PoE 3.19 Feedback: The Kalandra Calamity

I'm a long time PoE player with a habit of beating all endgame content and completing 40 challenges on my own merit in every league. Here's my feedback after finishing the Kalandra league. Not claiming to speak for anybody but myself.

Warning: Long text with a TL;DR at the end.

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According to the published numbers, PoE 3.19 broke the anti-record for player retention. A whole lot of people got excited about this league after hearing the announcement. And then most of them got extremely disappointed by what they saw after the launch and quit within a week. Let's call it the Kalandra Calamity. It was not the first of its kind, just the most recent and probably the worst to date. But this general pattern keeps repeating with almost every league since PoE 2 was announced. And it may lead to a much larger disaster if the hyped launch of PoE 2 goes the same way.

So, what happened? And why? And what can be done to fix it? Here's what I think...


Lake of Kalandra

The announcement was great. The hype was real. We were going to meet the legendary Kalandra! Surely, there would be a lot of great lore. And legendary rewards. Surely. Absolutely. Right??

Umm...

Kalandra turned out to be a bird that says one line and flies away. She is trapped in that lake somehow. She wants our help but doesn't ask for it. There is some terrible "truth" about it, to the point that the people who discovered "the truth" burned themselves alive in order to erase all knowledge of Kalandra and the lake. But now that we are here, she doesn't even interact with us. The lore gives no answers, only some vague teasers that will probably never lead anywhere.

There is nothing terrible there either. Unless you mean the rewards. The ones who found this place before us saw it exactly like it was on day 1 of this league. With chests dropping nothing of any value, metamorphs and breachlords dropping nothing at all, the terribly overtuned Beyond/Scourge dropping an armourers scrap, etc, etc. No wonder they burned themselves alive.

Seriously, did anybody test this before the release? I mean, one run of the lake would show exactly how bad it was. It was impossible to miss. It boggles my mind how anybody could OK releasing league content that has zero rewards. What the hell is going on?

One might argue that the main reward and the purpose of this whole thing is the mirrored jewelry. Then the lake should consist of one tile with the random mirror plus an occasional rare ethereal mirror of a random power level. But if we are to spend time there doing something other than looking for the mirror then our time should be rewarded.

After multiple patches, the Lake is much better now. The currency chests actually drop currency. The bosses drop uniques. But more improvements are still needed:

- Most non-currency chests are pointless. Either replace them all with currency or give them a chance to drop something actually valuable. Gems: double-corrupted or exceptional ones. Armour/weapons: synthesized, fractures, well-rolled, etc similar to Ritual. Maps: high tier, guardian/slayer/synth, 8-mod corrupted.

- Reflection of Kalandra is way too rare. I've finished all grind challenges, that's a LOT of maps. Almost all of them T16. In every map I've interacted with the league mechanic. And in an entire month of playing I've found that tile ONCE. That's insane. It needs to be easier to find.

- Metamorph must drop catalysts. Its entire reason for existing is catalysts. It serves no other purpose. At least one of the rewards must be catalysts. And then the rest can be random (including more catalysts).

- Delirium: It doesn't work with the Lake and its typical layouts, without mods and Atlas passives. It's just a waste of a tile. Maybe make it apply a permanent 20% delirium?

- Even after the changes, the Beyond/Scorge tile is by far the most dangerous and unrewarding. It's completely out of line, it's on a totally different level of difficulty compared to all other tiles. And all you get for killing the boss is some cheap currency. It needs to be nerfed a lot more, it needs to drop a lot more currency, and it should be rare currency too.

The mechanic itself is fine. Rings/amulets with randomly increased/decreased mods are an interesting idea. I like the idea of adding it to the core game. But it needs some more work. Atlas passives perhaps?

Also, the immersion-breaking "Itemise" needs to be changed to "Take the Tablet".


Harvest

I can't help but feel that some of the designers at GGG actually hate the players. Maybe they've read too much reddit and started resenting the toxic community there? Can't really blame them if that's true. But I have no explanation to some of the recent changes that are outright malicious. And the way the team has been communicating with the player base. Something bad is going on.

For example, Harvest. Removing dozens of useful crafts sent the crafting back to the stone age. Whoever did this knew pretty damn well that the players would be VERY upset. Yet they did it. Like an evil genie granting a wish in a way that makes you regret ever asking. Many players, including myself, asked for a change that would remove the need to use a third party service to buy the crafts. Somebody at GGG used that as an excuse to eviscerate the whole thing. And posted this pearl:

"

We are also aware that there is a lot of disappointment around certain Harvest Crafts being removed. Previously, Harvest Crafting was balanced by how difficult it was to get the crafts that you want. Now that crafts are tradeable, Harvest's power was reduced to be more in line with other crafting methods. We understand that there is a call for us to bring those crafts back but it isn't really possible while allowing Harvest to remain tradeable.

While this isn't exactly what you want to hear, I can say that this issue was pushed very hard during discussions to see if any compromise could be made. Harvest's crafting potential without being gated by rarity is just too high.

"Now that crafts are tradeable" - ARE YOU FOR REAL?! You can't seriously pretend that you didn't know that Harvest crafts were tradeable all this time. You didn't change that at all. Don't insult our intelligence with a lame excuse like this.

"Harvest Crafting was balanced by how difficult it was to get the crafts that you want" - so make them just as difficult to get using the new system. You have full control over the prices. Something was priced at X amount of currency on TFT. Make it cost X amount of currency to buy the required lifeforce. Or simply add a cost in whatever currency (Divine, Exalt, Chaos, w/e) to the lifeforce cost.

Some of the removed crafts were not even hard to find. Reroll-Keep-Affixes wasn't very rare. Craft Jewel Implicit was not rare at all. Why were they REMOVED?? Bring them back!

To add an insult to an injury, the person responsible for the removal of these crafts "accidentally" failed to include any mention of it in the pre-league balance manifesto or even the patch notes. I don't believe in such accidents, especially given the mocking tone of the response quoted above. It was done intentionally, to spite the players. And I hope that there will be consequences for the responsible party. Destroying Harvest crafting was one of the major reasons behind the record loss of player base.

Fixes:
1. Bring back the removed crafts. Attach currency costs based on how rare each craft was before the change.
2. Make sure that each plot spawns at least 1 rare monster. Dropping zero lifeforce is unacceptable.
3. Increase the drop rate of Sacred Blossom. It's currently way too rare. Alternatively, remove the Sacred Lifeforce cost from some of the crafts.


Monster drop changes

An absolutely massive sweeping change across the entire game that affects every aspect of it goes live without any mention in the patch notes. No early warning Manifesto post either. Wow. Just Wow. Apparently, Chris has to personally check on everything. And if he doesn't proof read the patch notes - things like this happen. But unlike the murder of Harvest, this doesn't look like an intentional "FU" to the players. More like a failure in communication and/or lack of testing. At least the tone of the dev post on the subject was very different.

But the most interesting part about that post is not the details of the change but the explanation why it was done. And that's the part that makes me worry about the future of this game.

"

...Path of Exile is a game about opting-in to more difficulty in exchange for more rewards. You can roll your maps to be harder or add sextants to them. You can play with additional party members...

Wait, what?! Adding party members makes the game more difficult?? Are we talking about the same game? Aurabots, cursebots, a multitude of synergies between different builds - adding extra party members almost always makes the game easier. Some extra hp on the monsters is nothing compared to the benefits of a party. You are rewarding players for making the game easier! Your "Philosophy One" fails right there.

"

Rewards should be set appropriately for the increased difficulty of these rare monsters.

What diffuculty is appropriate for a monster that drops 50 Divines per kill? Something along the lines of fighting Uber Exarch and Uber Eater at the same time, right? OR some random "Solaris-touched" Archnemesis rare in a T14 map that doesn't even do anything special.

Is this an out of season April Fools joke? How does it work with your posted "philosophies"? Sure, a Mirror can randomly drop from any trash monster. Or an expensive divination card. But you can't see it in advance, or predict it. It's pure luck. As opposed to seeing a monster with the specific mod and knowing what it's going to drop. And needing to bring an MF culler to get the most out of it - another disgusting consequence of this change.

The stated goal was to distribute the rewards more evenly across the content by moving them off the specific league monsters. And now they are even more concentrated on a fewer number of specific monsters. This makes no sense. Changes like this make me really worry about PoE 2.

I don't know how to fix this particular thing other than reversing it. One thing for sure: get rid of the "XXX-touched" loot conversion. It's completely wrong. Killing a rare monster should never be nearly as rewarding as killing an endgame boss. Declaring the reward type in advance forces the MF culler meta. Fuck that! Say No to MF cullers!


Archnemesis

We've been "live testing" this crap for 3 leagues now, and it's still terrible. It's been doing nothing but ruin the gameplay. There are way too many cases where Archnemesis doesn't work with other league mechanics: Blight, Delve, Heist, Ritual, etc etc etc.

Just limit it to 2 mods already! 1 defensive and 1 offensive. It's been proposed many times during the last 3 leagues. Multiple mods of the same type don't stack well. It's the source of all problems with Archnemesis. Near-unkillable tanky rares with multiple defensive mods, or ultra-deadly ones with multiple offensive mods - everybody hates them, they make people quit the game. You keep nerfing individual mods again and again. How many more leagues do you need to realize that the problem is not the mods themselves but their combinations? Just eliminate the stacking and save everybody's time.


Testing

This happens at the start of almost every league. Something is ridiculously overtuned and 1-shots players. Something lacks rewards, or is way too rewarding. Most of those things are completely obvious and could be found immediately if anybody tested them. Which means they were simply not tested. How is that possible? The usual explanation is that it was tested, but then a change was made just before the release.

I'm sure you are familiar with the concept of Design Lock. N days before the release, the "release candidate" version of the game is frozen, tested extensively, and no changes are allowed other than bugfixes.

Why isn't GGG doing this? Why do you keep making last minute changes that often invalidate all testing and lead to massive problems after the release?

Stop releasing untested content!


Big changes for weird reasons

Some of the recent design decisions and the stated reasoning behind them are just mind-boggling.

For example, the Divine/Exalt swap. For a decade, the economy of this game was based on the established hierarchy of currencies. And now somebody decided to shake it up. Why? Because Divine orb's natural drop chance was actually lower than Exalted orb's. If that really bothers you, why don't you simply increase the Divine's drop chance to match its value? But no, let's change everything, upset the whole economy, screw over everybody in the permanent leagues (yes, they still exist!) - for no good reason. And of course you forgot about the divination cards. Now we have a dozen of cards that used to be expensive that lost all value. People who spent money creating them must be very happy.

Another one: the change to Beyond. Watching Chris explaining this one in the podcast with ZiggyD was just awkward. Did anybody know that the old Beyond demons were re-colored Act 2 bandits? No? Why is that? BECAUSE NOBODY CARES! They looked like demons, that was good enough. But Chris listed that as a reason for the Beyond/Scourge remake, multiple times. Like it was something important, an actual justification for spending time and resources. Just how out of touch can you be?

Things like these scare me. Making major changes for no real reason. Fixing things that were not broken - and actually breaking them.


The road to...

One year ago, after the massive (and poorly received) changes in 3.15-16, we were told that we are basically testing new things for PoE 2. It looks like you want PoE 2 to be diffrent enough from PoE 1 simply to justify calling it PoE 2. But there was nothing wrong with PoE 1. People were still enjoying it. Now you are breaking, nerfing, changing it into a new game. And there is no guarantee that this new game is going to be as good as the old one. I'm afraid that it will be worse. And that will be the end of it.


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TL;DR

This is the worst league ever. The game is heading towards a major disaster. Some practices inside GGG need to change to prevent it.

+1

I don't think the league it's self is that bad... I find my self wishing there was 3 tiles I could favor so they show up more often tho.


I think mostly it has to do with the game..... "balance" as chris wilson calls it....
It took me over a day to get though the main campaign... where before it would take me around 5-8 hours to get to maps.

Plus they added in "arch nemesis" making a game people were ALREADY saying was too hard even more hard.... on top of spreading every single possible debuff to EVERY SINGLE MAP.

And then of course crafting....
I don't think it is that the devs hate the players... but if you listen to chris willsion talk about crafting he doesn't think you should be able to craft perfect gear - he calls harvest league a mistake
(so I think they are going to keep removing harvest crafts from the game until it is no longer in the game)
((Even though harvest was one of the best things to happen to PoE - and you SHOULD be able to craft perfect gear))

By "the worst league ever" I mean the current state of the game as a whole, not the Lake itself. The league mechanic is OK, just needs work. But what they have been doing with the game since 3.15 (except for the Atlas rework in 3.17) is just awful.

"

Kelvynn wrote:

By "the worst league ever" I mean the current state of the game as a whole, not the Lake itself. The league mechanic is OK, just needs work. But what they have been doing with the game since 3.15 (except for the Atlas rework in 3.17) is just awful.

oh ok, yah I feel the same then.
It sucks that this league and expedition seemed like good leagues.... but the over all state of the game is hot garbage that no one wants to play and it gets blamed on the league mechanic instead of "the balance" of the game. :(

+1
well written

+1

+1 kelvynn

Exactly my thoughts

Respect