3.20 Balance Manifesto: Monster Mods and Archnemesis

Well so far, this looks extremely positive.

Sounds like we’re back to our old rares just without stacking auras?

Seems like the simple fix that was needed in the first place. All that work to arrive at this 😆

I personally loved the Archnem system (if we ignore the first two weeks of 3.19) but I know that is quite at odds with the player base as a whole, so I'm glad to see these changes.

I think the simpler approach to monster mods is going to make a lot of people happy, and I'm still looking forward to the occasional nasty combo. Casual grinding can be a lot of fun but the times I was surprised by a challenging fight kept it a lot more interesting (and kept me playing longer).

Moving forward, I hope the dev team doesn't look back on Archnem as a mistake. Popular changes or not, I'm glad GGG is willing to risk bold alterations to core systems rather than playing it safe with the patches.

I suspect 3.20 and future leagues (not to mention POE 2) will greatly benefit from the rocky road that was Archnem.

Sooo we still need mf characters to maximize profits?

You cannot imagine how much good news this set of information is for me. I've been playing this game for 3 years now, and in all seriousness, my love for it has started to go the way of the Do-Do Bird thanks to Archnemesis mods. This just might breathe some life into my enjoyment once more, thanks GGG!

Hiding the affix only solves half of the problem...

Now MF culler services that only shows up to kill a specific monster and pick easy rewards is dead because we dont know wich monster is the goblin, fair enough

But the gap between parties and solo is now even larger: A party with 5 people who play builds that leave monsters just near dead and a culler would be unaffected by the changes and still get 50+ div drops, only now it can come from any monster, and the casm between party and solo would become even wider since culler services, as irritating as it was, was the only way for solo players to get rewards a bit closer to party players. So it basically only removes the goblins for solo players

You guys need to do something that fix the way party play can bypass the theorical need to sacrifice character power for MF by having a dedicated player that stack it to levels no solo player can reasonably get and letting the bulk of the fighting on the hands of other members of the party

Ideally, make IQ and IR apply in proportion to how much HP% you contributed for the kill rather than the current "only final tap dictates all", if 90% of the HP was taken by someone with no IQ or IR and only the last 10% was dealt by a guy with IQ/IR, then only 10% of the IQ/IR applies for example

If thats not viable because it would require extensive re-writing of how drops are created, then just inflict a penalty for each party member in the party: Yes, revert the bonus into a straight-on penalty: A simple 2 or 3-man party still gets bonus, but for every member after that, start introducing penalties. Having more people already makes the game significantly safer and faster, theres no need to have a bonus in loot on top of that, makes so that large parties recieve less stuff to counter the fact they can clear content faster and access harder content earlier, so MF stacking only brings the numbers closer to what you have with a 3-man party, so the rewards for larger parties are more in line with smaller parties and solo play, and increasing the party with a MF stacker is not a good option unless you do it in a small party, wich would actually mean you are indeed sacrificing a significant portion of the party power for it

In other words, it's still hard it'll just be called something else and worded something else.

Who cares?

I used to love this game and gave you hundreds of $$$ and thousands of hours. I used to praise your game. But after you ruined the game with Archnemesis (and doesn't sound like that's changing) and you banned me on Steam, f*** you.

I love this change, however the biggest issue may or may not be addressed. The game doesnt feel rewarding anymore... i used to be able to farm divines and sell them for exalts. It was a consistent strategy that gave me something to do in the end game.my time was rewarded and it didnt feel wasted.

Now i just feel like im running around waiting for a lottery drop... and because i use minions i get screwed because rarity and quant doesnt apply unless im killing the monster, which i am not. So i never get anything of value... its boring to go unrewarded.

Now having more hidden reward types is cool and hopefully there will be more drops. But i fear im in the same position as before... Running around hopelessly waiting for my lottery numbers to be called. And waiting....and waiting......and waiting.

Its a great step forward but in my situation i may or may not still remain bored and unrewarded. Im happy ive been building this character for a long time on standard because im not sure how anyone would have the patience or stamina to bother scrapeing together the currency these days to properly progress anymore.

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Forgotten_Overlord wrote:

Sooo we still need mf characters to maximize profits?

That's always been the case.

This sounds great. Let's see how it works in the game.