What's the problem with the campaign? Everything in the game is repetitive!

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Imaginaerum wrote:

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Mikrotherion wrote:

I'd even say it is much too easy. Perhaps if GGG made the campaign harder people would feel that it is more meaningful.

They did.. Or were in the process of doing so, and (gladly) stopped themselves. They updated Act 1 some time ago and made it quite a lot harder than it used to be. You know what the end result was? Act 1 took longer. The greatness of the game exists beyond the campaign. The campaign shouldn't really exist as more than a tutorial or map-ready-build check, there's no reason for it to be even longer. It's already longer than a ton of games I gladly paid $60 for[/quote]
I know that they said they did. Act 1 is still not hard. Not even on Ruthless.
Look up my characters, I'm no pro, but the campaign is so easy, that it does not even serve as a tutorial, because you can complete it with trash gear and resistances <75 and then get your arse handed to you on a silver platter by a random white monster in a tier 1 map.

Whoever think making campaig more challenging is solution should never talk about anything before checking "history" of this game. In the past they did buff Act 1 and amount of hate they got for it was insane. People hate the campaign. Not just veterans who did it hundreds of times, new people as well. People who join PoE for the first time are welcomed by this garbage and very often they leave before reaching real PoE - maps, because they just get bored. It reminds me of FF14. Great game but with horrible early game experience which is the most important to bring in new players.
You wont believe how many times I've seen someone saying "I finally forced myself to finish campaign and now I know why people love this game". It happens all the time. People need to FORCE themselves to finish the worst part of this game to even experience why PoE is so good.

I have restartitis and typically make 3 or 4 characters per league, and the acts is always the worst part of the game, beyond even the incredible frustration that is grinding specific challenges. Doing campaign once per league is fine, but even with twink gear and the ridiculous leveling builds doing it again for each character beyond the first is a gargantuan slog that has severely put me off experimenting because needing to dump a minimum of 5 hours into doing basically nothing except the most basic set up for a character is horribly frustrating. They should either remove level requirements from gear entirely and let us just mash endgame gear through the acts or allow us to bypass the acts and level another way, the story is fine once every 4 or so months, not playing it 5 or more times just because you wanted to experiment.

campaign is just there to gatekeep the real game

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Aynix wrote:

It happens all the time. People need to FORCE themselves to finish the worst part of this game to even experience why PoE is so good.

100x this. We all know that PoE really shines at its endgame and that the real game begins only after the campaign. And yet devs gate the real game behind a campaign (I don't mind one campaign run per league). Many things could be done to make it a better experience. For one shorten maps and remove gazillion floors in certain areas. You really notice how huge maps are for no apparent reason when you make a twink for yourself with leveling items and 4 Quicksilver flasks, and you just keep running, running and running like you are in some kind of walking simulator.

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esostaks wrote:

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Aynix wrote:

It happens all the time. People need to FORCE themselves to finish the worst part of this game to even experience why PoE is so good.

100x this. We all know that PoE really shines at its endgame and that the real game begins only after the campaign. And yet devs gate the real game behind a campaign.

I think this kind of rhetoric demonstrates how spoiled players are. In most other games the campaign IS THE GAME. PoE endgame is so rich it overshadows the entire 10 acts, but I hate that people thinks this makes it inferior in some way because it's not. It's actually really good compared to other ARPG's and I'll reiterate if people hate it so much they should HATE-LEARN it so they can crush it in 5-6 hours tops. As a community I think there's value in reflecting upon how lucky we are to have all the resources and knowledge to make short order of the campaign if we really want to.

Yeah we are spoiled because we want to get rid of shitty part of the game and play the good part.
Indeed.
I bet campaign is just yet another part of famous GGG startegy "you need bad for something else to feel good". Just like some skills are just utter garbage so other skills, in comparison, can feel good.

If mapping is supposed to be “the real game”, then at the very least people are going to have to stop calling it “endgame”. Can’t really have it both ways. The term is already stretched to absurdity.

regarding thr campaign being harder, i do sort of see where the devs were coming from. i actually agree with a lot of their reasoning, i think when something feels trivial its a lot less engaging and you lose a sense of achievement from having done it. so the reward structure of overcoming challenge breaks down.



i think i get it and i do actually share a lot of those thoughts. i think the problem becomes tho that you set a bar for things, and the longer you leave that bar in place the more that shapes perceptions. the game has been too easy for too long to now go and make something like that hard, it just feels really bad.

if they had never let it get that far in the first place maybe things would be different but some things you just cant put back in the bottle. i did used to make a lot of posts back in the day saying hey, youre adding this crazy power creep, no ones really asking for it and youre kind of not taking care of the integrity of the game, and this is gonna come back and bite you if you try and take it back.


but ultimately power creep is fun, theres a balance there and the game is still here, they walked a difficult line between giving us goodies and actually spoiling us... ultimately the game has been really successful so i think they can sleep well at night either way.






there has been a cost over the years and this is one of the reasons why we need poe2, because its all new bars for everything. im someone who wants a campaign skip in poe1, i wanted it years ago, it would have helped me a lot years ago. its probably too late for me as an individual now because im so jaded with the current campaign its an effort to even play 1 character in a league, but i think its good for other people to protect them from getting to where i already am.

but maybe poe2 with this new focus on being so boss heavy, wanting people to die to bosses, having a very soulslike approach. im gonna play the avocado a bit, maybe that works? maybe that makes levelling through the campaign an actual series of tests of skill and build capability that make it both entertaining and satisfying, not something trivial, and maybe that justifies its necessity?

if they give us campaign skip here, does that pressure them to give us campaign skip in poe2 and they dont want to do that?

people who want campaign skip, how do you feel about that? would you all be happy for them to give us a poe1 alternate levelling method for alt characters in a league that we unlock in endgame this time next year, but not implement it in poe2? personally id be fine with that.

For me, the big problem with the campaign is not even the campaign itself or anything around the lack of endgame rewards, but its that i find playing low level characters insanely boring

Cant equip the gems i want, cant set the interactions i planned, forced to pick a single skill and use it in the most straight-foward possible fashion, even the walk speed mods not being there makes simply walking from point A to B a chore by multiplying the time it takes

Playing low levels characters just sucks... even on D2, theres good reason most people on ladders abused the hell out of exploits that allowed you to complete the story on 15 minutes. Every public game you joined, the immortal question was always: "someone have wps?"

It takes a specific kind of guy to enjoy playing low level characters, most of us just want to skip to the fun part when we can actually make a build and not just pick a leveling skill that is more often than not painfully boring to use and being forced into this archaic playstyle for hours before we get to the fun part. On D2 it was all about just skip that awful stage when we are forced to use stuff like fire bolt and are forced to deal with mana and stamina issues. On poe its about skipping that awful stage when your gems barely interact

I would love if they made every new character after the first be set to level 60 and adjusted the campaign around it, so i woudnt have to suffer playing those first 60 levels of mind-numbing boring playstyle