I wonder how many of these failed leagues will it take GGG for them to learn, if ever?

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

i think people get a bit carried away presuming intent and endless time and resources when its just people who come into work that day, try their best, maybe its not the best day at the office. how many days a year are you putting in your best work at your job? you hitting it out of the park 110% every single day of the year?

I appreciate this bit a lot. Well said. It's very common for devs (and other people in creative industries) to get exoticised into these deific beings having profound battles of greed vs purity but it's just labour. It's just people going to work and trying to get by, same as ever.

I'll be slightly contrarian here. GGG has very little to gain by having terrible leagues like Necropolis - they just blew it in this case by bad design and little if any play testing. Now that being said they do try to mix up the types of leagues to satisfy the player base, so even though I prefer "mapping" leagues like Sentinel and Affliction I can deal with crafting leagues and to a far less degree for me "side game" leagues like Sanctum and Ancestor.

Anyway, GGG has never IMO had a worse league than this because it is so intrusive even if you decide to skip the terrible league mechanic. (and yes a few people are OK with it).

Back to the topic of this discussion. We just came off of what I consider one of the greatest leagues ever in Affliction so GGG deserves a little bit of a pass. Hey, those of us long-time players knew what they were trying to do with Necropolis - they just screwed it up. I think GGG has a history of "righting the ship" so I suspect next league will be fine. Trying to read more into the Necropolis failure by blaming it on "the vision" etc. just doesn't fly in my book.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

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JunkHeadJoePC wrote:

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kyobusa wrote:

As long as people are buying the Supporter Packs/Other MTX's they don't REALLY have to change anything honestly.

100%. They are making money. Why should they put in more work? Here's a good reason...because they don't have to.

in fainress ggg put in more work....... a bunch of stuff a bunch of stuff.... you hitting it out of the park 110% every single day of the year?

It ain't about me. It's about the game, the people behind it, and what gets delivered as a finished product.

Of course some leagues will be better than others, but when a league is done as this one was, it makes some of us wonder who's actually driving the bus.

EDIT: For the record, I like this league, but I'm not playing it to really accomplish anything.

The reason people are treating necropolis as part of a pattern instead of them just completely blowing it and massively missing the mark is because it is. This is the third time they have completely blown a league with a great deal of potential by massively overdone nerfs that ruin the play experience for most players and don't actually hit the top end that hard.

First came expedition nerfs and the changes to mana completely killing most builds at the time, along with a reduction in loot. Then came Kalandra, where they paired forced archnem mods with what was for all intents and purposes deletion of all loot not from rares or pinnacles, and even those drops saw a reduction in loot. Now here in necropolis, they ripped out a ton of QoL from most builds and nerfed loot everywhere except t17s once again drastically impacting the play experience of everyone except the absolute top tier.

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Snorkle_uk wrote:

i think people get a bit carried away presuming intent and endless time and resources when its just people who come into work that day, try their best, maybe its not the best day at the office. how many days a year are you putting in your best work at your job? you hitting it out of the park 110% every single day of the year?

Well....I would have to disagree with this assessment somewhat. We aren't talking day to day work here. It's not about hitting it out of the park every single day, no one expects that or is even asking for that. Fact is, these are months-long projects and presumably the ideas and groundwork has been laid long before even that. It is ridiculous to think that GGG starts from NOTHING each 3/4 month cycle. No, they likely (like any other company) had an idea brainstorming session potentially years ago and are operating on a thought out planned schedule of leagues.

Not to mention the "team" has checks and balances, where things should be going through multiple layers of people before it hits the playerbase. And this process is over the course of months, not a single bad day.

As for not enough time for testing, etc; of course they have time to test. Most of the bugs in a new league are found in the very first day. Releasing the patch a day earlier to a testing group would do wonders. They elect NOT to do that and instead choose to make repairs and bandaids as they go. And plus, the cycle of 3 or 4 months is a self-imposed issue: if they cannot adequately keep up with their own pace to put out a good product, then that is THEIR fault and things need to change. Why is this "okay" for a video game, but NOT okay for basically any other product? It wasn't even okay for video games not 2 decades ago, but now players are "okay" with a broken, mediocre product because "time".

What kept players for so long was the enormous variety in build potentials.

The problem with slowing the game down is making it more predictable in that there are fewer potentials and eventually the longer it takes to kill a mob the more likely it will kill you.

Nobody wants to play a game where everything is fine for a day and the next you're one shot due to balance passes.

I mean the game has improved since archnemesis. However most melee builds are pretty much garbage. Nothing has changed there yet. Melee get zero compensation for being slower than ranged and being closer proximity to big AoE.

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CarbotZergling123 wrote:

The reason people are treating necropolis as part of a pattern instead of them just completely blowing it and massively missing the mark is because it is. This is the third time they have completely blown a league with a great deal of potential by massively overdone nerfs that ruin the play experience for most players and don't actually hit the top end that hard.

First came expedition nerfs and the changes to mana completely killing most builds at the time, along with a reduction in loot. Then came Kalandra, where they paired forced archnem mods with what was for all intents and purposes deletion of all loot not from rares or pinnacles, and even those drops saw a reduction in loot. Now here in necropolis, they ripped out a ton of QoL from most builds and nerfed loot everywhere except t17s once again drastically impacting the play experience of everyone except the absolute top tier.

10 years worth of leagues and you only disagree 3 times like that? They must be doing something right!

May I remind you that Expedition was 3 years ago and Kalandra 2 years ago?

Somehow I fail to see the problem with the "trend", because what you describe is isnignificant in the greater picture.

That aside, in each instance there were lessons laerned and amendments made. Flask changes from Expedition were revisited almost immediately. Archnemesis modifiers have undergone many changes, most of which weakening rare mobs and they keep adjusting them even now, in Necropolis.

Just wait for the next season if you don't like T17s currently. There will be changes.

Seem people forget that league is about testing new content to add the the base game. Of course some will be bad and other good.

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xabe wrote:

Seem people forget that league is about testing new content to add the the base game. Of course some will be bad and other good.

There is testing for permanent inclusion in the base game, and then there is simple testing (before release) to see if it's going to be a pain to play/bug out/destroy existing game balance/fill in the blank. Don't forget that, for many players, the leagues ARE the game, and three to four months of something that doesn't make the grade could be a substantial portion of many players' PoE experience, assuming they don't go find something else to do with their time and money, instead. ='[.]'=

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ArtCrusade wrote:

10 years worth of leagues and you only disagree 3 times like that? They must be doing something right!

May I remind you that Expedition was 3 years ago and Kalandra 2 years ago?

Somehow I fail to see the problem with the "trend", because what you describe is isnignificant in the greater picture.

That aside, in each instance there were lessons laerned and amendments made. Flask changes from Expedition were revisited almost immediately. Archnemesis modifiers have undergone many changes, most of which weakening rare mobs and they keep adjusting them even now, in Necropolis.

Just wait for the next season if you don't like T17s currently. There will be changes.

The fact that they have produced quite a few good leagues, an occasional excellent one and a lot of mediocre ones does not mean that there is not a pattern where they decide to do a giant nerf that disproportionately impacts everyone except the absolute top tier players, further strangles the already borked build diversity and in general just makes everyone mad for little if any explained reason.

The issue is not that in 10 years they have produced some stinkers, although they certainly have. The issue is the pattern of poorly thought out gutting of the base game in the name of making it harder to cater to the absolute top streamers that makes the vast majority of the playerbase rightfully incredibly angry.

Before you go on about how its only 3 over ten years, the saying once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action exists for a reason. It is possible for people to make the same mistake twice even after the ridiculous negative feedback they got the first time. Making that same mistake again a third time is utterly ridiculous, they have proven by this that they either do not value the vast majority of their playerbase at all or that they are terrible at actually learning from their mistakes. Either way as far as I am concerned, and likely many others as well, my goodwill towards the devs is exhausted. I have functionally dropped PoE until at least the end of the league and if they don't make some steps towards seriously walking back their poorly thought out changes that hiatus is likely to become permanent.