Remember the CB plan. The game developed in the opposite direction

The CB members certainly remember the plan for OB.

It was planned that OB also has got a Cut Throat League for SC and HC.

PVP LEAGUES(not Tournaments) were planned.


But look what happened already on CB.

At first more Rare names were added to weaken the alchemy recipe.

On OB the alchemy and chaos receipe got weakened yet again.


Remember the fixed Large chests at Dweller, Thicket, Weaver or in the Cave?
They dropped quiet good and at last one rare. The chests were useable and weren't white trashcans.
Remember when Vendors should change their items every 24h?
Remember Phaserun that got replaced by Quicksilver Flasks nobody likes an result in a slow down.

There was a time Killspeed was high, droprates superior to OB+ and raced rewarded certain currency.


Now look what happened with OB+.

Gameprogression got slowed down over and over again.
Killspeed got slowed down next to nothing.
Large Chests became white Garbage Cans.
You got those scribes at catacombs that should drop maps but I saw players complaining they never found a single map on scibes in 300 runs(monsters dropped some)
Fixed Large chests got removed.
Gearchecks got added so either it's don't get hit or grind your brain out so you pass the gearcheck.
Vendor receipes got so bad players were compelled to do RMT.
Imagine a total beginner uses up his orbs. He learns about vendor receipes and finds out that the only thing he can get are chance orbs.
Uniques no matter how basic they were for example uniques like andvarius got turned into map only uniques. In fact they are so undesired you either got better items by the time you find them, you don't want to find them.


And what do we get now? Fishing Rods which were nothing but a joke in CB.

Vendor receipes that promise controlled crafting but in fact only offer 1 desired mod because the devs don't want currency to be used for crafting.
20 Regrets aka 20 alchemy orbs to redo a tiny quest? I would rather create a new character than grind 20 Regret Orbs.


And 1.05 even offers a vendor receipe that doesn't follow any system at all.

"Well it says Stone Hammer and Maps are stones, so why not make a vendor receipe out of it?"


Reflecting those changes one thing becomes obvious.

PoE became an ASIA Grinder. Games with poor droprates and a short lifetimes.
The devs put as much effort possible to make regular gameplay slower and slower to extend the lifetime.
They add some uniques each patch to extend the lifetime.
No matter how silly they are such as the Fishing Rod, what's next unique Templarpants with sockets but unuseable because that also was a joke?


Imagine how the original plan would look like in a CT standard league:
You got killed you got some white items.
But it's not possible for you to obtain some items because playing with white items is impossible.
You can't run fixed chests for items, there aren't any.
There are low chance garbarge cans in thicket and catacombs.
But thanks to the addition of chaos resists you will be killed in Thicket and extreme damage changes on white mobs you will also die in catacombs, because the gearcheck says:-20-0 cold resist = failed gearcheck.

You can box yourself some chaosorbs or alchemy orbs in lower difficulties because the vendor receipes either need several hundred hours for 3 items of the same name or you receive only chance obrbs.
And look many chance orbs you need to swap a chance orb into an alchemy orb-->Chances into Scouring --> Scouring into Regret-->Regret into Alchemy Orb



Or on a PVP league:
Oh you need Voltaic Rift because other players are protected against lightning and got bad chaos resists? Better RMT one because you will never find one unless you invest 2000 hours.


In fact the is in a state where it is impossible to realize those leagues or they will turnt into a wasteland because Asiagrinder/MMORPG influences took over.


My questions to the devs would be. Are the initial plans now dead and there will only be more MMORPG/Grindinfluences or is there any hope that those leagues will be realized without 95% of the players running away?

Good one.
The way they walk brilliantly show where this game is going to. MMORPG at it's finest. But this genre is profitable, don't blame them.

OB patch was a piece of shit that ruined most of the things this game was in CB, to make the first step to make this game basically an MMORPG, along with some completely unnecessary bullshit. It's all about money, GGG has given up on most of the things this game was in CB by releasing the OB patch, and tried to make it look like they didn't with some really poor excuses.

In many of the patches after that, they have shown how terrible at balancing they are - phys buff patch, nerfing elemental damage, nerfing HP and slightly buffing CI, overbuffing HP and making no changes to CI while deciding it's time to introduce another difficulty spike, nerfing low life spell casting and not compensating at all, complete inability to balance map bosses, EVERY boss fight is hard because of insane damage, gearchecks on EVERYTHING, the game is not about skill AT ALL, map-only uniques (removed arguably the two most endgame ones because of qq, while keeping shit like andvarius there) making blood magic USELESS (saying it's better than ever and not even fixing it yet) still keeping useless mods JUST to make crafing harder instead of introducing some niche mods being extremely slow about important changes.

Well, I still play the game, but it's not because of the terrible shit that's been coming out since OB patch (including OB patch), but because of how good of a base CB was. DEFINETLY not because of GGG, they basically fucked up something that had huge potential into a soon-to-be korean mmorpg, while trying to hide that that's what they're doing. As long as the money is flowing to GGG, they'll keep making this game shit.

Damn i miss CB.

Rose tinted glasses are awesome!

1. Phaserun was OP'd. It was a good change
2. Good items were never guaranteed from chests.

I don't remember the CB plan, but the game certainly de-evolved into a trading Korean MMO grindfest, since I first played it. And it looked like a promising ARPG.

But I do remember correctly assessing that Diablo 3 will be crap, since it will be balanced around trading. And I remember laughing at guys buying Diablo 3, thinking to myself, I'll just wait for PoE, GGG are a rising indie dev team of old-schoolers, that will show those fat f**** at Blizzard how true ARPGs are done...

Guess who is the idiot now. PoE is the same unrewarding looting, balanced around trading + chinese farmer play-style grindfest... :(

Meh, I got my share of fun, can't deny that. But currently even the small things are showing which is the direction GGG is going with the game. Full speed MMO ahoy!

"

Wittgenstein wrote:

Rose tinted glasses are awesome!

1. Phaserun was OP'd. It was a good change
2. Good items were never guaranteed from chests.

Phase run would not be OP now at endgame if it were to be implemented now in such way that it doesn't stack with quicksilver flasks.

Currently using off-hand set with Brightbeak + shield + Leap Slam + Faster Attacks + Blood Magic/Reduced Mana is far faster movement than that.

I remembered now that chaos recipe used to be any ilvl rare set. Guess you need to slow down those noobs!

(50% Steam players stopped at normal Brutus, LMAO... :))

"

1. Phaserun was OP'd. It was a good change
2. Good items were never guaranteed from chests.

Phase run was overpowered because of 250% melee damage+
It was fine as moving skill.
I don't care if it would be a -250% debuff I just detest quicksilvers.

Sure items needn't be good but you could get level 28 PVP items out of thicket chests in cruel, because rares were quiet common. But CB chests never were white garbagecans.

IIRC Phase Run was removed, not because of the melee bonus, but because every single person was using it for its movement speed bonus. It was mandatory for every single build.