Is Act 1 Too Hard Now?

Nah

A bunch of Act 1 happens in indoor or dimly lit outdoor areas. In such areas, the wonderful POE graphics design punches you in the face in which everything is a dark/grey/black blob on dark/grey/black tileset.

For example, a lot of people don't repeatedly die to Brutus because he's a challenge. They die because they can't tell what is happening around them, like the environment there has such poor lighting and contrast that the enemy can be RIGHT BESIDE YOU AND HITTING YOU and you won't easily see it.

Oh hey, look POE2 is making the same mistake :)

I introduced someone to PoE and I know they're big brain and enjoy the spreadsheet level of depth in their games. And they're not even new to ARPG.

After we killed Brutus they said they can't see a thing and have no idea what spells are doing graphically.

TBH, I agree. I'm running ashen fields map and even with all the PoE experience on my back I only manage to find the boss by manually hovering my mouse around the screen.

I don't think it's just the difficulty (tbh, I think PoE is quite easy). It's the tediousness and initial starting friction that might be keeping people away.

worst day 0 experience I have ever had. I finished act 1 and logged out. the game is only good at max level when you gain immunity to all the annoying crap. leveling is just a shit sandwich. slows, no runspeed, traps, vines, freezes, stuns, bleeds, the list is never ending. Also doesnt help servers crashing and offline so by the time you get back online and make it to lvl 15 you can watch global chat spam people have hit 50's. going back to warframe and rocket league.

a lot of ppl in this forum forget how its like to be a noob at the game.

poe is a hard game. it was never easy to begin with.

i really dont recommend the game to casuals.

a lot of people shit on d4, but d4 is much more casual friendly, you dont get buttfucked by random level 1-3 mobs. but in poe1 you can die even to hillock or crabspitters all in the first area.

This is standard GGG dumb logic. Here Exiles have this fun league with just the good parts of the zone buffs from Necro league added to Settlers. Proceeds to add mobs and mod combos to the first zones of act 1 that couldn't be killed by a level 3 character even in 15 minutes of kiting. Also now have no interest in PoE2 EA, no big deal I'm sure they won't miss the extra 30$

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exsea wrote:

a lot of ppl in this forum forget how its like to be a noob at the game.

poe is a hard game. it was never easy to begin with.

i really dont recommend the game to casuals.

a lot of people shit on d4, but d4 is much more casual friendly, you dont get buttfucked by random level 1-3 mobs. but in poe1 you can die even to hillock or crabspitters all in the first area.

hoo boy i've had that experience before. i forgot what it's like when you don't know the enemies and their attacks and how to weave around them. lots of new friends i tried to show this game quit early because they got thrashed in acts 1-4, but never died in early game Diablo or Torchlight or Grim Dawn or whatever

maybe someone else mentioned it but Act 1 was "redone" some time back to be "updated" to the modern game, and I remember the post saying they would be doing it to the next 4 acts over time but abandoned that sometime later. In my opinion the only thing updating Act 1 did was increase the time it took to clear it for no reason

Nah.

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Imaginaerum wrote:

hoo boy i've had that experience before. i forgot what it's like when you don't know the enemies and their attacks and how to weave around them. lots of new friends i tried to show this game quit early because they got thrashed in acts 1-4, but never died in early game Diablo or Torchlight or Grim Dawn or whatever

maybe someone else mentioned it but Act 1 was "redone" some time back to be "updated" to the modern game, and I remember the post saying they would be doing it to the next 4 acts over time but abandoned that sometime later. In my opinion the only thing updating Act 1 did was increase the time it took to clear it for no reason

iirc, GGG actually listened to player feedback on how the campaign was too difficult.

GGG reworked the early game to prevent some "shotgunning" effect, such as getting leap slammed by ice lizards repeatedly (perma freeze), which by itself could cause a shotgun effect if multiple lizards leap slammed the player.

there may be other things that GGG eased up on.

But in the recent years, GGG felt that the early game was too easy now and decided that the monsters no longer needed to "play nice". so now we're back to getting large damage spikes from rhoas from hell at early levels, which usually lead to perma stuns.

the "no reason" is because GGG felt that players need to be challenged and should be able to die even at level 1. maybe player feedback may have convinced them to have this way of thinking too, but thats pure speculation.

during a poe2 interview, jon mentioned how he said poe2 was too easy and asked to crank up the difficulty but only to realize the game felt easy only because he had played the game more and had become more skilled in the game so he reverted the change.

i really like him sharing this tid bit as its a good reminder to players and developers on how POE1 really is like. a lot of good players here are very biased and theyre accustomed to playing highly efficient builds which can clear the most difficult encounters in the game. they tend to scoff whenever anyone says anything about the game being too inaccessible because they know that there are a gazillion ways a player can be stronger and some of them really are honestly skilled at the game mechanically.

the frustrating bit is they usually are against making the game any easier for newer/weaker players either by giving player power or by reducing monster difficulty and would even ask to make the game harder. and you know what? GGG listens to them. theres a lot of harder content for top players now. GGG keeps adding more difficult stuff to keep the best players busy.

the thing i find sad is, i know that there are gamers that if they see that theres a lot of content that they know they simply cant gain access to, they will just skip the game. i casually play fighting games and if its on sale i might buy it "YOLO". but i dont play competitively as i know i'd get my ass handed to me. its also why i dont buy fighting games on release.

a lot of my friends who used to play poe quit poe for one reason or another. few of the reasons is they need to farm up really good gear to clear the end game content. its a lot of time they dont have and if theyre not planning to clear end game content, theres no reason for them to keep playing. another is because some of the end game content has such a high difficulty that they simply feel that POE is not meant for them.

all that said, i think act1 being difficult is "good". it culls players early. players have a clear expectation of how the game is going to be and they should be able to quickly identify if they like the game or not.

Its not to hard to ppl who learn. It is to hard for ppl who whats easy reward game.