Path of Exile

Also, do I get to brag at AladainAF that my casual ass gets mad if I die at all on Sirus?

Atziri is my kryptonite. I still don’t understand that fight and I don’t care about it.

AladainAF said:

Diablo 3 does the same thing, the only difference is the items are not tradeable. In fact, I think every game is balanced around the highest level of play so the professional players are challenged. I don't know many games that don't take this approach. There are a few, but if its going to make the pro players bored in the first 2-3 days of content and move onto something else, then it's a pretty weak ass game.

Did they nerf Ritual? Is there confirmation?

PS: I'm not a pro player. I often say I suck at this game. A8 Siris I beat about 70% of the time, and when I do I die 4-5 times. I cannot keep up with his movements, and lack the skill to avoid his beam or see the meteor exits clearly. I am only good at taking proper routes to farm money and such.

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One thing I’ll say is I’ve never had that hard a time getting a build going in D3. Now when you talk about ancients and shit, sure min maxing is hard and takes serious time.

I know there’s a card now, but let’s take Cospri for example. In D3 there would be a “junior” Cospri that would be relatively easy to get, but the ancient Cospri would be a bitch. Maybe it has 25% pen on it vs 10% for junior Cospri or some shit. I honestly think that would fix shit with maybe some better ways of farming uniques such at Atziri’s Mirror.

Base level of builds are way more accessible in d3. I’ve barely put 20 hours into Grim Dawn, but I have heard it has major issues with build enabling items never dropping. That’s a problem to me for SSF. I’d rather have “better rolls” tied to higher content but more common build enablers with shittier stats I guess.

LiquidDeath said:

Why can't I exchange ex for chaos for fusings?
Why doesn't Assalium have a set of div cards that I can farm reliably?
Why don't useful crafts show up more frequently in Harvest?
Why do I give a fucking flying shit that mirror tier items even exist when I won't reasonably ever see or craft one and they don't impact my game at all?
Why does the guild have to rely on someone on a forum bro to provide them maps? (to be fair, this problem has been alleviated to a small extent by *gasp* allowing more targeted farming methods but is still fucked)
Why do you continue to lobby for my single player gaming experience to have to rely on other people to continue at a reasonable pace?


"A 6 link non-endgame bow is completely trivial to get. You can farm 22 imperial legacy cards in desert map in no more than 2-3 hours. Slap an essence or two on it on the stat you need the most and go from there."

You're right, this should be trivial, but it is, once again, layered behind their bullshit trade/RNG. First I need 2-3 hours worth of desert maps to farm. How do I get those? Right now, RNG or trade. Do you see why this argument falls apart? Great, now I get the cards and the bow. Hope I have the currency to recolor it (RNG) or the ability to by more currency (trade). Now it is colored, lets essence slam it (RNG). Great I ran out of essences, need more of those and more scours (trade) or I just chaos slam or harvest craft it (RNG).

I'm not even against those scenarios, but when they are locked behind ludicrous RNG or a broken trade system then we have the exact problem I've been describing.

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All those "why" questions can be boiled down to "why can't I finish a league in a week". As long as your problems can be solved by playing more, they're not problems - they're just you asking for the game to cater to your lower commitment. At the end of that road you'll find Diablo 3.

The only complaint that has a leg to stand on is that one about specific uniques that are truly build-enabling. And even then I'd say a divination card with a specific source is enough. If an item doesn't have one, and you are unwilling to trade for it, don't play the build.

Of course, "trade for it" assumes that trading works, and the servers themselves work, but that's not really part of a gameplay design topic.

Caeden said:

One thing I’ll say is I’ve never had that hard a time getting a build going in D3. Now when you talk about ancients and shit, sure min maxing is hard and takes serious time.

I know there’s a card now, but let’s take Cospri for example. In D3 there would be a “junior” Cospri that would be relatively easy to get, but the ancient Cospri would be a bitch. Maybe it has 25% pen on it vs 10% for junior Cospri or some shit. I honestly think that would fix shit with maybe some better ways of farming uniques such at Atziri’s Mirror.

Base level of builds are way more accessible in d3. I’ve barely put 20 hours into Grim Dawn, but I have heard it has major issues with build enabling items never dropping. That’s a problem to me for SSF. I’d rather have “better rolls” tied to higher content but more common build enablers with shittier stats I guess.

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In GD it used to be a major hassle to get certain items - mostly monster infrequents (powerful mod combinations) and some people were farming hundreds of hours for certain rolls. Other items are gated behind some faction grinds. It's not a problem these days, you can generally gear up a build fast especially once you hit the end game and farm SR. Titan Quest which is the same engine/devs as GD had even rarer stuff, people farmed shit forever and never found the stuff they wanted in that game.

Some stuff in GD is hard to get as it drops from monsters that are very difficult to kill, most of it's' not build enabling gear it's full on end game stuff that enhances your already well geared character.

Mr Creed said:

All those "why" questions can be boiled down to "why can't I finish a league in a week". As long as your problems can be solved by playing more, they're not problems - they're just you asking for the game to cater to your lower commitment. At the end of that road you'll find Diablo 3.

The only complaint that has a leg to stand on is that one about specific uniques that are truly build-enabling. And even then I'd say a divination card with a specific source is enough. If an item doesn't have one, and you are unwilling to trade for it, don't play the build.

Of course, "trade for it" assumes that trading works, and the servers themselves work, but that's not really part of a gameplay design topic.

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Exchanging chaos for fusings is me wanting to finish the league in a week? That is a fucking stupid take.


Edit: Also, you apparently missed the post where I said I tried for hours over several days to trade for the goddamn unique I needed. I'm not unwilling to do shit, trade in the game is fundamentally broken. If you took any time at all to read my posts then you'd know it is a key theme to the complaints.

Grim dawn just needs seasons and ofc no hax in em

LiquidDeath said:

Exchanging chaos for fusings is me wanting to finish the league in a week? That is a fucking stupid take.


Edit: Also, you apparently missed the post where I said I tried for hours over several days to trade for the goddamn unique I needed. I'm not unwilling to do shit, trade in the game is fundamentally broken. If you took any time at all to read my posts then you'd know it is a key theme to the complaints.

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I don't mean that one example with fusings, I mean all of it. Each of those suggestions reduces time played for something you naturally obtain by playing. String enough of those time savers together, and you indeed get a game that holds your attention for less time. I kinda hate dragging out the D3 example every time, but that's the poster child for where this approach leads - because i's not only your personal comfort zone that gets accomodated, it's also the guy next to you playing 10h a week, and then the one playing 5h a week. Catering to more casual takes is a train that does not stop. As long as shit is farmable, just farm it. Use trade if you have to.

Side note on trade "fixes", I actually want npc vendors you set up in your hideout, mainly to curb price fixing and people not replying because it isn't worth their time, but that's about all I need as far as changes go. I suppose that kind of change would also put you at rest. But I don't give two shits about the UI being a website or in-game, because searching from in game is no guarantee for performance. Opening in-game trade UI and switching to my browser is both just a click in either case, so no difference to me.

I indeed don't remember your unique item post. But it so happens that I am playing bleed bow gladiator currently, and I traded for a couple of assailums at 12-20c while their price kept crashing, just to throw them into the double corrupt forge, plus the one I am still wearing. About 100ish c spent on them in the last week or so.

So either you play on console (sorry to hear) or you're fucking unlucky on those trades. Not sure if you already do that, but always message the offers that start a bit above the minimum listings. And again, this is aside from technical difficulties, since I am talking about game design, and not abou GGG being too cheap to keep their rented "launch week" servers for a few weeks more.

Mr Creed said:

I don't mean that one example with fusings, I mean all of it. Each of those suggestions reduces time played for something you naturally obtain by playing. String enough of those time savers together, and you indeed get a game that holds your attention for less time. I kinda hate dragging out the D3 example every time, but that's the poster child for where this approach leads - because i's not only your personal comfort zone that gets accomodated, it's also the guy next to you playing 10h a week, and then the one playing 5h a week. Catering to more casual takes is a train that does not stop. As long as shit is farmable, just farm it. Use trade if you have to.

Side note on trade "fixes", I actually want npc vendors you set up in your hideout, mainly to curb price fixing and people not replying because it isn't worth their time, but that's about all I need as far as changes go. I suppose that kind of change would also put you at rest. But I don't give two shits about the UI being a website or in-game, because searching from in game is no guarantee for performance. Opening in-game trade UI and switching to my browser is both just a click in either case, so no difference to me.

I indeed don't remember your unique item post. But it so happens that I am playing bleed bow gladiator currently, and I traded for a couple of assailums at 12-20c while their price kept crashing, just to throw them into the double corrupt forge, plus the one I am still wearing. About 100ish c spent on them in the last week or so.

So either you play on console (sorry to hear) or you're fucking unlucky on those trades. Not sure if you already do that, but always message the offers that start a bit above the minimum listings. And again, this is aside from technical difficulties, since I am talking about game design, and not abou GGG being too cheap to keep their rented "launch week" servers for a few weeks more.

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I keep seeing this play time argument, and I vehemently disagree with it. It actually rolls nicely into you talking about buying Assailums. I was trying to buy Assailums over a week and a half ago when they were between 1 and 2 ex. I whispered every single person listed on the trade page that was below 3 ex because I didn't have that much with no replies or a reply that it had already been sold. I don't know if you are the only person that isn't having trouble with the trade API being massively slow, but I wasn't unwilling to buy the item I was literally unable given the current state of the game. And I haven't checked prices since because I stopped playing the league between not wanting to go through the same bullshit to buy fusings. So how exactly does players not playing because of this inane bullshit help the play time argument? If it was up to me, I'd still be playing. I planned to do 3/40 this league. Right now, though, I'd rather play Apex where I spend the overwhelming majority of my time actually playing the goddamn game rather than standing around in my hideout alt-tabbing.

LiquidDeath said:

I keep seeing this play time argument, and I vehemently disagree with it. It actually rolls nicely into you talking about buying Assailums. I was trying to buy Assailums over a week and a half ago when they were between 1 and 2 ex. I whispered every single person listed on the trade page that was below 3 ex because I didn't have that much with no replies or a reply that it had already been sold. I don't know if you are the only person that isn't having trouble with the trade API being massively slow, but I wasn't unwilling to buy the item I was literally unable given the current state of the game. And I haven't checked prices since because I stopped playing the league between not wanting to go through the same bullshit to buy fusings. So how exactly does players not playing because of this inane bullshit help the play time argument? If it was up to me, I'd still be playing. I planned to do 3/40 this league. Right now, though, I'd rather play Apex where I spend the overwhelming majority of my time actually playing the goddamn game rather than standing around in my hideout alt-tabbing.

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I feel like I already addressed all that.

People not replying - I want a vendor mode, for both that and bullshit price fixers.

The rest seems to boil down to game and website performance, not actual design.

The game or website shitting itself is a separate topic from how they design the game, and I'm all for GGG pouring some time and money in that direction, but it wasn't core to my posts.

You quitting - fair enough, only play when you have fun. It's the clearest message to just stop logging in. That said, if your enjoyment was contingent on Assailum, they are dirt cheap now. If it was the fusings, just play - more time playing (not shopping) means more fusings from content. Shopping is the shortcut, and again the reason you failed to buy them is not game design, it's performance.

Would you be playing if you had purchased that Assailum and those fusings back then? Both of those problems track back to shitty server performance, not their design concepts.

I think the only thing that would really help against their casual approach to performance issues is actual competition in the arpg space. Unfortunately I'm not seeing any challengers in the neat future.

OU Ariakas said:

Your last sentence invalidates everything above it since gameplay design is built around trading.

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Am I to assume trade servers being down to be the state of things for the rest of the year when talking about game design? Because assuming that trade functions like it has the last few years, my comment still stands. If I assume they shut down the trade website then yeah, they might have to re-design some of their concepts. Maybe turn it into a pure SSF game like Deathwing asks.

From general reactions, it's undeniable that they have some sort of problem with their trade servers and looks like now also the game servers. Of course that needs to be fixed, but not by redesigning the game.

trade sucks. an AH or vendor system wouldn't break the game. Botters already farm trade. Chris's bullshit trade manifesto remains bullshit.

HH is the most OP item in the game and 100% delirium full juiced is built around the item. There're a few builds that can pull it off w/o but they usually take perfect play or end up getting nerfed into worthlessness. It also requires a fairly decent computer and connection unless one uses other third-party programs to edit models and remove particles.

But, it's also the most fun item in the game. IMO, the HH should be a quest item. Give it to everyone.

Was thinking that too, 95% of the time the only people I get to reply to a trade message is someone who has an auto scripted invite/hello your item is ready/trade/leave bot going.

I'm guilty of this too and why previously would happily pay them for a stupid hideout merchant who will sell shit while I'm online (even if I have to physically invite/accept invite) so I don't have to leave what I'm doing

My suggestion for anyone not able to reach a seller for their basic currency trades is to put your own stuff up for sale and wait for people to whisper you instead. Bought 1800+ vaal orbs that way.

That said they still need to fix trade someway, not exactly sure what the best solution would be but I'd be all for a hideout vendor. So you can just invite someone and they can go on their own to get the item.

Also Wtb remove/add life if anyone wants to sell. 2.5ex, can be any level.
(They really should just copy bestiary so you don't have to run the risk of people scamming you)

Man, reading this discussion does make me think that I am grateful for the market board on console because fuck doing the website/whisper spam bullshit and all the other issues. Granted, the board sucks in basically literally every fucking aspect possible, right down to the basics of listing item types and displaying options for sale, but atleast sometimes I can occasionally just find something and place an offer and receive an item in a reasonable timeframe. The player base is dogshit and in a lot of cases the entire board of an item for sale is controlled by one or two single individuals (I do mean this literally), but I’ll still be grateful to not have to fucking pull up a site and whisper and wait forever or be ignored. Sucks man. Trading in this game needs so much work, it’s almost embarrassing in its current state. Seems like it’s been so bad for so long there isn’t much hope among players for anything to change, either. Stupid and a huge shame. That and the mountainous pile of performance issues are mind boggling to me how a game like this, with this level of content and complexity and overall success (including major financial success), can even possibly still have these types of problems to this degree. It’s so crazy and I’ve never really seen anything like it. The game is amazing, GGG definitely earned their money and all but Jesus Christ it’s incredibly frustrating to see over and over.

Another 36/40 done. Struggled through it but, after deciding to SSF only harvest crafts too, I managed





Originally I was going to do Ritual Encounters V but after running 40 colosseums and never having the boss spawn in a ritual encounter I said fuck it and did the encounters VII, the kill bosses in funny ways, instead.