Let's talk about the race rewards for Soulthirst

I was thinking about getting back into racing and looked at the rewards. Since I'm more of a casual player I'm mostly interested in the first 3 which should be obtainable. (I won't be able to do all the races and I won't be in the top 10, that's for sure.)

First up: The Princess

The way I see it The Princess has a mini Hatred build in and good attack speed which might make it useful for a dual wielder using double strike. And that's it. Can't think of any other use than a really short period for leveling.

Is there something I'm missing?


Second contender: A white (ilvl 100?) Eclipse staff



Very nice crafting item with 80% global crit chance implicit. Means I have to sink a lot of currency into it to turn it into something useful. Let's say like 3ex for 5-link with 6 sockets if you use Vorici. And then it's still white.


Three's a charm, or is it: Crest of Perandus



It's shit. Sorry, but you can get a higher block chance on a rare shield and outside of leveling this shield is not going to do anything for you. So basically this is for a Shadow or Ranger until they get to a life leech cluster.


I really like the alternate artwork on the items but I don't see myself ever using one of them in the game except for skin transfers.

Dear GGG, can the lower tier reward items please be chosen in a way that makes them useful to more casual players who don't have several exalts lying around to craft a staff or items that can still be used late game?

Examples from the glorious past:



Quill Rain: Explosive Arrow; Death's Harp for the additional projectile and global crit bonus; Karui Ward for projectile speed.

(I still didn't have the heart to RIP them to Standard...)

Most race art is for the sake of 3d skins rather high end tier gear is usually left for ''Non'casuals'' such as the soul taker / Soulthirst belt.

Well, Chris said (if I recall correctly) GGG wanted to get more people into racing, especially the casuals who haven't been interested so far. I'm just giving examples which types of uniques I would like to see as race rewards for the "casual tiers".

TL;DR: Jessep Wants Bigger Carrot, GGG! ;P


PS: Just to clarify, Quill Rain, Death's Harp and Karui Ward are no expensive items like the higher tier items you get for 250+ points. But they are cheap, low tier uniques that can be used in maps and can be BIS for certain builds. Well, probably not the Karui Ward but it's still a nice amulet for a lot of builds and for a long time.

They should focus on making racing more fun for the general player. What you propose is simply giving bigger carrots to the participants. That is just a totally wrong take to draw in more people. If you continue that same line of thinking GGG could also start to pay people money if they race.

The way you worded your opening post, makes me think you see racing as some kind of JOB. Then why participate in the first place?

Would you participate in the races if there would be no rewards? And Why?

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Reinhart wrote:

They should focus on making racing more fun for the general player.

I absolutely agree. Right now there is too little information, too.

Why is there no detailed information page for races? How does a Decent Race even work, or Endless Ledge?


You can't expect people to go out of their way to gather that information and then offer a moldy carrot. Either you take the time to inform them, help them with tutorials or at least give them a carrot that's big enough that they will get interested.

Sorry, Crest of Perandus is not going to cut it for that. And a casual player will have no use for a white staff that he can only equip at character level 70+. Most casuals never level past 70 as we can see from the Steam achievement stats.

You've hit on a catch 22 for game developers. You expect all items to be "useful" but if they were, none of the items would be.

See... all items already are useful, but you just choose not to use them. You favor items which are more powerful, and thus consider items like these prizes less rewarding. I get that.

But if all the items were equally useful, you'd simply pick which ever one had the bigger number on it and we'd be playing D3 at launch, or torchlight.

Yes, I expect all race rewards to be useful for the group of player they are targeting. ;P


A white level 70+ staff is absolutely useless to new or casual players. Will they have the currency to craft a staff and link it? Probably not.

The Princess is absolutely useless unless you specifically build your character so that he doesn't use that weapon and deals damage with his main weapon. How many new and casual players do you expect know how to that?

Crest of Perandus. Even a new player will figure out very quickly that that shield won't help him to stay alive.

~~~~~~~~

Let's take a look at past season rewards, only the lowest items:
Season 1: Redbeak, Wanderlust, Coral Ring
Season 2: Karui Ward, Shiversting, Quill Rain, Onyx Amulet
Season 3: Blackheart; Sin Trek, Shavronne's Pace
Season 4: The Ignomon, Heatshiver, Brightbeak, Ruby Ring
Season 5: Kaom's Sign, Storm Cloud, Fairgraves' Tricorne, Moonstone Ring
Season 6: Perandus Blazon, Aurumvorax, Goldwyrm, Amethyst Ring
Season 7: Wurm's Molt, Blackgleam, Thousand Ribbons, Unset Ring
.
.
.
I find this seasons' low tier rewards just disappointing compared to earlier seasons. Too niche, too specific, too high level or just plain useless. The old reward were much more useful (at the time).

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Col_Jessep wrote:

...Right now there is too little information, too.

Why is there no detailed information page for races? How does a Decent Race even work, or Endless Ledge?

You can't expect people to go out of their way to gather that information...

I have been trying to compile all of this information in one location, [FAQ] Helpful Information & Common Questions. The second post in that thread, in the sources spoiler, has the links out to the significant season announcements and special event announcements. Including The Endless Ledge, and Descent Race Primer.

So if an exile is interested in racing, and visits the race discussion board one of the top two sticky posts (attempts) to provide all of the information in a single location with links out for further reading. It might not be the most intuitive, but it is the best I can do for now.

"

Col_Jessep wrote:

Yes, I expect all race rewards to be useful for the group of player they are targeting. ;P

If you think that target group is new players without any PoE experience, you are wrong. I mean you need to partially know what you are doing to be any good in a PoE race.

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Col_Jessep wrote:

Crest of Perandus. Even a new player will figure out very quickly that that shield won't help him to stay alive.

Well, your player skills partially determine if you stay alive or not. You can never fully rely on equipment.

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Col_Jessep wrote:

I find this seasons' low tier rewards just disappointing compared to earlier seasons. Too niche, too specific, too high level or just plain useless. The old reward were much more useful (at the time).

Weird, I have heard this every race season. Not just this one. The same whining every time. Vendor crap. Useless. Everything is useless except for mjolnir and shavs. So we can all be copycats of eachother. Just recently I have seen players armed with tabula rasa and iir gear, getting killed over and over again by normal Malachai. Instead of a little thinking, most people just follow the same set of build guidelines without even realizing what they are actually doing. But the boy was deadset to get some more iir! Can you blame them? Hey they are using "OP-items" like tabula rasa or lightning coil!


Maybe GGG should just introduce random orbs as rewards again. The system that was used during closed beta. We will hear a lot less whining then.

Also, you didn't answer my original questions.

EDIT: This thread got moved out of gameplay it seems.

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ChronoExile wrote:

I have been trying to compile all of this information in one location, [FAQ] Helpful Information & Common Questions. The second post in that thread, in the sources spoiler, has the links out to the significant season announcements and special event announcements. Including The Endless Ledge, and Descent Race Primer.

So if an exile is interested in racing, and visits the race discussion board one of the top two sticky posts (attempts) to provide all of the information in a single location with links out for further reading. It might not be the most intuitive, but it is the best I can do for now.

Good stuff. I would kind of like that linked in the race announcements. That's where people will look and the official version is very brief.