Surprise Suckerpunch

The start of a new Path of Exile season overlapping with the holiday break has really shifted up the dynamic for what the beginning of a new year looks like on Tales of the Aggronaut. Generally speaking the last few weeks of one year and the first few weeks of the following year are filled with a lot of posts navel-gazing about my thoughts about the year coming to a close and my hopes for the next. I’ve just not really been in the headspace to do much forecasting of what is on the horizon, and quite honestly now that I have abandoned Twitter I am not nearly as connected to the zeitgeist and the constant thrum of new releases. I’ve been weirdly comfortable just doing my own thing in my own corner and if the world is interested in tuning in… awesome. If not however I am going to keep doing my nonsense regardless.

This means that other than time spent in Alpha and Beta, I completely missed the launch of Dragonflight. While I saw bits and pieces of it flashing across my feed in Mastodon, it was not nearly as constant and imperative that I be doing the thing along with everyone else. Similarly, I am seeing flashes of the 6.3 patch that landed in Final Fantasy XIV, but it is nowhere near as constant as it would have been if I were active on Twitter. My engagement with FFXIV seems to be limited to logging in every four or five days and putting in yet another bid on a house that I won’t win. I think that if I do ever win a housing plot… it will probably signal my re-engagement with that game in a large way.

There was a patch last night in Path of Exile, and during it, I dusted off Grim Dawn and gave it a bit of a spin. It has been a few years since I last played it, and admittedly last night I mostly fiddled with keybinds because I have “specific preferences”. I’ve never made it through the campaign and seen the endgame and would really like to do this. Mostly I want to know what the multiplayer feels like once you are in content designed for multiple players. When I last played trying to do the campaign with another person was a bit of misery, because it very clearly was not designed for more than one person. I am going with a tanky character and have been doing a little bit of research on how best to build that, which should shock no one. I remember really liking the vibe of this game, and while the crafting system confused me at the time… I think after having assimilated to Path of Exile it should seem much easier.

Part of why I am hunting for another ARPG experience is that I am still at odds with actively playing Blizzard games while Bobby Kotick still has his thumb on that company. Then there is Path of Exile which I love for a single-player experience, but feels weirdly punitive when it comes to playing with other folks. This week my good friend Ace largely checked out of the league, because we found out the hard way that if your Animate Guardian dies… you lose all of the gear you equipped it with. It is stupid decisions like that which really harm Path of Exile as a long-term experience. The game is oddly hostile toward its players and so much of your success or failure is that you “bet” on the right build at the start of the league. For Ace, this was a third strike, and as a result, just too much frustration to recover from during this league. The first strike was that the Dark Pact Necromancer really did not pan out as well as it sounded like it would. The second strike was that Summon Raging Spirits was great, but the Poison variant became the flavor of the month and elevated the prices to make it unaffordable. Losing the Animated Guardian and having to buy admittedly a bunch of cheap uniques to equip it again… seemed a bit futile knowing that it could happen again in the future.

I completely understand what they are going through, because last league… I came precariously close to just saying fuck it and abandoning my character entirely. It was only through sheer dumb stubbornness that I made my way through all 115 Atlas nodes, and after completing that… I was largely done with the league. Ace made a comment that really hit home with me and put it all into perspective. Ultimately with POE you never really reach a point where you can have chill interaction with the game that also feels like it is moving your character forward. You spend so much time making incremental progress on levels after 90… that can then be wiped out completely by one or two deaths. You feel like you are stuck in this rut of not really having anything you can do that is enjoyable without feeling like the sword of Damocles is hanging precariously above your head at all times. Last night I took the first death on my Righteous Fire Juggernaut that I had in weeks… and it felt completely random and at the same time, I have no understanding of WHY I died. I just suddenly took way more damage than I ever do and fell over.

I’ve started a number of side projects this league and I am not entirely certain how I feel about any of them. Right now my Seismic Trap Saboteur feels like it is in this awkward pubescent phase of not quite being able to shift to using the abilities that will ultimately be the hallmark of the build. I need to knock out the first two Labyrinths but also feel ungodly squishy most of the time. This is a familiar side effect of leveling while using a Tabula Rasa, and honestly, I am beginning to think that item does more harm than it is worth. This is the second attempt at using one to jump-start a class and they feel like they begin to fall apart a bit around the first death of Kitava. I could pour resources into making it work, but also… I am not sure if I care enough yet to do that.

I wish I was more motivated by currency, because if that were my ultimate gauge of success then I would say I am doing grand. According to Exilence I am up roughly 3000 chaos since the last snapshot I took on Monday. I’ve had a large number of higher ticket items start moving, as well as a constant flow of resonators from my delve excursions. So I have resources that I could pour into fixing builds… but I am not entirely certain there will ever be a place I reach where everything feels amazing. It seems like Path of Exile is the sort of game that is always going to be pulling the rug out from under you when you feel like you reach solid ground. The more you engage with the game, the more it feels like there is another sucker punch waiting around the corner.

I don’t think I will ever reach a place of complete happiness with this game. I have moments of excitement and joy, followed by a pound of frustration being dumped in my lap. This is in part why I don’t try and get people to play this game like I do others. I enjoy myself but also sorta feel like I should maybe be playing something else after awhile.