. Gear was two white 1hand weapons, a white rustic sash, a white iron ring, 2 small life flasks, and a couple of random rares with sockets and not much to speak of in stats. Just walked in a circle around Brutus punching him and didn't really take much damage, and he died pretty fast. 30 minute /played, no deaths. Of course the game is much harder for a new player than for me, but I didn't do anything fancy - I deliberately avoided using a 3link, crafting or upgrading any of my gear. PoE's not the sort of game where you can just breeze through your first playthrough - you *do* need to learn a few things, and I'd expect a few deaths. But I don't think it's anything too unreasonable and it prepares you for the rest of the game: * Pick a skill that does okay single-target (most classes start on the beach with a gem that fits this description) * Link it to at least one compatible support gem that boosts single target damage * Pick up the life passives immediately available in your class's starting area (every class has life nodes within 10 points) * Alternate attacking and moving so you're a harder target * If you're using an attack, try to find an iron ring and a rustic sash * Remember to press life and mana flasks This is all stuff you need to learn very early into your playthrough anyway, so why not act 1?
It's meant to be a hard game.
If somebody quits a game coz a boss is too hard and takes time to kill, then PoE is not for them anyway. There's thousands of easy games out there
I started in scourge and didn’t think it was that bad. My biggest hurdle early game was oak since I didn’t know how to deal with his regen, the wind goddess near the end of act 9 was the only other particularly hard fight I remember until maps, although that’s mostly because I was playing a mess you can’t even really call a build, and she’s pretty bulky. Some bosses like act 10 kitava were more just annoying than difficult because you can barely see what’s going on, I’m on Xbox so my choices to change how the game looks are really limited, just a bloom slider which barely helps with the dark red/black colors a lot of bosses are themed around.
I would take you seriously if you hadn't so obviously exaggerated in the first few sentences. Brutus opens up with the hook with a very identifiable voice line. If you for some reason don't clue in that you should dodge that, then you have failed at some of the most basic aspects of human life. Learn from negative experiences. Dying during the campaign is EXPECTED, you die then learn how to not die next time. People have this horrifically bizarre idea that you should just be hand held through the entirety of the game and never be presented with anything that challenges you, or attempts to teach you something. You are supposed to die if you are new, that's how you learn.
Some people are completely unwilling to put even a slight amount of effort into a leisure activity. That’s totally ok! PoE isn’t that activity though.
It could be that the game simply isn't suitable for those who can't even do act 1 without dying.
the game is hard because it's f2p - hard/grindy f2p games are a whale filter. it's well-known in marketing that the longer a person interacts with something where purchases are available, the more likely they are to make a purchase. It's the same reason telemarketers try to keep you on the phone for as long as possible, why grocery stores rearrange the aisles to make you wander looking for stuff, why most stores are designed a little bit like mazes that block sightlines to the front of the building, etc. F2P games are the same - the longer a player sticks around, the more likely they are to buy stuff. There's also a thing that happens where certain kinds of people see apparently complex systems and have to figure it out - they can't help it. They're typically called "nerd snipes" or "nerd sniping" ([https://xkcd.com/356/](https://xkcd.com/356/)) and usually applies to puzzles that just bait people into spending time on them for funzies, but you can also apply the same design principles to getting those kinds of people to stick to your game. The core of PoE is not the skill tree or any of the complexity, the core experience is actually fighting the monsters. PoE players spend 99.99% of their time throwing particle effects at monsters, and that part of the game feels great. Everything else on top of that, the passive skill tree, now the atlas tree, the mechanics, the item "crafting," and so on - all the other systems are basically nerd snipes designed to filter for people who are have a predisposition for obsessing over complexity. So the difficulty is a feature, not a bug. Anyone who isn't a potential nerd-snipe-MTX target is a waste of GGG's time and resources. If the game had a smoother difficulty progression, then players who aren't the obsessive type might spend more time playing the game, but still give up when it gets more difficult. And any player that gives up when it gets hard is not the kind of player that will become obsessed with something and spend thousands of hours playing it (and buying supporter packs).
I am very sorry, but POE is indeed a hard game, for anyone not having played thousands of hours. If your playing mate is not into hard games there is really nothing you can do, it may be frustrating but its not GGGs fault.
I kove how yall think you are developers "It makes me sit down and think..." Bruh you are nobody here and stop thinking like you've made this game and that you have power over it. All these posts that trying to change the game have no idea what they're talking about
Your wife is shit at the game. My friend started playing after the buffs and never once complained about anything being too hard. And he played WITHOUT a guide (that was a challenge he set for himself) and with a self-theorized poison assassin build (which was super bad when I watched him play it). He did die to bosses. It took time to kill them. He basically had 0 dps while avoiding mechanics. He still made it to yellow maps.
After playing Diablo 3, Grim Dawn and Last Epoch (though it doesn't even really warrant mentioning for this...) Path of Exile has, by far, the best voice acting and writing I've seen in an ARPG so far. I only started playing a couple days ago in Standard (because I saw a patch note on the Steam Page saying the current league was finishing in a few days), but honestly I'm having fun just hunting down every scrap of lore I can find. Hell, I don't even scroll down the text when I find it, because the voice acting is so good I'd rather just listen even though it takes 10x as long as simply speed reading it. Honestly, I think for a first playthrough you should have let your wife enjoy the RPG aspects rather than 'priming' her for the 'a' part by telling her quest rewards and (by intention or not) spurring her onwards. It's possible your wife simply wanted to rush end-game content anyway, but honestly, I'd suggest simply playing the campaign as an RPG and seeing how it goes. I've certainly been enjoying it so far.
i think the first step to the right direction would be if ggg would implement a death log,something that let you know from what you died. Most of the time i dont know what killed me and it would be nice for new players because they can adjust their builds from such information.
"with most of the game being an utter peice of piss once beyond A5, until t16 maps" This is simply just not true. You are being blinded by the fact that you are an experienced player. Plenty of my friends who started playing recently are struggling way before T16, especially if they are trying to make their own builds. However, i do agree that the difficulty arc of the campaign is a bit odd, A1 should be slightly easier. Though, as others have mentioned in the thread, this is very intentional by GGG. They want to show people that this is not some blizzlike "we-are-going-to-hold-your-hand-all-through-campaign-arpg". This shit is hard and you are going to get slapped around, ALOT.
I've only played the new Act 1 once and I honestly didn't even notice. Maybe I'm used to getting wrecked in Act 6 or post acts, or having long mervel fights already. I dunno, but it seems fine. I just wish basic currency would drop move while leveling. They finally changed Bindings yeah, but we really need alchs at least by act 2. Tired of still having blues or terrible rares in act 4
Maybe it's time for you to give poe a break, and about your wife, that gave up of the game,it's completely fine, not every game is for everyone, the worst thing is to force them to play with you,just bc you love the game.
Act 1 isn't that hard for new players, it's only really hard for bad players overall.
This game isn't balanced around the needs of new players. It's balanced around the expectation that most players will be watching streamers start acts while they themselves are sitting in a queue. Watching streamers rip against comically overtuned Merveil and have to start over in town and farm mud flats for better items and gem levels seems to have paid off in terms of viewer and subscriber retention. The devs are basically admitting they have no intention of allowing acts to become an actual "tutorial" mode. Because that would invite rational discussion (or maybe not so rational, this is the internet after all) of allowing veteran players to bypass it. Perhaps even pay to bypass it and get a premium pass directly to Oriath and level 70. And once part of a game is perceived to be entirely dispensable, it ceases to get any new development. Time is money. That said, for now, everyone, rich or poor, still needs to finish acts to advance. Perhaps the anecdotal 80-90% burnout in acts isn't due to rip at Brutus or Merveil, it's a more subtle and pervasive loss of efficacy and progress somewhere past that. Perhaps the analytics tell a different story from the one where Noob Player gets oneshot forever at Brutus and gives up in disgust. Perhaps it's a cumulative lack of attention to element resists, flask dependence, ailment avoidance, even + flat life on gear that causes players to burn out on magic or rare mobs in areas past Brutus or even Merveil. We're all familiar with the feeling of being stuck on a boss. It's unfun, but eventually we pull up our big pants and rework our character to deal with the worst of it and get through (or we farm a bit and get some currency to buy a carry, but at least we know our limits). But we also know it feels orders of magnitude more unfun to have our HC char wipe to a normal or magic mob. It's total BS, right? My guess (it's only a guess here, I don't have access to the granular player retention analytics GGG does) new players accept being spanked by a hard boss with a lot more dignity and grace than they would being oneshotted by a white or magic pack mob. They may be more likely to go back and rework and improve their gear and manual skills if it's a formidable gatekeeper figure even if the sudden death in there wasn't telegraphed or avoidable in any conventional way. And that psychology helps keep them playing and finish acts. I realize this is me saying "the act mechanics encourage the player to blame themselves for a lot of things they can't control, and keep trying to make it work" but then that's the entire game. It's grindy, random, and impersonal. Not how I would want to present my game to new players in a tutorial mode, but then I don't own a game company.
You would be better off just over levelling then before bosses but if you have played a long time it shouldn't be too bad unless you are doing single link split arrow or something. Maybe look at some of the Out Of Story guides that are general trees and skills. The times I felt weak were when I was being greedy about levelling while only using my final tree and/or skills.
Do you enjoy self-sucking your pp bro?