General Discussion - Friction is becoming such a boomer thing - Forum

If you want a 'hardcore', complex and not-so-straightforward game, friction is a must.

In my eyes - in a season based ARPG - the most important factor in any league, is new problems to solve. New difficulty to overcome. And maybe new ways to solve old problems. Some people will call all of this "friction" because everything isn't linear, clear or straightforward (or "easy", if you like).

That does NOT mean that all friction is good. Far from. And lack of QoL features often becomes friction over time. PoE is filled to the brim of examples like this. They added ctrl+click everything in iventory to trade window, but won't do it for your stash; why? They refuse to give you direct access to your stash from the map device (like they did with allflames); why? And those are just two of many examples.

When it comes to trading, there is of course also too much friction. There are NO reasons why trade searching/indexing shouldn't be implemented into the game client. And while I think GGG is right to stay away from offline, asynchronous trading, there is no reason why accepting a trade can't be as easy as a LITTLE pop-up telling you you have a trade offer. Pressing this whould let you see the offer, letting you accept or decline, and once accepted, the buyer can just go to your HO and pick up the item.

TLDR: There is good friction and there is bad friction. So you can't say that friction is neither good or bad; it's both, depending on what.

Sometimes, just sometimes, you should really consider adapting to the world, instead of demanding that the world adapts to you.

Posted by
Phrazz
on Jul 13, 2024, 1:06:29 PM

Quote this Post

"
696Gamer wrote:

You can't find the excitement you seek in a game against AI, especially in our era where everything is a keystroke away (from a faq to build or the famous "services").
[...]

What "services" ? Leveling services ? It's your choice to use them, the same way that it's your choice to read build guides : it's not much different than playing a puzzle game and looking up the solution !
(Well, with the difference maybe that you're much more likely to get spoiled in chat for the most common ones, and I could understand not wanting to turn chat off.)

Also, PvP does exist in PoE (except in Ruthless, for some reason).