What Happened with Items

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PHILOSOPHY ONE: Reward mechanisms should scale properly with Item Quantity and Rarity bonuses

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...we have been using what we internally call item templates... Item templates ignored quantity and rarity bonuses.

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PHILOSOPHY TWO: Players should fight fewer Rare Monsters at once, but they should be more challenging and rewarding

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PHILOSOPHY THREE: There shouldn't be a large gap between the difficulty and rewards of league content and base game content

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Lake of Kalandra Balance Change: RARE MONSTER NORMALISATION

There are three changes that needed to happen at the same time as this:

1. The addition of interesting rewards to some Archnemesis Mods...
2. An adjustment to the average number of Archnemesis Modifiers on rare monsters...
3. A rebalance of Archnemesis Modifiers...

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Lake of Kalandra Balance Change: MONSTER ITEM RARITY AND QUANTITY NORMALISATION

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WHAT WENT WRONG

...I proofread the patch notes... I… didn't actually understand the impact of the change... I was busy, distracted, and should have sought more information...

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...post-release communication... I should have found a way to prioritise writing this post...

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IMPROVEMENTS TO TESTING AND COMMUNICATION IN THE FUTURE

...unacceptable that I can miss a change... I will not allow it to happen again.

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...Quality Assurance team... integrate them more into development...

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THE DIRECTION FROM HERE

...I have seen parties in this league get multiple mirrors per day, or find over 50 Divine Orbs from a single monster.

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Philosophy Three: There shouldn't be a large gap between the difficulty and rewards of league content and base game content

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...we think that drops are in a pretty good place after this week's changes. They should have been like this at release, and I am deeply sorry that they were not.

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Fr33Dumb wrote:

First and only post - 48yo casual and former dev

Since I'm often thinking "what kind of person has this take?", I'll give a quick description of myself. 48yo casual gamer who left my career to take care of my 77yo dad after my mom died of cancer. My work history is car audio installer ->laborer/carpenter (family business) ->game developer. I have been playing since Ultimatum and have bought packs/tabs on both PC and PS5. I know it's strange and cringe to give that info, but I think it's important to understand where I'm coming from. I am far from the average troll that exists on forums. This post will be more about the overarching issues with GGG, and little to do with the specifics of the changes they have made this league.

As I read these posts from Chris/GGG, I can't help but to notice many clues that remind me of situations and meetings I have experienced myself in the industry. First, I want to make it clear that hate/threats towards ANY owner or employee personally is unacceptable. However, criticizing and calling attention to specific failure or incompetence is completely valid. In fact, it's needed to make sure people actually do their job correctly.

There have been many examples over the last few leagues that strongly suggest structural and quality control issues within GGG. Items, skills, and content released after design and testing that are simply not working or need to be rebalanced in a way that makes it seem completely untested. Either there is an issue with the testing process itself, or the employees doing it are not up to the task. Surely it isn't unfair to point out the relatively massive changes that are often made to numerical values post launch is a massive problem. It's fine to tweak things once the community "stresses" content, but the size of the changes is alarming. Also, Chris suggesting that a change to the loot table of a 10 year old ARPG was suggested "in passing" and was an honest mistake, seems extremely dishonest. Especially considering his past comments regarding loot in POE.

Based on my experiences, and time in the industry, this is my GUESS as to what has happened to POE. It seems likely that Chris/GGG has wanted POE to play like D2 the entirety of it's lifespan. Unfortunately, creating new content every 3 months has led to massive power creep. GGG realized that since POE was being funded solely by supporter packs by this time, they couldn't just nerf the power due to player backlash. That is when they probably decided that selling to Tencent would be the answer. They could secure the near future of the company, the employees, and most importantly....the vision. The sale likely removed the stress of being beholden to the demands of the player base, and they could now focus on re-balancing POE and go all in on making POE2 the game they really want. I will add that they could have sourced funding for POE2 from so many other avenues based on their market position and years of proven success. Instead, they went for the big payout from essentially the Chinese government.

So why touch POE at all if they will already have a fresh start in POE2? It's pretty simple, if we are all zooming around like the 3.14 days at the time of POE2 release, the game will feel clunky and slow compared to what we were just playing. The majority of the community would still make the switch because it's the new shiny thing, but many players would stay with (or go back to) POE after realizing the new game isn't what they prefer playing. This is probably scary for GGG, not knowing what the community reactions and numbers would actually be. Therefore, the best move is to slowly (or not) ramp up the difficulty of POE until it closely resembles POE2 by release time. Players would be less inclined to stick with the old game and GGG wins by forcing hard mode.

Now I would like to address the people criticizing the community for complaining too much. Here is an analogy of what has happened to help those people understand:

Imagine you buy a new 60" 4k 144hz TV for $1000. You could have bought a 1080p TV for $500, but you feel the extra resolution worth the extra money. Now imagine that after a year of ownership, the manufacturer forces a patch that lowers the resolution to 1080p because it's what the manufacturer prefers, how would that make you feel? Keep in mind, that 1080p is still HD and looks good. You can still enjoy your content well enough, but it's simply NOT WHAT YOU PAID FOR! So when I read these comments, what I see is "stop complaining, you still have a HD TV, it still looks fine". Completely ignoring that what GGG is doing is fundamentally and morally wrong. The supporter packs that people have purchased over the last couple of years was to support the game that they were currently experiencing. Do you really think they were aware of the drastic changes GGG would make to the game?

Now, let me give you an acceptable version of the above example. You buy the 4k 144hz TV. After a year of ownership, the manufacturer forces a patch that lowers the refresh rate from 144hz to 100hz. They apologize in the patch notes "We are sorry about the change to your refresh rate, but we've found upon further testing that 144hz reduces the lifespan of the screen by years compared to 100hz. Do you see the difference? They made the minimum change possible, while helping the ENTIRETY of the consumer base with a fix that most people would objectively call a fair trade.

I will close by saying POE is still a good game, just not as good as it used to be. GGG and Chris are still some of the best in the industry, just not as good as they used to be. Unfortunately, GGG is looking more and more like EA, Activision, Blizzard, etc. and it makes me sad.

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bugslayerjohn wrote:

Neat theory. Your data is wrong, and it means that your theory is not operating in practice. I ran an incursion on a corrupted red map yesterday, full cleared it, and dropped ONE item. One. A crap base rare. Regular content is NOT rewarding right now, but do you know what is? League mechanics that drop guaranteed flat rewards (Essence, heist, etc.), and 6 player juicing. Everything in the middle, all the stuff your philosophies claim to want to improve, is not worth running. Whatever data you are looking at that says it is, is wrong. I suspect that you are looking at aggregates and 99% of the drops are concentrated in the .0001% of players that got a lucky combo.

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I have seen parties in this league get multiple mirrors per day, or find over 50 Divine Orbs from a single monster.