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Path of Exile
Eh path of exile is in the best state it's been for a while. Game is really fun at the moment.
It's certainly had other times when it was really good and a lot of times when it was less good, but now is great.
Hard disagree.
Path of Exile is a very different game today and appeals to a completely different subset of players since it started. The people that are still playing a very happy with it, but the people who started with its release/beta perceived it as decidedly "worse every patch".
The best it ever was was 3.0 when the story felt complete and the campaign still mattered. It's a glorified slot machine now, and anything that encourages players to actively play the game is perceived as a barricade to more serotonin hits. Just see how the community reacted to the PoE2 footage. "Why do enemies take time to die? What do you mean I'm expected to dodge attacks?"
Haven't kept up with the game changes for like the league after Sentinel but they really introduced some anti-fun changes, made the game grindier and killed off proper crafting so its "play this slot machine to unlock another slot machine, if you fuck up start all over" all over again.
Best state of the game was Ritual league anyway, after that the game slowly got enshittificated tbh. Shame about the 5k+ hours I put into it and not even being able to play the game in it's best state but oh well.
Was getting bored of playing Seismic trap for the 100th time in a row because they don't give a fuck about PoE1 anymore anyway so good riddance
fwiw I'm a new player who started in Sanctum league with some friends who are veterans, and I'm enjoying the current league a lot (the mechanic is arguably mid but some of the items are fire). I did come to the "slot machine" realization at one point tho, and the rationalization I landed on was "well at least they just want my time, and not all of my money too". Which, like, I'm really impressed by the restraint they've held with monetization of the game, the only real "gameplay advantage" mtx come from the stash tabs, and by the time a new player would need them, they've probably put enough time into the game to justify some 1 time purchases.
I was hella struggling last league because my group got me set up on Lightning arrow, but this go around on an RF inquis (I know, I know) I've completed all the atlas bonuses and unlocked all but one of the favored map slots. Currently trying to get melding set up but I'm probably not going to have the free time for that going forwards for irl reasons. Unfortunate, but probably for the best honestly. It was kind of becoming a free time black hole lol
Definitely agree about harvest crafting and ritual league being peak Poe gameplay, but I'd argue we are at a great point now where we have some of the power of harvest without the complete crafting meta warping capabilities.
There's a reasonable path forward, across multiple crafting currencies, for most pre- mirror tier crafts these days that anyone could follow. I know that I've done more than a handful the last few leagues.
The build meta was definitely a little stale from mid 2022-mid 2023, but this league there is great diversity. Suggesting that the meta is still seismic trap heavy tells to me you havent really checked in recently - no one's using that anymore.
I've got 6k hours in and felt really bad during kalandra, archnem, and similar recent leagues but I think the game is fun right now :)
Ah that sound good. Like I said, stopped keeping up with changes 1-2 leagues after Sentinel, which was like the 3rd or 4th league with no meta shakeup. Also heard about some drama about big nerfs after exilecon happened (don't use reddit anymore so haven't checked what it was about) so I assumed that the meta was as stale as ever.
Might check out next league maybe, current league mechanic looked a bit boring but I'll probably yearn for the good old ritual times and play something else that actually respects my time
Nah. I played before DPS/speed-clear meta and all the powercreep. When you actually fought the enemies, took damage, and didn't die to one-shots. I enjoyed that, and the game has always been downhill. After 1,400 hours of playtime, I realized I was only playing hoping for it to feel like it used to, but it never came.