The other('s) League
A little over a year and a half ago, during a period at my old job when my day consisted of anxiously waiting for a message from Northern Europe about a potential project allocation, I received an invitation from a friend from my homeland to join him in one of his old addictions. An addiction that would be getting a new face from its developer.
It is very hard for me to fall in love with games at this point in my life. Once the child who did not even have a video game console at home, but who bought magazines on the subject just to know how to beat the levels of a Resident Evil on the GameCube, my contact with games today is reduced to videos and articles about the petty squabbles of an industry that has taken far bigger steps than its legs could handle and inflated itself with its own ego.
One of the main reasons to avoid such falls is simply time. A 9-to-6 job that, even with plenty of downtime, still requires constant availability for meetings and discussions does not give me the peace of mind I had during my university years. And even before the working day begins, I have family duties that almost completely eliminate any free time other than the time available to rot on the sofa with reruns of classic HBO series.
But for at least a good two months, Path of Exile 2 pulled me out of this “video-gamistic” state of torpor.
I did not do what I wanted to do in the game. I reached level 92 with my Sorceress, copying a very balanced build that, by the final levels of the game, no longer had either the offensive power or, much less, the defense required for the game’s content, with its “pinnacle bosses” whose abilities could finish off the poor mage in a single shot. Then there is also my own uselessness at video games, something that has haunted me since the days when I had no skill whatsoever with controllers.
I did try to keep up this sort of activity. However, time became increasingly scarce, as did the justifications for dedicating myself to an activity with no return other than a small dose of endorphins at the end of a map boss’ fall.
I also admit that the league system in a game like PoE 2 left me a bit confused at first. Having grown up used to playing things like Ragnarök Online, where the goal was to reach the maximum level and only then begin enjoying the game for years on end, I did not understand the reason for “losing” all the progress made with a character a few months after it had been created.
But once I started following the scene of YouTubers and streamers dedicated to games like PoE 2, it all began to make total sense.
A game like this is also exponential. With more resources, you do more things, and you also gather more resources. Considering that there is a very dynamic economy there through the buying and selling of items and especially “currencies”, we would have a scenario in which the prices of anything inside the game would tend toward infinity if it were permanent. Just as happened with Ragnarök on many servers, which later forced their owners to come up with bizarre tactics to fix their economies, such as the literal confiscation of money, the offering of ultra-powerful and highly coveted items as coin drains, and so on.
With leagues, a game like PoE 2 and its original, PoE, do not suffer from this. And at the end of the day, the progress made with your character in a league is not lost. It is simply retained in a permanent league, one that does not receive the league’s specific content but allows the game to continue being played by those who choose that infinite long-term scaling.
In this latest league, I tried to return to the game. With work on low heat on some days and family commitments largely taken care of at the beginning and end of the day, I felt I could dedicate a few hours to this endeavour.
Without success. The rust is getting thicker and thicker, and the keyboard more and more rickety. My reflexes do not help either. I died several times to a boss that has always caused me trouble in Act II, but in increasingly frustrating and embarrassing ways. On top of that, the new Sorceress is very far from the ideal damage and resistances needed to do anything other than shoot lightning bolts left and right and run away desperately, hoping eventually to kill - and, above all, not be killed by - an Elite-level monster.
Here enters another major core of the issue that keeps me from making progress in this undertaking: the addiction to looking up the best builds of the league and setting them as a target that, in reality, will only be reached after many, many hours of dedication.
Unlike every content creator focused on these games, even those who do it part-time, I do not have anywhere near the number of hours they can dedicate to a PoE 2-like game. In one day of playing, I complete the first act of the campaign. In the same amount of hours, those people are already at least at the end of Act IV, or even beyond.
My slow progress causes me a great deal of irritation. To the point where I feel practically immobilized from continuing.
I am not the first person, nor will I be the last, to have this kind of feeling. A kind of FOMO that leads to paralysis. But perhaps it is even worse. It is the fear of not having the talent and, above all, the time to make myself satisfied. And “satisfaction” here means deleting bosses like a Fubgun.
Which leads to the obvious question: why do I let myself be carried away and measure my satisfaction by copying, or even by following the path taken by, another person with far more resources - for the game - than I have? Why am I not satisfied with simply walking my own path, with its ups and downs, and just ignoring this content until the moment when I might perhaps be able to use it in my favor?
The thing is that what happens to me in PoE 2 and other games is merely a reflection of things that happen to us in life in general. I do not have any active social media - my Meta accounts exist only to follow the page of the steakhouse near my house so I can know the daily dishes in advance, and to follow a cousin who plays volleyball in the youth categories of a major club in the sport. But in the game, I am as influenced by the dynamics of the “perfect Instagram life” as someone who uses social media for that very purpose.
Abstinence from social networks, in that sense, has done me a lot of good. Remaining unaware of what others are doing with their own lives no longer creates in me the desire to try restaurant X or spend a holiday at hotel Y. I buy my trinkets from Amazon and AliExpress as life demands them. Which should soon include a mechanical keyboard, since the one I have is already at the end of its life and usefulness.
That is not what happens with YouTube and PoE 2. My current feed is an endless number of videos about Fubgun and his partners managing to obtain dozens or even hundreds of Divine Orbs in just a few hours with characters built over hundreds or even thousands of hours of play. And also with the support of enormous communities that help them with ideas and, above all, with monetary donations so they can continue making the game their livelihood.
I have nothing against these content creators, not least because they are eventually the ones who write the guides I follow to enjoy the “endgame” in the best possible way. However, my search for them before a PoE 2 league has even begun has created these obstacles to my better enjoyment of the game.
So I feel that it is indeed better to do with YouTube what I did with social media. Abstinence hurts a lot at first, but its medium- and long-term benefits more than make up for it. Perhaps that way I will even be able to ignore this unresponsive keyboard for a few more days while I complete the PoE 2 campaign by the end of this week.