Path of Exile is a MAJESTIC incline

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

Yeah it seems like having some actual consequence for death and discouraging endless item farming basically turns Diablo style games from unplayable trash into games.

It's weird.

It's like one mechanic can make or break a game

 

[Kjaska]

I've heard this sentiment from the top streamers as well. I can understand it, but from my perspective it looks more like you're committing to a safety oriented play style for the rest of your playthrough and less like constantly making meaningful choices on which content to run. Maybe this is different for you personally, but when I watch all the HC streamers, 90% of the time they are skipping content that might prove dangerous just by default, with no real thought put into the decision. To me it's a lot like the choice of dialogue presented to you in Bioware games: you're always given the 3 choices, but you're always selecting the one that has the correct colour for your "evil/good/ironic" playthrough. The streamers also rarely die (with the exception of Zizaran) and accumulate wealth in both gear and currency that is beyond 90% of the Softcore Trade players anyway, so the discouragement is minimal at best.

To me the interesting choice lies in things like build choice and optimization, use of crafts/drops/currency, what content to invest my time into and so on.

 

[Peachcurl]

Yeah it seems like having some actual consequence for death and discouraging endless item farming basically turns Diablo style games from unplayable trash into games.

Sure, I like to play modern rogue-likes.

But, this concept of consequence for death clashes with online-only which is unfortunately present in many modern descendants of the big D. Whenever a game lets me do HC on a local instance, I'll try it. (Which still has the option of death-by-bug, but at least one layer of untreatable risk is gone.)

Of course, there's the still the issue Kjaska mentions, concerning how a "safety-first" playstyle affects the game. This isn't necessarily a deal breaker, but it might affect at least long-term motivation to play.

What would help both issues would be designing the game for shorter play cycles. That is, design it with permanent player death in mind. Make it faster to achieve a non-death end-state. Maybe even make players gain some sort of benefits that are not lost by death (see: rogue-lites).

Of course, this would mean that HC becomes an entirely different game compared to SC, not just in terms of rules but also in terms of core design aspects.

 

[Jaedar]

"safety-first"

this playstyle has gotten worse and worse over time, as GGG started increasing the difficulty(and nerfing all the super tanky strats).

 

[Baron Dupek]

Kirac delivers

Reinstalled after some time to test another build - with more success than previous ones and it one of the better builds.
Seems like Evasion+Suppresion is mandatory for those "surprise firing platoon" Eating of Worlds version of Tentacle Miscreations (from Lunaris Temple LVL2) mobs, who loves poping out out of nowhere and shred you to pieces even if you're not glass cannon. They're true bane for anyone trying to level past lvl90...

 

[Sharpedge]

What are people's thoughts on the Timeless Jewel algorithm having being found? Personally, I am hoping that they change it next league and then remove it from the client side, plus change the seeds on a league by league basis. The whole fun of those jewels is not knowing what they all do and being able to look up the best ones with a simple search index defeats their entire purpose.

 

[Kjaska]

That discovery didn't really change anything for me, but I can see why trade andys would get excited about it. I'm sure GGG will fix it either next league or the one after. I remember Chris saying something to the effect of "Timeless Jews are doing exactly what they are supposed to". The only thing I would want is for them to be easily imported into PoB.

Baron Dupek congrats on your 7 Ex... in Standard lmao. I can give you another 80, if you want.

 

[gurugeorge]

Josh Strife Hayes interviewing Chris Wilson. Good stuff. Wilson particularly stresses the importance of getting the economy right so that peoples' efforts aren't devalued (in a game that's all about making an effort).

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

PoE is for queers. What a bunch of fuckin queers.

 

[Kjaska]

Josh Strife Hayes interviewing Chris Wilson. Good stuff. Wilson particularly stresses the importance of getting the economy right so that peoples' efforts aren't devalued (in a game that's all about making an effort).

JSH mostly with soft-ball questions, letting Chris just cream all over his face and fan-base. Which I'm completely fine with. Overall a much less cringy affair compared to somebody like Tarke doing the questioning. Mostly known answers, but two things stood out to me:

1) they were inspired by GW1 for the design of their online world
2) 3 old leagues are getting an update next league

What I wonder during these interviews, is how much is Chris' time actually worth? Like, he boasts that they spend very little on marketing. But if he is CEO, surely this interview was worth like 10 grand or some shit.

 

[gurugeorge]

1) they were inspired by GW1 for the design of their online world

Yeah that's what I found most interesting - I'd always suspected it, but it was nice to have it confirmed.

 

[Saark]

Ah yes, why not.

 

[Kjaska]

Week 9 over.

getting close to finishing the 40

I was enjoying the increase in challenge length 2-3 weeks ago, but now I'm starting to feel some fatigue. If next league's challenges are this grindy again, I'm considering finishing them up on trade instead. Grinding up 100 invites for Uber Bosses would have taken way too long, so I went for depth 600 instead. That was shorter, but also felt like an actual grind. I'd preferred it was just sulphite spent instead, so I could actually do the mechanic instead of just rushing down and skipping all the cool nodes and walls on the way. The difficulty increase at depth 400 was noticeable, but between that and 600 I didn't feel any difference anymore unless there were some very dangerous mods on the biome.

Notables:

 

[Saark]

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3290585

With the Sentinel League ending soon, you may be wondering whether this mechanic becomes a part of Path of Exile's core game.

The answer is no, for now. The league would take some changes before it would be appropriate to become a core Path of Exile mechanic, and while this is something we're interested in looking into in the future, it's not the time now.

When the Sentinel League ends in a few weeks, all of your existing Power Cores and Sentinels will be deleted.

Recombinators won't drop anymore, but the existing ones will continue to work in Standard and will become progressively more scarce as they are consumed. We know that you really enjoyed the crafting options provided by Recombinators, and we are looking for a way to bring them back in the future. If and when we do so, existing Recombinators will likely change their function to work however the new ones function. We'll signal this in the news beforehand so that you can make sure to consume existing ones if you prefer how they used to work.

What a surprise.


If you're ever wondering if the design has become more bland, just take a look at how many of the more recent leagues aren't making it core because they wouldn't mesh well with the core game or simply aren't interesting enough to become a part of it unless they revisit them again. Shame, and not because I liked Sentinel, or Ultimatum or Scourge, but because it's sad to see them no longer taking risks like they did with Synthesis, Delve or Betrayal. Last "grand" league they tried was Heist, and it sucked and was way too profitable (still is) but that was one miss after half a dozen great leagues.

 

[Perkel]

Introducing new expansion
aside from new maps and shit expansion comes with new defense mechanics.
We are introducing 3 more defenses for each type of defense gear.

Armor+ Now gear will have secondary defense value called armor+ it is similar to armor but it defends against new type of physical damage called physical+
Evasion+ Secondary defense to evasion. From now on monsters roll twice for accuracy and frst evasion defends against first while evasion+ defends against second
EnergyShield+ Secondary defense on gear that protects against damage above your 75% cap.

kjaska:

 

[ArchAngel]

Introducing new expansion
aside from new maps and shit expansion comes with new defense mechanics.
We are introducing 3 more defenses for each type of defense gear.

Armor+ Now gear will have secondary defense value called armor+ it is similar to armor but it defends against new type of physical damage called physical+
Evasion+ Secondary defense to evasion. From now on monsters roll twice for accuracy and frst evasion defends against first while evasion+ defends against second
EnergyShield+ Secondary defense on gear that protects against damage above your 75% cap.

kjaska:

Is this a joke?

 

[Kjaska]

rent free

 

[T. Reich]

Introducing new expansion
aside from new maps and shit expansion comes with new defense mechanics.
We are introducing 3 more defenses for each type of defense gear.

Armor+ Now gear will have secondary defense value called armor+ it is similar to armor but it defends against new type of physical damage called physical+
Evasion+ Secondary defense to evasion. From now on monsters roll twice for accuracy and frst evasion defends against first while evasion+ defends against second
EnergyShield+ Secondary defense on gear that protects against damage above your 75% cap.

kjaska:

You're designing it all wrong! You're supposed to mix up deterministic and RNG mechanics to achieve the best layeded defense!

Armor+ should roll for additional protection.
Evasion+ works like armor.
ES+... we've got Ward already, dude!

GGG gotta introduce Life+ - when you die, you don't, but you will if your Life+ doesn't recharge in time.

Of couse, to balance it all, we need HC+ mode...

 

[Ba'al]

So I tried this league's gauntlet. It's one of the easier ones so I decided to try and get to level 90 (well, to be more realistic, at least 80) and try my luck at the prizes. I died at 74 to those floating balls of green shit that follow you and then blast you in the face. I imagine they do chaos damage and well, I had -50 chaos res. But I'm not cross about that, what bothers me is that I very clearly dashed away from them before they descended on me, but the server decided that my inputs were, in fact, after the balls exploded. In theory, I consider HCSSF the ultimate way to play the game. However, due to various bullshit like this, I'm forced to play softcuck tradefag (if you're wondering why trade instead of ssf - there's no reliable way to get build enabling items). Hell, if the campaign wasn't such dogshit I'd consider re-rolling.

 

[Kjaska]

there's no reliable way to get build enabling items

I would agree on Melding, Omni and the Ascendancy Jewels, but everything else is more farmable than you might think. If you enjoyed the SSFHC environment, I would recommend you try SSFSC at least for a week or two. You can always migrate into trade.

 

[Jaedar]

Of couse, to balance it all, we need HC+ mode...

This name needs more work, I'm thinking "Uber HC".

 

[Ba'al]

there's no reliable way to get build enabling items

I would agree on Melding, Omni and the Ascendancy Jewels, but everything else is more farmable than you might think. If you enjoyed the SSFHC environment, I would recommend you try SSFSC at least for a week or two. You can always migrate into trade.

I don't know half as much about the game as I would like, but I do know some stuff has divination cards dedicated to them, I also know there are some harvest crafts that can change uniques into other uniques, sometimes even of the same type. That's about it though, whenever I look up where to get an item it says it's in the core drop pool. But let's say I want to play skeletor mages, how would I go about finding a Dead Reckoning jewel?

I've already mentioned this in the thread, I play self enforced ssf. All I've bought this league were a couple of level 20 gems when I switched builds. Also I must admit that it feels good finding an item that is worth something even though I can't use it for my build. Maybe if ssf had more of a dick measuring aspect like gauntlet I'd consider it.

 

[Peachcurl]

there's no reliable way to get build enabling items

I would agree on Melding, Omni and the Ascendancy Jewels, but everything else is more farmable than you might think. If you enjoyed the SSFHC environment, I would recommend you try SSFSC at least for a week or two. You can always migrate into trade.

I don't know half as much about the game as I would like, but I do know some stuff has divination cards dedicated to them, I also know there are some harvest crafts that can change uniques into other uniques, sometimes even of the same type. That's about it though, whenever I look up where to get an item it says it's in the core drop pool. But let's say I want to play skeletor mages, how would I go about finding a Dead Reckoning jewel?

I've already mentioned this in the thread, I play self enforced ssf. All I've bought this league were a couple of level 20 gems when I switched builds. Also I must admit that it feels good finding an item that is worth something even though I can't use it for my build. Maybe if ssf had more of a dick measuring aspect like gauntlet I'd consider it.

btw. I know this is a kinda shitty way to do it, but you could also play self-enforced HC. gives you the leeway to ignore a death caused by 'force majeure'

 

[Kjaska]

I don't know half as much about the game as I would like, but I do know some stuff has divination cards dedicated to them, I also know there are some harvest crafts that can change uniques into other uniques, sometimes even of the same type. That's about it though, whenever I look up where to get an item it says it's in the core drop pool. But let's say I want to play skeletor mages, how would I go about finding a Dead Reckoning jewel?

I've already mentioned this in the thread, I play self enforced ssf. All I've bought this league were a couple of level 20 gems when I switched builds. Also I must admit that it feels good finding an item that is worth something even though I can't use it for my build. Maybe if ssf had more of a dick measuring aspect like gauntlet I'd consider it.

You don't have to know everything before swapping. Half the fun is learning to actually navigate field without the trade. You can also just watch streamers and/or ask in their chat for advice. That is how I learned a lot. Manni, Ventrua and Legi1 are good for this. In general though, your best bet at any particular unique from the global drop pool is via Gwennen.

I'll give you the Dead Reckoning example though. You would have to brute force it. But it's not an unreasonable drop to expect:

As for dick measuring in SSF: there is a unique collection ladder every league -> https://uniques.top/

 

[Sharpedge]

Of couse, to balance it all, we need HC+ mode...

This name needs more work, I'm thinking "Uber HC".

Awakened HC.