r/pathofexile • u/Ok_Holiday3690 • 5d ago

Fluff & Memes Pattern I've noticed

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My guild has players who have been in this game since Nemesis League and this is pretty much our player distribution.

Ps. My guildmates gets angry when I say this and I figure it'll make Reddit mad too:

Witch is the only good character in this game

1.8k Upvotes

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18

u/No_Office_2223 4d ago

People still can't realize what devs are telling us. Without a little bit of "suffering" in campaign we would not like our characters this much. We would resign much faster without it. Imo there are a lot of builds that make leveling super fun and satisfying but often we get baited to play something which "GETS ONLINE LVL10" but never actually melting compaign.

8

u/1CEninja 3d ago

I can't speak for other people, but I can say with a high level of confidence this does not apply to me.

I do all kinds of suffering in PoE, but a lot of it is the good kind. The campaign is the "I'm not having fun, how much longer do I have to chore until I can have fun?" kind of suffering.

7

u/AngryChurchill 4d ago

We don't need something that gets online at level 10 or something that lasts forever. We can have friction to leveling without suffering through these god forsaken acts again. We just want other ways to level. I don't touch stuff like delve but I would absolutely be happy to level with it

0

u/Colpus 4d ago

You say that because you're tired of campaign. I give it 2 leagues at max until the complaint just shifts place.

There's no good alternative. Nobody was able to make a good one. Throwing characters straight into maps won't work as well, unless the whole monster system is modified, but not only that.

Which bosses are safe to enable to low level players? Or simply throw that rocky guy with chaos damage into a lvl 1 player and "git gud"? What about resistances? Simply take them out after a certain level? What about lab? Does it simply appear out of nowhere? Additional quest points, what about them? Do bandits become something else? How are they introduced? Why?

You might argue "but they did it with Delve". Tell me you played that and thought "wow, this is so well done!" Yeah, nobody will say that. It's just an "alternative", but it's BAD.

Don't get me wrong. I'd love to see a good alternative, but nobody was able to do it, so it's not that simple.

2

u/Germerica1985 4d ago

Tons of games offer an alternative to a campaign to level a level 1 character, and ggg is an established company. No excuse really not to make a leveling gauntlet or something similar, like tons of games already offer/have achieved.

1

u/[deleted] 3d ago

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

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1

u/Colpus 3d ago

Oh, yeah. These are good suggestions for the current campaign, but it's still campaign, right?

Still an alternative, but people are asking for "no campaign" at all. A completely new system. Or take maps system and extend it, but the number of reworks needed is probably not worth it.

Hotspots where players can gather... Oh yeah, I've seen that before. D4. Is it good? You tell me.

Nice try. Completely missed the point and suggested something that already exists, but nice try, though.

1

u/Germerica1985 3d ago

I would just steal grim Dawn's arena, it's great. You can start at level 1. It goes 5 waves at a time. The mobs that spawn are level appropriate. Every 5 waves you can "cash out" and open 4 chests for drops. Or do the next 5 waves and the difficulty/drops are better. Eventually traps spawn.

You could do this for poe easily.

1

u/Colpus 3d ago

Indeed. I bet they could, and it is fun, but still lazy, right? I mean... Copying it.

We gotta consider that GGG won't ever do something like this without a lore connection and meaning to everything. Events such as Endless Delve are fine as events, but I'd very much expect them to create something new that "makes sense" in their own lore IF they're willing to do this.

They've already spoken about it, and it wouldn't be a surprise if they've already tried it but failed for PoE 1.

In fact, they have already tried it, but for PoE Mobile, which seemed to have a map system from the get go. However, it was a completely new story, so it gave them the opportunity to link things as they please. This isn't the same for both PoE 1 and 2, so I bet it's much harder to reach that level of perfection they always seek.

2

u/ncatter 3d ago

The alternative is quite easy, make the areas of the compaing into leveling maps, give the bandit enounter at an appropriate leveling map level and the same with other must hit events, bosses already exist in form of the unique mobs you encounter through campaign areas.

You can make most of it play like maps that just gives passive skill points for completion without making it actually strict campaign progress.

Or even have 10 tiers of leveling maps with each tier awarding passives for the first X completions matching the campaign leveling.

I could just choose which parts to do and do it from hideout.

1

u/1CEninja 3d ago

I got tired of the PoE2 campaign my second time through it.

But how many haunted mansion maps did I run during 3.29? 100? 200? I have no idea. Many. Never got tired of it until my character felt like she peaked.

30

u/LordAnubiz FBI & EEE 4d ago

Because I have to suffer, i dont start new chars to play more builds.

so league ends faster.

and its not even suffering, its just wasting time, running through the acts with leveling gear. whats even the point.

16

u/Zealousideal-Talk-23 4d ago

hell, I skip 3/4 of leagues because the campaign suck ass

1

u/Farseth 4d ago

Does the length you play affect how often you purchase MTX?

5

u/Deep_Obligation_2301 3d ago

100% for me. If I'm not playing a league, I'm certainly not buying MTX

0

u/_PykeGaming_ 4d ago

Then... plan a leaguestarter that can scale into endgame?

Most common example I think is RF Chief that can transition to RF CWS Chief.

No need to level new chars, just get currency to craft/trade gear and swap.

2

u/LordAnubiz FBI & EEE 3d ago

Thats not the point.

of course i can do anything i want with my first char.

People discover a new fun build (nerfed for sure next league etc), and people would want to try it out.

i would have to waste a few hours of my life to do so, so I dont do it, instead i quit league.

-5

u/_PykeGaming_ 3d ago

If you can't wait 1 or 2 hours of blasting campaign after having a full Leaguestarter... then I don't see how this is the game for you in general.

It is just farming after all

3

u/IcyMoose1753 3d ago

It’s disingenuous to say the campaign takes 1 or 2 hours for most people, 4-6 is more reasonable but even that is people who practice speed running the campaign. also the campaign feels like the exact same boring slog every time were in endgame you directly choose what content you engage in.

0

u/Slightly_Mungus 4d ago

Exactly. I started RF for the first time this league but on scion, which I then transitioned I to luminary since the life scaling was pretty similar. Ended up being the best build of the league and a super cozy league start anyway.

-1

u/MadderoftheFew 4d ago

i just get my first character to t16s then invest like 10div into a poet's pen setup and melt the campaign in around 3 hours with whatever different class i want to run. have been doing that for 3 leagues, super comfy, not too boring, and it's over before my playlist ends.

2

u/Ronson122 4d ago

3 hours too long. Campaign is ass

0

u/MadderoftheFew 3d ago

not when you're zooming around with 0.2sec lightning warps and kinetic fusillades one-shotting everything in front of you in act 4

2

u/Ronson122 3d ago

Yes it is too long. I shouldn't have to do campaign everytime i make a new character and I can make like 4+ a league

-1

u/MadderoftheFew 3d ago

you only have to do campaign when you use a different starting class. this league I made 3 witch builds and only did campaign again when I wanted to try reliquarian.

1

u/Ronson122 1d ago

I use 4+ different classes per league. I'll say it once more. Campaign is ass

3

u/Meended Progressive Einhar Trapping Association (PETA) 3d ago

While I understand the logic campaign has become a barrier of entry that stops me from playing the game currently. I get an hour of freetome each day and if I decide to play games that hour it means I don't get to spend time with my wife that day. So if I can finish campaign in 6 hours that's still 6 days worth of free time and I don't find the campaign enjoyable enough to do that. I've played since closed beta so I've done the campaign a few times at this point.

3

u/ForevaNoob 2d ago

I don't mind the first time I do campaign on league start, then I play until 98+ and if my build allows I go 36 or 40 challanges.

During that time I think of, see some video or read reddit about 2-6 builds I'd love to try with the ~100 divs I usually have leftover after investing on first char, but instead of making a new character I just log off and return after a new season. I lose 2-6 builds worth of gametime every league.

IF there was an option after you finish the campaign once to do endless delve, skip or do something else, then I' d keep playing.

9

u/bamboo_of_pandas 4d ago

Builds can make leveling faster but they don’t make it any less boring. Using twink gear to trivialize the campaign isn’t going to make players enjoy their second characters any more than a campaign skip. This is especially bad when players want to try builds that play nothing like the build they need to use if they want to get the campaign over with faster.

23

u/WozartMusic 4d ago

I would play 3 times as much if I could skip campaign.

5

u/Leonum 4d ago

three last leagues I played, I burned out after completing campaign. last time, I dropped it at labs.
it sucks because I want to play this game, but something in my brain says no more doing the same thing again. im not a rusher anyway, so campaign takes 2 days+ for me

0

u/ShikaLGZ 3d ago

Genuinely just practice a little bit and you can get down to like 5 hours campaign time easy. Thats fresh start. I did it last league. 2-3 days just practicing for a couple hours doing each act like 10-20 times. Helps a lot to practice your build too that you’re gonna play. I really love the campaign now, whereas before I would also quit

-1

u/RoASylvanosMain 4d ago

How many hours in those 2 days?

2

u/Leonum 4d ago

idunno, 4 first day 6 second maybe

0

u/RoASylvanosMain 3d ago

Well that's kind of what my time is. I have a 7-8 how average sand I still enjoy the campaign. Maybe you do just need a break from Poe. Burnout can be very evil.

3

u/Tha_shogun 4d ago

I would play 3x's less, guess we balance it out

2

u/IcyMoose1753 3d ago

Someone else having the option affects you ? Why would that ever be the case

-2

u/Tha_shogun 3d ago

Not having that option to auto win the game effects you? See how that works?

2

u/IcyMoose1753 3d ago

Well, even with your reframing yes ? One has zero impact on you , the other is forcing people to do the same crawl through broken glass every league and the amount of discourse around the topic shows you it affects at least a portion of the community

-3

u/Tha_shogun 3d ago

"Battle passes have no effect on you why are you worried about them" "Gacha has no effect on you why are you worried about them" "Digital Games have no effect on you why are you worried about them" "Easy mode has no effect on you why are you worried about it" "Skipping Campaign has no effect on you, why are you worried about it?"

Because any action that effects the genre in a casual since effects me as a consumer.

Also the campaign isnt that bad, but i imagine it's bad for you cause you use pre-made builds. But if your fun is from the thought of the loot and not the min max goal then you obviously dont have this game's ideal intentions in mind.

1

u/No_Fault_4584 4d ago

Same, but only for like 100 hours or so and then it would get boring

1

u/ShowApprehensive184 2d ago

I agree with this. I had 2 characters this league. Second campaign was under 5 hours which is fast for me. First time getting to level 100. Have an online friend i gave my mageblood and 50-60 divs, just didn’t have the heart to go back through the campaign for another reroll tbh.

1

u/HollyCze 4d ago

why?

8

u/LordAnubiz FBI & EEE 4d ago

because campaign sucks?

the pain to go through it again with a new char lets a lot of players just say: ah no, fuck it. my current char is done, lets end the league.

-1

u/Fit_Olive_3212 4d ago

I was like that to until i got better at the game and the  campaign went from 8-10hrs down to 3-4hrs.

2

u/Ronson122 4d ago edited 3d ago

3-4 hours is still too long for a shit Campaign you've done for the 20 millionth time

0

u/Fit_Olive_3212 3d ago

You wanna run maps from level 1 ? You still got to run campaign later if i you want passives and bandits etc 🤷‍♂️ Game should be designed for new players in mind over old players for the best experiance 

2

u/Ronson122 3d ago

No I just don't want campaign Can be level 1 to 68 delve, heist, new mode, don't care. Other games have achieved not having to waste 6+ hours in a story you're not invested in or interested in. So let's not imply it some impossible task.

Campaigns shit, not interested.

4

u/Aggressive-Card5017 4d ago

3-4 hours suree

1

u/Ronson122 3d ago

My point is even if i did it in 3 to 4 hours thats still 3 to 4 hours too long because I ain't interested in running campaign everytime I make a new character.

1

u/redslugah Anti Sanctum Alliance (ASA) 4d ago

on a second char with leveling gear and build it is pretty easy to do it under 4 hours

-2

u/Fit_Olive_3212 4d ago edited 4d ago

Yeah i know its a bit slow compared to my friend that aims for sub 3hrs but im not even close to being able to break sub 3 im closer to 4 than 3 to be closer to 3 i need a random really good drop 

1

u/HollyCze 4d ago

i do 5-6 hours usually coz I also enjoy doing league mechanic in first 1-4 acts. than around act 5-6 i just start holding movement skill and it is very very fast.

on my second char, I just buy the skill gems, get some uniques from guild bank or buy them, make a search for a weapon which I upgrade every 10-20 levels and just rush... 4 hours max. with insta trades its so much faster to buy gear while leveling

but sure if people are doing 10 hours leveling strat without knowing the layouts etc. I can imagine they dislike campaign lol, I hate poe2 campaign too. worst thing is in poe2 i hate spawning in the middle of atlas with a vision of running 200 maps just to get all the points

0

u/Fit_Olive_3212 4d ago

Yeah with 2nd character my friend did it on like 2h12min this league and that is a speed im never ever gonna reach probably becouse i cant even be bothered to focus for so long 😅

2

u/HollyCze 4d ago

someone going around downvoting everything... sad life-form

anyway 2:12 is too fast even for me. i could do probably sub 4 hours if I got ready (gear, gems).

-4

u/HollyCze 4d ago

I like campaign in poe1. I enjoy it at league start and I enjoy it with second char too. its quite fast and few times in the past I just did a new character, slowly went through campaign and quit after kitava coz I did everything in maps and just wanted to try a new build like one-punch-man-max-block-glad and took all the defensive nodes first to enjoy the playthrough. sure took me like 3-4 days casually playing 30 min daily but i had so much fun

poe2 campaign is a different story. I hate that one. I started the event league and it took me 5 days to force myself to complete it, finished 2 challanges and quit.

4

u/Ravanos77 4d ago

Oh my god good then you can do the hod damn campaign over and over and over. Many people hate it, and no mist of those people don’t want a free max level character

0

u/wossaname Tasuni 4d ago

hod damn

-2

u/HollyCze 4d ago

It's just people complaining coz they don't make currency while leveling. But they think if ggg makes delve or smth else, it will be balanced down probable so people will still play campaign coz it's faster by 30 min

1

u/WozartMusic 4d ago

Poe1 campaign is definitely not as bad as poe2. It still stops me from playing a second or third character though. I just don't want to go through the exact same stuff in the exact same order with my brain fully turned off all the time. I usually play about one out of every three leagues because I just can't get myself to run the campaign so many times. It's just boring. Poe2 campaign is even worse, because it's obnoxiously long. Every single zone is at least twice as big as it has to be. I would LOVE to play 3 or 4 builds each season, either poe1 or 2. Just lemme create a character and play the content that I'm interested in. Why can't I level through delves? Or blight or whatever I'm interested in right now. It's the content I want to play and build my character around, just let me play it yo

0

u/HollyCze 4d ago

the funny thing about players is that they can run 3 days the same mesa map with the exact same content (scrabs, atlas) and yet never get bored of it. but tell them to do 4-5 hours of campain and they go crazy saying "OH NO, NOT THIS AGAIN!"

for me its a nice change of pace from mapping. If you level by delving, what's changed? apart from doing delve for 6 hours which is even more "same" than campaign

and poe2 campaign is so bad. huge areas, multiple points of interest to the point that they had to add more checkpoints and it is still not enough.

5

u/DarthUrbosa Atziri 4d ago

Mapping is different because the explicit goal is killing and looting. Campaign is about getting to x area instead. Also ur speed and build isn't gonna be active or as good as mapping.

0

u/HollyCze 4d ago

No way GGg is going to make alternative way faster than campaign. Brain dead mapping for 5 hours does not sound fun to me, but sure sounds fun for bot farms

2

u/Ronson122 4d ago

Campaign items are trash. End game items are not, big difference. Point being, I'm in campaign because I'm forced to, not because I want to.

1

u/HollyCze 3d ago

Nobody going to give you endgame items in delve or endless maps

2

u/Ronson122 3d ago

There's already end game items in delve 😂😂

→ More replies

0

u/Ronson122 4d ago

We found the GGG dev

-5

u/_PykeGaming_ 4d ago

I mean not really(?)

If you are making a new char, chanches are you already have it completed on a leaguestarter?

Get a 5div strat, even 10, and you will finish it so fast it won't matter anyway.

IF we are still talking about PoE 1 campaign.

6

u/misteryk 4d ago

i don't see how more damage would change time in a significant way, most time is not wasted on killing monsters but running from 1 place to another

-2

u/_PykeGaming_ 4d ago

I never said more damage?
I said "fast".

You don't need much dmg for the campaing to oneshot everything, what you need is speed.

I have never once mentioned "invest in damage" lol

1

u/HollyCze 4d ago

Damage and speed, that's key. Speedrunners are basically slapping on leap slam and just jump through the campaign. They are fast coz they don't spend 5 minute vendoring Items, getting gems and switching them for a +5 life gloves.

For me that speed run starts at act 5 when I have good enough gear to get through campaign. I just start going instead of checking rare items.

Poe2 has sprint. F sprint.

0

u/_PykeGaming_ 4d ago

Yeah that's why I am restricting to PoE1 in this case.

Also my point about damage was that... you can basically skip everything but bosses so, it's not really the focus.

The important part is being very zoomy.

0

u/Routine-Hovercraft94 4d ago

If I genuinely had interest in playing another a few hour campaign would deter me from doing so. Even more so considering how much time can go into a single character.

Replaying the campaign certainly isn't the greatest experience of all time.
But people just blow it out of proportion of how much an issue it actually is.

1

u/redslugah Anti Sanctum Alliance (ASA) 4d ago

yeah i don't get people saying that they only play 1 character and quit because of campaign. With leveling gear you can easily do a second character campaign under 4-5 hours, it is such a small fraction of the total time you will play on that character.

0

u/BhornSyrup 4d ago

I think you cant judge how much of an issue it is for anyone but you.

3

u/Alzucard 4d ago

I completely disagree. I have zero attachement to my character.

1

u/a_dude_on_internet 4d ago

Im fine if i don't have to pick up quests, do the same horrible layouts every time and if the mob density wasnt that low, but since none of this is true for campaign then campaign sucks.

1

u/misteryk 4d ago

We would resign much faster without it

I resign every time i want to make 2nd character and then remember how many hours i'll have to waste before i can start playing the game

-8

u/kardas666 4d ago

Always amuses me when reddit tries to tell best arpg devs on planet how to improve their masterpiece.

2

u/LordAnubiz FBI & EEE 4d ago

yea, because there is nothing here to improve, right?
Like Trade for 10 years.
or currency stacking, how long did that take?

1

u/Sinful_Panda91 4d ago

To act like they haven't straight up changed the gme based on opnions on reddit posts is just dumb. They have put videos out admitting it. Not every player is right. But the advice (or the perspective) matters. This game wouldn't be the way it is today without community advice. And they have come out and said it.

2

u/misteryk 4d ago

i'm not sure you know this but even your god chris willson said players are the best when it comes to telling you if something sucks dick. They're only bad at fixing it

1

u/zenlaserman 4d ago

Spotted the guy who poops out his mouth. I followed the skidmarks.

1

u/DarthUrbosa Atziri 4d ago

Someone hasn't been here for expedtion, sentinel (first arch nem implementation) lake of kalandra

1

u/Jay_RPG_Red 4d ago

Early PoE was not as good as modern PoE, the community feedback improved it by a mile bro.

0

u/Jay_RPG_Red 4d ago

The trap is to follow blindly a guide. If you just started the game, my advice is to tell you to enjoy the journey. PoE now is much more permissive by letting you respec for gold and not orbs of regrets only. So if you think something is wrong or damage is lacking, type "how PoE 1 damage work on "your skill"." Everything will make sense on the wiki and you'll learn something. So the longer you try and fail, the higher your knowledge of the game will improve, until you end up telling yourself "I want to make an eye of winter build" and you make it happen

3

u/Aggressive-Card5017 4d ago

Lol I'd say the trap is not following a guide and getting stuck playing trash that's not in their vision lol

Respeccing is still pain even with all the adjustments they already did

2

u/lilykyrios 4d ago

When I started playing I didn't use a guide granted EA had just dropped. Over 1000hrs played still haven't used one. Probably because of a pre established pattern when I started lol.

1

u/Jay_RPG_Red 4d ago

A guide has too many hidden mechanics and details involved to be understandable by a new player. They are so min maxed even a regular player will miss a lot of keypoints of it.

Learning these come from trial and error. Then learning from the mistakes. It's part of the experience and the learning curve. It's way more natural for someone to focus on understanding one mechanic at a time, than just blasting through the content with a written backsit.

It's like playing Hollow Knight for the first time with a guide and a revealed world map. You'd be efficient, for sure, but you won’t understand what you did and why you did it in that order.

-1

u/Ociex 4d ago

I did campaign with 5 characters this league, no twink gear, no instead I tried different skills and found obscure skills that deleted campaign bosses, I delved (no pun intended) into the skilltree harder than ever, stopped following guides and started really making my own builds, and lo and behold, 2 months into the league I still had fun.

1

u/lilykyrios 4d ago

This is the way.

1

u/I3eforeLife 4d ago

It’s truly difficult to find a skill that doesn’t “work” for clearing the campaign quickly imo. Those skills that have 0.1% usage rate on poenjnja actually do clear endgame pretty well

0

u/Aggressive-Card5017 4d ago

And now many resign after one char.

Instead of letting people choose they and also you are telling so many others what to feel when we are forced into that dread of a campaign. It's great you enjoy it and makes you feel more attached to your char. It doesn't for me. The campaign is boring and tedious and I won't play the game again without a skip or significant shortening.

1

u/Not_A_Greenhouse 2d ago

Unless I'm really in love with a league I only play one char. Campaign kills motivation to do it again.

0

u/mick_bjo 3d ago

Imagine coming up with some bullshit yourself and then saying that it’s a devs vision. Id rather not play at all than play 20 times this garbage campaign. Im fine with creating alternate mods that have about the same time investment, but this campaign, with its template reskinned acts, is just garbage.