3.20 Balance Manifesto: Eldritch Altars

folks lowballing this nerf really don't understand how heavily this is gonna impact eldritch currencies in both SSF and trade leagues. You could get dozens of Grand currency from one map by running double keystones, it was a good risk vs reward decision. Reaching the point where you could do it efficiently without getting killed was a meaningful reward for players who put in the effort to make a character strong enough to handle reds with 4+ altars and both keystones allocated

More aspirational content is literally always better than less, if people have to think about whether to play it safe or risk running out of portals trying to run it before they're fully capable that's good, watering down actual meaningful decisions like this is the straight-up opposite of what y'all are always saying you want

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Mainoffender wrote:

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PoorDecisionsTV wrote:

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Boss Rushing
Players currently have an incentive to skip past all regular map monsters and kill the map boss first. The motivation for doing so is that Altars which offer rewards affecting the map boss are less desirable. By killing the boss first, you eliminate these options from your map altars, which makes them more rewarding.

Uhhhhh sort of.

The points you get are based on the number of kills and their difficulty, right? Monsters that are killed during one altar show up in the next altar.

If you kill the boss first, the rest of the altars will be more challenging and more rewarding, resulting in a greater number of points to spend when you're done, regardless of what rewards are offered.

There is a still a reason to rush the boss first, then backtrack to finish the rest of the altars after.

wtf are u talking about. are u talking about ritual?? cause this is not about ritual, its eldritch altars....

Hey listen, it's entirely possible that I am an idiot, ok.

"This is one of those cases where the most efficient and rewarding gameplay strategy undermines the expected gameplay loop and encourages players to do things that aren't really fun"
GGG now decides what's if fun or not.

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degas wrote:

"This is one of those cases where the most efficient and rewarding gameplay strategy undermines the expected gameplay loop and encourages players to do things that aren't really fun"
GGG now decides what's if fun or not.

Crafting died.>> Not fun to only normal player since nothing could be done without powerful builds.
Currency droprate lowered.>> Not fun to everyone, especially ichors and embers are a core part of a build. Now droprate of grand ones is decreased for at least 80% compared to recent two leagues. And what's worse, harvest is totally useless since 3.19.
Besides, even defeat a powerful uber endgame boss is not fun, since after a long battle and several deaths, we usually get nothing, and lose our "admission ticket" which might have high value. Only if we could stably farm these boss fights with high efficieny it might be profitable and give us a sense of achievement with great currency income. It is so frustrating that we challenge boss fights without any unfiltered drop, and maybe the main reason for "ticket" selling, to normal players.

A good game should have a positive emotional feedback, but POE is now emphasizing repeated farming and decreasing some income each league. Low output is the only way to prevent we players to challenge difficulty, cause it doen't worth our efforts.

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This is one of those cases where the most efficient and rewarding gameplay strategy undermines the expected gameplay loop and encourages players to do things that aren't really fun.

Yeah, no.

Efficient and rewarding gameplay is fun. You can't dictate us that it is not.

And you can't really define an "expected gameplay loop" in this case unless you prevent us ability to fight map boss unless like 75% of map's monsters been defeated.

If we can fight map's boss whenever, it is as expected gameplay loop as any other.

Doesn't look very promising.

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lookinerator wrote:

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This is one of those cases where the most efficient and rewarding gameplay strategy undermines the expected gameplay loop and encourages players to do things that aren't really fun.

Yeah, no.

Efficient and rewarding gameplay is fun. You can't dictate us that it is not.

And you can't really define an "expected gameplay loop" in this case unless you prevent us ability to fight map boss unless like 75% of map's monsters been defeated.

If we can fight map's boss whenever, it is as expected gameplay loop as any other.

Doesn't look very promising.

going to hard disagree that being forced into running the same 2 maps to boss rush for like 3 leagues in a row is not fun at all.
the first league where boss rushing profits more than doing the map normally ? an argument for the value of discovering the strategy could be valid..

and i am thinking that saying that "[GGG] can't really define an "expected gameplay loop" is absurd, its their game, they design it to be played the way they want it to be played.. i am sure most players will agree that being forced to backtrack every map (boss rush) is not a fun gameplay loop and that is not even considering that you are forced to play a small map where u can get to the boss with at little time as possible so the back tracking is as little as possible..

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my own thoughts now..

can we please get the altar mod effects in a buff/debuff icon so that when we forget what we have clicked we can just hover over the icon and read what we have got so far.. i nearly always instantly forget what debuffs i picked and when i die i cant look to see what mod killed me because theres no way to know other than to remember every single one

also very happy about separating the giga altar keystones.. having to get both felt terrible to waste all those points

also very happy that maven influence is getting a buff, literally was a waste of time to run the 10 boss fights since u never got anything from it other than like 2-3 splinters which was a joke considering how much time it takes to farm the 10 bosses at least 4 times just to fight maven once.. and its luck if u got more than 2 splinters from a 10way fight.. ( i did them with like 60+ quant with all the atlas passive nodes + keystones and got no more than 2 like 90% of the time)
it would be a lot better if u only have to run two 10way fights (20 maps) to get a maven fight OR if the 10way itself dropped anything that made it worth doing (since doing 10 maps to get 2 maven splinters is no where near close to doing the other influences in terms of value)

Altars no longer offer a choice for "Basic Currency" damn i got 2 mirrors of that mod i guess not again.

Overall nerf to altars clearly, not necessarily a bad thing cus the Maven and base game buffs look great.

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For example, if you intuit that it may be a 20 pack map, you might be more inclined to pick more Map Boss modifiers as there won't be as many Influence Monsters in the map to get other rewards from.

Not as much appreciated though that we're trying to play off a random guess as "intuition" implying any way, shape, or form of skill and experience has the remotest influence on how good this is. Unless you implement clear signs which number you rolled in the background (other than I just got a bit lucky/unlucky at the start of the map) this is just another casino that has nothing to do with player skill so selling it as such is a bit intellectually disingenuous to the player.

Eldritch Altars have always sucked. So, GGG does what? Oh nothing to make them not suck. They still have many effect on the player. Like -4000 armor. and crap like that.

Meaning you just run the type that fits your build better. And watch how GGG favor streamer builds that can do anything. So they can just pick the ones with the best rewards. Just another mechanic to say. Hey we at GGG don't like that build... So, here is yet another way to punish you for not playing the current meta build.

[Removed by Support]

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AlekzZz84 wrote:

this crying under every post GGG makes is getting old, the changes overall are awesome for everybody from casual to streamers and yet the thread is full of whining and bitching.

GGG does nothing - everybody is bitching cause no changes
GGG does change something - everybody is bitching there is a change

shut up already, finally there are some good manifestos, 3.20 is gonna be even better than 3.19 (and yeah, turned out 3.19 was great and super rewarding you bunch of cry babies throwing temper tantrums!)

Sorry but for most players it was garbage, there's a reason everyone left from the getgo.

The issue is what they do is they don't address previous issues of which the community has issues with.If i hire you to do my lawn but you paint my house. You're not addressing the issues. Which is why people at large take issue with 3.19 and since the changes don't address any of those.People are pissed.And if people expressing their displeasure bothers, i hope you find the irony there considering this post.