Announcing Path of Exile: Synthesis

when are you going to get rid of the shitty end game map hunt / extortion of currency just to play the game?

do that and i'll start to spend money again, otherwise, there's other games out there.

this will just continue to be a waste of time.

With new league every 3 months, then i wonder whar 4.0 will be!
Better gfx ( new engien )
Moreskillpoints?
More acts?
More maps?
Berserker dualwield 2H weapons.?

Hiw about ability to wield a wand with any other 1h weapon, i mean in real life you can easy hold a sword and wand, dagger/wand, just saying.

Anyways had to get it outofmy mind

Agreed. This appears to be: Incursion + Delve (upward} + (reverse) Breach.
Don't like limited use of the fragments. What is the point?
More crafting. (YUCK!)
More clear speed or die.
Goodbye Standard Atlas/ Map Tab (again) Grr!

Just want to play at my own pace and see ALL the content, when I get there.
I actually miss the old masters. All they needed was to be able to go into any of them when we wanted... not just once a day.

We should be able to start an instance of any of the current masters. Hell, why not put the old masters in Standard Hideout and let us continue to play them as long as we want?

Will most likely skip Synthesis.

Is there any credible information about whether the Sunspire Supporter Pack is/will continue to be the only way to acquire the Sunspire Hideout? Cause that would be the sole reason for me to even consider buying that pack.

On the general topic of shop items: Do we have a rough idea what level of support those actually provide at this point in time? I'm sure in the beginning they were crucial for the survival, but with the Tencent deal exceeding the 100m$ mark I'm having a hard time to imagine that they currently amount to more than scrap money. Which in turn would make it way harder to justify the notoriously high price point of a lot of those, cause now GGG isn't the small indie company they once where.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against companies growing, but it feels like they'd rather still be seen as this small studio with a dream when in reality they belong to the big (or at the very least mid-size) boys now.

"

Außenseiter wrote:

I'm afraid that people saying that they are skipping league don't quite understand that it's not the problem with league, it's the problem with core game and its monetization system.
Next league will not remove any gating on existing mechanics and I bet won't introduce anything game-changing.
I mean Betrayal is the most complex league so far, and it still boils down to clearspeed meta. You either wipe out syndicate dudes or they wipe you, everything on top is just fluff, it's not really new, it's the same as bestiary or breach or abyss encounters, just with some voice acting on top and encounters board macromanagement.

And synthesis league is just remixed incursion/delve/atlas system where I can almost guarantee you won't just go the route you want, you'll have to mess around with additional restrictions as well. Like synthesis fuel or something i.e. sulphite/alva spawns.

Gates are here to stay, reused mechanics are there to stay, future leagues won't change how you progress past the story acts, and you can bet on new collectibles and specialized stashes for them.

Because without gating players will just blow through all content and leave the game 2.5 months earlier than GGG would want.
And free-to-access truly endless dungeon will leave all other content a ghost town. Nobody would even bother with anything if they could grind what they wanted to their hearts' content.

I don't quite follow your reasoning here.

There are a ton of games out there which have very repetitive but easily accessible content and people play them for years on end. The idea that people will quit as soon as no new content can be unlocked anymore only leads to one possible conclusion: That the core gameplay does not provide enough fun on its own. Diablo 2 is still widely played and people have unlocked anything in that game a hundred times over. Why do they keep playing? Cause the core gameplay is enjoyable enough in its own right, without the need to constantly dangle a carrot in front of you. Same with other genres, FPS and sports games come to mind. Those have the same mechanics all the time and still players can't get enough of it.

A game does not have to reinvent itself every 3 months to stay relevant. If the core gameplay is strong enough, you could very well get away with a "static" gamemode without a drop in your playerbase. Mind you that it would only be an addition to the game, he never asked for it to be the only way to play it. And the argument that the rest of the game would become a wasteland is a bit far-fetched as well. PoE is not an MMO in the traditional sense, you don't need a large population for anything but maybe trading. All content can be done solo, there is hardly any teamplay going on, cause it doesn't reward you in any way.

People have different tastes, there would still be a sizeable portion who'd go for the temp leagues instead. And if the vast majority should indeed choose to only play the "Endless ledge"-mode and nothing else, that would be a clear indicator for GGG that their league mechanics idea is not as solid as they might have thought.

Bottom line is, if you let people have fun with your game on their own terms they will be happy and stick around. While if you try to force their hand and make them play they way you envisioned it they might wait a bit to see how things evolve and then eventually leave. This game would only benefit from a pure and 100% unobstructed dungeon crawler mode imo. Put some trade restrictions on it if that makes you feel any better about it.

"

MoarStuff wrote:

I don't quite follow your reasoning here.

There are a ton of games out there which have very repetitive but easily accessible content and people play them for years on end. The idea that people will quit as soon as no new content can be unlocked anymore only leads to one possible conclusion: That the core gameplay does not provide enough fun on its own. Diablo 2 is still widely played and people have unlocked anything in that game a hundred times over. Why do they keep playing? Cause the core gameplay is enjoyable enough in its own right, without the need to constantly dangle a carrot in front of you. Same with other genres, FPS and sports games come to mind. Those have the same mechanics all the time and still players can't get enough of it.

A game does not have to reinvent itself every 3 months to stay relevant. If the core gameplay is strong enough, you could very well get away with a "static" gamemode without a drop in your playerbase. Mind you that it would only be an addition to the game, he never asked for it to be the only way to play it. And the argument that the rest of the game would become a wasteland is a bit far-fetched as well. PoE is not an MMO in the traditional sense, you don't need a large population for anything but maybe trading. All content can be done solo, there is hardly any teamplay going on, cause it doesn't reward you in any way.

People have different tastes, there would still be a sizeable portion who'd go for the temp leagues instead. And if the vast majority should indeed choose to only play the "Endless ledge"-mode and nothing else, that would be a clear indicator for GGG that their league mechanics idea is not as solid as they might have thought.

Bottom line is, if you let people have fun with your game on their own terms they will be happy and stick around. While if you try to force their hand and make them play they way you envisioned it they might wait a bit to see how things evolve and then eventually leave. This game would only benefit from a pure and 100% unobstructed dungeon crawler mode imo. Put some trade restrictions on it if that makes you feel any better about it.

Diablo 2 has mods.
You pay for it once and you can do whatever you want with it.
You can mod infinite stash.
You can mod new classes, enemies and maps.
You can mod game yourself if you learn how.

You can't mod POE, so yeah in controlled environment game HAS to reinvent itself, otherwise people move on to something that constantly offers fresh experience.

"

Außenseiter wrote:

Diablo 2 has mods.
You pay for it once and you can do whatever you want with it.
You can mod infinite stash.
You can mod new classes, enemies and maps.
You can mod game yourself if you learn how.

You can't mod POE, so yeah in controlled environment game HAS to reinvent itself, otherwise people move on to something that constantly offers fresh experience.

Still not buying into that whole "players need a completely reworked game every couple of months" thing. Wasn't your initial argument against a playmode like this that it would be too popular with players? Now all of a sudden nobody would care?

As I said there are countless examples of games that remain virtually unchanged and are enjoyed by a large number of players for a long time. Why do you think Retro gaming became that huge over the last couple of years, what kind of updates are there for old console/arcade games to make people want to play them? They are just good games that you can play over and over and still have fun. You're just presuming that the PoE playerbase consists of only one type, the one who needs constant distraction to forget about how meaningless the core gameplay has become. When red tier map bosses are a mere sideshow to regular league encounters you know the game has painted itself into a corner.

And don't act like people switch mods like they change their underwear. Most people have a handful they like the most and will stick with those, effectively turning them into the new base game. Mount&Blade for example has hundreds of mods but only a select few of those (the good ones!) are played by a sizable number of people.

Nobody is asking for making Delve/Endless Ledge the recommended gamemode, but GGGs desperate attempt of relegating it to the sidelines shows a realisation that the current league mechanics just can't compete in the fun department for many players.

My argument is that GGG gates delve because it would be more popular than atlas system, rendering map stash null and hitting one of their bigger sources of income.

"

Außenseiter wrote:

My argument is that GGG gates delve because it would be more popular than atlas system, rendering map stash null and hitting one of their bigger sources of income.

The only fly in the ointment with that strategy is the periodic wiping of Atlas progress in Standard. It means players of Standard lose motivation to invest their time heavily in Atlas, and instead look to the other piece of endless content to base their endgame around.

That boils down to Standard players doing maps, without Atlas-specific progress in mind, purely as a supply for Sulphite. Any map will do. With that approach there's never any need to possess more than a single tab's worth of random maps, because there's little reason to be keeping tons of specific maps around. That, in turn, means there's zero motivation to buy a Map stash tab.

"

Snorkle_uk wrote:

...here we are, even more bloated layers of power creep introduced via more bloated limit access convoluted content....

Another dream within a dream with a thing and a menu that leads to an interface where you click the thing and then join it to the other thing and then play the zone and find the whatever that you grab and that lets you go back to the menu where you access the map that lets you select the node that links to the whatsit....

Endless dungeon, log in, zone into dungeon, play for 7 hours without having to trade or roll something or whatever, just play, just heres a dungeon that has monsters in it that are strong enough to feel like ur fighting something worth while. How hard is it to just do that?

anyone from GGG still out there reading this? Any high in the ranks game direction people out there?


Heres a vid youtube just fed me by mathil...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjvCd06E3nQ

heres the quote, his summing up of the league

"basically its just too convoluted, too unintuative to use and not very fun"


so I made my post before the league dropped, I haddent played it, still havent played it, yet I could tell you what was wrong with it just from ur few minutes of telling me what it was. Just like I told you what was wrong with beast league within seconds of u simply describing it. Same way I said delve looked amazing, and it was, except we cant fucking access it so its amazing content for once but I cant log in and play it so it basically doesnt exist (jesus fking christ lol)...


you know how? because I play your game.


all this shit you sit around and dream up, most of it is crap because u dont play the game and you dont want to play the game, you dont want to develop this game, you want to make a different game. The content fails because its not gameplay, it doesnt revolve around gameplay. What have I been saying for ages? Im sick of standing at my stash working out how to access the right content rather than PLAYING THE GAME.


People who play your game want to PLAY a game, theyre not like you, you dont want to play this game, you want to play cards or tabletop or some shit. Fine, thats you, but ur making an arpg and arpg players who want to PLAY an arpg game come here, when you fail to produce content to PLAY that revolves around PLAYING then ur failing them. Thats why you cant get players to stick around any more.

If you simply put in an endless dungeon with monsters that provided fun gameplay, actual minute by minute play, not theory craft a way to not have to play the game and kill them with 1 button, actual gameplay monsters, people wouldnt be here complaining. They would be PLAYING THE GAME.


Stop woth all this convoluted bullshit, all this jump through a million hoops to eventually find a few scraps of worth while gameplay, just give us the gameplay. Work on that, an actual fun experience to be had while playing. Not while wathcing ziggy D explain ur bullshit league in a video, not while in path of building working out how to use ur broken items to avoid playing, not while standing at ur stash staring at area modifiers and trying to figure out shit... actually in a zone, playing the game against monsters, ACTION rpg, ACTION gameplay. Put away ur magic deck and your warhammer quest tiles and ur D&D book and actually work on making an action rpg computer game that plays well, and then work out the most simple and straight forward way for players to be able to get in there and play the fucking game, please, for the love of god while u still have a game people give a shit about and havent started to abandon in droves. Its not here yet, its coming tho.