I hate running the acts

Games where you can skip the campaign bore me to death trying to grind up to endgame.

Poe campaign is fun, but i like leveling as melee, which feels really good until about lvl 80-85.

For context i have 19 characters this league and only 2 alive still. Also made 4 gauntlet chars with a 91 and 92 and 2 80 somethings.

Campaign is great imo.

Personally, the campaign itself is not half bad

But playing a low lvl character just sucks

Its the same in D, torchlight, any dungeon crawler... on the first levels, you are stuck on that leveling skill that is extremely straightfoward and makes the experience super monotonous until you can get to the level you can sustain the cool high level skill and start to have fun

Poe is uniq in the way it allows to set complex interactions and mix trigger skills with the usual play. None of that is available on the campaign, maybe blasting the early game with arc feel good for someone new to the game, but for someone who experienced the end-game, its just extremely constricted style of play

Its not even just on dungeon crawlers: On most games where gameplay evolves over the course of the story, most veterans tend to find the initial parts of the game boring. Yeah, maybe that simpler style was cool when you was a first timer and the game as a whole was fresh, but when you are coming with experience with the whole "expanded" gameplay that section of the game where only the most basic options are available just feels terrible

Even on a hack-and-slach it happened to me: When i lost my save on devil may cry 5, replaying the game with only the basic moves and difficultys available made the whole game feel extremely tedious

Its about the journey not the destination.

Watch how mathil plays, he enjoys even the early leveling, he starts using the main idea/skill of his build as soon as he can. He knows what I know... its all the same gameplay just degrees of difference.

The gameplay in act 1-2 is just a couple degree different from the gameplay in maps. The struggle gives meaning to the result. If you start telling yourself that the dopamine fast of leveling a character is the contrast that makes your end game character feel powerful, you can stop viewing it as a chore and start viewing it as progression that actually makes the game more fun.

I too used to hate starting new characters... Now I sometimes do it for fun. Talking about it I kinda want to. I wouldn't get mad if they let us level in Delve or something but I also don't mind if that never happens. D4 leveling (skipping campaign) last season just slammed home how fucking samey end game and leveling feel. Not sure thats a good idea in POE. The contrast might be more important for not feeling like a bland samey mess than anyone wants to admit.

We all do, it wont change.

Cant stand it either.

I understand the first time in the temp league... and thats a big maybe at this point, as of doing it now a handful of times.

At the very least your alts should beable to skip if you already did it during the league. But they would have to enable things like endless delve, or endless heist.... some system that can scale down maps maybe?

Should be a stance they should start walking back like they are with trade automation in their interviews.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

I also don't particularly mind running the campaign multiple times. In fact, I enjoy the feeling of "godliness" that comes from running it a second/third/fourth time with basically the best possible gear and gems for that level and just stomping on everything.

But I don't think its a stupid thought to NOT want to do the campaign over and over again. At this point in the game, I have done the campaign probably 1000x or more. I can understand people being tired of it....its static and unchanging, and probably isn't anyone's reason for playing (or rather REplaying) the game.

I believe that GGG could have come up with another way for secondary characters to level, entirely separate from the mapping system that they would eventually get to at the same lvl 68ish timing. Even the D3 version of secondary character leveling would have actually worked wonders in PoE. They could have repurposed some prophecy lines to be used as a secondary leveling mechanic, adding depth and rounds to the IV and V-round prophecy chains and just having them be a choice during the 2+ time you run a campaign. Any number of ideas could have been implemented.

And those who do like to run the campaign multiple times? Just keep it there.


Personally, I wish the campaign got revamped everytime we get a new expansion. Its a shame that ALL new material is essentially focused on post-campaign and the actual 10 acts have received no real love except for monsters getting buffed. If the campaign mattered so much to GGG that they actively refuse to make a secondary leveling system.....then it at least deserves attention and updating. The quest rewards are still stuck in 1.0 - 2.0 times. Apart from the first quest, Fairgraves' questline is still entirely useless. There's just so much that COULD have been done, but hasn't been.

I think this post hits on a lot of important points...especially the last paragraph.

It seems odd to: On one hand, doggedly require every character to run through the entire storyline before "graduating" to what amounts to the bulk of the game experience; While on the other hand, making absolutely no changes to that storyline for at least a little bit of "sparkly-new" feeling each league.

I am sympathetic toward GGG in their insistence that each player make their way through the storyline 1 time each league, and I definitely support the requirement that every character be levelled up manually without "accelerants". But, regarding passes after the 1st...I think it would be great if there were to be some diversity of options for playing through levels 1-70ish.

Play through the same timeline as your main who progressed through the main role of the storyline as a support character?...who is foiling the nefarious plans of the denizens of Delve? But seriously, Delve does seem like low-hanging fruit as an alternate levelling path that already integrates many of the other mechanics, even if it was just from Part 1, Act 4 onward. Just have the bonus skill points be awarded based on completion of challenges posed by the integrated mechanics, and include access to league content in Delve? The bonus deities are on track for gifting to alts, so why not the primaries?...or just offer those fights via "tunneling to the surface" via underground access at predetermined Delve depths which correspond to the appropriate respective challenge levels for those encounters? Then, at the end, of each Part according to Delve-depth equivalency, offer the appropriate Kitava fight, or an alternative.

The game has a pretty good storyline...But, even a great book has pretty strong limits on how often it can be enjoyably re-read, and books don't even require repetition of complex interactions to move forward. It's hard to imagine any book being good enough to read through hundreds of times...half a dozen, a dozen, or more times per year. Well...maaayyybe if it changed at least a little bit each time, offering something new and surprising to the experience...


PS I don't think anyone is suggesting that any player be forced to skip the storyline with alt characters.

The last time they adjusted the campaign everyone complained. Whenever they made act 1 harder is the last change i remember.

Although there have been adjustments to campaign bosses to make it easier. Act 4 piety doesnt shoot the balls anymore. The ones that made dodging the beam an actual challenge if you didnlt bait them to the wall and pull her away. I think innocence waits longer for the bullet hell phase too. There are probably several subtle changes that most people don't notice.

totally agree with you. I want maps for alts from the start. Or endless ledge or whatever. I do it for one character a league but for alts I do not want to do it again. And for PoE2 they hopefully put this relic of game design to the grave.
There needs to be some time investment for a new character, but forcing them through the campaign with vendor gem restrictions and stuff again is just not elegant. The time investment can be done elsewhere.

Also Act1 is too hard.
and please get out of my face you speedrunners and pro gamers. The difficulty scales backwards. Act 1 is hardest and from Act2 the game gets easier and easier. If the point it to teach you the game is hard, then its not a lesson to learn this early. Because you cant really grind a lot for gear early on. if this is the soulslike decision then okay, but the game isnt really a soulslike. I would rather the game ramps up slowly. Ever since the revamp Hillock is such a monster. Don't really see a QoL improvement there tbh. I think the really good players would not mind act 1 being easier and newbies would also appreciate a little more handholding until they can start farming an area for gear.

Also gem restrictions for classes are a bad decision on a game that wants you to do any spell on any class.
If your reason is to not overwhelm new players - then okay. But if your reason is having themed classes then I don't understand it because classes are themed by the tree already. Why theme them even more with gems.

me to bro me to.............................

Here a suggestion to make leveling alt characters more fun:
Gain 10% movement speed, mana regen and -10 level requirement for gear and gems PER collected Voidstone! This buff only works during campaign and is disabled after killing Kitava or reaching lvl 75.