Game Balance in Path of Exile: Expedition

21st century and we still have censorship, that's so ridiculous.

The low player retention last league was not because of how easy it was to get items.

Crafting strong items is insanely fun, and lets this game hit all the parts of a person's drive toward calculated gambling without the danger of losing real-world money.

I can find easy ways around the Aisling nerfs, (really, I got fed up with how much effort it took to set up the syndicate board, and stopped using it as a main method after multiple wrong results on a favorite craft project) but I find myself asking why I'd put up with the -absolute slog- of grinding up to endgame for an entire league, if the development ideology is to do everything humanly possible to make peoples' crafts be as randomly worthless and garbage-tier as the loot found entirely on the ground, with good gear something only to be bought from other players who got crazy lucky, or have the free time to laugh off wasted effort as if it were their day job.

Other games let me have fun from the starting line, rather than gating the actual fun behind a Maven's worth of time investment into Atlas passives to be reset every three months. *shrugs*

Sooo
For me, as casual HC-league player, is PoE dead.
Chris just show us, he fck on HC players.
I play own builds, play with friends for fun and w/o macros.
I know, iam bad, slow, stupid and i have go to play SC. NOPE ... SC is pure shet to play with no fear effect.
And i play PoE just for try own builds and use own brain.
What you say to new players? Go on SC bro, find some build and play exactly how they tell you and dont forget on MACROS - trade, flasks, logout ... common. Its that rly PoE from beginning?

Now? We have nerfed all normal and understandable defense mechanics.
Slow tanky builds dont have chance in this game.

[Removed by Support]

For SC ofc 0 problem. No defense is no problem. They just focus on dmg. But when this is something what GGG dont want, why they nerf all defensive options?
Or just delete defensive completly in this game. Its about RNG when i take IK, or get lag from your server performance. RNG like whole game. So why not?

Lecgo SC kings. Copy build and play like apes step by step what someone else tell you :D
Again and again BOTs famr currency for you, so just hurry on trade. Just about this PoE is. And as reward you take free MTX from GGG, couse they like game like this.
But GGG dont pi*s on us with nerfs like this, when is still in game something like aura bots, HH and more. Ofc that is just for RNG bosses with unique launchers hm?

No buff to cleave :(

I hate running the Acts and now it will be both slower and harder? Cute. I am disappointed.

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CyBeas7 wrote:

I hope I'm wrong, but when you release the mid league notes about popular classes and builds. I think you are going to see the opposite of "build diversity".

EXACTLY!

The more they nerf, the more players will gravitate to builds that are the least nerfed.

It boggles the mind how they can't figure this out. What they are (and have been) implementing creates the exact opposite outcome of what they say they are trying to achieve.

It's astounding to watch this disaster unfold, league after league, patch after patch.

What's the definition of insanity again?

SMH

None of these changes really bothers me. I don't like the crafting changes but oh well. got to live with them. I would like to see the numbers on the % of players that are completing each part of the game.

Like how many are killing Siris A9?
How many are Killing Maven 10?
How many are fully completing the Atlas?
How many are going past Delv lvl 1000?
How many of the players completed Heist content?
How many of the players that play Hard Core completed all of these?

I mean the reason that we were given for the nerf fest was that the players were clearing the content to soon.

I remember an interview that Chris did a while back where he said less than 10% of the league players actually complete mapping.

If that is true, it seems to me that GGG would want to find a way to make the players more powerful.

There will always be players who have the ability to smash the content, that .1% of the player base shouldn't force you to make changes to kill off the new or casual players.

I personally took the Ultimatum league off. The league mechanic didn't appeal to me. You mentioned that Ultimatum had one of the worst player retentions of all time. You can see from your metrics which leagues does well and which one's tank. Seems like we should get more leagues like Heist/Harvest and crafting should be somewhat easier.

I can't speak for anyone other than myself, I normally stop playing the league when I've leveled 3-4 characters and built them other rather decently, or the mechanics just suck. I really can't stand the amount of time that is wasted trying to farm drops/currency and wasting a ton of it and just fail at the crafting system. I normally just farm a ton, then buy my items from trade. TBH I rather dislike being forced to do that. I would much rather be able to do it all myself. However when you end up spending 3/4/5 times the cost of an item on trade trying to craft it and not hitting the mods, completely kills the motivation to spend another 20+ hours farming currency to try to recraft.

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DIIde_Ghazkhull wrote:

For those who don't want to read the long version, here is a short one:


Hey, we are not interested in all these players who have a job and all. So we make the game even "harder", leaving them only three options:

1. They can find the strongest build, go to some shady shop, spend their money on the 100 exalted orbs for the required equipment. Basically, this is cheating.

2. They can spend most of their spare time running the exact same content every single league, without the slightest chance of achieving something new. This is just boring.

3. They can dislike both options, and leave. This is probably the best option.

So, if you are not one of our beloved streamers, then you can go and fuck yourself. You are not the kind of players we want.

There is always standard. I'm sure you can have fun there too. Or farming simulator... You're at the end game with 0 time invested there...

P.S. Some facts that might offend you and others who share your point of view on the nerfs.

Think about this for one second: by day 5 of the league, (let's say people are playing non stop without sleep -lol), so in a maximum of 120 hours play time there are plenty of people (I do mean more than 1 person) who manage to get level 100, kill sirius, uber elder, maiden etc. I'm sure anyone serious enough about Path of Exile, like you, who take the time to read the manifesto and whine on the forums play over 120 hours in 3 months but still they don't get close to that level, hence your frustrations. It's easy to blame nerfs, the sun, the moon, covid, developers, the meta, grandma than actually put in the time and work towards your goals in a game.

But you and others like you are not here to have fun with the game or to play to improve, to get better and more knowledgeable league by league, character by character. You're here to "finish the game" whatever that means by your definition before you get bored. And, in your egotistical point of view, other players should play the game with you as a point of reference. And so you're here, hand extended, begging for whatever and making a case for Path of Exile to go the Diablo III route and get showered in loot, levels, milestones and achievements with 0 effort. Just look how that well is working out for Blizzard.

Funny thing is that I'm sure of the fact that if the game would go the other way and buff all the stuff like it has done consistently for every league since the game's creation (despite the -lol- "nerfs" declared in other manifestos and patch notes somehow player power NEVER went down since the game came out - I'm here since beta) you'd still be here whining. I'm not sure this league will do that either. I hope it will, but asshats like you make things difficult. Now, if you please, gtfo.

I am a HCSSF player that plays 18 hours a day with my balls in a vice and slivers in my fingers to punish flasking. I welcome these changes!

This game was tedious already. Now I don't know how to describe it after these severe changes. Destroying everything on the player's end and putting up more barriers is not conducive to fun. Combine all that with a league mechanic that looks like a chore and well....