Nerfing Defensive Archnemesis Modifiers

Crafting - dead
loot - dead
AN - makes you dead

So why should we play your 1/10 product Chris?

I understand the entire league is scuffed and bugged and in dire need of massive repair and reprogamming. I appreciate that you are beginning to address issues one by one, but I am worried that the implemenation of new mechanics to fix problems that arose from new mechanics is a troublesome approach. You guys don't need to be afraid to use reverts - most studios do when they make giant mistakes and work the bugs out internally before everyone quits. Reverting bad things isn't a mark of shame - it's just a sign of humility and honesty. We tried something big and omg it didn't work AT ALL! We will remove X thing until we understand it better. Reverts are okay, let your egos go. Keeping a company going means keeping a happy customer base and customer retention is going in a frightening direction, which worries me I won't have anyone to play my favorite game with.

****Spoiler, if you had saved ArchNem for PoE2 you wouldn't be in this mess - I could've told you how to put ArchNem in the game without driving away the entire community. If you had added it as a map mod/scarab/CHOICE with appropriate and enticing rewards - players would have done it and you could have harvested all the data you wanted for PoE 2 from it without enraging the community and having all these disaster league releases. We get it, we are your playtesters and there is not a proper Testing department, so stop biting off more than you can chew. If you had introducted ArchNem mobs and mods in this way (as a map mod/juice/choice) you would have people happily doing the encounters - when they *WANTED TO*. I promise you could've data harvested our experiences plenty, for leagues and leagues, if people were actually playing the leagues and not driven away by your extreme implementation of this PoE 2 mechanic.*****

I would suggest when you consider implementing massive, game-breaking and changing elements, to stay clear of the nerfs as you attempted to do last league. As always, in my posts, I'll restate this - Please Hire A Testing Department and the proper lines of communication that go all the way to the Devs, as all proper game studios do. Your players should not be your unsuspecting testers. Last league never should have happened. This league should'nt have been released. Archnem needed revert, the entire community knew it and we actually play the game. Being stubborn on this will ruin GGG.

****Here is how you should've implemented Archnem without driving away your customers and breaking the game for 2 leagues in a row. Torment scarabs should've been replaced with ArchNem scarabs, Map Device option, Map mod rollable with a proper risk vs reward balance and all the data you wanted on your new Mod system for your new game would've come for free and your player retention would be fine in fact you would've likely gained players over the last 2 leagues had you gone this simple, clear cut, obvious way of harvesting your ArchNem data. All this does is tell me to stay away from PoE 2 and that you're willing to ruin Path of Exile (the REAL PoE) and give your millions of customers the finger in your pursuit of a new release. I hope you will consider this for your next league so we can enjoy Path of Exile again.****

QUALITY BEFORE QUANTITY (No, I am not talking about gems and maps). I'd really love to see better business practices from GGG, I invested in your company from the start and I am so disappointed. Honesty, transparency, APOLOGIES WHEN NECESSARY (!!!!!), old problems being fixed before new problems are patched into the game, seeing a sense of direction in a company I am interested in angel investing into, this stuff matters. I don't want to see GGG's doors close but that is where you guys are headed if you don't make a big change internally - the entire company needs an attitude adjustment and to realize that we are your customers not just some freeloaders who download your game. Most of us millions of players invest hundreds to many thousands in your game because we supported the GGG we knew; I barely know you anymore. Quality before quantity applies to every situation in life and business unless you're working in a bad assembly line in at a bad company. Psst I'll buy cash shop items again when your game works, and I've always been a huge sucker for MTX but I want to see something that I can support and that isn't what you've been giving your customers.



Dear GGG, if anyone has a soul or a heart left, please;

On the topic of Minions. I've already thrown away my Necro and have a new character (and no more currency) after playtesting multiple builds and investing and reinvesting all my currency I've made this league, and I've played every day though all the bugs and through all the crying - I've been grinding and doing your testing. So let's talk about Minions.

Please address the Animate Guardian situation. Nearly every content creator and YouTube website visitor is aware the gem is currently in a state where it cannot function despite the highest levels of investment.

Minion builds got ran at from ten different directions, kicked to the ground until they stopped moving, then beat with baseball bats and left dead in the streets. Was this the intent? GGG's response has been "they are fine, playtest it yourself". Boy, the testing has happened but no response from you guys. Why your customers should have to do your playtesting for you at a studio this large is mindblowing. But back to the issues at hand.

Why not nerf Skele Mages' uniques directly because that was the only "meta" minion build that was overperforming? I'm not sure why the rest of the community or those willing to invest 100ish divines in our builds should not be able to play the game or do red maps. This was not tested, this is not balanced. I believe you told Ghazzy you tested a minion build and AG in a White Map and it "felt fine" (then told him to playtest it himself, no no - that is your job @ GGG). That is NOT quality testing!! Just delete the gems and passive tree at this point for minions. Minion builds outside the ripped Mage Skeles and current SRS (it's what everyone is playing because nothing else is viable into yellow maps/early reds) are the low investment builds you wanted to HIT - but you hit every high investment build across the minion spectrum. Now you're investing for nothing.

It's heartbreaking to go into a Twitch stream with thousands of viewers asking questions about their minion builds, many newer arrivals to PoE by the kind of questions they are asking. No one even has answers to give them as they follow builds that should've worked and using gems that were supposedly tested - imagine this being your first PoE league - plugging away and ignoring the community noise... then you drop all your currency into something that your company claimed was in a good place. I gasped in sadness when some viewer asked "I just got my Anima Stone and three jewels, it cost me all my money, will it work if the other Primordials are not all different?" (Newer player about to have the worst experience of his life... just sad and for no reason).

Necro Passive Tree nerfed, Necro Ascendency destroyed at the same time as our Bone Helms with our "replacement mod" weighted at a staggering 25 (that one left me speechless, the weighting on the copium mod for +2 gems), publicly nerfed our spectres and shadow nerfed the HPs on all minions, Animate Guardian is decimated and no level of investment can make the gem function, this is all awful. Combine these changes with the previous +gem crafts being removed (+str/int/dex gem crafts) are hitting even harder now. Unfunctional Harvest also keeps us from getting the Clusters we *DESPERATELY* need to function. Nothing functions. I can go on but I won't, let's start with these basic issues.

You told us to playtest it for you. We did. Not working, guys. You heard from the minion community's hero Ghazzy (casual 28,000 hours played in PoE, warned you guys pre-launch...) about the state of every minion build and what is wrong and why and told him go test some more. He tested. We tested it. We lost a week of league finding out nothing works. The amount of reaction videos to his display of how you cannot invest in an AG any more than he had done. He has already done it several times to show you guys, despite the pain and loss of currency, he has to prove it to GGG somehow and this is ridiculous. He is not your playtester, nor am I. Watch the videos of it getting 1 shot that you have to watch in 1/4 time because it does so fast. Everyone streamer even Asmongold are making reactions of horror to this. It is nuts. I hope you watch those because those people have voices that you open your ears to; what I'm writing will only be read by like 1 person.

I hope you hire a testing department instead of using your community like this. I'm about to report my community service to my probation occifer since I feel like I'm working for GGG for free at this point. We aren't volunteers, we are your players. This isn't advertised as an Alpha test, so it should not look and feel like one. We are not your playtesters - we are your customers. Release a finished product, that is how business works. Ty.

What a waste of everyone’s time. Shame.

you could have literally not touched the modifiers themselves and just did what players are screaming at you to do, limit how many defensive mods and offensive mods a rare can have at one time, because i am also not going to deal with a rare with four damage mods that can one shot extremely tanky builds off screen

PLEASE fix 32:9

There are currently three huge threads from people affected by this issue. Two reddit posts with 1000 and 1500+ upvotes and a 26 page thread on your forums:

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3294794

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/wwnhzl/goodbye_ultrawide_poe_329_5120x1440/

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/wsnn9i/329_doesnt_seem_to_be_supported_anymore/

This is great stuff! Thanks for working so hard on this. I'm sure this week has been a bit of a nightmare for you all, so thanks for pushing through and admitting fault in that. It's hard to make a mistake (not telling players details of what you are doing) and then trying to fix them as people remind you of it.

"

LizzyInATizzy wrote:

TLDR;

I hope you hire a testing department instead of using your community like this.

This is now how software development works. All problems with the game today are a result of poor decision making by the game designers.

"

DreadLordAvatar wrote:

"

LizzyInATizzy wrote:

TLDR;

I hope you hire a testing department instead of using your community like this.

This is now how software development works. All problems with the game today are a result of poor decision making by the game designers.

Yes, it is how it works, in fact. A testing department is one of many moving pieces of most studios. Go to Indeed, see how many Video Game tester positions are open and where they are hiring. It's a real job, with real oversight, that all major companies use so they don't deliver unfinished products to their customers.

This functions separately from Alpha and Beta testing done by players. The latter is done by consenting players interested in improving the experience and finding issues pre-release. But a professional testing dept is in place, as well.

But, as you said, poor decision making is the main culprit here. I just see what is a stubborn refusal to move away from poor decision making, and if they are going to go WILD like this - they need more professional testers with oversight and lines of communication all the way up to dev. If a tester says "This didn't work" it should be addressed before any release. It's normal for things to get missed, but this isn't one of those situations nor is anything in Path of Exile "normal" right now.

cant wait to test these changes next league

I think their problem is rather they have actual testers and not QA.
Tester: Does this monster correctly deals 99999999 damage and kills the player from offscreen? YES, test passed
QA: Well i have easier time killing Uber uber SSJ ultra-instinct Shaper than this rare mob, this shouldn't be right, lets get back this to the dev team, test failed.