Pros and cons of a casual POE

I define myself as a causal since I play less than 3 hours a week. That including reading builds, playing games, and thinking and talking about games.

To be honest, I really hate it when they change skill trees and adding new gems. I just do not want to "learn" any new things in games. People might call me lazy and I freely admit that I am a very lazy poe player and I just want to have fun.

I don't enjoy trading and the 3.x content. I think I developed Dom phobia and most of my characters are stuck at Dominus. I sometimes use public party to beat Dom but I got no sense of joy from it and I often quit after a couple levels in the next difficulty.

I haven't played for a couple month now and I have found the more layoff I have, the less I am motivated to come back, and to relearn all new mechanics and all the new gems. Ideally, POE would stop adding new mechanisms but keep pushing out real "content" (a new act?) and I would happily pay for it.

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I'm not that sure. GGG often points out that they are making a game they want to play. They clearly want to play a game where it is almost impossible for a casual gamer (read: a person with a job, a life, a family) to reach high end gear and maps.

that explains a lot, (mini hint: ggg=employees=job)

A version with higher map drops and exp penalty removed(or changed to a 1 hour[0-10mins pre-90] -50% exp debuff) would be pleasant.

They should create one called sandbox league when in reality its a self found league

:)

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BestUsernameEver a écrit :

I'm not that sure. GGG often points out that they are making a game they want to play. They clearly want to play a game where it is almost impossible for a casual gamer (read: a person with a job, a life, a family) to reach high end gear and maps.

The thing about this is that "high end gear and maps" was never the goal in PoE, and that pisses a lot of people off, myself included. I quit as soon as I realized GGG would most likely never cater to the crowd that enjoys endgame. And that "endgame" does not fit into any arpg world properly.

The game is designed for people that we have somehow convinced that they are casual because they dont run 50 78s a day. People like GeorgAnatoly play at a way higher level than the kiddies RMTing their way up the ladder and grinding out 100.

Unfortunately it is almost impossible for a game designed around self imposed difficulty to appeal to the min/max highly efficient grind crowd.

When I started it seemed like they would make maps cater to the latter group because the first group didnt seem to have much interest in them, their characters were usually rerolled by the time they got anywhere near them.

But, missed opportunity I suppose?

Just add a self-found league (no trading/account-bound gear). Up drops in that league considerably and reduce the effort (increase player luck) to get into the RNG-gated areas. Keep everything else as-is; it's fun to get steamrolled by some stuff, as it makes a player reconsider a build.

Thankfully, there's no "guild" requirement in this game. Right there, that says to me that this game is already somewhat casual. If one required a 40-person crew (somehow) to be able to stomp Atziri or Dominus, this would NOT be a casual game.

The moment this game becomes easier and I don't get thrashed by anything is the moment I drop this game and stop coming back.

On the flipside, not being able to have the RNG on my side to reach the end-game content often makes me drop this game for several weeks to months.

One thing has always puzzled me: "Just add a self-found league" and the game would be more casual?! How so? How can taking away one way to aquire better gear make the game more casual?

Honestly, I think the most casual players (in the sense of "need the least dedication to devote hours") are those with godly gear. They can just link the right skills into the right items and can then walk all over über-bosses without using more than the two mouse buttons and some rudimentary movement.

In that sense, the people who do not have such items are the ones playing the much harder game, so they can claim to be less casual. Some people who posted here even said they do this although they have great gear, just for the challenge. That is pretty cool and not a sign of "casual" in the sense we usually use it.

So taking away trading would make the game more hard-core, I think. If there was a good trade system in place, I'd use it, because I usually prefer easier content to harder content :)

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Treffnix a écrit :

One thing has always puzzled me: "Just add a self-found league" and the game would be more casual?! How so? How can taking away one way to aquire better gear make the game more casual?

Honestly, I think the most casual players (in the sense of "need the least dedication to devote hours") are those with godly gear. They can just link the right skills into the right items and can then walk all over über-bosses without using more than the two mouse buttons and some rudimentary movement.

In that sense, the people who do not have such items are the ones playing the much harder game, so they can claim to be less casual. Some people who posted here even said they do this although they have great gear, just for the challenge. That is pretty cool and not a sign of "casual" in the sense we usually use it.

So taking away trading would make the game more hard-core, I think. If there was a good trade system in place, I'd use it, because I usually prefer easier content to harder content :)

I felt exact the same way. I hate the trading experience in this game because the market is not efficient. There is hardly any price equilibrium least stable ones and players who do not want spend time to keep up and research market are at severe disadvantage. That is why I prefer a AH since it makes the market efficient and trading effortless.

I think we already have an AH, an inefficient and not so user-friendly one. But if a real AH is a big no no for some reason, then Self Found league definitely makes sense and I agree it makes the game more hardcore.

Some Conclusions I have drawn from this discussion:

Assumptions
1. There are no generally accepted definitions for "casual" vs "hard-core gamers" (HCG), neither for what makes the game easy or hard. I'll use the terms nonetheless :)
2. Casuals and HCGs have very different needs in the game. It is impossible to balance for both.
3. Casuals do feel the need to experience ALL content of the game, but also know they cannot realistically "earn" that right if the end game content is to be challenging for HCGs.
4. If POE can become more casual friendly without boring the HCGs, its marketshare would rise, which is desirable.

Conclusions
1. There are many changes GGG could introduce to make the game more casual friendly without sacrificing late level challenge:
- Smoother progression of difficulty, balance out some of the boss damage spikes.
- Fewer gear checks before end game. Many bosses are too hard without great gear and too easy if you have some.
- Add quality of life changes: More UI settings, more (meaningfull) side-quests, more real crafting recipes for low- to mid level chars. Make new content such as strong boxes available to all.
- Remove some artificial separation. Example: Add low level maps. Corrupted areas, for example, are usually fun at all difficulties.

2. Changes which are harder to implement and balance out
- Make the RNG side of socket crafting less frustrating somehow, but without making it easy to achieve 6L.
- Allow more build choice: ALL chars currently need max resists and many, many life nodes. This limits the paths you can take in the otherwise awesome skill tree.
- Improve technical issues such as desync and FPS drops.

2. A kind of experimental- or tutorial-mode would allow casuals to see end game content. They can then decide if they want to put in the effort required to "earn" that. Several suggestions have been made:
- High drop rates of gambling currency to allow experimenting with the outcomes.
- Starting with a high level char that can get great gear at the vendors so one can test-drive builds and visit all the über-bosses.
Of course, rewards from this mode must not be permanent, perhaps chars+items are simply deleted after X hours of testing.

3. Trading will always be part of online ARPGs. If not, then third-party shops will fill that niche. So it only makes sense to add a good way for players to trade.
People who want to play self-found can anyway do so.

I'll edit the first post to include this summary so far.

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Treffnix a écrit :

Some Conclusions I have drawn from this discussion:

Assumptions

3. Casuals do feel the need to experience ALL content of the game, but also know they cannot realistically "earn" that right if the end game content is to be challenging for HCGs.

I think for me, this is the biggest thing that I would like to see addressed. I do not want GGG to make the game easier at all, I want the people that want a game that kicks their ass to have it (plus, I think that was the original idea for the game anyway). I would just like to be able to get my ass kicked too!

The way it is right now, as a casual player (in this case, casual meaning I do not play often or for long periods at once) I know that I will just likely never fight Atziri. Too much RNG gates even getting to her. I'm not even concerned with being able to beat her, I just want to be able to see what it is all about.

IMHO, ideally they would make the content more accessible, but harder to complete if that makes any sense.

You wanna fight Atziri? Sure, it's more or less easy to get TO her.

You wanna KILL Atziri? And possibly get some kick ass drops? You better get your grind on n00b!