Does PoE's design successfully trick its players?

Or do you acknowledge the sneaky design and like the game despite it?




GGG sets you up for smooth sailing so you can enjoy your character and have fun. But they're afraid that you'll get bored, so they force you to die every now and then, deliberately. That way, you can't feel like you've finished your character! Clearly you need to work on it some more. Or maybe some enemy takes 100 years to kill, so you have to work on your DPS now!... But then it's back to the smooth sailing again. Back to enjoying yourself. Back to reminding you that, hey, don't worry, look over here! There's still fun to be had, it's not a brick wall, don't be discouraged! Just a friendly reminder that you still need to waste a bunch of time getting little tiny upgrades!! Keep playing our game!! Play our content!!!




Like... we all see through it, right? This surely doesn't trick anyone? The game flow is just so inconsistent. Some white enemies are stronger than bosses. Some bosses are stronger than Shaper, or whoever the current power creep end boss is. Sirius, Ruiner of Computers.




It makes no sense to go through a map and feel like, "Is this really a t16?" And then, randomly, after spending 30 minutes playing maps where your health never moves, a couple of white skeleton archers snipe you from offscreen aggro somehow and one-shot you. Then you return to that location, and have no such problem again, and you're back to hours of smooth sailing gameplay.

Or you encounter some enemy that removes your ability to leech from it. Okay, cool, that was my chosen method to replenish my health, guess I'll go F myself. Hey maybe I should go regeneration instead! Then what? This other enemy stops regeneration. Guess I was supposed to maximize both things all along! OOPS, I have to keep playing, because I haven't mastered my character yet!!!

Like, what purpose do such mechanics serve? Is it FUN to have your chosen build path randomly turned off? Is it engaging or challenging, for the game to decide your chosen skill points will do nothing in a random situation? It's just unnecessary and stupid. It's not even a test of your build strength. It's just an obnoxious obstacle. Like damage reflect. You either arbitrarily pick up methods of negating it, or you avoid the map mod entirely. That's it. So what's the point??? (Play our content!!!)




It's so obvious, all of these tricks and gotchas. Why does this community defend this kind of design?




And with how they've done other sneaky things throughout the years, like ghost nerfing drop rates before eventually admitting it... how do you defend them??? How do you trust them???

Is it just that the crimes don't outweigh the fun of the other moments, I guess???