Path of Exile 2.0 - Discussion

[rstrohkirch]

Can't say it's ever bothered me. I wasn't playing when they introduced it. When I started playing again I did a few of the trails and finally looked up what they were for. I will say that I tried to get a friend to play with me. We started in HC and he died in one of those. Remade his character and we went to around act 2 and he died in another one. He quit playing after that. I told him we didn't have to play HC but he was pissed already and said he was done.

If you have really hate them you could always pay someone a few chaos to run you through it. Even uber runs cost less than 10c if you let the person loot.

 

[Feneant2]

Paying might be an option, but I figure I just won't bother because they are really that frustrating to me (like for your friend).

I saw thread in their forum about how the lab killed the HC leagues and I don't blame them. Even at level 80 the beginner lab could kill me with all its ridiculous traps. Nah, I think I simply won't rejoin, just thinking about the lab angers me.

 

[rstrohkirch]

Check back in around July when they do the 3.0 revamp. There is a chance they'll offer an alternate way to gain ascendancy points.

 

[Majes]

PoE crashed 3 times during my merc lab run. That's pretty frustrating. Honestly though i really enjoy my runs through uber lab. The risk/reward ratio is pretty good and the challenge makes for interesting play. Farming the trials sucks. Running normal, cruel, and merc sucks. I wish they could just make it an end-game thing. They can lock 2-4 points behind it still, but give players a chance the ascend through some other method.

I don't think there's a perfect solution though sadly... They worked so hard on the content, but even players like me who enjoy lab runs hate the trials...

 

[Homerboy]

Hit level 81 this weekend. This is right about where all my characters have started to plateau and I just get PO'ed at the game. I think it's because any "upgrade" now is so nominal and not those big jumps you see earlier on.

I'm only playing T6 maps and still get hosed on occasion and it drives me nuts. I have to stop doing breeches though -- those are almost guaranteed death and I'm really not being cautious with the map-mods and league stones I'm using. I wish I could squeeze some more life points into my character, but my tree is pretty much tapped on those. Could craft some into my gear I guess, but I hate crafting when my masters are so low (most between level 5 and 6 right now)

Have ended up with 2 exalts thus far (non dropped). 1 was a purchase from the fat man for 1k coins and the other was a Kaom's Heart that dropped and I sold for 1.3E

I have 8 more days until MLB The Show is released so I hope to make some more progress in POE until then

 

[Feneant2]

I sure hope 3.0 changes it... it's just not a part of the PoE experience! I mean they have this phenomenal ARPG game, people love it, it works well, its popular, its free, and then they decide to add puzzles that just mess you up.

I picture it like this, I eat the Big Mac every day, I love my Big Mac, it's never changed! But then one day McDonald's decide that the Big Mac needs something new, so they add a giant slab of tofu to it. Sure, you can remove it but then you don't get the full experience. And when you do get the full experience, you wonder what you did to deserve this torture, which is added to something that was otherwise as near to perfect as can be. (that's an example, I don't think I've ever eaten a big mac in my life).

But I guess I'm in the minority, most people just accept the labs and do them...

 

[Homerboy]

I never liked the labs -- they seemed sort of out of place as you suggest.
That being said, is there some reason you HAVE to do them that I'm unaware of? I don't think I've ever done the Merc lab and I've never really gotten to "end game" level of content in POE to be honest.

 

[rstrohkirch]

You don't have to but it's a pretty big power boost for any class. If you didn't do high tier maps or end game encounters then they are unneeded.

 

[Majes]

I picture it like this, I eat the Big Mac every day, I love my Big Mac, it's never changed! But then one day McDonald's decide that the Big Mac needs something new, so they add a giant slab of tofu to it. Sure, you can remove it but then you don't get the full experience. And when you do get the full experience, you wonder what you did to deserve this torture, which is added to something that was otherwise as near to perfect as can be. (that's an example, I don't think I've ever eaten a big mac in my life).

Oh I don't think that's quite it. If playing PoE is like eating a regular Big Mac then when Lab released you can still use your time to eat that same Big Mac. There are now some new special toppings for that big mac but in order to get them you have to each chicken nuggets first. So if you liked the Big Mac before you can still have it, but there's now a better way to enjoy that Big Mac with your ascendancy points, and in order to get them you have to eat chicken nuggets (run the lab).

 

[CrowDog]

Oh I don't think that's quite it. If playing PoE is like eating a regular Big Mac then when Lab released you can still use your time to eat that same Big Mac. There are now some new special toppings for that big mac but in order to get them you have to each chicken nuggets first. So if you liked the Big Mac before you can still have it, but there's now a better way to enjoy that Big Mac with your ascendancy points, and in order to get them you have to eat chicken nuggets (run the lab).

Yea but at least chicken nuggets are good and are easy to eat real quick.....and don't completely ruin your Big Mac. I CAN"T STAND the lab and I think it is the worst thing to ever happen to one of my favorite games of all time. I still play but absolutely dread the lab and could NEVER fathom farming the damn thing...lol. I also only play HC temp leagues and have ripped just about every toon in the damn lab. In 3.0 if they don't change it my only option will be to play in SC.

 

[Thump553]

I'm pleased to see that I'm not the only one who thinks the labs are a huge negative. I gave up on hardcore when I died in a cruel trial. I went through three league seasons without ever making it through uber lab. Finally the last season I hired someone to cheese me through the merciless and uber-definitely the best way to go.

I'm hoping they have some alternative in POE 3.0.

 

[Majes]

Yea but at least chicken nuggets are good and are easy to eat real quick.....and don't completely ruin your Big Mac. I CAN"T STAND the lab and I think it is the worst thing to ever happen to one of my favorite games of all time. I still play but absolutely dread the lab and could NEVER fathom farming the damn thing...lol. I also only play HC temp leagues and have ripped just about every toon in the damn lab. In 3.0 if they don't change it my only option will be to play in SC.

I think if I played HC (and I have up to 80+ once or twice for race weeks) I'd start each league with a HP life regen based character. I'd skip all the labs until I was comfortable with my character's defenses. Then I'd do normal and cruel and just take my time. There shouldn't be anything remotely threatening if I can take my time with the traps. I'd do merc lab once I start pushing yellow maps, and I'd be ready for Uber lab if I managed to find all the trials...

I understand that bad experiences cause people to hate the lab. But I genuinely find it to be a nice change from the regular game.

 

[Homerboy]

had another Exalt drop this morning (that makes 2 this league)
Also had Ancient Reliquary Key drop... dunno WTH that is.

Getting shaped maps to drop too. I forget who helped me get those orbs or whatever the other night - but thank you for that

I have a million talismans, but never see any alters to drop them in.

Mantle is 5L now so that's adding some nice heavy damage.

 

[CrowDog]

I think if I played HC (and I have up to 80+ once or twice for race weeks) I'd start each league with a HP life regen based character. I'd skip all the labs until I was comfortable with my character's defenses. Then I'd do normal and cruel and just take my time. There shouldn't be anything remotely threatening if I can take my time with the traps. I'd do merc lab once I start pushing yellow maps, and I'd be ready for Uber lab if I managed to find all the trials...

I understand that bad experiences cause people to hate the lab. But I genuinely find it to be a nice change from the regular game.

That sounds easy enough....too bad it only takes a fraction of a second for that to go out the window. Normal lab is easy enough...usually do it around 40ish. But for some reason in cruel/merc I get hit by a trap and ...bam...dead. I do play casters mostly but still....and it's not EVERY time....but still....to have a mechanic that can throw a wrench in a HC players fun like that is lame imo. Not everyone likes the lab/trap playstyle. I really hope they release ascendancy points from lab and provide an alternative way of ascending. Leaving the lab in the game is fine....but don't make it a requirement.

 

[Chiropteran]

Ugh, the labyrinth. So many stupid aspects to it.

One issue I have trap damage scales with life, so doing it under or over level shouldn't matter. Fine idea, except the Izaro fight blows that out the window. You have to massively over-level the area to make the fight reasonably easy. Why even have traps scale with life? Just make them do absurd insane damage so you have to over-level it, because you are going to have to over-level it anyway to kill Izaro without risk.

For another it seems to drastically favor builds with huge life regen. Most of the traps do damage over time, with a low life total but lots of % life regen most of the traps are trivialized. Movement skills are critical, leap slam or properly linked lightning warp also trivializes much of the traps and seems to allow skipping whole sections sometimes.

Going back to traps that scale with your level, what is the point of having 3 different difficulty levels? Same trap scaling in each, it's just like running the same stupid treadmill over and over. Taken to the logical conclusion, they could make every mob scale with your power, and then zones would always be balanced. That is completely contrary to the point of an RPG, people are supposed to enjoy progression and the feeling of getting stronger. That doesn't work when the trap damage goes up at the exact same rate as your hp, it actually turns it into reverse progression because with a larger life pool you need more flask healing per trap.The auto-scaling traps are just so dumb.

I just have such a love/hate thing going on with PoE. So many aspects I hate, yet no other game out there is willing to offer the level of customization without easy respecs that makes Path of Exile builds so diverse any interesting.

 

[Majes]

One issue I have trap damage scales with life, so doing it under or over level shouldn't matter. Fine idea, except the Izaro fight blows that out the window. You have to massively over-level the area to make the fight reasonably easy. Why even have traps scale with life? Just make them do absurd insane damage so you have to over-level it, because you are going to have to over-level it anyway to kill Izaro without risk.

I agree with the rest of your post, just not the above portion. If you understand the Izaro fight it can be done easily enough on level (or a few levels above). I usually overlevel normal and cruel, but hit merciless at close to level. Just make sure you kill the adds/charges during the first two fights. I actually have more difficulty with the Malachai fights.

 

[Chiropteran]

I agree with the rest of your post, just not the above portion. If you understand the Izaro fight it can be done easily enough on level (or a few levels above). I usually overlevel normal and cruel, but hit merciless at close to level. Just make sure you kill the adds/charges during the first two fights. I actually have more difficulty with the Malachai fights.

If a second of lag can kill you, I wouldn't call it risk free. Perhaps it's a spec issue, maybe some specs can kill him risk-free on level, but I don't think that is true of all specs.

 

[Majes]

If a second of lag can kill you, I wouldn't call it risk free. Perhaps it's a spec issue, maybe some specs can kill him risk-free on level, but I don't think that is true of all specs.

A second of lag can kill you anywhere in the game though...

 

[Chiropteran]

A second of lag can kill you anywhere in the game though...

I wouldn't say anywhere. I'd say 90% of most maps is an utter joke, it's just the remaining 10% which would include warbands or tough essences or breeches or perandus caches that can kill you fast. It's kind of absurd really. I'd love to see some numbers poublished, because the impression I get is that certain special mobs have effectively THOUSANDS more hp and damage capability than the regular white crap you kill through the level, the difficulty surge is really rather absurd when you go from killing 30 white mobs at once over the course of a couple seconds without taking more than 100 damage and then you face one single monster that does thousands of damage to you every second while taking minutes to kill.

It's kind of crazy how messed up the difficulty curve is now. I have to over-level so much to handle essences and warbands and crap that all the regular bosses that used to be at least somewhat challenging are a total joke, and regular blue or white mobs are just an annoying chore with no risk whatsoever.

I remember back in the beta when blue rhoas were scary, because you didn't have to over-level so far to do the "extra content" of whatever league it was. Vaal oversoul was a big scary boss.

The problem with the design philosophy is that players need to gear and level for the hardest content they face, so every time they try to add something new to make it even harder it really just results in players grinding out a few more levels before doing that zone and everything else in the game gets trivialized even more.

 

[Majes]

I wouldn't say anywhere. I'd say 90% of most maps is an utter joke, it's just the remaining 10% which would include warbands or tough essences or breeches or perandus caches that can kill you fast. It's kind of absurd really. I'd love to see some numbers poublished, because the impression I get is that certain special mobs have effectively THOUSANDS more hp and damage capability than the regular white crap you kill through the level, the difficulty surge is really rather absurd when you go from killing 30 white mobs at once over the course of a couple seconds without taking more than 100 damage and then you face one single monster that does thousands of damage to you every second while taking minutes to kill.

It's kind of crazy how messed up the difficulty curve is now. I have to over-level so much to handle essences and warbands and crap that all the regular bosses that used to be at least somewhat challenging are a total joke, and regular blue or white mobs are just an annoying chore with no risk whatsoever.

I remember back in the beta when blue rhoas were scary, because you didn't have to over-level so far to do the "extra content" of whatever league it was. Vaal oversoul was a big scary boss.

The problem with the design philosophy is that players need to gear and level for the hardest content they face, so every time they try to add something new to make it even harder it really just results in players grinding out a few more levels before doing that zone and everything else in the game gets trivialized even more.

Before I delve into my reply I do agree with you that sometimes essences and warbands can be way more tanky or rip worthy than they should be. I agree 100% with that assessment. But the reason you aren't scared of Vaal Oversoul anymore is because you got better at the game. His slam will still one-shot you and his laser will still kill you. Rhoas still kill people too, but most builds mitigate that better now or players just dodge them. I used to die multiple times to Dominus. Now I can run double boss map Dominus with a melee character at close to 100% confidence. I can't tank a slam or the spiders but I can reliably dodge them through being a better player now.

The challenge of hardcore is learning where the damage spikes are. But the game will get you at some point... You see the best players die quite often to stuff they didn't see coming.

It feels like you're asking for more mechanically difficult fights rather than just "raise the HP and damage" mobs. I like this request but please don't forget that once you learn the mechanics often fights become trivial.

 

[Chiropteran]

You know, it's one of those things where what you think you want and what you actually enjoy might be different, so I can't 100% say "make this game this way and it would be perfect". But I do think I have a good handle on what I don't like.

Combat is too hectic and RNG dominated. I don't mean that the actual damage you take is dominated by RNG, but rather the combination of monsters you face is like a giant RNG slot machine and certain combinations just do absurd damage while other combinations are completely trivial.

Breeches, for example, some I'd have no problem at all and I'd be struggling to find more breech mobs to kill because they die so easily so fast. Others are the opposite, taking multiple hits just to down one mob and they spawn out of control filling the entire screen rather instantly. In a more strategic game, I'd look at the mods of the mobs and figure out why I'm having trouble with one breech and not the other kind, but again going to my "hectic combat" complaint you don't even have a fraction of a second to do that before you will die.

Honestly, I think the biggest problem is alt-f4 (or using menu to quit) & town portals refilling all flasks life and mana. The game literally gives you a full heal + all resource heal for essentially zero cost, usable in an instant. It also gives you an instantaneous get out of jail free button. So the developers have to balance around these things- nothing that kills you slow will EVER be a challenge when you can just use a TP to full heal. Maps put a limit on portals, but a lot of game time is spent before you even reach maps. Make it so you can't use scrolls in combat, and alt-f4 just disconnects your client while leaving your character in game for 10 seconds. Balance around THAT. Then the game combat could be made a little bit slower and more strategic, and not rely on RNG burst.

 

[Majes]

You know, it's one of those things where what you think you want and what you actually enjoy might be different, so I can't 100% say "make this game this way and it would be perfect". But I do think I have a good handle on what I don't like.

Combat is too hectic and RNG dominated. I don't mean that the actual damage you take is dominated by RNG, but rather the combination of monsters you face is like a giant RNG slot machine and certain combinations just do absurd damage while other combinations are completely trivial.

Breeches, for example, some I'd have no problem at all and I'd be struggling to find more breech mobs to kill because they die so easily so fast. Others are the opposite, taking multiple hits just to down one mob and they spawn out of control filling the entire screen rather instantly. In a more strategic game, I'd look at the mods of the mobs and figure out why I'm having trouble with one breech and not the other kind, but again going to my "hectic combat" complaint you don't even have a fraction of a second to do that before you will die.

Honestly, I think the biggest problem is alt-f4 (or using menu to quit) & town portals refilling all flasks life and mana. The game literally gives you a full heal + all resource heal for essentially zero cost, usable in an instant. It also gives you an instantaneous get out of jail free button. So the developers have to balance around these things- nothing that kills you slow will EVER be a challenge when you can just use a TP to full heal. Maps put a limit on portals, but a lot of game time is spent before you even reach maps. Make it so you can't use scrolls in combat, and alt-f4 just disconnects your client while leaving your character in game for 10 seconds. Balance around THAT. Then the game combat could be made a little bit slower and more strategic, and not rely on RNG burst.

The changes you mention are to fundamental aspects of PoE. It would be an entirely different game with those changes. I'm not saying that it would be bad, but it would basically be an entirely new game. I'd also like to point out that all of the things you mention as dangerous are actually player controlled. Essences, breaches, boxes, and even map mods and bosses are all controllable by the player. The biggest cause of death for my characters are either the flame/frost bearer groups or the volatile mobs. It's because I don't have control over where or when these spawn and I just get rolling too fast at times.

Part of the charm of PoE is the speed at which it is played. It used to be a much, much slower game, but it still pushed the player to go faster and faster. Keep in mind you can still slow down. You can approach things strategically.

 

[Homerboy]

As I explained last night -- the #1 killer for me is stupidity and "going to fast"

I often won't look at a map mods (hey, I did the last 10 maps painlessly... what could be so bad in this one?!) or don't look at the combo of league stones I have, or literally run into a Panderus mob, or touch that strongbox while I'm still fighting 3 Exiles or whatever. If you go slow in this game, you should really rarely die (assuming your build is sound of course). I just literally can not slow myself down.

 

[Chiropteran]

Keep in mind you can still slow down. You can approach things strategically.

Ah, but see my main complaint is that least 80% of the stuff is too easy. I guess that might be intended: make it so most of the game encourages you to speed up by making it mindbogglingly boring and trivial, while the other 20% or so it's absurdly out of whack with the rest, difficulty wise. It's just unfun to tip-toe through all the easy stuff, even if it's the "correct" way to play to avoid ever dying on the hard stuff.

It would be a different game without the alt-f4 cheat* being available, yes, but I think it would be a superior game. D3 doesn't allow such cheating, and it still has a hardcore community of some kind.

You might ask why don't I just play D3, since it has those features, and I do play it occasionally, but I do really prefer many of PoE's features- the incredible build customization, the map system, the variety of gear and unique items and lack of essentially mandatory class sets.

*I know it's 100% allowed and not considered a cheat by the developers, it's still a cheat in my mind because it's an out of game mechanic that existed back in the days of D2 due to necessity of weak networking of the time.

 

[Majes]

80% easy 20% difficulty spike sounds generous to me. I'd put it at 98% to 2%. I think if they could achieve an 80-20 ratio it would be absolutely fantastic. That means that 2 out of 10 encounters would be genuinely interesting. At the moment it seems like 2 out of 10 maps might have one interesting encounter.

This brings me to my biggest complaint about the game. I've clearly overleveled yellow and low level red maps. I cruise through them with ease. Why am I banned from running the more difficult maps? I ran 500+ red maps last league and reached T15 ONCE... This league I've probably run 50 red maps so far and I have one T13. If I could actually progress through those maps I wouldn't quit a month into each league out of boredom.