I think I'm done

[Kernist]

I decided to play this game after years of a break. New league has started, I thought "I will give it a try, I will play league for the first time, meat Catarina and other trainers again (this content is gone), there are 10 acts now, I will focus on the story". I knew game is hard, but I am experienced player (Diablo I and all sequels, GD, all Torchlights, TQ, Loki, Sacreds... well, you name it, I played it, even obscure things like Dawn of Magic).

I decided to play SSF (because where is the fun in getting boosted or just buying items you need), scion, along the way I decided to build around the SMITE skill. And I was having fun, really, till like act 7, maybe 8. Kalandra lakes got insanely hard, even if I was able to clear story maps without an issue lakes could 1 shot me. Sometimes I didn't even knew why I died. I am not a little ♥♥♥♥♥ tho, I was dying and dying, once I lost 85% of my exp bar in certain lake, I greeted my teeth and completed it, loot was ♥♥♥♥ but I did it, I would get my lvl back anyway.

Along the way I looted very nice unique ring. It's the one that gives you elemental resistance to one element depending on what gem color you equip in it's slot. As in majority of games of those type resists are very important. I thought I got lucky, I linked the ring in chat to ask if this is indeed so good. Response was "Nah, not anymore, recently meta changed".

Wtf? Meta? Meta should be in mobas, not in ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hack n' slashes. Why giving a player such a huge skill tree when there is one correct meta to play? Seriously, what the ♥♥♥♥?

I continued to play, I started dying in some of the events events (the temple one or fortresses/caravans with immortal order for example). No big deal. In act 10 I started to struggle with normal story maps. I was spent, I had no fun, I was 2 locations away from Kitava so I said ♥♥♥♥ it, I am rushing, I will beat the boss, I will know the end of the story and most important, I will hear "OTHER VIEW - Exile" one more time. I still have it in my playlist on my phone. Guess what, it's not in the game anymore...

So I killed Kitava, I zeroed my exp bar along the way, now I am lvl 73. And I think I'm done. I can't clear 3rd labyrinth and I can't clear simplest map. I have decent DPS but I have no survivability. I checked whole skill tree to see if I can improve something but no, I'm happy with what I chose. I have pretty bad items but my drops were ♥♥♥♥, the only way I can improve on that is RNG, The best I can do is to rerun story maps hoping for some lucky drops that will improve my gear and make me able to go for end content.

But it's no fun. I finished the story and can't do anything more. Some of you will say that I'm noob and probably made multiple mistakes with choosing passives, skill gems or gear. And you are certainly right. But remember I am not new to the genre. I ♥♥♥♥♥♥ over my character in Loki, I ♥♥♥♥♥♥ over my character in D2, but I always knew what is wrong and managed to fix it. Here the only solution I see is to farm better eq on story maps. And it's boring. I really pity people who choose PoE as their first game of the genre.

I would like to play further but I think it will be too frustrating. I am considering forgetting about this game and just buying LE even if it's not finished yet. Seems to me like PoE focuses too hard on veterans and tryhards that look ready builds and "meta" on the internet, who will just click buttons and spend skill points according to some guide to max their class to every possible number. And ofc buy from others eq they need. Wow, such fun.

It's a shame, really. Game is very good, it really is. This potential is wasted because it seems game punishes for experimenting and not sticking to current meta. Jump in difficulty between last 3 acts is insane and it seems there is an even bigger jump after act 10. I can ofc always quit SSF and buy some gear that will probably fix my problem but I don't want to, it's not how it should work. I hope state of the game will be soon changed because from what I read in reviews or here in discussions I am not the only one who is disappointed with how things are now.

[pxiong]

When you really understand this game, you can create your own "meta". A lot of veterans completely ignore the so-called meta builds and do all contents in SSF more smoothly than 99% of players in standard, check some streamers. You see that passive tree and that atlas tree, to create your own meta, you need to understand every one of them, and choose the optimal route to fit your build and play style. In short, this game is not for a faint of heart

[Arandur87]

Man, it's getting tiresome.

There once was a man called "Preach" who jumped into PoE completely blind. He chose to play a melee character. Imagine that, beeing melee in 2022.
He just played the game, took his time, invested into his character, used currency he found on items and guess what? He reached yellow Maps. Blind. On a meele character.

Conclusion: Yes, you indeed are probably not good at the game. No, you don't need to play meta. No, you don't need to trade, get carried or follow guides. You just need a normal, functioning brain.

But yeah, ranting on a "♥♥♥♥ game" is easier than getting smarter, I understand that. It's the internet after all.

[Rays of Apollo]

It's a shame that's how this game turns out. As a lonely gamer, I guess I was doing SSF already. I had fun before changing machines till like act 5 planning my own routes through the perk tree.

I haven't downloaded it again after building my pc, so I never got the point when it's grindy for the sake of grind.

Can't you pick up all sorts of loot to use in merchaet recipes and all the crafting tools? I felt like my Witch was always op during my time playing.

[Kernist]

Originally posted by Arandur87:

Man, it's getting tiresome.

There once was a man called "Preach" who jumped into PoE completely blind. He chose to play a melee character. Imagine that, beeing melee in 2022.
He just played the game, took his time, invested into his character, used currency he found on items and guess what? He reached yellow Maps. Blind. On a meele character.

Conclusion: Yes, you indeed are probably not good at the game. No, you don't need to play meta. No, you don't need to trade, get carried or follow guides. You just need a normal, functioning brain.

But yeah, ranting on a "♥♥♥♥ game" is easier than getting smarter, I understand that. It's the internet after all.

Nice, you just unintentionally proved my point. Highlighting how hard it is to hit endgame with melee build just proves meta is huge factor and PoE has serious balance issues. Also congratulations on being the first "elitist" in my thread.

Originally posted by pxiong:

When you really understand this game, you can create your own "meta". A lot of veterans completely ignore the so-called meta builds and do all contents in SSF more smoothly than 99% of players in standard, check some streamers. You see that passive tree and that atlas tree, to create your own meta, you need to understand every one of them, and choose the optimal route to fit your build and play style. In short, this game is not for a faint of heart

You are probably 100% right, but that's my point. I don't want to watch streamers. I am not a PoE "veteran". There are people that have 7k hours in this game, ofc they know every single word in it. My point is veterans should be clearing endgame with eyes clsoed while others struggle, not that veterans are able to reach it at all and the rest stay in the mud.

Originally posted by Rays of Apollo:

It's a shame that's how this game turns out. As a lonely gamer, I guess I was doing SSF already. I had fun before changing machines till like act 5 planning my own routes through the perk tree.

I haven't downloaded it again after building my pc, so I never got the point when it's grindy for the sake of grind.

Can't you pick up all sorts of loot to use in merchaet recipes and all the crafting tools? I felt like my Witch was always op during my time playing.

Well, first of all, you should return to it, as you see you can complete whole story and reach lvl 70 without any grinding. That's something. As for vendor recipes, it was one of the first things I studied, can't do more for now in that regard. As for crafting it helps and I could help myself even more with it probably, but gotta be honest, I always hated crafting in any game, I always played with what I looted. An exception is GD because crafting there is simple, you LOOT recipes and it's not the focus of the game.

[Kampfschwein Fjonda]

I am in T5 maps and struggling, too.
I only got so far because an army of 20-60 minions carried me there.

Having played 10,000 hours of Diablo 2 I can only say: PoE is much better ... and much harder. You have to accept that. Harder. And hard is ok. But at some point too hard is not fun anymore. If you reached that point and don't feel able to do something about it, that's fine, too. Everybody can mess around in Diablo or Titan Quest, PoE is for connaisseurs.

[Arandur87]

Originally posted by Kernist:

Nice, you just unintentionally proved my point. Highlighting how hard it is to hit endgame with melee build just proves meta is huge factor and PoE has serious balance issues. Also congratulations on being the first "elitist" in my thread.

You Sir, seem to not be the sharpest tool in the shed.

I told you that somebody who never played the game rolled a melee character without informing himself beforehand about anything and he reached yellow maps with relative ease.

There are also literally dozens of builds out there, not following any meta and reaching level 100, deep delve levels or you know just complete the atlas.
I started the league with a Charged Dash Energy Blade Trickster. That is as off-meta as it can get and I easily reached red maps before rerolling to another char I spent my currency on to craft gear and clear the rest of the Atlas.

Other people proof over and over again, that you can basically clear the entire game with whatever.
I'm not a huge streamer-fanboy myself, but Mathil really does a great job in showing what is possible.

If you are bad at the game, sure, you won't come far. But that's the same for every game.

If you want some mindless instant gratification, go play D3. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥...

[ksdg]

I had similar experience when I first started, nothing seemed to work. Now I just keep building skeleton mages and everything is like super easy in ssf where you can choose stuff to buy. This game has meta basically, you either build certain build that is known to work or suffer a lot. I like summoner since all you ever do is spawn minions and run from the attacks so you concentrate on survival and don't have to compromise survival and dps as your minions do everything for you.

I think it's the mistake in game design. Instead of nerfing OP builds they just test the game against most popular builds and balance that way. So any other builds don't work because they are too far behind in dps and you must focus on working build to succeed.

[Locklave]

Originally posted by Arandur87:

I told you that somebody who never played the game rolled a melee character without informing himself beforehand about anything and he reached yellow maps with relative ease.

One anecdotal case.

One anecdotal case where you have absolutely no clue if they were actually reading guides. It's true because they said so I guess. Clearly this is a great foundation. Sharp tools...

[Ghin]

spend less time writing books on forum and more time in game

[Kernist]

Originally posted by Fjonda:

I am in T5 maps and struggling, too.
I only got so far because an army of 20-60 minions carried me there.

Having played 10,000 hours of Diablo 2 I can only say: PoE is much better ... and much harder. You have to accept that. Harder. And hard is ok. But at some point too hard is not fun anymore. If you reached that point and don't feel able to do something about it, that's fine, too. Everybody can mess around in Diablo or Titan Quest, PoE is for connaisseurs.

I agree, and it pains me because I consider PoE 2nd best HnS that is currently available (behind GD). Yeah, I still have my lvl 73 templar from long ago build around minions and it was indeed ez. I did few maps with my cousin back then because we played together but game looked different (I think maps were activated in this device in solaris temple). I just stopped playing because my gtx 460 (back then, now I rock 3070Ti) basically malfunctioned and it was crashing on certain games. PoE crashed from time to time, but games like Overlord crashed in main menu. It was interesting.

Originally posted by Locklave:

Originally posted by Arandur87:

I told you that somebody who never played the game rolled a melee character without informing himself beforehand about anything and he reached yellow maps with relative ease.

One anecdotal case.

One anecdotal case where you have absolutely no clue if they were actually reading guides. It's true because they said so I guess. Clearly this is a great foundation. Sharp tools...

I mean I am good at games like these but there are better obviously. I believe him that some people are able to push through but :
1."Some" is not really satisfying;
2. Maybe they unintentionally played a more suitable build;
3. Even if claiming otherwise this guy surely is elitist and name streamers by name. And if he trusts streamers going blind... well, let's say I don't trust any streamer, after all they need to make good content, and dying all the time isn't interesting.

[MrWitz]

You're not going to be successful building your own character until you're familiar with all the games mechanics, gems, crafts, etc. There's just so much raw knowledge you need. But then, to do that on ssf magnifies this 10-fold.

[DaTank]

I’d like to say that Quin69 is currently playing a melee build and defeating end game bosses. If that guy can do it why are you making excuses?

Jokes aside It’s clear OP came here to fight, as is obvious in the first post and response to other people. Just move on

[Jadian]

Originally posted by Kernist:

Wtf? Meta? Meta should be in mobas, not in ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hack n' slashes. Why giving a player such a huge skill tree when there is one correct meta to play? Seriously, what the ♥♥♥♥?

It sounds like you don't really know what a meta is. Even puzzle games have metas.

In a game with a lot of room for choice like PoE, it should be expected that there are several metas to choose from.

[Kernist]

Originally posted by DaTank:

I’d like to say that Quin69 is currently playing a melee build and defeating end game bosses. If that guy can do it why are you making excuses?

Jokes aside It’s clear OP came here to fight, as is obvious in the first post and response to other people. Just move on

Nah, I am too old for looking for meaningless fights, especially on Steam. I was wondering if I should make this thread at all, but decided to go with it. As for the reasons why:
1. I see people here are dissatisfied with the game and wanted to see if it's for the same reason as me and if in the same game place/stage as me;
2. Wanted to see if someone has some good advice because I really would like not to stop playing PoE (idk, maybe I should do hesit, try luck In delve, maybe just surrender SSF);
3. Wanted to give my input so maybe devs will see the thread so I tried to go into detail why (possibly) are not happy and why they consider game too difficult (that's why I said problem is with Kalandra and at what point jump in difficulty is the biggest so far).

I would really appreciate if I would not have to read about accusations like this. I am trying to be as polite as possible, I admitted that certainly there are things I could do better, I never said game is bad. I really try to avoid fights in this topic.

[Razldrazl]

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