Joe Ziegler Says Path of Exile Build Freedom Kept Him Playing for 3,437 Hours

Some action RPG players seek comfort: a familiar class, a dependable loop, and a few hours of happily clearing enemies without needing to solve a spreadsheet-shaped puzzle. Joe Ziegler is making the case for the other kind of player—the one who looks at a tangled web of possibilities and sees a very large invitation.

Ziegler, the game director known for leading Valorant and later Marathon, says he has logged 3,437 hours in Path of Exile. The reason is not simply its fantasy setting or its ability to generate endless things to kill. It is the room the game gives players to construct, test, revise and sometimes completely dismantle a character build.

“ARPGs to me are [about the] buildcrafting and the cleverness of putting things together,” Ziegler said. “And I think Path of Exile is the most freeform version of that.”

That is a revealing way to describe an ARPG. The genre label—short for action role-playing game—usually suggests real-time combat, character progression, loot and repeated battles against increasingly formidable enemies. But the balance among those parts differs radically from game to game. In Ziegler’s description, the combat is the payoff for an earlier creative act: assembling interacting mechanics well enough to produce a fast, powerful and satisfying result.

Buildcrafting is the game inside the game

“Buildcrafting” is the community shorthand for planning how a character functions. It can encompass the style of attack a player wants to use, the supporting effects that make it stronger or safer, and the trade-offs that define the final result. A build is not merely a menu selection. It is a theory about how many separate parts can work together.

That makes Ziegler’s emphasis on freedom important. A game can have many character options while still steering players toward a limited number of intended combinations. His praise for the original Path of Exile is specifically that experimentation feels broad: players can approach the problem of creating an effective character from many angles rather than being pushed into one obvious answer.

He described the appeal as a “Rube Goldberg machine of effects and things,” an image that neatly captures the buildcrafting mindset. A Rube Goldberg machine is a deliberately elaborate chain of causes and effects. In an ARPG context, it means the pleasure can come from arranging a series of mechanics so that one action triggers a useful cascade, leading to more damage, faster enemy clearing, or another desired outcome.

The crucial point is that complication is not automatically the goal. Players are trying to make the complication do something. Ziegler boiled that end goal down to dealing the most damage possible and defeating enemies quickly. The elaborate machinery matters because it creates a personal route toward that practical combat result.

Totems and one-button builds show two different pleasures

Ziegler says he enjoys a variety of builds, with a particular fondness for Totem builds. He also pointed to “one-button” approaches, including Whirlwind builds, when he wants something more relaxed. Those preferences illustrate why “depth” should not be mistaken for a demand that every play session be equally complicated.

A Totem build, in the terms used here, centers on totems as a key part of the character’s offensive plan. The player’s enjoyment may lie in how that strategy is supported and optimized. A one-button build, by contrast, describes a streamlined control approach: it prioritizes doing a great deal through a simple repeated input. That does not necessarily mean the underlying character setup was simple to create. It means the finished arrangement can make moment-to-moment play feel direct.

That distinction matters for anyone trying to understand why a system-heavy ARPG can appeal to different moods. A player can enjoy extensive planning on one day and choose a lower-friction way to fight on the next. The satisfaction may be in discovering a complex solution that results in uncomplicated play.

Experimentation: trying alternate combinations to see what produces the desired result.
Buildcrafting: the process of designing a character around interlocking combat and progression choices.
One-button build: a build aimed at delivering much of its play pattern through a very simple input routine.
Freeform: Ziegler’s assessment that the original game allows especially wide latitude in how players think about and assemble builds.

Why the original Path of Exile remains Ziegler’s choice

Ziegler has also played Path of Exile 2 in Early Access, but says the newer game feels more limiting to him. He does not frame that as a blanket condemnation. Instead, he says its direction makes sense because it is built around more of an action-focused environment. His preference is personal and specific: Path of Exile 1 feels more aligned with what he wants from the genre.

“I think I’ve changed my expectation around ARPGs because of Path of Exile,” Ziegler said, adding that the original “was more meant for me.”

That is a useful distinction in a discussion that can too easily turn into a scoreboard. A sequel can pursue a different balance of action and player freedom without one approach automatically invalidating the other. Ziegler’s comments instead point to a design preference: he values the breadth of character experimentation in the original strongly enough that it has recalibrated what he expects from ARPGs.

For players, that is also a reminder to identify what they actually want before treating a large, demanding ARPG as a universal recommendation. “More depth” can mean more opportunities to discover a singularly satisfying build. It can also mean more decisions, more uncertainty, and more time spent learning why a promising idea did not perform as hoped. Neither reaction is wrong.

Complexity is a feature, not an obligation

The broader ARPG conversation often begins with Diablo, a series closely associated with the genre. Path of Exile, from Grinding Gear Games, was explicitly inspired by Diablo 2 and has built its own dedicated audience as a free-to-play ARPG. Yet shared genre roots do not dictate that the games satisfy players in the same way.

There is a meaningful contrast between treating an ARPG as a place to unwind and treating it as a continuing design problem. One player may return to older Diablo games because familiarity and simplicity make them ideal background play while listening to podcasts. Another may return because the next character concept is still unresolved. A third can appreciate both impulses at different times.

Ziegler’s 3,437-hour figure should not be read as a benchmark that players must meet to “get” Path of Exile. It is evidence of what happens when a game’s central strength matches a player’s exact appetite. His interest is in clever construction, varied build types and the pursuit of more efficient combat. For someone who enjoys that cycle, the possibility space itself becomes replay value.

For another player, the same possibility space can be a reason to step back. A huge game asking for substantial attention may be a poor fit even if its systems are deeply admired. That practical reality is easy to lose when conversations focus entirely on which game has more content, more options or a more enthusiastic audience.

What players can take from Ziegler’s perspective

The most useful takeaway is not that every ARPG should imitate Path of Exile, or that every player should pursue its most elaborate builds. It is that build freedom is a distinct kind of appeal. It serves players who enjoy asking “what happens if these pieces go together?” as much as they enjoy the resulting battles.

Players curious about the game’s reputation should therefore set expectations carefully. The draw Ziegler describes is an invitation to experiment, not a promise of effortless mastery. It is well suited to a player who finds pleasure in evolving an idea over time, whether that idea is a Totem-centered strategy or a streamlined one-button setup.

And for the people who would rather return to a familiar game and simply clear monsters for an evening, that preference is just as coherent. ARPGs share an ancestral loop, but they can offer fundamentally different relationships with attention, planning and relaxation. Ziegler’s long-running attachment to the original Path of Exile is a strong example of how far that relationship can go when a game’s systems leave room for a player’s own solutions.

His background also puts the comments in a wider industry context. As debate continues around the direction of major multiplayer and action games—including questions surrounding Bungie projects—the difference between player expression and tightly directed action remains an enduring design question. For more on a separate Bungie-related report, see this look at an unconfirmed Battlefront 3 rumor.