I’m still playing a map here and there, but I’m not spending a lot of time and certainly won’t go anywhere near the grinds you’re talking about.
sharaleo
5508
Got distracted by Lost Ark.
Bateau
5509
I can totally relate, but fwiw, it’s quite manageable this league. I got to 22 just by playing the game normally (24 is for the weapon effect), and a lot of them I was able to buy my way through quickly for not too much cost. Then again, I found ~25 raw exalts this league plus who knows how much (probably over 100ex worth) of other loot so I may have lost perspective on the matter.
Couple of my friends are playing SSF and they doing just as well as me, which is nuts. I’m talking level 98 raiders with the type of gear that would put most trade characters to shame. It’s absolutely unreal what kind of understanding of the game some people have - and also how deterministic it seems to have gotten over the years with the abundance of crafting options like betrayal, harvest, fossils, etc.
Romalar
5510
Damn, with all the scarabs dropping left and right from the new Atlas tree (e.g. operative strongboxes) and from Archnemesis, I’m really juicing up each map full of exactly the kind of extras I want to play with now. Don’t think I’ve ever had close to this many scarabs.
Bateau
5511
Yup it’s fantastic. And the strongbox passives are really strong, I’ll be very surprised if they don’t get nerfed next league, along with some others. It’s insane how often the perks proc when you look at the chance values, I feel like I’m finding an operative strongbox in every map, and every second box I open duplicates the currency. There’s no way that GGG won’t dilute this stuff if past balance passes are any indication.
Romalar
5512
Operatives does seem like it’s more common than the 6% the Atlas tree claims. Yeah, it’ll get nerfed.
Bateau
5513
Me last two days lol.
So close now that I can almost taste it, and yet it feels so far off. The idea of buying these last few maps and running them makes me want to uninstall.
Bateau
5514
See you next league, exiles!
Congrats! I think you’re a crazy man for doing all those grinds, but hey, we’re all crazy somehow :)
Bateau
5516
No doubt :)
But I’m happy the PoE bug caught me again, I skipped so many leagues in the last few years that I lost count.
I’ve never really understood why controller support is such a big deal to people.i use KB/mouse by preference anyway. But hey, if it helps people enjoy the game and doesn’t take away from other control options, why not?
I’m still doing a map or two here and there with the zombies, just for the heck of it. It sure feels like they upped the drop rates pretty much across the board. Everything from currency to maps to the various fragments are in plentiful supply. Makes my casual “play a couple hours here and there” style a lot more fun, so I’m pretty happy with it. I’m not going to max out achievements like @Bateau did, but other than that, pretty much everything in the league feels accessible with spending a ton of time grinding.
Yeah, I don’t understand why you would want to play a game like this on a PC with a controller and I’m a guy who prefers to use controllers when possible.There is no controller system that is going to make dealing with your inventory not a pain with a controller.
RSI issues in my right wrist make controller support a literal relief in ARPGs in particular.
Grim Dawn still does it best. Some skills/builds don’t work great as they want better targeting precision than “the first thing in a 15-degree arc thataway” but many are fine. And you can seamlessly switch to m+kb for interface wrangling – I just map Y on the keyboard to town portal and hit it on my way to setting the gamepad down on my desk. It’s lovely.
The moment to moment gameplay feels a lot more engaging with the controller. You “push” your character with the control stick instead of “pulling” your character with the mouse-click to a certain location on the screen. It makes a big difference in feel. Much bigger than I thought it would.
Also, for inventory, you’re partially right. Path of Exile on Xbox is almost completely unplayable for me because of dealing with the tetris inventory system with a controller there is a mess.
Grim Dawn does a better job of it, it’s still a tetris inventory system but they have better shortcuts on dealing with inventory (though I just switch to the mouse for inventory).
But Diablo 3 on console is the gold standard on how to deal with inventory. You should check it out sometime if you ever get the chance. Instead of a tetris inventory, they break everything into categories and have lists instead. So all your chest armors in one list, rings in one list, etc. Basically each place where you can equip something on your body in the ARPG gets its own separate inventory list, and it works so well.
EDIT: But yeah, the Diablo 3 method would not work in Path of Exile, because the whole point in Path of Exile is to sell you more tetris inventory tabs. That’s how they got so much money from me over the years. That wouldn’t work at all if each equippable slot already had it’s own inventory list like in Diablo 3.
KevinC
5522
This.
And this.
ARPGs almost beg to be played with a controller. It also opens up the possibility of better gameplay if designed for it up front. For instance, the ability to backpedal or strafe while shooting at a target (twinstick shooters).
Click-to-move also has to rely heavily on pathfinding, which can get glitchy. I can’t count the number of times I have run backwards through a trap in the labyrinth because another trap popped up blocking my way and causing the game to recalculate the path. Things like that are super annoying to me and made better by playing on a controller (well, it has in other games, I assume the result will be the same here). This is coming from someone who is primarily a M&K player in games.
So, it turns out that Path of Exile is still releasing stuff. I’d not been paying attention for the last several months, but now that I have enforced sedentary time, checking out the newest league is something to do. Apparently this Friday we get to visit the Lake of Kalandra, which seems like yet another attempt to get the “build your own area” concept to work. The Incursion version has worked well, the Synthesis version not so much, now we get a mirror-themed version.
And it seems they’re adding a bunch of new minion modifiers on items, which seems right up my alley.
I haven’t played PoE in a few leagues and have been poking around for a build to try. Maybe it’s just me but it feels like the game has gotten much more complex in the months since I played. I look at a few of the guides and they’re referencing all sorts of crafting I’m not familiar with. It’s a bit daunting… or maybe off-putting. I might just fall back to a minion build since I’m not likely to hit much of the endgame if my historical playtime is any guide.
As far as changes to minions, it looks like they made minions weaker but added a bunch of ways to buff them with gear. So in theory it could balance out, but I guess you now need to focus on getting minion gear earlier than before. Also SRS was buffed a bit (though the mana cost was increased at high gem levels).
Still, I will give the league a shot and see how it feels.
KevinC
5525
Crafting is a niche domain of a subset of the hardcore, IMO. I’m crafting obsessed in games but steer clear of it in PoE: it’s too convoluted and overcomplicated and there is way too much RNG for my tastes.
The good thing is it doesn’t matter. Just farm some chaos orbs and buy it from a crafter.
To be honest that’s what I usually do!
