No room for bad players.

Hello,

This post is just about my experiences and my skill issues.
With that out of the way I'd like to describe how the game feels to a low skill player.

I'm that low skill player, with slow reaction times and who has yet to grasp the concept of POE2's current landscape. When early access came out and I played on day one the experience was a lot of fun. Because even with a mediocre build I could at least get to end game.

Now I can't get out of my own way.
Yes it could just be that I'm that bad of a player and the game has exceeded my abilities and understanding of the game mechanics or something has drastically changed. To be honest even before the update I doubt I was ever going to be able to complete all the accidences and had no chance at reaching the high level maps. Despite that I was having fun smashing monsters with my friends.

After the update: for me everything seems twice as fast, monsters are two or three times more spongy, and the passive trees seems less visible. Before the update in the standard league I had a Ranger that was dedicated to poison / armor breaking that let my friends builds consume the armor break. Even with this build I could still solo to end game at a slower pace.

Currently I have a Ranger level 39 lightning arrow / lightning rod and it feels bad. It's to slow to setup now, the monsters blaze right to you and that makes the lightning rods useless, and yes it's probably mostly a skill issue.
But you couple that with what feels like a currency / gear drop famine, and the fun is gone. ( for me )

Currently I have maybe 1/10 of the currency I had in the standard league.
I've a couple pieces of ok gear, I was stuck on a serval pieces form act one until I started act three. This brought my progress to a super slow crawl.

It's my impression this game is supposed to be a combination of currency / equipment drops that you RNG build gear with as you go along.
If I'm wrong about the concept feel free to elucidate me one what is what.

Lastly before you troll me in the reply's let's address a couple things.

Everyone says go look up a build on the POE2 build tool.
To me that is no fun because it's playing some one else's way.
I've tried to look at the builds to understand the concepts behind them.

Get good, yeah I already acknowledged that one.

Just quit, everyone has a vice so here were are.

I'm good with the game being challenging, it just seems like it's now challenging at Shroud's level and no longer at a normal human level.

Thanks in advance for any helpful feedback.
And trolls you be you, it's a forum post after all.

IMO from a gear perspective, trying to craft and/or waiting for good drops is a waste of time currently. The currency drops are far too sparse to play the RNG slot machine with your gear during campaign. If you're in standard league, trade is everything. Instead of taking the few exalts that do drop and dumping them into sub-optimal gear in hopes of a good affix, just go to the trade site and buy up. GGG wants trade to be a cornerstone facet of the standard league, and honestly if you're not trading you're playing at a deficit. People get lucky with drops and crafting rolls, but those instances are few and far between.

For me, as soon as my DPS starts to falter I immediately trade up for a better weapon. Vendors can have some really juicy gear too, which refreshes every time you level up. Be sure to keep checking with them. Even vendors from the previous acts. I pick up ALL of the gear that drops to sell and pad out my gold level (sometimes spending an annoying amount of time portaling back to town. Though if you go that route, I suggest a "dump" tab in your stash so you don't have to sit and sell/disenchant/dismantle stuff every time you go back. Even if the vendors don't have anything good for you, buy up any rare items or anything with sockets/quality to dismantle to at a minimum get some regals and other materials to add sockets and quality to what you already have.

Trade can be a major pain in the ass sometimes, but once I embraced the idea of just trading up instead of trying to find/craft my own gear the game got exponentially easier.

I am the next step beyond you. I have over 1000 hours but not because I have no life but because I installed this on my work computer and play while waiting for replies from clients and rendering on my other rig. I am 50 years old and I am solo business. I got hooked at my friends request. In the old league I had a lvl 90 cold sorc done solo. Today? I cant get out of Utzaal and this just the first time around. I have respec'd my huntress 3 times and I am broke. I cant do enough damage to face the running mobs. I cant dodge roll enough to do enough damage to whittle them down. I just die. The problem the "vision" people have is they dont understand markets. There is no market for a game this hard in this version to sustain the company in 2025.

Nothing about ARPGs is hard lol

As long as you have a half decent build it's alllll about:
1) gear. If you start feeling weak go back and rerun some areas for upgrades. This is basically just mapping.
2) pattern recognition. "Oh when he telegraphs that slam I need to GTFO" ect.

Being 52 years old my self, I totally understand.
I completely understand the need for the game to challenge the top players.
That said the number of elite players pales in comparison to the number of scrubs that play these games. I dare say the scrubs fund the entertainment of the elite players by wanting to emulate their experiences.
So there needs to be a place for low skill players without depriving the elite players of theirs.

Thank you... and you are older than me lol. Take care.

Your take is fair and accurate.
But look at it like this. I was able to keep up with the pace and boss callouts before this patch. The Bog witch for example is my hard stop currently.
Her second phase is blistering fast and has issues where some attacks hit out side the visual range. Most good players will kill her to fast to even notice.
I mean players are killing bosses in 30 seconds or less.

I purpose this, play a bad build on purpose to make sure it takes a long time to kill her and you'll see wow that's really fast or that contact range is to wide.

Crushing bosses obfuscates these issues to skilled players.
This is why I think they over tuned the game.
Just my take on it, it's how it feels to players like me.

I'm in the group that plays during breaks from work. And I am stoked after today's interview, which I played in the background while working. I am sure of two things: (1) this game is going to be great; and (2) it is not going to be great tomorrow.

No argument here. I would just like to be able to enjoy it some between now and then.

Hey I have like 15000 hour in poe1 and I play as much poe2 as possible so here is my thought.
I think you should treat the campaign like endgame where you grind for gear. I not saying it sarcastically. When I play a new game that is massive, I do not know where is the "real end game". I treat my upcoming boss not as my obstacle to my real end game enjoyment, but as a "boss". I enjoy poe2 much more when I do not know what in front of me. It suck to look at other people who are better than me are and compare their progression to me.