Rising awareness about Path of Building unintended negative consequences.

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AllMasterKing wrote:

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LIKE I wanted a car, I got a car but I don't care how it work

The difference between a car and PoE is that car is complicated machine, but real PoE is not. In it's core is actually so simple that I could teach a kid how to play a build without PoB or guide. I agree thou with you that players need to copy to learn. Just the right kind of coping. Organic PoE (no PoB or guide) is not different then following a cooking recipe. Here are your indigence just mix them in the right way. I think sure, there people who don't care about my advice. That's ok. My goal was to let people know that there is an better alternative to play the game the follow guide or PoB link. So that they have a choice. Because right now PoE players don't have a choice. You want to play the game you need to "make a build" or download a PoB. And then what do you do if you want to play a build there is no guide on? Currently there is nothing that can explain you how to do that step by step and make it fun. PoB is limiting. So I want at least people know, analyze the campaign. It teaches you all you need to know about gear, gems and skill tree.

That is a weird thing to say. Did they not decide the better alternative is to follow guides or PoB rather than play the game blind? That is their choice.

Why do people get unduly irritated by metagaming? That is pretty common nowadays.

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Did they not decide the better alternative is to follow guides or PoB rather than play the game blind?

There must be some misunderstanding. I said nothing about playing blind the game. What I say that PoB is the reason the game is overcomplicated for players and the solution is to play the game organically. Meaning no PoB, guide and use GGG's systems put in place to teach you. I know for a fact that using their systems is a better choice. There can not be 2 different ways of learning the game in existence, because you can not follow both of them at once. So what ultimately happens currently, I am convinced after 2 years of playing without PoB that I am not wrong about this, is that PoE players are being told to use PoB and guides to learn the game. This pushed the actual PoE tutorial onto the side (PoE campaign). You are not blind if you simply pay attention and follow the campaign. This is nothing to do with my emotions. I simply sharing my experience so that people who were gaslighted for years, can get inspired for thinking again and start questioning the status quo.

Have to say 4/10. Was fun read.

I politely disagree. I am convinced that GGG's game systems don't teach you shit. Failing by trial and error is a painful and slow way to learn.

You do you though.

Nah, I just don't see how I could go through the breadth of items and options without a tool to do functional calculations on the character. There's no way I go around the trade to buy 30 nearly identical swords to see which one gives me the most damage...

OP you'd strengthen your argument significantly if you further delineated examples of learning from the campaign and why it is superior.

All you have now is conjecture and an unsupported assertion.

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I politely disagree. I am convinced that GGG's game systems don't teach you shit

and yet here I am telling you that I have learned from the campaign. What makes us different is perspective. Depending on how you look at things you may conclude the one thing or another. PoE community culture has evolved around PoB. Therefore most players look at the game from a numbers perspective. That has it's consequences on how people conclude what is right and wrong. We all want to do the right thing. So what kind of perspective do you develop if you learn from the campaign then? If you don't try to explain the game with numbers then how? The answer is simple. It has been right there in front of all of us all the time. You look from Tags perspective. Tags are the building blocks of Path of Exile. It's not just the gems, it's across all the systems. So much so that we could say that the main PoE system is the Tag System. The game is all about analyzing what tags are added to your character and what the tags are made out of. Go login, make a new character. Don't worry just to kill hillock. Each time you put on something onto your character ask yourself the question: "what tag have i just added to my character?". Take note and think about it. What would happen if you track all the tags until act 4? You would have suddenly a long chain of tags both defensive and offensive, from main skill and support skills. That chain of tags is nothing more then the definition of your archetype. I could go on and on. Try to change perspective and you will learn. That's why it is critical to drop PoB with the numbers logic and instead look at tags. Follow the vendor gem options. Did you know the campaign gives you exactly 5 times support gems as a reward? Hm... I am wondering if that is a coincident...

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OP you'd strengthen your argument significantly if you further delineated examples of learning from the campaign and why it is superior.

Guide is coming. I am working on it right now. That is one of the reason why I posted this. To see what other peoples perspectives are. What I can tell you however, is that if you really understand the games system and how to the campaign can helps you, PoB becomes waste of time. This is because you see patterns between all the archetypes. So right now I just think of a skill. Login. Play and win. I have more damage and defenses then any build guide made. Why is that so? very simple. Because if you make a Build in PoB you will stretch your travel points, witch is one of the 6 skill tree areas of the passive tree and when that happen you will have less points to deal with tags. Ignoring tags is the ultimate reason why builds fail. The campaign teaches you the tag-logic. In PoB you need a big brain to remember all the details that a build needs and still i see them fail covering all the tags. Learning how to make a build on your character is way more simple and straight forward. You put on a gem, scale the tags and feel the impact. Step by step. unlike in PoB where you get passives skill tree points like it's an unlimited resource.

Hmm, I appreciate you want people to enjoy the game and not just number crunch, but this is a mix of quasi spiritualist mumbo jumbo. "Just go out and close your eyes and feel your dps.. thats what matters!"

Also, I dont like speaking for the elusive "everyone", but everyone I know started without POB, made terrible failures of builds, nearly quit the game, and finally learned that you need to know how to improve your effective dps and health and the best tools are going to make you enjoy the game more, not less.

At the same time, I agree POB is a terrible, terrible entry bar to playing a "relaxing" video game.

Asmongold kinda nailed it here - TAsmon on the POE Community

I mean you are right OP but we had this discussion years ago. About the time they brought shaper out I used to view using PoB as cheating because it was so easy to make a build that would clear everything if you used it.

Years later though it is built in to the experience fundamentally because of how many requirements a character now has compared to the past. We power creeped characters using third party tools and they met that power creep in the game itself by asking more and more from characters (and occasionally providing more methods too)

Is it bad? Ehhh its more a choice than good or bad. This is gonna sound sad but I now get a good amount of enjoyment from just making builds in PoB its a fascinating puzzle game in its own right.

I do think it would have been better for them to incorporate the tools into the game itself but like all developers with super passionate third party support why would you? Bethesda make millions from modders selling their game for them you take the win for as long as you can do so.

Slightly off-topic:

A bit hard to explain... But imo the availability off too many multiplicative multipliers is what breaks things and makes PoB necessary.

You can only go from a 2M to a 40M dps by having extra multiplicative factors.

That's why some people prefer diminishing returns. When you have diminishing returns in some things there is less disparity in dmg between builds.

Since the disparity is smaller, it's easier to choose what you want to play and build it. In this case, if you're good at making builds then you wouldn't even need pob