PoE is punishing, not difficult. Video to clarify the difference.

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Moosifer a écrit :

You don't buy it because you're obsessed with being right rather than looking at the whole picture.

Say it all you want, it won't make all the threads with people asking for help with understanding the game go away. And those are people that bothered to start a thread, those that are digging around the forum and want to invest some effort to understand, god knows how many just shelved the game after trying to figure it out for themselves.

Sorry, but this isn't Titan Quest or Borderlands, where most of things are clear from the get-go or become clear as you play. PoE is too much like Sacred in that regard, the game where you could irrevocably ruin your char just because you had no info what exactly the skill mod you took does.

Ok, how about this then:
You're saying people are spending a reasonable amount of time trying to understand the game and that it's forthcoming enough, I'm saying the amount of time is unreasonable and the game requires much more patience than you can expect from an average player of the genre. We could agree on this and call it quits, the important thing is we understood each other.

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raics a écrit :

Say it all you want, it won't make all the threads with people asking for help with understanding the game go away. And those are people that bothered to start a thread, those that are digging around the forum and want to invest some effort to understand, god knows how many just shelved the game after trying to figure it out for themselves.

Sorry, but this isn't Titan Quest or Borderlands, where most of things are clear from the get-go or become clear as you play. PoE is too much like Sacred in that regard, the game where you could irrevocably ruin your char just because you had no info what exactly the skill mod you took does.

Ok, how about this then:
You're saying people are spending a reasonable amount of time trying to understand the game and that it's forthcoming enough, I'm saying the amount of time is unreasonable and the game requires much more patience than you can expect from an average player of the genre. We could agree on this and call it quits, the important thing is we understood each other.

Those people are looking for more detailed information or they didn't just look at what was written. Again, I'm not saying all information is at our fingertips in game but what you need to progress is right there.

The reason people ruin their builds and end up quitting is because early on, looking at the tree, you have no idea what you need. I agree this should be helped and I even agree that there should be a tutorial for new players. I just disagree that going to the forums is required for the majority of information.

I haven't played the other games you mentioned besides borderlands. While I had a lot of fun with it, it's a much more casual game. POE is designed for people who are looking for something like what POE is, a game that is easy to play but difficult to master. Once you master one thing there's 100 other builds and even more variations of those builds.

So to boil this all down.

1. I think the majority of mechanics a new player NEEDS to know are fairly easy to figure out and generally have simple solutions.

2. I think the tree is generally too confusing with little direction leaving a new player to almost always start with a failing build. Good for someone like me who takes it as a challenge to start over, not good for someone with limited time to find out the last week left them with a worthless build

3. I think it's a great thing that to really master the game it takes more work beyond just mindless wandering around the game.

Yeah, I mentioned Sacred specifically because it too had played on 'patient player' card, it was also a pretty complex game and took time to master. While a plethora of bugs on launch and horrible DRM also took its toll, the game was in many aspects even less noob-friendly than PoE and your chars took a very long time to actually feel strong.

The trouble is, patience is in very short supply these days, bipedal meatbags generally don't like to work much to get their dose of fun, and even fighting with your dinner before eating it has long since fallen into disfavor. If devs are confident they can maintain the game with current numbers - fine, because this is most likely all the game will gather.

And it could have been much different with just a few touches in the right places, the kind of touches that made SW KotOR a very popular game back then, despite essentially having D&D mechanics under the hood, which are as niche as it gets.

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raics a écrit :

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Moosifer a écrit :

You don't buy it because you're obsessed with being right rather than looking at the whole picture.

Say it all you want, it won't make all the threads with people asking for help with understanding the game go away. And those are people that bothered to start a thread, those that are digging around the forum and want to invest some effort to understand, god knows how many just shelved the game after trying to figure it out for themselves.

Ok, there is a thing that i NEVER understood: help threads.

I would NEVER open a thread on a forum to gather ANY kind of imformation. I just use this

mmmmagic
shhhhiny
thhhinggg

called "google"

First time i had a problem which was not immediate was with the "more" and "increased". I just googled "more and increased difference path of exile" and voilà, her's the response in 1 minute

If you open a forum thread for this, you're going to waste way more time, and maybe won't even get the answer or a wrong one.

Even with in like "best build for beginning", why opening a thread? search on google, you will find tons of information available.

And i strongly agree that most of game mechanincs are just simple and intuitive. Like the crit chance: one i had a doubt: will "crit chance" nodes affect both spells and attacks crit? i responded to myself by just looking on skill tree at specific nodes "spell crit chance" or "X weapon crit chance". For further confirmation, i checked my crit chance after the node; it changed = works for both.

Now, i saw this specific question about crit nodes something like 7-8 times in chat and one time on forum. Along with idiot questions like "iir gem works with non linked skills?" lol

All this questions are not coming from new player, they're coming from lazy or stupid players.

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Mahesys a écrit :

All this questions are not coming from new player, they're coming from lazy or stupid players.

Yup, people are lazy and stupid, smart and diligent people are actually pretty rare.

Unfortunately, you can't base your business on smart people, ask people at Apple on that subject, those guys are pros. Just imagine your local supermarket hanging a sign 'for smart people only', how good would that be for trade?

... wait... that could actually be a really good move :)

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raics a écrit :

Yeah, I mentioned Sacred specifically because it too had played on 'patient player' card, it was also a pretty complex game and took time to master. While a plethora of bugs on launch and horrible DRM also took its toll, the game was in many aspects even less noob-friendly than PoE and your chars took a very long time to actually feel strong.

The trouble is, patience is in very short supply these days, bipedal meatbags generally don't like to work much to get their dose of fun, and even fighting with your dinner before eating it has long since fallen into disfavor. If devs are confident they can maintain the game with current numbers - fine, because this is most likely all the game will gather.

And it could have been much different with just a few touches in the right places, the kind of touches that made SW KotOR a very popular game back then, despite essentially having D&D mechanics under the hood, which are as niche as it gets.

I hope it's clear that GGG is going for a niche game. They aren't going the route of the majority of games which are just trying to appeal to the masses. I don't think they ever expect to see over 1m daily active players or anything a game like DOTA or a bliz game is putting up. TBH, they seem totally fine with the game around 5k players and since release we've been steady over that. I love the concept behind the game and I love that it's designed in a way that you have to really work to feel a sense of completion.

Some games you get that feeling without even beating the game, it's what happened when I played skyrim. Awesome game, had a ton of fun, but I felt done with it well before the ending and eventually I just got bored, never even beat it. POE has this wonderful feeling that you "beat the game" early but it doesn't really start until end game, at which point you can stop at any point. I have yet to see a build, regardless of gear, that can facetank all content, in all situations, recklessly so there's always that goal in mind. While other games you can turn off the screen and do the end boss at some points never seeking additional info. It's boring to me.

@Mahesys - Honestly I think it's laziness mixed with entitlement. "I should have this information damn it" rather than "let me look this up." But probably more like 90% laziness.

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Mahesys a écrit :

Like the crit chance: one i had a doubt: will "crit chance" nodes affect both spells and attacks crit? i responded to myself by just looking on skill tree at specific nodes "spell crit chance" or "X weapon crit chance". For further confirmation, i checked my crit chance after the node; it changed = works for both.

crit chance is the worse mechanism you could have taken lol, because finding that to crit, you have to roll twice the chance to hit, and this is a difficult information to fine for a new player, and it's not just about min maxing : playing a crit build with low accuracy is just horrible.

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raics a écrit :

Yup, people are lazy and stupid, smart and diligent people are actually pretty rare.

Unfortunately, you can't base your business on smart people, ask people at Apple on that subject, those guys are pros. Just imagine your local supermarket hanging a sign 'for smart people only', how good would that be for trade?

... wait... that could actually be a really good move :)

Well PoE can, because it's meant to be a niche game, and to aim at a niche audience.

EDIT : Well Moosifer basically said it, didn't really see that lol

DorA is way more niche, hardcore, non casual friendly than PoE. LoL is meant to be the MOBA that appeals to the masses, with its vastly simplified mechanics and platstyle

In fact, the whole MOBA genre in general is as niche as you can get, so niche that the only other successful game in this genre (LoL) managed to pull it mainly due to good PR, gambling elements and more or less copying a well established game (DotA) while dumbing it down

Long story short, there is nothing niche about PoE, it's a D2 clone with some more complex mechanics and a different endgame mechanism. Its approach to "hardcore" is not niche either, it's the exact same recipe that every Korean MMO uses

Actually, you can't really deny that PoE is a niche game because it's act.
Niche is about the targeted audience.

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deteego a écrit :

In fact, the whole MOBA genre in general is as niche as you can get

This is purely and totally wrong, I think that you are misunderstanding the word "niche".

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Fruz a écrit :

crit chance is the worse mechanism you could have taken lol, because finding that to crit, you have to roll twice the chance to hit, and this is a difficult information to fine for a new player, and it's not just about min maxing : playing a crit build with low accuracy is just horrible.

A very good example, not a lot of players know that, they just have that nagging feeling their crit templar for some reason isn't performing as well as crit ranger even though templar has great crit nodes readily available.

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Fruz a écrit :

Well PoE can, because it's meant to be a niche game, and to aim at a niche audience.

EDIT : Well Moosifer basically said it, didn't really see that lol

You know, providing more info doesn't make your game any less niche, those that aren't interested don't have to read it, a good example are D&D games which usually have more detailed info available for those that need it and are the very definition of niche. And you don't need to have floating tooltips 'place a gem in socket and right click to remove' flying left and right. Just a short, tiny manual with indexed content from those three opening posts from game mechanics thread would do wonders, and it's almost no effort at all. So why not?