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[kcwong]

Are you expecting the staff play their own game in secret, kcwong? That would be stranger. And if they want to reveal themselves, then sounds like its up to them.

Yes, that's what I expect... kind of like a lottery where all the staff and their family members aren't allowed to participate.

They are definitely allowed to play the game in their own accounts, they can even buy supporter packs and micro-transactions. But this account would be discretely separate from their staff accounts.

If they like to mingle with the players, they can do so publicly in their staff accounts, or play normally with their personal accounts. They can even have multiple staff accounts, some for PR, some for testing and game master tasks.

Right now, we have a staff member in a player guild, and he's suspicious of playing favorites by leaking the information to his guildmates so they could profit a huge lot... in the scale of 20k exalted orbs. That's an ungodly amount of ex, I could never imagine anyone having that much in one place. My whole time of solo self found net me 7 ex. If you focus on Path of Trading, how about two thousands of ex? He still got 10 times more than that in a flash.

But if they keep it discrete, then this uproar would never have happened. Because *even IF he did* leak information, he did it under his personal account and we would perceive this like the 20% gem recipe: someone managed to find it and kept it secret, now it's out, and the whole community would use it.

[Aklyon]

Is it actually a leak if the only reason it wasn't already discovered was someone lying to hide a trick they wanted to keep, though? Someone in standard with lots of orbs would've tried it eventually.

[Aklyon]

For those still interested, theres a temporary league active for 5 weeks: Darkshrine. You find one, you sacrifice a rare of any kind, you get an effect. Stuff that might happen includes spawning a set of map portals, giving you a shrine effect until you leave the map, or just give the monsters gmp and give you extra item quantity and rarity.

[Rex_Nex]

Seems pretty cool, playing through some of it right now. I'm really tempted to drop it though, I hate leveling & short leagues are annoying.

[MantisMan]

I remember messing around with this game for about a week, which must have been years ago by now. I think I was playing a Maurader, and I was getting annoyed at his inability to wear pants.

I'm juggling too many games right now to add a new one, but I'm a little curious about how Path of Exile plays these days.

I just browsed the wiki for a bit to look at the class info, and that looks like what I remember. Playing the game felt a bit empty to me back then, though.

[Aklyon]

Well if you want pants, they have not added pants. Unless the Scion counts, but theres all sorts of reasons why/why not play scion that aren't pants-based. The classes haven't really changed, but the passive tree...well, its gone through at least 4 full-reset-worthy updates, making things better but sometimes harder to reach.
Mostly, it just plays better. Less lag (usually), no desync (if you have acceptable ping for lockstep mode), more things. More skills, more types of skills, gems you can craft and stick into the passive tree, Shrines (of the nondark kind) can show up, masters and their missions can show up, rogue exiles can show up and try to kill you, strongboxes replaced Large Chests (except these can show up all over the place, not just particular areas), and they've strewn lore all over the place. You can even listen to the lore without standing right next to it!

[nenjin]

At first blush the game won't seem like it's changed much. The lag and desyncs are vastly improved, to the point PoE runs like most other ARPGs. (Although it is extremely sensitive to latency on Lock-step mode.)

The game really shines at higher levels though, IMO. That's when you've built out a skill tree, gotten a good variety of gems, can create whacky combos, have the resources to mod gear, level up Masters, run Maps, mod Maps, etc...

And there's just a wealth of supplemental content now. Shrines with great effects like from Diablo 2. Strong Boxes with random properties. Vaal Maps with random properties. Tormented Spirits. A personal hideout to decorate.

TBH, the game only really took with me after I found a character and build I liked. Then I was hooked. I just got done playing a month long stint of it, gaining several levels on Merciless and starting to dabble in running maps.

I've also come to appreciate the challenge of it. It can get unforgiving at higher levels, where your build, your skills and your timing all are what make the difference between leveling or not. It's got a Dark Souls like challenge for me where things are so ridiculously hard sometimes that, when you actualy win, it really feels like you earned it. On the other hand, a bad build can require a re-roll if you weren't taking things seriously until Cruel difficulty. And I've often been reduced to zerg rushing some story bosses or uniques, xp be damned, just so I can get past it.

All in all, I think it's a game where the appeal builds slower than a game like Diablo 3, but that offers interesting mechanics and a real challenge versus what is now essentially a high speed loot explosion 24/7 in that game.

[PrimusRibbus]

I remember messing around with this game for about a week, which must have been years ago by now. I think I was playing a Maurader, and I was getting annoyed at his inability to wear pants.

I'm juggling too many games right now to add a new one, but I'm a little curious about how Path of Exile plays these days.

I just browsed the wiki for a bit to look at the class info, and that looks like what I remember. Playing the game felt a bit empty to me back then, though.

I feel you. I occasionally check out the thread because PoE has long been on my "I need to give that a shot again" list.

Back towards the end of beta and early release I was playing with a crew of guys that I played D2 with way back in the day. After a couple weeks we collectively came to the decision that either there was something about PoE that turned us off that we just couldn't put our fingers on, or that we'd all grown out of the clicky-clicky-looty-dicky ARPG genre.

*sigh* It looks so good on paper.

[miljan]

The game is a mix bag, in its core it didnt change that much. They added a lot of interesting things you can find out in the world, but it still the same spam one skill in end game. You have so many options but 95% of them will be stack few auras, curses and chose one skill that you will spam to no end. In combination with not that good combat and somewhat lacking gameplay that is limited by free to play model and balance around trade (similar how d3 was with AH), the game is ok as a f2p at best.

It has so much potential but is limited by some core problematic decisions of  developers and also lack of money when they build their engine up as the combat is probably the worst aspect of the game compared to other arpg games.

[nenjin]

I disagree, but that's me. I'm so bored of D3's rainbow vomit of numbers and brainless gameplay, PoE actually makes me feel challenged. I have to know when to retreat, when to dive in, when to potion, when to resist flask. Timing is very important in PoE combat. It's true, it's not as smooth or fluid as holding one button in D3 and just watching everything explode....but I find it more interesting.

Gearing is also more interesting than D3, which has fallen into the trap of just giving everyone legendaries every run, so that even legendaries are basically garbage.

I don't blame anyone for not liking PoE, it's got plenty of visual and handling issues. But like I said, mechanically, I think it's the best ARPG on the market, AND it's F2P with basically zero restrictions, microtransactions or P2W junk.

What it really hurts on though is the time investment required. Especially in the late game.

[nenjin]

None of that gives me cause to argue with anyone saying it's a great game. It has an incredible amount of depth and complexity, which is an increasingly rare thing nowadays. But for me it goes too far in the direction of inaccessibility. I feel as though to actually be 'good' at the game, I'd have to spend dozens of hours reading forum posts and guides, combined with a large amount of time doing things I actively dislike, like online trading (I've never been a fan of trading in games like this - I want to kill monsters, not be a merchant - and sites like d2jsp had a very detrimental effect on D2, in my opinion. I'd love to see a game like this where most gear people use is self-found).

FWIW, I've made it to level 80 with:

-No grouping.
-No trading.
-No reading the forums.
-Designing my own build.

Granted, there was a lot of trial and error in there and the passive resets are what prevented me from possibly locking myself into a bad build. But I think if *I* can succeed by dint of my own brains and skills and knowledge, PoE isn't that hard of a game. It can be unforgiving though, and a lot of my knowledge was hard earned. (Like, knowing how to balance resists vs. life vs. everything else is acquired knowledge.)

[Aklyon]

We do have a guild! Its not especially active (since I didn't know if there was anyone here still interested and wasn't worth bumping just to ask), but we have a bit of guild stash thanks to aristabulus before he left. I wouldn't mind inviting people to it whenever if it'd spruce it back to life, just give me a headsup.

And I've made it to lv. 40ish twice, once by being stubborn with wanting to make a summoner as a summoner, and once guessing how to use frost blades and it mostly working out.

[nenjin]

I'm surprised though - it sounds like you've almost been playing it as an offline game.

If I'm honest, I didn't have the confidence to group with merciless difficulty players running maps because I assumed I'd be a giant, flaming noob in their eyes. According to the math I will probably spend the next two years trying to grind to 100 solo, even before considering all the resources to roll higher level maps.

But yeah, I'm actually quite proud of myself for getting this far with no one's help at all. There are however some map bosses I simply can't fight if I don't want to lose XP. So I basically level up, get my xp bar zero'd out, then go do dangerous stuff. If dangerous stuff has been going well enough I've actually acquired some more XP, I go do something safer until I finish out the level, then go again.

PoE IS super intimidating to get into, but, it's doable without Dwarf Fortress levels of first-time-player research.

[Levi]

Everytime I got to play PoE I get super excited planning my build, but then I go to actually play the game and its ridiculously boring so I stop after a bit.    

I'm not even sure exactly what it is that bores me so much.

[ragnar119]

You should maybe wait for next month when they will release a new mini expansion to start playing so you dont get burned out by than.

I generally play it every time new expansion (mini expansion) is released to around level 85 and at that point get bored and wait for next content update.

But as a person that doesnt like to trade you should know that PoE has the worst drop rates from all arpg out there, as they are balanced around trade and economy. So if you dont want to trade (or play in a guild) the only two options is to invest few times more in grinding or play a cookie cutter build.

I love the game, but also hate some aspect of the game so much (trade and not that good combat that is to simple with one skill spam).