An Update from Chris

just have 2 thoughts
1.) the synthesis-league might have been a bit complicated to master, but thats why i want it to be added to the core - to have time to collect the right things and craft a slightly better item-piece over time

2.) please give those twitchers and basement-kidz some life back und revive the standard league a bit (work/life-balance ;p) - i think we dont really need a new (& bugged) league right after another - add more space between 2 leages plus there can be other not-so-much-time-consuming events with 'old' content like the upcoming flashback-event

I'll admit to not being happy with a lot of the design decisions that Grinding Gear's made recently, not sure I really dig where the game's going. I haven't been pleased with the team since the Tencent acquisition and the drastic decrease in spending I've sunk into Path of Exile since that acquisition has shown that.

This post showed some stones, though. I can appreciate the position Grinding Gear's in here - they've got two major overhauls in the works simultaneously and several separate realms to work on. There are only so many development man-hours in a day, and hearing that Grinding Gear rejects crunch culture makes for excellent news. It's good when a developer is willing to admit that they put their foot in it, even hedged around with CorpSpeak(TM) the way official comms have to be, and I'm glad you're willing to take a stand on things and then stick to it.

This won't magically restore all the goodwill you guys have lost since selling out to Tencent. But it's a step in the right direction. Thank you for the update. At least a few of your players can concur that the effort going into your 4.0.0 overhaul is not optional, and some of us do understand that every one thing you do is three other things you no longer have time or resources for.

Good work. Keep it up. And maybe someday buy yourselves back from Evil Chinese Skynet, ne?

Thank you Chris. Thanks to all of GGG too.

In my eyes you just made one fatal mistakt: Console support!

Just check out all the Console to PC conversions. They care a shit about propper input handling. One of the best examples are Metal Gear Solid V and Skyrim. TERIBBLE COMPLICATE Controler stearing without propper support for Mouse + Keyboard!
Inventory handling at Skyrim is still imposible without mods!!!

Just trash all PS2/XBOX stuff. USELESS WAST OF TIME!
And more time to care about your core comunity: PC.

It's realy easy.
PvP games are PvP games.
PvE games are PvE games.
PC games are PC games.
Console games are ... useless trash anyway.

NEVER EVER TRY TO MIX THEM! It will allways and 100% FAIL.

Just check out the number of flame/troll/crybaby/hater posts before and after kiddy console support.

And a big plus for not crunching :D.
Workers at the game industry are NO SLAVES!!
Just for this I will keep suporting you :heart: :hug:.


PS: The Synthesis idear was cool. The implementation sucked at the beginning. Now it's OKish but still needs some polish.
Don't throw it away, take another 6 month and bring it back @winter Synthesis 2.0 ;).

Most of these problems could be solved by shifting away from a 3-month cycle into something longer. A four-month cycle would be better. I'd go as far as a 6-month cycle. More time to develop and more time to play the current league, I know the 1% will complain but it's not GGG's problem if they decide to blast through everything within the first 10 hours of every league, catering to those players is how we got here.

Path of Exile needs to grow up. It's not a small game by an indie team anymore, it's getting bigger and has outgrown it's old development cycle. This is a rite of passage I've seen other games go through, where a slower-but-better development cycle sets in and it ends up vastly improving the game.

Really glad that you are adressing the "increased damage taken from player feedback" issue lately.
I really feel a lot of the people (new D3 players etc.) haven't had the same fantastic relationship between develpopers and players as you used to have. As one of the key points of me playing this game is actually your costumer support, besides the way you handle PR and the never-ending releases of new content. I really hope you will accumulate the same relationship as earlier between players and developers, while still being sane enough to fix every "issue" that reddit posts.
As always, we love you Chris, and keep up the good work.
PS. We also love the rest of you guys behind this game doing an amazing job :)

"

While our improvements after its launch have helped a lot and many players are enjoying it, we fully acknowledge that it is not our best league and is not up to the quality standards that Path of Exile players should expect from us. It will not be merged into the core game in 3.7.0. Maybe we can do something with it in the future, but we have no current plans.

I fully disagree with that. Synthesis was a big step in the right direction for mechanics.

This league has been one of the best in terms of renewable content, choice(on par with delve), it was and has been a very good league in terms of what it offers for advanced players/crafters, it's not just a simple league that's obvious(and thus boring) with stupidly simple loot explosions, it's cryptic and explorable with its many mods/buffs and a lot to explore, i think it's undeserved criticism by people who simply do not understand it, havent looked into the deep mechanics because it's not self explanatory and thus do not like it, and it just so appears that the current trend on reddit(a small vocal minority) is dislike, which in my opinion doesn't represent the overall playerbase. Do not get fooled by them. Not every league is going to fall in taste with everyone, that doesn't mean it shouldnt get added to the game or that you should apologize for it being "bad", when in reality it's actually very good.

A lot of devs get fooled by reddit, it's not a reliable source of information. Some devs listen too much to their screeching and their game gets ruined or in a bad spot for taking advice from a portion of the playerbase that is usually very casual and not advanced in terms of knowledge.

There are some aspects of this league which could be criticized however, mid patching and silent patch notes about certain things, the bigger issue with this league was balancing for hardcore players, notably the very deadly map mods and ESPECIALLY MODS THAT AFFECT BOSSES that were patched in. That was horribly unbalanced and made HC unplayable for this league. I had to switch over from the league i enjoy just to enjoy this league. Balancing content for HC is a way bigger issue and its something that has been neglected and should be fixed. Also hardware optimization and netcode(especially gpu optimization instead of cpu).


The league should be added to core, because it's been really fun. Don't allow your product to be ruined by an unorganic vocal minority of casuals from reddit like many other devs, you are getting undeserved criticism.

If you really want to know how many enjoyed your league open up a simple feedback poll and put it in the game startupmenu to get organic opinions from all players, if you want everyone to participate raffle out some mtx items or whatever given at random draws.

Synthesis not that bad IMHO. I just hate leveling in all these same acts again and again. I LOVE DELVE. Just let as delve sooner or give us moar sulphite and for me problem fixed. BTW yellow items are horrible these days.

This is the reason why I love GGG. Thanks for the transparancy Chris. We understand and definitly support you.

This post makes me forget about almost all the problems and makes me want to give you more money. Chris you are an amazing boss and i love how you handled this!! WE DO NOT WANT THE GGG EMPLOYEES TO WORK 14 HR DAYS!!!!!!!