Returning player from POE2 - Why i'm choosing LE (for now)

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Granted POE2 is in EA, i did enjoy POE2 a great deal. i enjoyed playing mace which was seen by most as the weakest playstyle in the game. I actually felt the mace gameplay was awesome and MOSTLY i felt it was balanced. I do recognize that there are a lot of things still bad against mace, and mace becomes absolutely shit tier once you compare it with “almost everything else”. i still enjoyed it.

but why am i coming back to LE? one thing i realized from my time in POE2 is GGG is sitting on a goldmine that they created. but the issue is i think they will take the gold and steer the game in a direction i dont like.

i’ve played POE1 for over a decade, but there are 2 major factors that LE/EHG does way better.
Which is giving players options/respecting our time more.

Why do I say this? POE has a complex and powerful crafting system. A lot of POE fans would cheerfully flaunt the complexity it has and the potential power players can get from wielding it. but the sad reality is crafting currency drops are SHIT. literal shit. i finished the entire campaign recently and i got like what? 20-40 alterations? WTF am i supposed to do with “just” 20-40 alterations. it takes sometimes hundreds just to get a good combo. i played 10 years and no mirrors dropped. ZERO. so when do i actually craft?

heres the neat part! i dont. most players dont craft. the best way of getting upgrades is just to trade. LE does things differently. i get TONS of crafting materials. i can even shatter stuff to get more. CRAFTING is not inaccessible. everyone can craft and sometimes it amazes me how i start crafting VERY EARLY in the game in LE.

this also alludes to another feature, which is item progression. since players are able to craft somewhat reliably and frequently, players tend to be able to have a smoother campaign experience. lacking resist in one area? you have tons of ways to add resistance. you have a lot of options!

That reminds me of another thing. I HATE relying on trade, in any diablo like, trade will simply become better all the time. SSF is the “silliest” feature in all diablo likes. I say that simply because SSF is just a badge of honour, just there to legitimize a players claims that “i didnt trade with anyone”. back before SSF existed and the internet was in its early days, many played solo. we were all SSF… We didnt need the tag, and even with the tag you gain no benefit from it.

EHG gave us COF. you want to SSF? now you have a real solid reason to SSF. SSF and COF go very well hand in hand.

So now i’ve given the appetizer, here’s the real main dish.

EHG respects “the old way”. wtf is the old way? Permanence. Standard league, Eternal realm, Legacy cycle. GGG kicked things off with temp leagues. Blizz followed suit with temp realms. I know that temp leagues are a primary way for modern diablo likes to survive. The promise of a fresh economy and competition/challenges can keep players coming back.

i am/was a poe1 standard andy. everything i did was for the benefit of my standard league characters. i HATED going into temp leagues refarming everything but i knew that that was the best way to bring power to my main account with out farming mirrors worth of goods. also some of the items simply never make it to the core game, making these temp league items extra valuable.

I was so used to begrudgingly delve in then one day EHG said. hey guys, for our cycles, you guys get to enjoy it on permanent cycle too.

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

if players wanted to play in a fresh cycle, they could. if they wanted to continue with their own stuff they could too!

i m more or less 10 years older than when i first played poe. things are much different now. i dont have as much time as i did before. i get tired more easily. i m FUCKING DONE rerolling every new league. i m so sick and tired of refarming everything all over again. if i dont my FOMO will force me into it. for example crucible weapons. my crucible weapon is significantly stronger than most and would cost mirrors to obtain.

i m done with this silly rat chase. i want to finally “retire” and ENJOY the game. i dont see myself doing that in poe1. a new league will release and if my FOMO kicks in, i would be compelled to jump in.

i find it so bloody ironic that a smaller/newer company has come up with so many different solutions to solve existing problems. but to that effect i actually learn to appreciate EHG a great deal more.

there are many other reasons why i choose to come back to LE. suffice to say i dont trust GGG enough.

as mentioned earlier i like the mace playstyle. but the only way to make the mace playstyle shine is to nerf everything else down. as to the recent interview, EHG has mentioned theyre going to do some rebalancing on the outliers. IMHO in poe2 everything besides mace is the outliers lol. i truly believe that nerfing tho hurtful is better than buffing. nerfing things down so its in line with others is better to me because it allows the devs to balance the end game better, and the gap between good players and weaker ones can be made smaller.

ggg has yet to make any announcement and i might have to eat my words lol. but i would say i m guessing GGG is more likely to buff maces rather than nerf everything else. i m not a fan of this as it will only escalate into power creep where the devs have to keep creating harder content and we’ll end up with POE1 gameplay all over again.

i’d also highlight how ggg refuses to learn from lessons they themselves learned. they removed melee totems from poe1 to give players more power and to reward a more active playstyle without relying on totems.

poe2 melee totems is a thing. like wtf? you found it bad in poe1, took it away and now reintroducing it in poe2?

anyway, i’ve been rerolling a new character in preparation for the next cycle.

quite hyped for it and all the upcoming changes. i might even start a new cycle character too. i havent played too much since LE’s open beta/ea

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It should be noted that this is only the case for now, because they’re still adding core content. But they eventually want to do exclusive season stuff as well. Probably starting with season exclusive uniques.
Whether these would become available after the season as a drop or just as a trade remains to be seen.

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thats really sad for me to hear. coz if thats the case then poe and le franchises are two that i will have to quit.
FOMO is real. i am a slave to FOMO. many are. many arent.

the caveat is if they make the season exclusives available to core not too long later

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In PoE depending on your skill level as early as Act 1. Guaranteed MS boots for example with vendor recipes and then into a blue item.
Alchemy slamming for the right socketed items.

Beyond it depends, rolling flasks can be a big thing, as can be very specific rolls needed… but mostly flasks for alterations at the beginning.

Besides those the ‘normal’ crafting steps, which are not randomly throwing stuff onto it but actually knowing what you’re doing.

For the first part: Absolutely! 100% right!
You don’t do it because you have no clue how to do it in a profitable way.
A crafter makes profit with their crafts because others can’t be assed to do it after all, otherwise there would be no demand for it, right? :slight_smile:

And the second part is simply wrong. If you know what you’re doing and it’s not a quite specific piece to craft then you’ll most likely make a profit. And over a longer timeframe you’ll with guarantee make a profit.

Yes, absolutely! LE has a different approach.

But you can’t do much with your items compared to PoE, which is the downside of said accessibility.

Can’t have both, they’re not able to be combined as otherwise you would acquire everything in moments and have absolutely nothing as a goal left.

If you like one or the other system better is up to you, at the top-end LE’s system causes definitely more issues then PoE’s system. At the lower end LE’s system feels better then PoE’s.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with the crafting mechanic but rather with how the power scaling and sheer quantity of drops is set up between the games.

In PoE 1 you’re limited by sockets as you progress in the campaign, hence you start to struggle with those and they limit your access to upgrades.

In PoE 2 you don’t get crafting materials, hence you’re limited by the pure drop-rate and hence the high RNG since those games have a vast possible drop-pool. The item for you personally is hence hard to personally drop directly.

In LE you have a vastly reduced item drop-pool (4 affixes instead of 6 + less tiers) and hence get a useful item easier. Also crafting is easily accessible for the common Affixes and hence you’ll not run into problems.
On the other hand as soon as you go past the beginning and middle-stages of the game the whole system turns upside down and PoE 1 definitely has the upside in progression rate and smoothness.

Compared to personal acquisition? Obviously, that’s a given.
Hence why SSF is usually a challenge mode. LE has done a good job in alleviating those issues to a vast degree. Albeit partially because the trading mechanic is simply sub-par and hence can’t be used in a proper manner without utterly wasting your time… more so then PoE does even, which is baffling.

It’s a personal challenge, not a legitimizing thing or whatever you’re thinking. Like saying ‘I wanna do a pure mage run in Elden Ring’ when you’re used to melee only before. You’ll have a vastly different experience simply, which is fresh and enjoyable… if you enjoy a challenge.

Back in Diablo 1? Ahh… not quite… back in… when was that?

Sure, many played solo… and many played with friends too.
The genre never existed before the days of the internet, it just wasn’t as prevalent as today though.

That’s utterly wrong there.

Blizzard started it with Diablo 2 by providing seasons. Those caused players to return rather then put the game to the side as they often did with Diablo 1. A massive upside.

That’s why everyone follows into their footsteps when making a online based H&S ARPG which is loot-focused. Because not doing so will make you fail with nigh no chance otherwise.
Also basically every game of the genre respects the permanence, even Torchlight Infinite does, and that says something :stuck_out_tongue:

Then you know wrong. A single top-end character in PoE 1 does currently profit around 10 divine per hour. Which is around as much as most players make in their whole first month in total profit in a league while playing. In a single day you can create enough value to provide 2 characters of yours with top-end gear… even with the higher prices in Standard.

Which is only a temporary state. EHG also will change it so Legacy has no access to the content before a specific amount of time passes, be it mid-cycle or after a cycle. But with the premature release of 1.0 they have to do a lot of catch-up first to even be at a proper starting line.

That’s the main downside of PoE 1, GGG hasn’t learned yet that temporary mechanics aren’t the way to go forward… permanent ones are.
I’ve said since years that ensuring the mechanics they create being able to be put as parallel side-mechanics into the game after a league is important, but your words clearly showcase I’m not the only one in that position.

So that’s something which EHG can definitely do ‘right’ compared to GGG.

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I kinda agree with this, but SSF is even harder than what it used to be in singleplayer games. Back in the day, about every item could be target farmed. As long as you knew where the item came from, you could grind that specific mob/location until it dropped. ARPG’s went away from that and did RNG world drops. That makes farming for specific gear much more difficult and players feel like they have less agency for finding the items they want. LE at least has boss specific items that can be target farmed.

I also completely agree about POE crafting. It is basically nonexistent for the mass majority of players. Trading is the easy way to get the items you want and most people have almost no chance of getting the best items in the game. It is a game that is very heavily catering to the top .1% of players. Keep in mind that most players don’t even make it to maps.

“more than 70% of players do not make it to red maps in Path of Exile (PoE) 1. Additionally, it is mentioned that only about 20% of players who reach white maps also make it to red maps. This indicates that a significant portion of players do not progress to the later stages of the game.”

I don’t want LE to become that inaccessible.

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what do i craft? - you gave the exact answer that newer players should learn to do. but all of this info is hidden knowledge and requires guides/wikis. it simply is very inorganic.

in LE, you start picking up crafting materials, and gain access to the crafting bench. you quickly learn how to craft items that you want. you dont need to learn the 1000 mods available for an affix or prefix. you dont need to learn about blocking. players quickly learn how to craft fast.

i would say poe’s crafting system WAS GOOD. back when the game came out. the complexity was good because players had more time. we were hungry for a complex game to sink our teeth into. POE was overcomplex for the sake of complexity. the crafting system was something players needed to learn OUTSIDE of the game. but it was fine “back then”. it was something for us to do. and i was one who celebrated that fact and enjoyed it. “back then”. but back then and now are 2 different things. POE’s strength in crafting complexity actually just simply made players not engage in it.

you are absolutely right about “if you know what you’re doing you can make profit off of it” when it comes to crafting. but on the flipside its just inaccessible to most of the playerbase.

similarly all the top ended stuff that you mentioned about what crafted items can get you. you’re right about that too. crafted gear in poe can be god bonkers tier. but how many people can actually afford them? to the majority of the player base these items might as well dont exist. its similar to me and mirrors. i have a guild with a small group of friends. 2 of us play the most, the rest on and off. none of us had got a mirror before in 10 years.

you mention something like crafting accessibility would hamper end tier power and that we cant have both. thats debatable.

in LE, item progression would probably be T20 gear, then T25+, then 4LP uniques to slam your best mods onto. 4LP uniques with T25 mods are bonkers strong.

you mention POEs crafting is better. i would contend it is better for you, and others who prefer it that way. me myself and many of my friends prefer LE’s crafting a huge lot more. and to us, POE crafting simply doesnt exist.

when i talked about progression, you mentioned how crafting mechanic has nothing to do with it but instead power scaling etc.

i see where you’re coming from and i understand what you’re getting at, but i would argue that the existence of crafting would make it a factor of the campaign experience.

how do players progress really? ignoring poe1’s archaic skill slot system. most diablolikes do this by having players gain XP, gaining access to new skills, and gearing.

its all gears that work together to keep the engine running. LE has somewhat deterministic crafting. this solves a huge part of the problem. i got a sword, its strong but i need it to hit harder or swing faster. i have options. i can more or less solve this issue in LE by simply playing normally and i could either drop and upgrade OR i could save up crafting materials.

it is something i can reliably work on fixing.

poe1 you simply cant rely on anything. the drops are hugely RNG based. as an experienced players, me and my guildies tend to get all the way to mapping wearing shit gear with barely any mods that we care for something pure normal gear which we neglected to waste our currency on, just because it had good sockets/colours that we wanted.

you can sing praises all you want about POE’s gears being better at the end game. but whats the point of all that when newer players simply dont get there? also once players get to the end game, they dont get access to the top tier gear either unless they grind for it and trade for it. its like talking about how if you go to a certain club you’ll be able to see some of the hottest people ever compared to your local pub. true but most people only ever get to see those hot people and never actually get to engage with them in any meaningful way.

as for your notes on SSF being a challenge. SSF has always been how diablo 1/2 has been for most of the poor folks who couldnt afford or even access the internet back in the day. all games were essentially SSF. so the very notion of SSF to me is a hilarious one.

when you disagree about SSF being not a legitimizing thing. i can give you a history lesson on that. Do you know that SSF is actually a new game mode that was introduced in POE? it never was a thing until GGG introduced it. Before the mode was introduced, players COULD play SSF by default. all they had to do was just make their own self imposed rules. all players could do this. the common practice back then was adding SSF_ prefix to a character name so players would remember not to trade using that character.

if you’re talking about personal challenge, you can see that “SSF” already was something players could do by default. so i do agree that you’re right on it being a personal challenge but at this point im talking about SSF before the game mode was formalized.

non SSF-ers DGAF about SSFers. even myself. to me it the exact meme of people saying stuff about how they achieved this or that or dropped this or that in SSF and i would turn around from whatever i was doing, give a huge thumbs up, then go back to whatever i was doing.

we really didnt care. but then SSFers complained to GGG. their argument was “we want an actual SSF mode so that we can separate our characters and can ensure that we dont accidentally trade”. non ssfers got annoyed by this. all SSFers needed to do was “just dont trade” but they were asking GGG to spend their resources to actually create and enable an SSF mode.

think about it. what benefits do you get for having such a mode? theres actually only 2 benefits. one is you separate your stash/characters, and another is you have the game devs “seal of approval” via hardcoding the game mode to disable trade. the seal of approval was what they wanted the most.

similarly, why do you think hardcore mode exists? its simply to let others know “look, its real! its hard core, i got it to 100 without dying!” its all badges of honour. validation. SSF mode operates similarly to hardcore in the sense that its all validation/legitimizing. so its more than “just a challenge”. its really a badge of honour. before the modes existed, anyone could claim they did something, but then how do you prove it? its all validation.

you mention me utterly wrong about POE inventing leagues. if you want to say D2 invented seasons. OK i can accept that. but D2 season were just ladder resets. nothing else.

D2 seasons are more of restarting the game over and over again with barely anything new. maybe a few balance changes or new rune words. but barely anything impactful.

but that said, i feel you’re just being argumentative for no reason now that you brought it up. to compare d2 seasons to poe1 leagues is like comparing a tricycle to a ferrarri. poe’s leagues innovated the entire diablo like genre in a huge way. creating more than just a “game reset”. it allowed the game devs to experiment new content to be added to the game core. in an essence it served as a beta test as well as a grand event that players looked forward to. “what will they come up with this time?”. players have such high anticipation.

diablo2’s reset has nothing on poe’s leagues. “oh a new ladder reset is coming” yay in small letters. bare minimum effort needed for diablo 2 seasons. i actually find it insulting to GGG that you would equate d2 seasons to their leagues.

as for respecting standard/permanence. to me respecting permanence comes with not giving permanent league players less. you mentioned that EHG plans to follow the trend where legacy cycle be divorced from temp cycle content.

i have not followed EHG news too much, suffice to say, if thats the case, LE lost one huge reason for my return to the game. i am sick and tired of refarming shit up and i hate missing out content.

by separating cycle content from legacy, legacy players are essentially punished for not jumping in. and if EHG becomes the same with all other diablolikes. then, i ll see no less reason to play LE. i m sick and tired of feeling like a second class citizen in a game that i spent money to play on.

i do acknowledge that it is the current trend. but i would argue, that it could get more players to play their game.

temp cycle enjoyers would play the game regardless because they like temp cycle content.

legacy enjoyers would play the game more and always want to jump back into the game during new cycles since they can just come in and enjoy the game.

the major point of contention is temp cycle enjoyers would say “oh but you’ll split the playerbase and the economy would suffer”. the reality is legacy enjoyers play the game if they find the game enjoyable. if they dont want to reroll and start from scratch every cycle, these players simply would avoid cycle content or even the game entirely. they were never part of temp cycle economy to begin with.

also, since EHG has made so much effort into COF, cycle economy is already split to begin with. i personally have chosen to play COF as i am tired of needing to trade. i want to get stronger by just playing the game.

also, you say i m wrong for stating i hate going into temp leagues and refarming everything? wtf is wrong with you? i literally tell you my experience of the game and you say i m wrong? i literally tell you bluntly i fucking hate refarming everything and you’re just going to say i m wrong? seriously. wtf.

also, you mention TOP END characters earning 10 div per hour. you’re not wrong on that. but i told you i hate fucking leveling a new character from scratch.

and if ehg is going to make me do that again in LE. well. lets just say i wont be playing LE anymore when that happens.

i m done with exclusive temp league content and any game that does this. theres no real reason why legacy cant gain access to it.

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to me GGG actually got power progression quite good before maven was introduced.

a lot of poe enjoyers seem to have forgotten that the top content was accessible by t14 maps. for example beasts that led to beastiary bosses started dropping at t14, forbidden tomes that led to the lycias real form were t14. rigwald required t14 talismans to be sacrificed. but after maven was introduced, harder and harder content was introduced. now we have ubers and t17s which are significantly out of reach from most of the playerbase.

for ggg they saw it as creating content that was not meant for majority of the playerbase. but to me, i saw it as an indicator that the game is not meant for me. i am not the demographic.

as for target farming. i kinda have fond memories of titan quest. in that game enemies actually used the gear they could drop. this made some of them deadly but it was highly fun. i would keep hunting them down in the areas they would spawn. boring yeah but in a way at least i know i would eventually drop what i want.

i think boss specific items is a must for all looter games.

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I think they still have no idea in which direction they want to go, otherwise they would let us know. Hence, for now they are making a mediocre game for everyone instead of the best game for specific group of players, like they did with Poe 1.

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yeah… its 2 conflicting playstyles.
zoom vs deliberate.
they cannot exist side by side. zoomers will grow exponentially as they have faster clear, hence gain more currency and gear. while the deliberate playstyle will see players slowly inch towards the zoomers, as good gear quickly raises in prices since “all the zoomers” can easily earn currency.

i m betting ggg would cater to the zoomers. but i hope they cater to the deliberate.

if they try to cater to both, the deliberate players will come to realize they are playing the inferior version of the game. as what i am feeling right now.

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When was this? D2 didn’t have this and D2 is way back in the day.
Other than a few specific items (like boss-drops), none of the top diablo-likes had this. There were a few less successful ones that did this, but even then, not many.

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The same is happening with LE as well though, there’s no distinct difference there. That’s fairly normal.

It already is, Lagon being the major cause for that.

Your gear, whatever it is you need at the time.

I mean… that’s how you do crafting. You see what you need next and then you check out how to achieve it.
Be it Essence slamming on items, be it Fossil crafting, be it fracturing something… all possible and viable, everyone does it different depending on access and knowledge, and depending on outcome each also is the optimal or non-optimal solution… but most work.

No need to learn ‘1000 affixes’ or anything like that, you instead look simply towards ‘what do I want?’ and ‘How do I get that 1 thing?’ and that’s it.
Nobody knows every craft at the back of their head, not needed.

That’s what suffices for 99,9% of crafts, beyond that is the top-tier… it’s the ‘aspirational’ part of crafting, much like Uber-Aberroth will be the aspirational part of direct content. You don’t go and say ‘but I can’t do it immediately’… it’s just another aspect to work upwards to, get to know it, remember it, master it.

And that’s more a ‘you’ thing then a overall one. If it’s the time-based aspect then it depends entirely on the player.
Just shows you got less time so you can’t be bothered with it, understandable… but avoiding such things isn’t a upside for the game overall.

LE has a distinct depth to their system… and it’s lacking the same depth the second the RNG factor with the guaranteed end-line comes into play so early as it does now. When have you ever used a rune to change the roll-range of affixes on an item? By that time you’re darn happy you’ve even made it through and it didn’t break.

You don’t drop em, you buy em. They commonly drop between 5000-9000 hours of play-time for people, so it’s not a viable option to farm yourself… which is the community reasoning with trade for it to exist. Otherwise it would be a nonsensical item.

As for the top-end gear? Definitely not accomplished by most, sure… much like only a miniscule fraction kills Aberroth.
Does that mean Aberroth should be removed? Or made substantially easier?
No, it doesn’t. It’s content depth there, and you don’t need to experience every single bit something has to offer to enjoy it. Quite the contrary… having something to work towards still works as the best way to keep people interested in things after all. The moment you run out of new experiences you generally are very quickly ‘done’ with something.

A single T7 mod (hence a T22 item) is better then a quintuple T5 item (Hence T25). The curve of how powerful exalted modifiers are is ridiculous.

Absolutely! One of the absolute best crafting systems out there are neither PoE nor LE, it’s the one from Torchlight Infinite.

It has a easy way to get into but a massive upper-end available for re-crafting options included. Their core idea for the setup is beautiful, the execution is not perfect but it’s a fantastic one, UI issues are the thing ruining it mostly, not being properly conveyed to the player what can be done as it seems cryptic despite being piss-easy.

To a degree the same issue as PoE has, cryptic non-existing info in-game which needs to be there instead… the system itself is a decent one, top-end of the genre.

Because a solid base system can be adjusted to deal properly with any range of the game… which GGG never handled properly. It’s a drop-rate issue in PoE simply, more crafting currency… less direct loot early on. People get into crafting and the outcomes also become viable and realistic. As example.

But a bad core system can’t handle things no matter how you adjust it, since it doesn’t have the option available in the first place. No matter how you adjust rates you can’t make a system which has states that outright full-stop you into something doing not so without revamping it substantially.

Why? It’s nonsensical. Minor addition, no effort basically needed development wise and gives a clear-cut experience which formerly could just be waved off with the comment ‘Yeah, suuuuure that person did it on his own’.

It’s like someone complains about adjusting values for enemies… ‘they could instead create a new mechanic!’… no… no they couldn’t. That’s not what the person doing the balance work is commonly doing. It would be a coder or actually someone who’s in a mixed dev/tester position, that’s their core aspect to deal with anyway.

Separation is the major one.
Personal gratification.
Bragging rights for managing to get that far as with most challenges.

Why does Iron-Man exist in OSRS? Same thing. It provides longevity to a game with varying challenges that have a substantial time investment and otherwise wouldn’t be done by many.

As you say, same with HC. So yes… you’re answering the ‘why’ yourself.

  • rebalancing + uniques +shifting out old uniques.
    They weren’t simply ladder resets for a good chunk of time.
    The amount of content was just far less substantial, but it was the only time they did that, and they baseline invented the seasonal content influx this way.

Obviously not!
GGG took that concept and made it a big thing… but they didn’t ‘invent’ it. They just showcased what power is behind it properly. Which kudos, very good.

Only if said content gets removed after rather then becoming included permanently.
Then the early access to it is an incentive, not a punishment. Similar to how times exclusives are. ‘Oh no… I’m loosing out when I don’t buy this game right the second it comes out instead of in 6 months when it gets available where I actually will play it!’ is one of the modern nonsense arguments.

Then don’t? The argument was about the nonsense of refarming stuff in a league when you can achieve the accumulation of value easier and quicker in Standard. So why do it? Because you think you loose out.

The only reason you go there is to experience the new content available… the FOMO. So don’t give me the accumulation stuff, because you can also simply buy the bases after the league ends and have 20 times more currency since you needn’t waste time on playing up a character when you already got a dozen fine ones availble at a moment’s notice in Standard.

So, the moment you can’t do all content existing (even if not the core progression… T17 are not core progression, Maven is and does well as a end-point) it’s not for you?

That kinda limits the depth and complexity of any game. So yes… then it’s really not for you, because games grow over time commonly. Which is a good thing.
You’re supposed to experience the journey and not solely the completion. It’s not a job checklist.

Yes, that I agree 100% with.

And yes, I also agree with that 100%!
That’s the core issue with LE, aimlessness.

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I think that was the point he was trying to make. In PoE, you have to keep consulting external tools (most often craft of exile) to even know what you have to do. And the options available are often overwhelming to new players.
LE’s crafting, on the other hand, is pretty straight forward and everyone can easily see how it works. Knowledge will still affect your success with them (using removals, chaos, etc, can lead to different results), but the system itself is easily understood by everyone in-game and doesn’t require consulting guides.

Not really. Those were done in patches and there were plenty of ladder resets that didn’t have any patch attached to it. Most of them, in fact, especially in latter years.

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Sorry, are you saying that an item with 3x t5s & 1x t7 is better than an item with 4x t5s?! Really? Why is that? Is it because the t7 affix is better than the t5??

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Quintuple T5, not quadruple.

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Single player games like old NES, SNES, Playstation RPG’s like FF7. Also still happens a great deal in MMORPG’s. I don’t know if any aRPG’s have tried that, but it’s still something that has been done before in similar games.

It’s also done for very specific items in some aRPG’s. Boss drops with specific loot tables, or things like Wirt’s Leg in D2 that had a very specific drop spot.

Actually, D2 had some set items that were farmable in specific spots too. Cow King’s Set for example.

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No, he is saying that because T6 and T7 add so much, that a T22 item is better than a theoretical T25 items with 5 T5 affixes. T7 is double or more what a T5 is usually.

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“Normal” RPGs have done that a lot. aRPG’s have done it as well, when they’re mostly story-based. But diablo-likes introduced a new paradigm where most of the gear is based on random drops.
Sure, D2 had a few targetable items, like the cow set or annihilus, but the vast majority of stuff wasn’t target-farmable. In fact, there were less target-farmable items in D2 than in D1.

Still, this is something most diablo-likes have done since then. A few items are target-farmable, usually locked behind specific bosses (LE has a lot of those). But I don’t think I’ve seen any diablo-like that had all items being target-farmable. It kinda defeats the purpose of the genre, really.

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in titan quest, certain base items and uniques drop from certain specific enemies.
in grim dawn, boss specific uniques are a thing. also they have something called “monster infrequents” which are rare item drops with specific bonuses based on the enemy that you kill.

having a way to target farm items is a modern invention, which i vastly prefer.

i dont have time to just keep “killing everything” and just hoping what ever i want drops.

even in poe/tli they have divination cards which can be target farmed for specific loot.

d4 has ways to craft chase items using resplendant sparks.

in fact if we’re going to talk about old games i would say that magic find is an outdated/archaic mechanic that plagues diablo-clones.

players should always strive to become stronger instead of wanting to waste a mod slot for better loot.

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I mean, that is exactly what I said. Diablo-likes have some items that are target-farmable, while the vast majority aren’t. And LE is no different from that.

Classic RPGs like Baldur’s Gate or Skyrim, as well as story based ARPGs like Elden Ring or Witcher III, usually have the good items always in the same spot, and they’re usually tied to story progression and character progression. And this is because these games have a clear progression from start to end.

Diablo-likes, on the other hand, don’t actually have an “end” in the same sense. You keep playing until you’re satisfied with your character and can’t or don’t want to progress it anymore. And this progression comes from some items that you know where to find, but mostly comes from random drops.

Besides boss uniques, you have CoF. They can increase drops of a specific type, thus allowing you to target farm them. I would prefer a passive system that would let me focus my drops into more specific things, like a tree where I pick more minion affixes, less melee affixes/weapons, etc, but the way it is now is a tool for target farming.
Not to mention MG, since trade is, by definition, the ultimate target farming.

This is only a problem if you include magic find in gear. LE has the equivalent tied to mono corruption. So no gear slots wasted there. PoE1 tied it to the atlas tree.
It’s mostly just PoE2 that made a throwback to this and with generally disapproving results from the community.

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It’s mostly just PoE2 that made a throwback to this and with generally disapproving results from the community.

POE1, is a big offender for having MF on gear. POE2 still has MF on gear iirc. as for the throwback i think the biggest problem about MF for POE2 is 2 reasons.

the game is meant to emulate D2’s feel, where you dont get to easily craft gear. the problem is, we’re living in 2025 where players have less time and have different needs. we dont want to waste too much time grinding. the natural drops in the game are unreliable. it is possible to get superb items from vendors, but still its unreliable.

i got to 80+ but i havent solved my resists. after dying a lot i got pissed off enough that i finally relented and started relying on trade. immediately fixed everything and became vastly stronger.

the game doesnt give you enough at base level. this also applies to waystones, where i stack a lot of waystone passives and yet its possible for me to do a t15 map and get no map in return and even sometimes drop a t1-5 map? like wtf. if feels real bad when you cant sustain and it feels that we’re being punished for not running hyper juiced up maps or having more mf.

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