What Happened with Items

thank you

I read this post minutes after it was out and I played for a few hours in the last few days. these are what I thought, as a really casual but started playing before 2.0. and to clarify, I have no issue with all three thoughts you have and I think they are correct, i.e., in the right direction. however, I'm not happy with how it's done.

problem 1: is the reward scales properly with difficulty?
stacks of armour scrap or whitestones are certainly not what you mean by this right? these will certainly get hidden or appear annoying since no one cares about these lowest levels of currencies. if you're actually doing this, do you factor in some sort of "lucky rolls" or it's simply just some rarity/quality number?

I really think you should consider adding an additional layer of the rewarding system on top of the changes, though, I'm not a programmer and I don't know if it's possible. I really don't believe that the majority of players in the end game will pick up all items and id them, hoping there's a potential upgrade to their character. this might be true in the first 3 days, compared to the entire 3 months of the league. maybe there should be at least better mods on the items if your vision is to encourage players to check what's dropped instead of simply hiding the majority of loot. if you don't really like deterministic crafting (probably true after all the nerfs on harvest), this is much more consistent with your idea of "finding good things along the way for upgrade".

I also don't know if you're targeting certain groups, like 6 men parties, MF, or just general all players. I also don't know if there are internal numbers on how much the loot is different compared to the last league. by that I mean, for playing the same way, as single-player solo mapping or full party with nearly best gears and anywhere between the two extremes. if not, maybe that's something to do and test before the next league.


problem 2: archnemesis itself
this is personal preference I would say, but if there's any petition to remove archnemesis in the game I would definitely be there. like, combining certain monsters making it more difficult and able to get better rewards is cool and certainly one of the core ideas of this game. but since adding archnemesis into the core game, it's no longer a "choose to do it" like metamorph but it's becoming a more general thing to all players , which is the biggest issue IMO. you no longer can choose what to do but the game will randomly give you something that might be easy or completely impossible to kill. if this is only in maps, fine, players can simply skip them. but that's not the case, Chris. now it's everywhere, literally everywhere and in certain cases, players are forced to kill these unwanted monsters because the content they are doing forces them to encounter these, in an inappropriate but somewhat accurate world, bs. this is not fun, at all.

you see, archnemesis is completely different from other league mechanics now. atlas passive allows players to choose what they don't want but doesn't include archnemesis. I certainly agree (IIRC, from Mathil) that there should be a node on atlas passive tree that allows more archnemesis mod on rares but increase the chance to have more associated rewards. this allows players to choose if they want harder content or if they want to get the loot from some other mechanics. the out of map mechanics should not have the archnemesis mods, or with a limit to 2 or 3. this is much more consistent with what we had and how you designed the game in the past few years but oddly not done.


problem 3: mechanic-specific drops
this is currently more related to harvest, which I strongly suspect the life force drop is affected by all the drop systems you have now. so, logical thinking, if I complete a harvest encounter, I should get the reward associated with the content, i.e., the craft. now with the new changes, as the craft option is converted to lifeforce, there should be at least something from completing the encounter. but that's not what seen so far. I don't know if this has anything to do with one of the previous situations in the past leagues where a harvest provides no craft at all. now I'm seeing no lifeforce dropped. why? shouldn't there be a minimum number, even like 10 which is like 1/5 of normal crafts? you already dramatically decrease the craft available but double nerfed the life force and crafts available, and then you created the same situation where there's no craft at all. I literally found a garden with four harvests but none of them dropped any life force. none. i would think it's a bug that needs to be fixed but certainly, it's not working well.


problem 4: general testing
I mean, it's not the first time that players found the league is completely, or almost, screwed up by certain new changes. we had the archnemesis thing before and now we have all the items and archnemesis again and you have to nerf these rares soon after the league started. may I ask again, is the game tested and played before the league launch? I mean, these issues are so obvious that almost everyone can notice simply by playing the game from the start to mapping, right? and are there any SOP for testing a new league after the balance changes? is the testing playing the game like normal players from all levels or did they just test a specific content in a short period to check if there are any bugs? I'm not flaming your quality team but I think there should be some changes inside your team to prevent a large amount of negative feedback like this time. they could be preventable. as mentioned in problem 1, maybe simulating different levels of player experience should be good.


problem 5: type of players and how it's affecting them
I still remember that you mentioned, probably in one of the interviews, that "Wraeclast should be hard". let me ask a question, for a casual player, playing maybe 5~10 hours per week, how do you see them or how far they should get? complete the acts? red maps? killing normal end-game bosses?

this is quite related to the loot drop because it's affecting how players get the resource to push their characters further into the game. how I see POE is that it's a game about doing whatever you want. I can play whatever build on any of the character classes I choose, as long as I'm happy about trying it. I don't know about others but trying different builds is the biggest motivation for me to keep playing this game. slowing down the progression from the loot drop could be the biggest issue for me or whoever playing the game as I do. I really think you're team should think about the changes related to progression more, if there's more in the future, as that it's going to impact different groups of players differently.


I don't play any game from Blizzard so no comparison for me. these are just thoughts as I played while thinking about if I should keep playing or switch to something else like genshin which also introduced a major update. anyways I'm still here and you guys did some good stuff. it's still a great game. I simply think there's more that can be and, likely, should be done. not necessarily now or this league but at least your dev team should think about it from everything that happened within the past week. we as players love and care about this game.

best regards

You are only talking about the drop, but the most important problem is the crafting nerf and until they return what they deleted, the players will not return to the game. Think about it.

Game should be rewarding for new players.

Making DIVINE orb as new EXALT is a biggest BLUNDER in my opinion.

I hope they revert it and who ever have divine should be exalt. exalt should be converted back to divine.

IMMEDIATELY.

New league maps dont drop anything for new players. its trash.

The whole thing is bad. People like to run fast and kill and get loot. but this maps generation is sequential.

Less people play game less interest in the game

Otherwise people play SSF only

Diablo II was famous because of Loot mechanic. It was rewarding for new players with better way to progress each act. I mean drop should amp their dps as they level up. powerful Uniques should drop more to help them.

Rare drops for maps. As it needs to be crafted for specific build.

As an avid supporter ( I mean those that buy alot of supporter packs to show their appreciation), this league compels me to outright leave the game.. I'm not sure what direction this is but it sure isn't in line with the game we've loved for years. If the post had a poll - between "Love this league", "Its OK, I guess" and "this league's going to the pits", I have no doubt players would pick "I wouldn't touch this league even if you give me a million dollars".

It IS that bad. There is no joy in farming mobs. We've had "mobs league" where players farm mobs to get their stuff. We've had "bosses league" where players farm bosses to get good stuff. What of this league? It's been slated to be a "bosses league" but nothing's dropping. I'm not sure where the hell you're seeing 6-man parties dropping mirrors but all the streamers sure as hell aren't getting any divines, much less mirrors. The costs far outstrips the profits they make.

Why are divines all the rage? That makes no sense. That little bit of stat differentiation won't do any more good than an exalted. I'd rather have an insane new mod than to perfect a stat that's already within a tier.

Why were all the reforge harvest crafts taken out? Keeping suffixes and prefixes craft may be abit over the top but the former sure isn't. Even color crafts are gone. Why? So players have to farm like 10,000 extra hours just to get the correct colors?

First it was piano flasking that was the issue. Then the shadow nerf to the drop rate. And then harvest crafting is too OP so shit has to be taken out with almost nothing left to harvest craft at all. And the AI of the mobs seem to have improved substantially so it's no longer a brain-dead fight with rare or unique mobs, albeit with the shit drop rate so players who aren't as skillful can't join the battle and are forced to forfeit. Really? What next? Mana is still OP so every skill costs substantially more mana to force players to plan their skills more carefully instead of blindly spamming them? Potions have a longer cooldown to force - again - players to manage their flasks even more? I'm not even gonna be surprised if skills will now have at least 5s to 10s cooldown so players are forced to fight unnecessary elongated battles - probably 30 mins - with bosses.

I'm not sure about others, but when this league ends with the same mechanics it has and direction it's going, I won't be a player here any longer, nor will I subscribe to any more news from this game. It's just not the game I've enjoyed playing for oh, I dont know, 6-7 years now. It's like you're hell bent on taking the game down to hype up the rumored POE 2.

Oh, an additional note, I don't have any idea why the 3.19 patch notes doesn't address the stupid server lags we are having ATM at the time of this post reply. I'm randomly getting 2k pings for a few minutes before it calms down and then just happens again out of nowhere.

In any case, GLHF to the others still intending to play the league for whatever foreseeable future this game still have left. It's been an enjoyable journey while it lasted.

I love this changes.

tired of seeing streamers play in 4-6 people with some wingedes scarabs and overlapping league mechanics and get SHOWER LOOTS! on day 2-3 getting most chased items.. items that regular ( devoted ) players find maybe in a few weeks of HARD and CONTINOUS DAILY GRINDING

you need to work for your inventory , nomore cheesing!

happy for all these changes. LOVE THEM!

LMAO, atleast, Can you fixed holy stacks of Armourer's Scrap or Blacksmith's Whetstone ?

I don't know why you want us 40x of these things. Farm to be farmed by AN mobs.

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kermitdaftfrog wrote:

Stop releasing non playtested leagues. How do these changes not go through weeks of testing so the community isn't doing beta tests for you every time you launch a new league

I used to be very excited for new leagues but this year especially you guys tune way to much without playtesting and looking over consequences and it puts the game itself overall in a worse place then it was months Earlier

Leagues Should be content and patches that push the content and add more to player experience. They should not be drastic changes to core game play unless properly vetted.

You should rethink balancing between leagues and keep leagues and balance separately as currently the POE team cannot keep up with Balance, league mechanics, bugs and POE 2

That's the thing though. It is play tested, its just this IS the game they want. Its likely more in line with POE2, and they are wanting to get the player base in line.

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jupiterrules1 wrote:

Game should be rewarding for new players.

Making DIVINE orb as new EXALT is a biggest BLUNDER in my opinion.

I hope they revert it and who ever have divine should be exalt. exalt should be converted back to divine.

IMMEDIATELY.

Swapping divine and exalt is not the biggest problem. It's the fact that they removed the 6-link vendor recipe for a divine and, to a lesser extent, that they didn't add divine shards for harbingers.

div/ex swap WAS biggest problem as GGG didnt prep ANYTH at all for it