EXALTED ORB Price Shenanigans [Expedition].170:1 Terrible patch = terrible economy. *shrugs*

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Spoiler

Spoiler

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BrettLee wrote:

1. How have you determined that GGG focuses on les than 1% of players? Is this an exercise in mental gymnastics?

2. What makes you think they don't care about the actual game experience? Can you reconcile this with your comment that they want the average player's money? Perhaps you can't because you are clueless? While you are at it, find me another 10 year old game with quarterly updates similar to POE.

3. Explain how bloat is an issue. When a player encounters a new mechanic for the first time, they have the option to learn it, or ignore it and learn about it later. POE has a lot of mechanics, build types, etc. etc, but the amount that you actually need to know to play the game isn't that deep. As new players learn the basics, they can start to engage with and learn different mechanics.

How does removing mechanics benefit the game? Should we remove delve, heist and <insert random mechanic> that at least a reasonable number of players enjoy? Just another baseless remark from. The depth and variety is part of the appeal of the game. The fact that players can continue to learn things after more than a day or two of playing the game is a pro, not a con.

4. Nerfing the most overpowered and meta skills alienates players? Thats a new one.

5. Ultimatum's player retention statistics are aligned with Ritual at the moment. Most leagues follow a similar trend. The one exception to this was Harvest, which had markedly lower retention, and the worst player retention out of any league released to date.

This is a long, seemingly baited post, but I will try to answer your questions, even though I dont believ they are in good faith, nor do I believe that you even want to consider many issues with the game as problems (for whatever reason)

1. If you have read the most recent manifesto's on their balance changes, it's hard to imagine anyone coming to a conclusion that their considerations are based on total player experience. Harvest is a good example, but it isnt the only one. Using TFT discord or Reddit item showcases as reasoning behind some of the crazy items available, shows the disconnect. Perhaps, at most, a couple thousand (likely less), used their guilds, discord, etc... to make outrageously OP items. Most players used Harvest as a way to fix average items to assist in gear progression, not spending dozens to hundreds on exalts, influence orbs, maven orbs, to cratf multiple x5 or 6 T1 gear. That's a total lie and misrepresentation of the playerbase.

Also with their statistical analysis on skill usage, they tend to look at what's most common at higher levels, which on its face seems fine. However they never detail what percentage of players make it to those benchmark levels. (70, 80, 90 etc..). So you end up having a double percentage analysis, which is faulty. If 15% of players make it to 90+ (totally made up), how is the analysis of that particular segment a good basis for wholesale balance changes of a particular skill? It's not reasonable.

2 & 3. These are pretty tied together. PoE's performance, visual clutter, skill effects, and texture issues are well documented. Even in extremely high end rigs (see Shroud's disbelief), the game is a nightmare.

As far as the bloat is concerned, you could easily invest 60-80 hours and reach level 90 without even touching Delve, Jun, Heist, Alva, and more. This doesnt even touch on the atlas & conquerors, Maven, Sirus, passives unlocks, ect. Again it seems like the game is providing choice, but all progression and balance is tied to multiple features. Map drops rates, crafting, currency & drop rates take into account all the previous league mechanics. It's too much, and they are unable to balance it.

4. We already touched on their flawed analysis of what they think the "meta" is. They look at the top end performance of skills without asking how many got there, or how successful those builds are without significant min/max. What ends up happening is they balance content off "meta" performance of the minority of the playerbase, and dont consider what those impacts have on the larger scale. Not everyone is capable of spending tons of currency, are experts on PoB and min/maxing, play the flask piano, etc. Every league is seemingly a knee jerk reaction to what they see (stream/reddit/forums), and less on what is actually happening. I dont see how significant changes to minions, then nerfing, then buffing, then nerfing again, is helpful. The same thing has happened to many skills, and leaves the average player wondering what the fuck is going on league to league.

5. Your analysis of league statistical performance is both flawed and misguided. If you are going to compare different league expansion sizes, at different time launches, to serve a particular narrative, that's fine by me, as it's not a winnable argument with the limited data we have. It's hard to even get a clear picture with COVID, bots, or game competition, and only grabbing data from Steam. What it really boils down to is revenue performance and how retention of actual players impacts this. We wont really know this for awhile yet. I have my suspicions that recent GGG development strategy is going to impact them negatively, but we will see.

For this league specifically, I will be interested in seeing the challenge level break down as that actually involves statistics for all players in the league.

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Sadaukar wrote:

Without any research I'd guess some youtubers made videos about how profitable Heists still are and now everyone and their mom is back to farming exalts in Heist.

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momonami5 wrote:

they are used for new style of crafting very good items.