Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

[Interesting]

Got my life regen summoner bow duelist to level 33 and died on Hardcore at last boss from normal difficulty. Top player was level 49 at the time. Now I woke up and there are people at level 59. This is just like Diablo 2 pre-lod, except you are ten years older and should be ashamed of yourself for playing it if you did played D2 :D But after the disappointment of Diablo 3 (I didnt even buyed or played it, I knew it would fail from the first gameplay video), as a gamer you got to play Path of Exile just for nostalgies sake. The difference between Diablo 3 and Path of Exile design decisions is like night and day.

Note to self: do not play in a party when doing bosses, the boss shoots at others and hits you when you are not expecting it.

What I did? Deleted the character and started a new one, same name, back from level 1. Thats the Hardcore community does. You still keep the stash items, only the stuff that was on your item and your character gets moved to Softcore.

Regarding the chat.
Play Hardcore. The steryotype of people that you want to avoid might start on Hardcore, but they end up dieing pretty soon and getting thrown on Softcore, sticking to it.

Hardcore mode in this game is really well done. If you desync or lags for 3 seconds the game disconnects your character to protect you from unfair deaths. As long as you dont get an insane burst of damage within 3 seconds of your lag, you should be fine. Usually only bosses and some rares can do that if you get the right passives and items to improve your survivability.

Economy is pretty tight. Party play is very good, you go to Noticeboard and there is always a few parties doing the areas you need to do.

 

[Steve]

Gave it a go today with two friends, not very impressed. The game has kind of a clumsy and slow feel to it. Maybe it gets better later on but at the moment it's just spamming the same boring spell on the same boring enemies in the same boring areas.

 

[Bony]

retard ^

 

[Eyeball]

Making a correct observation. If I had to summarise PoE in 3 words, "slow and clumsy" would be fairly accurate.

 

[Bony]

another retard

 

[Steve]

retard ^

deal with it, fanboy

 

[Eyeball]

Making correct observations.

The main problem with the game is that there really is very, very little customisation possible until the later levels when you get enough socketed gear and gems to actually make the skill system non-boring. Compared to Diablo 2, which had multiple playstyles depending on skill trees used available from as early as level 2, this is a quite significant setback and only adds to the feel of PoE just being.....slow.

 

[godsend1989]

I used to have the same feeling that is a slow boring game, when you reach act 2 and get some more levels there the real shit starts, i saw some really machinegun attack speed at some of them, scary shit.

 

[LeStryfe79]

PoE is a bit of a slow burn, but it's an incline since it helps weed out the dumb shits that prefer a more craptacular popamole progression. I can't think of too many high quality RPG's that reveal their inner secrets within the first couple of hours. PoE literally gets better the more you play it. This has held true for me for 200+ hours. By this I mean the first couple of hours mean nothing in the long run. I don't know about that D2 reference either. I played 7 barbarians to Hell difficulty and I guarantee they were more linear for the first 2 hours than any melee class in PoE. I call bullshit on this bullshit.

 

[Surf Solar]

I don't know how you feel the game is slow, I am practically steamrolling through hordes of mobs with arrows//multishots that all die in one hit. I think those "auras" that you can give yourself and your allies are a bit overpowered since they stack. Game is really easy this way but its fun

 

[CappenVarra]

Finally gave this a try for a few hours: so far, so good. I'm only interested in D2-like single player mindless OCD relaxation, and it does the job... And it even lets me play a preachy oldfag fighter/mage right from the start? Nice.

 

[Nim]

Act 3 is terrible Awful, awful map design. Suicided my mara in the battlefront, I couldnt take it anymore. FFs and i was actually having so much fun playing with my buddies till then.

 

[Castanova]

Act 3 is terrible Awful, awful map design. Suicided my mara in the battlefront, I couldnt take it anymore. FFs and i was actually having so much fun playing with my buddies till then.

What specifically is so bad about the map design in act 3 compared to earlier zones?

 

[Nim]

Act 3 is terrible Awful, awful map design. Suicided my mara in the battlefront, I couldnt take it anymore. FFs and i was actually having so much fun playing with my buddies till then.

What specifically is so bad about the map design in act 3 compared to earlier zones?

I was going to say the corridorness, but then lots of maps before are that too. I think it's the blandness ? F.ex. look at the slums map. It is a big ass map except at least 50% of it is non-accessible shitty looking scenery inbetween the 3 corridors that lead through the map. Now add a not so great monster selection and it is just a boring slog. After that you have a warehouse map, a marketplace and 3 sewers that aren't much better imo. I actually "played" a bit farther in default, by just running through the map. Solaris temple wasn't too bad but directly after that the docks were again just awful. And then I was told go into the sewers, so I quit and uninstalled.

Difficult for me to express this properly. Shouldn't take you too long to get to act3 and see for yourself.

Maps I like: Old Fields, Crossroads, Broken Bridge, Church, River Crossings, Pools & Streams. Can't think of any act1 map I really like.
Maps I hate: Waterfall caves, Ancient Pyramid, The Coves.

Most other maps fall into the meh category.

Just to give you a general idea. I think I'm also disappointed that after they managed a noticeable improvement from act1 to act2 they regressed here.

 

[Minttunator]

PoE is a bit of a slow burn, but it's an incline since it helps weed out the dumb shits that prefer a more craptacular popamole progression. I can't think of too many high quality RPG's that reveal their inner secrets within the first couple of hours. PoE literally gets better the more you play it. This has held true for me for 200+ hours. By this I mean the first couple of hours mean nothing in the long run. I don't know about that D2 reference either. I played 7 barbarians to Hell difficulty and I guarantee they were more linear for the first 2 hours than any melee class in PoE. I call bullshit on this bullshit.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

Act 3 is terrible Awful, awful map design. Suicided my mara in the battlefront, I couldnt take it anymore. FFs and i was actually having so much fun playing with my buddies till then.

One of the best map designs

Spoiler

 

[DarkUnderlord]

To be completly honest, I'm baffled by all the troubles DU has with the launcher and downloading the game. I never had any problems, just start the launcher and wait for it to do all his weird checking resources, allocating space, calling cthulhu shit.

Except the download, because it has no speed controls, sucks up my entire connection. As a result, I can't do shit while I'm downloading it. Even opening google.com takes five minutes while Path of Exile is downloading.

As a result, I have to stop / start the download. Except the only way to do that is to close the installer, do whatever, then re-open the installer and watch as it checks resources and "allocates space" all over again (a process which takes 10 - 20 or so minutes and at various stages completely freezes the PC if I try and do anything else with it at the time). I can't even play on a Minecraft server while this thing is downloading.

Normally I have no trouble downloading a program, a game on Steam or whatever, while I do other shit with the PC but with Path of Exile, if I try and touch the computer, shit don't work.

A standard torrent or normal downloader without the magic New Zealand voodoo that this thing does, would be far more effective. So far, installing with this piece of shit has been nothing but a needlessly frustrating experience.

 

[Hoaxmetal]

 

[Jashiin]

Don't worry about it. I nearly lost the will to live playing this crap. Another empty lootgrind with a pretty face. Might be fun in coop, but I wouldn't know cause I hate people.

 

[dibens]

Nazi barbarians chopping chimpanzees with fire axes. This should their marketing slogan.

 

[Vicar]

Playing a duelist cleaving has been surprisingly easy, soloed all the way to act 2 now. level 17



Maybe I should've played hardcore mode

 

[Eyeball]

PoE is a bit of a slow burn, but it's an incline since it helps weed out the dumb shits that prefer a more craptacular popamole progression.

Reminds me of an argument put to me by a WoW player after I aired my views on how dreary it had become: "Oh, you think WoW is boring but you're only a level 40 warrior? Well, you really gotta get to the high levels. WoW only starts at level 70."

I'm sorry, but the idea that you need to play a game for dozens of hours to get sufficiently leet for the gameplay to open up and become fun just isn't doing it for me. D2 which PoE tries to emulate was fun out of the box, PoE is just grindy, with boring map design and environments to boot.

What PoE gets absolutely right, at least last time I played, is the potion system and the monster damage balance. Even if you play the warrior guy, standing in the middle of a bunch of monsters even in the beginning will likely lead to you dying, making movement more important than in many other games of the type, and I find it appealing how the potion system doesn't simply revolve around TPing to town to stock up on 6000+ healing potions before a major boss fight but actually having to play the game well to get them refilled. Good thinking by the devs there.

 

[Castanova]

Meh, "dozens of hours" is a real stretch. I started getting support gems like two hours into the game and I was playing somewhat slowly. This game is not even remotely comparable to spending 100+ hours just to grind to max level in an MMO like WoW.

 

[IDtenT]

Some very selective nostalgia in here. Diablo II had probably the worst map design I've ever encountered. Hurp rectangular fields.

 

[rashiakas]

Anyone playing a true man caster? Only Barbarians and Duelists here.