As we have reported beforehand, regardless of holding government roles in a number of main companies and enterprise the busy work of burrowing himself in incoming political regimes, Elon Musk manages to search out time to boast some spectacular gaming laurels, claiming to carry excessive placements in Diablo 4 leaderboards and Path of Exile 2 hardcore league rankings. This week, these claims are being known as into doubt, as PoE 2 streamers and subreddit sleuths analyze a latest stream by which Musk appeared to fumble over primary gameplay mechanics.
On January 7, Musk streamed an hour and a half of Path of Exile 2 gameplay on his present stage 95 hardcore character. In PoE 2, surviving into greater ranges within the hardcore league, no matter ladder placement, is a powerful feat: As you progress, the sport stacks layers of enemy modifiers, injury resistance reductions, and unsafe tileset modifiers, and dying as soon as in hardcore means your character is toast. Getting a hardcore character into the 80s is spectacular; getting one excessive sufficient into the 90s to position excessive on the hardcore ladder is a feat of expert gameplay and buildcraft.
The gameplay on show in viewer-recorded VODs of the stream, nonetheless, is… effectively, not that.
Odd indicators start showing as early as 18 minutes into the stream, when Musk enters his character’s stash to disclose a tab that is been named “Elon’s map.” Considering the opposite tabs aren’t labeled “Elon’s forex” or “Elon’s catalysts,” the tab stands proud. Someone of a conspiratorial persuasion would possibly see it as an indicator that, maybe, one other particular person had curated the tab’s choice of map-generating waystones for ease of gameplay—like when you needed to have the ability to showcase your excessive stage character and not using a actual threat of getting it killed.
But possibly it was only a enjoyable little approach for Musk to brighten up his personal day. Who can say what affectations delight the hyper-wealthy?
Things spiral from there. Musk’s clearspeed is halting. His motion, at instances, appears random. At one level, his injury plummets as he goes a full 10 seconds with out refilling his empty mana meter. Elsewhere, he leaves worthwhile forex objects like Chaos Orbs and Exalted Orbs uncollected on the bottom, however picks up low tier keystones that will be irrelevant at his character’s stage of development.
At instances, Musk clicks impotently at nodes on his Atlas map, seemingly struggling to determine which he can truly run regardless of having theoretically cleared the tons of—if not hundreds—of maps vital for his character’s stage and kit. Later, when weighing which map to clear subsequent, he selects a node with 4 modifiers. “There are 4 issues right here,” he notes, which technically is not unfaithful.
He enters maps with a full stock, then repeatedly makes an attempt to choose up objects with out stock area. He does not have a loot filter lively, however could be seen clicking and dragging objects into his stock—a maddening show that will suggest he’d have manually sorted by hundreds of dropped objects to assemble his character’s tools, which might very effectively have taken longer than the precise gameplay vital to achieve his present stage.
This is all, supposedly, from a participant who at time of writing has been capable of outpace all however 11 folks on the worldwide PoE 2 hardcore ladder. Still, it might’ve been efficiency anxiousness. Even the wealthiest man alive can get a bit nervy when streaming for the peasantry, I assume.
What’s most damning, nonetheless, is that Musk appears to point out a elementary misunderstanding of how itemization in Path of Exile 2 works. Late within the stream, he appears over his present tools. Inspecting his weapon, he says it is “solely stage 62” in comparison with his stage 95 character. In doing so, he is seemingly unaware that in PoE, an merchandise’s effectiveness is not decided by its stage requirement, however by its merchandise stage—a separate determine that determines which affixes the merchandise can roll with.
He repeats the error as he mouses over every merchandise he has outfitted. “My tools’s fairly low stage in comparison with my character stage, however it appears to work fairly effectively,” he says, though it is all high-end gear that is been meticulously collected, crafted, and rerolled to maximise his character’s construct. It’s a misapprehension that, frankly talking, strains perception.
For gamers on the PoE 2 subreddit, the stream intensifies the doubt already surrounding Musk’s possession of his account. “His gear is best than quite a lot of full time streamers. No approach it’s actual. Account sharing or increase of some type,” redditor InvestmentFew9366 stated.
“I imply he has a f’in mirror tier workers and says he wants to interchange it as a result of it is solely stage 62,” stated redditor frenchpatato. “You need not say the rest.”
“The wierd [sic] half to me is that he feels he must brag about being a professional gamer for some motive,” Elbjornbjorn stated. “Dude put a automobile his firm designed into area on a rocket his different firm designed, why the hell does he must brag about gaming?”
