PoE 1 Appreciation thread. Reply with one thing that made you fall in love with it.

I will start.

When I first reached maps back in Betrayal league, I realized only then that I could make a minion duelist build, A melee witch build, a spell-caster marauder or a bow templar.

With that realization and ability to use any skill gems I wanted with any unlimited number of mechanics, support gems, items and ascendancy passives that make builds work when they don't seem like they are supposed to work, I gradually fell hopelessly in love with this absolute masterpiece and build planning for each new league after. The decisions from GGG moving forward were not always agreeable, there were some ups and downs. But at the end of the day, the game at it's core remained the one I love so deeply. I still can't get enough of it, even after playing it for more than 5 years. There has not been many games that I could say the same about.

You beat me to my number one reason, the incredible build diversity. So, I'll take that to the next step: Replayability.

Any number of combinations of skills and classes can lead to character concepts to try out; throw in a wide range of unique items and their special abilities (or just the themes they suggest, like an "All Daresso" build) and you could end up like me, with a dwindling number of character slots, even having bought a substantial number of extras. =^[.]^=

The idea of building my characters to be tankiest as possible where almost nothing can kill me was my way of having fun.

Delve :)

Loved SO spectres, then they're were rocking. And overall minions were viable.

Loved my jugg ag nearly immortal with 26k ES and tonnes of armor.

Many things.

classlessness/build freedom

the game was originally marketed as being classless as starting using a different class just put you on a different side of the tree. you truly had freedom of choice and true build diversity.

if your build was bad, it didnt matter. 50-100k dps was considered a huge lot. "back then". and i loved making janky builds.

It's free-to-play. Just like POE2 will be on full release. So I'll play both.

i m gonna cheat and add one more very big reason why i fell in love with "POE"

the devs and the way they promoted the game to be played forever

they're passionate and they had a vision of making a game that could be played forever.

one of the many ways the encouraged players to play "NOW" is the promise of OP legacy gear. which also highlights how important standard was back in the day.

we were enticed to play now so that we any gear that was deemed VERY POWERFUL was ours to keep and would remain that way even if they had to nerf/rework those uniques in the future.

chris really played into the MTG strategy of players collecting old cards that became more valuable over time.

its also how when they eventually released alt art uniques, this alt art increased in value over the years where now they are worth mirrors.

i remember how down the line i became a proud owner of a pre nerfed void heart. i scoffed internally whenever i saw anyone sell newer versions of void heart in temp leagues as i owned a prenerfed one on standard.

then eventually void heart became unobtainable altogether.

despite voidheart being "useless" today. i still see value in it as i own a part of POE's history

Absurdly complicated character customization.

I love tinkering with a machine, watching it go, then iterating on the design.

The power fantasy and zoom around the time Ascendancy release.

Unfortunately they have been dead set on pulling the game in opposite direction since then but I still manage to squeeze out some fun despite their best efforts to turn everything into ruthless.

Back in open beta and killing stuff in docks with my lightning strike and a monster dropped multistrike gem, so i equipped it and I just lost my mind, it was a whole new game lol.,