Will Ultimatum Become a Core Game Mechanic?

Will we have access to the unique items dropped by the trialmaster through timelost unique drops?

And the exclusive items? And the semi-impossible and OP Hateforge???

Saw trial master 3 times only in this league.
2 deaths and 1 win.
Hateforge being one of the drops made the encounter worth it.

I havnt even seen a trialmaster. His spawn rate is way to low and its not because i havnt been trying.

The 5 leagues that give me the most desync in order from most to least is.

1)Ultimatums
2)rituals
3)Blight
4)delirium.(mostly the simulacrum after 15 waves)
5)Harvest right when you open the plot.

It guess what all of them have in common is that a lot of monsters spawn in a small area. It would be nice if it was fixed. I lose my flask and skills for the duration of the encounters sometimes.

I have had mix feelings about the league.

I liked Ritual but not this one. It might have been that its to much the same. from a back to back leagues. I also felt like the league gave way to many items and not enough low end currency like Alc and Alt's sure i can vendor them for them but i would rater have the currency. Even with smart loot 99% of the time they felt bad.

I would also like to add the maven system with the conqueror system is starting to feel like unveiling. It starting to burn me out and demotivating me just thinking about doing it again next league. Maven just adds so much to do. I haven't even unlocked the uncharted reals or most of the 10 ways this league.

This is my personally opinion i think the 40 challenges isnt enough anymore and need a rework. there is way to many leagues now. I always felt the challenges was a means to introduce new players to league's then gives returning players a reintroduction to ones they missed or a reminder how they worked. A introduction to the new league. Then a way to bridge over a casual to harder content and more complex stuff. And then stuff for more hardcore player.

For example Do legion encounter. Do a 4 way legion encounter. Do a 5 way legion encounter.

I love how their logic isn't that the Trialmaster rewards should be less [Removed by Support], but that it should just drop less items. Brilliant. A league mechanic in which you get fucked by 15 rares with Soul Eater and that won't drop decent items anymore. [Removed by Support]

"

We would want to improve the combat of Ultimatum encounters so that the experience is less overwhelming and more tactical. While we do like things to be challenging, we currently feel that there are too many monsters spawning within the tight space of the circle and too many things going on at once.

There's absolutely no issue with having lots of monsters spawn within a tight space. That's what (most) everyone want. Killing things ad-nauseum to get experience and/or loot.

Issues do, however, present themselves, when several rare monsters spawn as part of those big clumps of monsters. While rare monsters do bring some much needed difficulty to the game, they do also bring issues in the form of auras.

If you wish to rebalance the chaos, then monster auras is a good place to start. Either by down-tuning them, or limiting the number of on-screen monster auras to e.g. 3 (three), rather than be effectively unlimited. Some of the monster auras can even be moved to be Nemesis only.

"we currently feel that there are too many monsters spawning within the tight space of the circle and too many things going on at once". Realy GGG? Took you 2,5 months to figure this out? I've been playing PoE since 2013, this is the first time i quit a league before 1.5 months into it. The idea was realy good, but the balance of the mechanic was terrible. So terrible that Legion early difficutly pales in comparison. I realy enjoyed Legion. You know why? Cause after a few weeks you TRIED to balance it. This time around it realy felt like you did nothing to fix the league. 3-4 builds with dozens of exalts worth gear could finish 10 waves realiably, and all the other non-meta, non-mirror-gear builds have about 60% chance to be oneshot before finishing the Ultimatums. My char could easily run 13+ juiced maps and got oneshot half the times i opened Ultimatums even on white-tier maps. Anyway, looking forward to the next league with hopefully better execution this time.

I don't understand the issue of bringing it into the game currently. You claim you would want to make improvements before bringing it back but simultaneously Chris said in podcasts that they would rather bring a mechanic in and then make fixes to it later.

It's kind of odd that you would not mention time restrictions being a reason as to why you would not make it core? If you're having trouble bringing out the new league and making the current mechanic core at the same time, then maybe mention this? I would have a hard time believing this is not a factor.

I know it might be hard to believe, but some players come back to the game to play Standard because they did not want to participate in the league beta testing. Now that's not possible and Standard players will have nothing to look forward to, for even longer. At this point, I just wish you let us play different versions of the client on a private server that we could pay you for. At least then we could enjoy either 3.11 Harvest, 3.13, even 3.6 just for the Synthesis mechanic.

Lastly, others have mentioned this already but you're improvements to the league mechanic in order to bring it back at a later date don't exactly turn out perfect tbh... ProjectPT made a comment on this here: https://youtu.be/OaHaM62q7v0?t=1062 from 17:42 to 18:35 where he says your original extravagant version of the league mechanic, in most cases, just gets turned into a mill of assets once it is brought back. If Ultimatum can't go core, maybe allow Standard to try the 3.15 league mechanic for once, instead of forcing players who want to experience the new content to have to start a new character? Not everyone enjoys starting over. Just my thoughts on the situation.

Voyage sucks

Also, can you cut down on NPC lecturing you? I'd rather not to roll my eyes while reading lore

I really didnt liked the ultimatum feeling especially the combat part.

I second this decision and it avoid some bloat too which is nice.