1.2.0 Improvements to New User Experience

Bartering System need re-work!

With trade channels and currency consolidating/conversion, this system is not user friendly and I know lots of people who are just cannot get into POE because of this "retarded/outdated" bartering system going on (this is what they say/feel)...

Here is a suggestion thats is easy to implement that gets rid of lots of complexities & waste of time (which adds nothing to the game) and very intuitive for new-players...

Bartering System needs some LOVE!
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/877787/page/1

also, this one, I put all my suggestions

POE needs some LOVE!
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/874615

which I put all my thoughts after playing a while...

"

TheAnuhart wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

<...> If people can learn how to play more easily, then the pool of people that you'll eventually be able to play end-game content with will continue to grow and grow.

This is at best wishful thinking.

Sounds good, but when the game relies on a pyramid economy to play end game
<...>

Sort out the pyramid economy, currency sink end game and playground of the rich crafting.

My biggest gripe has partially been addressed, there are crafting recipes now for specific things;
move speed on boots is a powerful starter and it gets incrementally better if you run it again,
the creation of Eternal Orbs gives a second chance when Exalting a piece of gear rolls first-tier garbage,
And there are recipes for specific damage types on white items.


What the system still lacks is the ability to combine recipe values:

That savage 2hander now has pretty good physical damage, but my only option now is to augment it and I don't need +5 to accuracy rating. Can't I use the elemental damage recipe to give it some fire? Sure--if I don't mind losing the existing physical boost!

Can I trade a magic(blue) sword and some skill gems to get a rare(yellow) sword with a guaranteed elemental component related to the color of the gems I used?

And for the love of god, can I PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE get mods on an item that are within 2 tiers of the item's required level (if not actual item level)???

I would totally be for more crafting options.

An argument against improved crafting is often that players shouldn't be able to pick the mods they want, but I don't really see the problem as at the moment players are doing the same except on poexyz

BTW: Just upgraded my gear by selling a nice drop for 5c and buying a boots and armor with +life on it =)

I was never going to craft boots like this with 5c.

"

SoylentJello wrote:

"

TheAnuhart wrote:

"

Chris wrote:

<...> If people can learn how to play more easily, then the pool of people that you'll eventually be able to play end-game content with will continue to grow and grow.

This is at best wishful thinking.

Sounds good, but when the game relies on a pyramid economy to play end game
<...>

Sort out the pyramid economy, currency sink end game and playground of the rich crafting.

My biggest gripe has partially been addressed, there are crafting recipes now for specific things;
move speed on boots is a powerful starter and it gets incrementally better if you run it again,
the creation of Eternal Orbs gives a second chance when Exalting a piece of gear rolls first-tier garbage,
And there are recipes for specific damage types on white items.


What the system still lacks is the ability to combine recipe values:

That savage 2hander now has pretty good physical damage, but my only option now is to augment it and I don't need +5 to accuracy rating. Can't I use the elemental damage recipe to give it some fire? Sure--if I don't mind losing the existing physical boost!

Can I trade a magic(blue) sword and some skill gems to get a rare(yellow) sword with a guaranteed elemental component related to the color of the gems I used?

And for the love of god, can I PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE get mods on an item that are within 2 tiers of the item's required level (if not actual item level)???

You might note the term 'pyramid economy' in my post.
You might also note how I said it can't sustain.
Note also the point about playground of the rich crafting.
And again how that cannot sustain.

Take a look at the line I bolded in your post.
Now if I tell you the drop rate of eternal orbs is somewhere between 1 in 2000 hours and 1 in 5000 hrs of CONSTANT MONSTER SLAYING.

Do you really think the eternal orb did anything positive?

Guys, may I also suggest to consider increasing movement speed early in the game? It feels like you're at 0% move-speed until Cruel where you all of a sudden get boots with +20% MS. Add to that going for the movement speed passives is a huge pain, I really think that would reduce the 'slow and clunky' feeling as well.

the biggest bottleneck for "new" players i feel is really not around lvl 1. its around lvl 30 and up that begin to feel harder and harder. mainly due to gear i know the hardcore elite people simply start over but for those of us who play an hour or 2 a day we don't have that luxury. builds that are suboptimal should of course struggle but should not be downright destroyed in the face of blue mobs.

"

Compared to other Action RPGs, our early melee attack speed is relatively slow. We're currently internally testing a change where early weapons have been rebalanced to be slightly faster, while still doing the same overall damage per second. This is tapered so that higher level weapons are unmodified (by then, the player can have vast amounts of attack speed from items, passive skills and support gems). So far, we've found that this helps combat feel more impactful at low levels. We're still investigating the balance consequences of the change (such as its impact on mana when skills are used more often) and haven't yet decided whether and when we'll deploy it to the live realm.

CoC could make this change very dangerous to end game balance...

I once was new players 9 months before, and honestly i felt terrible for the clunky fucking slow progression of leveling and upgrading items.

Somehow, I still havent figured out yet why I still keep playing this game until now, keep enjoying it and paying supporter pack. I supposed to quit it at the very first time of beginning without any good items and the pretty boring and slow fight and countless death due to stupid and crazy bosses.

Maybe, the thing is, the more I read, learned from the build at forum, the more I watched stream and found out how much interesting this game are, the more I crave for challenge my self, achieving special unique items and gained high reputation as a high lvl char and sink into it more deeply. That maybe the thing or the reason which encourage me to stay as long as now and for sure in the future cos I still have a lot of thing need to find out more in future, a lot of goals that I want to achieve after a long term of gaining experience.

I want to lvl 100 at least before i quit, i think so.

I am thinking about another type of tutorial which is widely used in Japanese RPG:
the players start with very strong power, but it was discarded after the tutorial phase.

So in poe. this can be translated like a flashback:
New chars start with decent gears (40ish? ) and the stage was still in oriath, after a few tutorial actions he/she was surrounded by Dominus legion. A hopeless fight ends by his arrest, then the whole story which we are familiar begins - Different chars could even use different tutorial scene to reflect his background story.

This should be much work to do but appears to be the best solution for me. And of course ppl should be able to choose to skip the part when creating new chars, and for race leagues it is always skipped.

Thank you GGG so much. You know I can be a vocal critic but this has been exactly the kind of thing I have been arguing for and asking for! Thanks for listening to the community! Big HUGS!

Can I suggest even more discussion along these lines, so that rather than making small improvements like attack speed changes to the early game, ways are found to beef up the base combat mechanic itself (i.e. indicators when evasion or critical strike has happened on the character models, improved sound effects upon strikes, consequences for monster dodges, parry mechanics, etc) and more tutorial elements that explain what gems do in-game and what skills they can connect to!

Also, I think it would help new players if the drop rates in Twilight Strand were higher for white and blue items... with some blue items being tweaked in a way as to be able to drop decent stat lines and a few more challenging encounters like Hillock right out the gate. It's not a bad thing either if people die in the first few areas. I doubt that affects new player quit rates if they only die 1-2 times on average. I expect to die in many games that I am new to.

So, basically: higher drop rates of base items for the opening area or two + more risky encounters. (i.e. maybe a very well tweaked and interesting Nemesis rare monster that always appears in strand). The mob sizes and battles will still be so small as to still feel like one on one... but at least they will have a white shield, a white ring, a blue belt and if they are lucky a yellow sword in their hand as they face a Vile Touch/Bringer of Bones rare (who once again has been tweaked to be easier for those areas).

The underlying issue for the new people I talk to is that the beginning of the game has good atmosphere but doesn't feel exciting. The first few areas feel like a grind.