New PoE player, lvl82, 200hrs, losing interest in endgame

[Venustas]

I appreciated the acts, I think they were very well done. I am looking forward to 4,5 and 6, as well as the other classes. I'm only level 82, but I feel like I'm level 190, and I've been dealing with endgame for about two weeks now and it's boring. Also, if it wasn't for PoE2 content creators, I'd have not understood how 95% of the Atlas endgame even worked.

I think PoE2 would've benefited from just stopping the "progression," after you finished act 3 on Cruel. Just have people finish the story twice, and then most players would've gravitated towards making new characters until they've gone through all the classes in a month or two. When you're ready to introduce Act 4 with 2 more classes. Instead you implemented a meh system (Atlas endgame, with very little guidance) and it's burning people out.

In regards to the Atlas endgame though, I'd honestly prefer a 3rd difficulty and just spot-farm the beautiful zones or bosses that were created in the acts instead of dealing with this "mapping," gameplay.

Instead... I gotta hop on the trade website to get good precursors, to then get good waystones, to then get shat on by a boss because me moving at 45% movement speed means the boss can adjust their trajectory in air and then one shot me? No problem for those rocking energy shields, but some of us thought life/armor, or life/evasion, or life/armor/evasion would be comparable. I guess it's comparable in the sense of hunting fish as a Bald Eagle or as a Hummingbird.

I went from playing about 6ish-8ish hours a day to basically 20 minutes because it's really lame to be rocking through a map, and then die abruptly. It's not as bad as in Diablo 4 when you'd just be one-shot by some stray projectile off-screen lol, but unfortunately... It's not just the time sank into the map, but the time and effort beforehand setting it all up that is wasted as well.

The trials are ridiculous. No offense, I know designing things is hard work, but whatever developer or team was involved in making these trials should be suspended without pay for a few months. The first two trials for the first two sets of ascendancy points are a cakewalk, and then the "difficulty," spikes dramatically. Aside from that... Do the people involved in designing the trials really think the playerbase wants to trudge through 30+ minutes of a system that gives you debuffs every step of the way, for RNG/mostly worthless loot rewards...? I'm level 82 and I don't even wanna do the trials for my last set of ascendancy points: it's so boring, tedious and unfulfilling. But it's also because mercenary is super buggy on the keyboard+mouse, and life, armor and/or evasion are disappointing.

Rare find is important, but only practical on a few builds, or with people that are in guilds who want to turn their character into a +rarity machine while their other buddies rock actual builds. Magic Find also apparently effects the orbs you find as well, which is wrong imho. The "crafting," items or "currencies," should be impacted by the difficulty and level of content, not by one's rarity find or magic find or whatever you wanna call it.

Then it's really weird because you have this massive passive tree that looks incredibly intricate and full of possibilities. I love theory-crafting, I've made tons of amazing builds in tons of games that others took months/years to figure out. I think there's a good amount of people out there in the same boat. It feels awesome. The whole reason I bought this game was because I saw a picture of the passive tree and was like, "Oh yeah, let me cook in this." Yet somehow, even with how large this passive tree is, if you wanna get anything meaningful accomplished without raising your heart rate, then you're rocking the same 1-4 builds... COMBINED. Not even 1-4 builds per class. I'd call that a massive failure. If you don't care about T15 endgame content, then this doesn't apply. You can still have a great time through normal and cruel with whatever build you wanna pursue, but if you actually wanna "finish," all of the game, or get to that point where you're controlling the trade market or better yet don't need it, then just roll monk or sorcerer and play the same 1-2 builds, rock energy shield, or get your water ready to start sweating your palms up with whatever other class you chose with the 1 build that "kinda works," for endgame. Out of a passive tree that's bigger than Rhode Island.

- The kicker is that there's 6 more classes coming. If I'm getting burned out playing one class, and loot is tedious to craft or come by so I can't even experiment with my ideas on my own to see if it's viable, to then try another class... Then why am I going to trudge through another 11 classes? Actually 23 if you count them as subclasses/ascendancies. Especially when there's going to be 6 acts, which needs to be repeated... To then trudge through a boring atlas endgame? An atlas endgame that's apparently shared between all the characters in your account..

I'm also really tired of playing mercenary and having over 75% attack speed and 200% reload speed, and my character can never fire the crossbow consistently. Sometimes I'll shoot at a steady rate that seems on par with the 2ish attacks per second with a .2s reload speed; and then, with no debuffs and full mana, my character takes 7 seconds to contemplate their digital existence before firing again. To then wait another 4 seconds to fire again... What? Feels like I'm wasting my divs on jewels for attack speed and reload speed when it doesn't make the experience ANY better than if I just ignored those stats to begin with. Time, energy and digital currency down the toilet... Super cool to navigate around being screwed in reality, and now I have to navigate getting screwed in a video game.

It's just no fun to grind for a few hours and not get what you're grinding for... Not even close to what you're grinding for.

I don't know why the developers of this genre can't quite figure it out over 20-30 years. Yes things should be rare, yes it should take time and work, but we're not all 13 year old spoiled brats with no lives that can spend 16 hours a day acting like Chinese/Korean e-farmers. It'd be nice to show something worthwhile; as in an upgrade, or even the ability to accurately upgrade an item, not some RNG that could make something worse and now you're in an even worse position.

I don't know. Maybe this genre just isn't for me anymore. I don't understand why I can't just find an item with 4-5 out of the 6-7 modifiers I want; and try to make those 1-2 mods I don't like into ones I do like. Diablo 4 kind of did it, but they still made it ridiculous RNG; and this game doesn't even offer that. Every modifier is at risk here. You can't even upgrade the items into higher tiers for better modifiers, so you're just... Constantly farming and farming, and this is just ONE class. Out of an assumed 24...? Good Lord the amount of time, effort, patience, diligence and energy that's going to take.

So after all is said and done, and the game's released in 2025 or 2026, and the 6 acts are out with all 12 classes... All I'm going to do is play the 6 acts twice, with like five classes, and then stop playing the game entirely. Which is fine cause you got the money, you deserve it as I think it's still a good game, so for $30 I got what it's worth. It's unfortunately disappointing that it doesn't seem to matter what developer is making this genre of game, they all fall into the same traps.

[=.VaRtaZiaN.=]

All the points are very valid. But its hilarious that you are ranting after spending 200 hours on a game you paid $30 for in early access.. Yes there are issues. But most of what was said can be fixed / tweaked, and GGG are the type of devs to do exactly that. You won't get 200 hours out of most games nowadays and this is just EA.

[Baked Potato]

Originally posted by thestile:

This genre kind of has an unfair expectation when it comes to holding someone's interest.
Keeping player interest for several hundred, to thousands of hours, is pretty darn hard to do.

Most devs just don't have to worry about this. Hehe

I know it's meant to be a long-term gear/level grind... but still

Market trade helped people getting hook on poe1 too, they were mapping to find THAT incredible currency drop that will make them rich...

The game is suppose to evolve every new league. It'll always change by the fact they will introduce new mechanics each time.

I'm pretty sure they will tweak mapping, if peoples are already doing t15-t16 maps. Or they will simply nerf those builds that made it easy to reach.

[gachi is manly]

This game will be supported for many years to come. What we've got now for endgame is basically just a barebones skeleton. It's nice to have that at least, so we can help them shape the end game moving forward. There's already some questionable design choices that will likely be rectified by overwhelmingly negative feedback on certain elements.

It's better that they learn the pain points regarding end game now before they keep adding more onto this skeletal foundation that will eventually become a more robust end game.

[Xetelian]

Dude you sucked up all the dopamine this game could give you in 200 in early access?

A lot of the criticisms are fair enough but from perspective of someone who BOUGHT a free game to play early

The economy changes with time, The market and costs are a you thing, I just played it with some friends self found because I plan to put time aside when its out to play again

[Snooze Juicer]

this guy. "ive binged something too much and now ive run out of things to do"

[cushy77]

News flash: it's pre release and you're trying to beat a dead horse that was never even born with a half a stick. You have dopamine addiction and need a new fix. Enjoy.

[Empukris]

The citadel end game is really sucks, you can explore dozen upon dozen of tower without even meeting a single one. Even if you did you can accidentally brick the whole grind by some one shot mechanics that your barely even see. On a game where every single boss can one shot you unless you have some meta gear of 10k effective HP like MoM build. This whole end game is design for people with no life or huge guild only.

The crafting is the worst part of it. The only elements of it are omens which for whatever reason the drop rate is locked behind RNG upon RNG. The rest of the games are fine but the end games are really terrible.

[Streylok]

then go play another game theres literally thousands of games out there but you choose to make a redundant post instead, adding to block list

[RawMeatDiet]

> No problem for those rocking energy shields

Yes, you must go ES in most cases. Life and armour suck.

[PSL God]

Originally posted by Thanous:

I lost interest not long after running maps and needing to buy everything from trade, where even the crappy items start at 1 ex and a decent one not even great starts at 1 divine in 130 hours never saw 1 divine drop. So if you have to buy all your gear whats the point in running maps? I like the feel of the game, thats it.

this is my biggest issue with the game rnight now. I hope they fix the divine drop rate because I'm getting close to that number with no drops.

[saito2288]

Originally posted by thawn4444:

Originally posted by saito2288:

Yeah there is FOR SURE something wrong with the merc crossbow moving and shooting. I posted about it on the website. I'm lvl 83 in t 13 maps and it is definitely sad with how absolutely crappy armor is. Most casual (and even more hardcore gamers that don't pay attention) don't even know how bad a spot merc is in compared to all other classes, even warrior. At least warriors get some damage reduction and can block. I LOVE the combos you can do with merc and just how engaging and satisfying things feel but I have been having less and less fun with how most other classes, weapons, and gear are so much more optimized. Clearly I know i don't have to play a cross bow and use a merc and go into the northern side of the passives but why TF should I have to!? I want to use crossbows and feel like getting armor with evasion is useful.

spreading out defense into both evasion and armour has always been bad 99% of the time, it was in the first game, so it should be no surprise it is here as well.

you need to pick one and go all in on the one you pick, otherwise you will never be able to scale.

:exalted:

Right I understand what your saying but that is exactly the point lol. GGG literally designed the merc to go armor and evasion hybrid and as you said it's BAD. So GGG VERY bad design choice. It'mostly just because how bad armor is as a stat itself but until they fix it making a hybrid design choice is horrible.

[MP]

Originally posted by SeiKz:

i have almost many hours and im starting to hate the game,.......... im using the same itens that i bought at lvl 70, ........, i feel like crafting is not worth ......... it's better to use ex to buy what you need.......

You just eliminated all progression that comes naturally and skipped a big portion with just buying things.
Play SSF and enjoy the game was meant to be played and you won't burn out that fast.
That is a self made YOU problem and you don't want to accept it.

[TeknoBug]

There's not really an endgame yet, they will add more acts (I think 4-6) with official release or next phase of EA or something.