The 6-8 hour mandatory tutorial

"

Phrazz#3529 wrote:

"

cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

Why would it be a problem for it to offer advantages?

Because in a game "all about" efficiency, power and min/maxing, it would no longer be an "alternative" way of leveling or an "option", it would be something you'd be stupid not to do/utilize, no matter if it's a tiny amount of benefits.

I could turn it around; would it be a problem if it was longer/less rewarding than the campaign?

yeah i think an argument can be made that if they did it then it has to be slightly less optimal than the campaign. its impossible to balance anything so complex to be even so people shouldnt feel forced to not play the campaign.

for people who dont care it doesnt matter which is more efficient, for the few that do the campaign should be how it is played because its more complex. knowing all the skips, what order quests can be done in, when to grab a way point to loop back later etc. theres an entire speedrun gamification of running the campaign that is a mastery skill area of the game and i dont think that should be replaced by a giant generic D3 coloured brainelss turd.


maintain being good at the game = rewarding. ill pay a tax of 1 extra hour to not deal with that campaign and play a more mindless grind base xp method.




when i say mindless, i mean dont make me think about trash content like fetch quests and bullshit. by all means make the mobs and bosses harder and make me think more about the actual minute by minute gameplay and my build.

"

Snorkle_uk#0761 wrote:

when i say mindless, i mean dont make me think about trash content like fetch quests and bullshit. by all means make the mobs and bosses harder and make me think more about the actual minute by minute gameplay and my build.

I think the campaign became a formality, there is no challenge, no excitement its just busy work. I don't see the point of it personally. They should either rebalance it or allow ppl to bypass it

Check the board for leveling groups, it can be more fun to see others mess around.

During leveling the spam isn't that bad either. PoE does easily drive leveling groups apart (different movement speed/people just going their way quest-wise) so it won't be perfect.


About alts, this league it was about getting that merc and from there it's just all running. It never felt more strictly a chore, but any alt was fast at least.

I'm up for heist/delve leveling for alts, once the first character reached a certain goal.

"

AintCare#6513 wrote:

"

Snorkle_uk#0761 wrote:

when i say mindless, i mean dont make me think about trash content like fetch quests and bullshit. by all means make the mobs and bosses harder and make me think more about the actual minute by minute gameplay and my build.

I think the campaign became a formality, there is no challenge, no excitement its just busy work. I don't see the point of it personally. They should either rebalance it or allow ppl to bypass it

yeah i hear you, thats pretty much how i feel about it too at this point.


i feel that about almost all arpg campaigns tbh. im 43, when i played games as a kid it was chaos engine, xenon 2, r-type, alien breed, turican, golden axe, theres a sort of story but essentially what is fun is playing the game. you load the game up, it maybe gives you 15 seconds of a few screens setting out a basic premiss then you play the actual game because you came to play a game. thats what i want, i want to play a game.




completely unnecessary arpg campaign ranting no one asked to hear...

"

Snorkle_uk#0761 wrote:

no one was sitting around with this amazing idea for a fantasy story and thought "no, im not gonna write a book, im going to tell the story through the medium of a diablolike arpg hacker looter". no one has ever done this.

Actually....this isn't true. There are plenty of times where the story and medium are chosen hand-in-hand.

Example off the top of my head: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. JK had a story idea, but the only medium she felt that could convey that story was a Play, and NOT another novel. She had never written a play before, and every other HP was a novel. She could have just as easily written the story in such a way as to work as a novel but she didn't.

JRPGs are another great example of story and game working hand in hand: if the medium of the game didn't exist, neither would some of the stories. The authors decided that the story they wanted to tell worked best as an interactive experience, and not a static book.


Why do writers choose to create novels over plays, over movie scripts, etc? They have the story AND the medium in mind to deliver that story.

There are likely direct quotes from some of the greatest playwrights, authors, and creative minds throughout history where they specifically state WHY they felt the particular story could ONLY be told through the medium in which they created it.

Game development isn't much different. Although in THIS specific case, the game was almost definitely developed before the story. But we most certainly can't make that call.

"

cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

Although in THIS specific case, the game was almost definitely developed before the story. But we most certainly can't make that call.

You two are almost talking like the campaign has no elements of gameplay, like the campaign is all about the story and that the endgame has no story. The gameplay is just as important in the campaign as it is in the endgame and it has everything to do about the progression and the contrast in power.

Two of the things PoE does better than "all" other ARPG's, are:

1) The way you start out as a naked nobody
2) The way the game doesn't shy away from giving you the power we're all here to achieve - if you put in the effort.

---

I get it; people are getting tired of doing the same campaign over and over, and as I said, I'm not against an alternative (even though I think players would be tired of the alternative quicker than you think). But to make it sound like the campaign is only here to provide the players with a story - in a game all about progression - is missing the mark and needlessly simplified.

"

Phrazz#3529 wrote:

You two are almost talking like the campaign has no elements of gameplay, like the campaign is all about the story and that the endgame has no story.

I actually wasn't talking about PoE at all lol. Merely the creative process. Completely an irrelevant tangent. Which I think is kind of why Snorkle chose to "spoiler" that part of his post in the first place.


It wasn't a comment on whether there was gameplay in the campaign along with the story, it is a game after all hehe. And there is pretty clearly a story going on. it was commentary on whether the story existed and the game was created to somehow fit it OR vice versa OR in tandem.

Basically an assessment on the value of the STORY as it pertains to the developers' perception and the overall game.

People need to stop complaining about the campaign. It has a crucial role from multiple angles:

1. It serves as yet another divider in a new league, giving trained people an economic advantage and therefore benefiting players that over time got better at PoE. No other game rewards experience and skill as much as PoE.

2. It serves as a way to get to know a new spell and see it develop. Not everyone minmaxes the campaign, some just want to use their skill as early as possible and in those cases you get to experience not only your char but also your skill develop.

3. The "effort" you have to put in the campaign in regards to a full char or even a league is absolutely neglible. We are talking 5-8 hours in the span of what, 4 months? Less so for twinks if you feel like getting a second char online. If that is too much time invested for you then I dont know, lets give you 4 voidstones as well I guess?

4. We already have options to transfer skill gems to other characters, items to other chars and to even respec into 2 other classes. Giving people a campaign skip would further reduce friction and decision making. If your decisions what you pick have no impact anymore because you can momentarily reroll into a different class then it naturally kills off any fun of planning ahead.

I feel there are more reasons, but I think those are already enough. If you can´t handle a few hours campaign once every 4 months go play Diablo.

Campaign would be fine if it was actually gameplay.
However, it's not, as the game has been power crept to the moon and back a dozen times by now that it's just a boring mindless time wasting simulator.

"

Vennto#1610 wrote:

People need to stop complaining about the campaign. It has a crucial role from multiple angles:

1. It serves as yet another divider in a new league, giving trained people an economic advantage and therefore benefiting players that over time got better at PoE. No other game rewards experience and skill as much as PoE.

2. It serves as a way to get to know a new spell and see it develop. Not everyone minmaxes the campaign, some just want to use their skill as early as possible and in those cases you get to experience not only your char but also your skill develop.

3. The "effort" you have to put in the campaign in regards to a full char or even a league is absolutely neglible. We are talking 5-8 hours in the span of what, 4 months? Less so for twinks if you feel like getting a second char online. If that is too much time invested for you then I dont know, lets give you 4 voidstones as well I guess?

4. We already have options to transfer skill gems to other characters, items to other chars and to even respec into 2 other classes. Giving people a campaign skip would further reduce friction and decision making. If your decisions what you pick have no impact anymore because you can momentarily reroll into a different class then it naturally kills off any fun of planning ahead.

Let me flip this around on you:

1) Why would any other alternative method be any different? Someone "skilled" at Delving is going to progress faster if Delve were the leveling process than someone who isn't. And is it really gameplay "experience" that speeds up the campaign, or simply being quicker at everything that ISN'T gameplay? I consider myself quite good at the game: ive made countless builds from scratch, cleared all the content the game has to offer, superjuiced, made multi-mirror builds in a league, etc. I've made hundreds of builds across all archetypes and ascendancies. Every metric of an "experienced" player......and yet I am slow in the campaign simply because I don't like to rush.

2) Again I would start with my first comment: why would any other leveling experience be any different? You STILL start from scratch with no gear and no links, and gradually progress and learn your spell or skill. The only difference is you are doing so in a potentially much more enjoyable environment. Which might actually encourage more learning, not less.

3) If the effort is negligible, then why make points 1, 2, and 4? And why would more options be a bad thing if its ultimately unimportant and not temporally relevant? As someone who makes 5+ builds per league, I very much disagree with this whole premise that anywhere from 15 to 25 hours to campaign 5 characters is not a relevant amount of time. Given 2 hours a day, thats 2 full weeks spent in the campaign. Every League. The point of offering more options for secondary characters is making rerolling and building new characters MORE appealing. The comments about the campaign aren't likely coming from folks only running it once every league.

4) How does having a non-campaign leveling option change your decision making? As you said, we already have the ability to transfer gems. We would be getting gear the same way, we would be leveling the same way, progressing through the tree the same way, etc. What decisions do you make that are uniquely tied to the campaign? Who to give the Sekhema Feather to? Furthermore, different leveling options means MORE choices and decision-making.



All of these points are ultimately irrelevant because NONE of the things you said are remotely "crucial" for anyone who has done the campaign more than 5x. Or potentially even less. Even less so for someone like me who has literally done it over a thousand times. It is not an experience test. It is not a learning experience. It has no effect on my decision making. The economic advantage it provides me is negligible to non-existent because I'm not a speedrunner in the first place. I love leveling and growing, but doing it within the confines of the campaign serves no purpose except to turn it into a chore rather than a fully enjoyable experience. I can all but guarantee that you'd be hard-pressed to find any significant amount of mildly experienced players that would disagree with this.