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Showing posts from October, 2016

PoE's trade system does have one obscure skill

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There are at least two different scales of commitment, and at least three different sub-games in Path of Exile. The scales of commitment are: time and skill. Good game design allows a baseline rate of progression per unit time with little or "no" skill, while allowing increased rates as skill increases. It's a mistake to think that allowing fast rewards for minimal time investment AND minimal skill, simultaneously, is "casual friendly." If by "casual friendly" one means "the game is all played out in a matter of hours and not with picking up again until the next content dump," then maybe. But assuming one wants people to play one's game, and play it a lot, getting all the rewards fast should require massive skill, and getting them without skill should take a massive amount of time. A tutorial is taking up a player's time in order to train a particular skill, if the player doesn't have it already. Researching stuff (looking i