What Happened with Items

This post is very confusing. Every explanation for the changes were my reasoning as to why the changes are bad.

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Philosophy Two: Players should fight fewer Rare Monsters at once, but they should be more challenging and rewarding

In fights with a lot of Rare monsters on screen, you can't follow what modifiers they have, what skills they're using, and sometimes not even what type of monster they are. There's too much to pay attention to, with too much noise and screen pollution. You cannot use appropriate combat tactics, and instead have to just stutter step or be so powerful that it's inconsequential.

Archnemesis is extremely similar to Diablo 3 where I'm fighting Arcane beams and jailer for piles of treasure goblin items. I don't care what I'm fighting or how.

Fewer, more difficult rare monsters help you pay attention to what is happening, assess it, and act accordingly. It gives you an opportunity to employ counterplay and for your playskill to actually matter (rather than relying on pure character power). It is also a lot cleaner and far better for performance.


Rewards should be set appropriately for the increased difficulty of these rare monsters.

We are fighting fewer, but more rewarding monster. However, There's too much to pay attention to, there is more noise, more screen pollution. When I fight an Archnemesis monster I know I'm in a difficult fight, but I have less information on how to tackle the fight. I still don't know what monster I'm fighting, what tactics to use, what the mods mean or any information for real gameplay. The best tactic is to stutterstep with an overpowered build to avoid it's screen cluttering balls of doom. The monster doesn't matter, it's just a health sponge with random effects with no thought. It would be better to have more tactical monsters with emergent gameplay and scaling modifiers to effect the stats of interesting monsters (old Devourers, Drop Bears, or Fire Dogs)

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Philosophy Three: There shouldn't be a large gap between the difficulty and rewards of league content and base game content

Monsters added in leagues are more difficult to kill and drop better items than regular ones encountered in the base game. When those leagues become core, these properties carry across, creating two tiers of content, with one far more rewarding than the other.

We feel it's good for league content to be harder than the base game, and therefore more rewarding. But the difference should be approximately twice as rewarding. If the gap were any larger, then it would be less efficient to kill regular monsters and a player should spend all of their time focusing on repeating a small subset of content.

With those philosophies established, let's have a look at some changes we made in 3.19, and then examine what went wrong and what we're doing to address it in the future.

Where full juicing group play was out of hand, removing high rewards to league mechanics and juicing goes against this philosophy. Juicing, in solo play, makes gameplay more difficult and more rewarding. The changes made caused the game to be more rewarding by playing easier content and hoping for the right combinations of AN mods, or using chest league loot templates to avoid the changes all together.

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In addition, Lake of Kalandra is an out-of-area league. Its rewards entirely come from the Lake itself, rather than from your maps. This is in stark contrast to Sentinel, our last league, which not only dropped rewards in your maps, but was honestly tuned higher than average in terms of league rewards. Players went from receiving masses of league rewards as they clear maps to receiving absolutely nothing from the league until they travel to the Lake. This is unfortunate timing and exacerbated the perception of drop reduction.

Out-of-area league mechanics should be massively more rewarding than a league like Sentinel. Lake of Kalandra doesn't have Oils, Alt quality gems, catalysts etc to incentivize running the Lake. So why run an out-of-area league and skip the opportunity of running maps, with atlas bonuses and map rolling quantity. This statement is backwards from how leagues should be designed. Out-of-Area leagues should be massively rewarding to entice players from taking a break from maps, to allow more variety of gameplay and longevity to playtime.

Overall these explanations are what the community is saying as to why these changes are bad. If GGG truly believes these changes, then massive changes to the current state of Path of Exile is required. Out-of-Area leagues should be more rewarding, Archnemesis should be removed for a better alternative, and juicing should have better reward scaling to keep up with the difficulty.

Can you speak on the harvest changes? Why were the most important crafts removed and why wasn't this change announced in the manifesto? Might we see them brought back in future league content?

OK ggg i understand your vision its your game not to us but you have to stop thinking all player are same mind and same skill. For exemple me i dont play league because i dont like reset a progression each time , and even after longue time on this game i feel i dont understand how reach like some people power like huge dps etc etc , they do content so easy . But some people like me try to progresse step to step but is hard , i feel i struggle on some content cause my character is not enough strong. When you nerf item and loot you up chance to my character stay alway on some point and cant evolve more . So i try XP for trying and dream to reach lvl 100 to have some more stat point but -_- is clearly impossible !! because every time this game i some mechanic or thing alway kill me etc etc .
Fortunaly i still love this game i continue to love feeling killing skil. i cant wait to play poe 2 specially for easy multiple six link xD , because on actual poe is each time impossible !.

Hey GGG, I'm in software, and software is hard. You're doing a great job. The manifesto and those philosophies make total sense to me. Keep up the good work.

Edit: changed my mind after playing some more. Not as terrible as everyone made it sound.

100% fine with the Beyond nerf.

Philosophy 1 is ... dubious.

IIR and IIQ as character stats are bad design, they are rich-get-richer mechanics. I say this as someone who traded for a dozen perfectly rolled Andvarius as soon as I realised how OP character IIR was this league.

IIR and IIQ as monster stats that reflect challenge are better. BUT, we reach a point in progression (about the time we hit our second voidstones) where rare items on the ground cease to be meaningful loot. And in trade, the same happens to all uniques except the few that are simultaneously in-demand AND genuinely rare (Shavronne's Wrappings and rarer)

'Templates' or reward icons as we call them are better because they drop DIFFERENT loot. Stuff like double-corrupt jewels, fractured items, 6 links, divination cards, etc.



Question:

For a typical solo semi-juicer running rare 60% delirious T16 Crimson Temples with 4 Polished Scarabs (say Legion, Divination, Expedition and Breach) and random sextants - how significant is the change to Apothecary drop rates?

Still looking forward for Hard Mode .
i dont give a f...about loot abymore i had 10years of constant currency rain in every map.

Item culling would have had a big effect on perceived drop rates as well. Less items dropping = reduced chance of rarity chance upgrading them.

Thanks though Chris for your honesty and courage in taking responsibility.

I enjoy the league. The hysteria hopefully dies down eventually, it's getting real tiresome hearing some of these screeching kids 24/7. Can't even imagine how that'd be if I were in the game devs shoes. Peace

I'm done with Archnemisis