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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2061 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for July 24, 2026

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And it seems like the grinders are the market being catered to at the moment (PoE, I'm looking at you, because they have been around so long they have dedicated players who've played the game for years as it developed and who can now whip through all the levels fast to get to endgame maps and are then bored if their maxxed out builds with the extra-special gear don't find it enough of a challenge).

This complaint doesn't really make sense in poe, the exp penalty for being overleveled means if you're slow and don't do the sweaty run past almost everything strategy you end something like perpetually 3-4 levels over the zone which is fine, you'll be stronger than you need to be, it's like a built in auto-difficulty adjuster.

Depends if you're trading for gear or not. I do solo self-found, so often I can get extra levels on the starting acts but still be looking for something good. I do prefer taking my time and exploring the area, but the game does punish you for that if you haven't fine-tuned your build and gear so you can handle mobs popping up out of nowhere (Righteous Fire is a life saver there).

PoE 2 is good but sufficiently different to PoE 1 that the habits of gameplay you pick up from the first game lead you astray.

But I'm only very, very casual and not playing games since I was ten, it's only in the past five or so years I've really started playing, so ignore me 😁

The poe complaints aren't about character level. The kind of sweat who is an active participant in the poe community takes 10 hours at most to get past the part of the game where levels matter, and proceeds to trivialize the rest of the game in about 1-2 weeks, lamenting "league dead" afterwards.

I agree that the grinders exist, and they care about the loot and juice systems being rich enough that they can keep climbing the grind for better gear that will make it so that you can more efficiently grind for even better gear cycle. Where I disagree is that this really has any negative effect on the casual player who spends 12 hours on the acts. Because you definitely don't need to grind in the acts to keep moving forward, in fact it's the opposite, almost every new player kills way more monsters than they need to.

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