What Happened with Items

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

I would say that if this is the intention the mark has been missed here. Within the context of the base game and league mechanics.

For instance, the Kitava Map boss spawns several waves of 4ish rare monsters at once. Sometime it is harmless, but sometimes you get 4 spammy monsters and the screen is full, and chaotic, and there is no time to react.

You want to slow things down, and have players pay attention to the mods. However in the context of most current league mechanics. This is impossible Path of Exile is not a turn based strategy.

I will post a quick breakdown of my experience with Arch Nemesis this league. I am by no means the best player in the world. My past leagues I generally get between 12-24 challenges done, some pinnacle bosses, and a full atlas clear - and really I am happy with that. That is what I set out to do with the time I have, and I enjoy that.

However my problem is archnemesis is just added into everything and it just makes the game too crazy. It may slow us down in how much time it literally takes us to kill a monster, but it doesn't slow down the game. There is too much stuff going on. You're frantically running in circles and trying to figure out what is happening. Magma orbs flying in from all over. Consecrates on the ground. Those fire bombs from incendiary I think? The lightning totem things. It is a manic mess.

I honestly don't mind hard monsters, and fighting one or maybe two of them at a time in the right context can be fun.

Places where it is not fun are specific league mechanics in the game which have remained unchanged and AN has been forced into them.

Incursion: This is a timed event and a lot of times the rare monsters in incursion take ages to kill, but you do not get a bonus that reflects this increase in time. Those times I imagine were built around the old system and not adjusted since.

Legion: Also a timed event, even at low tier maps the monsters worth killing are often too tanky in the initial stage that determines who you actually get to fight. This would be a bit better if they had less health in that stage so that you could at least break a few of them open without being the ultimate meta build with all the gear. The game is about progression, so progression should feel smooth. It shouldn't be a huge wall... and if you get lucky with RNG you can bypass it.

Breach: Also timed, also spawns an insane amount of rares because they're so tanky they spawn faster than you can kill them and then you're just overwhelmed with again, spammy effects.

Delve: Monsters in the dark can just one shot you from off screen while you can't hurt them. They also leave a lot of on ground degen effects you cannot escape.

Metamorph: I haven't tried this since maybe the first day or so, so maybe this has been fixed... and I only tried the ones in the lake - however a lot of the metamorphs in the lake I encountered had so much health + vampirism. Making them impossible to kill. The ones I did kill dropped literally nothing. Maybe 1 or 2 rare items with the filter turned off. Compared to normal rares and map bosses this was not worth the hassle. So I have avoided this mechanic in the lake since.

Ambush: Ambush seems to be in a good place really and even if you get spammy ones. The way that this mechanic works it doesn't seem too crazy or unreasonable.

Harvest: You get a lot of spammy ones spawning at once. I actually think harvest should be reconsidered, so instead of going into a garden and spawning them - maybe they're just random packs on your maps. Like rogue exiles or something. Now that you're not needing to craft in the garden - the garden part almost seems pointless.

Abyss: Abyss doesn't seem too bad. The rate of rares to normal monsters and the time between them seems reasonable. A couple of times I've gotten unlucky but those are pretty few and far between, and getting unlucky sometimes is fine.

Bestiary: I haven't really fought many of these since the patch so it may be fixed, but they have too much health + the bestiary abilities are pretty spammy by nature then you're adding on top of that Spammy arch nemesis mods. Again this isn't slowing the game down. It's just adding mayhem.

Beyond: I've only played this in the lake, but it seems to attract the whole spammy too much stuff going on scenario. Again, it's not 'slowing things down' it's adding chaos. It makes it frantic, there is no way anyone has time to assess all the arch nemesis mods and devise some sort of plan. You stop moving for half a second and you've been hit upside the head 500 times.

Expedition: I have mixed feelings on this one. It seems mostly fine because you have some control over the amount of rares that spawn. If I am being greedy and hunting log books more will spawn than if I am not. So it might actually correlate with risk/reward.. but I might be ignorant to how the mechanic works.

Essence: Apart from the essence monsters that sometimes take an age to kill. This is fine. This is actually one of the few instances where I view it as being near perfect. You get to see what you're getting into before you open up the essence. So you have the choice, are the essences available to you worth the fight, or do you walk past?

Betrayal: Seems fine, usually the rares seems to be spaced out in a manageable way.

Harbinger: I've only done through the lake tiles. However it seems like it can spawn a lot of rares all at once, and then you get into spammy monster frantic chaos mode as mentioned above.

Map Bosses: Like I stated before, Kitava + other map bosses spawn multiple rares at the same time. This often leads to encounters that are not fun. Not because they're hard but just because it just introduces chaos and noise.

Pinnacle Bosses: I think elder spawns rares, this also causes problems. I think the harvest one as well. These need to be tuned a bit.

General Mapping: I think with general mapping it's mostly fine. They seem to be spaced out enough that you're not having hoards of them spamming you.

To summarize the part of Archnemesis that is probably the least enjoyable for me. Getting loads of spammy ability monsters all at once, so that there is no real feasible way to react. I get you're trying to create these 'epic omg that happened experiences' but this isn't that. There is no way to react. If I had a hard fight that was like a pinnacle boss, where they have moves and queues and you can focus and you can actually fight back with some purpose. That'd be really cool. However with the way things are, it's magma orbs flying in from all around, lots of junk on the ground, you can't see where is safe to stand(if there is even a safe spot) and it's mixed in with a lot of other mechanics.

One other thing I think still needs to be addressed is in the midst of all this spammy chaos, your minions have no chance. I think they need some sort of built in damage reduction vs arch nemesis if the overall damage towards players isn't going to be toned down. They're dumb, they stand in shit. You can use convocation but they run instantly back into the shit to the monster which hasn't moved out of their death circle.

TLDR: Arch Nemesis needs to be looked at on a league mechanic bases and tuned around those so that they still hold up. That or we need new league mechanics that are specific built around arch nemesis and the old ones removed.

what a nice post, thanks for once again taking the time to explain to us what is actually going on internally.

I agree with some of the feedback that was given about the issues, but i also feel that a massive amouunt of the sommunity blew it out of preportion, both in terms of severity and the words used when expressing their worries.

Thanks for once again proving that GGG is in fact one of the best studios out there.

come on chris, play the game and see what we see. Ur still so far off its really upsetting, i love this game, but my friends and guild list is getting less n less active by the day. PLEASE ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING.

I appreciate your post here. It isn't easy to admit where things went wrong.

I still play with the faith that things will turn around.

Keep me posted.

Thanks

I'll preface this saying I don't wish any stress on to the dev team, people make mistakes and I hate that people are being so toxic about all this. However I feel like you cant just drop a "we messed up but it's fine now!". If we give the benefit of the doubt that the amount of drops even out somehow (which it really feels like it doesn't) it feels bad that they're all packed in to archnem monsters and not distributed more evenly, like it felt before. Additionally harvest is in shambles and it feels like you guys have sorta ignored that. I also don't really think it's a big deal that the big juicers big juiced with beyond and if you REALLY wanted to somehow compensate with a dedicated currency you shouldn't have changed the currency, it was good before and now it's not, just revert it. Honestly all in all I think most of these problems are best solved by a revert.

I feel it has gone in the right direction. This has been the best league so far, FOR ME. Which is an odd one considering how messed up it has been. The community is too engrained in "kill monster, get currency, trade for gear and upgrades"
I think the shift you have made to focusing on loot drops as upgrades and better bases of uniques and rares instead of the currency stratergem, was too drastic and immediate. (I am an oldschool D2 player and pick up almost every rare that is on a good base, hoping for them good 'circlet' rolls)

Ive had amazing rewards from the lakes, decent pre-buff. Luck I guess. I appreciate the nerfs made to AN. I appreciate your honest words. Hope you can follow through.

Ok so once again you made several "MISTAKES" in regards to loot drops that you surely promise won't happen again, right?... loot is still not good compared to what it was before even after the few patches and 25% buff btw.
A group having some extreme luck all stars align moment and dropping 50 divines does not make it okay.

Why no word on the INTENTIONAL absolute destruction of crafting with the removal of the few key harvest crafts as well as severely nerfing others and divine/exalts swap with so few sources of divines?
Even if exalts are cheap now I don't wanna close my eyes and gamble slam worthless crap like 1 life regen or 1 reflect phys dmg then have to gamble annulment and lose ton of currency when it fails and removes a good mod...

:/

also the reward for each of the league mechanics are way off in comparison to each other. They need to be brought inline with each other to encourage more diversity. I know economy is totally ruined atm cause of gggs bad decisions but regardless of that some league mechanics aren't competitive in rewards to others.

And archnemesis monsters are just to dangerous to fight, many of them hitting harder than pinnacle bosses which is just ridiculous. I don't know how hard you want them to be hitting but i feel like you need to do a lot of testing to make them a bit more manageable, add telegraphed one shots instead of every auto attack instantly kill you if you desire them to be that difficult.

We need endgame crafting back to keep the endgame alive as well as the economy. Either through harvest or recombulators or any other means. Without mirror item crafting the circulation on the market is non existent and league will die in much shorter time than previously. It also takes away aspirational goals away from the player, we need a strive to keep motivated to play or the league becomes more like test the new league mechanic for a week and then we quit.

Also stuff like minion suitability even though i don't play that archetype myself is in a really bad state which also was a broken trust you did from the comments on the podcast. But i guess it's also a result of the archnemesis being significantly overtuned.

The play testing you assumingly did on was way of reality on most cases regardless of item drop issues we had. Item drop was an error you said but there was multitude of issues with the league from archnemesis, harvest, league meachnic, minions, tainted currency and much more.

Trust in the future is bleak for me at least. Still a lot issues to resolve for the game to be enjoyable. I cant justify to continue with the league as it stands. All i can do is try forget it ever happen and try the game in 3 months again to see if I enjoy it somewhat to come back or not by then. [Removed by Support]

Too little too late. You are not getting my money GGG. With this "philosophy" I am wishing you good luck but the answer is no.