The main issues I have with the bestiary system

(For the purpose of this post, im using "rare" to refer to mobs with yellow names)

When leveling up, the bestiary system is a great way to get some easy low level gear...there are easy low level recipes that are a great help to characters that are leveling. E.G. Oozeback bloom + 3 rhoas gets you rare boots with movement speed.

By the time I got near act 10 however, I found the bestiary system started to get more and more annoying. Heres why :

-Bestiary mobs spawned with the skull symbol on the minimap are WAY tougher than rares, uniques or even bosses. They dont seem very well balanced...certain modifiers do absolutely insane amounts of damage even if you are 10 levels higher with good gear. The exploding spiders will easily do 5k+ damage and a few exploding bunnies will kill you.

At lower level, its just legendaries that are tough, but in low tier maps, I am seeing rare mobs (not a red skull icon) that spawn with legendary tier modifiers. These mobs are harder than Merciless Izaro.

-ALL "passive" attack abilities like putrid flight, halal dive, etc, all start attacking you from off screen. The range is too long...you should not be getting hit before you can even see the mob. Goat shamans firing frost bolts from off screen are another great example (yes i know thats non-bestiary).

These abilities cant be stopped either. This is a huge problem to any builds relying on freeze, stun, or any other kind of disabling mechanic.

-All the special effects (blue whirlwinds and other ground AOE) combined with the massive amounts of reinforements appearing out of thin air makes it extremely difficult to see anything. Like the tiny bunnies that run up to you and explode.

-The sheer annoyance of having to time captures. I have seen rares/legendaries fail to get captured even though they had very little health left. In the case of legendaries, it is VERY hard to keep the legendary mob's hp bar visible because they keep spawning reinforcements which clutters up the screen.

-The semi-random nature of bestiary spawns. They are obviously heavily weighted towards spawning as the area's regular mobs...your odds of finding a bestiary crab in the river ways is much higher than trying to find one in the Ossuary for example.

-Mobs that ambush the player such as slave pen purge hounds can only spawn as the regular verison, making it even harder to capture a rare of certain mobs.

-After going through all that effort to capture a rare mob, you have to fight several of them, at the same time, in a tiny arena with no room or cover, to even craft something. Taking on a legendary is hard enough, having them spawn a dozen reinforcements while 3 rare mobs attack you from all sides is just insane. I gave up on trying to craft any level 60+ recipes because even if I block them off with frost wall, I am locked into a corner and get killed by passive attacks that cannot be disabled and have to be tanked, because you have no room to run.

-The terrible lack of info on the bestiary mobs. The official wiki doesnt include any information on them at all. The ingame bestiary doesnt tell you where they spawn, making it less than useful. If I see that a recipe requires a certain mob, the game doesnt tell you where to find it. SOme basic info would have been nice.

-You cant kill or release a captured mob unless you use it in a crafting recipe or waste a orb to throw it away. Like...why? There should be a simple release button.

-The sheer clunkiness of the bestiary related UI. Heres an example. When you capture a mob, Einhar shows up via a portal and plays an animation. But instead of keeping the portal open for players to use, the game forces you to ask Einhar to open it. then wait for the portal animation to play. It would have been way more user friendly to keep the portal open for players to use.

-Way too much overlap of nets. Off the top of my head, there are nets for "above level 64" and nets for "above level 68". Higher level nets drop too early as well.

The system works at low levels mainly because you can easily capture and craft low level gear using it, but at higher levels when the mobs start doing insane amounts of damage, it just gets too much of a hassle to capture and then fight in the arena. The arena is just way too small, the way it is setup, the arena fights are way harder than boss fights 15 levels higher because you get surrounded with no room to run. It is way easier to buy gear from someone else at higher levels rather than try to hunt down a missing rare mob to craft something.

And yet... other people have done it. This game relies heavily on your ability as a player... as much or more than the equipment your character has. You seem to be biased by games out there where it's all about your character. PoE has always been more about player skill than character skill. Sounds like they're trying to get you to see that.

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Shagsbeard a écrit :

PoE has always been more about player skill than character skill. Sounds like they're trying to get you to see that.

Sexcuse me xD?

Out-of-screen attacks are just... really dumb.

"I know! Let's let the Beast be able to attack a player when that player can not do anything about it! I always think reducing the player's impact on their own performance in a game is a Best Design Practice! BRILLIANT!"

The Beast League needs some tweaks and polishing, that's for sure. By the time I even looked at all the Leveling recipes, there was nothing there for me. Why am I going to "craft" an ilevel 21 boot when I'm at level 40? For some runspeed? No thanks. Do I even need any really targeted gear improvements at those ilevels? Nope. I could wear a party-hat and whack mobs with any of the fifty sticks I can find on the side of the road and still reach the end of the Story portion of the game with a half-baked build.

BUT, the flask enhancements? Those are wonderful! I really did like those. I even "gambled" a bit on some of the "Rare" item crafting. Didn't get anything that was even worth selling to a vendor... But, at least it might have been "possible."

I did reroll a unique and crafted another, so that wasn't too bad. But, if I wanted to actually go "hunt a Beast?" Good luck... They spawn "randomly." YAY RNG! U SO AWESOME RNG! :/

If they want to improve the Bestiary League, they need to allow players to actually "hunt" Beasts instead of just randomly throwing nets all over the place, hoping to snare something useful in the mob of ticked-off mobs they're aiming at.

I'd rather have Quests I could go on that directed me to the zone where the mob was. At least for important mobs and not just for the end-game Beast lairs, which most players will probably never see.

So, add some randomly generated Beast Quests. Add some spawn mechanics that at least improve the chance of a player finding a specific type of Beast so they can target-craft recipes and.. balance some of these Beasts so it's possible for most builds to be able to take down a level-appropriate normal or rare Beast. Limit "Red" Beast spawns and include some of those in a Quest system, so the player can prepare and feel like a "Hunter" actually going after a feared "Beast."

On "skill" - That has nothing to do with it. Perhaps in late-game or for those self-building their characters or roughing it in solo-self-found, then "maybe." But, thanks to RNG, and given some rudimentary understanding of game mechanics, passive selections and item stats, all any player needs to reach the end of the Story portion is "time." And, for early mapping and early "end-game" play, in comes the heavy-hand of the RNG.

Does "skill" effect play? Sure. But, not all who reach end-game are more skilled than those who don't. They may just have a bit more time, which is a quality all its own.

Sticky please, great points op

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Question2 a écrit :

(For the purpose of this post, im using "rare" to refer to mobs with yellow names)

When leveling up, the bestiary system is a great way to get some easy low level gear...there are easy low level recipes that are a great help to characters that are leveling. E.G. Oozeback bloom + 3 rhoas gets you rare boots with movement speed.

Nice 7 challenges. It certainly looks like you played Bestiary league an insane amount of time that certainly makes you a most reliable source of feedback.

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Bone2flesh a écrit :

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Question2 a écrit :

(For the purpose of this post, im using "rare" to refer to mobs with yellow names)

When leveling up, the bestiary system is a great way to get some easy low level gear...there are easy low level recipes that are a great help to characters that are leveling. E.G. Oozeback bloom + 3 rhoas gets you rare boots with movement speed.

Nice 7 challenges. It certainly looks like you played Bestiary league an insane amount of time that certainly makes you a most reliable source of feedback.

Level 81 is more than enough to experience and judge the content.

I have not been attempting to complete as many challenges as possible. Some of them arent even related to the bestiary system...what does using 1 of each currency item have to do with the bestiary systme? Nothing.

A quest based system to hunt down the beasts would have been far better, yes. Rather than just RNG running into ones that you may or may not need.

Necromancy nets being drop only certaintly doesnt help. One of the biggest complaints that I have heard about the system is how easy it is to accidentally overkill a beast you are trying to capture. Again, certain builds are unfairly penalized...ignite can accidentally kill mobs, so can crits, minions, etc...

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Kiss_Me_Quick a écrit :

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Bone2flesh a écrit :

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Question2 a écrit :

(For the purpose of this post, im using "rare" to refer to mobs with yellow names)

When leveling up, the bestiary system is a great way to get some easy low level gear...there are easy low level recipes that are a great help to characters that are leveling. E.G. Oozeback bloom + 3 rhoas gets you rare boots with movement speed.

Nice 7 challenges. It certainly looks like you played Bestiary league an insane amount of time that certainly makes you a most reliable source of feedback.

Level 81 is more than enough to experience and judge the content.

Considering you get out of Act X at around level 70 no, level 81 is not enough to make a good judgement on something. Just because you agree with him does not make any of you right.

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Question2 a écrit :

I have not been attempting to complete as many challenges as possible. Some of them arent even related to the bestiary system...what does using 1 of each currency item have to do with the bestiary systme? Nothing.

A quest based system to hunt down the beasts would have been far better, yes. Rather than just RNG running into ones that you may or may not need.

However every league has different challenges and most players consider playing the actual league actually doing those challenges. A lot of them are league mechanic related and most of the others make you encounter league mechanics.

Love it how you mention out of all of them the Orb's from vendors one. If we go by that one this league is as good as any other one. Almost all of them have this challenge in one form or another.

Quest system for league mechanics and not RNG? When did any league have a quest system? Why would it start now?

If people would have a brain they could clearly see the patterns GGG takes with leagues and it's a brilliant marketing strategy: for quite some time now you get explosive leagues and after a slower paced league. Rinse and repeat. Keeps people playing. It works.

The player numbers for POE are constantly rising not dropping. Think about that. A few salty people leaving while stomping their feet in anger when a slow league starts are negligible losses. Plus they will be back next league regardless. And they already bought their supporter pack.

RNG has been and always will be the core mechanic of any ARPG. It's why you play this type of games: The shitty feeling when you get bad RNG and the oh so good feeling when RNGesus blesses you.

81 is enough for him to have a valid opinion dudes only sharing his views, I don't really agree with some of them but the idea that isn't enough content is wrong, what's he missing? Oh no hes no caught a spirit beast.......... like players with multiple 90's.

You can be mid 50's and know that a vast majority of the recipes are a waste of space hell you didn't even need to play the league to know that lol all the memes about essence league were pretty appropriate in that regard.

I don't agree that the rares are super hard though this for me is the best bit of the content, the beast rares are fairly exciting and require a bit more fight than the regular rares and to be honest I would prefer the game if they were the difficulty of regular rares, the whole things become a bit steameroller recently.