What We're Working On

Hey Gang,

Probably too late in the thread to have anyone from GGG reading but here goes anyway.

Thank you for removing the guard-killing-raises-alert thing. It was not great, but that's really only a half measure to fixing Heist. Fixing this helps kill an unhealthy gameplay loop, but doesn't fix that Heist just isn't all that fun during the actual heist itself.

During a Heist you go in, grab every chest you can fit into the alert bar, hit the big thing at the end, and get out. That's the loop. In that process no decisions you make affect the difficulty of getting out at the end, no decisions affect your risk vs reward, and there is no room to make on the fly decisions about how much more or less risk you want to take on. You will always take the labeled chests over unlabeled ones. The closest thing to managing any level of anything is if you clear out the patrols or not (which you now always will because there is no alert penalty for doing so).

I think that the problem is that we need things happening in the heist that affect the difficulty of the escape portion in a meaningful way. My suggestion would be to have the difficulty of the escape be multiplied by the level of the alert before activating the escape phase. This would mean that each chest we open adds to the end difficulty in a visible way, and gives us an increased reward at an increased risk. Its a decision you can make moment to moment, and gives us a reason to sometimes not try to grab every chest.

The guards still need tweaks by the way. It doesn't really work to not have guards generate any alert level. I think that instead of granting alert level on death, they should grant alert level for every 1-2s you're in combat with them (adding 0 alert if killed before the first alert tick). This both thematically makes sense (the longer you're in combat the more likely someone is to notice), and still gives us a reason to avoid patrols.

I am a relatively new player to PoE, MM was my first league. Its definitely a complicated game and requires a fair bit of actual thinking in order to get decent at it. I am a bit on the older side of your PoE base, I played D1, D2 & D3 on release and loved them (D3 was lacking tbh). PoE fills that hole and I will keep supporting PoE whenever possible.

That being said, Heist is an excellent release. I loved the stealth aspect of it and had to change my build around a bit in order to survive the content. I am now trying to figure out a new character in order to efficiently complete more Heists.

The last "restartless patch" left me disappointed. Specifically, the alert level change. Heists went from Stealthy planned missions, to faceroll. It left me wondering what the hell happened - there's even Heist Gear Suffixes that are basically useless now? Wat.

I can understand the possibility it was reversed this hard until it is properly fixed at a later date, and I sure hope it is. At least give us some sort of actual challenge regarding the stealthiness of Heists. Give us some sort of thought process involved in Heisting.


TLDR:
Alert change was overkill.
Less Zoom-Zoom, more thinky.

The steel skills feel great to use, but I wish there was something I could do to influence Call of Steel in some way. I think a little passive tree support would go a long way. (Edit: Should have noticed the jewel existed. Still wish for a tiny bit more)

I think there's probably a happy middle ground for gaining Alert from killing Heist mobs. Maybe just have it be specific marked patrols? A couple of the mobs do this, like, red ring pulse thing? I think having that raise alert level if it hits you would be very fair. It does feel a LOT more relaxed now, but maybe erring toward too relaxed.

Love this league idea!

Looking forward to the changes!

1.Slaying Monsters Increasing The Alert Level
We killed this. It's not a thing anymore.

It was fun and intriguing. But rewards was a bit weak for that type of risk. Now it is too hard to fail heist.


2.Explode on Death
Two Heist monsters explode on death. The more problematic one deals too much damage which has, and is again being, reduced, made conditional and will have its visual telegraphing examined.

I lost character because of that shit.
It was 50 lvl heist and my character did maps already. Nothing deal dmg at all. But one thing just one shot full hp to 0.
Would be better if ggg kill explode on death, but save (1) risk/reward.

Now heist feel a bit "like nothing happen at all". Mobs try to stop you, but they have no chance. Maybe in future ggg can add special heists mode where old mechanic work? Or just prefix/suffix. The more options the better :)

3. Enduring cry still not counting normal foes often. Fix that please. Enduring cry feel so bad (if you dont have urgent orders with new quality or cry wolf).
Before 3.11 enduring cry was so much better than now, it worked on normal foes too!

I almost never post on these forums, but I just have to rant I suppose. I had a lot of expectations from heist, and game performance aside, I had a lot of fun with it. There was planning, I had to stop and take my time with certain things, along with thinking about what I should and shouldn't loot to best estimate if I can reach the objective in time.

Now?

That's a little dead, with the reduced alarm and removal of alarm rise on kill. Doesn't really make sense. It's now like a map with extra steps. I know other people have said this before, but it feels a bit redundant to go in, kill everything, loot everything, and just leave. There's no incentive for me to stop mapping or even invest real currency into the contracts lol. If anything, t13-t16 are often more rewarding (by far) due to normal maps being able to interact with core mechanics too, like delirium, temple, etcetera.

The story for heist is phenomenal. Voice Acting? Superb. Characters? Wonderful and Immersive with varying and sometimes hilarious personalities. This is a game though. I know GGG got backlash because people felt punished for not being able to zoom everywhere, and kill things as they please. I thought that was the point though. To me it seemed like a real cope out, as without even a full week going by, it's been effectively gutted.

Of course I still play for the story and characters, and I still enjoy the idea of Grand Heists, but it seems a bit insincere to change things so quickly. People will scream, and rant (like me), but let things adjust and take their time first. First impressions won't necessarily be the last. And who knows, maybe i'll change my mind and find something else fun with it later on. For now, though, I just wanted to post.

Keep doing a good job, regardless.

"

Slaying Monsters Increasing The Alert Level
We killed this. It's not a thing anymore.

Unfortunately, this change seems to have also killed the identity and theme of the content. There is no longer any consequence to being spotted by guards or patrols. This takes out the previous on the spot decision making players had to make. Planning to balance out how many guards you can take out while still grabbing chests and getting into rooms while also having enough alert to make it to the end was very fun and encouraged a more 'stealthy' approach that the league's theme was going for.

All of the previous changes with the whole stealth rework affecting detection radius is now rendered pointless as you can get spotted by every single guard in the heist with zero consequence. The previous playstyle of heists made it so that every run was a bit different, and heists wouldn't go exactly as planned for those rushing in.

While I do agree that the raising of alert might have been tuned a bit too high, I still think that even reducing this value by half or finding a better balance is much more engaging for the league than just removing this altogether. It was clear that the design of these heists were made to have a bit of stealth in mind as the patrols give clear audio queues in the general direction of where they are. This now turns heists into a "grab chests in map and go" system rather than getting in quiet and trying to steal as much as possible without making too much commotion.

Hopefully a better balance with guard kills and alert levels can be found and this change isn't a permanent one as this also ends up ruining a lot of the implemented voice lines and reactions of the new characters the team have put in and really kills the intensity that some of these contracts and blueprints have provided in the past trying to get to the end in time.

Dead league. Alert level was the whole thing about heists. Of course it needed a review and some fixes, it was too punishing. But there are many ways to tweak the mechanics of the league, and you instead have chosen to completely erradicate it. What's the point now? It feels like doing maps, but without a further planning, nor unlocking special bosses or anything.

This league was fresh and different. Hard, but different. Now it's just "more of the same". Another zum-zum league.

Regarding the new skills. I was excited to try out crackled lance. I made it to about level 40 & it felt very underwhelming. Looked at some other players using it that were farther along & saw pretty much everyone had stopped using it & re-rolled which is what I did. I ended up going ED contagion instead. Usually new skills feel way better than this. I always try to go with a new skill build. Its just not powerful enough & feels clunky. Visually it looks great which was part of the appeal.

Did they said they are gonna fix so the new uniques can be put into the unique stach tab? I cannot put in one of the new uniques? or is it already fixed?