What Happened with Items

I see you. And so do others. We see through your misdirects.

The real reason this all happend isn't some "oversight".


This is rehshape and recondition the costumers/target audience.

Behind closed doors i would imagine you are absolutely ecstatic that players like PoM and Empy's Group left. It's all according to plan.

WELL PLAYED Sir. Enjoy your money because your reputation is gone for good.

Also who knows .. maybe you slightly underestimated the fallout and the long-term impact on revenue all of this "magik" will have Mr. Wizard :)
Not my game anymore. | michaelstrangefoundationdotorg | r>=0
Senior Leadership

- Knows all aspects of the plans and capabilities of staff and teams
- Corollary of above, if not then make sure you do
- Question everything that you do not understand... understanding and synthesizing new solutions/products through that understanding is your job
- Communicate internally and externally to make sure that what your company plans to do is exciting for the customer and in line with what is being done internally
- Determine that your staff is in fact competent and desires to communicate openly to make sure the above happens
* If not the above, train them to the desired level of competency
* If not the above and untrainable, find staff members that can be competent
- Make sure your staff are always seeking betterment for themselves and the mission of the company
*Use metrics that determine whether the above is happening
*Pay special attention to external metrics and do not try to salve the message by internal massaging (sycophantic yes sirs or yessers)
- Understand that growth is not More of the Same, sometimes organic changes need to happen in the company
- Realize that you are not all knowing and in total control of a company that has changed organically and you have not
* * If not the above, get trained to the new level of competency
* * If not the above and untrainable, help find your replacement that can be competent

It appears that on the basis of the last several league starts and patches that GGG is having a difficult time keeping their Leadership growing with the company. In the end, it leads to inconsistent and disappointing performance and eventual total failure. How very unfortunate...
Thanks Chris for a really interesting and frank analysis, and for explaining the issues. I'm sure you've all had a heck of a week. I've been quietly (and slightly guiltily) really enjoying the league so far but the issues were noticeable and the improvements are welcome.

Loot
I'm not much of a juicer and still levelling but from an evening's play last night, non-league loot did indeed seem to be back to previous levels. No problems with item culling, thank you.

However something odd which I still don't quite understand from the post, I rarely run league content (latest or past) whilst levelling, certainly through the campaign, and this league had far less basic currency drop than usual. More than 25%, subjectively around 90% less scours, alchs, regals (and chaos) especially, having only 1-3 of each stashed at best without really spending. I was scrabbing around, vendor converting currency, and running blue maps except for atlas completion, unable to reroll gear or maps without spending chaos, and chaos recipe FTW. Hitting red maps post patches, things seem to be resolved so far. So I'm not sure if that's as a result of the 25% buff, or just having progressed past any problems.

Philosophy Two
This is great but I don't think GGG have leaned into this hard enough. From the league launch video I was hoping for one rare every few screens at most, with a more interesting fight and better loot. Without juice I'm still stacking up 3, 4, 5 rares on a regular basis, and many of them aren't dropping much of note. Most feel more like pacing control than a challenge or reward.

Philosophy Three
I think you've a tricky balance to find here, since twice as rewarding league content sounds just fine, but if it's twice the time for twice the reward, or is too rippy vs the XP penalty, there's no incentive to run league content either outside SSF for niche drops, over rolling another map. Even more so given buffed map boss drops. I think this needs to be moderately imbalanced in the favour of better drops for the league content (x2) versus time invested (x1.5 say). We have to run maps anyway for atlas and boss progression.

Beyond
Loss of juicing in Beyond is no problem for me since I never did it, but from the uninformed cheap seats, the mobs seem really excessively tanky, tainted currency doesn't seem good enough to justify Beyond at the moment (so I'm aborting my plans to play with it, with a bit of disappointment), and I'm a bit concerned for the more serious juicers who like something to spec into, this being PoE, rather than just stack rarity, quant and time. Speccing into things is fun. It feels like there could be room for a league mechanic which is stupidly hard but can be leant into and juiced to the extreme for those players.

Archnemesis
I've accepted that this probably isn't going anywhere, and I am enjoying the league, but in the spirit of giving feedback, I'm still not much of a fan. Particularly of the two common flavours of mod: damage/resistance buffs, and novelty mechanics. The rarer, more interesting and rewarding -Touched mods are comparatively fine, well telegraphed, and a lot more interesting.
Spoiler
None of the common mods are thematic with the monsters they appear on, they feel very arcadey, and out of sync with other PoE boss and mob mechanics as a result, and so they detract from the feel of the game for me. The flourescent yellow of rares doesn't help, though I appreciate its Diablo 2 origins, but is symptomatic of the same problem: they're not unique assets, they're a generic layer on top of existing hand crafted content. So it feels like I'm fighting Archnemesis, not playing PoE. They could almost have been implemented by another studio (compare DXHR's outsourced boss fights).

For me elites with damage/resistance buffs felt "okay" in D2 at the time because it was a different era and the team were shipping a boxed one time game, not delivering a leagues-long service, so expectations were lower. Also because of the radical simplicity of the game (and most games of the era) compared to PoE. Resistances and even outright immunities were acceptable because you could dual spec, or just skip the mob, since the good loot didn't come from rares anyway. We can't dual spec in PoE without spare affixes, gem slots and passive points. Damage/resistance buffs don't change our gameplay meaningfully since there's no strategy to employ.

The novelty mechanics are more vexatious than challenging. Many just seem to punish standing still and so lower DPS or slow looting, and they're very limited in number and so quite repetitive. Because they're not thematic, this all stands out far more than say red spikes from revenants or hails of death from miscreations, which I expect whenever I see them, learn over time and feel smarter (cough, relatively speaking) for knowing how to avoid.

I do have a suggestion, but hardly a practical one.
Spoiler
I think for such especially buff variants of monsters to feel like part of the game would need huge effort. Take all 1580 or so unique PoE monsters and split them into core groups. Design several unique variants for each group, larger champions, intended to be scattered amongst the packs and thematic with the monsters they're grouped up with. Design them like bosses. Give them heavily telegraphed, entirely dodgeable abilities and better AI than aggro radius, whether that's spawning more of the rank and file, buffing allies or cursing players, blocking retreat, or stepping in for a big hit. All of which are animated, slow and again suitably telegraphed, no offscreen rips or instant curses. Unlock their abilities progressively through the campaign and maps. Make them slow, and let players skip them, because they're tough, in exchange for missing out on rewards.

Archnemesis loot also has a few issues. 100 whetstones is about 400 Wisdom scrolls, or +/- a jeweller's orb. Perhaps (I imagine) this gets far, far better with juice. Flasks en mass great the first time, and perhaps their mods are rolled rare, but I haven't checked, though I probably should. The jewel stacks and occasional upgrades of any drop to a set of uniques though, are very nice.

Thanks again for the update. Take care out there.
Last edited by Genstein on Aug 26, 2022, 4:32:22 PM
Interesting line of events:

POINT 1
returned harvest - streamers is angry. "why people can have same items as us".
removed harvest (remove, aug to influenced items e.tc.) - streamers and rich people welcome the changes because return monopoly for craft.

POINT 2
next nerf harvest (current) - streamers is angry. "we can't craft items safetely". Oh wait. streamers are you srsly? i have interesting fact for you: crafters (who have MORE currency than you) have same opinion about you same as your about avg people from point 1. so when you was down to avg players - you angry. stop cry and learn to play pls.

NEXT LINE OF POINT:


POINT 1:
streamers can afford play 6 party ppl from start with a lot of investment and do deli 100% map with beyond and alva in first day. they are happy. but what about avg player? avg player have nothing. because you economic of game will fuck up in few days after start.

POINT 2:
nerf FREE LOOT - streamers angry. they still have more currency than avg players, but not a lot as same past time.


and i have 1 question after:

game created for avg players? or for streamers?

P.S. as avg players any changes of this league did not touch me. opposite - they up my currency count and items in first few days of league. im very happy with this changes of league mechanics. and hope future will be same where everyone is equal in possibilities. avg player can't afford go to 100% deli map in full party in first day.
Righteous Fire forever.
Just change it all like it was , [Removed by Support]
Last edited by Lisa_GGG on Aug 26, 2022, 4:38:47 PM
Reputation is good.

Btw: players like empy - must go out of games. because they have sense of self-importance higher than Everest.

what empy do? play a game, donate like other players and what? Ah. What: advertises game on twitch. SO WHY ALLOW HIMSELF LINE LIKE: "why should i sit in line with everyone" or "who are you and who am I"????????

ah. and what empy do more: use bugs and non game soft for play in game. and dont tell me "they send bug report" e.tc.
after report send - he CONTINUE use bug.
Righteous Fire forever.
still barely any loot, i struggle to get my alchs back that i use for my map, i cant alch my map which leads to not being able to progress my Atlas.
Rares take insanely long to kill and drop most of the time nothing except my patience with the game, not every build has Millions of DPS but obviously you already know cause you keep nerfing everyone to the ground except meta builds still stay meta cause they scale well and easy.
Last edited by JohnBregol on Aug 26, 2022, 4:29:22 PM
Loot feels still shit. Why does it feel like you (GGG) nerfed the outcome of vendoring yellow items? I was one of those SSF enjoying boomers who even when I played trade league, I tried not to be forced to buy bulks of alchs and scours to reroll my maps.

I still loot all portals full inventory yellow items and vendor them.

New is, that I cant buy Kirac Maps aynmore neither can I alch/scour my Maps. Its still fucked up. Your today's buff - Not enough of a difference to the fucked up loot from a day before.

If this isnt going to change, you can write a "what happened to PoE"-Thread instead of "what happened to items" in the next weeks.
Thank you for clarifying the situation.

I hope there will come fixes asap, I don't get any currency from Maps, no one wants to trade anymore and even killing your beloved Archnemesis Mobs influenced by a lot of essences drop only shit.

Sitting in T16 with 20 Chaos, can barely drop anything.

AN influenced by 6 Essences drops me 6 Essences and a Rare Ring. This is what I get for 6 Minutes of tedious fighting. Influenced by a shitload of essences, but I didn't even drop a damn Chaos Orb, but "some other Players" are dropping 50 Divines? How is that remotely balanced, fair or fun?

Fix the League before its dead. We NEED CURRENCY, WE NEED LOOT

Pls Fix 32:9 btw
Just put the old harvest back and 90% of the complaining will stop.

One good league and everything will be forgiven, since GGG staff works very hard to add new content in the game.

Best regards
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