3.19.0f Patch Notes

So I don't think this patch is going to be good enough.

I played it last night and it's still just didn't hold up in terms of the loot or the fun.

I think the real problem here is it's obvious what GGG is going for, and it's killing the game.

Their concern prior to 3.15 was that players were progressing too quickly, had too much power, and therefore were getting bored and leaving the game quickly.

Unfortunately for us, GGG decided that the correct answer, instead of coming up with reasons for players to stay, was to try to slow down play progression immensely. This is the reason they've killed loot, killed crafting, and fucked with the economy.


The problem is in doing so they have made their game utterly not fun. That's why Chris Wilson gets such shit over his vision, because this sounds a lot like his hard mode vision, but unfortunately this is not what most people who play this type of game want.

It's nice to be nostalgic for Diablo 2, and that makes for a nice baseline for a game, but in the significant time since Diablo 2, player tastes and expectations have changed dramatically.

You can't just have Diablo 2 with better graphics anymore. Especially since players have now sampled what is possible, even though GGG has tried to pull it back.

And this is where GGG gets themselves into trouble - rather than looking at how players are having fun and saying "well, we didn't intend this, but players are actually having a lot more fun with it right now but retention is down, so how do we allow them to continue to have fun but increase retention?"

Instead, GGG appears to be locked into some severe myopic view of responding to players having fun but getting bored and leaving mid League by deciding to take the laziest path, which is slowing down progression to a crawl, and then being completely oblivious to the fact that they are now betraying the expectations of their player base.

"Chris's vision" gets a lot of memes and a lot of shit, but people need to understand and GGG needs to understand that this is because he put that out there into The ether, and now that the game is more closely resembling the things Chris Wilson wished he could do with the game with regards to hard mode and making things really obnoxiously impossible, he is going to be associated with that especially when there's a ton of people who enjoyed the game prior who don't agree with Chris's vision of hard mode Poe and don't enjoy the game that way - in fact I dare say based on the retention numbers it's a majority of the people who play Poe who don't agree with Chris's overall vision. And to be fair it might not just be Chris's vision. He's doing the stand-up manager thing and taking the bullets for the team which is what he's paid to do.

But the problem is, if this is what that team wants and they refuse to budge then they may as well just fire the rest of the GGG staff and build this thing out of someone's garage for their own personal enjoyment instead of stringing a whole bunch of people along who really enjoyed parts of the game in significant ways only to have GGG take the fun away from them.

That's where we are at. Chris Wilson and the other developers who started this game need to decide whether path of exile is an actual video game made for the masses, or their own personal vanity project. Unfortunately they have been trying to straddle both and it can never be both especially when player enjoyment and developer vision are so different.

A smart developer starts with a vision but then allows the game to take on a life of its own and develops according to what will bring in the most players and the most enjoyment for players.

A bad developer rigidly sticks to their vision no matter what and is willing to even sacrifice player enjoyment on the altar of their Almighty vision.

Now I realize that's very simplistic and it's not always cut and dry. There are times when a game needs to be rebalanced. But unfortunately when it comes to Major rebalances, you can only take that shot once. If you do it again you'll end up making the player base feel very betrayed and they will start jumping ship.

And that's exactly what we saw with 3.15 and then now 3.19. if this was such a problem then they should have done this in 3.15 with everything else. If they didn't find it until after 3.15, they should have just left it alone and said "oh well we cannot do this to our player base again, at least for significant period of time".

Unfortunately GGG is now in the process of burning Bridges. It doesn't matter how politely they burn them and it doesn't matter how many communities get labeled toxic by GGG defenders. The real issue is GGG has broken the trust between a developer and a player and they don't seem to understand the depths of it.

Bad developers blame the players for not accepting the developer vision. Good developers will adjust their vision to cater to their players. That's the cliff notes for this.

Wont play until loot changes is reverted.

So far we've gone into this league with high hopes and faced the following.

Aug 22 - What we're working on
Aug 23 - Patch notes and update on community feedback
Aug 24 - Improvement to item drops
Aug 25 - Nerfing defensive archnemesis modifiers
Aug 26 - What happened with items
Aug 27 - Tool-assisted pantheon mod farming
Aug 29 - 3.19.0f patch notes

And still, after all this with straight up lies regarding loot, the tool-assisted farming, AN being a dumpster fire, the game is tumbling down.
Not just a little, it's going towards the amount of players you see at the end of a league.

You can and will do as you see fit and you'll reap the rewards by doing so.
An empty game with just a handful of players that prefer the game like this.
Nothing wrong with liking the current state, but I certainly hope that you realize that you're going to be running leagues for 10k players.

I've tried to give this league a fair shot, was hyped at the start, but as I no longer enjoy the turd on a silver platter, I've decided to simply quit.

Best of luck, was fun while it lasted, no longer interested in being an alpha tester for a small indie company.

I guess the technology just wasn't there yet.

oops double post, I cant even delete a comment?

does ACT 1 and 2 REALLY need taunting monsters everywhere? lol cmon

Game got balanced around people playing 10+ hours a day, farming harvest and making mirror tier items within 2 weeks of league start.


I wish there was a better SSF version with no options to migrate so you could play SSF but have more loot rewards towards crafting.

still no loot changes?

yup, now instead of nothing, you get nothing at all.....big change there lol

sooo disappoinitng

its so easy just add a 0 behind every loot drop chances and everyone is happy. That maybe tooks 30 min of work. ez gg