I tried to motivate friends to play

Hello GGG
I'm trying to get a few friends to play PoE1, but the fun factor for new players is just really hard to find. New players just die to stuff without knowing why they’re dying. Why can’t GGG manage to implement a death tracker in 2025?

Same goes for damage calculations — I spend hours teaching new players how to use Path of Building. Just give us a training dummy in the hideout so people can test their support gems. That’s easily possible in 2025.

I get asked stuff like "what the hell are portal scrolls actually?" and "why don’t they have their own little item slot?" Why do they have to take up space in the main inventory?
Games had that 20 years ago

Map Mods:
Now I’ve finally managed to help some players build decent characters — they want to play cool skills and actually do content. But they didn’t want to play meta characters.
And now they have to run a Tier 17 map for the Voidstone.

So now tell me: how am I supposed to explain mods like "no damage dealt for 3 seconds" or "-22% to max resists"?

And the real answer is: you can’t counter these mods — you just die.
You don’t run those unless you have a top-tier endgame character.

Even me, playing with really strong builds — I do Rogue Exiles and don’t die to the mods themselves. But if I can’t deal damage for 3 seconds, there’s a real chance my game crashes from too many effects on screen.

And -37% to max res? I honestly don’t know how you're supposed to counter that crap.

So now my friends don’t feel motivated anymore to work on their characters for hours and hours if they still end up not being able to run these maps — they just reroll them or throw them away.

I mean… if GGG actually plays this stuff themselves: are you having fun with it?
I’m just saying — it would be nice if PoE1 could attract new players again.

Kind regards and with the help of CPT translate
XXIdefiX

- The most common complaint on new player playthrough videos is something like "what's hitting me?" or "what's killing me?" or "I can't tell what's happening on screen".
- The very first area in the game, twilight strand, is a dark grey/black/brown tileset with dark grey/black/brown monsters doing dark grey/black/brown attacks, which sets the theme that the player will never understand what is going in in combat
- Damage calculations with dummies won't matter because most intuitive build strategies in this game don't work. It's like telling a new player "ya play a witch with fireball and fire and casting supports, lots of projectiles and crit and stuff". Sounds intuitive for a caster in an ARPG? They will die repeatedly in white maps and barely kill anything beyond white mobs
- Portal scrolls are for D2 nostalgia because D2 is the greatest game of all time and its design can never do no wrong
- Oh by the way, did you know that D2 had mass item identification feature in the year 2000?
- Resistances are irrelevant beyond campaign. If your only elemental defense is resistances you will die instantly whether they are -50 or +80. A new player coming from an ARPG will think "wow my character has a bunch of life and capped resistances and some block and armor I should have an easy time"? Nope, you'll die instantly to everything because "Defensive layer" in this game means "here's another thing you must have".

If I was to give a brief crash course for a new potential player for POE1 in 2025 I would state the following points

- stay away from youtube and twitch because it features players that treat the game like a job
- stay away from build guides because it features players that treat the game like a job
- you will never find an item upgrade off the ground beyond the campaign
- you will never understand what killed you
- nothing in this game respects your time
- the endgame is designed for those who treat it like a job
- the game has horrifically bad engine optimization for even godmode computer
- your reward for having a godmode computer is still not understand what killed you
- if you try REALLY REALLY REALLY HARD for a few hundred hours you might maybe possibly derive some fun build to play endgame POE1 beyond a few days

Stop sugar coating things. Just tell them like it is. It's a brutally unfair currency simulator that went off the rails years ago. This isn't the only worthwhile ARPG game in town these days, and that's not considering many other RPG games or other genres.

1. Totally agree with the lack of information on deaths/damage.
Simply pause the scene on death to allow for post-death analysis or have a dialogue text that tells you what monster/attack you were slain by.

Obviously even more info would be great, but either of those would be a huge QoL boost.
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2. Training dummy has been covered in multiple interviews
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3. Tired of people playing crap builds then complaining about end-game juiced content. The game needs content for everyone, including mirror tier builds. It has options for weak builds as well, but you need to drop the FOMO and play what you are capable of.

You can let them try poe2. That one’s more beginner friendly