I have over 5k hours in this game. I realize it is in beta and that there are some planned changes to the way corruption effects drops etc but I just spent a literal month farming formosus to try to get frostbite shackles with LP. Hopefully 2. I realized that was a tall order when I started this grind but after killing that boss at 430 corruption over 50 times I still hadnt dropped it with LP. Quite a few without LP. I have over 100 runes of ascendance but they wont hit boss drops.
Well thank god I dropped one this morning. Its stats were junk compared to the one I had equipped (somewhat expected) and this was going to hurt my performance a bit. That LP thoughā¦one exalted t7 shred chance stat on gloves (which I had also spent quite a bit of time farming that and getting 2 other t5 stats on that I needed, one dumper stat, and rune of creationing it so I had 2 chances at hitting the t7 leaving 2 other stats that would be helpful and one chance at the āno helpā stat.
I was very excited. Hit that t4 julra and got to the end, reluctantly put my items in the eternity cache, and violaā¦over a month of work dumped into the no help stat making that set of frostbite shackles worse than the ones I have with no LP.
It kind of broke my heart again for this game. I love it. All the way to endgame grind. then the lack of attention to the way boss item farming works completely kills it for me. I have too many things in my regular life that make me feel like this. Gaming is supposed to be fulfilling the lack of dopamine hits to my brain, not making me feel like I wasted a month of time to get somewhere in a game just to have wasted it in one second.
I love LE. I wouldnt be here complaining if I didnt, trust me. Just please, get this right in 1.0. Some of us have been here a long time, grinding to the end of a character that hasnt nearly met its potential, and getting frustrated out of that character because the end grind is just too arduous. I cant imagine properly outfitting a character from nothing in a few months during a ācycle/leagueā. Unless min maxing is to be only for those who can play all day everyday?
I personally am not a fan of new characters. I prefer to perfect one then move on to the next.
I have yet in this game to feel like I have maximized a characters potential above 90%. Im not talking about 4LP everything or even that all my exalted items have sealed affixes perfect etc.
Im just not enjoying endgame as much because of this.
This is a problem I have with aRPGs. They mistake rarity through extremely low RNG drop chances for the prestige/excitement/satisfaction of having an item that rare. If the drop is just random, then you could literally go forever farming for it and never see it. Meanwhile someone who got really lucky could find it on their first try.
Now, you might get a brief feeling of being lucky when you randomly drop it, but does it feel special after that? You didnāt really do anything to earn it. Thereās no memory to associate with getting it. It just dropped on run #2371. For non boss drops its even less cool since it just fell out of some random monster you probably didnāt even see before it died in some random echo.
Iād very much prefer it if the super rare/prestigious stuff came from overcoming the toughest challenges in the game. Maybe a special boss, or maybe after a certain threshold of corruption the bosses get some extra mechanics and then drop the cool thing when you beat that harder version. Obviously thatās not as easy as just making the drop chance lower, it takes work to make that extra content. So I understand why it doesnāt happen a lot of the time. But that would be better if it were feasible to develop.
One of idea that crosses my mind is when you put it in jurla dungeon for unique with Lp to become legendary that you have possibility to block or lower the chance on 1 or 2 affixises on exaltet item to appear on you legendary
However, this is not so much about being an ARPG, this is about being a ālive serviceā game.
Simply put, if you want your game to last forever, you cannot allow players to get the ultimate, absolute best gear. Because as soon as they do get this gear, there is nothing left to look for and they are done with the game.
The whole concept is based on creating, then abusing, Fear Of Missing Out.
In the OPās example, I would say the system has worked exactly as intended: it has kept him coming back, again and again and again, and repeat the exact same thing on the very slim hope it might yield a different result. So far, so good, thatās the behaviour the game is trying to induce.
Now, the small difference in LE compared to other live-services is that there is ONLY rng. In most games, when you play for a few hours, you would have āsomethingā. A tiny bit more currency, an infinitesimal increase in HPs or Powerā¦ Something.
Here, it is perfectly possible to play ten hours and end up at the exact same point as when you started (well, you would have more gold and shards, butā¦ yeah.). Thatās what make the RNG factor more obvious and painful than in other games, imo.
I thought that was what seasons were supposed to accomplish? Thereās so much contradiction in the purpose of the various systems, Iām starting to lose track. Either the absurd levels of rng rarity will keep people aroundā¦ or seasons will do that. Because, having both seems a little conflicting ā limited timeframe to acquire impossible-to-acquire itemsā¦ then starting all over again in a couple of weeks.
And, all this time, I thought that quality content and compelling gameplay ā combined with enough class/mastery choices would keep people around.
Personally, I think the only thing that LE needs right now is more endgame activities. Preferably ones that either give different rewards or let us chase the regular rewards via alternate ways.
I think a big part of this ālack of dopamineā is because right now all we do is grind monos, with the occasional trips to dungeons. Or, if youāre a fan of it, doing endless arenas.
This lack of variety leads to some jading, which in turn reduces our dopamine, because we become more and more apathetic over time.
The state of RNG and the appeal of seasons will all be evaluated by us once 1.0 hits. Itās quite likely that many things will change in regards to gear availability.
The state of endgame is normal, right now, for a young game like LE. In fact, it has more endgame than PoE did at launch. Over time, I fully expect LE to implement a few more endgame activities so weāre not forced to do the same thing over and over again. When that happens, itās quite likely that dopamine hits will rise again.
Only to an extent. They then have to go for another build, whether another class or a different build for that class, where that item is no longer the BiS.
Yes, I agree. Iāve always been a defender of lowering the difficulty for the top BiS gear. But itās ultimately a dev choice on how accessible they want stuff to be. Weāll see how it is in 1.0 with trade and CoF.
Yeah. For me this is the big thing that made me put down the game until 1.0. You can make a cool build, but there 's kinda nothing novel to do with it thatās novel once you reach empowered monoliths. At that point youāre just going to be doing the same content for marginal improvements to what is otherwise a complete build.
Iād really like for there to be goals that I could work towards then consider myself done with a character, ending on a high note, rather than just kind of stopping when I get too tired of it.
Yeah, Iām sure many players feel this and Iām sure the devs are aware of it. Iām also sure that they plan to have a lot more endgame activity. It will come with time. I donāt think weāll get any at 1.0 but I expect it will happen soon(ish ).
As I said, LE actually has more endgame at the moment than PoE 1.0 did. New players that start with 1.0 will get a fresh experience with monos/dungeons/arena and will get introduced to future expansions in a timely manner. This affects mostly the players that have been playing EA for a long time.
i always hoped for a Hack and Slay game that becomes more difficult with mechanics rather then only number increases. Sure this will never happen because itās a lot of work but having more complex mobs in lego Fortnite then in modern day Hack and Slay games is somewhat funny and sad.
Yeah, but D2 did this as well & thatās >20 years old and wasnāt a live service game. Though Iām not disagreeing with you, just saying that the concept of ridiculously rare stuff has been around for decades and was in the granddaddy of the genre.
Iām not disagreeing with you, other than to say that D2 didnāt have any top BiS gear that wasnāt achievable in the space of a season by a (relatively) large number of players. By this I mean the grinders and min-maxxers, and Iām including perfect rolls for relevant stats.
I would argue that itās a waste of time no matter what. Itās a game. You gain nothing in your life by getting good loot in a video game. Also, isnāt the entire point of a game to waste time?
You said you have 5000 hours in this game. Imagine the actual skills you could have learned if you put that time into learning something. Exercise, learning to play an instrument, learning a foreign language. I canāt bring myself to dump that much time into games anymore due to that realization. So much time squandered.
Ok Ok. Before you make a bunch of absurd assumptions about my life and what I have accomplished while also playing LE (and many more hours playing other ARPGs over the years) let me just say, what I make at work, my product is the #1 google search in my state in my industry. I have achieved a lot while also playing games. It is possible. I am also a single dad and walk my dog for an hour every single day. So what.
Also, this is not about a waste of time. It is about the lack of satisfaction grinding endgame boss drops.
Please tell me all the great things you have achieved while not playing games as much as me.
You had to know this was going to be my response. You dong.
Take this feeling and extrapolate that to gaming in general. That is where I am at. Itās just my view on things. I have squandered a lot of my time on a lot of things, and I regret a lot of it.
Also, you may be some old fart (me too), but Iāve read articles about the negative aspects of too much gaming. One study recently said the average amount of time spend playing video games by the time someone is 21 now is around 12,000 hours.
I also agree with your point about RNG and drops in this game. I feel the same about most systems in LE. The only deterministic thing to work towards is filling out the skills/passives you plan and that is mostly complete in a day. Everything after that is playing a slot machine and the repetitive nature of the game makes that boring very quickly.
well, I probably got a little bitchy because youāre also right. I have chosen to waste a lot of time in my life too. I have accomplished a lot but I was just looking at what country Iād move to when my house sells and I realized I cant speak any other languages and would probably struggle in most of the places Iād go. Life trajectory could be different.
Its a different world now. And I assume our generation was the last to see a time without such intense screen time. It is the future though. I was happy to watch C.H.I.P.S on a saturday night on a black and white tv in my parents bedroom when I was a kid and afterschool cartoons. Now kids are 1/4 lost to the webā¦soon it will envelop the world and we can evolve to our next form. Flesh blobs.
Iāve been reading about how our eyes, because were always looking so closely at screens, will devolve to not seeing distance sharply. People are now exercising their eyes by looking far away, then closely at something, repeat. Iāve done it. Itāll surprise you how weird it feels to do.
It is indeed the purpose of seasons.
As well.
There is no contradiction: everything is designed with one goal, to keep people coming back. Thatās the business model.
Enough class/mastery choices? Yes, absolutely.
Quality content and compelling gameplay? No, this is what makes people come to the game in the first place. But it has little to do with keeping them around.
Potentially, yes.
Where things stand right now, no, because gold is pretty much useless (the dungeon being more RNG and no guarantee of improvement), and I cannot remember a single instance, even on character-found, where I couldnāt craft what I wanted by lack of shards.
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