3.12.3 Patch Notes Preview

ty

see you in december, folks

p.s. im not saying that league is dead, i just want to play something else instead of PoE this time

Honest question - what's the point of heist when blight, delve, or red maps are more rewarding, less buggy and have less down time/pauses/very slow doors? If missions were 20x rarer and 3x more rewarding, I could see it, but right now it already feels less rewarding than other activities, and this patch looks like another 'nerf 100% of the population because of the activities of 2%'. It's also a 'belt and suspenders' nerf. If a few people are abusing main path chests by stacking a ton of alert timer extension, then opening a bunch of chests, you don't have to nerf the gear that extends the timer, the NPC that extends the timer, and the chests themselves. The first two would be quite sufficient. Long story short, Heists don't feel rewarding right now. They'll feel less rewarding after the nerf. It feels like we're going to be playing Standard, just with less assets and more bugs.

So I have a slight concern reading the patch notes considering the lockdown timer increases changes.
While nerfing the current state of them seems fine to me (I'm no balance expert) I do get a little anxious when I read that the nerf hits that mechanic in 4 different areas in pretty substantial numbers. The result of a double or even triple layered nerf in the past has resulted in way way overdoing, so please make sure to double check this isn't too heavy handed.

Mainly the nerf to the additive AND multiplicative timer bonuses (quite large ones too) at the same time as the nerf to time cost on opening chests seems very substantial, and I fear this may result in making increased lockdown strategies completely useless compared to a alert level reduction gear focus.

I'll trust the balance team, just wanted to voice my uneducated concerns to double check the numbers on this with some testing, it does seem quite hefty to me.

tl;dr - |a * b * c = d| is too strong, but nerfing a, b and c at the same time results in a very large nerf to d. Maybe unintentionally so.

Thx GGG. Nice job ;)

*edited accidentally posted my post twice, please delete this one! sorry mods :(

Heist has so much content to savour and gameplay to enjoy, regrettably tarnished with a really poor launch.

"

GGG, 25 June 2020:
What to expect this year
This makes us extremely optimistic for managing the year ahead and continuing to deliver on the high standard of Path of Exile expansions that you've come to expect.

"

GGG, 2 July 2020:
Changes to Harvest Crafting
This whole situation actually prompted quite a lot of internal review about how we handle processes like this. We're not pleased with what happened either. While we'd love to reassure you that it'll be better in the future, we're going to go with actions rather than words this time.

GGG, the words say you hold yourselves to a much, much higher standard than this league thus far suggests.

Disappointed and a little frustrated. Hope you get things back to where you want them to be soon. Not just for Heist, for but for many leagues to come.

"

Natalia_GGG wrote:

The Captain Fairgraves encounter in The Ship Graveyard now begins slightly sooner.

YES! FINALLY!

Edit: To avoid any confusion, just in case it wasn't abundantly clear... I'm being sarcastic. :P

"

SenchuTen wrote:

And again no word about the constant grand heist crashes...

Woho... at this rate we can do them at 8 weeks into the league.

I've had 4/8 grand heists crash on me. It feels so random, as some of them crashed right away, others crashed on the way out. One just didn't open the damn door lol

For obvious reasons... I'm a little tentative to keep trying them.

Finally a reason to come back, thanks GGG for actually fixing what was insanely broken mechanics and rewards wise.