Popular Opinion: In 3.28 League Challenges Should Require Solo Completion
"In discussions, the burden of proof is the obligation of the person making a claim to provide sufficient evidence or reasoning to support it, not the other person's duty to disprove it. Extraordinary claims, or what you might refer to as "objective facts", require extraordinary evidence, and failing to meet this burden means the claim is not accepted, promoting rational debate by preventing unsupported assertions. I, for one, don't like pressing too many buttons. That doesn't make me unskilled, lazy, complacent or whatever other descriptor you are trying to pluck from your vocabulary. - Unknown philosopher, ca. 2025 Last edited by Celestriad#0304 on Jan 26, 2026, 3:21:07 PM
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" Steamcharts data, as described in the video I linked, is crystal clear on what they are discussing. There is no redefining needed. Perhaps you don't understand it? " I'm doing....the exact opposite of this. I'm stating outright that there are MANY metrics...but the one that GGG is focused on, as per their own words, is increasing retention WITHIN a league....its the basis for every improvement they try to make within the game. I agree that league to league is important, but what you fail to grasp in the video and in my post is that "league to league" is not a metric you can focus on. Because its absolutely entirely dependent on the game itself. " There is no speculation. I provided proof, he failed to do so. Speculation over. " lol no.....it would make no sense to do this because the sheer amount of work and rebalancing it would require to not break their game. It's also kind of the point of the entire "seasonal game" structure to NOT do what you say.....it has nothing to do with retention or saving things for hype. OF COURSE GGG doesn't let go of all their eggs every single league....that's just stupid. They have ideas they mull around for years before releasing it at some point. Or even failed ideas like Phrecia. Yes, new is powerful. But new on top of crap....is crap. And you ignore the time and effort it takes to "introduce something completely new"....which is why they don't and have never done it. The one "overcomplicating" things at this point isn't me....the things you mentioned are VERY complicated and explain nothing about the situation re: retention and the video (now videos) linked. It's simple and straightforward, and directly from a primary source: THE source for all things PoE. Peak = $$$ is a GROSS oversimplification to the point of meaninglessness. How does one GET a peak? How did GGG grow their peak from 10k to 200k? Did those higher peaks actually translate to more $$$? THOSE are important. Without a quality product, peaks don't move. In fact, they would go DOWN. This is especially true of the gaming world. And if you don't think a total overhaul and redesign of the league mechanic, during the league, is not an example of a major change......then I can't help you any further. Starting anew....with PoE 2 Last edited by cowmoo275#3095 on Jan 26, 2026, 3:36:45 PM
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" The videos you provided does not proove that league retention is the main focus, this is why i say it is speculative. They discus retention as AN improvement and that it is of A concern, in POE2. Now for me, as we are discusing PoE1, can not relate since my conclusion is that POE2 at the moment is not for me. " This was the way POE1 did it before seasonal content. https://youtu.be/pM_5S55jUzk?t=546 If you have time, I would recommend you watch the full video, I think there are alot of points we would agree on. Sadly, we are probably the 10% mentioned here. https://youtu.be/pM_5S55jUzk?t=1538 " I just responded to the over exaggeration of saying the mid league changes in 3.27.0 were major. " This is why I said it is my opinion. Here are financial statements if you want to read into facts, but I'm just gonna stick to my opinion. Link might get removed but they are public. https://app.companiesoffice.govt.nz/companies/app/ui/pages/companies/1887410/documents Now, the key philosophy here does neither confirm or negate either opinion(Or fact according to you) as it is predicted scheduling so we're just gonna have to argue that it supports one or the other. https://youtu.be/pM_5S55jUzk?t=1209 " I do, but when did that last happen mid-league? Looking at keepers patch notes for example I found these note worthy patch notes but nothing that is overhauling or redesigning the league mechanic. ~5 days after launch https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3873809 * Ailith and monster interaction tweak * Graftblood tweak(numbers) * Enc of encounter tweak(drops) https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3877526 * Mostly numbers tweaking. * More foulborn uniques. * QoL wall interaction. https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3880147 * Wall QoL to another wall "QoL" A overhaul or redesign is a major change to an already existing system, e.g changing previous breach mechanic to the current state. If they would have changed back to the previous state of breach mechanic and designed the tree around that, then I could agree it was a redesign. I know this went abit out of scope but you couldn't help me so I helped myself. Last edited by Snooke#4557 on Jan 26, 2026, 5:19:11 PM
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I think it is good idea to make challenges solo. I was doing boss carry last league to raise status on tft and eventually be able to sell bottled exiles - which i did not do in the end but i wanted that option. I did it for about 2 weeks closer to league end for free - or for vouch only. And i got 142 unique vouches in that time. Several other people were offering the same.
I carried through ubers bunch of people who barely got to endgame - like level 85 guys. While i don't mind helping others at all, i think this simply devalues challenges. It should be something which you really do need to work on and not just login couple days per league into game without even completing atlas and get all challenges done with help of others. |
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" I'm done with this aside after this, its tiring and nonsensical. But I will highlight this because it illustrates how little you are understanding and now misrepresenting. For the record.....I LIVED through PoE development 2012 until now. No gaps. Obviously you didn't. Because you'd know.....there WAS NO PoE "before seasonal content". Seasonal content started during the beta lol. Additionally, there were never (as in not once) "major changes" the way you describe them mid-league. Ever. Period. The only time that would have ever happened was during the beta. Because that's precisely what the beta is for. *Ed: There WAS major changes to items in Delirium league because they broke the game. The "wall changes" you point to in your examples were MAJOR SHIFTS in how the content was designed. It completely changed how half of all interactions with Breach 2.0 went. You have 40 challenges this league.....how can that be possible and you DON'T consider that a major 180 in the success or downfall of the entire league lol (aka a MAJOR change). You see it as an easy QoL....and fail to see the full gravity of the change itself and what it would mean had they NOT made that change. And that's just ONE example of GGG making a big change to league material. How about bestiary and the removal of nets and redesign of capturing beasts? How about original harvest and the changes they made to how planting crops worked? How about the myriad changes that occurred during Heist league? How about 3.23 changes to the entire forest? Do I need to go on? I bet you'll find the vast majority of those changes....happened over the course of a week or more than a week into those leagues. I also bet they "look" rather minor on paper, but had incredible impact on the actual game. As for the write off of the video as "well this is PoE 2".....newsflash: the model for PoE 2 and the model for PoE 1 are EXACTLY THE SAME. They are both forever, seasonal games, built upon the exact same game loop within the same company. They have the same business model, the same teams working on advertising, the same development cycle. Your "financial statements" were.....never in doubt. I said as much across TWO posts now: GGG makes the majority of their money at league start. That isn't a secret. But you have continued to fail to digest what both videos I have linked show in terms of the developer's eye and focus, and what I have written in response to that exact point. Starting anew....with PoE 2 Last edited by cowmoo275#3095 on Jan 26, 2026, 6:56:18 PM
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" This is a great video. I encourage YOU to rewatch it, and put your critical thinking cap on. And this is only the marketing part of the video, there's even more in the rest of the sections on why they develop the way they do. Basically....none of it refers to a focus on "making the most money off the initial peak". That is a BYPRODUCT of everything else they do and say they focus on. This is what you fail to grasp. The peak and therefore the $$$ is the byproduct. It is the measure of their success in everything ELSE. I can't stress this enough.....rewatch the marketing section of the video YOU linked. And think while you are watching. There are numerous things highlighted in there: 1) The justification of focusing a LOT of manpower on a little content that very few get to see, and take time to get to. They actually spend a huge portion of development time and money on something that....gasp......is NOT for the people who appear on the Day 1 or Week 1 peak! Now why in the world would they do that? He explains why. 2) The rationale for WHY challenges should be solo and harder. CW literally spells it out. 3) The entire focus of designing a new league.....for the longevity of various groups of players. Every single aspect, highlighted and explained, as to why it will attract and KEEP certain types of players. Not keep them returning for the next league....keep them for THIS league. It's all right there in the clip. So....good find. He mentions that a core philosophy is "make sure that users quit with a plan to come back"....but the elaboration on that is simply that players WILL quit and they need to know WHEN the next league drops to come back. And he then reiterates that they monetize heavily at the start of the next league. Nothing that was ever in doubt. But that's ALL he says about that.....the rest of what he says is focusing on the game so that they even WANT to come back in the first place. Less than 1 minute of the video saying they want players to return versus 5+ minutes talking about retaining them during each league. Which in turn, translates to them coming back for future leagues. He even states offhand when going through the results: "Delve we saw a decrease, but that was likely because of a lack of retention during Incursion".... Starting anew....with PoE 2 Last edited by cowmoo275#3095 on Jan 26, 2026, 6:46:06 PM
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" yep. Voidstones should also be solo. People force their progression past where their character can actually farm then complain about difficulty. People don't want to achieve anything, they want their character instantly to the point where they can farm the most divine/hr strat possible easily. |
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" That’s a good point and a clear reason why we need to get this change, along with an overhaul of the challenges on its own. Hobby Gamer and Professional Software Engineer & Systems Architect from Tennessee
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe“ - Albert Einstein |
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" People buy voidstone carries because its too grindy to get the maven and uber elder ones yourself, and its faster and just better to pay someone 80c or 30c for them. The solution here is to make them faster to obtain and make the content better so people want to do it, not to force people to do it solo lol It also makes no sense that your first 2 voidstones are quest-related and quick, and then the game is like "I dunno just like go farm these 2 random unrelated bosses for a long time". The game should get you all 4 voidstones quickly in a questline with quest versions of maven and uber elder too. Or whatever other bosses. That's probably not happening until a major endgame expansion is out. But this "solo-only" change is not happening because A: the majority of players would hate it and B: SSF exists so making anything solo-only in any other mode of this game is redundant and pointless. And this whole concept of "oh you bought a carry for X,Y,Z content which you aren't ready for" is elitist. No, people just don't feel like farming the expensive invitations which take forever. This is why voidstone carries are so popular, obviously you want all 4 stones for max map sustain and more t17 drops to sell/do. And some people's fave map is so low on the atlas that they need 4 stones to turn it into a t16 so doing anything without 4 stones socketed is an actual waste of time for them. Anyway, I'm gonna enjoy paying people 100+ chaos and buying my voidstone carries in Phrecia. And in 3.28. The objectively correct solution is to make the content fun to do so people want to do it, if the other 2 voidstones were as fast to get as exarch and eater then not nearly as many people would buy carries. |
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" No, people buy carries because they can't beat the content and for literally zero other reasons, ever. Any other excuses are, at best, pure cope and denial. We are literally talking about people paying to have LESS game to play... why would anyone do that unless it was content that they felt they had zero chance of beating on their own? |
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