**The Only Hope of Casual Players Is...**
" I get your point, but you're oversimplifying the issue. 1️⃣ **"No one is forcing you to copy meta builds."** Sure, but the game’s balance *strongly* pushes players toward them. If off-meta builds struggle with content and make farming inefficient, is it really a choice? 2️⃣ **"I've been playing T16s with a Titan and didn’t spend any Divines."** That’s fine for *completing* maps, but the real issue is **efficiency**. Casuals don’t just want to *survive*—they want to progress. If a meta build clears 5x faster and makes way more currency, the gap becomes massive. 3️⃣ **"You don’t need more than 1-2 Divines to map."** For basic maps, sure. But high-juice farming (Delirium, Breach, Expedition) requires serious investment. If you can’t farm efficiently, you’ll never reach endgame viability. 4️⃣ **"Pinnacle bosses are a gear check."** That’s exactly the issue—most casuals never even get to attempt them. The gap between mapping and bossing is *too* steep, making progression feel hopeless. |
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" + 1 to all the points that were made. I want to extend the OP endgame point: ALL DEATH PENALTY at end game is proportionally worse for casual players. A 10% loss of exp if you only player an hour a day is a disaster. Losing a map, that may have taken you all week to progress to and build, disaster. Losing the bonuses on the map tiles, disaster. For the blaster who plays all day on broken build none of these things feel that bad. For a casual it is completely different level of punishment for any death. Oh, and if you get triggered and go back and die two or three times on the same map tyle... Let's not talk about how that level of exp loss feels to a casual player. This game had 578,000 + players. As more casuals made it to end game, saw the economy and other game mechanics. It has dropped to a low of 95,000 (Jan/29). This game has lost almost 500,000 players since early access began. If they keep cooking in this direction POE 2 will have the same numbers as POE 1 at which point this game will become a meme. They need to fix the Casual players endgame experience for player retention. They need to fix the economy with long term solutions for the same reason. Last edited by Iheals#4730 on Jan 29, 2025, 4:41:09 PM
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" If the hard content was easy, you'd do it and quit and be bored. There'd be nothing left to do. Put another way, there's really no point in farming like a job. The league is going to reset and most people will quit long before that. Divines per hour are pointless if you have everything you need to play the game. Not all content is for everyone. And everyone can try it. But it's not everyone is going to be able to beat the hardest stuff. And that's fine, maybe next league when they have a better build. I do hope they nerf arbiter a bit but it's early access so I don't really care. |
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I mean I'm going to be that person and just point out the fact you haven't even gotten through the entire campaign in Path of Exile 1. I would love to see how much progress you have actually made in this game to be honest. Just looking at the information you are posting about just sounds like you are listening to a bunch of people on Youtube and just listening to click bait titles and misinformation.
You played Path of Exile 1 :Settlers league and no other League. You knew coming into this game that there was going to be league content so complaining that you have 3 months to complete something is a little absurd... Settlers league has been going on for 6 months about to be 7 months, and you haven't even made it to Act 6 yet. Most of your complaints are just empty complaints and or excuses. No one is telling you how to play the game. If you feel obligated to farm certain strategies or play certain builds that is completely on you. As someone who works in IT you know there are plenty of different ways to achieve the same goal. This isn't a post about just get good, it's simply it sounds like you are letting other peoples judgements/opinions destroy your own experience. I have a coworker who is playing this game completely casually and is having no issues dropping items or buying anything off the trade website. He isn't playing anything meta and is just enjoying life and as someone who has beaten all of content in Poe 2 it is awesome to see the PROGRESS he has made. Too many people don't even put in the effort to actually PLAY the game, when just by playing the game you will accumulate wealth. Last edited by Hier_Snipe#2347 on Jan 29, 2025, 5:26:58 PM
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" That’s not casual. If you average 3 hours a day or more including weekends, that’s half of a part time job. Nearly a quarter of your waking hours. It’s so far removed from casual as to be absurd almost. “Casual” can mean different things to different people, but it’s definitely an hour or less per day on the top end. I’m a casual player. Some days I get to play for 1-2 hours, some days I don’t play at all. On average I’m probably around 30 minutes per day, maybe a little bit less. After all I’ve got a family, a job, other interests, you name it. This is one of the games I like to play, currently the main game I’m playing, but not the only one. I’ve played 3 different characters to see how they feel, my furthest progress being the character who just finished normal difficulty and is now in cruel. That’s casual, and plenty of folks likely play less (an hour or two on the weekends only), with maybe an average of 10-15 minutes of play per day across the week. This is not to say that such players expect to clear pinnacle bosses during a league or anything, it’s not to say anything at all really except you need to recalibrate what a casual player looks like. At that amount you’re not a no lifer, but you’re not a casual player either. There is space between those two, everyone who is not one is not automatically the other. |
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Not all games are intended for people THIS casual...
there are plenty of other games out there. i have succesfully played offmeta builds to end game for 10 years investing 6 hours a week in spare time playing. |
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" You seem to be missing some very important things, core things really. 1) It's in early access. In case the "Coming Soon" signs everywhere didn't make it overly obvious, the game isn't complete. It hasn't even been available for play for 3 months, and has never received a balance patch. Yes, balance is all over the place, with some builds being orders of magnitude more powerful than others. But that is not reflective of anything to do with the game's final balance, that instead has everything to do with the fact that it's *not* balanced, admittedly so. The entire point of early access is to allow people to play around with what they have so far, and to participate in the development process. Part of that is their feedback, sure, though "the game isn't balanced" isn't particularly new information. Part of that is through their builds, massively accelerating the testing of the overwhelmingly large number of possible combinations and bringing to light the ones which don't work as intended or fall outside of the intended balance level of the game, both good and bad. 2) The balance level of "meta builds" is not within the intended balance level of the game. In case it wasn't obvious, the intended balance level of the game does not include people one shotting or effectively one shotting pinnacle bosses. The stuff you're chasing because it's the best for "efficiency" is not something that is intended to exist at all, and once the game is balanced better it won't exist, at least not to the degree of overpowered that it does today. Yes, there's a limited number of "meta builds" hitting those peaks of efficiency, but that's because those builds are literally unintended to exist at the power levels they exist today, and are representative of builds in need of not just heavy but astronomical nerfs to bring them to 5% or less of their current power level. So just be aware that once you do get to where you're chasing it, if you keep playing that build after the balance patch, it will literally be destroyed, because it needs to. Part of early access development. 3) Pinnacle Bosses are meant to be, you know, the pinnacle. The pinnacle bosses are that which you work towards all league, or longer if needed. Once people are able to clear them, that's it, there's no greater challenge the game has to present to them. So yeah, they're not something intended for folks to roll over in a week. Someone taking the entire 3 months to get to where they can clear the pinnacle boss is not just ok, it's expected. If you don't make it, well, your character isn't deleted or anything, keep going at it. I'm sure as heck not going to clear a pinnacle boss by the time of the balance patch or "league reset", but I do have a goal for myself of clearing one before the end of EA. Don't expect the game to balance the final challenges it has to offer around *your* particular availability. " I've been having fun playing casually. I cleared the entire campaign's story so far, I'm making progress and more importantly just enjoying the game while playing it, which is after all the entire point of a recreational activity. Seems designed for casuals just fine to me, no reason at all to seek out a different game. |
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" Captain GGG to the rescue! |
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+1 to all
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Op, you have perfectly articulated all my frustrations with this game and why i dont see myself coming back for a while.
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