What Happened with Items

I will share what my philosophies are as a player, in hopes GGG realize the gap. Please feel free to add more to the list.

Philosophy 1: My time as a player is inherently valuable.

It makes sense that if you juice your maps, you get more rewards. We get this. We agree with it. It benefits the 0.1% more than anyone, and I will never be one of those players. But they spend time and resources and are also experts on the game, so they yield more returns. It makes sense, it's fair and it's logical.

However, if we talk about "more investment, more rewards", my time investment in the game is the biggest investment I am making. I want to be rewarded just by the virtue of playing the game. The base content of the game should feel rewarding. I should be able to sustain my maps, alchs, basic currency, etc. simply because I'm playing the game and I want to continue playing the game. Nothing feels worse than running 3-4 rare red maps and having to downgrade to blue yellow maps because you ran out of red maps and alchs.

Again, not saying fully juiced content should be less rewarding. Just saying that the base game should always feel rewarding and should not hinder my progress in maps, regardless of how juicing works.

Philosophy 2: This is a game about power fantasy.

Whether rare mobs are too strong or not is a secondary discussion. The reason I play this game is because it feels good. It feels powerful. FFS, I am a god slayer in this game. That is the basic premise of any ARPG: power. Yes, if there is no challenge, any game feels dull. It's the designer's core responsibility to find that balance. If I have to run away from a random rare mob, you have failed that design. And if the mobs are so strong that I cannot even run away from them, if they keep chasing me throughout the map and I need to logout, you have failed miserable. Let me feel powerful.

So, whatever you do about monster power, AN mobs, league mobs, etc., please remember this game is about power fantasy.

Philosophy 3: I came to POE for its talent tree, for the build diversity.

That is what hooked me into the game. That's why every public streamer goes "woooaa" when they see it for the first time. It's a core selling point of POE. Stop butchering it.

Yes, there are people that play the same build every league. But there is also a significant number of people that play a different build every league. We love it. Every time you are killing a build archetype because you want to "balance" the game, you are making it a bit more difficult for me to come back to the game. I want to play every league. I even want to play multiple times each league. I'm just not going to do it with the same build, through the same acts. Make build diversity a core priority.



I feel GGG haven't touched any of these points in their recent posts, and I hope this helps find a balance

byeee

@DarKMooNKiller, you right man!

GGG i want my 4k 144hz TV back!

"

Philosophy One: Reward mechanisms should scale properly with Item Quantity and Rarity bonuses

Currently, they really don't scale at a rate proportionate to the amount invested. Maybe you should put some effort into that.

"

Philosophy Two: Players should fight fewer Rare Monsters at once, but they should be more challenging and rewarding

Currently, there's only ONE rare worth fighting (Solaris-touched)... so no one is engaging with any of them, if they don't have to.

"

Philosophy Three: There shouldn't be a large gap between the difficulty and rewards of league content and base game content

Technically accurate in most cases, since the rewards are absolutely garbage across the entire system. The only exception at the moment, is chest rewards from Heist, Legion, Blight, and a few other marquee examples.


If one were to compare loot to a Sin graph with an average line drawn in it, it feels like you lowered the frequency between peaks and valleys substantially, and made the peaks FAR more narrow then the valleys. It feels absolutely punishing to play this game right now... and subsequently, its not fun.


IF YOU EVER NEEDED EVIDENCE AS TO WHY YOUR MASOCHISTIC DREAM VERSION OF HARD MODE WAS SOMETHING THAT NO ONE SHARED WITH YOU... YOU NOW HAVE IT. THE BACKLASH YOU ARE SEEING DUE TO THESE CHANGES IS IN-LINE WITH THE BACKLASH YOU GOT FROM EVEN MENTIONING THAT STUPID HARD MODE IDEA. YOU CLEARLY HAVE NO CLUE AS TO HOW TO READ THE ROOM.
(This action you've taken feels a lot like a certain gaming convention where a certain mobile game was introduced instead of the pc-platform title the community all wanted and was looking forward to.)

"

VIPER258 wrote:

"

InspireLight wrote:

Very well written. Thank you, Chris, for doing your absolute best. Your game and vision really help me have fun and enjoy the game bit by bit. I know there are many things that players do not like, and, in a way, their voiced opinions and views are helpful to keep making this game awesome, and yet I on the other hand feel as well that everything is excellent and that I can trust everything you have done. I am just the single minority, and this comment is not as important as most in here, but just wanted to thank you Chris and voice as well that I am truly so grateful for everything you are doing for us. I am patient and understanding and again truly grateful for creating such an awesome game.

Probably my only concern is how you emphasized being the PoE1 director vs the PoE director. I really hope that when PoE2 comes out that you will still keep being around for us. We all love you and support you in our own way. Thank you so very much.

Geez dude, you're really kissing some ass today. The fact that you say that everything in the game is fine, shows that you don't know much about the issues at hand or you don't care to know about them.
How do you expect people to react when you give them something good, take it away, not replace it with something equally rewarding. But then are surprised that they get upset about it.

As for the trust everything he has done part, I would comment on that but insta ban would be headed my way.

Thank you for taking the time to express your feelings as well. Also feeling grateful towards you for voicing them feelings. I am not as experienced, supportive and knowledgeable in the game for more than a little over a year, but I am so thankful and hopeful that things will keep getting better and better. Mistakes have been made, apologies have been extended and Leagues will keep getting better and better. Some drops here and there, some Leagues will be preferred more than others by me, but GGG is doing the best they can. GGG has my whole support m_^.^_m

Again, thanks for your comment.

revert the game back to 3.17 and start over from that point on. the last 2 patches have made the game completely unfun to play. everyone i know is quitting.

I have not had that much luck in game yet. However, with that being said I am not trying to burn myself out within the first month of League. With taking it slow and learning more of the crafting mechanics and build development. Keep working at this and I am looking forward to PoE2.

If you want to keep your players and further develop this game based on what your community wants (which I certainly hope you do), item quantity needs to be set back to how it was before. I quite literally refuse to go on this game without any other goal as to sell my items at the moment. People trying to level and get through acts with summoners are struggling, which needs to be fixed. What other point to have an ascendancy called Necromancer if its completely useless? At least some of the other lesser-used ascendancies such as juggernaut and gladiator have some fun things to mess with. But after the nerf to minions and Necro's ascendancy, it serves literally no purpose so people that enjoy playing it simply cannot play it anymore. Harvest lifeforce needs to be doubled in my opinion. I'm full specced into it and its still pretty bad. Reforge keep suff/pre also needs to have a spot on the harvest bench again. Crafting has become a complete lottery at this point. Not fun at all and hardly rewarding.

I'm really just stating the obvious and what the rest of your community is saying. These things need to be fixed.

I'm also saying these things not because I hate GGG at all. Quite the opposite. Love this game, have around 2000 hours (which admittedly isn't very high compared to a lot of players who dedicate their lives and whatnot) on it and I'd love to see you guys take off. But frankly, just don't think that this past patch did it for anyone.

One last thing, I notice (and many other people probably have as well) that these patches have been made really just based around the top 1%-5% of your players which is pretty ridiculous. There's going to be the players with insane builds, currency, etc. Thats just expected after playing the game for 9 years.

Kinda just said what Path of Matth said in his video but he really just hit it that well ig.

-please don't fix( now so good)
-only increase the reward of the lake
-because we are in the lake of kalandra

"

toyomatt84 wrote:

"

Philosophy One: Reward mechanisms should scale properly with Item Quantity and Rarity bonuses

Currently, they really don't scale at a rate proportionate to the amount invested. Maybe you should put some effort into that.

"

Philosophy Two: Players should fight fewer Rare Monsters at once, but they should be more challenging and rewarding

Currently, there's only ONE rare worth fighting (Solaris-touched)... so no one is engaging with any of them, if they don't have to.

"

Philosophy Three: There shouldn't be a large gap between the difficulty and rewards of league content and base game content

Technically accurate in most cases, since the rewards are absolutely garbage across the entire system. The only exception at the moment, is chest rewards from Heist, Legion, Blight, and a few other marquee examples.


If one were to compare loot to a Sin graph with an average line drawn in it, it feels like you lowered the frequency between peaks and valleys substantially, and made the peaks FAR more narrow then the valleys. It feels absolutely punishing to play this game right now... and subsequently, its not fun.


IF YOU EVER NEEDED EVIDENCE AS TO WHY YOUR MASOCHISTIC DREAM VERSION OF HARD MODE WAS SOMETHING THAT NO ONE SHARED WITH YOU... YOU NOW HAVE IT. THE BACKLASH YOU ARE SEEING DUE TO THESE CHANGES IS IN-LINE WITH THE BACKLASH YOU GOT FROM EVEN MENTIONING THAT STUPID HARD MODE IDEA. YOU CLEARLY HAVE NO CLUE AS TO HOW TO READ THE ROOM.
(This action you've taken feels a lot like a certain gaming convention where a certain mobile game was introduced instead of the pc-platform title the community all wanted and was looking forward to.)

You've got it right

The game has been going downhill for a while. Probably since after harvest league. Delirium league still had issues with overtuning back then but still was a overall a successful league. This league has shown to be their worst league they've ever had and part of that is the player base finally had enough. The loot drops have become a joke and while they keep trying to post that they fixed it it's not good and there's actually videos showing that decrease and the loot they actually get which is really bad often dropping nothing more then a transmutation at most. Crafting got so bad that the only effective crafting was essence and fossils. Part of the problem is GGG's push to slow the game down. They've messed every league up they tried to do that. Harvest was a good example of a league a lot of people hated for that. To be fair the issues of last league were overtuning and degen on the ground but the league was playable for most if not all was fun rewarding otherwise. That ls the type of league that would be great overall but what was bringing it down was overtuned enemies. You got people writing "power fantasy" but hate to break it that's exactly what that overtuning was and that wasn't good. On the contrary they could have buffed map bosses a bit as they were becoming a joke and weren't rewarding but end game ended up even bring in more challenging bosses where you needed to decently managable to fight them.

Furthermore they didn't make minion builds better but worse. They were already getting to be high management builds reliant on requiring survivability of player and minions but even the gear was so pretty hectic. Take a lot of those helmets as example. You don't have room for anything that provides survivability. Survivability has gotten worse and worse that many builds ended up only being able to rely on defiance banner as most survivability skills had been drastically nerfed.

The loot and skills have been the big issues of this league. Though it's been building up also for a long time as well and why every league is notably losing it's playerbase. The people creating defenses aren't helping and generally don't know what they're talking about nor the problems with the current state of the game.

On the contrary arch nemesis mods and harvest crafts are now starting to go in the right direction.

Yet while there is a lot of these so called "I know what I'm talking about" people defending this like a guy stating he owns a bussiness in game develop etc. Seemed to know squat btw. I keep making those kinds of friends because everyone seems to want to be in game development. :P Only one I know who was worth their salt worked with 2K and actually stated the issue for him was the company ignoring their own employees and customers hence many of the games could be way better and end up poorly done. Big companies like Square-Enix actually came out to say in the past that when FF14 first failed and they nearly went bankrupt the issue was they were ignorant to the playerbase and tbh a lot of companies have become like that. Telemarketing will ignore it's customers as they'll use them being angry to end the call or they'll manipulate the conversation. Meaning they get away with faulty products. In terms there is no excuse for a company. I mean they need to know the stress that comes with their career and deal with it. The customer has the right to be angry and keeping those customers means meeting those needs and keeping them happy.

Challenge isn't being lost in the game with Maven and Ubers and such btw but many of those aren't even getting touched by the player base either as how the game is getting managed either.