For our newest “What Would You Change About…?” article we’re heading to the continent of Wraeclast in dark fantasy action RPG Path of Exile from Grinding Gear Games, a fairly unique addition to the RPG genre with a number of old school hardcore features that set the game apart from its peers. With different Leagues allowing different levels of difficulty and adding in unique gameplay mechanics, combined with the core trade system which requires players to trade items with each other to seek out what they need, the game has taken many strides to stay unique and true to its vision. However, over the years since beta and release the game has suffered in a variety of ways and here’s some of the things we think could be implemented to get back on track.

• Desync Issues - Constant desyncs make the game sometimes unplayable. Most games suffer from this in some form or another, where the speed at which the player performs an action from the client side and the almost instantaneous reaction of the server that we expect (and need) has delays, usually leading to some types of “lag” or rubber banding. However, in more serious cases, and what Path of Exile seems to constantly fall victim to, is a desync where what you think is currently happening isn’t the same as what the server thinks is happening, leading to situations where monsters and players are in completely different locations on the server than the player can see in their game. It is extremely frustrating and with such a punishing and hardcore game makes it pretty hard to play sometimes.


• Melee Combat - Melee fighters have too hard a time. Melee characters do seem to have a much harder time than ranged, they are considerably harder to play successfully and the various builds (at least until later levels) are quite underwhelming. Interestingly is that melee fighters, even the more tanky sorts, seem to lack general survivability which puts them in a relatively unique position in comparison to other MMOs where melee characters are usually the easiest to play and are pretty tough. Fighting with melee feels clumsy and lacks the fluidity of other class types, but combined with the desyncing issue mentioned above it makes the class almost unplayable if they are constantly (unknowingly) out of range from their targets. If a little more support and survivability from skills were implemented, some auto counter attacks, and less of a demand on high quality drops to make them useful then it might actually be worth playing melee again.


• The Death Penalty - The penalty for death is quite harsh. Playing the game players will earn XP and level up, which is pretty standard, but unlike other MMOs when players die they actually lose 10% of their accumulated XP, essentially lowering their level and so reaching the level cap (100) is an immense achievement and one performed by only a small section of players. Personally we like the system for the most part, we like hardcore features and death penalties due to our old Ultima Online experiences back in the day, however for a game that is already so difficulty we do feel the system could be tweaked. The problem is that dying is already quite frustrating for players in any game, it already wastes time getting back to where you were, and even more time to then try and recover the levels/XP you just lost. Whilst we like the XP loss format for dying we think there should be an opposing XP boost for staying alive for longer periods of time, it would at least reward players for playing smart and take off the edge when they do finally die.


• Trading - It can be really hard to actually find the items you want and need. Trading is no doubt the primary feature of the game, it is unique in that it essentially removes the requirement for currency and instead forces players to barter with each other and NPCs and trade item for item. It is a really interesting system and most definitely adds to the theme and plot of the game as well as reemphasizing that hardcore gameplay. The problem is that a lot of the game and its progression is heavily tied to trading and when it comes to an item you want then there’s quite a number of hurdles in the way: firstly any item you want typically needs to be in the possession of another player, from there you need to be able to FIND a player that has it (usually using third party programs and the forums due to there being no in game search/auction house), adding in the fact that they both need to actually want to trade the item and you need to have something that THEY want. Once you go through all that you need to physically meet the player in the game to make the exchange, and here is where the bigger problem can come into play sometimes as with time zones and casual play it can be a real chore to try and get online at the same time as the person who may have one of the harder to find items you are after. Just to make it all a little easier we’d propose an independent drop point Banker NPC, someone that you can drop an item off to in a safe lockbox at any time, the other player drops of the item they are trading and marks that they approve of your item, once you return to the Banker and approve that their item is indeed what you are after then the trade happens and both players can pick up their new stuff. Simple!


• Downgrading Tier 1 Items - The introduction of Tier Mods makes players feel like they wasted a LOT of time. This point is more relevant to the expansions and general work around of new Tier 1 mods that may effectively make a lot of items suddenly weaker. It takes an amazing amount of time, effort not to mention resources to craft and reroll stats on items to create the near perfect gear you have been working towards for months, introducing Tier 1 mods upsets that balance and it can feel like the investment made was for nothing, that all your hard work was temporary. With larger updates that change the top tier meta we’d argue that it should never undermine the progress of a wide cross section of players just to benefit the minority who have already done everything and got all the best stuff just to give them something new to strive for; the wants of the few should never outweigh those of the many.

So that’s what we’d change with GAME, but more importantly what do you believe should be changed? What do you think could/should be added to improve the game? What would you add to your own personal wish list? Let us know what you think in the comments below!

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 25th, 2015 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.