Path of Exile Gameplay Insights

Path of Exile is more than I it's a lot more than I expected look over the years I've tried to avoid playing Path of Exile not because it was a game that I didn't think that I would like but because of the reputation the game has built for itself over time being this game of immeasurable complexity in depth to the point where it is intimidating for a new player to want to try to get involved in but at the exact same time it's also built a reputation of being an incredibly well- ran live service game and one that is tireless supported by both its community and its developers so I felt it was time for me to finally give this game its Fair Shake that's what I want to talk about today look I've played Path of Exile in the past I've di my toes in got my feet wet but ultimately I drowned before I ever got to the beach I've never finished the campaign that is until today I'm now in the early throws of the end game for Path of Exile and I want to talk about those past failures I want to talk about my last 30 plus hours of gameplay what it looked like what it felt like and most importantly because of the fact of it being a live service game and a free-to-play game what it cost so I recently played Warframe for the very first time and I documented my entire experience here on YouTube and I had so much fun doing it that I'm doing it again here with Path of Exile now this wasn't my first choice following Warframe but the recent update Settlers of calgar caught my attention an idol mechanic where you can trade currency respect most importantly and passively earn gear even when you're not even playing seemed like the perfect time for an inexperienced or new player to be able to hop in because it adds a level of forgiveness and convenience that was otherwise not in the game so I downloaded the game fired it up and logged in I want to start off by saying that Poe has the greatest character selector I have ever seen no unnecessary information just the name of the class and a character background that's voiced by one of the most badass voice actors I've ever heard learn well the lessons that R class will teach you which it is your only hope of finding your way home the sharpness of his words set the tone right away you're no hero you're a criminal exiled to a hellscape for your crimes there's something in that something far more interesting and visceral than the typical hero story that we've been fed and served year over a year I've been exhausted by the softness of modern game's approach to their different narratives so afraid to offend and disgust and I found myself exhilarated by how unafraid this game is to be itself and honestly never stops being after naming my witch I quickly load onto a beach where I'm greeted by a wounded Exile leaned up against a log he tells me that we are the only survivors to make it ashore he explains to me that the island is crawling with criminals has me arm myself with a wand before he's devoured by an undead I kill it and I get my first skill Gem and within seconds the game reveals its complexity Poe doesn't use the standard Trope of leveling up to unlock more skills no skills are contained in gems and gems have varying qualities and you can level them up and you can see every detail of the spell or skill by hovering over them when playing for the first time I'll be honest this was immediately jarring all games copy off of one another at least to some extent and systems are the most common shared aspect for any loot driven arpg after playing enough of any type of game you're going to build up a certain level of familiarity and when you have that pre-existing knowledge and EXP experience it makes the transition into these games a lot more comfortable however Path of Exile subverts that Comfort skills and spells are no longer things that you unlock they're things that you find and buy passives for those spells are exact same thing you have to find and buy those as well and those are socketed into linked sockets on your gear and that's how you modify specific spells and not all passive gems are compatible with all skills and not all skills react the same way to different passives I shrug it off absorb what I can and continue to play Poe is highly responsive your character goes exactly where you want them to it plays how you would expect a game like this to play environments are highly detailed the background music is haunting character animations are solid and enemies from the very start surprisingly hit like a truck I Fireball some enemies down I pick up some random pieces of Loot and then I level up and I'm given a passive point which I quickly realize is a drop in the ocean against the backdrop of a massive passive tree this is where I've quit this is where I've failed before and I know that I'm not alone Path of Exile skill tree is the equivalent to a novel response that you get from a text message that you sent to a friend simply asking what's up it's the sometimes, 1400w essays that I see in the comment sections of my video because somebody disagrees with me it's the essayes on Twitch in chat it's too much too fast and so overwhelming that you don't even want to look at it this tree is what's prevented me from playing the game or continuing to play the game in the past I try to play games as blind as I can I stay away from Guides metas and more because I don't want anything spoiling my journey and I learn best when I'm taking my time to understand the game rather than just playing the game on autopilot I've effectively bricked characters in the past because the game doesn't really allow you to freely reset your skill tree and you can only remove points with a free single point book that you get or a few of those that you get throughout the campaign or using a current called orbs of regret as a new player playing without guidance depending on how far off the rails your build gets you can easily find yourself in a place where there's no way to Respec outside of going out and farming currency to Respec yourself or starting a new character and even if you do respect the way that you want you could easily render your character unplayable because skills and gems and gear all have based at requirements and if you no longer meet those well you no longer can play your character look I'm going to level with you that's just not fun making a mistake in needing to farm a currency to be able to fix it just doesn't feel good accidentally removing a passive stat that allows you to be able to use certain spells or gear that you were using hurts even worse and for me it's resulted in outright quitting the game time and time again it took time for me to come to the realization that I wouldn't have made those mistakes if I planned ahead but to plan ahead you have to know the game meaning Path of Exile isn't for new casual players it's for people who are thoroughly researching before they make any choices planning ahead before they're even playing the game and find gratification in doing that and if you're not one of those players you have to learn to become one of them by following the lead of those players that have already put out build guides planners and item filters leading the way you know it's weird this is usually when I would talk about how I think that this is bad game design because it's convoluted and confusing and all the systems are often intertwined so any issue you have mistake you make ends up being multiplicative because it ends up affecting other areas of the game as well and while I don't like that and it sucks at the exact same time I have to respect it because there's not a lot of games that are out there that are like this most games you have to put 50 60 100 hours into them before you can get any level of complexity or challenge out of them but Path of Exile just hits you with it straight from the start and the game is made for a very specific audience and they make that very clear clear and even if you're not one of those players they're facilitating the ability for you to become one of the poe players after a while because you're going to learn that and pick that up the longer that you play the game and there's something really cool about that but so many AAA games and live service games that I've seen over the year try to widen their scope to the point where they can try to bring in as many people as they possibly can trying to make their games as accessible and inclusive as possible watering down the final product to the point it's not even recognizable playable or enjoyable for that matter you have grinding gear games in Path of Exile that has narrowed their scope they know who Their audience is they know what kind of game they're trying to make and it works for them and the game has a very specific and unique identity and it works and I see that the more that I play the game it becomes more and more apparent that I play even though I can sit here and think to myself man I wish things are a little bit different I wish things were explained better displayed better that systems were a little bit more forgiving in the game at the exact same time I just have to respect the game for being what it is so I did things differently this time I actually followed a build guide to the letter I filled in the gaps anytime there was something that I couldn't achieve that it wanted and I continued to make my way through the game in this I ended up realizing that my past failures yielded some underlying experience that made playing the game this time through that much easier I understood map layout knew of quest rewards understood currencies and even knew that I could craft items by selling specific things to vendors like selling a gem in an iron ring to make a resistance ring or selling tricolored items to yield a chromatic orb so I could recolor sockets in another piece of gear this past knowledge allowed me to start taking my time to better understand the skill tree know why I'm heading in a certain direction and what benefits it gives realizing that the passive tree is there to support the ability of the chosen and gems that you're using not the other way around your build is mostly using red and blue gems well you want intellect and strength nodes based on those stats because that's what you need to be able to level those gems and continue to use them as well as get gear that uses those gem sockets and those colors then I realized that if you're playing melee magic minions or rang you want to pick up those nodes along the way as you're picking up those different stat lines in this I realized that my past failures were never a waste of time they were just the outcome of me learning the game for the first time and that's part of the journey every single game that I've played for years now doesn't allow the player to outright fail and I think that both players and developers have forgotten how much value there is in learning a game and learning from your past failures and how often times it makes conquering challenges that much more rewarding there's something very distinct and real about a game that is not afraid to let you fail even let you quit and because of that it makes you want to overcome these Challen challenges even more as I continued to play the game I found that my past knowledge as well as the build guide that I was using was allowing me to start to drink in the finer elements of the game that I often overlooked when I played it in the past most notably The Story characters voice acting and music all of which exceed my expectations and at times the standards of what we have for full-priced games similarly to my experience with Warframe Path of Exile isn't a great free-to-play game it's just a great game that happens to be free to playay well gamepl always comes first many modern games Cut cost on quality through things that elevate The players's Experience like quality writing music voice acting art design and atmosphere well none of these things make a great game on their own if the game play is great and you have all these added elements of quality it makes a good game legendary all NPCs are fully voice acted no reading necessary and the vast majority of them are incredibly well voice acted with unique personalities and backgrounds tile set after tile set you are exposed to a wild variety of detailed environments with unique enemies and layouts each Zone has its own background music with some of them so good they become the background music to the script that I'm writing right now at this very second and some of them even use their own version of environmental storytelling in a way that I've never even seen before there's this section of the game where you're chasing down piety and you enter into the facility that they use for experiments and there's these rivers of blood bodies floating around tension building music playing in the background while you hear the pained screams of her victims off in the distance Path of Exile is just so damn brutal and dark a legacy that was picked up by the developers a torch that they were carrying for Diablo too but they've cranked it up to 11 the lore in this game is so Primal and Savage almost anytime you go to save somebody they die and your character just shrugs it off because death is so cheap in this world the first boss that you go to fight is in a prison he's a prison Warden and he was imbued with these theurgical gems part of this experiment he was wishing for greater power and after he survived the experiment he awoke to kill everybody that granted him those powers and he was locked in the prison because everybody was so terrified of him that they left his hands and arms are now big lump of Flesh because he beat on the walls of the prison for over 250 years it's so metal in comparison to later lore and bosses this is vanilla this is Slice of Life anime this is Fruits Basket the game only continues to ramp from here and it's just trying to match the unbridled might of your character from Beasts to monsters to Warriors to Gods to eldrich horres that defy reasoning it's as if your character is an affront to the law laws of reality itself and as such the only way to challenge you is to break reality itself I was a Diablo kid Diablo I I remember I had a friend of mine that came over to the house he had a cracked version of Diablo I Lord Of Destruction installed it on our family PC and that was all she wrote I was glued you couldn't get me off of that computer I lived on that damn thing because I enjoyed the game so much back in the day for me being able to play mature games or having mature games were a rarity I played Pokemon and jrpgs that was literally the only things that I played and I remember how shocked I was and enthralled when I watched that opening cut scene for Diablo I reading the stories and listening to the stories in Diablo I it was so good and there are very few games that are out there that can nail that feeling of unease and curiosity when it comes to matters of human depravity demons magic theurgical weapons and technology mixed together the premise of all of these different things mixed with gods and immortality and everything else it's just so damn good it's so it's just so incredible you can't help but want to listen to some of the people because some of the things that they say is just it's wild it's wild and I think one of the things that I really respect and I really enjoy about this game is the fact that character power feels like it's always being challenged by the story equally in a lot of cases you're looking back at playing Diablo well if you killed a demon well you know a lesser evil or a greater evil well they're basically all the same to you and it's like well why is this one more strong oh you know you know he ate one of the other demons or something like that it's like that's not good enough man in this game they're like yeah no we're going to kick it up a notch literally every single time you go to fight something else the next thing that you're fighting the next bigger enemy that you fight just gets even crazier and I like that it feels oddly more natural even though it's technically unnatural but yeah and it's not just The Narrative of the game that continues to swell and grow and match you it's the content that this game serves the massive amount of content in this game Path of Exile officially released back in October of 2013 and it quickly became a prominent figure in the action RPG genre for over a decade now and it's just keeps going going keeps growing the longevity and the continued success of the game can be attributed to the Innovative approach that they've taken when it comes to content updates through their league system leagues are temporary events that introduce new mechanics challenges and rewards they're designed to keep the game play fresh and engaging keep bringing players back these leagues typically last around 3 months or more and after which these mechanics are then integrated into the game permanently or they're removed based on player feedback and overall impact on the the game's balance many of the league mechanics have become staple features in Path of Exile offering diverse ways to be able to progress through the game The Campaign endgame whatever it might be for instance I ended up doing some of the immortal Syndicate a complex web of encounters where I can manipulate people to gain more valuable rewards there's the delve League where there's an infinite dungeon an Azurite mine I gather materials in the open world and then I get to explore deeper levels of the mind for more unique rewards and challenges similarly there's also the Temple of atotal I think is how you pronounce that I'm not really too sure where you can change the layout of the dungeon and you go through these different time traveling mechanic I don't understand it I I don't get it there's actually a lot of these that I don't understand at all there's this one like fractal mirror portal looking thing that I find on maps I don't know what it is I'll have to look into it or I don't the best part about these League mechanics is that they're all optional do them if you want to or pass them right by Focus on learning specific League mechanics that you are actually interested in and just ignore the rest my biggest issue when first playing is that I didn't have that kind of context and it took me forever to be able to progress through some of these areas in the campaign because I was trying to learn all these different League mechanics at once and I couldn't get a grip on them or how to optimize them now that I have some level of experience I use the beastiary to grab some specific currencies that I need or fill a specific gear slot I tap on the Frozen enemies to be able to collect Essences and craft items when I find a solid base and in the current league I take a little bit more time to go out and try to optimize my town and passively earn things that will help me down the road each one of these mechanics serves as their own way to be able to break any sense of monotony or boredom that I felt when I was playing it I was surprised with how seamlessly some of these mechanics felt like they were introduced into General progression often times I felt like I could just tap them and go and some of the other mechanics are a little bit more disruptive they'll actually stop your movement you got to go into a portal and stuff so those ones I usually skip but I especially like the current mechanic I can just pick up gold whenever I want to or the beasti area where I can capture targets that are already on the field when I'm searching for something else and I also really like delves where I can just tap on the chest store the energy that I need and use the mechanic whenever I want to when I look at a game like Diablo I they often have League mechanics that are the primary means in which you are progressing That season and while I think it makes sense from a Content perspective I don't think it makes sense from a player perspective because often times we may not even be interested in that mechanic heck we might not even like it and only really want to use parts of it so that we can progress further in other areas Path of Exile is very much one of those play your own way kind of games classes in essence are just a blank canvas that you can use whatever skills or spells that you want to on them you can truly make distinct and unique builds all on your own you can skip content interact with mean mechanics that you want to and that spirit is found everywhere in the game as I mentioned previously this is my first time ever getting this far through the campaign clearing the campaign I just unlocked the atlas of Worlds a fully customizable end game where I can choose my path my modifiers what events I see what bosses I see what loot I see and more I can combine this with any of the other league mechanics that I enjoy and develop an endgame that I want to play rather than what somebody else thinks I should be playing you know it's genuinely wild how customizable your experience is when you're playing Path of Exile and I think it takes some time and experience to be able to come to the realization at least it did for me to understand that you don't need to do everything in Path of Exile you just need to focus on a couple of things and it's best to find things that you enjoy the most because you're going to be doing them a lot and if you think about it if I'm trying to do everything all at once I'm probably not going to get very far but if I focus very hardcore on just a couple of things you're going to be able to progress those enough to get the rewards that you need to be used full in the end game and I think that's awesome because there's two things that I've always wanted in more games and I've talked about it in other videos in the past which is that I want more games that are not afraid to be themselves but I also want games to not stand in the way of how players want to play those games the experience the players actually want to have and when you put those things next to each other it sounds almost impossible to do but Path of Exile seemingly pulls it off without any effort at all it's impressive genuinely is look over over the last few years I've been so exhausted by live service games I completely stopped playing them for the most part because anytime I would take any type of short or extended break I'd come back to a game that just didn't feel comfortable to play anymore because I had to relearn so many different things or they're having me do something that I'm not even interested in doing or whatever it might be and as such I end up just throwing the games to the side because I just don't want to play it anymore I don't want to have to deal with that I don't want to have to deal with coming back to something that I don't know how to play even though it was only you know six months or a year since I played it last and Path of Exile goes right around that by allowing you to be able to take on any of these mechanics and some of this content at whatever Pace that you want it gives you the room and the space to be able to learn the things that you want to learn to play the things that you want to play and especially if we're looking at the most recent League mechanic the settlers of calgar I think is what it's called that's passive I'm picking up gold as I'm playing the game I can go to the city and upgrade it or do whatever I want any time that I want and even if I forget about it for too long well I still have heaps of gold that I'm going to be able to go and reinvest into that town and use and I think that's awesome especially just the passive mechanic of earning gear and stuff like that as well and it's great for a new player experience because it makes it where those systems are a little bit less intimidating and I really hope that something similar makes its way over to Path of Exile too cuz it's going to make the new player experience just that much more approachable and more comfortable for players when they're first starting out it's crazy to think about how much content is in Path of Exile but it's even more crazy when you start to realize that it's free well kind of one of my biggest issues when it comes to most live service games is how lazy they are when it comes to monetization rather than trying to provide anything of value to us rather than working for our money they often times will try to squeeze more money out of the players by by taking it from areas that already exist in the game just recently EA had to walk back proposed changes on price hikes for a battle pass in Apex Legends gaslighting the players saying that it was all to provide them more value in the future when in fact it did the opposite if you want to monetize your game be creative earn my money and I'll be happy to give it to you Path of Exile is working for my money Poe is by far one of the most customizable games that I've played outside of Warframe you have gear skins weapon skins auras pets cloaks trailing effects behind your character and you can even change the way that spells and abilities look in the game just about everything that is character related can be customized in some way and better yet they're transparent about it I think what I love most about the Cosmetic shop and Path of Exile is the fact that every single transaction that's in there comes with its own individual YouTube video that shows you what those weapon effects and skins look like in actual gameplay rather than just going off off of an image player expression is key to any successful live service game yes you need the game to be fun and filled with content but you need some way to be able to monetize it and customization is the best way to be able to do that now I will say that I do think that it comes at a great cost in Path of Exile while skins and effects are really cool the vanilla weapons and clothing seem to take a noticeable hit I think one of the core issues with a game that heavily leans into Cosmetics is that the developers are incentivized to make the rest of the game game look weaker in comparison I'm not a huge fan of this especially in an action RPG part of the fun of being a badass is looking like one and while some weapons and gear skins and sets can look pretty cool they pale in comparison to what you can buy which brings me to the topic of stash tabs the most contentious of microtransactions in Path of Exile and it's one that I am generally conflicted on I can buy storage space cool which when you're progressing through the campaign it's not necessary whatsoever but it definitely becomes a wall if you wish to progress in the end game or if you plan to trade and trading in a game like this is what keeps it alive and interesting it keeps that Community thriving while I might not be able to find what I need when I'm playing the game I could pull together other resources and trade with another player to get an item or a few items that help me get unstuck or UNH halted from progress because of my bad RNG well solo self found is 100% viable most players that are going into the endgame are going to want to trade however you can't list items to the public unless you own a premium stash tab furthermore the longer that you play the more League mechanics that you get involved in the more likely you are to run out of space relatively quickly and as such buying a stash tab or buying a space in your storage is less of an option and more of a requirement to play personally I think that stash Bay should be expanded a little bit at least give a single premium stash tab to new players so they have some room to grow and the ability to list and put items up for trade without having to use a third party website but overall I don't really have an issue with stash tabs as a concept it's just the generic premium ones especially once you start contrasting them with item specific tabs like Essence map currency or some of the other league ones because they're unique they're highly functionable they are incredibly userfriendly and provide a lot of value for the money that's actually spent on them I don't think I get the same value from a St standard premium stash tab as I do the other ones and that purchase just feels generic and forced while there is room to criticize I do appreciate that all stash Tabs are bound to your account you don't need to buy them again for every other character and also grinding gear games is said that well any of your purchases from Path of Exile 1 are going to get carried over to Path of Exile 2 I appreciate that now I've heard from Path of Exile fans directly that they reference the stash tabs as the box price for the game and to be honest with you I'm just going to have to agree with that one look there's hundreds if not thousands there is thousands and thousands of hours of gameplay for players tons of content for absolutely nothing and as much as I would love to live in a world in which freeo play was free to play with no caveats I recognize that we don't live in a Utopia and there has to be some type of Equivalent Exchange for us to get a game like this and a service like this and you're going to have to put some things out of the reach of players for them to be able to motivate you to spend money I get it it's a business and look to be honest with you throwing them $ 20 to $30 to be able to play a game that has this much content that's been supported this much for this long is beyond worth it it's the easiest purchase I've ever made even more so just before recording this video I ended up buying one of their supporter packs because I've enjoyed the game that much and they don't obfuscate currency it's beautiful it's so beautiful I don't know what to say f what is it like $5 for 50 coins or something like that it's I think what it comes out to be 200 coins is 20 bucks 100 coins is $10 the money actually makes sense on the screen they're not trying to rip me off by having me overinvestment games have in their microtransaction shops it's insane it the society we live in look when we talk about microtransactions and just overall monetization it's always about the value received and the value delivered how much am I giving you and what am I getting back and at the end of the day Path of Exile is a game that just keeps on giv over the years I've grown to hate live service games and stay away from free-to-play games entirely because I feel like they represent an industrywide move to commoditize and commercialize games to a point where we're going to be spending we're going to be far exceeding what we normally spend on a game especially when we're looking at the box price for a game they want to chop these games up into pieces sell it to us bit by bit hike the price as inflation grows and all the while return less and less value to the players I mean that's the name of the game do as little as you possibly can for as much money as possible and let's see how far we can push it until the players push back and then well we'll just try again later I'm growing to realize that not every studio and publisher is the enemy some of them that are out there do seek to provide players with games that they actually want to play charge them a fair price and then continue to deliver on that Path of Exile is one of those games grinding gear games is one of those developers while they were inspired by Diablo and blizzard they couldn't be any more different they made a dark and depraved game with no shortcuts no self-censoring or drops in quality well it's a hard game to get into and it's not designed for new players it's a journey that grows on you as you continue to to play it learn fail and then overcome it's a beacon of light in an industry that pulls its punches that focuses on areas in games that matter the least to players and seeks to ask us for more and more money while simultaneously diminishing the quality of their own products it's a game that you can choose to play however you want build whatever you want revisit mechanics and choose whatever content that you want to play you can sync hundreds or thousands of hours into it and likely never even pay a dime it's a game that truly understands what it means to be a live service game a great live service game and it stands as an example to all well I'm just over 30 hours in and just finally completed the campaign for the first time I plan to continue to play learn more of what I can of the end game and share that experience in the future I've enjoyed my time in Ray class and this Exile isn't going anywhere anytime soon it's crazy to think how much time that I've spent trying to play this game realizing that I still haven't even scratched the surface there's so much on the back end of this game that I haven't even touched yet I barely just got into the atlas of Worlds there's a whole other passive tree for me to mess with that that's a whole other thing I'm I don't even know if I'm even ready for I have to do a lot of research talk to some people a DM if you ever watch this video or asmin gold somebody give me some resources or something like that I don't know there's just so much information I think that's like the it's the hardest thing about getting into playing this kind of game is that there's just so much in information because there's so many things that they've added to the game there's so many things that they've changed in the game over time and there's just a lot of research that needs to be done a lot of third party tools that I'm not really a fan of I don't like using third party tools to do things in games personally it's just a me thing I'd rather do everything in the game and not have to worry about going outside of the game for anything but yeah it's it's a lot man it's huge it's just crazy how much game there is and it's wild to think that they're planning on continuing to this game when they come out with Path of Exile 2 I don't even know what that's even going to look like I've watched a lot of the trailers for Path of Exile 2 I'll be real I'm going to get in there day one I'm going to stay in there day one and I'm not going to get out because like the last thing that I want to do is not play that game and it get too far away from me and then me have that much more to try to have to learn I'd rather be there day one figure it out know it and then go from there simple as that I think that's one of the things that it's one of the more intimidating things when it comes to Path of Exile just a base game is that you know when you have 10 years of development that's a lot of content to dig through it's a lot there and it gets away from you and it became this thing for me for every single time I'd look at the game I'd be like oh man there goes another month there goes another year that I haven't played it another year or two or three of content that I have no idea what's going on with this game and yeah yeah I'd like to avoid that in the future Plus on top of that poe2 looks sick oh God it looks so sick it's so interesting and cool that I didn't really talk about this in the video and I probably should have brought it up somewhere else but one of the things that I was thinking about was the fact that they don't just make an arpg they are Trailblazers they're trying and testing and doing all kinds of different things and seeing what else will work in this kind of game and the rest of the games that are in the genre you know not throwing Flack at them or anything like that they're not doing a whole lot to try to innovate it and to be honest I think it's a genre that does need some Innovation because otherwise it's just going to get too dated for younger audiences that you know after we're all old and crusty and can't play games anymore but I think it's really cool especially looking to see how they're putting in Combos and stuff like that I I can already see that they're implementing some stuff for uh new player experience UI improvements and things like that I hope some of that stuff makes its way back to Path of Exile though that's something that I saw recently with is it no man Sky no man's sky is working on light no fire they did some really cool stuff in their development of light no fire and they thought huh why don't we just go ahead and put it in our other game I think that you know I want to see more live service games continue to do stuff like that I think it's really smart why not you already made it right so why not just Port it over somewhere else if it's going to improve the experience and bring more players in and I think there's going to be some players even when poe2 comes out I think there's going to be some people that are going to want to play poe1 they're going to get the background I don't know where it's set TimeWise or anything like that but yeah continue to make your games good that's it but yeah I really enjoyed this one I've really been enjoying doing video series like these I'm going to continue to do them in the future have a lot of games I still need to play a lot now that I'm getting into some of these freet to-play games I'm looking at some of the other ones that I have on the list Guild Wars 2 genjin impact weing waves there's a few other ones that are on there I don't know if you guys are interested in any of those let me know down in the comments if you guys enjoyed this video let me know subscribe to the channel I talk about video games a lot catch me on Twitch I play video games live and talk about news and things like that uh yeah that's all I got stay cool stay righteous stay safe my friends and I will see you in Ray class peace family family family family

Path of Exile is more than I it&#39;s a lot more than I expected look over the years I&#39;ve tried to avoid playing Path of Exile not because it was a game that I didn&#39;t think that I would like but because of the reputation the game has built for itself over time being this game of immeasurable complexity in depth to the point where it is intimidating for a new player to want to try to get involved in but at the exact same time it&#39;s also built a reputation of being an incredibly well- ran live service game and one that is tireless supported by both its community and its developers so I felt it was time for me to finally give this game its Fair Shake that&#39;s what I want to talk about today look I&#39;ve played Path of Exile in the past I&#39;ve di my toes in got my feet wet but ultimately I drowned before I ever got to the beach I&#39;ve never finished the campaign that is until today I&#39;m now in the early throws of the end game for Path of Exile and I want to talk about those past failures I want to talk about my last 30 plus hours of gameplay what it looked like what it felt like and most importantly because of the fact of it being a live service game and a free-to-play game what it cost so I recently played Warframe for the very first time and I documented my entire experience here on YouTube and I had so much fun doing it that I&#39;m doing it again here with Path of Exile now this wasn&#39;t my first choice following Warframe but the recent update Settlers of calgar caught my attention an idol mechanic where you can trade currency respect most importantly and passively earn gear even when you&#39;re not even playing seemed like the perfect time for an inexperienced or new player to be able to hop in because it adds a level of forgiveness and convenience that was otherwise not in the game so I downloaded the game fired it up and logged in I want to start off by saying that Poe has the greatest character selector I have ever seen no unnecessary information just the name of the class and a character background that&#39;s voiced by one of the most badass voice actors I&#39;ve ever heard learn well the lessons that R class will teach you which it is your only hope of finding your way home the sharpness of his words set the tone right away you&#39;re no hero you&#39;re a criminal exiled to a hellscape for your crimes there&#39;s something in that something far more interesting and visceral than the typical hero story that we&#39;ve been fed and served year over a year I&#39;ve been exhausted by the softness of modern game&#39;s approach to their different narratives so afraid to offend and disgust and I found myself exhilarated by how unafraid this game is to be itself and honestly never stops being after naming my witch I quickly load onto a beach where I&#39;m greeted by a wounded Exile leaned up against a log he tells me that we are the only survivors to make it ashore he explains to me that the island is crawling with criminals has me arm myself with a wand before he&#39;s devoured by an undead I kill it and I get my first skill Gem and within seconds the game reveals its complexity Poe doesn&#39;t use the standard Trope of leveling up to unlock more skills no skills are contained in gems and gems have varying qualities and you can level them up and you can see every detail of the spell or skill by hovering over them when playing for the first time I&#39;ll be honest this was immediately jarring all games copy off of one another at least to some extent and systems are the most common shared aspect for any loot driven arpg after playing enough of any type of game you&#39;re going to build up a certain level of familiarity and when you have that pre-existing knowledge and EXP experience it makes the transition into these games a lot more comfortable however Path of Exile subverts that Comfort skills and spells are no longer things that you unlock they&#39;re things that you find and buy passives for those spells are exact same thing you have to find and buy those as well and those are socketed into linked sockets on your gear and that&#39;s how you modify specific spells and not all passive gems are compatible with all skills and not all skills react the same way to different passives I shrug it off absorb what I can and continue to play Poe is highly responsive your character goes exactly where you want them to it plays how you would expect a game like this to play environments are highly detailed the background music is haunting character animations are solid and enemies from the very start surprisingly hit like a truck I Fireball some enemies down I pick up some random pieces of Loot and then I level up and I&#39;m given a passive point which I quickly realize is a drop in the ocean against the backdrop of a massive passive tree this is where I&#39;ve quit this is where I&#39;ve failed before and I know that I&#39;m not alone Path of Exile skill tree is the equivalent to a novel response that you get from a text message that you sent to a friend simply asking what&#39;s up it&#39;s the sometimes, 1400w essays that I see in the comment sections of my video because somebody disagrees with me it&#39;s the essayes on Twitch in chat it&#39;s too much too fast and so overwhelming that you don&#39;t even want to look at it this tree is what&#39;s prevented me from playing the game or continuing to play the game in the past I try to play games as blind as I can I stay away from Guides metas and more because I don&#39;t want anything spoiling my journey and I learn best when I&#39;m taking my time to understand the game rather than just playing the game on autopilot I&#39;ve effectively bricked characters in the past because the game doesn&#39;t really allow you to freely reset your skill tree and you can only remove points with a free single point book that you get or a few of those that you get throughout the campaign or using a current called orbs of regret as a new player playing without guidance depending on how far off the rails your build gets you can easily find yourself in a place where there&#39;s no way to Respec outside of going out and farming currency to Respec yourself or starting a new character and even if you do respect the way that you want you could easily render your character unplayable because skills and gems and gear all have based at requirements and if you no longer meet those well you no longer can play your character look I&#39;m going to level with you that&#39;s just not fun making a mistake in needing to farm a currency to be able to fix it just doesn&#39;t feel good accidentally removing a passive stat that allows you to be able to use certain spells or gear that you were using hurts even worse and for me it&#39;s resulted in outright quitting the game time and time again it took time for me to come to the realization that I wouldn&#39;t have made those mistakes if I planned ahead but to plan ahead you have to know the game meaning Path of Exile isn&#39;t for new casual players it&#39;s for people who are thoroughly researching before they make any choices planning ahead before they&#39;re even playing the game and find gratification in doing that and if you&#39;re not one of those players you have to learn to become one of them by following the lead of those players that have already put out build guides planners and item filters leading the way you know it&#39;s weird this is usually when I would talk about how I think that this is bad game design because it&#39;s convoluted and confusing and all the systems are often intertwined so any issue you have mistake you make ends up being multiplicative because it ends up affecting other areas of the game as well and while I don&#39;t like that and it sucks at the exact same time I have to respect it because there&#39;s not a lot of games that are out there that are like this most games you have to put 50 60 100 hours into them before you can get any level of complexity or challenge out of them but Path of Exile just hits you with it straight from the start and the game is made for a very specific audience and they make that very clear clear and even if you&#39;re not one of those players they&#39;re facilitating the ability for you to become one of the poe players after a while because you&#39;re going to learn that and pick that up the longer that you play the game and there&#39;s something really cool about that but so many AAA games and live service games that I&#39;ve seen over the year try to widen their scope to the point where they can try to bring in as many people as they possibly can trying to make their games as accessible and inclusive as possible watering down the final product to the point it&#39;s not even recognizable playable or enjoyable for that matter you have grinding gear games in Path of Exile that has narrowed their scope they know who Their audience is they know what kind of game they&#39;re trying to make and it works for them and the game has a very specific and unique identity and it works and I see that the more that I play the game it becomes more and more apparent that I play even though I can sit here and think to myself man I wish things are a little bit different I wish things were explained better displayed better that systems were a little bit more forgiving in the game at the exact same time I just have to respect the game for being what it is so I did things differently this time I actually followed a build guide to the letter I filled in the gaps anytime there was something that I couldn&#39;t achieve that it wanted and I continued to make my way through the game in this I ended up realizing that my past failures yielded some underlying experience that made playing the game this time through that much easier I understood map layout knew of quest rewards understood currencies and even knew that I could craft items by selling specific things to vendors like selling a gem in an iron ring to make a resistance ring or selling tricolored items to yield a chromatic orb so I could recolor sockets in another piece of gear this past knowledge allowed me to start taking my time to better understand the skill tree know why I&#39;m heading in a certain direction and what benefits it gives realizing that the passive tree is there to support the ability of the chosen and gems that you&#39;re using not the other way around your build is mostly using red and blue gems well you want intellect and strength nodes based on those stats because that&#39;s what you need to be able to level those gems and continue to use them as well as get gear that uses those gem sockets and those colors then I realized that if you&#39;re playing melee magic minions or rang you want to pick up those nodes along the way as you&#39;re picking up those different stat lines in this I realized that my past failures were never a waste of time they were just the outcome of me learning the game for the first time and that&#39;s part of the journey every single game that I&#39;ve played for years now doesn&#39;t allow the player to outright fail and I think that both players and developers have forgotten how much value there is in learning a game and learning from your past failures and how often times it makes conquering challenges that much more rewarding there&#39;s something very distinct and real about a game that is not afraid to let you fail even let you quit and because of that it makes you want to overcome these Challen challenges even more as I continued to play the game I found that my past knowledge as well as the build guide that I was using was allowing me to start to drink in the finer elements of the game that I often overlooked when I played it in the past most notably The Story characters voice acting and music all of which exceed my expectations and at times the standards of what we have for full-priced games similarly to my experience with Warframe Path of Exile isn&#39;t a great free-to-play game it&#39;s just a great game that happens to be free to playay well gamepl always comes first many modern games Cut cost on quality through things that elevate The players&#39;s Experience like quality writing music voice acting art design and atmosphere well none of these things make a great game on their own if the game play is great and you have all these added elements of quality it makes a good game legendary all NPCs are fully voice acted no reading necessary and the vast majority of them are incredibly well voice acted with unique personalities and backgrounds tile set after tile set you are exposed to a wild variety of detailed environments with unique enemies and layouts each Zone has its own background music with some of them so good they become the background music to the script that I&#39;m writing right now at this very second and some of them even use their own version of environmental storytelling in a way that I&#39;ve never even seen before there&#39;s this section of the game where you&#39;re chasing down piety and you enter into the facility that they use for experiments and there&#39;s these rivers of blood bodies floating around tension building music playing in the background while you hear the pained screams of her victims off in the distance Path of Exile is just so damn brutal and dark a legacy that was picked up by the developers a torch that they were carrying for Diablo too but they&#39;ve cranked it up to 11 the lore in this game is so Primal and Savage almost anytime you go to save somebody they die and your character just shrugs it off because death is so cheap in this world the first boss that you go to fight is in a prison he&#39;s a prison Warden and he was imbued with these theurgical gems part of this experiment he was wishing for greater power and after he survived the experiment he awoke to kill everybody that granted him those powers and he was locked in the prison because everybody was so terrified of him that they left his hands and arms are now big lump of Flesh because he beat on the walls of the prison for over 250 years it&#39;s so metal in comparison to later lore and bosses this is vanilla this is Slice of Life anime this is Fruits Basket the game only continues to ramp from here and it&#39;s just trying to match the unbridled might of your character from Beasts to monsters to Warriors to Gods to eldrich horres that defy reasoning it&#39;s as if your character is an affront to the law laws of reality itself and as such the only way to challenge you is to break reality itself I was a Diablo kid Diablo I I remember I had a friend of mine that came over to the house he had a cracked version of Diablo I Lord Of Destruction installed it on our family PC and that was all she wrote I was glued you couldn&#39;t get me off of that computer I lived on that damn thing because I enjoyed the game so much back in the day for me being able to play mature games or having mature games were a rarity I played Pokemon and jrpgs that was literally the only things that I played and I remember how shocked I was and enthralled when I watched that opening cut scene for Diablo I reading the stories and listening to the stories in Diablo I it was so good and there are very few games that are out there that can nail that feeling of unease and curiosity when it comes to matters of human depravity demons magic theurgical weapons and technology mixed together the premise of all of these different things mixed with gods and immortality and everything else it&#39;s just so damn good it&#39;s so it&#39;s just so incredible you can&#39;t help but want to listen to some of the people because some of the things that they say is just it&#39;s wild it&#39;s wild and I think one of the things that I really respect and I really enjoy about this game is the fact that character power feels like it&#39;s always being challenged by the story equally in a lot of cases you&#39;re looking back at playing Diablo well if you killed a demon well you know a lesser evil or a greater evil well they&#39;re basically all the same to you and it&#39;s like well why is this one more strong oh you know you know he ate one of the other demons or something like that it&#39;s like that&#39;s not good enough man in this game they&#39;re like yeah no we&#39;re going to kick it up a notch literally every single time you go to fight something else the next thing that you&#39;re fighting the next bigger enemy that you fight just gets even crazier and I like that it feels oddly more natural even though it&#39;s technically unnatural but yeah and it&#39;s not just The Narrative of the game that continues to swell and grow and match you it&#39;s the content that this game serves the massive amount of content in this game Path of Exile officially released back in October of 2013 and it quickly became a prominent figure in the action RPG genre for over a decade now and it&#39;s just keeps going going keeps growing the longevity and the continued success of the game can be attributed to the Innovative approach that they&#39;ve taken when it comes to content updates through their league system leagues are temporary events that introduce new mechanics challenges and rewards they&#39;re designed to keep the game play fresh and engaging keep bringing players back these leagues typically last around 3 months or more and after which these mechanics are then integrated into the game permanently or they&#39;re removed based on player feedback and overall impact on the the game&#39;s balance many of the league mechanics have become staple features in Path of Exile offering diverse ways to be able to progress through the game The Campaign endgame whatever it might be for instance I ended up doing some of the immortal Syndicate a complex web of encounters where I can manipulate people to gain more valuable rewards there&#39;s the delve League where there&#39;s an infinite dungeon an Azurite mine I gather materials in the open world and then I get to explore deeper levels of the mind for more unique rewards and challenges similarly there&#39;s also the Temple of atotal I think is how you pronounce that I&#39;m not really too sure where you can change the layout of the dungeon and you go through these different time traveling mechanic I don&#39;t understand it I I don&#39;t get it there&#39;s actually a lot of these that I don&#39;t understand at all there&#39;s this one like fractal mirror portal looking thing that I find on maps I don&#39;t know what it is I&#39;ll have to look into it or I don&#39;t the best part about these League mechanics is that they&#39;re all optional do them if you want to or pass them right by Focus on learning specific League mechanics that you are actually interested in and just ignore the rest my biggest issue when first playing is that I didn&#39;t have that kind of context and it took me forever to be able to progress through some of these areas in the campaign because I was trying to learn all these different League mechanics at once and I couldn&#39;t get a grip on them or how to optimize them now that I have some level of experience I use the beastiary to grab some specific currencies that I need or fill a specific gear slot I tap on the Frozen enemies to be able to collect Essences and craft items when I find a solid base and in the current league I take a little bit more time to go out and try to optimize my town and passively earn things that will help me down the road each one of these mechanics serves as their own way to be able to break any sense of monotony or boredom that I felt when I was playing it I was surprised with how seamlessly some of these mechanics felt like they were introduced into General progression often times I felt like I could just tap them and go and some of the other mechanics are a little bit more disruptive they&#39;ll actually stop your movement you got to go into a portal and stuff so those ones I usually skip but I especially like the current mechanic I can just pick up gold whenever I want to or the beasti area where I can capture targets that are already on the field when I&#39;m searching for something else and I also really like delves where I can just tap on the chest store the energy that I need and use the mechanic whenever I want to when I look at a game like Diablo I they often have League mechanics that are the primary means in which you are progressing That season and while I think it makes sense from a Content perspective I don&#39;t think it makes sense from a player perspective because often times we may not even be interested in that mechanic heck we might not even like it and only really want to use parts of it so that we can progress further in other areas Path of Exile is very much one of those play your own way kind of games classes in essence are just a blank canvas that you can use whatever skills or spells that you want to on them you can truly make distinct and unique builds all on your own you can skip content interact with mean mechanics that you want to and that spirit is found everywhere in the game as I mentioned previously this is my first time ever getting this far through the campaign clearing the campaign I just unlocked the atlas of Worlds a fully customizable end game where I can choose my path my modifiers what events I see what bosses I see what loot I see and more I can combine this with any of the other league mechanics that I enjoy and develop an endgame that I want to play rather than what somebody else thinks I should be playing you know it&#39;s genuinely wild how customizable your experience is when you&#39;re playing Path of Exile and I think it takes some time and experience to be able to come to the realization at least it did for me to understand that you don&#39;t need to do everything in Path of Exile you just need to focus on a couple of things and it&#39;s best to find things that you enjoy the most because you&#39;re going to be doing them a lot and if you think about it if I&#39;m trying to do everything all at once I&#39;m probably not going to get very far but if I focus very hardcore on just a couple of things you&#39;re going to be able to progress those enough to get the rewards that you need to be used full in the end game and I think that&#39;s awesome because there&#39;s two things that I&#39;ve always wanted in more games and I&#39;ve talked about it in other videos in the past which is that I want more games that are not afraid to be themselves but I also want games to not stand in the way of how players want to play those games the experience the players actually want to have and when you put those things next to each other it sounds almost impossible to do but Path of Exile seemingly pulls it off without any effort at all it&#39;s impressive genuinely is look over over the last few years I&#39;ve been so exhausted by live service games I completely stopped playing them for the most part because anytime I would take any type of short or extended break I&#39;d come back to a game that just didn&#39;t feel comfortable to play anymore because I had to relearn so many different things or they&#39;re having me do something that I&#39;m not even interested in doing or whatever it might be and as such I end up just throwing the games to the side because I just don&#39;t want to play it anymore I don&#39;t want to have to deal with that I don&#39;t want to have to deal with coming back to something that I don&#39;t know how to play even though it was only you know six months or a year since I played it last and Path of Exile goes right around that by allowing you to be able to take on any of these mechanics and some of this content at whatever Pace that you want it gives you the room and the space to be able to learn the things that you want to learn to play the things that you want to play and especially if we&#39;re looking at the most recent League mechanic the settlers of calgar I think is what it&#39;s called that&#39;s passive I&#39;m picking up gold as I&#39;m playing the game I can go to the city and upgrade it or do whatever I want any time that I want and even if I forget about it for too long well I still have heaps of gold that I&#39;m going to be able to go and reinvest into that town and use and I think that&#39;s awesome especially just the passive mechanic of earning gear and stuff like that as well and it&#39;s great for a new player experience because it makes it where those systems are a little bit less intimidating and I really hope that something similar makes its way over to Path of Exile too cuz it&#39;s going to make the new player experience just that much more approachable and more comfortable for players when they&#39;re first starting out it&#39;s crazy to think about how much content is in Path of Exile but it&#39;s even more crazy when you start to realize that it&#39;s free well kind of one of my biggest issues when it comes to most live service games is how lazy they are when it comes to monetization rather than trying to provide anything of value to us rather than working for our money they often times will try to squeeze more money out of the players by by taking it from areas that already exist in the game just recently EA had to walk back proposed changes on price hikes for a battle pass in Apex Legends gaslighting the players saying that it was all to provide them more value in the future when in fact it did the opposite if you want to monetize your game be creative earn my money and I&#39;ll be happy to give it to you Path of Exile is working for my money Poe is by far one of the most customizable games that I&#39;ve played outside of Warframe you have gear skins weapon skins auras pets cloaks trailing effects behind your character and you can even change the way that spells and abilities look in the game just about everything that is character related can be customized in some way and better yet they&#39;re transparent about it I think what I love most about the Cosmetic shop and Path of Exile is the fact that every single transaction that&#39;s in there comes with its own individual YouTube video that shows you what those weapon effects and skins look like in actual gameplay rather than just going off off of an image player expression is key to any successful live service game yes you need the game to be fun and filled with content but you need some way to be able to monetize it and customization is the best way to be able to do that now I will say that I do think that it comes at a great cost in Path of Exile while skins and effects are really cool the vanilla weapons and clothing seem to take a noticeable hit I think one of the core issues with a game that heavily leans into Cosmetics is that the developers are incentivized to make the rest of the game game look weaker in comparison I&#39;m not a huge fan of this especially in an action RPG part of the fun of being a badass is looking like one and while some weapons and gear skins and sets can look pretty cool they pale in comparison to what you can buy which brings me to the topic of stash tabs the most contentious of microtransactions in Path of Exile and it&#39;s one that I am generally conflicted on I can buy storage space cool which when you&#39;re progressing through the campaign it&#39;s not necessary whatsoever but it definitely becomes a wall if you wish to progress in the end game or if you plan to trade and trading in a game like this is what keeps it alive and interesting it keeps that Community thriving while I might not be able to find what I need when I&#39;m playing the game I could pull together other resources and trade with another player to get an item or a few items that help me get unstuck or UNH halted from progress because of my bad RNG well solo self found is 100% viable most players that are going into the endgame are going to want to trade however you can&#39;t list items to the public unless you own a premium stash tab furthermore the longer that you play the more League mechanics that you get involved in the more likely you are to run out of space relatively quickly and as such buying a stash tab or buying a space in your storage is less of an option and more of a requirement to play personally I think that stash Bay should be expanded a little bit at least give a single premium stash tab to new players so they have some room to grow and the ability to list and put items up for trade without having to use a third party website but overall I don&#39;t really have an issue with stash tabs as a concept it&#39;s just the generic premium ones especially once you start contrasting them with item specific tabs like Essence map currency or some of the other league ones because they&#39;re unique they&#39;re highly functionable they are incredibly userfriendly and provide a lot of value for the money that&#39;s actually spent on them I don&#39;t think I get the same value from a St standard premium stash tab as I do the other ones and that purchase just feels generic and forced while there is room to criticize I do appreciate that all stash Tabs are bound to your account you don&#39;t need to buy them again for every other character and also grinding gear games is said that well any of your purchases from Path of Exile 1 are going to get carried over to Path of Exile 2 I appreciate that now I&#39;ve heard from Path of Exile fans directly that they reference the stash tabs as the box price for the game and to be honest with you I&#39;m just going to have to agree with that one look there&#39;s hundreds if not thousands there is thousands and thousands of hours of gameplay for players tons of content for absolutely nothing and as much as I would love to live in a world in which freeo play was free to play with no caveats I recognize that we don&#39;t live in a Utopia and there has to be some type of Equivalent Exchange for us to get a game like this and a service like this and you&#39;re going to have to put some things out of the reach of players for them to be able to motivate you to spend money I get it it&#39;s a business and look to be honest with you throwing them $ 20 to $30 to be able to play a game that has this much content that&#39;s been supported this much for this long is beyond worth it it&#39;s the easiest purchase I&#39;ve ever made even more so just before recording this video I ended up buying one of their supporter packs because I&#39;ve enjoyed the game that much and they don&#39;t obfuscate currency it&#39;s beautiful it&#39;s so beautiful I don&#39;t know what to say f what is it like $5 for 50 coins or something like that it&#39;s I think what it comes out to be 200 coins is 20 bucks 100 coins is $10 the money actually makes sense on the screen they&#39;re not trying to rip me off by having me overinvestment games have in their microtransaction shops it&#39;s insane it the society we live in look when we talk about microtransactions and just overall monetization it&#39;s always about the value received and the value delivered how much am I giving you and what am I getting back and at the end of the day Path of Exile is a game that just keeps on giv over the years I&#39;ve grown to hate live service games and stay away from free-to-play games entirely because I feel like they represent an industrywide move to commoditize and commercialize games to a point where we&#39;re going to be spending we&#39;re going to be far exceeding what we normally spend on a game especially when we&#39;re looking at the box price for a game they want to chop these games up into pieces sell it to us bit by bit hike the price as inflation grows and all the while return less and less value to the players I mean that&#39;s the name of the game do as little as you possibly can for as much money as possible and let&#39;s see how far we can push it until the players push back and then well we&#39;ll just try again later I&#39;m growing to realize that not every studio and publisher is the enemy some of them that are out there do seek to provide players with games that they actually want to play charge them a fair price and then continue to deliver on that Path of Exile is one of those games grinding gear games is one of those developers while they were inspired by Diablo and blizzard they couldn&#39;t be any more different they made a dark and depraved game with no shortcuts no self-censoring or drops in quality well it&#39;s a hard game to get into and it&#39;s not designed for new players it&#39;s a journey that grows on you as you continue to to play it learn fail and then overcome it&#39;s a beacon of light in an industry that pulls its punches that focuses on areas in games that matter the least to players and seeks to ask us for more and more money while simultaneously diminishing the quality of their own products it&#39;s a game that you can choose to play however you want build whatever you want revisit mechanics and choose whatever content that you want to play you can sync hundreds or thousands of hours into it and likely never even pay a dime it&#39;s a game that truly understands what it means to be a live service game a great live service game and it stands as an example to all well I&#39;m just over 30 hours in and just finally completed the campaign for the first time I plan to continue to play learn more of what I can of the end game and share that experience in the future I&#39;ve enjoyed my time in Ray class and this Exile isn&#39;t going anywhere anytime soon it&#39;s crazy to think how much time that I&#39;ve spent trying to play this game realizing that I still haven&#39;t even scratched the surface there&#39;s so much on the back end of this game that I haven&#39;t even touched yet I barely just got into the atlas of Worlds there&#39;s a whole other passive tree for me to mess with that that&#39;s a whole other thing I&#39;m I don&#39;t even know if I&#39;m even ready for I have to do a lot of research talk to some people a DM if you ever watch this video or asmin gold somebody give me some resources or something like that I don&#39;t know there&#39;s just so much information I think that&#39;s like the it&#39;s the hardest thing about getting into playing this kind of game is that there&#39;s just so much in information because there&#39;s so many things that they&#39;ve added to the game there&#39;s so many things that they&#39;ve changed in the game over time and there&#39;s just a lot of research that needs to be done a lot of third party tools that I&#39;m not really a fan of I don&#39;t like using third party tools to do things in games personally it&#39;s just a me thing I&#39;d rather do everything in the game and not have to worry about going outside of the game for anything but yeah it&#39;s it&#39;s a lot man it&#39;s huge it&#39;s just crazy how much game there is and it&#39;s wild to think that they&#39;re planning on continuing to this game when they come out with Path of Exile 2 I don&#39;t even know what that&#39;s even going to look like I&#39;ve watched a lot of the trailers for Path of Exile 2 I&#39;ll be real I&#39;m going to get in there day one I&#39;m going to stay in there day one and I&#39;m not going to get out because like the last thing that I want to do is not play that game and it get too far away from me and then me have that much more to try to have to learn I&#39;d rather be there day one figure it out know it and then go from there simple as that I think that&#39;s one of the things that it&#39;s one of the more intimidating things when it comes to Path of Exile just a base game is that you know when you have 10 years of development that&#39;s a lot of content to dig through it&#39;s a lot there and it gets away from you and it became this thing for me for every single time I&#39;d look at the game I&#39;d be like oh man there goes another month there goes another year that I haven&#39;t played it another year or two or three of content that I have no idea what&#39;s going on with this game and yeah yeah I&#39;d like to avoid that in the future Plus on top of that poe2 looks sick oh God it looks so sick it&#39;s so interesting and cool that I didn&#39;t really talk about this in the video and I probably should have brought it up somewhere else but one of the things that I was thinking about was the fact that they don&#39;t just make an arpg they are Trailblazers they&#39;re trying and testing and doing all kinds of different things and seeing what else will work in this kind of game and the rest of the games that are in the genre you know not throwing Flack at them or anything like that they&#39;re not doing a whole lot to try to innovate it and to be honest I think it&#39;s a genre that does need some Innovation because otherwise it&#39;s just going to get too dated for younger audiences that you know after we&#39;re all old and crusty and can&#39;t play games anymore but I think it&#39;s really cool especially looking to see how they&#39;re putting in Combos and stuff like that I I can already see that they&#39;re implementing some stuff for uh new player experience UI improvements and things like that I hope some of that stuff makes its way back to Path of Exile though that&#39;s something that I saw recently with is it no man Sky no man&#39;s sky is working on light no fire they did some really cool stuff in their development of light no fire and they thought huh why don&#39;t we just go ahead and put it in our other game I think that you know I want to see more live service games continue to do stuff like that I think it&#39;s really smart why not you already made it right so why not just Port it over somewhere else if it&#39;s going to improve the experience and bring more players in and I think there&#39;s going to be some players even when poe2 comes out I think there&#39;s going to be some people that are going to want to play poe1 they&#39;re going to get the background I don&#39;t know where it&#39;s set TimeWise or anything like that but yeah continue to make your games good that&#39;s it but yeah I really enjoyed this one I&#39;ve really been enjoying doing video series like these I&#39;m going to continue to do them in the future have a lot of games I still need to play a lot now that I&#39;m getting into some of these freet to-play games I&#39;m looking at some of the other ones that I have on the list Guild Wars 2 genjin impact weing waves there&#39;s a few other ones that are on there I don&#39;t know if you guys are interested in any of those let me know down in the comments if you guys enjoyed this video let me know subscribe to the channel I talk about video games a lot catch me on Twitch I play video games live and talk about news and things like that uh yeah that&#39;s all I got stay cool stay righteous stay safe my friends and I will see you in Ray class peace family family family family

Transcript for:Path of Exile Gameplay Insights

Transcript for:
Path of Exile Gameplay Insights