What Happened with Items

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I'm the Game Director for Path of Exile 1, and it is absolutely unacceptable that I can miss a change that has the consequences that the league monster one did. Changes like that need to be very, very carefully tested, have their consequences fully understood, and then be communicated clearly. I have let you down and I will not allow it to happen again.

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AlekzZz84 wrote:

Philosophy One: Reward mechanisms should scale properly with Item Quantity and Rarity bonuses
that is exactly the problem with this league

Philosophy Two: Players should fight fewer Rare Monsters at once, but they should be more challenging and rewarding
but they are not rewarding... except 1 uber rare "loot goblin" rare

Philosophy Three: There shouldn't be a large gap between the difficulty and rewards of league content and base game content
there is a huge gap now in difficulty, with rare mods on top of a league content, everything is super unbalanced power wise

please bring back important harvest crafts, allow us to lower at least a bit the mod gambling

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Waitubold wrote:

"

I'm the Game Director for Path of Exile 1, and it is absolutely unacceptable that I can miss a change that has the consequences that the league monster one did. Changes like that need to be very, very carefully tested, have their consequences fully understood, and then be communicated clearly. I have let you down and I will not allow it to happen again.

Chris... I love you, man, and I know your heart's in the right place with this, but you really, really need to stop writing this combination of words in posts.

The problem is that you've said variations on these same words on several different occasions, now, during several different league roll-outs, and it hasn't prevented additional fuck-ups from happening. You're human. You're fallible. You're going to fuck up again, at some point, eventually. Promising to not be fallible, effectively promising to not be human anymore, just isn't something you're ever going to be able to deliver on.

I appreciate that you're taking responsibility for the mistakes. I think you're a stand-up guy, and I trust that you're guiding the team towards a future game state which I'm going to enjoy, and I'm happy to keep supporting GGG and PoE in the meantime. But your promises need to be realistic ones. It will help if they're more specific ones, too.

Q: What is the overall direction or vision for the future state of the game? I have faith that it will be a good one, but I'm starting from a position of trust; some of your player base clearly don't have that same trust. I understand that some of what you're working on is intended to be the meat of future surprise reveals, some of it's just not ready to talk about yet, and some of the details won't even make sense with the context of those two groups of things, but... Maybe talking in general terms about what the future of the game looks like will help calm some of the anxiety you're seeing.

Are you hoping that PoE 2 will be a slightly slower-paced game, with fewer, longer, tougher fights? Are you hoping that PoE 2 will be a much more dangerous game, where players need to be paying attention at all times, and not gliding past screens of enemies that just die in their wake? Are you going to spend the next year gradually making changes that will take PoE 1 incrementally towards those goals, one league at a time?

Because that's kinda how it feels. Don't get me wrong, I love it - the "It's all nerfs!" patch note from a few leagues back was one of my favourites ever, for its boldness, its honesty, and its simplicity, but it feels like you've spent every major patch since trying to make similar changes to the game, but without admitting that you're making similar changes to the game.

And I think that's the thing that's rubbing some people raw, right now. It's not just that you're evolving the game (although, for some of them, that is definitely part of it); no, the main problem is that they don't have any sense of what PoE is evolving into, and GGG's messaging on the subject is just a bit of a mixed, confusing mess, right now.

Obviously, a lot of us still have a trust, and still feel good about supporting you -- just glance to the right at the frankly embarrassing number of my supporter pack badges, or the simple fact that the first wave of ExileCon 2 tickets sold out in a matter of hours, even with all this drama happening. But this is the thing you need to do better. Don't promise to never make another mistake again; instead, promise to level with us about what the goal is. Promise to be more transparent about how you plan to get there, and why.

I don't want or need you to be perfect. I don't want or need you to be less than human, or to never make another mistake again. Just be a little more open, and a little more honest, about where this ride is taking us. If you need to nerf something, so that you can build something better, then do it. Just level with us about the fact that you're doing it, and let us in on reason why the nerf is needed.

All that said... I'm still loving PoE, I'm still supporting GGG, and I'm not planning to go anywhere. Stay strong!