The Path of Exile Delve Trailer Depicts an Underground Labyrinth of Fear and Torment

[cageymaru]

Grinding Gear Games has released their newest trailer depicting the new Delve expansion for the game Path of Exile. A creaky iron crawler provides the single source of light in the cold, pitch black, and ominous caves as your adventurer delves into the darkness looking for long forgotten treasures. A gigantic labyrinth of these caves form the Azurite Mine that will steal your soul if you venture away from the light for too long. Fight as you can to suppress your greedy desires for fame, wealth and upgrades as the whispering chasm seeks to undermine and overwhelm you. Download Path of Exile today on Steam and play for free. Thanks Aix. and horrorshow .

The Azurite Mine is Path of Exile's first infinite dungeon. The deeper you delve, the harder the game gets. In Delve, you'll find encounters that are much harder than end-game Maps. Your progress is only limited by the power of your character build. The Depth Ladder tracks who has delved the deepest into the mine. Path of Exile: Delve will launch on August 31st (PDT) on PC and September 3rd on Xbox One.

 

[criccio]

Got a real Inferno vibe reading that.

 

[cageymaru]

Got a real Inferno vibe reading that.

Check out the trailer. Got the post up on the front page now.

 

[tetris42]

Path of Exile is a great game, but the problem is this new content usually depends on you starting a character from zero every 3 months in order to experience it. After that, start over again for the next feature. Base game is still solid though.

 

[DogsofJune]

Path of Exile is a great game, but the problem is this new content usually depends on you starting a character from zero every 3 months in order to experience it. After that, start over again for the next feature. Base game is still solid though.

And D3 doesn't do the same thing?

I understand what you mean. I kinda just want to build a character up for a bit, AND, play the new content....
Trailer looks good. I may have to deviate from standard league for a bit and give it a whirl.

 

[dragonstongue]

I dont know, after the many issues I had with stability since Labs were released and many many patches/updates that did not fix the issues (even when they claimed many times over they were fixed, not only for me but countless others) (2015-2016 late year)

I more or less gave up on the game, one patch everything is amazing, the next patch it tankes things, the one after adds more crud into it for "nothing" give them creds for trying to cram as much as they possibly could into the game and all but stability of all the extra crap they added into it was not exactly high on their "to do list" (for an engine absolutely not designed to handle it oor "modern" system design for that matter..32 bit single core focused lol)

I read thread after thread of people with much higher end systems then my own stating they had the exact same issues I was having no matter if they were running a complete Intel/Nvidia system or AMD/Radeon system or mix of Intel/Radeon or AMD/Nvidia or loaded full of system ram, ssd, 32bit or 64bit OS etc etc...in other words, no rhyme or reason why some "claimed" ran like a champ no matter what was happening and others claimed the exact opposite of this.

maybe I will go back to it one day, but I doubt it (I do not see it being any better on Ryzen with Windows 10 which I am so not in a race to do)

I hope is good though, but I will not take them at their words, they (not necessarily GGG) have promised a great deal and it failed to materialize into the substance it should have...maybe if it "played" as amazing as some people claim it did on their systems I might have been more apt to enjoy it, I was not one of those people, can only deal for so long when performance is all over the place no matter what you do about it.

be damned if I shell out massive $ to play any game (hardware wise. especially a free one) at "acceptable" levels (when others way higher spec play much much better with the same hardware) ^.^

thanks for the heads up though o7

 

[Zion Halcyon]

Path of Exile is a great game, but the problem is this new content usually depends on you starting a character from zero every 3 months in order to experience it. After that, start over again for the next feature. Base game is still solid though.

I think now that they completed the base story, this is no longer the case. I do know they do reset the skill trees at the start of every new "league" so that people aren't locked into a character that perhaps the build they used saw significant changes.

In fact, I would argue this expansion is an attempt to resolve the "restart" problem.

All in all, still the best F2P game out there.

 

[dragonstongue]

And D3 doesn't do the same thing?

I understand what you mean. I kinda just want to build a character up for a bit, AND, play the new content....
Trailer looks good. I may have to deviate from standard league for a bit and give it a whirl.

D3 I played many times after updates for new seasons etc and the "start over" has IMO never been a "requirement" it has not been in a very long time, granted maybe after you did not play the game after many months aways from it, or want to take part in a new season is not a bad thing, but they generally didnt "scrub" everything the way PoE does/did with new versions where they basically reset the skill "web" and you have no choice but to redo it.

to each their own I suppose ^.^

 

[tetris42]

And D3 doesn't do the same thing?

I understand what you mean. I kinda just want to build a character up for a bit, AND, play the new content....
Trailer looks good. I may have to deviate from standard league for a bit and give it a whirl.

I wasn't aware Diablo 3 HAD new content. After Reaper of Souls, I guess I heard about them adding a new zone, and necromancer (but that's not really new content if you're playing anything else), that's about it. Maybe I just haven't heard of this stuff. At least leagues with path of exile are all adding undeniably new stuff.

I think now that they completed the base story, this is no longer the case. I do know they do reset the skill trees at the start of every new "league" so that people aren't locked into a character that perhaps the build they used saw significant changes.

In fact, I would argue this expansion is an attempt to resolve the "restart" problem.

All in all, still the best F2P game out there.

Well I think Bestiary and Incursion were only for the league weren't they? Those features weren't playable in standard. My understanding is if you want to try any of these new modes, you have to start at level 1 with a new character and grind your way all the way back up again.

 

[DogsofJune]

Oh very true, D3 hasn't added much for new content at all, I was referring to the Seasons deal. What little changes they parse out anymore, you have to play the Season. Start over crap

 

[SCSI-Terminator]

Well, there was also that Darkening of Tristam event they did to celebrate diablo's anniversary, and I can't remember when exactly the class set dungeons appeared...but yeah I agree, no real new content on the d3 front.

I kind of wish bliz would just add controller support to the PC version letting people who choose play it like it is on the consoles from the comfort of their couch. I'd certainly give it another go thru if they did. Thou if they did, they would probably haft to split off that part of the community to their own matchmaking server due to the changes in spell mechanics for controllers vs KB+M.

 

[oROEchimaru]

i would play again if loot/gear was easier to get.. and more skill rerolls

 

[Aix.]

Path of Exile is a great game, but the problem is this new content usually depends on you starting a character from zero every 3 months in order to experience it. After that, start over again for the next feature. Base game is still solid though.

That's been the intended design of the game since it was announced. Leagues were not a "me too" add-on like seasons were in D3 - ladders with exclusive content were a huge hit in D2 and GGG built on that with themed races (anywhere from 1 hour in length to 1 month) as well as big 3/4 month leagues. When most leagues end you keep your characters to play in standard/hardcore if you want.

Every single new big game mechanic comes from a league. It's a way for them to take an idea and widely play test it to see if it should be added to the "base game" (standard/hardcore perma leagues), while also making it an event for everyone to experience together from scratch - they don't all make it. Right now there's a 1-month "Flashback" event on that has all previous leagues active (up to 4 at once for any given area) and it's fucking mayhem.

The game was designed by GGG with the expectation that you'd be building lots of characters; you can just play one forever in standard if you want of course, but you'd be missing so much fun and discovery skipping the leagues and not trying new builds.

 

[tetris42]

That's been the intended design of the game since it was announced. Leagues were not a "me too" add-on like seasons were in D3 - ladders with exclusive content were a huge hit in D2 and GGG built on that with themed races (anywhere from 1 hour in length to 1 month) as well as big 3/4 month leagues. When most leagues end you keep your characters to play in standard/hardcore if you want.

Every single new big game mechanic comes from a league. It's a way for them to take an idea and widely play test it to see if it should be added to the "base game" (standard/hardcore perma leagues), while also making it an event for everyone to experience together from scratch - they don't all make it. Right now there's a 1-month "Flashback" event on that has all previous leagues active (up to 4 at once for any given area) and it's fucking mayhem.

The game was designed by GGG with the expectation that you'd be building lots of characters; you can just play one forever in standard if you want of course, but you'd be missing so much fun and discovery skipping the leagues and not trying new builds.

Leagues make sense for 3 kinds of people:

1. People who've never played the game before / haven't played the game for years
2. People who play almost no other games, Path of Exile is pretty much it for their entertainment
3. Professional twitch streamers

For everyone else, they're a big fat waste of time. I'm not about replaying the same content over and over for hours as a gate just to get the new stuff. I have a couple level 90 characters and the time it took to get them there with good gear is unthinkable to be redoing that every few months unless that's all I did with my life. Some of us have jobs.

And that's not true about the major stuff all coming from leagues. The trainers, Lord's Labyrinth and class redesign, Atlas, 10 acts, shaper, none of that was the result of league testing.

 

[Aix.]

Leagues make sense for 3 kinds of people:

1. People who've never played the game before / haven't played the game for years
2. People who play almost no other games, Path of Exile is pretty much it for their entertainment
3. Professional twitch streamers

For everyone else, they're a big fat waste of time. I'm not about replaying the same content over and over for hours as a gate just to get the new stuff. I have a couple level 90 characters and the time it took to get them there with good gear is unthinkable to be redoing that every few months unless that's all I did with my life. Some of us have jobs.

And that's not true about the major stuff all coming from leagues. The trainers, Lord's Labyrinth and class redesign, Atlas, 10 acts, shaper, none of that was the result of league testing.

GGG's design philosophy is that players should encounter a league mechanic immediately after leaving town in act 1, and it's meant to be a theme for the entire game; there's no playing hours and hours to experience anything. The game sees a gigantic spike of player traffic for at least a month at the beginning of each league so "for everyone else, they're a big fat waste of time" is simply wrong.

But yeah I didn't really consider the "expansion" elements like the Labyrinth or new acts to be game mechanics; I meant stuff like breaches, beyond portals, rampages, strongboxes, prophecies, Tormented Spirits, tempests, Harbingers, Abyss cracks, nemesis mods, bloodlines, essences, etc., etc. These are all things that round out the everyday game experience that weren't there before their respective leagues - and most of them provide lots of exp and loot.

 

[tetris42]

GGG's design philosophy is that players should encounter a league mechanic immediately after leaving town in act 1, and it's meant to be a theme for the entire game; there's no playing hours and hours to experience anything.

Yes, you get a taste early on. Take something like breach or abyss, you get to see what it's like. To actually engage it a meaningful way, you need a MUCH higher level character to output damage on, not only to level up the character, but to find relevant gear. It's an hours and hours and hours process. Nobody's seeing breachlords, Harbinger beaches, or Abyssal lichs without grinding like hell to build their character from level 1 all along the way. Whereas if a character somebody had already invested the hours into were to have access to that, they COULD see that sort of thing in a reasonable amount of time.

The way they're structured, it's a wall to make everyone starts over again where 5% of your time is the new content, 95% is playing everything over what you've already done before.

Obviously doing the same thing over and over again isn't a waste of time for some. In my eyes, it's just a gimmick to squeeze more hours out of people for minimal additions.

 

[BloodyIron]

Okay, that looks fucking sick.

 

[illaghee]

Wow i'm in, that trailer hooked me in... free to play usually means ima pay for minor shit to progress right?

 

[v3rninater]

Wow i'm in, that trailer hooked me in... free to play usually means ima pay for minor shit to progress right?

Don't have to pay for anything!

 

[tetris42]

Wow i'm in, that trailer hooked me in... free to play usually means ima pay for minor shit to progress right?

You can play through the entire main game without paying anything. It's only if you're going for the full end game that paying becomes semi-mandatory.

 

[illaghee]

thanks for the info guys..

 

[Aix.]

Wow i'm in, that trailer hooked me in... free to play usually means ima pay for minor shit to progress right?

You can't purchase any actual in-game items, but you'll start with 4 stash (storage) tabs and you can purchase more for quality of life. Buying a couple of stash tabs when they go on sale is usually what people do if they like the game and find themselves running short of space (Edit: actually they're on sale for $2 right now). Or you can do it D2-style and just make "mules" and store items on a bunch of level one characters (not ideal).

Other than that, their revenue model is based on cosmetic stuff. Best value is probably to buy a "supporter pack" that gives you both points to spend on stash tabs or whatever you want + a bunch of mtx effects:

 

[tetris42]

You can't purchase any actual in-game items, but you'll start with 4 stash (storage) tabs and you can purchase more for quality of life. Buying a couple of stash tabs when they go on sale is usually what people do if they like the game and find themselves running short of space (Edit: actually they're on sale for $2 right now). Or you can do it D2-style and just make "mules" and store items on a bunch of level one characters (not ideal).

Other than that, their revenue model is based on cosmetic stuff. Best value is probably to buy a "supporter pack" that gives you both points to spend on stash tabs or whatever you want + a bunch of mtx effects:

View attachment 95305

Well it's more than that, a premium tab is almost mandatory for the end-game because without it, it's going to be far more difficult to sell any items you find to fund items you need later on. But again, this is end-game stuff, it's not needed at all for the main story.

And no, the supporter packs are not "best value" unless you want cosmetic extras. You get less game currency from them to buy the features you need than if you were just to buy the game currency directly.

 

[Bowman15]

Looks great but the skill learning is ridiculously complicated. I played it for a few weeks when it was new, but meh...

 

[Aix.]

Well it's more than that, a premium tab is almost mandatory for the end-game because without it, it's going to be far more difficult to sell any items you find to fund items you need later on. But again, this is end-game stuff, it's not needed at all for the main story.

And no, the supporter packs are not "best value" unless you want cosmetic extras. You get less game currency from them to buy the features you need than if you were just to buy the game currency directly.

That would be why I said "+ a bunch of mtx effects." Those effects would normally cost much more than 50 points individually; $30 will get you 300 points, or $30 will get you 250 points + those mtx effects. If you don't ever want cosmetic extras then go wild and use the extra 50 points on stash space.

But yeah, the guy is asking whether he needs to pay to progress, and he can absolutely play the entire game without doing so or even trading. There are multiple lvl 99's in the solo-self-found Incursion Flashback league that started 7 days ago (no trading). Those people are crazy, for sure, but the game throws insane amounts of gear at you these days even if you just play casually.

 

[Aix.]

Looks great but the skill learning is ridiculously complicated. I played it for a few weeks when it was new, but meh...

New like 2013-new, or have you played recently? The game has come a loooonng way, especially since July 2015 when they upgraded the game's netcode to eliminate the desync problem that plagued it earlier in development.

There are many more damage-related support gems now to simplify the skill process, but yes, there are many active skills to choose from for sure: https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Active_skill_gem

 

[tetris42]

That would be why I said "+ a bunch of mtx effects." Those effects would normally cost much more than 50 points individually; $30 will get you 300 points, or $30 will get you 250 points + those mtx effects. If you don't ever want cosmetic extras then go wild and use the extra 50 points on stash space.

But yeah, the guy is asking whether he needs to pay to progress, and he can absolutely play the entire game without doing so or even trading.

"The entire game," how many people are beating Uber Elder on SSF with no paid tabs?

 

[Seelenlos]

I was an early supporter of the game and enjoyed it. However the bugs drove me away. Every time I see news on the game I think about going back. Then I read the forums and see it is still has issues.
With such a wide selection of games out there today companies need to step up on quashing the bugs.

 

[Aix.]

"The entire game," how many people are beating Uber Elder on SSF with no paid tabs?

New players - like many of those reading this thread - can play all 10 acts and get into mapping quite comfortably without buying stash tabs or paying any money. At that point you'll know whether you like the game or not and whether you want to spend some money, but you can very much get the PoE experience for free. Endgame grinding is totally another story as you run into tons of items/currency/etc., but there are no "pay $5 to pass this point" moments in the game.

Uber Elder was pretty much added to be an ultra hard mode for people looking for that level of grind and challenge. A very low percentage of players even makes it to high-tier maps let alone Guardians, Shaper, etc.

I was an early supporter of the game and enjoyed it. However the bugs drove me away. Every time I see news on the game I think about going back. Then I read the forums and see it is still has issues.
With such a wide selection of games out there today companies need to step up on quashing the bugs.

What early bugs do you suspect are still in the game today?

 

[Seelenlos]

What early bugs do you suspect are still in the game today?

Bad lag, dsync, rubber banding etc. From what I can tell they have improved but still see people complain about it.

 

[Aix.]

Bad lag, dsync, rubber banding etc. From what I can tell they have improved but still see people complain about it.

July 2015 they implemented Deterministic Lockstep mode (client syncronized with game server) and also vastly improved upon the traditional predictive mode. Just like any online FPS or RTS, if you have decent ping you won't have desync anymore.

 

[Krenum]

Tried so hard to get into this game since it came out years ago. Just can't do it. And Im a huge fan of ARPG's. Something about the dynamics or the world just seems off to me or un interesting. I'll play it for a couple of hours & wont touch it for months. Good to see its still going strong though.

 

[tetris42]

New players - like many of those reading this thread - can play all 10 acts and get into mapping quite comfortably without buying stash tabs or paying any money. At that point you'll know whether you like the game or not and whether you want to spend some money, but you can very much get the PoE experience for free. Endgame grinding is totally another story as you run into tons of items/currency/etc., but there are no "pay $5 to pass this point" moments in the game.

Uber Elder was pretty much added to be an ultra hard mode for people looking for that level of grind and challenge. A very low percentage of players even makes it to high-tier maps let alone Guardians, Shaper, etc.

Oh I agree and said as much, just you're not going to be playing ALL content for free realistically. There are still bosses, dialogue, maps, cutscenes etc. you don't get elsewhere, even if the meat is in the main acts.

 

[Aix.]

Also check out the new water physics and incredible lighting upgrade! Should be queued up at 7:23 of the video.

 

[jwalk6]

Interesting but not enough to bring me back to the game.

I can see many hours of dying from "darkness" and sacrificing many keyboards in the process.

Kudos to GGG for creating new content instead of rehashing the old tho.

Maybe the Chinese ownership won't be so bad after all.