Why I Enjoy Playing Path of Exile

in #gaming7 years ago

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Many people consider Path of Exile the way Diablo III should have been. Personally, I like having two similar but very different games. Path of Exile is an f2p game I have enjoyed for a way too many hours. It has very complex systems, choices, and options that make playing as unique as you want it to be.

Free to Play

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Quite an alarming amount of f2p games you see out there are either moba (multiplayer online battle arena) or fps (first-person shooter); the rest I find are riddled with p2w (pay to win) cash shops with heavy time gates of endless Korean style grinding. Others that claim to be f2p are really just extended trials where you still got buy majority of the game

Path of Exile f2p model includes: base game, free patches, and expansions. They fund the game with supporter packs, and a cash shop. These things include: item cosmetics, better banking options (ie, more bank stash tabs, currency tab, ability to rename a perineum tab, and price items), hideout decorations, pets.

Some will argue that buying perineum bank tabs is p2w. I just view it as being very convenient and you not required to download a third-party application to sell or buy things from a player item website where you spend in-game currency you loot to barter with other players for that item.

Item cosmetics, pets, and decorations don’t add any extra benefit other than looking cool.

Free accounts start with 4 bank stash’s that are shared across all the toons in the same league.

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As you can see from my rather 2 messy stash tabs I have shown they carry a lot of space.

Even when you find yourself wanting more space you just use another character to hold onto things. Free accounts can have 24 character slots!!

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This is one of my toons I use to hold spare currencies, scrolls, and sacrifice fragments that I don’t want taking up space in my bank

All in all, I find the f2p model to be so fair here towards the player. I admit I’m still an f2p player after 532 hours. I know I’m a rather evil person enjoying that much play time within a game and not paying the developers for their hard work. Once I have some spare disposable income where I can buy some stash tabs, and item skins I will because my toons armor is always ugly!!!

Ten Acts

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If you ever played a game like Diablo you know the drill for these kinds of games you progress in the storyline and then redo it all over again on different difficulties.

While Diablo III finally did give players options of doing away with repeating the same acts over and over with the adventure mode. With Path of Exiles recent patch 3.0 they removed the difficulty levels and gave you more acts to progress in the storyline.

Now to be fair they did reuse art assets and changed the looks of landscapes to go from 4 acts to have a 10th act. The story, however, progresses from act 1 to act 10. You revisit many of the same areas as time has passed and you see what liner story actions effects had.

Massive Passive Skill Tree

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A lot of people joke when they first see the skill tree proclaiming “is this a map to the universe?” Here is a link to see the full map in all of its glory.

Picking your class just decides where you start on the skill tree.

If you, for instance, you choose to play a Ranger that uses a 2h sword and that charged dashes into packs of mobs and then whirlwinds around the screen to killing the thing you can. In fact there even build for that called Debeon's Dirge Charged Dash under Harbinger league spoil on that form post

Even with all my play time I often go with premade builds others have come up with. Simply put it’s a rather complex thing to take into account: gear, sockets, skills, and support, with the passive skill tree.

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Most choose that option as it can take a fair bit of in-game looted currency to respect to another build. 1 orb of regret only respects 1 passive skill tree point. My main picked up 20 refund points for free from questing. I’ve also so far only looted 14 Orb of Regret from the current season. If I ever needed more than that I would need to trade for more orbs from another player or hope more drop.

Lots of Skills and Support Options

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As I was saying early this game is complex. These are just some of the main skill and support skill gems you can socket into armor.

I won’t get into the complexity of socket colors, linking, sockets, and theory crafting of finding great combinations to go alongside your passive skill tree and gear. I am simply going say you can have up to 6 gems in either a chest piece or a two-handed weapon if the rights conditions are meet.

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For example my current main this season has a chest with 5 linked blue sockets in it so far. So he has 1 skill gem Glacial Cascade and 4 support gems in it. The 4 support gems in it do things like place a mine for skill, drop 2 extra mines at a time, reduces area effect but gives more damage, add extra physical damage as lighting.

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Results of all that is I drop mines on the ground and when I trigger them I send a wave of ice spikes out and in a very wide area of effect. I just love the look so much. This is just one of a crazy amount of combinations used with a lot of different skills.
That happens to be my main attack skill; my other gear helps me in other ways with combinations skills. Such as movement, buffs, debuffing

As you can imagine, unlike other games where you feel so limited by how many skills there are. You can do a lot of crazy things and be unique as well if you can make it work.

Mapping

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Once you get to mid-level 60’s you start to run maps. This is what most considers being the bread and butter of the game. If you make it to this point you are expected to have fallen in love with the game.

I’ll be honest I have not been anywhere near visiting the over 100+ base maps on the Atlas.
You loot maps that drop and place them into a mapping device. This allows you to choose what maps you want to run, how hard that map can be (normal, magic, rare, and unique).

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After playing a while you learn what maps you hate and don’t pick up. What maps you love but don’t want to kill the boss in. Also modifiers you prefer on a map or once you want to skip altogether.
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Maps have a nice risk to reward ratio. I have 6 times I can enter into the map either from deaths, or filling my inventory. After that that the map closes.

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Off to run another map. What loots will I get? Well, I am not telling you!

Other Things

Those are just some of the things I love amount this game. I frankly can’t spend the days it takes sharing all the things I love about it. From things like crafting gear, prophecies, pantheon, labyrinth, leagues, and other thing

Information

Everything written is my own expressed opinion of the game Path of Exile in accordance terms of use .

All screenshots where taken in game by @enjar from the game Path of Exile created by Grinding Gear Games.


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Pexels edit with Lunapic

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I have played this for at least 300-400 hours of gameplay on and off since its open beta back in 2013 I believe. The problem with it is when you get to the end game you get burned out. Seeing the same places over and over again is mehhhhhhhhhhhhhh. But I think this expansion is the birth of something new in the game. I think that act 5-10 will eventually be added to acts 1-5 and there will be new places that take the place of it and new NPCS. The game feels quite easy till you get to act 5-6. Me personally I think that when you are at a lower level I think there should be a chance that when you enter a map it has map qualities like the burning shocking ground. Or the new enemies in maps that you do not see. Or what about those purple shits where it spawns a bunch of enemies. There is also scammers all around. You gotta be careful. I seen a couple of threads on the internet of people working together to scam so GGG fixes the flaws in the game. People want a auction house.

I can see a complete overhaul of this game and this is the beginning of it. Ever since the guy from D2 joined ggg the quality of the game has went so high up and I have high hopes that this game will replace d2 as the best arpg of all time.

I want a greater view distance.
Affixes like plus damage to skeletons or a certain enemy
I want affixes like a good item but it destroys all of your viewing capabilities like D2.
i want to hire a mercenary.
I want open world pvp where you can kill and loot assholes. You do not have to sign up for that but it could be a special league.
I want enemies to attack a town and you and a group of people take an enemy down.
I want more bosses that are super hardcore but they are not trapped in a little arena so you can kite it around.

I agree this is definitely one of those games that is just getting better over time. I am really excited to see what the future holds for it.

Some more major overhauls would be welcomed I think patch 3.0 has showcased they can and are going to make some wonderful changes.

100% needs a high view distance!

The new expansion is a masterpiece.. too bad all my friends already stopped.. I was so hyped when It got released.

That it was. Sadly I only got an odd hour here or there to play anymore. I did manage to put in a nice 60+ hours before I had to pull back my time and place it elsewhere. I still try and catch some live steams of zizaran playing on twitch when I can to get my fix in!

HEh I was on a holiday when it launched so I was a bit behind but managed to get to a decent spot.. got my 6 link Disfavor in the league and just got bored of playing on my own

I’ve always played on my own. I’m just on at such random hours and days it never works out trying play or keep up with others.

Watching the speed runners is amazing thought. I made a new toon last week to switch over from my league starter and try to find something stronger. Not sure how those crazy people on their second toons make it to act 10 in 3 or 4 hours!!!

Heh I do play mostly solo too but we are usually a bunch of friends always talking on discord.. and i bloody hate lvling.. get me to maps and I'm done 😄

Nice post. Been thinking about checking this game out, but a bit worried about getting sucked into a game that turns into a grindfest. Its also good to see a f2p game that doesn't just try to take your money. I always hope to see a one-time purchase option with permanent benefits that just encourages freebie players to make one $5 purchase and then play the game at their leisure. Anything like that in here?

Grind

It can be a grind fest towards end game. Most don’t make it to level 100 as you lose xp when you die as well after a certain point. I never have focused on reaching level 100 and just have a blast.

I always play in a fresh ladder. A month or so of playing and then I’m off to another game while I wait for the next ladder. I believe they start every 3 months. Ladders each time are always a little different this time we have Harbinger’s (link leads off steemit). Harbingers are alright but not as good as the last season’s ladder. That one was a blast filled with a lot of challenges and choices.

Spending

As far as spending $5-10 I would recommend something like stash storage space (bank space) would be best. It goes on sale once in a while at 30% off. I just happened last weekend so it will be a little while. That is best time. Right now I think without the sale 1 Premium stash tab is $4 and 1 Currency tab is $7.50.

A currency tab is always nice since they hold 5k of a currency in that slot. Otherwise you end up like some of the screenshots I shared where I have 10 of this or 20 of that per slot. There are fewer slots as each currency only gets one.

Otherwise there are just cosmetics to buy. Ice crown for $5 that glows on your head stuff like that. If you do try out the game you will notice the paid cosmetics as they tend to glow on people and look much better then non-cosmetic gear. There are loads cosmetic stuff like that in the shop.

Honestly...nearly anything could be better than Diablo III....can I get an amen?

I still play both. Long term thought POE hands down is so much better than D3.

I’m kind of shocked by now blizzard has not made a D4 to milk some more money out of it. I am wondering if they are just going go and make “bundles” they are calling the Rise of the Necromancer out of all the other remaining classes. Oh man that’s just a sad and greedy if they do.

amazing ' beautiful '
Well done publishing

looks nice thnks for info

This is the first time I have heard of this game, but it looks like a fun game to play from your description and post. Thanks for sharing!

Grinding Gears is a small company I believe Path of Exile is there only product. Most of their servers are in US/EU so that might be why you never heard of them.

Game can be a blast. Other times a bit frustrating if you are lacking enough resistance or hp on gear and die a lot. I never have made it to level 100 in an active ladder. Overall I love it and put way too much time into it hehe.

Hahah!! I am playing this game, Clash of Clans. And I am like you in that I put way too much time into it. :) It's addictive.

I’ve heard of that one. I think I even played it for an hour or two few years back. Didn’t get really far into it. Think I don't like it due to cash shop and how time gated everything was.

Yes!! It is really time-gated, but to be honest, it helps me a lot, because then I don't spend hours playing the game. The time restrictions ensure that I switch off the game for a few hours, until I am ready to play again. It's a Godsend, otherwise, I would literally be on it 24/7. :)

Wow, this is a well-put-together post. Excellent, excellent content here. A very nice effort, and great to see you rewarded for it! Well done! Upvoted, followed, and hoping for more like this!

Great choice of game - nice work!

Thank you very much for the kind comment. I was in shock last night right before I went to bed as I always check for comments.

Haha - well, you definitely deserve it! And you've been noticed by @gaming-trail too. That's awesome!

Looking forward to reading more from you. :)

Thanks, it will always be a mixed bag from me. Something things will be great. Other things I know are dreadful but I had some fun writing them hehe.

I been avoiding writing to much about gaming but it’s just who I am. Steemit really seems to like it. So I’ll be thinking about doing some more in the future.

I noticed you have some very interesting interviews. Have you seen the Path of Paper? It’s a roleplaying of Path of Exile. I’ve not watch much of it as I’m not into roleplaying much. Some of the twitch players I love that play Path of Exiles are in it so it has to be good (I hope!)

No - I hadn't heard of that at all. Thanks for the link. Will definitely check it out :)

And yes, just write what you want on here - as long as you're putting in good effort and constantly working on improving what you publish, you will reap the rewards.

Keep it up!

i love playing games but to this extent

Yes, PoE is probably the best action RPG out there and it has been for quite some time now

Great post! Would you mind if I included it in today's "best of gaming"?

Sure, thank you for asking.