What Happened with Items

nerfing all past league content In one league? Next time roll nerfs out small. one set of content at a time so it doesn't break the whole game. GGG wake up call your not too big fail. If you wanna nerf everything you should do each content slowly league to league. So we don't even notice because you can balance previous nerfs each league. trying to nerf and balance 10 years of content no wonder you failed. I see you next league Revert please

Crafting still dead.

Minions still horrible.

AN still horrible and not fun.

Lake loot still not worth.

Progression through to red maps still feels horrible.

NEW LOOT META:
Enter Map search for Solaris-touched AN. If not found, leave map. Rinse Repeat.

I just installed Diablo3 after not having touched it in 4 years. Gonna check out season 27.

I've watched this game grow into something beautiful since the closed beta. These continued failures at launch in the last couple years are a big stain on that. Now, I know that I am in the minority when I say that I enjoyed harvest mechanics as they were for that league, they required a lot of time and effort without acquiring other rewards for big payoffs. I know that the life-force mechanisms as they are now are set in a way to gate the amount of targeted crafting one can do BUT, and this is a BIG 'but', before 3.19 when I found a harvest, I could effectively slam an item with what was effectively immediate-use chaos orbs. A lot of them. Now I can only do it once or twice from each harvest instance. I absolutely loved this mechanic. Is there a way to bring that back?

Harvest was the only league I ever played all the way to the end. Most leagues I stop after maybe a month. Being able to continue to remove/add mods from items allowed me to invest myself in not just crafting my gear but continuing to invest my time in the game. There were always goals right around the next corner to achieve. Grinding out 4000 hours in a game and never seeing a mirror, hoping to maybe one day see the mythical thing is not what keeps bringing me back to the game. I have ZERO interest in that kind of time investment for that small of a reward. This is a game, a hobby, not a job. I come here to have fun, to enjoy the time I spend on path of Exile. Unfortunately, for the casual players who put in maybe 10-20 unfocused hours a week, who will never see an Uber boss in a league, continue to grow tired of a lack of direction after hitting t16 maps. They rarely know the depths of the crafting system and it's just not a worthy time investment for them. They need hand-holding, guidance and short-term goals to keep them invested.

Is there a way to allow players to stay focused on short term goals? Something they can achieve in 4 hours of play reliably? Simply removing and re-adding a fire mod on a chest-piece to hopefully reroll that bad Fire Res to a higher tier was FANTASTIC for that purpose. Even if you didn't get that particular craft, you still actually acquired other crafts that might make the same progress on one of the few other items you had as projects on the side.

Is there a way to bring back the raw power of harvest crafting without allowing it to make mirror-tier items? I-Level limits? Being unable to craft on influenced items?

Another way to look at it is: Would you pay 2 hours worth of your wages to play 4 hours of PoE?

please just revert the game to 3.13. please...

First off thank you for the post. Despite being very late and doing little to actually correct the issues that are going on currently it's nice to at least see behind the curtain a bit.

Second, some feedback for you since you asked for it...

Philosophy one: In general there is nothing wrong with the correction of drop rates. I can't speak for everyone on this of course, but I expect them to some degree each league and would have been fine with some drop rates being adjusted if it was communicated properly like the changes to uniques. Scaling drops to difficulty is also fine as long as it isn't scaled that an average player gets next to nothing for his effort. In regards to the current league I think you still have a lot of work to do to make that happen. It does not feel like it is in a good place currently at all from my experience. Maps and currency especially feel completely out of whack. There is no good reason I should sitting in yellow maps struggling to find alchs for them while I'm closing in on 1000 armor scraps and whetstones.

Philosophy two: Fine in theory. If only you made a proper system for it that wasn't a complete cluster****. AN while being a wonderful tool for build a boss style mechanics is a complete dumpster fire when applied to random mobs. There are only so many things a character can conceivably counter with the gear and talents currently available to us and too many things that absolutely break builds included in them not to mention the fact that you are encountering them on a random basis. It's not something you can plan around since it's random and it's not something you can reliably counter since there are too many of them. In a game built entirely around building a character and planning things out that is the absolute worst. Act bosses? Map bosses? Uber and pinnacle bosses? Make them as hard as you want. We can build accordingly and plan to take them down since we control when we fight them. Random mobs that are as hard as them? No thanks. It's just not fun. Especially when they plague every other mechanic in the game. You simply can't avoid them and they make the game feel like trash. The very least you should be doing is separating them from other content.

Philosophy three: This one I completely disagree with. There is nothing wrong with jacking the rewards way up for league content. In fact you should want to do exactly that. Sentinel was a perfect example of this and one of my favorite leagues because of it. We come league to league wanting to play the new league content. There should be no issue with having it provide amazing loot in relation to others. It's a new league and new content. We come wanting to run it and you should actively want us to engage in that small subset of content to enjoy the new league. Lake of Kalandra specifically has a cost in order to even run it meaning we have to take the time to run 5-10 maps before you can even engage in the content. There is zero risk of most people playing it exclusively since they pretty much have to invest that much time into it in order to run it. Better and more significant loot from that additional investment should be expected. Contrary to your philosophy I think it much worse to provide a league with drops that aren't extraordinary. You only get one first impression and you want people to enjoy the league content. Even if the lake goes core in the future you could have tuned it down then. Now it will always have the stigma of worst mechanic ever since it's launch was so screwed up by this philosophy of yours.


Either way AN as it is right now is a deal breaker for me. I had hoped to see some intent to change it in this, but it seems like your set on this course that I and the vast majority of players despise. That seems like a decision and philosophy you should also touch on and explain a bit more why your so hell bent on making this trash mechanic into something it is not.

I am getting full screens of flasks no one cares about low lev flasks and scraps

So the economy in standard, in which each has hundreds to thousands exalt but barely hundred divine is still fucked?

No divine shard or more divine cards, or divine recipe? Fuck the creator and the meaning behind brother's stash I guess?

You want crafting to be harder, fine. But harder and less accessible at the same time?

Your philosophy says reward should scale with difficulty, but the way I see it, unless you get the right combo of mods, most of the time you will be picking up trash while the trash ANs are not any less difficult. People would get excited if once in a while we run into a very hard AN, which guarantees explosion of drops (and not trash drops). Not fighting some eldritch horrors on a daily basis while only occasionally get some meager currencies

Still won't touch the stupid combo problem like haste + frenzy + mana siphoning/drought bringer etc... I see. They are problematic by themselves and even more stupid when you couple it with essence, possessed, blight, heist, or generally while fighting bosses that spawn rares between phases. Why are you still so stubborn to admit that a rare is harder to fight than a pinnacle boss is a problem? An UX problem as well as immersion problem?

Here's a bright idea, create a 4 labs lvl 90 character with average gears (you said yourself the dev team do play the game and not so detached, so I assume you understand what average means) then live stream you fighting all the AN mod combo possible, one by one. We would love to see your reaction facing those stupid combos

We appreciate your apology and explanation, but leave it after you've fixed this steaming pile of mess

if nothing works at GGG censoring the forums and biasing it towards their favor ALWAYS WORKS

The most honest constructive criticism about AN that I can give from my personal point of view is this:

◉ The max potential difficulty of an arch nemesis mob needs to be lowered drastically, while the minimum could be raised in the name of compromise and consistency. There are archnemesis rares I kill in 4 seconds, while I had one in a low level heist that I need to portal out-in-out-in five times with full flasks to take down across 3 minutes. It's a bit much and trying to speed it up was certain death.

◉ There could be implemented mutual exlusivenesses that forbids the same AN monster having multiple mods of the same type (storm bringer, stormweaver, electrocuting, storm strider, storm herald, mana siphoner) making them an impassable brick wall or death to most builds of that element. 2 max could be fine, although even then the element resist and ailment resist can stack sky high. What about hard caps or reduced scaling when mods of the same archetype stack?

◉ Please make the lightning obelisks on death effect disappear entirely after dealing with the mob pack, just like it was with bloodlines, instead of letting it linger around for several seconds.

◉ Storm strider lightning guys can spawn under you, effectively concealing themselves. Please make it so you have time to react to them. Also limiting how many of them can be summoned per second would be nice.

◉ It's a little bonkers if an AN rare can surpass 150-200% movespeed, effectively making it inescapable for almost all builds. To my perception, a mob that is so fast that you cannot avoid or escape it, should also be penalized heavily in damage and health, otherwise he's the main character in your instance, and you're the expendable mob. If not realistic, a cap on AN movement speed would be welcome.

◉ Certain combinations of monsters are still a nightmare. Such as a temporal mob, whose base speed is higher than your own before he even envelops you in his bubble, because he's using close range attacks. Essentially forcing you in a close range deathmatch, which can easily be lost without any real counterplay, because it just relies on pure character power vs the rares damage mods at that point.

◉ Act boss, map boss, perhaps even some lategame boss effective health pool can be overshadowed by an AN rare or two, from the very same instance. Currently tends to be the case with Lava lake map, I believe. Making unique mobs feel more on par with tough magic mobs in logical hierarchy.

◉ AN mobs inside older league mechanics such as blight, legion, breach, delirium, alva incursions and maybe a few other places, can be a massive time sink to spend your shrinking time on them. The timers won't be adjusted if beefy multi AN mod rares spawn, and I for one find trying to run past them instead, tryign to preserve the remainder of the encounter. Often eating dirt in the process.

◉ Piggybacking off of my last bulletpoint, this sort of interaction with other league mechanics, especially the timed ones, leaves me feeling like naturally encoutnered AN mobs on the base map should be the tough ones, so the player can choose to fight them for increased rewards, or bypass them if unable/unwilling to defeat them. And the ones spawning inside/during league mechanics (emphasis on timed ones) shouldn't be so stacked, that they completely overshadow the entire mechanic with their presence. Because skipping/tackling those can cost the league mechanic too.

Congratulations on saying you're not going to change things at lower levels. You've officially decided to not staunch the bleeding and instead you'll lose your player base faster than you could possibly imagine.

Good thing YOU think the game is in a good place. Because that's what matters. Quadrupling down on shit mechanics and shit drop rates is a horrendous look for yourselves. I truly am sad though. I loved this game, and you've made me grow to hate it in less than a week.