Asking the player to waste 5-10 hours repeating old content every time an interesting sounding build doesn't work is asinine, as is the belief that no respecs somehow make the game more 'hardcore'. It renders that impressive looking skill tree utterly pointless. If you don't have a shitload of time, you use a cookie-cutter build, period. I'm sorry, but that's discouraging experimentation and creativity, not fostering it.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
This downside will be less and less apparent as you progress to the end game, because by then you already have shitload of attack/cast speed and those choppy animations won't be matter anymore.
When you don't want the truth, you will make up your own truth.
Asking the player to waste 5-10 hours repeating old content every time an interesting sounding build doesn't work is asinine, as is the belief that no respecs somehow make the game more 'hardcore'. It renders that impressive looking skill tree utterly pointless. If you don't have a shitload of time, you use a cookie-cutter build, period. I'm sorry, but that's discouraging experimentation and creativity, not fostering it.
5-10 Hours? I played at least 50 hours in breach league only to repeat my own progress with different chars/builds in legacy league.
While the sound of it makes you depressing, for me it's addicting. Sometimes I dunno either about which is the case, either PoE is too damn good or I already addicted to it.
When you don't want the truth, you will make up your own truth.
Tree of Savior's playerbase shot through the roof (like, it practically doubled) when they held an event where you could respec your stats and skills freely (well, daily), with many players saying it was the funnest time they've ever had in the game during that event.
Once that event ended, within a couple weeks its player base plummetted to the point where it was even less than before the event started.
Not that the PoE developers are obligated to care about player base when they're an indie company though (and PoE is pretty successful anyways of course). It's just an interesting story on how much respecs can affect widespread appeal.
If it wasn't for that eerie claustrophobic feeling I get whenever I play this game these days, the lack of resets would probably keep me away anyways. I start up the game after a long hiatus, look at the utterly massive passive tree, play around with a few builds in my head or on the skill planner, but just can't bring myself to click the "Confirm point allocation" button or whatever it's called because I'm paralyzed by fear so I just leave it be and then leave the game for another half year (well, more specifically, I run around a bit before I start getting feelings of actual depression at how SQUISHED everything looks because the camera's zoomed in so damn much and then after that I leave. Dunno if they changed it to let you zoom out more since then but I haven't heard anything about it)
This a thousand times over, far to zoomed in and cannot see enough real estate on my screen, the ugly models dont help but if i could play without the feeling of my face mushed against the windshield I would really enjoy the game, until that happens i will always be out. Its the main visual fun of the genre and when you have such a small visual field its just bleh.
You can now zoom way out and zoom way in. You cannot change the camera angle.
Honestly? The game is free. Give it a try. The graphic updates and model updates are very good. When I see people say graphics suck, I know they haven't touched 3.0. Graphics no longer suck. The entire game has been given a graphic overhaul. New design elements have been added. New mob models in all acts, new mob designs. It it no longer oppressively dark overall as it was years back.
What are you playing?
I play Solo Self-Found (SSF). I've got several builds lined up, pretty much in order I plan to play them:
Lazy Paladin: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/105920
A long-time favorite. Very interested to see how it plays in 3.0. This guy is very tough. A little slower than the others, but also very forgiving of mistakes, like mistakenly opening the door to Argus, wandering in and saying, uhn, what's this?
One of the things I like about each of these builds is the care the crafters took in making their posts, with detailed explanations about why this, allowing you to understand the underlying theorycrafting. And as a SSF player, these are all doable. They are all good at responding to questions about their builds (some of these have builds have close to 900 pages of posts and have been supported and updated by their crafters for years).
I agree @DMKano here. I love the game and enjoy it freely and have a ton of hours logged. However there are two things that separate it from being a great game to hands down amazing, best ARPG on the market.
1 - The ability to respec. I know there is a currency but I wish there was a way to test drive some skills before locking them in. Sometimes skills do not execute the way you want or play the way you want. For new players, I think it can be a major negative that there is very little to respec their character.
2. Inventory. It drives me crazy. The stash system is fine but I feel like I return to town every 5 minutes.
EZ full respecs takes away a TON of replayability for people that put a lot of hours into the game. And there are ways around needing full respecs if you do some research.
In the end their respec system makes a ton of sense and lets people become more attached to their characters.
Chapter 5 was fun and refreshing. Chapters 6-8 have been too similar to what we already have. I was somewhat expecting this, just not to this level. Part of this is because many of the tilesets have already been in the game for the map system. Fighting revamped versions of old bosses is a bit disappointing too.
I haven't seen chapters 9 and 10 yet so hopefully those are a bit better
You pretty much need to multiplayer it up at the highest levels in order to efficiently utilize maps, though. Unless that changed with the Atlas update or something. It's weird in that it's not about difficulty but in that if you aren't sharing/rotating maps, you're only getting a small portion of the exp you'd otherwise be getting per your own map use, for really indirect reasons.
Have they added a way to respec all points as you wish, so that ine can freely experiment with different builds?
hahaha
PoEs best feature is the deep skill tree system.
Its worst feature is that you cannot freely respec to experiment.
This is funny..... why?
I never understood why allowing players to enjoy the best aspect hassle-free is somehow considered "crazy talk" by the playerbase.
How much have you even played the game to say something like that? While the skill tree is indeed amazing and a good feature it is certainly not the best thing in the game. The "best feature" is the deep customization (skill tree, gems, itemization, different game mechanics which you can mix and match).
As for no FREE respecing being a bad feature I have to disagree strongly. As it is now respecing with orbs is in my opinion the way to go. It might seem expensive but it's really not that hard to get regret orbs. For starters you get like 20+ respec points from quests, maybe you'll get a few regret orbs during that time too. After the first week of a league (or pretty much all the time in standard league) regret prices drop to around 1 chaos, paying like 100-120 chaos for a full respec IS NOT THAT EXPENSIVE even if it does seem like it is unless you don't sell anything, don't do chaos recipe and rely only on drops.
If respecing was made free it would ruin the whole game as people would level a build, respec it like 20 times the first 3 days of a league try all the builds they can think of and drop it because they still suck at playing the game since a skill tree without proper gear and gem links/levels is worthless. And the players that can play will drop it 2 weeks in because everyone would have builds that can do all the content and won't be pushed as much to level new builds that cover the weaknesses of their old builds when they can just change the old build freely.
Love the game. Best Lore and background in recent history. For this I can put up with the bits I don't prefer. Just wish that I could get a decent connection. It's been months with hitches and lag making the game unplayable. Had just one recent week where everything worked. Different computers, different internet connections, same problem. Probably out of their hands, most likely an infrastructure issue. Sucks....
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Love the game. Best Lore and background in recent history. For this I can put up with the bits I don't prefer. Just wish that I could get a decent connection. It's been months with hitches and lag making the game unplayable. Had just one recent week where everything worked. Different computers, different internet connections, same problem. Probably out of their hands, most likely an infrastructure issue. Sucks....
Don't worry. I can handle PoE just fine and my latency is avg 30ms(to Frankfurt) and I still have some odd micro lags.
But, overall, it's been rather stable.
I hope in the future GGG will implement feature that allows you to reconnect to your previous session. I find the current implementation is frustrating as it will automatically kick you out of party whenever you disconnected from server.
When you don't want the truth, you will make up your own truth.
I just started to play this game a few days ago and PoE does remind me of Diablo - my childhood. Many things from Diablo were developed in this Game, which is better. One thing I am really impressed by PoE is its perfect Graphic Design. You cannot claim more for a FREE GAME with SUCH EXCELLENT Graphic Design which will satisfy your eyes from the scenery to the skill effects.
Will definitely recommend this to my teammates!
Respecting would be nice. I will agree with people who want that. As games have gotten to where the visuals are better, PoE is a great game that I want to play but can't. So many people love the look of the game and to me it is a depressing world. I play games for fun and I no longer want to look at the world after a couple of hours. I hope this proves great for GGG. I wish I could get the mechanics of the game with the graphics of D3.
Good luck to all who are playing today and this weekend.
And Diablo's not depressing? ...since when?
Even if the overall plot of D3 is meant to be dark and depressing, I actually felt there's so much self-referential humour in Diablo 3's random sub-quest events throughout the game that the game felt like it was a tongue in cheek parody of the typical ARPG dark atmosphere at times. Not that that was necessarily a good thing.
Still, Diablo in general I found to be slightly less dark than Path of Exile if only because human civilization was still in a working state in Diablo. In Path of Exile, the extent of human civilization is all refugee camps (or bandit camps or brutal totalitarian fascist regime army war camps). Which makes sense because you're an exile in exiled lands, but I did find it a good bit more depressing than the Diablo games. There's also a "humans are the real monsters" thing going on in Path of Exile. It was easier to distance myself from the horrors in Diablo 3 because demons will be demons so they're contractually obligated to be horrific assholes, but almost all of the horrible dark things in Path of the Exile are of human origin, which made it hit closer to home.
I actually liked that it was depressing that way, myself, as it made the game and its plot stand out from the Diablo series, but it was still genuinely depressing.
Yes, you're right. But if you like Warhammer or Dark Souls...you'll choose Path of Exile. Diablo wasn't really silly pre D III. Sure, there were easter eggs, but overall it was...grimdark.
Nice catch on differing origin of troubles! Really nice. Overall, Path of Exile is more of a Wild West: Tame the land / survive / do your things afterward, while Diablo's a typical "SAVE / DEFEND THE WORLD" schlock. Sure, it's enjoyable, but still very different than Path.
Diablo's about the world and what you can offer it. It's not really your story. It's Sanctuary / Leah / Deckard / Tyrael / Adria's. Meanwhile, Path of Exile is entirely about you and how you can get even with Dominus / Malachai etc. To use SWTOR lingo:
Diablo III = Jedi Knight Path of Exile = Bounty Hunter(I think that one's the closest) (both are good)
Ehm... I love Warhammer and Dark Souls. Still would not bother with PoE till they implement free respecs. So far D3 for me is the best of the genre.
Why people make excuses and attach weird philosophy to the discussion about quality of life improvements? There is no drawback for implementing free respec. Literally none. Since when more options = worse game?
If it wasn't for that eerie claustrophobic feeling I get whenever I play this game these days, the lack of resets would probably keep me away anyways. I start up the game after a long hiatus, look at the utterly massive passive tree, play around with a few builds in my head or on the skill planner, but just can't bring myself to click the "Confirm point allocation" button or whatever it's called because I'm paralyzed by fear so I just leave it be and then leave the game for another half year (well, more specifically, I run around a bit before I start getting feelings of actual depression at how SQUISHED everything looks because the camera's zoomed in so damn much and then after that I leave. Dunno if they changed it to let you zoom out more since then but I haven't heard anything about it)
This a thousand times over, far to zoomed in and cannot see enough real estate on my screen, the ugly models dont help but if i could play without the feeling of my face mushed against the windshield I would really enjoy the game, until that happens i will always be out. Its the main visual fun of the genre and when you have such a small visual field its just bleh.
You can now zoom way out and zoom way in. You cannot change the camera angle.
Honestly? The game is free. Give it a try. The graphic updates and model updates are very good. When I see people say graphics suck, I know they haven't touched 3.0. Graphics no longer suck. The entire game has been given a graphic overhaul. New design elements have been added. New mob models in all acts, new mob designs. It it no longer oppressively dark overall as it was years back.
What are you playing?
I play Solo Self-Found (SSF). I've got several builds lined up, pretty much in order I plan to play them:
Lazy Paladin: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/105920
A long-time favorite. Very interested to see how it plays in 3.0. This guy is very tough. A little slower than the others, but also very forgiving of mistakes, like mistakenly opening the door to Argus, wandering in and saying, uhn, what's this?
One of the things I like about each of these builds is the care the crafters took in making their posts, with detailed explanations about why this, allowing you to understand the underlying theorycrafting. And as a SSF player, these are all doable. They are all good at responding to questions about their builds (some of these have builds have close to 900 pages of posts and have been supported and updated by their crafters for years).
Cheers!
But following anothers build is like assembling an IKEA shelf, just follow step by step instructions, I feel like I am playing someone elses idea and design.
I like to experiment on my own and come up with my builds organically through trial and error.
To me that makes me feel attached to my character - having the ability to freely respec would only make me more attached to my character.
The game (as currently designed and operated) encourages players to make new characters from scratch, and organically create new builds, rather than keep one character and re-spec. People are hitting max level in a week (or less) and they can generate a mid level character with a totally new design in days (hours). They do allow for limited (free) respec, as well as allowing people to trade for items for full respecs.
The bottom line is that this game is currently built around the concept of having many characters (with different builds if you like) rather than having only a few (that respec as needed). If you need proof of this, simply look at the events calendars... where they have you make new characters for hourly/daily/weekly races.
Eh, I like Diablo III's approach to skill swapping but for some reason I just found the combat in D3....stale. No matter what happened it seemed like the enemies never felt any impact from my skills, and neither my character with theirs. Fights with my monk were just me and my enemy(ies) standing there spamming a couple of skills until the enemy died. No dodging, or blocks, or anything meaningful.
For comparison with a similar combat system I never felt this way when playing Tree of Savior. I can't quite put my finger on it.
Comments
Asking the player to waste 5-10 hours repeating old content every time an interesting sounding build doesn't work is asinine, as is the belief that no respecs somehow make the game more 'hardcore'. It renders that impressive looking skill tree utterly pointless. If you don't have a shitload of time, you use a cookie-cutter build, period. I'm sorry, but that's discouraging experimentation and creativity, not fostering it.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
#IStandWithVic
This downside will be less and less apparent as you progress to the end game, because by then you already have shitload of attack/cast speed and those choppy animations won't be matter anymore.
When you don't want the truth, you will make up your own truth.
While the sound of it makes you depressing, for me it's addicting. Sometimes I dunno either about which is the case, either PoE is too damn good or I already addicted to it.
When you don't want the truth, you will make up your own truth.
Once that event ended, within a couple weeks its player base plummetted to the point where it was even less than before the event started.
Not that the PoE developers are obligated to care about player base when they're an indie company though (and PoE is pretty successful anyways of course). It's just an interesting story on how much respecs can affect widespread appeal.
Which are both fundamental aspects of the genre.
The comparison to ToS is silly in that they are entirely different games with entirely different leveling curves.
Don't push to do to this genre what's happened with the mmo genre. It does not need to be arcadified.
I'm a MUDder. I play MUDs.
Current: Dragonrealms
A man who fears nothing is a man who loves nothing; and if you love nothing, what joy is there in your life?
You can now zoom way out and zoom way in. You cannot change the camera angle.
Honestly? The game is free. Give it a try. The graphic updates and model updates are very good. When I see people say graphics suck, I know they haven't touched 3.0. Graphics no longer suck. The entire game has been given a graphic overhaul. New design elements have been added. New mob models in all acts, new mob designs. It it no longer oppressively dark overall as it was years back.
What are you playing?
I play Solo Self-Found (SSF). I've got several builds lined up, pretty much in order I plan to play them:
Tornado Ranger: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1041989/page/1
Because I love ranged bow classes. First time with this build.
Firestorm Witch: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1460817/page/1
Massive AOE. And skeletons.
Marauder Ice Crash: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1289037/page/1
Because I love staves. No aiming required.
Lazy Paladin: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/105920
A long-time favorite. Very interested to see how it plays in 3.0. This guy is very tough. A little slower than the others, but also very forgiving of mistakes, like mistakenly opening the door to Argus, wandering in and saying, uhn, what's this?
One of the things I like about each of these builds is the care the crafters took in making their posts, with detailed explanations about why this, allowing you to understand the underlying theorycrafting. And as a SSF player, these are all doable. They are all good at responding to questions about their builds (some of these have builds have close to 900 pages of posts and have been supported and updated by their crafters for years).
Cheers!
In the end their respec system makes a ton of sense and lets people become more attached to their characters.
I haven't seen chapters 9 and 10 yet so hopefully those are a bit better
When you don't want the truth, you will make up your own truth.
A man who fears nothing is a man who loves nothing; and if you love nothing, what joy is there in your life?
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
When you don't want the truth, you will make up your own truth.
I dont have to grind the story every damn character I make
Will definitely recommend this to my teammates!
Why people make excuses and attach weird philosophy to the discussion about quality of life improvements? There is no drawback for implementing free respec. Literally none. Since when more options = worse game?
The bottom line is that this game is currently built around the concept of having many characters (with different builds if you like) rather than having only a few (that respec as needed). If you need proof of this, simply look at the events calendars... where they have you make new characters for hourly/daily/weekly races.
For comparison with a similar combat system I never felt this way when playing Tree of Savior. I can't quite put my finger on it.