Now that the Path of Exile: Awakening expansion has been out for a couple of weeks, how do you guys feel about it?

I tried an evasion archer and it just didn't work at all because the hits that do get through hit way to hard.

This is a really horrible mechanic for this exact reason. It makes gameplay much more luck based. Even if you evade 99% of the attacks, the 1% that land are an instakill.

Also there are strange difficulty spikes throughout the game. The first 3 acts are largely easy. It's very rare I ever had to go back and level to go forward. The final boss in act 3 (let alone act 4) is so vastly higher tier than the rest of the game, it's laughable.

The entirety of Act 4 feels like they spiked the difficulty up a level. I was playing a marauder (a dps marauder) and it took me a LONG time to beat the final boss. I'd walk in, land 2 hits and then instakill. I could surmise I didn't level effectively, but this was so late-game I had no chance. I absolutely HATE games that have difficulty spikes (That's one of my biggest negatives for Psychonauts, a typically great game).

The biggest problem with the game however is a similar problem to Diablo, its loot. I don't know why these games do this, but loot will drop for stats you'll never have. I can't tell you how many times I'd beat an act boss and an intelligence item would drop (again, a marauder). This system just feels lazy, especially on a final boss. Seriously, I beat the act 4 boss and my reward was a pair of rare boots...are you fucking kidding me? I understand farming and it does have its place, but you shouldn't need to farm for hours to get a good piece of gear...the game shouldn't lag behind for that long.

I think the easiest ways to improve the game would be:

  • Either make drops class-specific, or increase legendary drop rates. It may make gameplay shorter, but it makes a lot of the game less pointless. RNG to this scale is like Mafia II's open world, there's plenty to see, but little of it is useful to you.

  • Even up difficulty game-wide. You can switch difficulties but there shouldn't be that big a spike during one playthrough. Even those that level correctly agree Act 4 is far more difficult than the rest of the game, even scaled for difficulty.

I know this is a free-to-play, but that's no excuse for unrefined gameplay.

/r/Games Thread Parent