Path of Exile's End Game is Sweet Torture | New Players vs. The End Game

it is not torture just gqin more damage and kill em or evade to mechanics.

Im a casual veteran. Ive been here on and off since the 3rd season. The game has gone through so many changes...
Back in the beginning, there were acts and 3 difficulties, very much the spiritual succesor to Diablo 2.
Whem thwu added act 4 it was a big deal.
Then they shook thing up and went to a straihjt progression 10 act game. It was amazing the amount of work that went into this free to play game.
I didnt like some of the seasons. I hated the Betrayal season and still hate that mechanic...the interrogate or kill thing is fine, but here i am progressing just fine and boom, assassinated by a former allied NPC that appears while im fighting an already tough unique.
I dont enjoy copying existing builds, and i dont spent hundreds of hours playing. Ive never made it to tier 6 maps with a character that didnt die immediately. Never laid hands on a high end legendary item. And i hate trading.
But its still satisfying to play the canpaign and try out differnt things.
Maybe someday ill find a build and gear that can clear the yellow tier maps. But im okay just casually popping campaign mobs tonrelax after work once in a while

You sums it up well. I can say this game is like life. It puinished you and then you have to learn why. And if you invest enough time and make research you progress ans it's rewarding. You have a plethora of tools available to you if you wish to learn how to use them to progress better. I love it.

gg ez clap

You summed up almost everything i love and hate about the game
I played PoE because i saw it as a great alternative to Diablo, however the constant need to look shit up because i have no clue what kills me or just to get a solid build even after 400 hours is why i lost interest in the game

The difficulty spike is ridiculous and the stats are over-complicated for no apparent reasons other than pointless grind, i beat plenty of Souls-like and im used to hard games such as Dark Souls (obviously) and Nioh yet i cant seem to crack PoE nor do i find it particularly satisfying whenever i make any kind of progress

This is why i see PoE 2's revamp of many mechanics are a second (and last) chance for the game to drag me in after which a failure means im done with the franchise as that would mean the original devs of Diablo (GGG guys) have lost touch with what made them who they are

THIS. I can't explain how much I feel what you're saying. That's literally what keeps tilting me out of the game.

Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. Accurate. I'm at it for 2500 hours and I'm still suffering the "WTFKM" sensation. Now I've at least got an idea. It's not just the resistances. There are about 7 different layers of defenses, all that can make you vulnerable on one way or another. I have no clue how you've been able to make sense of it all without following build guides and watching a billion videos. But Accurate to all of this.

After 4k hours I still don't get why there isn't a system chat saying "killed by X" or something alike

Most gamers for PoE aren't really that good - myself included. Many get further along due to trade - they grind for currency and buy that 6-link etc. Then they follow a guide. You've done well to get that far, but without research, it's hard to get past level 90.

I’m also an “in the middle” player, but I giggled when you said you wondered why you were dying, said your resists are maxed out but then showed a screenshot of your character having -52% (!) chaos resist 😉

The worst feeling of "I can learn it myself" is that, when you hit a wall, and with soem basic googling, you understand that you completely messed up your character, need to build one from scratch or need some heavy resources which are not so easy to find for a new player, to find that many.
It happened to me, and I went to checking guides properly after that.

whats funny is what you have done is what i do every single league and its satisfying (although i imagine less than what you felt) as even WITH all the help i can find u hit the exact same. progression walls you do with them being just slightly higher or me having the knowledge of how to pass some on them. what keeps me coming back is that it gives me an intrest to learn both in the game and outside of it and im still not on the level of true high content which amazes me(maybe im just stupid and with all the guides i read i should be reaching end end gsme but well im not)

Honestly, this is my experience with the game to a T. Build guides always just felt like I was playing someone else's build. I completed the game back in Sanctum with a Sunder Slayer and couldn't get past T3 maps. It really did feel like a sweet kind of torture. Great video.

Omg THaaaank you !!!!! now i can show all my friends this video, when i try to explain this game. :D

Congratulations, I'm probably just a casual, but for me as long as the game is rewarding and fun, then you're getting what you should out of it.

true

Its crazy what you achieved, i played 1500h more or less and i would never been able to progress so far alone you are an endurance monster

This right here is why poe is better than D4.

It actually takes something to progress.

What a video. I been around since closed beta on 2013 if i not mistaken, and bruh, i still dont even know how to make a perfect Betrayal board lol.

And u right, the complexity of PoE is what makes me stay. I remember when I first time play the game, I was imagining the passives skill tree during classes at school lol, just to think on which part of the tree I need to go to improve my char 🤣

My very first character was made entirely using knowledge gained from Diablo 2. I made a zombie necro. She was terrible and still farmed yellow maps all day. No excuses.

I... never had issues learning this game... But in my defense it has been my main game since April 11th 2012, week one of closed beta... Back then all they had was Act 1 and Act 2(But just the town of 2)......

So I learned all of these mechanics slowly and surely over the years, so maybe my case is a bit different.. But it all seems self-explanatory.

Rule 1: Kill things
Rule 2: Kill more things
Rule 3: Kill even more things.

==

Profit.

I've been playing in a similar way since the early years of POE. Was in the beta.

But, I play hardcore. And guess what? I've never been able to reach the endgame.

I will roll characters and inch closer and closer to the endgame until I eventually burn out. Then I walk away from POE for long periods of time, but eventually always come back.

I'm not complaining, it's the way I like to do it. Just reaching the atlas will be a big deal for me, I think. Maybe I can do it before the end of the season.

We are very similar in how we approach the game. I hate feeling like I need an encyclopedic knowledge to even get started, and would rather, almost on principle alone, just figure it out. That always feels way more like overcoming a challenge than having a guide give me step by step how to efficiently subvert the game's systems. The exploration is where all the fun is for me.

"all my resistances were maxed" -> -52% chaos res OMEGALUL. All jokes aside, you have to pick one of two: follow a guide or spend a LOT of hours to comprehend 10 years of game features. Complaining that you're stuck after spending x amount of hours, BUT refusing to research the game is looks weird

Poe is the perfect example where the devs became comfortable on the reliance of 3rd party tools and resources. Poe's endgame is really more tuned towards people who have been with the game for many many years and know all the ins and outs.

And this, you PoE diehards, is why the Diablo series will always be better. Yes, even D3. Because it teaches you how to play the game and doesn't throw needless complexity at you without any explanation or cryptic NPC dialogue. You learn to play, the build progression is far more linear (losing 30% of your resistances just because is bulls**t) and you're far less likely to build a terrible character with no way forward. Sure, you can screw up a build in D2 and have to start over, but you're not very far into the game by the time that happens so if you start over, its not such a loss.

One thing he didn't cover, which I don't blame him for, is the convoluted mess that is PoE's currency system. This is why the Ruthless gold thing was such a huge hit when GGG introduced it as a trial thing recently. Currency and crafting is cool, but the random nature and stupid amount of currency needed to make it work, absolutely sucks and ruins it. It pushes casual players into simply picking up rare and unique drops and trying to brute force their way through the game with very limited success only to have the endgame stomp a mudhole in them and stop progress.

1500 hours in. Love it to the bits! Best game ever! Even tho i dropped it like 2-3 times xD
Great video, feeling of accomplishment is real here. Once you understand how stuff works - you'll start the real progress.
After campaign - you're just mere fraction of what your character can be. And once you craft, level up and finish your character - that's where you feel the joy of how amazing this game is!

Worst game ever under leveled loot always get one shotted currency hard to find crafting is hard ie lack of materials and linking rng is shit

100 hrs is no where near enough, I think 1,500 hours is more like it at the minimum (but I would like more like 5k hours). There is so much, and then they change it on you as soon as you learn it like they did with Harvest. I was just getting to understand some Harvest crafting they they flipped it on it's head, and the only people who knew how to craft where vets that have been around for like 5 years. Let's not talk about the massive imbalances that happen when you try something melee instead of a caster.

20% phys dmg reduction.. braahhhhww u must die a lot LOL!
if i dont cap 90% at the second day of league i get desperated cause i dont like to die a lot..

He's not even at tier 16. How did he touch end game??? Tier 7,lvl 80+ but say he's on end game??? They really look at this guy's content??? If he's lvl 90ish and on Tier 16 maybe. This guy is still too green to teach you anything useful

You need grace and determination Aura's and the revelant nodes that gives 25% mana Reservation. As well as the Major Nodes Sovereignty and Charisma

I must say that my experience was different, yet the same. After many hours of incredibly frustrating gameplay, I discovered the build guides. Then I discovered POE Ninja. All of this completely on my own. Just stumbled upon the information by reading other people's comments and searching on Google. So I followed several guides/builds which got me pretty easily to The Epilogue and maps. FULL SCREECHING STOP! Tier four to five maps were like a brick wall. It was like starting the game all over and trying to kill Hillock with a stick! And that was with having every single node of the skill tree cloned in exacting detail, which is no mean feat in and of itself. So at that point, just what is the progression path? Perfectly rolled gear? Yikes! 😬 That's pure RNG and I sucked in Vegas. Trading? Oh yeah...I can find that perfect armor that the guy/gal on POE Ninja has. But the traders want a freaking MoK for it! I've never even SEEN a mirror drop yet. Much less am I likely to get one at my level. Perfect gear perfectly rolled is either a matter of pure random luck, or so expensive as to be insane. Trust me, there's a reason well heeled players pay botters/farmers for gear or currency. It's a wall that's almost impossible to get past.

If anyone knows of a way to beat the system on this, I am all ears. Otherwise, I can just pretend that Tier 4 maps are the endgame. 😄

I can't wait till u try the main bosses in the game and their user versions. Or even get into crafting.

Basicly get fucked casuals and it's the best

There are just so many defense layers in the game beside armor, evasion, resistance and effective health to consider. Regeneration, life leech and recoupe. There´s damage taken as. There´s plus max resist. There´s endurance charges. There´s dodge and block. There´s spell suppression. There are auras, buffs and curses like blinding nearby enemies. Having meat shields, having taunting minions.
Random advanced mechanics like petrified blood.
There´s movement speed and movement skills. Running fast is really important. Also using potions and rolling them.

Offense might be even worse.

I just had the access to tier 6 maps, I feel so small ಠ_ಠ

I think one of the biggest systems in the game that fails utterly is the currency system.

There are all these components that have varying effects and rarities. It results in a system with a lot of depth sure, but it's utterly confusing.

Why not choose a single token with prices for all the effects based on the current token rarity.

Because ultimately, it's not the builds, or their complexity specifically. It's the inability to create the drops you need, or find them from other players.

The latter if which can be addressed with 3rd party tools. Why should a third party tool be essentially required for efficient advancement?

i almost cry

Couldn't have put it better mate. It's clear they only want a 'hardcore' player base, and I can kinda understand what. They're certainly not greedy in that sense! Everyone can see if they changed a few things they would have much bigger numbers but it's clearly a deliberate decision. They grew up with games in the 90s that didn't explain anything either, and I assume they wear that like some badge of honour. To a certain mind there is certainly an allure to these obtuse systems and mechanics.
The sequel is due soon I wonder if they'll change anything in that regard.
Glad you're enjoying yourself overall though, welcome to maps!

I feel like the game is fighting you at every turn and that just isn't fun. It's one thing to get stuck while doing the campaign, but it's completely something else when you've dumped all your points into defense, everything is maxed out with what you're given and then realize that you're only at T7 maps and the game just refuses to give you a minor hint on what you should do and you still die right and left in the blink of an eye; sometimes more than once in that moment. At this point I just find it to be bad game design and the devs are just clawing at the elite and holding onto them for dear life since they're the only ones that enjoy this after spending so much time on it.
I've played so many MMOs and gotten extremely far, including in ranked content all with my own knowledge I gained over time, things fell into place, it made sense why meta builds were meta, yet in PoE I can't for the life of me understand how players manage to pull 6k hp out of their asses and 5 types of layers of defenses. Games like Elden Ring or Underrail are honestly a cakewalk compared to what PoE asks of you, and I won't sit through 10 hours of some dude that played the game for 10k hours explain to me how I need all these stats that I already have and how it will help me progress. It's EVE Online all over again... you spend hours upon hours of watching guides over and over and these still don't even scratch the surface of what you're actually meant to do, because the game has reached a point where it's just there for people that were present from the beginning.

This past year has been really punishing for casual players. New player issues have always been there, but the recent nerfs to player power while not toning down monster power has left many of us high and dry. Before the nerfs, my typical league ended up with me making it to red maps and killing some Guardians. T16 maps were still very challenging for me. For several leagues this year, I quit after league launch weekend in frustration. Other leagues, I could only make it to yellow maps due to the player power nerf. These nerfs only hurt the casual players. The streamers and no-lifers will always be able to complete all end game content no matter what GGG does to the game.

You mentioned one of the biggest problems in the game. Not knowing how or why you died. It is hard to get better at the game when you don't know what happened. Before I came to POE, I played a ton of Grim Dawn. There are no one shots in the game and you will almost always know why you died. I have also been playing Last Epoch, and when you die there, they have a screen that pops up and tells you what killed you, be it fire damage or poison or whatever. I hope GGG is baking something into POE2 to address that. I have totally quit leagues over the one-shot mechanics. I enjoyed the actual counterplay I was getting in Grim Dawn.

I can relate a lot to what you were explaining.

Anyways i was wondering why you constantly talk about that "don't having time to play thousands of hours" but you choose the most time consuming method by learning EVERYTHING yourself.

I often critiqued the lack of tools which PoE provides INGAME. Especially things like betrayal (immortal syndicate) are just 100% confusing for someone who learns everything by himself.

I heard you wanted to bring your OWN build to endgame. I actually started learning PoE once i started 2 things.

- Playing a lot of DIFFERENT Builds and ascendencies
- Playing SSF

when i reached a threshold with my character which selfbuild i checked PoE Ninja to look at similar characters. Checked their items and skills and taped it all together with my own build.

I highly suggest to dive into some online resources. Once endgame and all the different mechanics started to make sense to me this game went from. It's a good hack and slay to one of my favourite games ever.

(I played Elden Ring and Sekiro completely blind) but like you said fromsoftware gives you the tools to understand (mostly)

cheers.

I feel ya, we all feel ya.

250 hours, try 2500 and you still gonna have questions haha

Poe just a sadist game, no qol, no nothing for anything. So many things can be done in just numbers, but simply want to put them in inventory to kill your inventory space, let alone the stupidest ever Tetris Poe wants to honor the legendary d2. D2 is fine, not as complicated and not as many items, but Poe is not. The only reason to keep it is to make more money from stash tab sales probably.

Its ridiculous that you need a math degree to understand Path. You cant just go in .. have fun and stop playing. you need to understand the ultra complex play system and do Einstein equivalent math to play. There's no real unlimited amount of gameplay. its usually 5 styles and 5 paths. Yes you can go anyway you want but you're never going to get past anything tuff. So someone whos playing for years knows how to speed through and farm endgame you follow their OP build and boom. but at that point did they play and youre just a copy cat? I keep trying to play but when i see my build failing around chapter 4 ... I quit.

Respect

Problem with PoE u need currency to progress. Let's say everyone was SSF n u can't trade for items. A casual will fail or quit as currency jus doesn't drop. So u can't craft u can't currency spam as every chaos/alch could be ur last. So when no ssf a casual jus waits for a drop. If league gives me more divines (exalts before) I play little longer. I go a week not seeing anything I start the playing a different game countdown!