settlers 2.0 - short review from standard player

1) town is disgusting concept and execution. it is nothing else than artificial retention booster exploiting fomo mechanics. just like most predatory mobile games do. it is revolting to see it in POE.

2) town prints money. ignoring it IS NOT AN OPTION. it is cool to fish for items from shipping, it is great recombs are back. the semi-deterministic mirror farm is.. strange. yes, i know it is still a chance and it takes lots of time and grind to send ships, but of all things making mirror shards so 'easily' farmable is.. weird.

that profitability is what makes 1) so much worse of an issue.

3) town being 'maxable' is bit of a saving grace - the forced fomo grind actually ends at some point when you need only gold (you get from maps), but that max limit is far enough to be considered 'infinite' by casual standards

4) already a problem in regular league: non-gold league mechanics are.. as well as removed because you WANT to upgrade your city asap. and once you have your city maxed you need the gold to fuel it, because it literally prints money. there is very little window to go outside gold-spamming mechanics and grind delve or whatever. if you LIKE these mechanics - sure, go ahead. but if you want to make money? maybe Simplex hunt makes sense if you consider yourself VERY lucky. otherwise map and off-map mechanics that dont drop gold really do not make economical sense to interact. some people still do, so the exclusive items are available (slightly more expensive) - but they mostly play it because they like it. selling 2c resonators when ships bring you mirror shards doesnt really work long term

5) mud flats is still the 'peak of poe'. it is the zone when our barefoot and toothpick wielding hero encounters Abrams tanks.. opps random BS mobs from endgame. in my case it was a sulphite golems with GMP and extra crits. it was dumb. no outplay, no chance, nothing - not when that mofo sits on top of a quest item. luckily it was x:50 so i just waited it out

peak gamedesign, very entertaining to watch im sure

after that 'spike' - smooth sailing with a 2link and blue items, it would have been perfectly doable ssf (i play.. shock nova + galvanic field shock-effect/duration self-cast. so yea, im bit daring)


now, in maps, i kinda know what few 'special' mobs are ritually overtuned - i just avoid them. as always, with every league it is a very short list of obscenely overtuned shit that is supposed to make rest of the content 'special' in some way. everything else theyve added is 'ok', keeps level with everything else. but enter X or Y - yeah, 10x times more powerful for some stupid reason

6) lantern mods are.. weird. they made sense with downsides (too much clicking tho) but with all upsides it is just free handouts for everybody with few extra steps. i like the experience tho, made the first ~4 acts much nicer due to more passives to utilize. maybe thats the key to making campaign a more entertaining thing? more passives available earlier? like 2 passives for first 10 levels and then cut some extra side-quests to keep the total the same?

7) existence of 'good' mods is sad. it ended up precisely how people predicted. WHY divs/chaos mods were added is beyond my understanding. it is cool to have 100 chaos at the end of campaign without trading anything. but then you check prices and these 100 chaos wont buy you much. weird decision, in my opinion one of the worst type of errors - obvious one.


anyway

for a short blast - to get a box if thats your thing - good event to spend some time. but the randomness of maps gets tiresome very quickly. for me - want to see how far i can get this junk build of mine and once i hit the wall im out. the game is cool in standard already. piling mountains of random filler on top of it - it is kinda strange decision

standard but with added tattoos and recombinator is im MUCH better as a game than both current and 2.0 settlers leagues

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sidtherat wrote:

1) town is disgusting concept and execution. it is nothing else than artificial retention booster exploiting fomo mechanics. just like most predatory mobile games do. it is revolting to see it in POE.

Profile is private, so I can't tell if you played Settler 1.0 or not. Town is unchanged from 1.0 to 2.0.

I know it doesn't help you right now, but its worth noting that the town's fomo, and to some extent also the non-gold league mechanic issue is a non-issue at the higher levels of end game farming. T17 maps of all varieties, and certain juiced T16s, mainly titanic rogue exiles, produce more gold than youll ever be able to spend on the town. You can run an hour or 2 of either of those and have enough gold for a week, freeing you up to do whatever non-gold mechanic you would prefer.

Yes, it is still a weird addition to POE that doesnt fit with the rest of the game mechanics, but GGG was very clear they were testing alot of new things.

In my opinion, the town worked out really well. Does it need to be rebalanced if its going to go core? Yes. Maybe reward move divines but no mirror shards for shipping. Or reduce the rewards all around, but also reduce the friction of disenchanting (many people have suggested a purchasable tab for it)

But the towns ability to produce consistent profit, with a heavy emphasis on dust, has done something I didnt think was possible with a single league mechanic. They gave us a reason to care about rare but shitty uniques, rescusing dozens of items from obscurity. It no longer feels like a slap in the face when a T0 thats not HH/MB drops. You no longer feel obligated to filter out all of the T3 and below uniques. You have a reason to loot more than a single inventory from a map (even if that is annoying haha)

How great this is for the game can not be understated, and needs to be preserved in some way moving forward.


As for the 2.0 experience itself, the map chasing looked annoying even in the preview. Can't speak to it personally, I stayed in 1.0 and watching the streamer content and reading the forums has not made me regret it at all.

well i did and did not play original settlers - console 3-play with family, couch but not couch (thanks for amazing POE support for couch co-play :) so it wasnt anything remotely competetive/serious but we still got to maps, eventually. but maps is when most junk builds die, so when family quit i also quit.

we didnt do city building much because.. sending ships was a nightmare due to synchronization etc. and trying to organize it somehow siphoned out the fun out of the family game. so i did it on my own for some time and then also dropped

it was quite telling when a first time player called the ship interface 'captcha done every 30-or-so minutes'. surprisingly accurate UI/UX review :)


back to the point

that sustainability point you mention is very, very far into progression. for 'full time players/streamers' - it is maybe achievable in a week. for people who play less or were stubborn enough to pick non-meta build, it takes quite a big longer

long enough for one to naturally quit the league before that.

and while the later half of progression affects mostly experienced players etc, the earlier half of the town grind is VERY oppressive if you play 'healthy' amounts. the science behind this mechanic is known, mobile games use it all the time to boost retention and 'engagement' (and sell progress for people with less time to spare)

i still think this type of 'pressure to login' and 'pressure to play' is terrible. regardless if done on purpose or not.


the T0 uniques being so bad that their only use is scrap yard.. i do not see how settlers fixes anything. the primary problem is that some T0's are stupid strong - MB/HH/Squire, while some are pure shit - mostly attack weapons. solution to that is nerfing the OP and buffing the junk. how is Lioneye's Glare T0 bow i cannot understand. it is Rog craft with fancy skin. Essentia Sanguis is even worse as it is Trickster on a (weak) stick but without the actually powerful Trickster part

instead of making these T0 expensive because they disenchant well, the true solution is to actually make them worth building around. and i wouldnt say no to removal of like 30% of all existing uniques. GGG does not have the resources to maintain all the bloat they add, so there wont be any changes to them - just remove them. that mostly applies to attack (esp melee) weapons - items like Doomsower or most unique Daggers. these do not have place in this game anymore, game powercrept them years ago. if their only role is Dust - just make them drop as dust instead..

The thing about the tortuous city build is that the game dont actually punishes you for not upgrading fast, even if the point where you can confortably keep the town running 24/7 is a bit far, you dont need to rush it. 2 months of league time was super ok to get the town to a good spot
The progression of the town is tailored into a way where the rewards are roughtly in line with your general progression. Town offers very little at the start, and gets more rewarding as you move foward. Sure in campaign ships only gives crap currency and when youre in early maps, it will likely just net very modest chaos, and it will take some effort for it to give consistent 1 dine per day, and will take serious dedication to max it and enable mirror shard farming, but thats perfectly fine because it should reflect your global progression
That point where you can keep the town running 24/7 is not really mandatory to get profit, btw. I took me more than a month to get there and for me it was beyond the point the town was netting me a div per day, wich is good profit considering how minimal effort it takes to set a ship

Settlers is not a super interactive mechanic that demands you to focus deep into it, its a mechanic thay can be left running in the background, it only makes you obsessive into keep playing if you are paranoid about maxing the town asap. For me it was the oposite: having progress being generated even if i wasnt playing took pressure out of my shoulders to get my build done before the end of the league

As for how the settlers solution to make T0 useful is not ideal, well i think everyone will agree that the ideal would be the uniqs having "true" value as items and not just disenchand fodder, but thing is, even a imperfect solution is still a solution. You seem to have a mindset to dismiss imperfect solutions just because they are not ideal, but that mindset(actually called "perfect solution fallacy") never gets anything done(balancing weapons in particular is not easily done. Currently super well rolled weapons are vastly more common than the era where most rarer weapons were introduced and red maps were the top content, too many uniq weapons competing with double T1 preffix rares would decimate the lower levels of crafting because people would default to uniqs instead of experimenting with a mid range rare if only because uniqs are more consistent by design)

"

The town and my fomo is like a predatory mobile game…

What?

"

Town prints money … ignoring it is not an option…

Yes it is optional don’t need to interact with it… look at all the people that say mapping in the town isn’t worth


Something about maximal and fomo again….


Little incentive to go outside gold spamming mechanics???
Uhhh cat rushing was $$$ all league and this new one it will be as well
Ritual is $$$
Blight is $$$
….

Much question mark


Something about mudflats and peak PoE …..

What?


Bunch of other complaints as well

"

Mashgesture wrote:

… look at all the people that say mapping in the town isn’t worth

Those people are simply wrong. That's like saying self mapping is not worth it. Mappers are amazingly effective at consistent modest income, and reliably hit jackpots in the long term.


Personally, I have gotten:

2 Apothecary
1 Mageblood (even rolled 4 flask)
6 dust-value T0's


at least 150 div in well rolled jewels/rares and 21/20 gems.


and thats not even that jackpot'y. Have had guild members get raw mirrors and hinekoras.

I agree with the town stuff. I chose to ignore it once I got the quotas for Challenges because it wasn't fun for me.

Gold costs feel way way way way to high.

Pulling a shot machine and missing every single time blows. I'm not a gambler so it was just a waste of time.

Also mappers dying sucks. Why? It happens way to often.

My drops have been terrible this league, but at least playing the Game is where I get my enjoyment.

I funny wasn't to play set a 30 min alarm and send ships the game.

For the refresh I just got the black market and didn't upgrade anything else. For some reason I didn't find a 4 link at all, even spamming the black market.

"

sidtherat wrote:

that sustainability point you mention is very, very far into progression. for 'full time players/streamers' - it is maybe achievable in a week. for people who play less or were stubborn enough to pick non-meta build, it takes quite a big longer

long enough for one to naturally quit the league before that.

It taking most players more than a week is a good thing. The leagues are planned for 3-4 month runs.

POE is an ARPG. If you want to hit max progression in a week or dont have the attention span to play even half of a league, then you might want to look for a different game.

"

sidtherat wrote:

and while the later half of progression affects mostly experienced players etc, the earlier half of the town grind is VERY oppressive if you play 'healthy' amounts. the science behind this mechanic is known, mobile games use it all the time to boost retention and 'engagement' (and sell progress for people with less time to spare)

i still think this type of 'pressure to login' and 'pressure to play' is terrible. regardless if done on purpose or not.

I understand what you are saying, but if the town makes you feel that way, how does the rest of the game not also have that effect?

POE leagues have a very dynamic in-game economy, especially in the first month. Prices climb dramatically on some items, fall off a cliff for others.

The league start gear you spent your first hard-earned divines on will be worthless next week. The divines you have been saving for an upgrade have a 10th of the purchasing power than they did 2 weeks prior.

Anytime you arent playing, you are not only not generating any income actively, but if you have failed to successfully speculate and then store your wealth in items/currency that will match/beat market inflation, you are also losing money.

Settlers is actually a partial solution to that, with the ability to sustain some active income generation through farming/shipping.

"

sidtherat wrote:

the primary problem is that some T0's are stupid strong - MB/HH/Squire, while some are pure shit - mostly attack weapons. solution to that is nerfing the OP and buffing the junk.

instead of making these T0 expensive because they disenchant well, the true solution is to actually make them worth building around. and i wouldnt say no to removal of like 30% of all existing uniques. if their only role is Dust - just make them drop as dust instead..

This is the answer of someone who hasnt thought about, or doesnt understand, the bigger picture of game play, future development, or other peoples interest.

1. You can't just buff other uniques to "fix" the issue. You have to also take into account crafting. If a bunch of uniques got buffed enough to make them playable, then rare's become less desirable. POE's entire currency is based on crafting material value. Less rares in use = less crafting = currency inflation due to loss of crafting sink = less value gained from raw currency drops in maps/mechanics.


2. There is nothing wrong with the game having a few chase items. GGG has stated they agree with this design point. the people that disagree with this [tend to be] the ones that dont understand the aforementioned in-game market behavior and end up broke all league, making this a player knowledge, not game design issue.



3. Removing old uniques has so many downsides and so few upsides. It reduces build diversity, hurts collectors/fans of game lore/alt arters, and decreases the available drop pool.


4. Decreasing the drop pool is a negative, since I assume you will argue otherwise. If you decrease the drop pool, and do it by only removing "worthless" items, then you have to also decrease drop rates. We have all already felt the impact of reduced ground loot, and pretty much all seem to be in agreement that it feels bad. If you find that you see too much useless stuff on the group, thats a loot filter (player knowledge) , not game design, issue.

"

roundishcap wrote:

Pulling a shot machine and missing every single time blows. I'm not a gambler so it was just a waste of time.

...

For the refresh I just got the black market and didn't upgrade anything else. For some reason I didn't find a 4 link at all, even spamming the black market.

Is this a troll post? The black market was literally advertised in the release trailer as a "new way to gamble"

"

Piousqd wrote:

"

Mashgesture wrote:

… look at all the people that say mapping in the town isn’t worth

Those people are simply wrong. That's like saying self mapping is not worth it. Mappers are amazingly effective at consistent modest income, and reliably hit jackpots in the long term.


Personally, I have gotten:

2 Apothecary
1 Mageblood (even rolled 4 flask)
6 dust-value T0's


at least 150 div in well rolled jewels/rares and 21/20 gems.


and thats not even that jackpot'y. Have had guild members get raw mirrors and hinekoras.

Oh yeah no its just free loot. Its apery at its finest lol

I didnt even spec into harvest and just got most my lifeforce from mapp runners. I got too frustrated with crop rotation this league to really care lol.

(Even got a mirror this league from mappers)

But yea it spits out gems(gcps..) valuable gems,... good progression gear, good jewels.... Get plenty from it.