So, I just uninstalled PoE today.

Good post and I can really relate to 1 and 2 especially. I first started in 2013 and did countless Dock, Piety and Dominus runs. After a long hiatus came back with the expansion to 10 acts. The overall speed meta became very noticeable along with some buggy behavior that still persists
since then. I believe you're right about the too aggressive release of new, and sometimes very convoluted new content is just making things worse.

I usually don't even try a new league until a couple weeks or so after the start because the inevitable bugs. Normally I'll try 1 or 2 league characters then, and continue improving enjoyable characters in Standard. I skipped the last 3 leagues because summer (outdoor things to do) and what didn't interest me in some of the new content.


I also picked up Grim Dawn which was a very different and to me, more fun style. Actually finding decent gear, farming recipes some of which might be quite rare but at least achievable without convoluted bloated methods. Some challenging bosses without the 1 shot stuff, never seems unfair because they're more tactical which can be learned rather than blasted off the face of the earth, zoom-zoom. Dying isn't quite so infuriating as in PoE's lags and game freezes that penalize heavily because in GD you lose experience but can regain a good part by touching a tombstone if you can manage to fight your way to it.



So, while waiting for Grim Dawn's new expansion, I came back a couple days ago to futz around a bit in Standard, getting rid of junk and doing a few test runs. Still fun but I'm seeing the same problems as in recent past and the Syndicate crap is really trying my patience because it's the source of my only deaths with its freezes and over-tuned, mostly unavoidable unwanted convoluted content I'd rather avoid altogether. Just kill stuff and hopefully advance without cheap, annoying and infuriating stalling of experience progression because of the death penalty with this Syndicate stuff.


I'll keep the game installed and watch its progress or lack thereof and still support it, the devs are aware of most of these things, I hope they slow down a bit and do general polishing and clean-up.

+1 to OP

tldr; have to agree pretty much with everything OP writes.

I played standard about a year, I'm so glad I put it down before Syndicate stuff went into core game. DP was frustrating enough, and from what I hear people saying in forums (I've been just lurking around to see where PoE is going after since) there is zero incentive right now for me to come back unless something drastically gives in.

I also agree with OP on issues which s/he listed as culprits, he made valid points especially about timer mechanics which are supporting speed metas. What puzzles me is how some QoL features in principle sound easy to implement, much easier than making a dozen bad mechanics forcefully into game. Say, tiering of item mods, which was fixed recently. It alone almost made me want to pick up PoE again. It was such a basic QoL, and still took that long but then GGG implements LOADS of untested stuff and new content on top of everything that is not fixed. It should've been obvious player numbers went up because of the master change, not Betrayal as itself. I should know as I was playing standard throughout the time. There's too much stuff to find out in third party software and none which game itself openly offers to a player -to an extent one needs software just to plan a build tree for his character. In the end, ARPGs are about killing monsters and looting stuff. If this basic flow of the game is constantly broken because of annoying checkboxes you need to look up with Google constantly, it does no service to actually playing an ARPG. If I need to play menu style games, I'll rather pick up a real strategy game like GalCiv.

Oh, and devs may think whatever they like about power level of rares vs. uniques but almost all the uniques are vendor thrash and still every nerf concerns only uniques. What's missing is an effort to try make uniques viable and balanced. It's another way of forcing people into trade leagues but it breaks items and any anticipation of having uniques drop from actually playing the ARPG behind all this instead of Path of Trading. The way I see it, PoE is a solo game, and trying to force it into something else is what further breaks it. Sure, devs can destroy their game in any way they see best. Just sayin'. Now, problems with unique drops is what I saw myself. Knowing how penalizing deaths are XP wise, freezing problems with syndicate are just icing on the top for me.

PoE is a great game, it just feels its release cycle philosophy and monetarization -which admittedly are connected with each other- are out of place right now. Honestly, I think devs know most of this stuff by now. It's hard to speak openly especially in a hostile environment where people are spewing so much anger, and GGG isn't necessary packed with professional communication experts. My <3 for them in any case, of course I wish them success.

GD is great, I'm waiting for their expansion.

"

Fapmobile a écrit :

"don't let the door hit your ass on the way out"

When this dies and you are here all alone. Dont forget to lock the door when you leave.

The OP is definitely right about technical problems that aren't getting fixed. The problems are getting worse not better. Synthesis League is not even beta quality, more like an alpha release with all the performance problems and bugs. A new league every 13 weeks is just way too short of time to code/test/debug/polish.

Well written, Gibbousmoon.
I'm kind of in the same boat, but still enjoying a couple things and want to keep playing to see how things turn out.
See you later. Enjoy Grim Dawn it's a great game.

"

Arrowneous a écrit :

The OP is definitely right about technical problems that aren't getting fixed. The problems are getting worse not better. Synthesis League is not even beta quality, more like an alpha release with all the performance problems and bugs. A new league every 13 weeks is just way too short of time to code/test/debug/polish.

That's plenty of time for a dev team that is competent and actually cares about putting forth a quality product so...

Unfortunately im with you on this, syndicate drops me down to no frames and they said they fixed it but they didnt so im curious to what they "fixed" and them also creating the meta is annoying. I guess ill try out grim dawn see if it can satiate my ARPG itch.

I agree with all the points you made.

I'm currently contemplating what to do...If I don't hear them (GGG) say they will fix the prmium-map-stash-tab problem in standard soon I might as well say goodbye to PoE after almost 7 years of playing it.

would be really bad to see another long time player go for good.

hope you find some fun after they patched melee so it also clears 3 screens in advance like for example essence drain/contagion.

edit: actually i would also be a bit lost if i couldn't just use 3 quads for synthesis items until someone figured out the underlying tech.