GAME FEEDBACK

End-game leveling takes way too long. I have over 500 hours played and still haven’t reached level 95. If the goal is to make the game accessible to casual players too, especially since it’s available on PS5 as well—I’d strongly suggest increasing end-game experience or reducing the death penalty so you only lose half a bar instead of so much progress.

Right now, it’s unrealistic for someone to have the time to level multiple characters when it takes this long just to reach max level. It’s honestly ridiculous.

On top of that, the weapon and armor drops in the end game need to be improved. I’ve spent over 100 hours in the end game and haven’t found a single meaningful upgrade or no crafting item for an upgrade, while everything on the trade market costs over 50 Divine Orbs. That just doesn’t make sense.

I also want to point out that it feels like I spend half—if not more—of my playtime managing items and figuring out prices instead of actually playing the game. At times it feels less like an action RPG and more like an item-management simulator.

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Krisemur#8275 wrote:

End-game leveling takes way too long. I have over 500 hours played and still haven’t reached level 95. If the goal is to make the game accessible to casual players too, especially since it’s available on PS5 as well—I’d strongly suggest increasing end-game experience or reducing the death penalty so you only lose half a bar instead of so much progress.

Right now, it’s unrealistic for someone to have the time to level multiple characters when it takes this long just to reach max level. It’s honestly ridiculous.

On top of that, the weapon and armor drops in the end game need to be improved. I’ve spent over 100 hours in the end game and haven’t found a single meaningful upgrade or no crafting item for an upgrade, while everything on the trade market costs over 50 Divine Orbs. That just doesn’t make sense.

I also want to point out that it feels like I spend half—if not more—of my playtime managing items and figuring out prices instead of actually playing the game. At times it feels less like an action RPG and more like an item-management simulator.

Maybe it's not the game, but maybe, just maybe it's you?

I've had 1 char every league so far > lvl90. This league even 3. Only touched the market with my latest char.

Maybe, just maybe stop looking for perfect gear and use what's 80% good.

I get multiple characters 90+ and have leveled at least one (sometimes more) 95+ in SSF HC in every league since 0.1 and I hold a demanding full-time job and basically play this game as a hobby on weeknights when I can find the time (which sometimes I can't), and then usually for a few hours on the weekends - Sunday afternoons and evenings are where the bulk of my playtime sit - but there are also a couple week-long spans where I don't play at all.

4+ months is a long time to fit in the time to get to high levels. You don't have to squish it in to a 2 week period near the beginning of a league. There's even still like a month and a half left in 0.4!

Trade, or "the economy", is not what is holding you back.
An XP penalty is not what is holding you back.
Being a self-proclaimed "casual" is not what is holding you back.

I would wager you're using some sort of temple-meta trade-economy oriented loot-filter while complaining that drops aren't working for you, and even if you're not, it is for certain that you're not fully taking advantage of your drops because there's no way you can play 100 hours in the current league's endgame and not find/craft something good enough to bring a character to 95.

Some honest advice for you, from someone with lots of PoE experience and who wants you to have the best time you can have in this game, don't let other players define success for you.

You will get caught up in chasing their version of success against them - players who have been playing PoE for a decade, and can channel their knowledge into dominating a trade economy, and they will baffle you with the speed of their progress and builds and the most prominent of them will also have more time to play than you do. It's not worth participating in that rat race for almost everyone.

And then you will just feel as you do now - as if it's not just the game's "deck" that's stacked against you, but also maybe that your ignorance of it's configuration is being unfairly weaponized against you by more knowledgeable players, which you're conceptually separating into a "non-casual" (ie. "not like me") category or people who get lucky with tons of divines and can just buy powerful gear. It's not really the case.

I think you're probably on your way to figuring out the 95+ pathway and you're probably being too hard on yourself for not achieving it. Seems like there's just mismatched expectations about how difficult it should be to reach it which are probably being exacerbated by a normal (and relative) lack of experience/knowledge compared to other players who can do it quickly or more efficiently and it's making it feel bad for you.

That's a common thing about this game - it can take you 500hrs to figure something out, but then over the next 100hrs you will repeat it 5+ times with increasing efficiency. And then there'll be something else you see someone with 500 more hours than you achieve that seems impossible - until you do it too. It basically repeats like this over and over. 10 years of PoE lets you see, and learn a lot.

Just remember that it's important to define your own goals, and measure success against your own progress - otherwise you're just going to be miserable. Soon enough you'll come to this forum and read about someone who says they've played 500hrs and is feeling discouraged, and that they think something is impossible or that it needs to be easier, and it will be about something you've accomplished multiple times over just within your last 50hrs, and you'll understand what I mean by all of this lol.

dang i wish i could boost this message to global.

dude's really been making solid posts, even moreso lately.