One-month Flashback Events: Progress and Feedback

I'm playing on softcore with a RF/cyclone templar -> damaging with RF and using cyclone for EE, vulnerability and fortify.
My feedback on specific aspects of this event and latest changes:

Flashback - It's amaaaazingly great. Having a guaranteed exile, strongbox, invasion boss and ghost in each zone really spices up the gameplay and hack&slash-y feeling of the game, while also making it a lot harder. Every zone and map feels fresh and eventful. The only thing that I dislike is beyond - sometimes the difficulty level of even simple maps is literally "beyond" because of random haasts and na'em's. Map progression feels a lot slower when beyond is active, because they don't drop maps at all, and they are much harder due to other league mods. Tempest weekends are super RIPpy, but it's still incredibly fun to play this event! (also, holy fuck invasion and beyond bosses EXPLODE with loot when possessed by tormented ghosts :D)

Challenges - Very easy overall, there are only three that require some effort and time investment. The only one I'm still missing is getting to 85 lvl. Not a problem for most builds, but kind of "not on par" with other challenges, as you can complete almost all of them without ever going above map tier 1 (there are some special ways to complete the tier 8 onslaught boss one), leveling up to 85 is a completely different category - simple grind, and I don't like to grind in such short events.

Map tiers - Unnecessary change. Confusing and disappointing as fuck. I don't understand why was that change needed. The argument: "players coming from MMO games think that they should farm at zones similar to their character level, so map tiers should be less confusing to them" is IMHO retarded. Same with "potentially mistaking ilvl with map lvl"... Every percipient player will sooner or later notice that tier 1 = monster level always 68, tier 2 = monster level always 69, and so on. So what the hell is the difference, if map tier always corresponds to the exact preset monster level? I sincerely hope that specific maps will drop within a tier range in the future (e.g. Arena map ranging from tier 3 to 6, instead of always being tier 4) and introducing map tiers was done to better prepare players to upcoming, even bigger change.

Map drops - Obviously better than before, but I still think that boss map drops should get some significant buffing (I don't think it even requires an explanation), i.e. not dropping maps lower than -2 tiers, so a boss from tier 9 map would drop maps ranging from tiers 7 to 11, not 1 to 11.

Divination cards - Oh boy. I love this system and I love seeing how there are more and more of divination sets added with ~each month or so. Some of the sets are really underwhelming because of their simplicity and uselessness (carrion crow, rain of chaos, hermit, king's blade), but seriously their art and the stories that they bring are extremely interesting!

From my perspective Flashback is the most fun league so far. Just playing Flashback since a couple of days but it's loads of fun. Very various mods on the maps, fun to play and sometimes really challanging. I also like the idea to may get a "Flashback Mod" as mentioned earlier in this thread.

Can't speak a lot to the map drop changes as I found the first Tier 3+4 maps today. But I don't get the idea to call them Tier instead of monster level, as the monster and drop level still persist. So from your argument that players want to play monsters on their level, they still don't beat monsters on their level - the issue is still the same from that perspective. It only has another name.

Just one thing that dulled my mood yesterday was, that I was logged out to login screen while enter a map where a portal was surrounded by corpses. Please GGG fix this, this is really annoying if you "forgot" that this is an issue and get remembered with the login screen again.

Overall, Flashback is very fun to play and I hope to see more of events like this in the future. (Or maybe a flashback map mod)

Thanks for all the good work, keep it going!

League is much fun for me, but as 30y/o, i have time mostly just at weekend. And having all mods at weekend is just insane and frustrating for me, just because of Beyond (with onslaught on and huge density of monsters thanks to other modes).

I understand some people like challenge, but most complained here about Beyond - and having it during ALL WEEKENDS is insane for players like me who plays mostly on weekends and are "casual" players..

Please reconsider it and make at least one weekend without Beyond, so i can enjoy the league without having to play in standard or not poe at all.. HC players have everything done anyway and also lot of ppl seems to stop playing league cause of Beyond

"

MegaTen_IV wrote:

Level 50.
Cruel act 2.
Didnt played much because I hate Beyond.
And Beyond was 4 times in a row so I totally lost motivation during the first week.
Cant motivate myself further to spend hours just for a free MTX.
And fun ?
No.

Thats why I propose ways to avoid beyond such as destroying corpses on kill (now its not possible to avoid it atm if u dont hit-run-hit-run)

I like beyond but not 6 days in a row as u said, so I think its a good point to guive other options to avoid beyond (feezing, infernal blow, bone offering...)

But in the end its the best league so far, i love entering haku instances when all the mods are on, you can find the spirit boss with tormented spirit, rogue, invasion boss and beyond arround, perfect to go cycloning to the boss screaming "Demaciaaaa!"

flashback is nice, lags are bad

One of my fav leagues so far. I'm only concern is that after this league, the game may seem easy in comparison ?

yes will seem easy, probably that's the point 2 make peps try HC leagues.

"

FriendlyPikachu wrote:

flashback is nice, lags are bad

yes, worst then first flashback, kinda miss the PL:))

My feedback on 2.04

Map drops are on such a shitty level I feel like I should be playing PoE inside a septic tank once a character starts mapping.

It's so fucking bad I emailed support asking if my account was somehow mistakenly flagged as a bot or something.

It's so horrible that after 3 weeks i threw in the towel. I now just login, alch and Vaal whatever my shitty highest level map is.... Run it, get nothing ..... Literally ZERO map drops, and logout.
I run 1 map a day now as opposed to 8 hour mapping sessions.

In summary/conclusion: 2.04 map settings are pathetic and driving players away. If you don't believe me look at your statistics that you are afraid to display. Take those statistics and draw some realistic conclusions based on analysis. Asking us for our "feelings" is stupid and lazy.... Of course this is all just my opinion.

Queue the flaming white knight brigade!

"

It's been just over two weeks since we released the 2.0.4 content update and made changes to maps.

lol k.

Its still <3 though

I enjoyed this league, until I spawned Haast in 5 maps in a row. He is killable, true, but not balanced at all. 85% positive cold res + 4k HP seemed too low for him, so he decided to "1 shot me" with a glacial cascade. That guy and Abaxoth are a bit overtuned in my opinion.

I also wonder why the prize is not the black version of the seraphim set, after the huge teaser that GGG did with the league introduction (a screen of the set). Really, the league is amazing, but why would you tease people with something you will not release (at least not as a prize for that league)?

Everything else was really cool!