Development Manifesto: Warbands and Tempest Content

My 2 cents here:

I never encountered a single warband commander in the challenge league.

Adding warband/tempest into the core of the game would make the game more interesting and challenging , running them from zana ? wasting of chaoses....

i do not understand the decision ....

I remain concerned about what looks to be considerable disorganization behind the scenes. Wrote a post on that on tab 44 of the earlier "More Information About the Upcoming One-Month Event" thread. There seem to be a number of concerns out there about the current meta, map drop rates, and a number of other things. Finding the right balance of risk-to-reward, difficulty scaling, issues in the passive tree, and map drop rates is no easy thing. At present there is a rush to terminate the current leagues and start up something new, while also conducting analysis of what happened with Warbands/Tempest and consideration of what adjustments may be made. I worry that this has all gotten too chaotic for a well-thought-through review of the present state of things and better consideration of how to get back on solid footing. My hope is that there was just too much on the plate moving into the summer: loot filters, Act IV coming on line, regional servers, introduction of lockstep, meta-changes, and so on. Stumbled into an unpopular challenge league with resulting decision to shut it down early. Understandable how we could have gotten here with so much going on in the summer period, but whether there has really been enough time to get a handle on things with the rush to shut down these leagues is a concern.

Regarding what to do with the Warbands dynamic (I did not play Tempest), I think there are better ways to make use of it. In my view the main point of the dynamic was to introduce a reason or incentive to play a wider range of tilesets in the endgame. Instead of always running whichever map tilesets one usually prefers, there is an incentive to find where the warbands might be and run that map tileset instead. This is a good feature. Incentive to vary map tilesets in the endgame introduces some variation. We should not be so anxious to drop that or convert it into a Zana or map mod. There are better options.

A suggestion for how it might be done:

I would be inclined to drop the distinction between 1-dot, 2-dot, 3-dot, etc. in a regular dynamic. Whatever map they are in should be handled like a 4-dot from the challenge leagues. Spawn or do-not-spawn in the same manner as the challenge leagues. Each map tier should have one emphasized tile-set during a set time period. i.e. map level 70 has one, map level 71 has one, map level 72 has one, etc. You can choose to run an emphasized tileset regardless of what map level your toon may be on at the time. Presumably the emphasized tileset would be whichever tileset was run the fewest times during the last time period. Map level 75 for example, maybe Orchard was run the fewest times between 4 and 6. From 6 to 8 it is the emphasized tile set where warbands might spawn. This gives some reason to run that tile set.

For the emphasized tileset where the warbands could spawn, I would give a slightly higher probability for maps of that type to spawn extras: i.e. rogue exiles, masters, lockboxes, or treasure ghosts. Slightly higher probability: not enough to effectively force everyone to play that map by cost-benefit comparison, but enough to give an incentive to run that map instead of some other one. It works in the manner of a 4-dot map from the challenge leagues where it may or may not spawn different warband types, and it has a somewhat higher probability than other maps of that level to generate the extras. This accomplishes the point: you are not forced to play the emphasized tileset because the probability of generating these things is too much greater than other maps of that level, but you have some incentive to vary tilesets by doing so because they have a somewhat higher probability of generating these things. Now the point is accomplished: whichever map tier level your toon is running at a given point in time, you have some incentive to vary the tileset used. Not a compulsory incentive, but an incentive.

For myself I would be inclined to give them an extra distinguishing characteristic. Drop the peculiar and rather mysterious change that rogue exiles and warbands cannot drop maps. Give them some reasonable or on-par map drop chance, whatever that may be. I do not care what it is: give them whatever probabilistic chance folds into the larger strategy of the map drop system. If a warbands member drops a map however, they always drop an unidentified corrupted map. Now they have a distinguishing characteristic: if they drop a map, it is a corrupted map rather than some other one. So far as I can tell there would be nothing terribly imbalancing about the thing since you can always make a corrupted map yourself with a vaal orb, but it sets them apart with a distinguishing feature. They are a little bit different from run-of-the-mill mobs insofar as they drop corrupted maps instead of regular maps. So they are interesting. Not overwhelmingly interesting, but interesting.

With respect to varying map tilesets, I might even give them another interesting feature: they can drop abnormal level tilesets. Most of the time they drop a corrupted map instead of a regular map, but every now and again they can drop a variation-tileset. On map level 75 for example, they might drop a level 75 shore map. The level 75 shore map is nothing more than a shore map with level 75 monsters instead of the usual level 71 monsters, but it is a somewhat unusual item that adds tileset variation now and again. Since it is not a particularly special map or a unique map (it just has level 75 monsters instead of level 71 monsters), it would presumably not be some fantastical thing that sells for multiple exalts. It just adds to the purpose. The objective of introducing the warbands dynamic is to introduce a reason to play varied tilesets. So they can drop a tileset of variated level sometimes. The dynamic then accomplishes its objectives.

It seems to me that using them for some such purpose as this gives them a function and a reason to be introduced that they would not have as a Zana mod or a map mod.

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The time-based incentive to farm specific zones created by them made the end-game of Path of Exile significantly more enjoyable for me.

Fully agree here the timed-based design has been really great for warbands league and maintained a continuous ambience for community.

The downside of this really great feature has been an RnG way too hard and too much time consuming for nothing at the end.

Just check my playtime and the number of warbands i killed. Count uniques specific dropped and you obtain 2 total ( or 3 ).

Soo it tend to think it has been again designed fully around trading an not playing with some strategy etc ..

I get the point trading is important but what about studying to get your challenge instead of paying for it ? Why would you even call that a Challenge ? :/

Bring back the Hardcore and satisfaction will be high enough to not having to sell supporter pack anymore.

Warbands have been also a different way to play endgame and find an utility to lower maps sleeping in stash exploiting more content at the end.

I'm not saying they should be implemented in the same way but aside zana's mod they should have a chance to randomly spawn and create the surprise for players ... keep sharing them etc ...

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I think Warbands and Tempest were interesting idea's but the reliance on third party sites etc just for the information to be shared was a big part of the league's being boring

Sharing with other players was great experience unfortunately it would have been better to not having to third party ( again ) i fully agree.

I'm using more tools for PoE than for work. That's a thing !

When you fix Ground effects, you have my permission to add Tempest to the Core game, not before...

worst leagues for the most important step after release for the game u guys did a rly bad job.

It may be a stupid thing to ask, or wrong place (if so, genuinely sorry about that), but still:

When will new leagues start - right after or with some delay?

Just gathered a bunch of friends to enter world of PoE, but starting a league that's week away from ending seems like bad way to start.

After Rampage, Torment and Warbands I'm going to just play Standard.
Rampage - some visual effects on the screen once in a while.
Torment - annoying ghost chasing.
Warbands - mobs tankier than the zone boss that never drops anything worthwhile. What uniques?

Tempest was the best legue ever. Amen.

What you should learn from Warbands is how to communicate your vision for a league better to the players (I wrote an email about that). You should have put more effort into bringing the story of warbands out to us, because right now, PoE is all mechanic and very few storyline and lore.

Secondly: I would have really liked it if you had totally removed warbands from the game, even as a Zana mod, and made it so that these warbands randomly (instead of globally like now) appear on maps. You put in a map, and like 50% of the time nothing appears, but the rest of the time some kind of warband is in the map and you just get the indicator for that. THAT I would have found funny.