reporting my views on how the league season is going for me

I must have played hundreds of hours since game launched, and tried my very hard from the get go. I feel as though I am Blight fatigued, as this has been the absolutely stingiest RNG I have ever experienced. I have gotten 4 exat drops, that's nice but remember, ive played like 12 hours every day since launch, and ive had a group of people helping me. sales absolutely are the hardest thing to make, as 99% of offers come in at about 1/15th the worth followed by hours of spam because their mad they cant afford the item. lets talk about crafting, atm I am about 4k alterations in on a single 1 handed weapon and its still a plain bases, 4k fuses into a body armor that has decided it doesn't want to be used. How about shaper and uber elder? well if your into unique gloves and opal rings, your gunna love this league! Not only did they make sure that blight only gives 2 clear oils, 3 jeweler orbs, a few chances and regrets on t16 maps, but you are now guaranteed only 1 watchers eye per month and its guaranteed to be purity of lightning with something else that can never be used. I honestly feel like this league on xbox was purposely made to have very little loot and small drop chances, but for consoles smaller player base, that only translated into most exhausting and pointless endeavor ever.

I don't really trade much except for the baron I bought, some maps and sold a few maps, mostly to get chaos for the map mods.

My gear I got is mostly from drops, I don't craft much in poe as I find it annoying to craft with so many layers of RNG, it's just not really enjoyable to grind for many hours, spend time crafting and you don't get anything.

I played in the first week, stopped in the second and have been on and off again since.

I don't mind the blight stuff, except for the poor performance, as usual on console.

Thanks for the info. :)

For me, this League sucks. It's not about RNG. Though, I have had one Exalt drop, which is more than I think I had the last League I played. I got lucky with a six-link staff drop and sold that for an Exalt early in the League.

Though, there's nothing to buy with two Exalts that's a basic Chase Item for general builds. (Not the serious stuff, just linked Chests/weaps, maybe a Belly/Kaoms, though those prices should have come down by now.)

I've gotten some chaos, but mostly through Rare Vendor recipes and a few sales of basic Rare gear. I had a couple of decent Uniques drop that I sold for some Chaos and I ran a couple and sold their Prophecy upgrades for a few chaos.

That's it. I play every day... Get pounded by the RNG and the XBox Marketplace which is owned by pricefixers and bot currency converters. I just cashed out an Exalt to get enough Chaos to maybe buy a Silver Oil I need for a build's Amulet Anointment.

But... I spent a hour searching for a friggin' pair of boots. Nothing too complex, just something to cover some base stats I need to pump up. ZERO. And, even after dumping some stats and searching for whatever might work, nada. From the Two-Toned all the way down to some crappy 40 level base, nothing. Some boots had an inventory that might fit a page. (Online sales. I'll check those offline, later, but there is no telling if they'll ever log back in... The best time to check that is Thursday for the Weekened PoE Warriors.)

Blights are not "doable" for me on Red Maps running a Necro. It's less-than-a-slideshow. With my Cyclone, it's "doable" to an extent... until the game disconnects me because the box can't handle my hit reporting rates...

I have had good progression "for me" up to mid Red maps, where the lag comes in huge chunks playing the Necro. For a Cyclone, I can't dare touch a Breech or Legion encounter - I'll blow through them and get disconnected. Friggin' yay...

Basically, I might have enjoyed this League. But, to be honest, it's the worst League experience I have ever had in PoE (XBox). Everything... sucks. Seriously - It sucks. Even though my Necro and even the Cyclone character are powerful, the friggin XBox can't handle the required performance without chugging to a standstill or disconnecting.

I spent two hours running diagnostics on my connection and internal network. It's pristine. You could stream five "Titanic" and two "Avatar" movies through that pipe and still have room for seven cat videos...

GGG polishes up the PC version as best as they can, the brown-wrapper's the console port and shoves it out with the hope that players will still come back.

You know what? The "Campaign" game runs just fine. All content, a breeze. End-game, where all the mobs and sparkly effects come into play is a dumpster-fire. And, when do players show their appreciation in terms of buying MTX? About midway through the start of a League.

And, that's before the crap hits the fan..

I'm never buying MTX before I hit Red Maps again. Nope... (I haven't bought any this League "on purpose." I did buy the Delve "NOT ON SALE FOR CONSOLES BECAUSE CONSOLE PLAYERS DON'T DESERVE IT" Stash Tab though.

Signed,

Bitter and Very Annoyed Consumer

PS - I don't care about RNG loot drops. That's RNG. I do care about a terrible marketplace, outrageously crappy economy ruled by bots and 'fixers, and the lack of access to gameplay due to what can only be described as "marginal" performance on XBox One. Meanwhile, my friend playing on the XBox One X is having one of his best Leagues ever. :)

PPS - Sorry for the mini-rant. :)

I have lvl 93, played much more than this lvl, since lot of deaths.
But droprate this league is terrible, 1 ex dropped. And so far best drops was 25c each.. Which total for i sold items was maybe around 200c(with oils)... Not counting sold currency like fusings)

Die to the overpriced items one ex is worth way less than an ex on pc.

The problem is either the droprate or the ridiculous prices the sellers set for their items (which is the main problem).

They should up the departs for console compared to pc.

I was getting butthurt about the league but im over it.

You can check my profile, I get to endgame in about 4-5 days kill uber elder set up my elder maps run delve etc...

GGG nerfed the drop rates on everything.

Everything.

Maps.

Currency.

Loot.

Anyone who says differently hasn't played enough to experience the difference.


That said, I've had some great drops this league, and that leaves me feeling really puzzled. The drops made me feel like I was playing a mobile game.

If you pay close attention, you can hear Tencent in the background whispering into GGG ear, they're saying " Reduce the drop rates so they have to play more, They wont know the difference. We can't sell them mtx if they're done in the first week".

The game is turning into a casino with flashy lights.

All the problems I've just talked about are being felt on PC just as bad. The xbox just can't keep up with it. The market makes our problems 100x worse.

the performance makes it worse.

the playerbase makes it worse.

GGG sold out to a chinese company and will do anything to push that mtx on us. Even if it means making the game boring as hell.




My advice to you, is to do what I'm doing... play the meta the first couple days of league (or until you can accomplish your goals). Then completely ignore the mtx, ignore the market and go back to the old theory crafting game we once loved. Make a build yourself. It doesn't need to hit maps it doesn't need to hit red maps, just start having fun and taking your time. GGG is pushing us to play the game a certain way, a way that has ruined the fun for alot of us. It's up to them as a company to make the fun things the obvious way to go but they're failing hard.

I won't buy another mtx from them until I see tencent back off.

@Avio Cast bro I agree with you 110%

I like to make sure to spend 100 to 200$ every league to support the devs like

jeff and chris Wilson, but I don't know whats happened, the game has totally

changed, it doesn't even feel like POE

My experience this league has honestly been more positive than negative overall:

1. I love the master overhaul, it is what has kept me playing longer and more. It feels great running my masters when I want to how I want to and where I want to.

2. I don't hate blight as much as many people, I think the overall pacing is mostly okay, I don't go zoom zoom and do 45 maps an hour, I am closer to 10-12 an hour and while the blights do slow me down they are not so far out of wack I don't want to do them.

3. I love summoners so that is actually why I am playing this league because I had intended to take a break and skip a league, the summoner changes are pretty awesome and a little OP (though I think everyone is typically overreacting to the FOTM being "OP"). The will adjust the level increases some but honestly summoners are generally not much more powerful then before, the biggest difference is not having to play Necro to get a lot out of them.

4. The drop rates of the blight maps are too low, my biggest problem is the maps drop a too low a tier for the map you are running, they should not drop with the normal "map rules" drop restrictions if you are only going to drop ~7 per 100 maps. They should be much more likely to drop at the map tier you are running than they are now due to the low drop rate.

That aside the blight map drops themselves I don't find too troubling, I have certainly run more blight maps then I have most other end game content from previous leagues I have engaged in.

5. The encounters themselves are a little to RNG reliant for me, most of the time blight encounters are faceroll, but some just seem nearly impossible to prevent the bears from going 2 feet to destroy them or ranged things spawning within range of the pump and immediately start shooting. The blight maps themselves are honestly the worse, my success rate is almost 100% reliant on the layout I get, I get something I have decent lines of sight, I get decent tower locations early when I can actually pay attention to them and I don't get a unique spawning 3 feet from the pump and I likely win with a full durability. When I don't it is a mess. I still succeed more often then I fail, but going 4 minutes of hectic fighting to get a fusing and a jewelers orb because a unique spawned to close and took my full pump durability out in a split second is not the most fun. The pacing of these encounters should give me some time to respond to how my defenses are holding up and split the fight into three waves giving me some actual time to engage with the towers and fill in gaps. You know like a TD game.

Blight maps are too rare, so I don't really know how the league is. They did this in legion too. You got to run a legion once a week if you played every day unless you bought from players... which you didn't if unless you have HH and 3 IL's.

Now you just need a good boss killer build who can *not die* and you can run the blight maps... you also must have the one X, because even with the X, your game lags SO HARD you have no control and likely will die and lose everything in the blight map. Its actually not worth doing.

if you bring a friend, you split the loot, again, making it not worth doing.

And where is the sporeguard? I don't see any on the board, or offline... does anyone have one? Maybe it's not dropping because no one's playing blight maps? I see them on PC for 8ex, so they should drop as much as eternity shroud (the way I think).

I've been able to put together a 50-60ex build, and a couple of 10ex builds. I mean... there's still ways to make money guys. I haven't had good drops either. I think.. .playing about every day for well over five hours a day, I've had five ex drops.

I got a few other drops here and there, but because of all that I HAVE to sell high. I can't discount. so I'm the guy who's declining offers and not changing my price. That's because it's my ONLY WAY to get money right now. the burden is on the buyer to find enough money to get this super rare item, which shouldn't be so rare, because no one is playing, and drops are locked behind league content, which is super rare and has a very high entry cost.

It's just bad game design. Maybe it has to do with trying to keep us playing. I play for totally different reasons. I'm not chasing drops. That would be stupid, especially in a league like this.

THEY NEED TO FIX ENCHANTS TO BE TRADABLE ORBS.

that's all. thanks. this league sucks. GGG, step up your game bros. I'm a huge fan.