[outdated] Caustic Arrow Solo Map MFer (20/300+)

Another tale, this time about the extremely difficult challenge to collect Chayula splinters. Hopefully your challenge is going better than Nilfer's.

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Dispatch: Ten-Baker-One, Ten-Baker-One. Four-one-five in progress at 161 North 51st Street, Apartment 16C. Please respond.
Unit 10-B-1: Roger dispatch. Ten-Baker-One en route.

"Goddamnit," thought Officer Branson to himself; "Disturbing the Peace call at 2:30 in the morning. Well, there goes the coffee break."
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Earlier the previous day...

Global (1):
40#BigBully: You're such a noob Nilfer.

3#Nilfer: Guys, help me out please. How'd you finish the Chayula splinters challenge?

38#NeenerNeener: Duh! You attack Chayula in a Breach.

40#BigBully: Haha!

3#Nilfer: But Chayula never spawns! Come on guys, help me out!

38#NeenerNeener: Well, did you follow the ritual?

3#Nilfer: Ritual? What ritual?

40#BigBully: Noob!

3#Nilfer: What ritual?

38#NeenerNeener: Oh for Christsakes. The tabasco sauce, baking soda ritual, obviously.

40#BigBully: Yes. The way-past-midnight, naked gaming with loud music ritual. Haha.

38#NeenerNeener: That's the ritual, BigBully, LOL. Oh, and you need to shout "CHAY OOH LA" over and over else he won't spawn.

3#Nilfer: What? Wait. I'll screenshot this for reference. Thanks guys. Thanks a million.
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Nilfer isn't a particularly good Path of Exile player. In fact he's bad. Really bad. It's a miracle Nilfer somehow managed to complete three challenges. But one thing Nilfer has going for him is tenacity. Failure after failure does not deter Nilfer in the least.

And now, Nilfer knew how to spawn Chayula. None other than BigBully, Hardcore Ladder Rank 7, provided the secret. And so Nilfer began to prepare for the ritual.
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Belatedly Nilfer realized that he should have asked how much tabasco sauce and baking soda were required. Well, the more, the better, probably.

So Nilfer emptied a full bottle of tabasco sauce into a tall glass, filled it half way with water, and then added about 1/4th cup of baking soda. He stirred the concoction, stripped naked and logged onto Path of Exile.

"Oh, almost forgot the music," realized Nilfer. "Hmm, this should do."

He clicked on a Motley Crue mp3 and set his speakers to maximum volume. His apartment literally shook with the blaring noise.

It took four maps, but finally, Nilfer spawned a chaos breach! No time to waste! He downed the entire tabasco sauce-baking soda concoction in a single gulp.

Immediately his eyes began to water; it was hard to see the screen. He felt absolutely terrible.

Still, Nilfer shouted at the top of his lungs, "CHAY OOH LA... CHAY OOH LA...," over and over. Baking soda bubbled from his mouth each time he spoke.

Except that Nilfer's tongue began to swell and his lips started to turn numb. What began as "CHAY OOH LA" became slurred and jumbled sounding like "CHI'LL KOOH AH" and then "CI'LL KOOL YA."

But it worked! It worked! There, in front of him, was Chayula! Nilfer moused over for the attack!
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"SHOUT, SHOUT, SHOUT AT THE DEVIL!" blared from the speakers within Apartment 16C. The noise was deafening.

Officer Branson knocked loudly at the door of the apartment. "Open up! This is the police! Open up!"

No response.

So Branson crashed heavily into the door, using the full bulk of his 6'-3", 225 lb. frame. The door literally exploded inward.
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There, in the room, sat a maniac hunched over a computer screen. He wore no clothes and seemed to be gesturing crazily at something.

Branson was a good, church-going Christian, and thus, immediately recognized the scene in front of him, for what it obviously was: Devil Worship.

The madman was screaming something. White foam frothed from his mouth - a clear indication of lunacy, probably advanced rabies infection.

"CI'LL KOOL YA.... I'LL KOOL YUH..." shouted the madman. "I'LL KILL YOU!"

Fortunately, Branson was well prepared to deal with the situation presented to him. He simply took out his nightstick and struck the lunatic squarely on his head.

The madman fell unconscious onto his keyboard.

Out of curiosity, Branson looked at the screen. There, in front of him, some sort of winged, purple monster was beating on a human-looking form. Shortly, a dialog box appeared.

"You have died.
Resurrect in Town.
Resurrect at Checkpoint."

Branson shut the computer off.
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I really do not like the approach POE has taken this league at all.

To improve online player participation, POE decided to make the challenges this league much more time intensive - double, or more, as compared to the past few leagues.

So, endless repetition of the same content - over and over again - to achieve challenges is the new design.

Is this good? Desirable?

I think not at all.

Why can't GGG attract continued participation by offering new content/races/prizes?

Instead, the forumla is to make 40/40 about 2 times more difficult in terms of time commitment.
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Don't get me wrong - I'm enjoying the league - and, after a fashion, I think I'm enjoying the leveling process for my first ever level 95 toon.

But is the time I spend achieving these ends really worthwhile?
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And there's further impact on the game.

Previously you could roll CA/magic-fnd and leisurely progress towards 40/40 without a huge time commitment - fairly confident of success.

Now... it takes so much time to get to 40/40 that you need to rapidly clear maps with extremely high DPS - not just for maps, but for killing bosses.

Which makes a ton of builds completely unsuitable - unless you group or unless you're willing to play 8 hours/day for the entire league - this includes CA/magic find.

And I for one, was hoping to play the terrible Blight skill - I like the way it works, and it's a unique playstyle - but getting 10,000 map levels on a Blight toon - no thanks. I'm now playing the most powerful reasonably affordable toon in the game (CI/HoWA) IMO - and it's taking me way too long.

And I've had to completely alter my playstyle to give me a chance at 10K map levels (don't pick up anything at all unless it's totally worthwhile, re-jig your Atlas so that it drops linear or otherwise quick-to-run maps... skip everything in a map (for me this includes Essences) unless it's fast - and if you don't care about leveling.... skip everything that's not fast and won't drop maps. Essences here are a waste of time for sure - Breaches probably make the cut because so many mobs spawn that map drops increase enough to make Breaches worth while.

Side note - probably these same mechanics and map drop rates continue into next league - but without Breaches or some high mob spawn mechanism - next league could easily be extremely difficult until GGG rebalances things; for me, Breaches make all the difference between sustaining Shaped Mesa/Strands (or nearly so) and having to spend all your currency on maps or sextants or Zana/mods to sustain a map ppol.
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Once more... I think GGG will be better served by trying to make the game fresh/new/technically challenging - as opposed to making it time-consuming/tedious.

But I may be wrong...

Perhaps striving for a goal is more rewarding than actually fulfilling a goal.

According to GGG their player-participation numbers have never been higher.

So, in spite of my desire... I think time-intensive, monotonous grinds are the new norm.

Expect next league's 40/40 to take at least as much time as this league's.

"

hankinsohl wrote:

And I for one, was hoping to play the terrible Blight skill - I like the way it works, and it's a unique playstyle - but getting 10,000 map levels on a Blight toon - no thanks. I'm now playing the most powerful reasonably affordable toon in the game (CI/HoWA) IMO - and it's taking me way too long.

a) Only about 0.6% of the playerbase pushes for 40/40. These are the only individuals which will be affected by super time-intensive grinds, of which there are only two (10k tiers, Chayula splinters (grindy on the basis of RNG, and it's unpurchasable)). Everyone else, only ~3-5% of which actually get 36/40 or higher, will be ENTIRELY unaffected by this.

EDIT: Note, I'm discluding end-game grinds from this because the format hasn't really changed that much since it was introduced.

In other words, having one, or two, grindy AF challenges, impacts an insignificant enough amount of the playerbase that "According to GGG their player-participation numbers have never been higher," definitely has almost nothing to do with the way the challenges have been orchestrated this league.

It's MUCH more likely that it has to do with the mechanics of Breach itself, the fact that power creep is (apparently?) fun (I disagree) and keeps players around longer, and just a general climb in new players. And probably other factors.

b) If you can clear a map in even 5 minutes (which is slow-ish, and which the CA toon can easily do, as long as you only pick up good bases), and you're running T11 maps, that's 132 tiers per hour, or ~78 hours playtime. Accounting for more proper MFing (8 minutes), that's ~121 hours playtime.

In other words, two months in, if you've been playing T11+ maps for most of it at 2 hours per day, even semi-casual, you should have, or be really close, to 10k map tiers.

And if you're not, it's because you're simply not pushing high level maps.

Which, again, for those who aren't pushing 40/40, they won't care.

So this:

"

To improve online player participation, POE decided to make the challenges this league much more time intensive - double, or more, as compared to the past few leagues.

Is straight up wrong. The amount of people that will be impacted by the very few time-intensive challenges (less than 5%, probably less than 1%) would not be significant enough to see a drastic spike in player retention.

In short, you're one of the few 40/40 people that will actually be affected by the grindy challenges, because you do only put in a few hours per day. I think what's going on here, more than anything, is that you're simply frustrated that your semi-casual approach is no longer 40/40 viable inside of a month.

Which, I think is... kind of the point.

GGG recognized that it was way too easy for people to people to just buy their way to 40/40 inside of a few weeks.

And as much as I agree with this:

"

I think GGG will be better served by trying to make the game fresh/new/technically challenging - as opposed to making it time-consuming/tedious.

The problem is it doesn't MATTER what kind of new, skill-cap challenge they introduce into the game, because you'll be able to buy it anyway.

Shaper. Prime example.

Uber Atziri 10/10. Prime example.

Unless they really rein in on power creep, which seems unlikely, the only way that they can slow players down from maxing out on challenges is to add time-intensive ones.

Because I don't think introducing a skill-cap challenge that you can't buy (say, no party, one portal) will go well with the playerbase that can only put in 1-2 hours a day and *needs* to buy a few challenges in order to hit 24 or 36/40.

Which circles me back to 40/40 being < 1%.

The time-intensity was designed to give this small portion of the playerbase that enjoys maxing out on challenges something that they have to work toward personally, instead of buying it.

So this:

"

Perhaps striving for a goal is more rewarding than actually fulfilling a goal.

Is a bit of a misconception. Now, there's a goal you actually have no choice BUT to fulfill yourself. Which is more rewarding, I think, to most people, than fulfilling a goal by buying it.

Certainly was the case for me.

Good discussion.

And I think I agree with some of your points.

As stated in my previous post - player participation in this league - for whatever reason - has never been higher.

Is this due to the extreme difficulty of 40/40 as compared to last league?

Beats me.

If only 0.5% or so of players previously completed 40/40, whatever is done this league will have virtually no impact on player participation numbers with regard to 40/40.

So, making challenges far more time intensive for the 40/40 players is pointless- maybe they'll knuckle-down and pursue the challenges, maybe not... but how does this affect overall player participation one way or the other? Answer, 0.5% maximum downside. Who knows how this might inspire new 40/40 players to take up the mantle - likely far less than existing 40/40 players - so this increased difficulty is again pointless.

So the only reason for upping time commitment is to build reputation - 40/40 is really hard. Up to the challenge? Then play POE.

Is this actually a selling point?

Answer - obviously not - only 0.5% or less of participants get 40/40. So if it's really difficult versus nearly impossible has no effect on player participation.
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So why the higher player participation numbers?

My guess - this league is actually better/more exciting than previous leagues and POE is gaining momemtem from new players, switching from games such as D3.

If this is the case... requiring that challenges be much more time consuming to complete has zero effect on player participation.

Based on Serleth's comments, we're in agreement on this point.
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RE - making challenges more time consuming.

Here we disagree.

If there's no upside to this, why did GGG do this?

IMO, I think it was a play for longer/higher player participation - and with the goal to be recognized as a challenging game - a skillful game. Not a D3 snooze-fest.

RE - Challenging and making 40/40 actually more difficult

Simple fix - require that hard content be completed solo. Bingo. Huge win on all accounts - reputation as a technically challenging game soars - because, well it's actually technically challenging.

Concrete fixes:

E.g., Shaper must be killed... solo.

10 Uber Atziri kills - must be solo.

It's trivially simple to up the technical difficulty requirement without substantially increasing time commitment - ideally this would of course be balanced.

The best players, the most skillful players, could get 40/40 rather quickly.

The rest of us would require longer... needing time to level and likely needing better gear.

And for me, that's where the time commitment becomes fun/challenging, rather than monotonous/boring.

And this dovetails into your point about needing to personally achieve goals as opposed to buying them.
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So making the game more time consuming...

Obviously... this is driven by some sort of profit motive. Increase reputation. Or increase player participation for transaction shop sales or... something... it's obviously profit motive driven.

My guess.... it's a reputation thing. Coupled with profit.

Releasing fresh content very regularly - after about 1-1/2 months, is beyond GGG - they simply do not have the resources for this.

So, the leagues must be more exiting from end-to-end over 3 months, or reputation of difficulty must increase or something else.... or more likely a combination of these things.
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Finally 40/40 Itself

Humans are funny things.

They want stuff that they don't have. The more difficult it is to have missing stuff, the more valuable it is.

Only once whatever it is that's desired is actually attained... there's a sense of letdown.

It's not the destination that's important... it's the journey.

And for me, this is why GGG is likely more successful this league.
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Finally, I'll leave you with an anecdote from my first manager at Microsoft.

When I was interviewing for Microsoft, my soon-to-be manager said that the reason he joined Microsoft was to make the world a better place - to help drive innovation to improve humanity.

This really stuck with me - make the world better.

On this note.... why can't GGG do the same. Make our entertainment better - not more tedious/time consuming - but simply better - for me, that means more challenging., more fun, newer.. not more time consuming.