While I dislike the current state of rare and magic mods, PoE has always been like this. In the beginning you were always getting killed by some white/blue/rare mob. And everyone fucking loved it. Everyone was playing HC back then.
The difference now is that we actually have big pinnacle bosses and also that people can make really decked out characters, whereas before you only had very limited crafting. Losing a character with so much power feels much worse than losing a character that had "triple res and life" boots. Not to mention that the play style and gear requirements for the pinnacle boss fights are quite different to those for mapping.
Last league Alkaizer died on his Mageblood character to a regular bleed. People just laughed at him then. Now suddenly this Ziz death showcases a giant systemic problem, even though this has been the case from the very beginning of PoE. Ziz is notorious for dying a lot because of his careless play style (being in melee range on his FR Totems char for example).
While I agree completely with your overall point that it’s incredibly odd that this critique comes now when it’s always been a thing, there’s no denying this is and always was a problem with "modern" PoE (say, from somewhere near Essence and forward). At least on Hardcore which I play. It’s the main reason I nearly always quit leagues after dying on my first character. I don’t get mad or tilted, I just always feel like playing something else because I rarely know what killed me and if I could prevent it. If it was me being bad at dodging or making a mistake I wouldn’t care much, but it’s often something poorly telegraphed. It’s the difference between reacting poorly - which kills me in other action games because I’m old and slow and which ironically CAN make me frustrated sometimes - and not reacting at all because you had no idea you were supposed to.
This league is a good example - I went RF (how fun is that build this league btw) and I had quite a lot of positive (as in, fair or whatever you want to call it) near deaths with things like juiced up Essence mobs which I knew was pushing it. Had I died to those I would have been like “well, you made the choice to not only fight but also corrupt this sumbitch”.
I did red maps, I did elders, I did sketchy bosses, sketchy maps, a ton of shit that threatened to kill me but I did them with high awareness and playing thoughtfully (because I knew they were dangerous). In the end, I died in some random mid-tier Maven invitation to Doedre map boss, and I have no idea what killed me. Unfortunately I no longer have the VOD, but looking at it I go from 5k life and 1000es to 4,8k then almost simultaneous to 0. There’s no attack animation or indication of a spell, character just falls over. My best guess is that it’s a projectile coming from off screen (you can’t really make it out with all the shit going on).
Lost Ark is a pretty bad game as a whole, but after playing it, it becomes very clear just how poorly PoE visually communicates attacks and effects sometimes. In contrast, when I died in Lost Ark it stung really badly because it always happened because I didn’t have a movement cooldown after using one too frivolously, because I reacted too slowly or because I mistimed it. I think the reason I never get mad, or slam my desk when dying in PoE is that so often the experience just yields a shrug.
Obviously people are going to reply with “git gud” and such, but that’s not really the point. I’m very bad at action games but usually I don’t mind dying in them because it was obvious from the death that I died because I was bad. In PoE the same behavior that will get you through 99,9% of the content will suddenly be deadly out of the blue.
I love the systems in PoE but I do somewhat vibe with Raiz's comment on the last Baeclast to the effect of "PoE is a really complex and thoughtprovoking system inside a really good skinnerbox inside a really bad game".
) recombinator (that also needs to roll correct combining) is a starting weapon?
