[End of League] Settlers Feedback. Hit or Miss?

Hello,

I have played a lot of this league, very consistently across multiple characters. (30 days on one character, for example.)



I've done all the challenges, I've done all the "meta strats" and some really decent off-meta things. I've basically just been kind of forcing myself to login over the last week due to the league mechanic.

I'd like to give my final thoughts regarding Settlers of Kalguur after playing it *almost* as much as I did Affliction.

Here's my breakdown of pro's and cons:

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PRO's:
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* Faustus Auction House. One of the biggest QoL reworks we've had in the game.
* Less clicking for fuses and other currency rolling.
* Atlas Tree rework.

(I still think three is too little. There's too many strats and rerolling one of your trees just to do it is a daunting task. Add more, please!)

You guys did some solid work with making this game a bit more accessible and easier to play on a *core* level. But what about the league content in the core part of the game?

Unfortunately, well, there is none.

I realize this comment will come off as sensationalized, so I'll explain my personal experiences with the cons.


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CON's:
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*League mechanic is considered an "idle" mechanic, in which your only interactions with the mechanic is just farming gold, clicking on some rocks, and again, killing things.

This is an interesting concept, and I know you're experimenting with gold for PoE2 and its' use as a timesink, but the disparity between amount farmed vs amount used when you need rank 10 farmers, mappers, and shippers is pretty out there.

(I am very aware of rarity modifiers to gold output. It's still not enough if you're actually using the mechanics like mappers and not just playing idle ship simulator.)

*Settlers Boss Fights vs. Disconnects / Crashes:
On the occasion that your game crashes, or you DC, you lose all your shippers and all your mappers depending on the fight. I shoot a *lot* of projectiles, and I shoot a *lot* of projectiles because this games philosophy has been rapidly moving towards "Kill everything before it can touch you" over the last few years.

I can rant on this subject about mob density =/= more content / enjoyability but I'll save that for another thread.

Anyway, during some fights (not just settlers exclusive), I sometimes crash, despite being on a fairly decent PC (Ryzen 9 5950x, RTX 3070 Ti) and having most of everything set to 'low'.

I'm not sure who's in charge of QA, but from the perspective of an average player, losing a full set of rank 10's because of a game crash is simply an unacceptable outcome.

I've had friends quit the entire league because they spent days farming the gold necessary just to get those rank 10 shippers / mappers for the same reason.

To top it off, in the event that it happens, you can't pay a ransom afterwards as an "oh well" kind of moment.

This, in my opinion, was a massive oversight by GGG and isn't something that should be paraded by the community as a "risk of doing the fight", when the "risk" is just playing the game itself.

Losing if you died to the boss? Sure. GG. You learn and move on.
Losing if your game arbitrarily crashes? Bad mechanic design.

Going forward, should Settlers go core in any capacity, please give this some serious thought for the future.

*Lack of map-based content.
As stated before, you click rocks, kill mobs, and get gold, with the occasional Starfall crater popping up, in which, you kill a mob, get some rocks, some gold, and maybe a decent rune.

I think the [core] changes to overall map functionality were great, but Settlers itself did not introduce anything new to what 99% of the endgame is about: Mapping. There is no Settler-specific map content. It's the same as Heist. You get some contracts from maps and go to another instance.

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Ending commentary:
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Overall, the QoL changes you introduced were bangers. They are practically irreplaceable at this point (Good luck on the backlash if Faustus doesn't go core). There's a lot more I could comment on that should be looked at, but that would be core feedback, not league specific, so I'll refrain.

As far as Settlers as a mechanic goes, overall, I think it's (mostly) a miss. Too much time needed to invest to have your idle mechanic work. Not enough engaging content to keep you playing outside of "Oh no I'm running out of gold."

Great concept, a lot of effort put in to make it presentable, but not so great execution.


See ya next league!

Pretty much agree on all points.

❤️❤️❤️

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Mashgesture wrote:

❤️❤️❤️

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

end of league already? i m still playing!

to me i quickly loved it the mechanic but later had mixed feelings about it.

i've played on 2 ends.

one, playing on juiced up maps, another on just regular mapping (normal or even magic t16s with no scarabs).

the difference is just waaaaaaaay too high.

similarly the gold consumption for higher ranked hirelings jumps up fast.

i "get" the idea behind having effective gold sinks. and i pretty am sure that a lot of players who play a whole lot, are rewarded greatly.

but theres a huge disparity of the "in betweens". i have never once felt the urge to use the gambler as i know my gold does run out. i spend the weekend farming enough gold to last the entire week. and i m basically just farming and not really using stuff like map runners etc.

dont get me wrong, i really like the league, but the level of FOMO it introduces is something i feel should be addressed.

i dont know if theres a corelation but some games that have daily rewards/timed rewards can intensify FOMO.

for example in undecember, they allowed you an easy way to gain resources in game. you could do around 25 maps to hit their "daily bingo card" and you would be rewarded greatly. but if you skimped out on it you would feel like you've wasted it. then when IRL commitment forces you to skip a few days, you feel like you've wasted so much progress you might as well just stop playing as its not worth it anymore.

the easy retort is "dont FOMO". the easy response is "OK, i ll stop playing then".

my plan is
1. keep the lights on
2. max out my farmers
3. max out A TEAM of shippers
4. max out A TEAM of mappers.

currently maintaining number 1 is an issue which leads to me trying not to use the reroll hirelings button. if i DO reroll, i use up gold. if i DO get a rank 10 hireling, he costs gold to hire, and makes my upkeep higher and makes number 1 harder. so i m stuck in a loop there.

its more or less always beneficial to have highest ranked farmers on the farm. so far i've got all of them to minimum rank 7.

as for shippers and mappers, i only need 1 team of highest rank of each. even then i havent even begun mapping as i m still stuck in the keeping the lights on vs getting better hires loop.

That's a good battleplan! It's what I did for a while until I saved up enough to branch out to all 3 because I didn't like the idea of just... sitting there for days to accumulate enough crops to send out a shipment for 35 minutes.

But yeah, this League's mechanics feels like a mobile game patch, which daily login / activity are necessary which isn't my thing. If I wanted that, I'd go play Dialo Immortal lol.

I'll play daily if I love the mechanic, but I don't like the mechanic, since there's nothing that incentivizes you to stay on other than "FOMO" and gold. Would be better off just playing in Standard since I'm 40/40 lol.

It's not like these borrowed power runes will be sticking around in any capacity, so I'm personally good until next league / PoE2.


Edit: and to clarify, I meant "End of the league (for me)" since I've done all challenges, not that the league is ending any time soon.

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SewDoughOfficial wrote:

That's a good battleplan! It's what I did for a while until I saved up enough to branch out to all 3 because I didn't like the idea of just... sitting there for days to accumulate enough crops to send out a shipment for 35 minutes.

But yeah, this League's mechanics feels like a mobile game patch, which daily login / activity are necessary which isn't my thing. If I wanted that, I'd go play Dialo Immortal lol.

I'll play daily if I love the mechanic, but I don't like the mechanic, since there's nothing that incentivizes you to stay on other than "FOMO" and gold. Would be better off just playing in Standard since I'm 40/40 lol.

It's not like these borrowed power runes will be sticking around in any capacity, so I'm personally good until next league / PoE2.


Edit: and to clarify, I meant "End of the league (for me)" since I've done all challenges, not that the league is ending any time soon.

no worries about the End of league thing, was just pulling your leg. ;)

i still like this league a great deal and i would still rank it as one of the best leagues in the game, just that the goldsinks feel overtuned at the later levels.

i believe the intention is GGG wants gold to have value, and thus goldsinks is the best way. i really like the idea behind how gold sinks is implemented

what can you use gold for? trading! so fast so easy.

what else? well you can passively farm and send out shipments for rewards!

ok thats great! most people can do that and afford it.

what if people still have excess gold? then we let them automate mapping!

ok what if some dude is like super rich?

ok then 3 teams of mapping!

ok what if some dude is super duper filthy rich?

well they can gamble their coins away!

holy moly! theres a butt ton of things you can do with gold so that gold always stays relevant.

tbh i think they took a page from Last Epoch, which uses gold economy but has a butt ton of gold sinks too so that gold is always valuable.

i just pray hope that ggg decides to tune down the gold sinks a little so that the average player could at least passively generate stuff and do shipments without needing to grind for gold a huge lot.

does this mean taking away from players who actually have time to get more gold?

NO!

this change would mean they would have more gold, and with that more gold, these players could actually use gold to gamble. i kinda feel that most of the people in the game cant afford to gamble as is.

Settler's was awesome. Mac side of things was shit, maybe even a joke tbh.
36 / 40 challenges done, and I'm ready to logout.

Other than very poor (almost non-existent) support for Mac, the connection to servers are horrible at times and I would stay clear of HC (at least in eu) at all times.

And to be completely honest as a Mac owner (I do work in music production), I fear this lack of support and feedback for frustrated players on Mac clients will taint POE2 too.

If that's the case, I'm better off buying a PS5 for gaming needs, they at least get support and apologies from GGG.

Edit: typos

power rune drops could use a buff and mappers could be improved but overall i really liked this league. its in my top 3 favorite leagues

SSF POV: League mechanic would have been good if they removed the (IMO totally pointless) micro and replaced it with QoL. As it is however I dont want it to stay in the game in its current state, it would IMO make the game worse.

Some particular things: Recombinator is too much fiddling with items - bases especially. And Alt-rolling is not fun. It being overly powerful does not fix this. Dont balance power with annoyance. Also bad that it has hidden and weird rules.

Workers: I dont see any point for workers with more than one profession. This is a useless/bloat feature. Remove it. Its also too hard to figure out worker efficiency when hiring. I dont want to have to use spreadsheets. Just tell me the worker efficiency and let me easily compare it with the ones I got.

Shipping: This should make proper sense in that more goods give proportional more returns. As it is now its one of those micro-for-the-sake-of-micro designs.

Mapping: Didnt do any.

Admiral: Admiral with lvl 84 capturing vessels of low levels doesnt fit with the rest of the game. The rest of the game has a "handholding progression" approach, this doesnt match. In addition to that its kind of non-optional. The fight being "super easy" (for lvl 84 fights) doesnt fix this.

In general fluff perspective: The whole town/economy makes no sense. No one in their right mind would hire an exile and use that exile as the sole driving force for everything in the town. Exile gets lazy or dead or doesnt share gold => town dead. Also this exile is the one making all the big decisions. But on the other hand this exile has to do every little thing like carry all those items from Tujen to Rog, how does that make sense? Why cant I hire somebody to do that?