I tend to agree with that assessment.

It's a free-to-play game that has optional cosmetics that don't help you in any way whatsoever in the game. As you well know. There is no inferior game experience if you spent 0 euros and got 5000 hours from the game. Except bragging rights.

The only psychological "lure" or trick here is that they keep making the game awesome and addictive (who doesn't) and getting people to willingly contribute to it. I'm not even a little bit surprised that addictive games were found to induce people spending money on said addictive entertainment products.

It is exploitative in the same way as CDPR making additional content for Witcher 3 to entice people to buy their products. I.e., not really.

But yeah, to veer back into topic, builds are necessary for the more complex games like Path of Exile and should be discouraged for the easier ones due to the joy of experimentation.

Well games that are difficult to beat unless you follow a specific build are poorly designed.
However you can be stupid and choose a build that will guarantee failure. Watch Kilgore Trout play a game on Twitch. That is not fun.
There are choices that lead to success while others lead to failure, but there should be flexibility. You don't want it to be too rigid.
For example, Titan Quest has class and skill choices that are better than others, but success can be achieved with multiple choices.

I dislike it when games have mechanics that encourage this sort of thing. It's one of the problems I have with Final Fantasy 6/9. (The fact that time doesn't pause during animations during combat is another problem I have with these two Final Fantasy games in particular.)

Lords of Xulima also suffers with this sort of issue, particularly when it comes to herbs that give permanent stat boosts, but you can only pick them once and the amount you get depends on a certain skill at the time you get them (and improving the skill is done by leveling up, not by use).

I made it all the way through the first difficulty and almost to the end of the second. No help from online tools, and no real skill in these kinds of games. This was my first proper game of this type since (an ill-fitting comparison) Diablo 2 many years ago. So I was basically unskilled, and a bit overwhelmed with the skill system. If I could do it, most can - so I say on the easy side for sure (as long as you're not seeking to get through the highest difficulties).

However, it's fairly complex as things go, and I did get lucky a tad that I chose a suitable (and compatible) set of skills and bonuses. Basically I built a health-regenerating, life-stealing, high-armour, sword-wielding soldier build. Layers on layers of stacked stats. Not really planned ahead, but you can get through without too much problems as long as you don't spend points carelessly.

Thanks, but.. well, I considered higher difficulties too when I talked about end game content. I'd find annoying getting stuck at 2\3.
I recall that in D2 it was fairly easy to reach the normal ending, unless you really chose the worst skills ever.
But Nightmare and Hell were another story, expecially for the element resistance debuffs and monster immunities.

Diablo 2 was particularly badly designed in that aspect, by throwing total elemental immunities around all over. There were tons of potential builds that were completely not viable at all because of that. It also had its terrible "synergy" system added at some point, further constraining options. And it had numerous skills that were useless after a point in the game. Leading to "hope you followed a guide!" for Hell. D2 was also designed assuming multiplayer, so there are whole characters who can't do crap on their own, since only Paladin and Necromancer can break immunities (and even then plenty of foes exist totally immune that can't even be broken).

Grim Dawn lets you succeed on Ultimate if you have any skill at all at making sure things jive and have read the game manual to understand what's going on. (It's not that long.) Sans build guides. GD you might occasionally encounter a *combined pair/set* of randomly populated bosses that synergize each other well in ways that make your build really hard clear them. But it's not constant and individual foes like it is in other games (like D2).

Regarding D2 - exactly. You could get through past Normal, but by the time the "immunes" became overpopulated on the map anyone's imperfect build either found themselves grinding for experience for absolute hours or simply unable to finish. I call this poor design.

GD: I probably could have finished the second difficulty but at that point I was grinding for stuff and I lost interest playing the same content over and over again. My build might have continued a bit better if I had adjusted my build slightly ... but I hate working out stacked skills like it's some sort of maths puzzle. Point being there's a limit I get to in all these game types where you find your character which served you well for ages is being eclipsed by enemy levelling. And when you pop the bonnet and almost scream in frustration trying to sort out the mess of skills/stats/items/etc ... the game starts to feel less entertaining than doing your tax returns.

Yeah I remember dropping Diablo 2 in Hell difficulty or something (dont remember since it was like 20 years ago) on the diablo stage (in hell) because my character was just unable to progress. I had built a sorceress focused on ice magic since ice sphere/orb was cool and it was fun to play. The bosses were far easier than the mooks because the bosses didnt have any immunities while the mooks were full of them. Multiple ice immune monsters killed me and there was nothing I could do. Didnt know about this when I started but given the fact that several monsters also had multiple immunities, I thought that sorceresses just arnt viable end-game.

To answer OP, yeah builds are definitely made to make games “easier” or in some cases, just playable. If you are just starting a game, you dont know the mechanics, what abilities are useful, how they interact, etc. so a build guide helps. Any build usually takes some grinding to achieve, whether they require certain weapons/stats/abilities/etc. so people will want to seek out builds that make them powerful (justifying the grind) as opposed to random “fun” builds.

So most builds are there to make the game “easier” although I dont think thats a bad thing. Games with tons of choice also mean opportunities for mistakes.

I actually haven't yet played that game and I took a look at it, and holy, what kind of skill tree is that?! Are they just making skills for the sake of forming a tree map?

I'm just kidding around of course. But it's really extensive, literally.

I had to google it. What the frell did I just see? Haha

I never liked that kind of skill tree circle very much (without easy respecs).
You can't usually grasp the path you're following, so this requires even more planning than normal.

Btw I saw it first in FFX, but I don't know which game actually invented it.

On the other hand, FFX does allow you to go back and learn the skills you didn't get earlier; in other words, it doesn't have a mechanic that plays the role of a level cap, at least as far as skill learning is concerned. (On the other hand, there are a finite number of nodes, but by the time you need to worry about that, you're in post-game, and I believe any change to the grid you're allowed to make is reversible, with the exception of things you would have no reason to ever want to reverse.)

(With that said, note that FFX's post-game is terrible, especially if you're doing the International/Remaster extras; it's much more fun to try a No Sphere Grid run, except that then you have to sit through all the unskippable cutscenes.)

Ah, I forgot I guess. I didn't like FFX much (and it was my brother's game), so I didn't play it for long.
Btw I saw online that the choices in the sphere tree were actually quite linear, so people created straight versions of it.

You could basically get all the nodes at 4+ and have what you could call "max level" however certain nodes were locked, and you needed to get those *whatever you call em* to unlock them, one was in the cave where you vs Omega... i fookin missed that..

But yeah you can basically get all your stats upto something like 255 or whatever it is, it just takes a damn long time to do so.


Thats why i like small guides, as i don't like replaying games multiple times to get everything, especially when that area is forever locked once you have done it.