Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

[ArchAngel]

So after eating a dick for the third time (as a summoner in this particular case) and being ultra butthurt I decided to give it another try, instead of doing something productive like a normal person.

Beat them acts finally as a sunder zerker (didn't buy shit, should have probably went for SSF in the first place, but missclicked and decided not to bother), the only close call I remember is that gargoyle on roids in merciless labyrinth, hit me for like 80% in one punch, got me worried. Seems like a pretty newb friendly class, a whole lot of easily accessible defensive passives sure helped a lot. So anyway, what's the end-game in PoE? Is the map grind the only thing that's left? I purposely avoided wiki and things like that, so Kitava (2nd version) was a bit of a mess, but in terms of shit-to-do I'm a little lost now.

Maps are only part of endgame. There are multiple bosses and some more or less hidden fights.

 

[ArchAngel]

I've noticed a recent trend. (I've never stopped following PoE, even though I haven't been playing in many months.) Numerous threads like these have begun appearing on the PoE subreddit. These are just from today, probably a few I've missed:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/852s6a/accessing_end_game_has_become_absurd/
https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexil...k_of_balance_might_turn_away_some_playersbut/
https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/84y43d/poes_focus_on_the_economy_instead_of_player/

The gist of these being that GGG balances the entire game around the tiny number of streamers and no-lifers who play the game 24/7 (often one and the same) and reckons that the individual player experience is fine regardless of RNG obnoxiousness, just so long as the overall economy is healthy.

I never used to see these types of threads at all, and certainly not with such frequency or receiving so many upvotes.

Thoughts?

Game has always been like this for me but this league they nerfed some of the mechanics that many used to have a better drop rate (I never abused those) and also this Bestiary league sucks big time and does not give enough extra enemies on maps so everything drops less.

But I don't expect many people here to agree with you, when I complained in the past that PoE should be renamed to PoT (path of trading) I was attacked by a few people and put on ignore list by some

I guess truth is too hard for some people.

 

[Blaine]

But I don't expect many people here to agree with you, when I complained in the past that PoE should be renamed to PaT (path of trading) I was attacked by a few people and put on ignore list by some

Agree with what? These aren't my opinions. I'm simply reporting the trend I've noticed on the subreddit, because I'm curious how the usual suspects might weigh in on it.

Either way, I suspected something along the lines of what you described, because where there's smoke, there's fire: that is, changes made sometime in the last few leagues must have made rare drops more scarce or somehow less obtainable, thus prompting a spike in complaints.

Can't say anyone actually put me on ignore when I suggested that PoE should be renamed to Path of Health Nodes, but I was mostly joking about that.

 

[Saark]

I never used to see these types of threads at all, and certainly not with such frequency or receiving so many upvotes.

Typical circlejerk on reddit. Basically people who started with PoE during Breach or after, who never had to play the game when sustaining maps/currency was actually hard and almost impossible to do without trading, suddenly cannot sustain maps/currency anymore. They blame it on GGG being a malicious/inept developer who has no idea what they're doing. They blame it on biscos nerf, they blame it on breach removal on zana8, they blame it on sextant nerf, they blame it on nets dropping instead of currency, whatever they could come up with, they blamed it for their problems. GGG then comes out of hiding and tells people that their theories are bullshit, that the only place where nets actually were dropping instead of currency was uber-lab emperor-troves and that the impact wasn't nearly as big as they initially thought. Same thing happened with the beast-craft duping btw, people yelling that there must now be hundreds of duped items floating around, and GGG being transparent with the actual numbers shut them up almost instantly. Now the alch/map droprates are the next best thing to whine about.

Now, a lot of prominent streamers and high-profile players who were pushing ladder before breach was a thing talked about it a bit, and they all said the same thing: Sustaining alchs wasn't possible before breach either and you were bleeding chaos because you actually had to reroll quite a few mapmods, which is not necessary anymore. The new generation of PoE players has been pampered with league-mods such as breach, abyss, legacy and even harbinger, where the league-mod spawned insane amounts of additional mobs that were able to drop currency/maps. It was a stupid development, and I am glad they stopped that sort of league-design in its tracks. Obviously all those newer players who don't really know shit about how the game has been before breach/perandus are whining and crying about map/currency sustain being "the worst its ever been" when they have no fucking clue what hard map-sustain really looks like. People used to exalt maps to try to sustain t8+ because it was almost impossible to do without spending insane amounts of currency.

Long story short, people who haven't gotten used to running <20% packsize/<80%quant maps with 3 atziri fragments cant sustain maps anymore, those that are actually rolling maps for bonuses again, use sac fragments and use their sextants wisely have no trouble whatsoever sustaining t13+. People who are used to picking up loot and vendoring it after every map have no trouble sustaining alchs. All the newfags who are only used to sextant/bisco/breach maps who only ever picked up currency are getting fucked. Well done GGG.

The only complaint I can get behind is the spawnrate of red beasts. Apparently it is supposed to be 1 in 5 maps, which is way too low for how they are the only limiting factor to the league-mechanic. I do get why GGG sets the spawn-rate of their league-mechanic at the lower spectrum first though, by now it's to be expected after harbinger, abyss and now beastiary all had fairly low spawn-rates at the start. Doing it the other way around would flood the economy and ruin the game for a lot of people fairly quickly because of instant gratification without any form of progression. Beastiary doesn't really have any progression though, which is the bad thing about this league and something they'll have to keep in mind for the next ones. Breach wasn't just liked because of the insane amount of mobs spawning, but because you actually had some decent progression towards a special event. That is completely missing now.

 

[ArchAngel]

I agree with second part of your post, the first is your opinion of course but the game has become a lot more popular since Breach and after and for a good reason. Using history of the game when it was less played and praised proves only that it is a better game now and it should not go back to state when it was not as good.

 

[Saark]

Of course the game has become more popular after it repeatedly catered to the people who were whining about the game being too hard or the end-game content being too hard to access/beat. When you streamline shit, more people will be able to play and enjoy it. I don't want PoE to become a streamlined piece of shit like hundreds of other games.

 

[ArchAngel]

Of course the game has become more popular after it repeatedly catered to the people who were whining about the game being too hard or the end-game content being too hard to access/beat. When you streamline shit, more people will be able to play and enjoy it. I don't want PoE to become a streamlined piece of shit like hundreds of other games.

That is not being a hardcore game needing to farm like crazy just so you can farm some more. In D2 you farmed to get loot, not to just get maps so you can farm those. That is just terrible, terrible design

 

[Blaine]

Of course the game has become more popular after it repeatedly catered to the people who were whining about the game being too hard or the end-game content being too hard to access/beat. When you streamline shit, more people will be able to play and enjoy it. I don't want PoE to become a streamlined piece of shit like hundreds of other games.

The game's changed a lot since it was released, though, and much has been added and iterated. I first played PoE in closed beta, then picked the game up again last year and played through to a medium-ish tier of maps while annoying the Codex clan for advice; I'm pretty sure maps, lab, and also a lot of other stuff didn't exist back in 2013.

My point being: There isn't an absolute, static state of hardcore-ness that has always existed, because the game has been in a constant state of flux and evolution. Veteran players who quickly and easily absorb each added layer of content and complexity (since they've seen all the rest of it before, and have accumulated years of knowledge and experience) may not realize when the experience for newcomers is in dire need of improvement. I'm familiar with this concept (and many general arguments thereof) because I'm a long-retired veteran of EVE Online, whose economy is as complex and whose learning curve is as astronomical as PoE's, if not much more so. Also, EVE is three times older than PoE.

Then again, veterans may not (and often don't) care about the new player experience; and sometimes it's not possible to improve the new player experience in an aging MMO anyway. A few years ago, CCP (EVE Online's developers) finally gave up trying to cater to new players, and seem to have resigned themselves to keeping the heavily entrenched and ancient existing player base satisfied until the grand old game eventually stops turning a profit at some point in the unforeseeable future. However, EVE is a subscription-based game. I realize that EVE and PoE are very different, and yet in some ways they're more similar to each other than to anything else out there. Certainly they're the only two commercial massively multiplayer games in existence that I have any respect for.

In more abstract terms, would you agree with the common contention that PoE is balanced around the top 1% of the player base?

 

[Hyperion]

In more abstract terms, would you agree with the common contention that PoE is balanced around the top 1% of the player base?

Yes, and no. GGG has actually done a pretty good job of catering to both the casual and the hardcore. 2013 - 14, it was very likely that a casual, new player was going to be confused and overwhelmed by the time they killed Hillock and reached Lioneye's Watch. The game has a pretty extensive (and obtrusive if you're a veteran) tutorial now, which was almost nonexistent until about 6 months ago or so. Pre-2.0, there was a good chance that these same casual, new players were going to make a build that was simply not good enough to reach maps, which Chris Wilson is on record as saying, "once people reach maps, we own their soul." This is GGG's ultimate goal - get people to maps, because they know that's when they get hooked and will be convinced the game is throwing money to. After that, however, the entire game is grinding. Without a huge timesink, and a seemingly unobtainable chase for the majority of people how else will you keep asses in the seats for the entirety of a 3, 4, or even 5 month temporary league?

People like myself, who have actively played the game from closed beta to now are part of a dwindling population who are actually feeling let down and betrayed by GGG in the last few years, because in my eyes at least, nothing they do is hardcore compared to years past. If you scour this thread a bit, I'm sure you'll find quite a few of us in general agreement, but with differences in terms of how we want it more 'hardcore.' I just miss the more deliberate pacing of the game's original vision, akin to Diablo 2's farming pace. I'm also one of the few masochists who honestly misses the larger, more random zones before quite a few were excised from the game. There are some areas which have 3 side quest objectives jammed into a single zone, which I think is almost unheard of in an ARPG before this. My point is, I think a large portion of the population has associated hardcore with timesink, and it sucks. A timesink shouldn't be a timesink for the sake of it - it should be a timesink because it's fun and you WANT to login and play. While I don't consider PoE an MMO by any stretch of the imagination, what's going on is a similar to what I remember of Vanilla WoW, when the casuals complained that they were left behind in the raiding scene. Eventually, in trying to please everyone, nobody is going to be happy.

whose economy is as complex and whose learning curve is as astronomical as PoE's, if not much more so.

There will always be a small portion of players who exploit the fuck out of the economy in a game like this. Funny thing is, in PoE, if anything, it actually makes the game easier for the majority of players, because a lot of items that get you into, or through early-mid tier maps are dirt cheap that you can afford with the assorted currency you get just from working your way through the base game. Yet, most people don't realize this, see a few rich people, and flail their arms and cry why they can't do the same. They could, but they don't realize these dudes are often shitsocking it, and making a concerted effort to do that. If you're able to remove yourself from any of that, economy-based games are always more enjoyable. Particularly in PoE, because GGG does a pretty decent job now of being able to slowly work your way to a goal.

All this said, Bestiary league was poorly thought out, and is a pretty boring mechanic. Had they made Red Beasts appear in every map, and improved your odds of getting a useful leveling item, or just an item you wanted by placing 4 Red Beasts in your Blood Altar, we could have had some legendary RIP clips, and absolutely filthy encounters. But, alas, they went the weak route and made Red Beasts too rare, and balanced encounters around a single Red. Bestiary is also different from the past few leagues in that it doesn't have incremental rewards from monsters, like Breach Shards, so you can't actively SEE the progress you're making. It's straight RNG-gated, which is triggering the fuck out of people.

 

[Blaine]

While I don't consider PoE an MMO by any stretch of the imagination....

Yes, this is a very annoying semantic issue. "MMO" carries many connotations that don't apply to PoE at all, yet PoE is certainly massively multiplayer (and tangibly so; there is a large pool of players to chat and team up with, a league-wide economy, etc.) and it goes without saying that it's also online, offering no true single-player mode. Even when playing solo, the game's itemization is clearly designed with player interaction in mind, even though SSF is entirely doable. It's an MMO by definition, but most people think that MMO means "It's like World of Warcraft."

Pre-2.0, there was a good chance that these same casual, new players were going to make a build that was simply not good enough to reach maps, which Chris Wilson is on record as saying, "once people reach maps, we own their soul." This is GGG's ultimate goal - get people to maps, because they know that's when they get hooked and will be convinced the game is throwing money to.

That's funny, because maps is where I decided to take a break from the game. Even with the benefit of the spare maps in the Codex clan's stash to assist us ("us" would be me and Lazing Dirk), something about maps just didn't grab me once I'd slogged a ways into it. Mind you, I had Filtration loot filters set up, had a bunch of well-organized storage and trade tabs in my stash, and took to poe.trade like a fish to water (quickly and accurately judging the rarity/strength/value of an item is another matter; T. Reich was an immense help here, but I nevertheless remained extremely dumb and new for the most part). This was during Legacy League, which has to have been one of the most enjoyable leagues there ever was. I was really hoping they'd retain most of the legacy features permanently to some degree, but as I recall they axed the juiciest bits.

To be fair, by the time I reached maps, I think everyone agreed league fatigue had indeed begun to impede the normal greed stampede, and that was a factor. Also, I knew that potentially huge changes were soon coming along with the new acts, demigod (?) battles and so on, and having to potentially learn a huge mess of new things (and un-learn outdated things) right after I'd just finished learning a bunch of new shit was a slightly annoying prospect.

There will always be a small portion of players who exploit the fuck out of the economy in a game like this. Funny thing is, in PoE, if anything, it actually makes the game easier for the majority of players, because a lot of items that get you into, or through early-mid tier maps are dirt cheap that you can afford with the assorted currency you get just from working your way through the base game.

Yep. That's a truly massive upside that I noticed and fully appreciate the value of. I was even able to afford a nice 6L chest eventually, as I recall, and indeed a fairly nice everything, although at least one was a generous hand-me-down from Zdzisiu.

All this said, Bestiary league was poorly thought out, and is a pretty boring mechanic. Had they made Red Beasts appear in every map, and improved your odds of getting a useful leveling item, or just an item you wanted by placing 4 Red Beasts in your Blood Altar, we could have had some legendary RIP clips, and absolutely filthy encounters. But, alas, they went the weak route and made Red Beasts too rare, and balanced encounters around a single Red. Bestiary is also different from the past few leagues in that it doesn't have incremental rewards from monsters, like Breach Shards, so you can't actively SEE the progress you're making. It's straight RNG-gated, which is triggering the fuck out of people.

Yeah, I posted ITT a couple months ago that I was thinking about coming back, but the grumbling I began to see (and not only on Reddit) made me think that perhaps I should wait for the next league in the queue.

It's not that I necessarily agree with Reddit-tier newfags/casuals or feel the same way they do (as an old EVE bittervet I'd be compelled to commit suicide if I ever truly go full casual), but if it's boring and obnoxious for them, then probably it's going to affect me negatively also.

 

[Saark]

Beastiary as a league-mechanic seems fairly shit right now. I do however think that Beastiary will be one of the more important leagues we've had for a while, because with how much effort went into designing and coding the underlying infrastructure that it requires, we may see some fairly impressive patches/expansions in the future using the same framework. People should keep in mind that temporary leagues used to be the testing ground for mechanics that then make it into the main-game, or at least their framework getting taken over into it. I am fairly sure that Tempest/Warbands was the breeding grounds for what eventually became War of the Atlas. A lot of the tile-bases used in the Atlas of Worlds patch we eventually got to see again in Fall of Oriath (what had been designed first is anyones guess). Master side-areas were eventually improved upon in Abyss, which is why they blocked each other for quite some time.

What annoys me the most, is how whiney reddit has become over the last few weeks. There's usually like 45% whine-threads, 50% item-showcases and 5% good content. Nowadays its more like 80% whinethreads, 19% item-showcases and only a few interesting/entertaining posts remain. I specifically liked the master-rework suggestion by incorporating old challenge-leagues. Stuff like this is interesting to think about and worth discussing, but instead of having more of these we usually have 500 "i cant sustain maps anymore by doing alch+go strats that worked for the last 3 leagues, fuck GGG" topics instead.

 

[T. Reich]

Let me put this on record that while I'm usually the last to complain about PoE, I think that Bestiary is complete dogshit. Not conceptually, but every bit of it screams "unfinished".

Frankly, in my eyes, the fuck up is Andromeda/No Man's Sky tier bad.

3 month league dev cycle + continuing XBox development (I made a XBox thread on Reddit a few days ago, people playing PoE On XBox complained that it needs a whole damn lot of polish to approach the PC experience) + continuing China development = GGG stretched real thin.
3+ years' worth of old mechanics and content that need to be brought up-to-date with the modern core gameplay of PoE doesn't help either.

 

[SirSingAlot]

 

[Blaine]

Let me put this on record that while I'm usually the last to complain about PoE, I think that Bestiary is complete dogshit. Not conceptually, but every bit of it screams "unfinished".

I'll bet. Assuming there are dozens of new models, animations, and sounds (?) and that all of these critters had to be distributed around the various areas and maps (?), it was probably a whole lot of work on top of the tangential console etc. work they're already doing.

Also, I'm further assuming the Menagerie will become a permanent feature in every league. Surely there's no way they poured all those resources into assets like that with the intention of shelving them, only to be pulled out occasionally as with some other league mechanics.

The good news then is that they probably will finish it and refine it at some point down the road.

 

[ArchAngel]

That Watcher's Eye is now the most expensive unique item in the game :D

 

[Jason Liang]

39% cold conversion, nice.

 

[T. Reich]

I'll bet. Assuming there are dozens of new models, animations, and sounds (?) and that all of these critters had to be distributed around the various areas and maps (?), it was probably a whole lot of work on top of the tangential console etc. work they're already doing.

No, it's not that. GGG are masters of reusing assets. In terms of new game models and animations, we're talking: one new voice-acted (sparsely) character and a couple of animations for him (idle, "capture"), less than 10 new animated monster models (4 spirit bosses, 4 unique legendary beasts that may or may not look exactly like spirit bosses, one new story mode optional boss), plus maybe 20 skill effects which may or may not resemble the already-existing ones. No new unique tilesets were made, all are reused from existing ones.

"Unfinished" refers to the much more critical aspects of the league:
1) a multitude of embarrasing bugs (GGG is usually good on this front, bt not this time);
2) clearly untested core mechanics that were entirely uncomfortable and rage-inducing until hotfixed into mediocrity;
3) "crafting" that's either hilariously umbalanced in its OPness (that got removed a few hours after being patched in) or that's completely useless (slightly better now, still dogshit compared to essences);
4) endgame content that's so much hidden behind RNG as to be nonexistent.

GGG has always maintained a certain mark of quality, but this time they dropped the ball, hard.

Also, I'm further assuming the Menagerie will become a permanent feature in every league. Surely there's no way they poured all those resources into assets like that with the intention of shelving them, only to be pulled out occasionally as with some other league mechanics.

The good news then is that they probably will finish it and refine it at some point down the road.

No doubt about it. The problem is that it seriously aggravates their playerbase right now. I mean, I'm a loyal GeeGeeGee fanboy for over 5 years, playing an evarage of 3 characters to endgame every league, sticking around for 2 months on average, and this league I'm ready to drop it right now, with 1 character done. And sure as hell I'm not going to throw any money at them for a long time now.

 

[Reinhardt]

After farming onigoroshi i think twilight strand gameplay > end game maps.

 

[Alpan]

What's incomprehensible about GGG not living up to their previous standards with Bestiary is that it is totally unforced, like a chess grandmaster blundering a piece for no discernable reason. Past challenge leagues -- I've been playing and supported PoE since 2012 -- have made a point of making their mechanics be fairly common and broadly accessible, with the accepted consensus being that GGG would dial them down once their integration into Standard took place: Essences/Abysses/Breaches appearing in every zone during their respective leagues, for instance. For this league GGG seem to have abandoned that principle. They have weighed Essence and Talisman on the same scale and decided that going the Talisman route would be received better. Anyone who's actually played the game then knows how ridiculous that sounds, but there you go. The backlash is only natural.

 

[ArchAngel]

Terrible league mechanics aside I am enjoying the Ascendancy rework. First I made an accuracy jugger and got my foot into mapping and uber lab farming and earned some currency. Then 1.5 weeks later I decided to try another changed one - Elementalist. And I am having a blast using 2x Poet's Pen.
Arc in main hand, Glacial Cascade in secondary. I shock everyone for 50% more damage and then blast them with GC. Stuff dies faster than what the main PP build (Volatile Dead + Unearth) does.

 

[Gerrard]

Is someone here seriously implying the game is not balanced around nolifers playing 10+ hours a day?

 

[you know what time it is]

I think I got about 100 hours in over the years (and my best character to date was a 77 lvl zerker that I just killed like a dipshit in a t10 breach), so I don't know much about end-game and such, but I still hope they'll add Legacy as a third option to standard and current leagues. That shit was stupid fun.

 

[Blaine]

Bestiary League's barely more than two weeks old? RIP. This really was an acute spike in unrest on the subreddit.

See you in June, fags.

 

[Jaedar]

Casual player(my record is t4 maps!) comment on Beast league:

I really like the basic idea. Pokemoning beasts, and then combining them into good items. The issue for me is that the good item part seems to be a bit missing. Turn 4 beasts into one rare item (possibly with one guaranteed mod, but afaik you can't be sure of its magnitude, so you may just get +5 hp)... that's just terribly weak. It worked better in the beginning, with mostly guaranteed access to stuff like +movement speed qs flash. Random unique is also a complete lottery, but at least slightly fun.

The red beasts also take a really long time to kill (for me), so I don't mind that they don't show up more often. However, this league doesn't seem to scale well at all. In essence, we'd get dual and triple ones after a while, but so far red beasts have been it the whole way.

 

[ArchAngel]

Bestiary League's barely more than two weeks old? RIP. This really was an acute spike in unrest on the subreddit.

See you in June, fags.

I got nothing better to play anyways so I will try to stick around until Battletech releases in April.