Delve - Not fun, rewarding, or challenging

An "infinite ledge" has been thrown around by certain PoE players. It sounds amazing. Delve is clearly an attempt at this, but some how this simple idea of an infinite ledge was made over complicated and simultaneously dull/tedious.

A handful of leagues ago I started doing 36/40 challenges, however for this league I simply cannot.

Delves are incredibly slow, boring, uneventful, unrewarding, not challenging, etc.

Sulphite:
The groups pushing high tier delves say that their main issue is Sulphite, not the difficulty of the Delve.

At the low end, the Sulphite cap is ridiculous. 1-3 maps causes u to cap, making you constantly load and unload areas which is a nightmare for slower computers, as well as tedious. As RaizQT said, he likes mapping, he likes Delving, but having to constantly switch between the two isn't fun.

Why is there a cap on Sulphite?

Bugs and Crashes:
Delve has been plagued with crashes, and I still have the same crash since the start of the league: Sometimes Azurite level 2 rooms cause the client to instantly crash when the loot starts dropping.

Azurite is basically essential to progress in Delve, so crashing at the only source of it... One of the reasons I'm quitting.

However, this isn't the only crash, far from it. Each patch has many crash fixes related to Delve, and while trying to duo, my partner crashed when I threw a flare/dynamite (not sure which, I tend to throw both on walls, this happened multiple times).

Flares and Dynamite:
Feels like no one really tested this properly, a large rework had to be done to flares and dynamite on release, and even still they feel bad.
Who the hell would use dynamite against monsters? Doesn't the monsters life cap at t16?

Therefore, Dynamite should be clickable on walls and that's it. It feels incredible awkward trying to hit 6 and 7 on the keyboard while getting hit by darkness and immortal mobs.

Fossil Crafting:
Unstackable currency?
Over complicated crafting that only 1% of the community will use?
There's enough stash clutter without these. Not going to buy 10 tabs like I've seen SOLO SELF FOUND players use just to store fossils. Most likely there's going to be a convenient fossil stash tab for sale once this gets approved for core.

Having to price each fossil was not fun when I sold off my collection, let alone sort through all of them spread out randomly in a random tab.

Rewards:
Sure, I made a respectable amount from sell mid tier fossils, but I could of made similar amounts mapping. I've heard very high levels is rewarding... but .0001% of the player base in a dedicated 6 man group having access to that level of rewards is not feasible for pretty much all of us, considering when I tried to duo one of us ended up crashing every time.

Aside from fossils, and level 500 depths currency rooms or whatever they're doing, Delve rewards feel horrible. It's like incursion events... but longer to do and 1/5th of the reward.

Progression:
Delve is incredibly slow to move forward, especially when trying to focus on ATTEMPTING to completing the challenges.

The "catch up" mechanic is a joke, forcing you to desperately hunt for Azurite rooms instead of progressing (as someone new to Delve, upgrades aren't as important once you get use to how things work).

Why can't we move past rooms? I literally don't give a fly f able non-azurite rooms, why do I have to stop there, click some grave, and wait 30 seconds for 1 pack of monsters to spawn from the ground?

Trying to get to floor 300 was terrible, I couldn't do it. It was so dull and boring and unchallenging as said at the beginning. Just throw me at 250 with -100% darkness resistance and 1% cart light radius, I don't care, I don't want to sit through this low tier garbage waiting for things to pop out of the ground so 1 chromatic orb and 20 wisdom scrolls can appear from the loot.

Challenges:
If you thought that incursion rooms for challenges was gated by RNG, then wtf is this league?
There's how many challenges related to rare rooms and bosses?
Where are they?
Do they get more common as you go deeper? Or do I have to shift through an endless amount of trash tier content to find them?

I was bored of my first Delve, I'm bored at my 200th Delve. I don't want do be doing this for months to find these things.

Difficulty:
I don't know where it is. Have you seen it?
This WAS suppose to be a test of your character to see how far you can Delve, but instead its a test of your patience?

The higher tier groups say progression is gated by Sulphite, not difficulty.

I'm all for pushing yourself to your limit before you break and give up. It's fun and gets your heart racing, and if you manage to push somewhere on the ladder it is incredibly fulfilling. Delve isn't this though. Delve is about how many quarries/maps you can be bothered spamming, while the content of Delve being... bad.

Maybe it does get challenging. But the journey to that point of it being challenging is so putrid I wont be doing it. Ever.

How to improve?:
Delve is clearly an attempt at being PoE's Greater Rifts.
That failed.
Ignore the "infinite" and the "ladder" part of Delve and focus more on the rooms and the loot.
Nobody, literally nobody, cares or is going to compete with the current group.

Stack the currency...

Improve and speed up the progression of Delve into higher tiers.

Fix the crashes.

Try greater rifts/infinite scaling again, and don't over complicate it with BS mechnics like EMPs and Darkness and flares and hidden loot.
Make it a real test of character/teamwork.

Summary (tl;dr):
Delve is boring. Delve makes me crash. Delve has a lot of grindy Challenges, and that grind is horrible. Delve isn't Greater Rifts, and it never will be in its current state.

I am really hyped for the race to begin, I won my first alt art Demi last league.
I will be quitting Delve until the race, where in that race I'll most likely be ignoring Delve mechanics.

Just release an endless ledge... Much easier to code and much more fun...

And I'm here thinking Delve is the best league ever. It brought me right back into the game.

"

diablofdb wrote:

And I'm here thinking Delve is the best league ever. It brought me right back into the game.

Exactly, I play since Breach, this league is the best so far.

Good league overall, just 3 bad things for me so far:

1. Sulphite. It's a fucking chore. Maps need to give a whole lot more of it. Or, better, delve sulphite prices need to be lowered by a lot. Doing delves would be a whole lot more enjoyable without this stupid sulphite gathering chore.

2. 'XXX is the first to YYY' spam. Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to do that for every single level, and in both solo and non-solo mode too? It takes just 1 douchebag to make everybody else's experience unbearable with that spam.

3. Difficulty scaling. Once the mobs become lv 83, there is no real point in going any further. They don't drop any better loot or give any more xp. The only reason to dig deeper is to test your power, for the ladder/bragging rights.

The difficulty curve should become exponential from that point downward. Mobs should get exponentially more life and damage. Don't drag it out for a thousand levels, make it impossibly hard in about 100. Make the difference between levels on that ladder really matter.

"

diablofdb wrote:

And I'm here thinking Delve is the best league ever. It brought me right back into the game.

"

coyd wrote:

"

diablofdb wrote:

And I'm here thinking Delve is the best league ever. It brought me right back into the game.

Exactly, I play since Breach, this league is the best so far.

Could you guys explain why?

And why you guys think this league is better than Incursion?

Incursion was interesting, had great rewards at all levels, and fit in nicely with mapping (if you wanted to could skip temples but do the event for example, and still get something out of the league).

Delve feels very easy to me, offers no challenge, no risk, no reward.
There's nothing to look forward to, besides increased sulphite costs.
There's nothing to aim for.

In Incursion, during the flashback race:
Aila, rank 1 ssfhc did incursion events for more exp.
Rank 1 ssf, non-hc, rushed elder orb and used the Incursion Temple to sustain maps.

Double corrupt was gave you an adrenaline rush. You could get something crazy amazing, or you could lose something very valuable.

Getting a 21/20 vaal gem was a goal you could set yourself, even in SSF.

The Challenges were fun and straight forward.

There was something for everyone.

Delve?
There's 1 group pushing and nobody can be bothered challenging them.
I've seen plenty of posts saying they hate the messages that come up saying "new level reached".

The loot?
The loot feels horrible and unrewarding, at all levels (besides the few groups at 500+, and the fossil farmers).

The exp?
Some events are incredibly slow.
The undead event where they slowly come up...
The tunnel monsters that slowly come up one by one...
The chain of rock monsters that rise up...one by one...

The GR pushing your limits?
Delves are limited by Sulphite, not difficulty.
It's incredibly dull.

What are the positives of Delve?
Do you find this endless chain of easy, low tier rooms fun?

I'm interested to know why it's the "best" league.

the crashes suck, yeah

all the rest : i enjoy delve more then incursion and ( of course ) bestiary

only thing to complain is that they do not scale sulphite drops with map quant, this should be fixed asap

"

Fallen_Enigma wrote:

Sulphite:

At the low end, the Sulphite cap is ridiculous. 1-3 maps causes u to cap, making you constantly load and unload areas which is a nightmare for slower computers, as well as tedious. As RaizQT said, he likes mapping, he likes Delving, but having to constantly switch between the two isn't fun.

Why is there a cap on Sulphite?

I think this is probably the worst part of the league, if you ignore darkness/fossils/dynamite/flares (and I do). The cap seems arbitrary, once upgraded sufficiently its not terribly bad at delve monster level 80 and at t7-t9 maps. But the start after the "catch-up mechanic" is horrible and I expect the end-tier map and delves will also be horrible. As usual the game seems mostly balanced toward doing 76-80 level areas, which is not that exciting after a few leagues.

"

Fallen_Enigma wrote:

Bugs and Crashes

I've not experienced crashes after the first hotfixes, definitely since a few days. But I don't do party stuff and I guess my PC setup is not the only one out there.

"

Fallen_Enigma wrote:

Flares and Dynamite

Fossil Crafting

No comment on both. Just bad and pointless. Including the darkness. Use awkward consumables, to combat an awkward mechanic, to reach awkward crafting resources you wont ever use? Why?

"

Fallen_Enigma wrote:

Rewards

After a week of the league, I don't really feel like I've had Delve specific rewards in terms of loot. It mostly feels like Standard with a bit more loot at delve ends.

Delve exp is a pretty nice addition, as yellow tier maps enable you to do red tier delves without having to hope for a map drop. But the exp will only get you so far; I don't aim for reaching 96+ so this is not very rewarding.

"

Fallen_Enigma wrote:

Progression

Difficulty

In a week playing, at delve level 240 (or something), I don't really feel like there has been difficulty. As far as progression goes, for me its not too bad. I feel like the ladder is a poor idea when combined with how sulphite works, but I don't really care about that aspect of the game.

"

Fallen_Enigma wrote:

Challenges:

There's how many challenges related to rare rooms and bosses?
Where are they?
Do they get more common as you go deeper? Or do I have to shift through an endless amount of trash tier content to find them?

I find the concept of making so many challenges league related to be a very bad idea. A league is not only new content, but starting over and enjoying the game with a new build, as well as doing challenges. Gating the challenges behind the delve mechanics (in particular the ones about darkness exploration) seems like forcing a player who dislikes the new league mechanics to deal with them anyway.

Definitely disappointed to see so many challenges that ring no bells at all. You would expect that with 1000s of hours of playing, at least you would have a vague idea how to complete a challenge (other than, spend 100s of hours in the delve and you'll maybe run into that thing).

i havent played it (yet. waiting for fixes to 'cannot enter instances' that i find very disheartening)

but..

the league seems fine to me. it has obvious 'cost' (sulphite) and that cost has to be there because otherwise why play maps? and ggg cannot risk playerbase asking this question, ever

the fossil crafting is the 'bribe' - yet another level of power creep. ggg seems to think that players wont like a league without STRONGER rewards. well ggg.. youve made the playerbase spoonfeedign them the power. now you have to deal with it. it starts to look pretty lame at this point

i like the idea of venturing to the side and exploration. but.. only because of rewards. i doubt i would ever do that if there were no rewards

rewards right now - fossils esp and randomg legacy uniques etc - are 'bribey' enough for players to do it

botched implementation of levels and ladders - 6man party dominating everything - made people not eager to compete so the entire competitive aspect of delving is gone after 1 week

and if the monster level is capped.. there is little incentive to push harder if high delves are not really much harder than vaal temple or something. of 'there are mods and it is dangerous blah blah'. ok. maybe it is. but if rewards are similar at lvl 200, 300 and 700.. why bother? (remember - the sulphite cost is what makes the difference)

It looks like everything drops in Delve. Currency, maps, sextants, map only bases (steel rings etc), div. cards, essences, prophecies and finished key sets (first time I have a full council set since Prophecy league), sac frags, Lab offerings, even freaking Elder/Shaper items... Fossils are just the icing.

Of course if you are gonna make this flood of goods, you have then cockblock it with bullshit grind.. -_-

It's interesting to hear people's takes on Delve.
And it sucks that some people can't play at all due to crashes and 'cannot enter instances' like sidtherat.

The shortest comments are the ones saying its "the best" league, I do really want to hear their side so please do comment and expand on why.


Edit to reply to:

"

morbo wrote:

It looks like everything drops in Delve. Currency, maps, sextants, map only bases (steel rings etc), div. cards, essences, prophecies and finished key sets (first time I have a full council set since Prophecy league), sac frags, Lab offerings, even freaking Elder/Shaper items... Fossils are just the icing.

Of course if you are gonna make this flood of goods, you have then cockblock it with bullshit grind.. -_-

I have found very few maps in Delve.
While there is a large range of items that CAN drop, it doesn't seem like it drops much worth looting.
Even the rings that drop as "Can have multiple crafted mods" I over-estimated. Unless you land decent life (over 45 at the complete minimum) with your regal, they're not even worth looking at.

I played a full MF Windripper build, and loot from maps were much better and consistent. In Delves, I noticed I crashed ALOT more with quantity gear at the end (from the loot explosions as mentioned in first post). I had to stop using quant gear in Delve, not because of the difficulty, but because of the crashes. And even with quant gear, the loot seemed pretty bad regardless (a chaos orb and a few other things at most from a delve room).