Casual gamer play Through!

Hi

Yeah, I know you are thinking oh no, another gamer dad complainer.
Well, no, I am not complaining, I just want to give some actual data and facts. I know POE 2 is for the gamers that have a lot of spare time on their hands, so I just want to give some insight into how I perceive the game.

First of all, I love the game — it’s great!
But still, there are some reasons why this game can never be a big part of my gaming experience.

1. I have used 1 day and 7 hours +/- to reach end game.

2. As a "dad gamer" this would normally take about 5 weeks for me to achieve (I have played a lot more than normal this season).

3. "Alts" — as a result of this, I would have to always find the "perfect" class/build for me on the first try and stick to that.

4. Crafting opens up in the end game. This makes it not part of the game for me. It’s also very complicated, and I don’t have time to try crafting on "unofficial sites" in order to learn it. In the end, it comes into the game too late, with little to no introduction to the casual player.

4. Finding items in game is heavily reliant on "magic find" and this is not obvious to a casual player. Also, trying to balance magic find on items while trying to cap resistances is a no-go for a casual player, at least in my experience. As a result this forces you to trade for items. And in my opinion, if you as a casual gamer have to buy all items in the game to survive, there is no point in playing — just trade.

5. Resistances (especially chaos res) are very hard to get during the campaign, at least in my experience.

6. Campaign is very long. I love campaigns, but it feels like the items of the game are locked behind a very long journey before you can actually survive.

7. Evasion/armor/energy shield — for a new player it is hard to know how much and what you need to survive at each act/level. And all I can say is that according to my experience, ES is the only way to not die a lot... but then again, I am not good at this game.

8. Game understanding — this game gives very little explanation of how and what the impact of game mechanics/requirements are throughout the game. You have to do a lot of web research and watch a lot of YouTube videos to keep up. In my opinion that is kind of gatekeeping the game away from the general masses. Finding ways you slowly introduce mechanics and making people interact with them would help a lot. Or add more explanations on stuff, like showing on items what is a prefix & what is a suffix. The fact that I have to put on advanced mode and hover over the tier of the item to identify this is too hidden. Why not just add “Prefix” above all the prefixes that are grouped together, and “Suffixes” above the suffixes that are grouped together? As a new player I would not have figured this out easily.

Again i do love the game, and i do not want you to change any thing based on my feed back, but i do hope you keep some of this in your mind, for the future.

ah yeah and i know " go play diablo 4 " would be the next comment on this post. but again this is not me "complaining" i am just trying to give my constructive feedback. and if you dont agree. this is perfectly fine.

keep up the good work GGG!

have a great season.

You finished it faster than me. I was not in a rush, but have played POE1 a lot, even if I am slow. I think your playthrough will be typical of a lot of players.

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5. Resistances (especially chaos res) are very hard to get during the campaign, at least in my experience.

I think this is true, that it is harder to get, but I also think it is less important to have them capped in the campaign than in POE1. Chaos res does not seem that essential for the campaign, as with POE1. However I did have an armour piece with +20 chaos res that I swapped in for the act3 temple boss that does chaos damage. That fight probably would of been a lot harder if I did not have it. Also as said, I am going slow, and thus have more access to my gear keeping up with this sort of thing. It is possible for faster playthrough that you are correct, and having access to resistances could be a bit of a limiter. I certainly think that Act 1 did need more access to cold resistance for final boss encounter. In general I found act 1 the toughest before I had some gear. This is similar to Act 1 being one of the tougher areas in POE1. Many other games start easy and build up, where as the POE games seem to of intentionally been made difficult in the early content, then in many respects the game then gets easier.

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7. Evasion/armor/energy shield — for a new player it is hard to know how much and what you need to survive at each act/level. And all I can say is that according to my experience, ES is the only way to not die a lot... but then again, I am not good at this game.

They did do this a bit with POE1, having certain aspects of the game introduced progressively to teach the mechanics, but I agree that they could do it more, and even more so in POE2. As someone who understands the defenses, it did not bother me, I knew I needed a lot of armour, but I see where you are coming from. This is also something that is not well explained in-game in POE1, but at least there is an available wiki description that has been created. POE2 wiki is not yet sufficient to explain many mechanics, and I agree that without any experience, it is hard or impossible to understand, without third party information. I have suggested a glossary of terms as a starting point, but being that the game has some complexity, it probably needs more than that, though it is a starting point. Some of that basic information should be available in game, especially when it has not yet been developed outside, through wiki etc.

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The fact that I have to put on advanced mode and hover over the tier of the item to identify this is too hidden. Why not just add “Prefix” above all the prefixes that are grouped together, and “Suffixes” above the suffixes that are grouped together? As a new player I would not have figured this out easily.

(Edit: It looks like this might be on by default, but it is really hard to see, and you need to know to press alt. I played through the whole game know about prefix and suffix, but did not see this on the LHS. Probably partly because I was looking on the RHS, where it used to be, but largely just because it is Opaque and written in the background. I'm having trouble seeing it even when looking right at it. This is probably okay once you know it is there, but I did not see it at all. Perhaps more tutorial information is needed for this kind of thing, beyond assuming knowledge from the existing game.)

This is a good point. Advanced tool tip settings, another aspect from POE1 that is a source of frustration, but may not of been solved. I was aware of this, and wanted to have it turned on, but did not think to do it until reading your post. To your point, how is someone supposed to learn about that if they don't even know about the setting? I think the reasoning in the past for having this information off, is so as not to overload information. Which is understandable, but often it means players go a long time without learning an important aspect of the game because it is turned off by default. I will add this to my feedback as well, as it is an ongoing annoyance of mine. It is somewhat related to your above point, that these aspects can be learned by doing a lot of research, but are not learned naturally by playing the game.

About crafting, I accidentally saw a video on youtube yesterday by Ghazzy, something like a crafting guide. The video is almost an hour long and it shows how to craft things if you want a specific affixes etc...
I watched maybe half of the video and walked away laughing... Practically for a decent result you need to have knowledge about affix tiers, what can be on an item what can't, tags for affixes, omens, essences and a million other things.
That's the first thing, practically this is the first season and there's already a bunch of other omens and things that just complicate the game more unless you study it like college... And what's next, more seasons, etc... I was hoping that poe2 won't be like poe1 where you need a PhD and two colleges but so far I see the opposite...
Then the currency prices, what Ghazzy used in the video costs a lot and the average player similar craft season can't afford plus the fact that the result is practically despite all the RNG so this makes poe2 a game I might not play in the future...

Like I have quite a bit of time to play so I'm not a "gamer dad" (yet), but I still think this is too much and this is the first season, then what about the next season in 4 months, another xy orbs, omens and I don't know what all? Then eventually it'll be something just like poe1 where you need five colleges and instead of playing you study crafting on xy sites...

Crating in POE is pretty full on. I've played POE1 extensively, but am not extremely knowledgeable on crafting. However, if this game is anything like the first, you do not need an extensive knowledge of crafting to get by, even without trade, sub optimal crafting can still get you what you need most of the time. I think it is a good aspect of the game, where you don't need to master it for it to still work, but for those who really enjoy and are interested by it, there are very deep mechanics.

So far in just playing through the campaign, I think they have made some good choices with the crafting system, that at least fit for this game. No alterations, more exalts and regals, etc. it seems to work, at least in the early game. I'm not sure what it is like at the top end, I only have just made it to maps.

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Thoriorx#6802 wrote:

About crafting, I accidentally saw a video on youtube yesterday by Ghazzy, something like a crafting guide. The video is almost an hour long and it shows how to craft things if you want a specific affixes etc...
I watched maybe half of the video and walked away laughing... .

I agree the crafting system seems extreamly complicated, with no good explantions.

If crafting is supposed to be like this, then i would assume make some quality guidens on how to craft ingame, would be bennefisial for ever one.

If playing poe 1 from day 1 is a prerequisit to crafting, and using websites to find out what and how to craft, alot of playes will not enjoy it.

I my opinion the it is important to intruduse the basics from the start, to ensure easy understanding.

they could create (optional) crafting quests, to help people get into crafting? maby..

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Belegur85#5784 wrote:

I think your playthrough will be typical of a lot of players.

Thank you for the good feedback.

You have some great insights, and since some of the same experiences are in PoE 1, I hope the devs can make improvements based on all our feedback on these topic's.

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If crafting is supposed to be like this, then i would assume make some quality guidens on how to craft ingame, would be bennefisial for ever one.

If playing poe 1 from day 1 is a prerequisit to crafting, and using websites to find out what and how to craft, alot of playes will not enjoy it.

I agree with you, though I think this was never really done for POE1 either. A lot of the information got figured out and collated by the player base, or communication between the players and the Dev's. In some cases, I think they like that there is a level of unknows in the game that people need to figure it out for themselves. I agree though, that in this age of information, that just ends up with websearch research being needed, and I would also prefer if at least the basics were provided in the game.

I think they have made a lot of improvements with the mouse over key words though. Now a lot of information does appear. I don't think it would be too hard for them to make this into an in game guide.

As far as extensive guides, like for crafting, I do not expect that. I think that is part of the game, and often as things get more complex, player may actually become better than the Dev's at knowing some aspects of the game. Where a guide from the developers would actually not be the most accurate information. So long as the basic information of how mechanics work is explained.

You have brought up some cases where it may not be providing enough though. For example, the base defense types, and how they work mechanically. I'm not sure a description of this is in the game. The mouse over option seem to have taken the description a step further than in the first game, which is a good start, but it is still pretty vague.

Again, I think they are tying not to overload on information, but I agree some players would prefer if this information was available to access in the game.

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Thank you for the good feedback.

You have some great insights, and since some of the same experiences are in PoE 1, I hope the devs can make improvements based on all our feedback on these topic's.

Yes, I think we have a fairly similar opinion, I also liked they game but do think there are things that can be improved.

I have also made thread of feedback of my playthrough.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3838459

It is quite long winded, so I would suggest you will have more fun playing the game, than reading it, but I think they are paying attention to the feedback. It looked like there was some good fixes in the last patch. I think they are capable of making a game that is both good and understandable for casual players, as well as deep and highly repayable for long term enjoyment.

Agreed!😁

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Belegur85#5784 wrote:

. I think they are capable of making a game that is both good and understandable for casual players, as well as deep and highly repayable for long term enjoyment.

I was thinking a bit about how they could add good instructions for crafting, and they kind of already have a great template for this with the skill previews in the game.

If they added small videos like the ones they have for skills, but for crafting, i think this would be the easiest way to teach people how crafting works.

then you could just link a video to each slot in the crafting tab for every “crafting item,” and the video would unlock once you get the relevant crafting material… maybe.

the only issue is if you don’t own the crafting tab in the stash.

Yeah I think that idea is a good suggestion. They could have a glossary type section where all of that information and video is available that is possibly linked from tool tips and the key words. I think it is already needed for the keywords. They are good, but only viewable if you have a copy of the thing you want to learn about, which is a bit of a limitation.

They have one in POE1. It may not be as extensive as it should be, but it is there. I think they have created a base of information in the game which they can adapt into a fuller guide.

The problem they have is there is so much information in POE, beyond what a lot of other games have, and they change things very frequently. So anything they change would also require being constantly updated in the in game information, and they have to draw the line somewhere.

They have relied too heavily on third party information to explain things for a long time. They certainly have added some things that are improvements to helping players learn in the early access, but it is far from complete. They are also somewhat relying also on people having a certain amount of knowledge of the original game or other ARPG's, but that is not helpful for an incoming audience that is not from that background. I hope they improve this aspect extensively before the 1.0 launch.

It is a game where constantly learning is a big part of being a player. That is not going to change, but they need the basics to be very clear. Knowing optimal currency strategy is not something they need to convey, but having it very clear what currency functionally does is. There are some things where it becomes a bit more complicated, like vaal orbs, where there are many outcomes, but like you are suggesting, a short video or text paragraph in a glossary would be helpful to show the basics of what things do. A link to the armor equation in game is another example. There is the basic description, then the advanced description. If a super advanced description is needed for something, a glossary could suggest possible sources of information outside of the game, such as an established wiki, but without an extensive official guide, I think there needs to be a strong intermediate source of information in game.

Another example I can give, is I currently don't know exactly how dodge roll and sprit work. I know what they do when I use them, but I don't know the specifics, only have a vague idea of why I am falling over when I run, and what benifit I get when I dodge. Likely I have skipped over a tutorial, but there should be an easy way to look up what they do exactly in-game, and I am not currently seeing one.