The best thing about D4 is it finally pushed me to give PoE a honest try, and I'm so happy I did. Hands down, the best arpg in the genre, and it's not even close 😊
Bladefall is like a waterfall, which intuitively can't be considered a projectile, meanwhile toxic rain is a rain of pods, which are intuitively projectiles
Expedition is one of the best league mechanics for SSF players. Most of what you're saying is pretty spot on but it's obvious that you haven't played very much with your end game critiques. GJ getting TT to narrate a little.
All of the critiques on the league mechanics are based on the design and mechanical design. I understand that expedition is good in terms of reward but I don't have much interest in critiquing a mechanic based on how meta it is. Also thanks for compliments on the video :D
If there is one thing I've learned playing PoE watching it expand and evolve it is that most people including many devs in the industry have no idea what makes a fantastic game. People know when something is good or bad in the same way they can know they feel good or feel sick, but knowing the experience is completely separate from diagnosing the cause. Very few understand that games are not about maximizing fun, but rather about engagement and that half the formula for success does include problems, frustration, and losing. In other words not everything that is perceived bad or a problem to someone is actually a flaw. A good example is the notion that looking at external resources and/or following a build guide from the start is a negative to the new player experience, but the truth is it is a basic activity and exercise of the game at all levels even for the most veteran players. In fact finding/making guides is core to PoE's game play loop and longevity. It's an end-user focused game that will be near impossible to fully master and have full expertise in, which makes external resources, guides, and teachers a major part of the game ecosystem. For some people this will repel them and for others its hook.
Thanks for the comment but I unfortunately disagree. If build guides were so paramount, there'd be more in-game integration, no? Build guides would be fine if there was perhaps an in-game search for them but Path of Building is not Path of Exile.
@@Lycan072 I think you've misunderstood the nature of what I'm talking about. I'm not saying the game needs guides to play. I'm saying the game is made for players looking to learn, seek, and solve to a high degree. The whole point is that people can find nuanced solutions and methods that are never going to be apparent at a surface level even for veteran players. That the depth and complexity of the game manifests way more information and ways to accommodate using that information than can be housed in-game or provided by the developers. PoE is the deep end of the pool. No reason to think it be better giving people floaties like they are 3 year olds when that's not the point of the deep end.
The external resources being a negative is absolutely true though. Ive seen it a ton with poe, people dont want to go and download 3rd party programs. Just because "most veterans do it to" doesnt make it a good thing. You can not convince me that ggg cant buy out path of building/make their own and insert it into the game. PoB is essential, it should be 1st party and easily accessed. This doesnt apply for things like crafting calculators or anything, really just pob.
@@cooper5602 PoB is opensource and GGG already hired the original developer ~5 years ago. The reason it will never be integrated into the game is because it would be wildly impractical for all involved. For one because it is opensource it is worked on by the community and updated frequently. If it was bound to the game client then those people couldn't work on it unless they worked for GGG and GGG would have to push patches as game updates through their servers and steam. Another major issue is that many things added to PoB are extrapolated solutions and information from the content when it was current. It's not something GGG should be spoiling to the players as again the whole point of the game play loop is that there are new things to discover. Those discoveries get added to tools and that's why they are necessarily 3rd party.
I think you should play the game a little bit more, when you were speaking of the mana bar's purpose it didn't really connect with me since you don't necessarily have to have the mana bar for that purpose, that's your conception of what the mana bar SHOULD be, but as I stated: it doesn't have to be however you want it to be. You can also take damage on your mana bar and have lifetap for your skills, lifetap also increases your dmg... Not using lifetap nor "mind over matter" BUT using eldrich battery, is also a thing people do (I do it). So it's simpler if you think about it in this way: the game gives you an usual Mana bar and an usual life one, you do as you please with them with the tools provided and combine it to make what you're looking for.
You have some genuinely interesting arguments here. I suppose it depends on how you view it. If we go with death of the author (or developer I suppose) then yeah your arguments make sense. If we don't and go by what the devs are intending then we know that they aren't happy with how the mana bar is in poe currently and instead of fixing it in poe 1 which would be a lot of work, they rather just updated it for poe 2. Overall tho great argumentation.
The reason is because of the tags that are found on the gem themselves. Bladefall has the tags - Critical, Spell, AoE, Physical, Duration. These are the possible vectors you can use to scale the damage of the skill. Toxic Rain has the tags - Attack, AoE, Chaos, Duration, Projectile, Bow. These are the vectors you can use to scale the damage of the skill. Critique is very important but to say that since you see proj on the screen, modifiers that apply to bows should apply to a spell is insane. You make some valid points but don't be purposely obtuse about why something works the way it does.
@cosminpislariu4540 Yes, that is correct. I would have worded the criticism differently now because of how many responses seem to have misunderstood the point but I'm glad at least someone understands
I discovered POE last league, and I have been playing it a lot, and think it's a great game. But here are my biggest critiques as a new player; Numbers - There are no numbers on screen, the damage numbers in your skill tool tip are not correct, there are no visual numbers on the passive skill tree, to show me if a passive improves my build in a specific way, and by how much. This is so big, and this is the reason that POB is necessary to play the game. I bet that everybody and their cat could make a half functional build, if something like POB was in the game. Difficulty - the difficulty in POE is fine, and if POE want to be a hard game, that is no problem with me. But when you higher the difficulty on certain points (after act 1 and act 2), please give people a bigger message. I barely saw it the first time, but I think so many new players will miss this, and don't understand what is happening. Also, after you beat the campaign and the hardest difficulty comes in, this get paired with the modifiers on maps, which I was not prepared for. I think these two things, the highest difficulty kicking in and modifiers, is the cause of a high difficulty spike. I would only like to see a 4th kind of map, a normal map. That you do not have to make magic or rare to get the atlas point, not many maps, just some to let players get used to new difficulty. Resources and currencies / crafting - many problems with maintaining your sockets and links throughout the campaign are already heavily mentioned. But there is another problem in late game for new players. If you want to craft you need resources, but these are scares, which makes engaging in crafting very hard. This problem becomes worse when you understand that these resources are also currencies that you can use to pay for items. This makes it even harder to get in to crafting, because you are also using up your money. I think overall currencies drops could be higher for everyone, to make it easier for people to both engage in the economy and the crafting. Onboarding - Practically does not exist, in practice this game says to you. Good luck finding out our game, we are not going to help you. Don't argue with me about stupid tool tips and stuff, that is no substitute for a tutorial. The only thing that is good is the few pages of info on the help page, but the wiki and slowing finding it out will be the way to go. I'm not asking GGG to explain every aspect, but to give new players some tips around damage and defense (how to scale, and layer) and how to play the game effectively, every new player would appreciate that.
Breach is my favorite mechanic, not only because it pushes the kill lots of stuff, get lots of loot, but also because it was involved in the moment where I truly fell in love with the game. Was running Imperial Gardens during acts, when I got ambushed by rogue exiles using Shockwave totems... three of them. Their totems were crowd controlling me, causing me to burn through my flasks. While kiting away, I saw a breach hand... I had two choices: avoid the hand, avoiding mobs of monsters who might kill me in a potionless state, and deal with the rogues, or trigger the hand and have mobs of monsters to kill and refill my flasks; took the second option, kept my flasks filled throughout the breach, picked off one of the rogues. When the breach closed, I had full flasks, and the two rogues became no problem whatsoever. Like everything else in life, the more you put into it, the more you'll get out of it. I've spent 2400+ hours playing the game, maybe 50 hours of research in the same period, and said research always reaped benefits.
14:00 I think a more accurate critique here is the lack of communication on why resistances are important. A new player is much more likely to add additional health and defenses to a build, not understanding that enemies are balanced around your resistances being capped. Acts 6-10 are painful because this lesson isn't explained in Acts 1-5.
Thats pretty much a problem throughout almost the entire game. It doesn't tell you what's going on half the time...and not in the "figure it out as you go along" kind of way, but in the "wait why the fuck didn't you tell me this" kind of way.
The problem is you don't know what killed you. That's a problem(lack?) of death log. The game doesn't teach you what you did wrong/what you were not prepared for. Lack of feedback leads to frustrating difficulty, not interesting one.
Cool video. Some points of disagreement. You praise Blight for existing outside of blighted maps, but at the same time would prefer expedition to be logbook only. Expeditions main plague is the ability to brick encounters with some stupid modifiers such as: full immunity to damage types, 100% ailment avoidance and a few more slightly less problematic ones. It taking too long is not true in my experience. There's multiple ways to interact with Expedition. You could just slam the explosives on the Runic markers, chests, and avoid remnants mostly and you'll do okay. They are opt in difficulty, with great reward and as your character gets stronger you can start to just spam down the explosives on everything, and probably be able to handle it. Extreme Archeology speeds up this process even further. Expedition takes significantly less time than a blight encounter, and has significantly more decision making than blight. Them both having in-map and their own maps is completely valid imo. Labyrinth traps being tanked by characters with heavy investment to regen is completely fine. It makes the regen feel rewarding. For most characters i wouldnt say the traps pose no threat at all. They'll kill you quite quick without your flask. I'd say the balance between just sprinting through traps using life flask to facetank a few traps and dodging a few other traps is in a good enough place. I do agree that lab can be tedious. with dead ends, golden doors, and very long layouts. It also has distractions in silver keys, random puzzles, doggos and darkshrines. But for an experienced player lab only takes a few minutes. Izaro's moveset is great, but his fight is clunky. With him waiting to leave if a mechanic is spawning, and those mechanics being fairly vague. Essence and metamorph i also slightly disagree with. Essence is a fantastic league to interact with. Quick and simple to understand. The rewards are also simple, but powerful. In endgame they can get a little too powerful maybe, but you're not punished for doing essences in T1 maps. So its again opt in difficulty. Metamorph's assembly i feel is a little awkward. And with it being a thing you do at the end of your map when you collect all the parts, it's easy to forget. The organs they drop are annoying, you never get neat sets, always have a ton of certain parts, and a critical lack of one type. They aren't nice to trade either. And the little bit of magic "oh the metamorph is transforming into the map boss, and monsters in the map, thats cool" is lost in Tane's lab. I feel like a lot of the takes, especially on harvest, bestiary and betrayal are mostly from you being a new player who hasn't interacted with the mechanics enough. But even if so, very interesting and well presented. Was fun to hear your criticisms. Hope you stick around in the PoE community :)
Reflect is a symptom of PoE's complexity. There are more "Reflect" mods than just reflect. Many common modifiers can brick builds, such as "%chance to evade poison/ignite/shock/freeze", "cannot leech", "cannot regen", "hexproof", etc. etc. But for so many options to exist, to scale your build, so must there be a growing pool of negative modifiers. This results in a huge amount of possible interactions, which would be a pain to "balance" around. Other than that, I really enjoyed your video! Oh, and "The Hunt" is called Bestiary :D
Just a tips while you corrupt a maps and it goes unidentify it keeps the original mods that was roll on it before going unidentify and get an innerant bonus of 20% quality added to it so if you take your time checking the mods before corrupting them you can avoid 99% of reflect outcome execpt when the corruption rerrol random mods on it and roll a reflect. With experience over 200 maps corrupted i normaly hit 1 or 2 at most turning reflect so they are lost otherwise 99% keep safe ;)
Another good tip there is that relatively cheap sextants exist that disable reflect damage on the next 3 to 4 maps you run. So you can just put those reflect maps aside and buy a couple of those sextants once a week or so to run the buggers, especially since anything reflect tends to get a massive quantity and rarity bump. Worth it if the map is otherwise amazing. For reference: in Ancestor the reflect sextant goes for 3 chaos and prevents reflect damage on 4 maps. As long as you find a single chaos orb on that map, it paid for itself. In trade just search for "cannot take reflected damage", for SSF you'll have to keep an eye out for that mod and grab it with a compass when it appears to use as appropriate. Alternatively just make a second character with a different damage type and shuttle the maps that are bricked for one to the map pool of the other.
The most "problems" you point out are lack of in-game information, which is why forums/reddit exist and stuff that can be worked around with proper character build and/or atlas tree specialization. And as much as I hate some league mechanics (looking at you essence and lab) the proper build is gonna make it a breeze. You wouldn't expect 1k depth delver that focuses on surviving and killing the few mobs around you to clear 2 screens of legion or doing uber lab in 2 minutes. Or dedicated heister to consistently kill pinnacle bosses. It's where specialized characters come in. And I find this to be part of the fun of PoE. Not every character will do everything. And it should be like this or 80% of people will only play 1 build. For league mechanics that are less popular that just means the few who like it and are willing to specialize will have easier time to make currency with it and buy gear for that build cheaper than the ones that are way more popular.
19:59 Good news, PoE2 is confirmed to have no Labyrinth. Instead, Acts 2, 3, and 4 (of PoE2's 6-Act campaign) will each have some special activity for progressing your Ascendancy.
You're too new to make any demands of the devs, especially when it is clear you don't understand the game even half as well as you should to levy such critiques. Play more, learn more and worry about giving us your opinion less, until it's more informed. You might try starting with actually digging into Heist, as it's clear you've written it off before you've even scratched the surface.
@@Lycan072 I think i can try with adding some exaples instead od our guy Bittler, - toxic rain in the description goes "Fire arrows into the air that rain down around the targeted area, dealing damage to enemies they hit" and "Fires 4 additional Arrows" wich suggests that the amount of projectiles can be counted . while bladefall is more of area of damage, the game propably would have problems with dmg calculations if you are "casting" that many projectiles and to addition i dont think that casting it once would suffice to progress comfortably, in my opinion we have enough lag inducing "builds" - bladefall is a spell beacouse everyone can assume that the blades are conjured. - mirrors info straight from wiki "A Mirror of Kalandra (often refered to as just Mirror) is a currency item that can be used to create a mirrored duplicate of any piece of non-unique equipment, non-corrupted item, or map that is not itself a duplicate." so no, it cant create a perfect copy of any item in the game". - ideas about changing mechanics like bandit bonuses, labs, kitava permanent resistance debuff, late game exp penalty, etc. are fine but it should be dealt in the right way, some of them might be so big that the game will lose its charm and its nature. So leaving them be like there are and focusing on new and good content looks like second best option for GGG and players. Overall, good work, keep going and i wish u best of luck.
@MrMag12 thank you for an giving me an actual argument to chew on, I genuinely appreciate it. I understand what you're saying about toxic rain and bladefall completely. My argument isn't about how it works in that sense, its more about a player's intuition. A player can easily intuit bladefall to be a projectile owing to it's similarity to toxic rain. gems are fantastic. Its just not always intuitive in rare edge cases. I said that about the mirror to explain it as simple as I could to the unaware. All poe players know what a mirror is. Non poe players have zero clue what a mirrored item is lmao.
It doesn't hurt the experience for me and how it's "fixed" in poe2 only "fixes" the mana issue but now literally every build will have every aura it can fit because it consumes spirit instead
To be fair, the reason one of them is affected by projectile supports and the other isn't is because one is a skill that tracks projectiles doing damage in an area of effect while the other is just a big AoE attack like a flame wall or meteor that is VISUALLY represented by projectiles falling from the sky. Bladefall is basically just a big AoE damage effect with the blades being flavour/smoke and mirrors, no actual projectile mechanics are going on or tracked in the game, so any gems modifying projectiles can't apply. Enemies can't evade or block individual blades because according to the game they don't exist, they're either affected by bladefall damage within the bladefall AoE or they aren't. That said, it IS funny that the blades are just window dressing in that skill.
Disclaimer: that's a lot of text. I'm not trying to diss author of offend them, just providing different opinion. For ~70% of things said I'm agree with them. Ok, lets dive into this subjective stream of consciousness. - Bladefall is not a Projectile skill, and has huge difference from other proj skills - default number of projectiles. Can you count them? Will +1 proj really benefit it? I guess no. To simplify this we count it as a single area hit. - Auras is good as it is. If player constantly using a skill, mana will run out sooner or later, so character need a way to sustain it. Mana regeneration is generally based on flat amount rather than % of max, unlike life and ES. So most of PoE builds won't get any benefits from big mana pool. And auras is a way to utilise unused amount of mana. - Rhoas are dangerous only for speedrunners who run there effectively naked. Newbies gonna wear everything they find at this point and have some level of protection, and experienced players can deal with those charges. - Brutus had summons a long time ago, before he was kicked out of his compartment. - Vaal Oversoul has 3 attacks - slam, quake and laser. Same as Merveil. - A lot of builds use Alira bandit choice. Others are outdated, yeah. It's almost a decade - old stuff, obviously it's kinda aged. - "Fetch quests"? What do you mean by that? Most of those don't require you to go off the way, others can be skipped. Thats true for entire campaign. - "Act 3 is uneventful"? It's great in design perspective, with every location have it own stuff to explore. Quite distinct from a bunch of forests. What was your thoughts when you entered Crematorium for the first time? Have you ever tried took around in Lunaris lvl 2? This act is pure horror on first playthrough. (Play with ambiance sound for full immersion) - Act 5 feels much longer than Act 4 personally, just because non-linear progression. - Innocence IS a boss they need to turn down a notch. This fight is long, his damage it incredibly high and bullet hell playstyle is a huge difficulty spike. - Act 6 is a resist check. If player still don't understand importance of resistances it teaches him hard way. - Act 6 and 7 (and all subsequent acts) are practically identical to first half of the game - same locations (just differently colored), same structure etc. And since character power and speed is much higher than 5 acts ago, Act 6 feels much faster than Act 1. - Act 8 tells a bit about chaos resistance, and it's not as hard as Act 6. That's why we can see most of even decently experienced players roll with negative chaos res. - Labyrinth is hard, yeah. It exists for player to think about build he's currently at and evaluate it's performance. If your build struggles on Lab, maybe you doing something wrong? And it's "one wrong move and it's over" is nothing compared to newly re-introduced Sanctum. It has incomparably higher difficulty and mechanicly limits spectre of builds that can run it to few chosen ones, while also being the best source of income in the game. - Enchantments on other hand are quite annoying to get because they are locked behind entire Labyrinth run, but i guess it's the only thing that makes Lab viable in endgame. - Poe is infamous not for unexpected mechanic introducing, but for sheer amount of those, while most of them have couple of layers hidden between wiki pages and impossible to understand in written form. New player is required to spend a lot of time learning those mechanics. It's all just because PoE is a decade - old game that was getting new huge updates four times a year. If Blizzard was able to do that, D3 would be as complex as PoE. But they can't. - Skill tree is given at level 2. - Reflect modifier exists for you to pay attention to map mods. Without it half of PoE builds will be able to run everything, effectively making map mods irrelevant. So reroll those or deal with them in any way you can. - Death penalty is required for huge amount of reasons. Without it any defences will be cut to bare minimum. "We have six portals so we will use all of them", right? - League mecanics are so different and so specific, that every player will have his own favourites. I'm personally don't like Delirium for it's timer - based nature and backtracking, but quite like permanent ones with orbs. Also, Simulacrum is the best encounter in the game. I can't withstand Delve at all. For me it's just same tunnel running over and over again, pretty much without any variation to it. I've managed to play it for two weeks every league, feeling bored every time. - You can't run Delve - only playthrough. You still need fuel for your cart, right? It can't be bought, so player need to get outside, run maps, kill monsters etc. - Heist is so much deeper and wider than Delve that i won't even start discussing it. And it can be played without ever touching maps. - "Essence monsters have absurd amount of health and damage". Pretty much what I've said about Lab - if you can't manage simple Essences, maybe you doing something wrong? - "Hunt" is actually called Bestiary. It's depths lies in added modifiers, just like Essence, not in stats increase. - Every crafting mechanic is useful if you know how to use it. - "Frustraining explosive placing" what? It takes up to ten seconds to place them, much less than running entire map back to collect all the loot in Delirium. Explosives area is clearly shown, it even highlights things that will be blown. Have you even tried it (you don't have your own footage in this video)? - Every mechanic yields best rewards if you specialise in it. Blight as well as others can be rewarding without investments, but it too slow for most profit runners. - In Ritual rewards aren't getting cheaper. You just gain more points. Ritual fights can have a lot going on. For example, dragging Conqueror along with map boss into a spinning icy beam fight is pretty complex IMO. - Betrayal suffers only from lack of decent rewards. Most expensive stuff you get must be sold on TFT of other live trading service. I've spent more than three hours selling T4 Aisling while forced to stay at crafting station doing nothing. - Left option in Betrayal is the worst choice most of the time. - Harvest is soulless corpse. It was great in it's own league with all those plot planning and was decent with random rewards. Now you ether farming yellow crops and selling juice for profit or buying juice and avoiding Harvest at all. - Abyss is used mostly to add monster density to a map. Breach was like this too before GGG nerfed it. In summary, I'm speaking not only from current impressions, but also from experience. PoE is unique game and in current state it's really marvellous. But you missing so much stuff... I recommend you to try more. Make different builds. Engage with different mechanics in different ways. Maybe you'll change your mind about some things you mentioned. Also, keep in mind that most of stuff you complain about is there for a long time as it is, and there's a reason for it. Sometimes it seems like it's a wrong design choice, but GGG went over this thoughts a lot of times and decided to keep it that way. To fully understand it you need to know entire path they went with this concept and obstacles they overcome. And there's a lot of them, believe me.
QOL seems to be the main concern most parts of your criticism lean towards. Don’t get me wrong i completely understand the points you’re making. They’re incredibly constructive and well thought out but throughout the years poe has been slowly tailored to fit the “sweatier” players’ wants and QOL has rarely been prioritized. For example a large portion of the player base hate having to run labs for every new character because the mechanic is simply frustrating for the sake of being frustrating. The devs know this yet it has been the same (more or so) for years now. The point I’m trying to make is that poe1 is in no place for any constructive criticism because it is a mess and a lot of valid criticisms like most of the ones you made feel nit-picky and a lot of vets will feel offended and defend the game to the bone because they have fallen in love with the mess that it is. Ironically its what makes the game so loved and cherished by its community. There’s a reason they plan to keep poe1 even after poe2’s release.
While I enjoyed most of the video I do have some points where our opinions differ. For example, I like expedition a lot and would put forth that if people find the planning and placing of individual charges to be 'tedious' the devs have added the "Extreme Archeology" node in the atlas tree that should fix that 'problem'. Most of the points where we disagree can be summarised by personal preference, I agree with you for the most part on mechanics, but I would also like to remind you that different builds handle different content well... differently. While your build focusses on aoe damage and thus prefers having more mobs on the map to less but tankier mobs, another build may be far more focussed on single target dps and be more suited to farm that content. Again, I enjoyed the video and the production quality was very good! Wishing you the best for next league!
I should have added this in the video but I did test the vast majority of the mechanics in a large variety of builds to limit bias as much as possible. I appreciate the comment and the good faith understanding of my points.
edit: this comment adresses some "agrees/disagrees" and deeper clarifications to what is said in the video, I overall agree and applaud the effort spent on it: The Bandit Quest Choice is actually pretty nice to have with a new character (especially in a new league): - The Bandit Buffs can provide helpful benefits that are at least worth 2 Points early (Mana regen, Movement Speed, Damage Mitigation etc.) - Kill all Bandits -> 2 Skill Points are better at higher lvls (once gaining lvls slows down a lot) and once you get good items to customize your Passive Tree with further at the cost of skill points (Jewels / Cluster Jewels) Lab needs a rework for sure (it's fine to have, but it should only need to be done once with each character to unlock the ascendancy - repeated lab running for enchanting items is still fine though) If you corrupt a rare map and it becomes unidentified, it still retains it's old mods before corruption. You can decide beforehand if the rare maps you corrupt have mods you can run, then corrupt them and find "unidentified" to be perfectly fine, as it grants bonuses to quantity and rarity The "reflect" mod outside of boss mechanics obviously should be removed, it is too universal of a brick mod for too many builds, yes. Modifiers to maps or areas should have reasonable work-arounds possible for a lot of builds or hit them differently hard (like how "less aura effect" especially hurts builds that rely on auras a lot, "no life/mana regeneration" can be worked around with flasks etc.). Heist is something I enjoy a lot, and while I agree that contracts often seem similar and can be tedious (depending on the build running them), you can decide quite a few things on how you approach Heist: - Contracts have different layouts and traps depending on their type, so there are minor differences - Do you want to maximize profit from contracts specifically? Run Deception/Perception for stacked decks and the final room, maybe use Gianna too if possible to get her cheaper reveals for Grand Heist Blueprints. That's minimum effort for decent loot already, needs only 1 rogue well-equipped to be really good. - Do you want to focus on Grand Heist Blueprints for the extra juicy special rewards? There is a way to get enchanted contracts (from a sextant modifier), these contracts add tremendous upsides for minor downsides, one of which is "200% more markers from final target" - a way to quickly gain markers for blueprint revealing - another enchant grants "additional reveals on completing the contract". ;) I actually never got into Delve because I hate using the keyboard shortcuts to use dynamite or flares so much, and it feels like I miss out without using them. I disagree on Essences, I think they are fantastic. The point of an essence monster is not for the monster to be unique, but to be challenging and rewarding depending on their essences (mainly in the late game). More essences = harder/tankier = more essence drops. It is a mechanic that rewards players that have especially strong or resilient characters that can kill them, allowing weaker builds to skip them without interaction. In the early game, they are easy and provide good early crafting materials, and I actually appreciate how uncomplicated they are to interact with, and how immediate and guaranteed the rewards are (unlike with metamorph). Metamorph is fun, but if you hyper-focus on metamorphs, you need a really, REALLY strong build to take them out, and if you don't make sure they are juiced with good rewards (making them harder), they are unfortunately not worth the time imo, even if they are interesting and fun.
I agree its a nice addition for characters. I just wish the mechanics were updated to be more in accordance with current poe. The pantheon system is a good blueprint.
@@Lycan072 I agree, some mechanics are clearly outdated, lab for sure, but also encounters like Torment (Tormented Spirits) and Rogue Exiles (they clearly are lacking and not worth bothering with, even after testing them out). Essences are debatable as well. By the way, any thoughts on current PoE "Trial of the Ancestors" and on Tattoos? :D
@@sagi3933 I was sitting at like a 4/10 for the ancestor mechanic at the start of the season but GGG put in good effort to improve it. An example would be the reduction in the time stunned when hit while attacking a totem. Now id give the mechanic maybe a 7/10. (BTW I'm running off of 5/10 being average, not IGNs weird bullshit) I think tattoos are bloody fantastic. Huge fuckin A for that one.
@lycan064 also you can save a bandit for the reward that one offers to help early and then when you reach maps or endgame you can them finish the quest if wanted and collect your 2 points.. so it is actually more dimensional then it appears at first appearance like most things in poe
Reflect mods on maps are kind of b.s. but your argument of unid maps with that(or any b.s.) mod is actually a good addition to the depth of mapping.. so basically while there are crap mods and you can reroll the map to make it doable you can also run it unid for a 30% quantity boost on that map so if you want to run a map unidentified then thats the risk you take.. also if you use a vaal orb to get a unidentified map then the map has the mods on it when it was vaaled so you can choose to not do mods by vaal orbing maps with mods that you can do.. but on that same topic i also do agree that reflect x( put damage type here) is a mod that is completely crap and creates a fake "hard" map that is unplayable if the reflect mod is of your damage type its not hard it just is happening and you cant outplay it
No, selling items isn't locked behind premium stashes, you can list those items on the forum and they will show on the trading site, you can list them from the regular tabs, your inventory and even equipped gear can be listed, although the currency tags for setting prices can be a headache to learn, it is a fairly easy process to list. On top of this, you have tools that help you list items, such as Acquisition or Procurement (the later still requiring an update due to the new API changes).
Your scathing review of Heist kinda sounded like you didn't experience the full content of it. The other part that sounded crazy was that you shouldn't lose experience on death. All ARPGs have this feature, and getting to max level is supposed to be a huge grind, and dying is supposed to be a huge punishment. But I have to say this is a very thorough critique, nicely done.
This is the one thing (the clicking betrayal left option always) I will say wholeheartedly that I got wrong in the video. I still remain true to my point that betrayal needs a much better tutorial tho lol
Great review overall. One minor thing I disagree is the difficulty of the first act, i.e. Rhoa's in the beginning and Brutus fight. They were buffed a few leagues ago specifically because they were considered too weak. This is supposed to be a hard game, and you are supposed to get good to progress, same as in Elden Ring which you have mentioned. I think dying in the first act is a necessary pain to teach players that some well-telegraphed attacks should be dodged, and that it is more efficient deal with some bosses by exploiting their weaknesses than trying the direct way over and over. To me, Brutus is very similar to Duriel in Diablo 2. If you really know what you are doing, you can fight either head on. However, as a noob, it is far more satisfying to cheese them, such as flame walk vs Duriel or bleed vs Brutus
Disagree with death penalty. Not dying is a skill and should be rewarded. Like hardcore is wayyy to much of a penalty, and softcore is a slap on the wrist. There needs to be an in between, and some leagues acomplish that well like heist or any league with a timer. I disagree about delve, it works well with no investment. I go into it when the sulfite is full and it gives me a break from mapping, but otherwise i map away. Didnt think about the compairsons between metamorph and essence. I should give meta another go and see how its rewards have changed.
While playing the game without looking at extrenal resources is perfectly valid, I feel like you should put some time into research for a video. From the top of my head - Delirium can appear as early as act 5, after the Innocence fight. In fact there even are custom voicelines for -each- campain area should it spawn a delirium mirror. The three bandits [and the resistance penalties] are a carryover from where PoE had only four acts, after which you replayed them at a higher difficulty. Normal, Cruel and Merciless difficulty had each different bandit choices to make in act 2 [and a res penalty from entering a higher difficulty].
I can't say I agree with everything being said here but the video itself was well done imo. The second boss definitely has more than two attacks, but there are two that get used most frequently and I agree that the fight is rather uninteresting. My bigger problems with PoE at the moment is trade not being held exclusively in game (though its way better than tha chat spam days) and the utttler lack of any damage logs. The number of times I have died and have no clue as to what is too damned high for someone that has been playing on and off since the third act was the end game. And I have seen a lot of questions regarding this in the past where players start recording their games just so they can ask what is killing them when they die. I also think Chris Wilson shouldnt be allowed to touch the development of the game and fear thay PoE2 will be awful at release because of him but I guess we will see what the future holds there.
I agree with you on the damage logs point. I should have put that in my video. The number of times I've died and let out an audible "what the fuck" is staggering. I will be making a POE 2 critique when It releases so stay tuned for that. Thanks for the kind words on my video, I appreciate it.
You could make the same argument you made about bladefall for alot of melee skills like smite, lightning strike, and tectonic slam for not having the spell tag even though they do stuff light create lightning bolts out of thin air from just hitting the floor with a weapon, or totem skills not having minion tag. These are all done for balancing issues as it would be an absolute NIGHTMARE to balance them all if they had every single tag you would “intuitively” think they should have.
Watched the whole video, and liked it Though, the essay would really profit from a more distinct structure, at times it felt like a stream of consciousness. I could argue about some points, but it's probably just preference and of no meaning to argue about :)
I'll concede the syndicate one. I was incorrect. The criticism of it lacking any sort of decent tutorial still the worst thing about it and is the reason why misinformation like "pick the left one" is prevelant. But I never said resistance swap is the best. I used it as an example cuz its a very simple example for the power of harvest
and i stand by that. It is what the majority of players will probably interact with in any meaningful way without speccing into it on the tree. Not the BEST, but the most used for something genuinely impactful while being relatively cheap
the bandit system btw: this could be a good idea but they dropped the ball with balance by making 2 points more powerful than the other options. that should be a criticism. more choice based rewards could have been a good direction to take the game. also it seems you no criticisms for the horrid gem switching scenario. maybe the degenerate follow a build guide gameplay is just so ingrained into the average poe player that they never feel the need to switch anything but for other players this discourages creativity and discourages trying new gems and dif skills. socket colors and gems being tied to equipment is HORRIBLE and is the #1 worst aspect of the game for me.
23 seconds in and already something untrue... "awakened versions of the skills"... that dont exist.. not worth the watch... also, meta and builds doesnt change over night... there was maybe 3 cases in over 10 years this game has been available, where devs changed something on the fly, instead of in a big patch note every 3-4 months. - calling vitality regen "powerful" is the biggest stretch of that word ive ever seen... on most builds it barely compares to a flask affix "regenerate 3% of life per second while active"... couple points on passive tree are stronger than this entire aura. - for the point on 28th minute, if you corrupt a map and it becomes unidentified, it RETAINS all the mods it had before, simply granting you unidentified status, which is i belive 20% increased quantity.
Act:s are not too hard. Almost too easy. When I did push trough them and entered maps, my 1. character was total mess and I can't do maps. (because only 6 tries.. you can brute force act:s, because there's not trying limit). Mud flat is a good wake-up for new players, this game is not "day picnic". But this is not hard game, just little bit of thinking and planning ahead makes this game pretty easy. (well... till you get into maps and true endgame, last bosses).
ohhh come on, just dodge the fcking roa xd no need to tone them down xd if you split the resistance reduction it makes it smoother overall, if you already cry that act 6 is hard because of 30% reduction, then have fun starting maps with -60% ;)
First of all I enjoyed your view and opinion given on the game. But it is pretty obvious that you have a quite shallow level of experience with the game. Nice try, but imo this lift of a "thorough critique" is too heavy.
Reflect exists for one purpuse - READ YOUR MAP MODS. Even if the endgoal of most builds is to zoom zoom through one juiced map after another, the devs want you to have a habit of at least glacing for a few seconds at what you're running up against. If you choose to do a unid map, you also agree to the risk it's a reflect map.
Great points. I love the one about the falling daggers. Glad to see you interacting with other creators. I bet you'll be on EFAP one day. That skill tree reminds me of FF10, a game I got to the last boss of before quitting entirely. That trading stuff needs to be integrated into the game. I may not play these types of games, but your videos about them are great. "It's a veritable work of art, mate!" - Merchant
wtf. only a day or two to beat the campaign of a league and you say this like it's a good thing? life is short. this is one of the worst parts of the game. i quit paying 4 years ago because i was sick of going through the campaign. people have lives. it feels like poe players dont get it. no wonder poe1 even when d4 fails miserably to retain player count cannot capitalize and draw in new players. a lot of elements are poorly designed here
You critique the most benign little nonsense and forgo the cancer that is crafting, looting and a thousand and 1 league mechanics combining the two former. I also hate the zoomy gameplay the game is tuned to, eliminating any sort of tactics and smart play.
If it wasnt for PoE i would not be interested in ARPGs anymore. The fact that it exists is a godsend. Is it overwhelming at first? Sure. Does it matter? No. Just play. Die play some more. Experiment with the gems, gets overwhelmed by the skill tree and just have FUN messing around fucking up and rebuilding and learning. The game is so incredibly rich with content and deep with customization that almost any build can get to maps, but its gonna take a little more though to get bosses down. I am really sad with the state of Diablo and have been playing it for nearly 30 years. The true soul of D2 was passed to PoE. PoE2 is even coming next year. This is how far behind Diablo is in terms of system and content.
