Path of Exile 2's Crafting System Hates You | Design Delve
This week's episode of Design Delve is now available!
Path of Exile 2's Crafting System Hates You | Design Delve (YouTube)
Comments (6)
Red Dead Redemption 2 s crafting is fun. Going outside to touch pretend grass to upgrade a Wild West man purse. lol. 馃ぃ
I have played Path of Exile since 2013 and have always thought that its interpretation of videogame currency/crafting is unique. Tying every currency directly to utility and having relative usefulness dictate exchange rates, having different content reward currencies that manipulate items in specific ways, layered levels of interaction with item types... I get it's not for everyone, but I personally believe it's the deepest and most interesting implementation of crafting in a game ever. Glad to see GGG get some love here - they have made a lot of design choices worthy of Design Delve eps imo! Please talk about the PoE1 Atlas Tree next time...
"Friction" is an interesting term. Personally, I think it's kind of too generic, like any sort of challenge or even activity could be described as Friction. A book has friction. Some more than others (I'm looking at YOU, Faulkner). No, what we're talking about here is a specific kind of friction widely known as "grind".
And of course it is (MM)O RPG.
I'm glad other people can enjoy different things, but I think this is the first Design Delve that has caused me to recoil from a game mechanic. The extra steps and randomness don't add enjoyment to me, it just prolongs the time I have to spend grinding the game. Maybe my opinion would change if I played to know just how much optimization is required to complete all content, but POE already has a massive barrier to entry with the skill Yggdrassil.
One of the problems is that this game is always presented to people with these crazy difficulty mechanics as if they're required to play. You can absolutely enjoy the story and make fun builds and not touch most of this. The skill tree requires zero planning. Level up, stay on the main branch of your class and its perfectly playable. As you play you get plenty of loot drops to keep your character geared. All of these mechanics are there for replayability and endgame/post-endgame. And you can store drops for other characters in your stash. So if you decide to make a new class your already geared up.