The absurd irony of this games design

POE markets itself as:
“A game with infinite builds and freedom.”

But in practice:
only a small % of skills are viable
most defenses are traps
most builds are punished without exact knowledge
So the illusion of freedom is high,
the actual freedom is low.

Sure everything is viable with enough divine or time spent. However.... the point of an arpg is to pick a skill you like and play it. In poe its " what cookie cutter league starter can I use to collect currency and get vvoidstones so I can access uber endgame items so I can actualy play a skill I enjoy. 1000 hours later...

The game needs a complete overhaul.... desperately. Its too bloated to carry on this way. Stop adding to it and fix what's broken or better yet complete overhaul.. right now the game is choking on its own power creep and bloat. Limitless possibilities... yeah right. Seems that way but it isnt, you're forced down a very limited path on what appeara to be limitless possibilities

Well, the overarching problem here is that modern POE1 (and POE2) have devolved (some would sadly say EVOLVED) into a currency simulator instead of an ARPG. That means virtually 100% (rounded up from 99.999....%) of wearable endgame item drops are automatically worthless except for the poorest and early of players/builds.

Does a particular league mechanic play into the currency simulator game loop? no? well then said mechanic is automatically ignored 99%+ of the time in trade league (SSF is a different story, and that requires a serious level of masochism).

POE1 (and POE2) are choking on its extreme extrapolation into some timesink grind hellfest with ever diminishing returns and ever more worthless drops. This pattern continues until one asks questions like "is this an ARPG?" or "is this a game?" or "does this game respect my time" (definitely not) and eventually "what am I doing with my life".

This overarching issues supercedes all relatively more minor concerns like extreme defensive layer requirement, horrifically bad game performance optimization ("ya you just need 2025 hardware to run a 2013 game on medium bro"), extreme skill gem imbalance, masses of worthless unique items, etc.

If you PoB enough you can make anything viable. It is just that some skills (especially in the melee section) function a lot like each other and therefore you just take the best numerical one.

Also there are plenty of builds that require little currency investment with which you can viably do endgame with.

Are you going to post variations of the same thread every other day now? https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3898739

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Jradlot21#0486 wrote:

POE markets itself as:
“A game with infinite builds and freedom.”

This is a true statement, as it stands. No where in that statement does it say that all of those builds are good, or viable for end-game farming.

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Jradlot21#0486 wrote:

But in practice:
only a small % of skills are viable

Which is why every league there are balance changes to shuffle the meta.

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Jradlot21#0486 wrote:

most defenses are traps
most builds are punished without exact knowledge

ALL builds are punished without knowledge. Literally no one has ever claimed POE wasnt a knowledge skill check.

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Jradlot21#0486 wrote:

So the illusion of freedom is high,
the actual freedom is low.

Disagree. You're desire to participate in meta/juicing without using a meta build is the barrier to your freedom, not the game.

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Jradlot21#0486 wrote:

Sure everything is viable with enough divine or time spent. However.... the point of an arpg is to pick a skill you like and play it. In poe its " what cookie cutter league starter can I use to collect currency and get vvoidstones so I can access uber endgame items so I can actualy play a skill I enjoy. 1000 hours later...

Sounds like you just arent a fan of the basic premise of the game. It is supposed to be a grind.

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Jradlot21#0486 wrote:

The game needs a complete overhaul.... desperately. Its too bloated to carry on this way. Stop adding to it and fix what's broken or better yet complete overhaul.. right now the game is choking on its own power creep and bloat. Limitless possibilities... yeah right. Seems that way but it isnt, you're forced down a very limited path on what appeara to be limitless possibilities

No, you just need to find a game that fits your playstyle needs better

"Game needs a complete overhaul"

Oh, you mean something like... a second game?

I think GGG agrees and is working on PoE2.

You can't make this up lmao

Sheep follow the herd, there is a whole world out there but if the herd sits in a box the box is all they'll know.

In other words, stop getting trapped in the box because of other people, while there are "FOTM"/meta builds they tend to get nerfed hard, and while the rest of the skills may not be optimal or even particularly good you should be able to do well enough with them with a little effort.

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Jradlot21#0486 wrote:

only a small % of skills are viable

Viable for what, exactly?

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Jradlot21#0486 wrote:

But in practice:
only a small % of skills are viable
most defenses are traps
most builds are punished without exact knowledge
So the illusion of freedom is high,
the actual freedom is low.

In practice, it looks like you haven’t fully picked up all the aspects of the game yet.

The absurd irony of the OG post, lol