Bateau
5487
If anyone’s not using this yet, you should. It’s been a while since I took challenge leagues seriously enough to need something like this, but I have to say it’s amazing. Made about 200 chaos in 5 mins after I installed it. Even if you severely underprice your stock it’s still worth it, any currency is better than stuff laying in your inventory to no one’s benefit.
Bateau
5488
Quite happy with my char so far. Hit 96 yesterday, not sure if I have the patience to push for 97, only thing that’s ahead is another 4% life node anyway. Damage is ok, ~2m ignite vs endgame bosses (PoB link for anyone curious: Untitled - Pastebin.com ), which is just enough to interact with the mechanics and not faceroll anything, but at the same time also doesn’t force you to spend too much time on the fights which opens you up to making mistakes. I can’t overstate enough how good it feels to have a somewhat tanky character, it really makes mapping and bossing a lot more enjoyable. And the best part is that I still have some room for improvement in my gear to push the dps even higher.
On that note, I’ve skipped the last few leagues (pretty much since Sirius came on the scene) so I can’t really comment on the changes, but I have to say that this latest iteration of atlas feels pretty great, especially with passive skills on it - it really allows one to tailor their atlas experience to their liking, make some things easier, some things harder (but more rewarding). Map sustain is no longer an issue, I haven’t stepped out of T16s since I unlocked them (probably also why I even bothered to level this high), and every map has so many interactable league mechanics on it that you never really know what you’ll get - plus you always have the option of forcing some mechanics through scarabs or masters, which is fantastic.
All in all, fantastic evolution of the game, but the league specific UI continues to be pure garbage - GGG said they’ll release an update this week and I look forward to it, because right now I’m just slotting in random stuff because it’s too annoying to constantly tab out and check the recipes, especially when you have to do it 4 times per map.
Ultrazen
5489
I seriously doubt they are ever going to actually balance solo self found in the way they would need to, to make it truly viable. It’s a shame, because it’s the way I like to play the game, but it just becomes untenable at some point.
Have you had a look at Last Epoch? It’s like a collision of D2 and POE, but the loot philosophy is about killing monsters, not shopping. It’s not finished, but it’s very far along and already an excellent ARPG.
KevinC
5491
Last Epoch is pretty good, I enjoy the gameplay a lot more than Path of Exile. PoE of course has a huge advantage of 10+ years of development and the build customization is top notch. At the end of the day, though, POE became a game about farming currency in the fastest manner possible and I feel like they’ve painted themselves into a corner. They can’t un-fuck the terrible bosses and stupid random one-shots without slowing the game down, but they can’t slow the game down without the hardcore screaming bloody murder. I mean, mechanically there’s only so much you can do when the game plays at the pace it does at the end.
I still love POE for what it is, but I’m really looking forward to Last Epoch getting multiplayer this year. It’s been a nice contrast to play a game where I’m actually thinking about what ability to use when and putting some finesse into dodging telegraphs instead of “Delete screen before something random deletes me” that is the POE gameplay these days.
Do you have to have a build in mind from the start in Last Epoch like you do in POE? I love POE but I HATE the feeling that I have to play the game with a specific build in mind from the start. I love their skill tree but HATE that you are essentially locked in and can’t go back and reset it if you get specific loot that you want to build around.
Respecs are fairly easy. Passives cost a bit of gold, and skills simply have to be re-leveled (at an accelerated pace). The only think you cannot change are your class and master class selections. If you like to tinker with builds and experiment, LE is designed for that approach.
Bateau
5494
Only if SSF was locked so you couldn’t transfer back to temp leagues I guess. I don’t think it would be too much of a problem to apply ‘lucky’ modifiers on rolls league wide, the tech is already in the game and used for some old league mechanics such as heists and harvests.
In the mean time I managed to get my char to 97 (highest ever!), PoB now reports ~3m ignites vs Sirius. I hit the wall hard on the Feared invitation though, so I’m now trying to gear up for the second run, but the Cortex runs are expensive (~2 ex a run). Everything else the character handles with ease, uber elder, uber atziri, all guardians or conquerors in the crucible, etc - all deathless. Still, I’m growing a little tired of the totem gameplay so I might switch to a real archer build. If I sold all my gear right now I’d probably be looking at ~60-70 exalts, considering how much prices went up for some things.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the game, or did, and am very thankful for the many many hours I’ve gotten out of it for next to nothing. At the end of the day it comes down to another game that is really close to being great for me. I like the character development, I like the moment to moment gameplay (other than the super spikey nature of it), I like the loot.
POE seems like everyone associated with it has been so inside of it, for so long, they can’t see how obtuse it is to someone who is anything but deeply down the rabbit hole.
As far as SSF goes, the main problem is, when you’re trying to use currency to actually craft stuff, vs using that currency to trade for something, the requirements are probably x20 given how much RNG there is in everything. When you have thousands of people getting drops or trying to craft stuff, you can end up getting more or less what you want/need for a build, but if you’re trying to play solo, ending up with anything even remotely suitable for a build is pretty much impossible. They could fix SSF by drastically increasing mat drops, I’d be fine if those characters could only stay in SSF, as I always delete them anyhow, I don’t even have a character that isn’t part of the current patch.
KevinC
5496
100% this. POE and Warframe both released somewhat around the same time with a similar development model (GaaS with constant updates) and after all these years, I have very similar complaints about both. I think they’re both great, I’ve played the hell out of both of them. But they’ve been down that rabbit hole so long along with the truly hardcore I feel they get tunnel vision or a distorted view from being so close and being in an echo chamber for so long.
I took a break for 3 years or so from POE (after playing since the pre-Steam betas) and just came back in December. I have a friend who has played every single league since launch. I was having a hard time conveying to him some of what you were saying, that a lot of stuff might be clear or work for people who play this as their main/sole game but the experience leaves something to be desired for people outside that core. I’m with you in that my preference would be to find/craft my own stuff, not trade for it. But everything outside of trade has devolved, in my opinion. Obviously you can still play SSF, but I share the issues you mention.
You guys are both spot-on.
League mechanic accumulation is the thing that I would add to the discussion. I was annoyed and overwhelmed with how many league mechanics I was expected to understand like two years ago, and it’s not like they’ve slowed down.
It’s utterly absurd to me that they don’t rotate old league stuff in/out by season, or offer different concurrent leagues with various things turned on/off. I’d be totally into that, but no, my only option is to be shotgunned in the face with whatever the current (invariably buggy and poorly UX-ed) thing us plus ten years of previous (invariably buggy and poorly UX-ed, but maybe patched once before being forgotten!) nonsense.
And yeah, I’ve enjoyed the hell out of my time with POE and don’t regret the probably $100-150 I’ve spent on it over the years, but staring up the mountain of league layers and RNG burrito when contemplating rolling a new toon keeps leading me to decide in the same direction.
One of my big issues is I don’t like to have to communicate with random people to trade stuff. Give me an Auction house where I can put my items up for sale or trade and it would make a huge different. As others have mentioned SSF needs tweaks to be viable and I’m not going to jump through hoops to trade for what I want.
KevinC
5499
I know they don’t want trade to be too easy like an AH, but I really wish there were a middle ground somewhere. When the league was starting, I was in triple digits in regards to the number of people I messaged to get a Dead Reckoning jewel over the course of a few days. I’d send out 20 or so messages, get no response, and then decide I really want to spend my time playing the game and not pasting text macros in from a website. Then repeat the process over and over throughout the launch weekend. I finally got someone to respond on Monday.
I get they want it to be cumbersome but that’s just another example of the navel gazing they’ve been doing for years. The seven layer dip of RNG (@inactive_user I see we’re doing our part to carry on the all threads are food threads tradition of Qt3) is enough to make sure you can never find anything you need for your build, but then you have to go through the tedium of trading with strangers. Strangers that might not want to interrupt their map/heist/whatever to trade with you. Strangers that may be trying to scam you. For my “I have played almost no other game in the last 10 years” hardcore friend it’s fine, for the rest of my group it just detracts from the game.
Again, I like the game. I have a real soft spot for it and I love that no one does what they do. But Last Epoch really did feel like a much needed breath of fresh air (even though it’s rough around the edges) when I tried the last early access release, it felt like I was playing an ARPG that was trying to be a fun ARPG instead of an economy grinder. At the very least, I hope they have some success because I think GGG could use some competition and maybe a fresh perspective.
The problem with Last Epoch is it costs $35. In today’s game environment of cheap gamepass and free epic games, I have a hard time paying for games anymore. Especially EA games by unknown developers.
Hopefully when POE2 comes out they will address some of this stuff.
KevinC
5501
Yep, totally fair. And the other problem is it lacks a decade of content development. I mean, that decade of content is part of POE’s problem as we’ve all just discussed but I could see it being a really hard sell for a POE fan. I’m hoping there’s room for both, because I’d like to play both.
I’ve played POE for years and have loved it. For a long time it was like a “comfort food” for me - because I was so familiar with it, it didn’t take a lot of thought or effort to play, and I could chug along while watching tv or whatever. I think I’m finally tired of doing that, and so I haven’t played a lot recently, but when thinking about the game, I feel like feature bloat is an issue they really need to address - you must encounter 10 to 15 different league mechanics as you level through the 10 acts. It’s too much! I like the idea that older league mechanics could rotate out (heck, they could have a big list of league mechanics and pick 5 “legacy” mechanics and 1 new mechanic for a league).
As it stands now you’re hit by feature after feature after feature. As a long time player I simply ignore a bunch of mechanics I don’t like. I bet they could identify a bunch of mechanics people don’t care for. They oughta blitz those.
I’m curious if this issue will be addressed in PoE2, when it launches…uh… in a year or two? It’s getting close, isn’t it?
Did you ever see that Simpsons episode where homer builds a website? lol…POE really reminds me of that, every possible do-dad on screen at once.
At one point, I was inside of the game enough that is was like this for me as well. If you take some time off, and get behind the loop, it becomes a real slog to try and play catch up again.
I wish they would take more time in between updates, but make those updates really a singular play experience. They could have a batshit crazy mode where every mechanic ever made was turned on, but it would be nice to have a league focused on one new mechanic, and some base core of the game that is less loaded up.
Ah well, I certainly got my fun out of this game, but the last time I went back to it my eyes just sort of crossed when faced with 6+ league mechanics I had no clue about lol. Oh yah, and getting one shot…
Bateau
5504
Wohoo, hype! Killed Maven on first ever attempt, 3 deaths (one to platform orientation, that was really stupid of me, lol, two to memory game).
Nice bonus prize:
My char at the time of the kill: Untitled - Pastebin.com
Not sure what I’ll do now, I’m still having fun so maybe I’ll try to knock out a few challenges since I’m only at 22 and Elden Ring is still a week away.
Stay sane Exiles!
Bateau
5505
Phew, The Feared was intense! I did it white because there was too much currency riding on the line and the fights are hard enough, but in the end I did it without dying, so I guess I could’ve rolled it for some extra quant. Oh well, that’s challenge number 35, hoping to hit 36 today and then just casually work on the endgame grind and BOTH archnemesis ones that I’m still missing. Which really is a testament to how shit the ingame UI is.
Bateau
5506
Did everyone stop playing already?
Almost there - the longest grind I have left is running about 100 guardian/elderslayer maps combined (70 of which are for slayers). I don’t know if I have it in me to finish it this week before Elder Ring, but the league is still long so I will certainly try for 40/40. Been a long time since I enjoyed PoE this much.
Also, the MTX rewards this time are so very lazy lol. 3 effects are the same, just different themed (fire, cold, lightning), and at 38 you get a prismatic which combines all 3 elements.
