Constructive feedback : 3 main gripes with the current game

Hello GGG,

As someone who used to love the game and has played thousands of hours since 2013, I find myself losing the desire to play with every passing league lately. Please hear me out.

And don’t get me wrong: the foundation of the game is great. However, three main aspects are currently ruining the experience, in my opinion.

I will assume you are aware of, and understand the ramifications of systems within your game and how they interact with one another; therefore I won’t deep dive into why system A leads to result B, relying on your common sense and expertise. Here I go :


1. Faustus, the new trade system

While Faustus is an amazing quality-of-life improvement, its introduction has had side effects that went largely unmitigated. For example, almost every unique that used to be worth 2, 5, 10, 20, or even 50 chaos in the past is now worth 1 chaos, simply because the market is flooded due to increased availability and ease of trading.

What does that mean in practice? It means that when you launch a map, you already know from the get-go that you won’t get anything of value. And it means that while doing a map, nothing exciting ever drops, no small dopamine hits, no small/uncommon items worth anything to sell.

You cannot introduce a system like Faustus without adjusting other systems around it. You either need to greatly reduce the drop rates of ALL uniques, or you need to introduce more friction into listing items—such as high gold fees—so that items can retain some degree of scarcity and value.

I shouldn’t have to say this, but scarcity and rarity are core pillars of loot-based online games.

2. Genesis Tree reward–type mechanics

This one is egregious. Why do you keep introducing systems like the Genesis Tree that reward players with perfect bases, fractures and 6-links as soon as they reach maps. With barely any efforts.

That completely negates the core purpose of the game. Good bases, strong fractures, and 6-links should be chase items, something you work towards to better your character along the way as opposed to being handed out on a silver platter 10 hours after a new league start.
This alone objectively hurts long-term retention as well as player psyche, meaning that if you give out things too easily and too fast, people will play less because they have less things to chase.

3. Stacked Decks, Valdo boxes, and Reliquary Keys

I find it sad that in a loot-based game, roughly 50% of all "expensive" chase uniques listed on the trade site come from Valdo boxes, Reliquary Keys, or Stacked Decks rather than from actual gameplay and bosses.

Why not nerf this? Having these systems exist to some degree is fine, but when foil items and stacked decks flood the market, it stops feeling rewarding and fun.

Items that are supposed to drop from specific endgame bosses should not be flooding the economy through unrelated sources mere days into a new league. That undermines the entire progression and reward structure of the game.

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These three issues alone have removed have killed my excitement and desire to play, at least personally. And that’s frustrating, because I WANT TO PLAY Path of Exile, I want to grind, I WANT TO PLAY the game I used to love and have supported for over a decade.

I feel like the game is getting casualized in order to cater to a different demographic of players, younger generations who expect that everyone is entitled to everything without efforts.

PS:
- Bigger balance passes, especially for skills and ascendancies
- Old Breach was way more fun and enjoyable than Breach 2.0
- Kingsmarch being passive resource generation feels (IS) mandatory
- Too much loot overall accross the whole game

nothing wrong with faustus, best addition to the game in YEARS

tree mega op yep

do you know how many decks, valdos and keys get opened to get these uniques you're thinking of? thosands and thousands and thousands, nothing wrong with them

There is PLENTY scarcity: just with different items. The benefits far and away outweigh the drawback of a "few" (it really is only a few) uniques losing their value faster each league. But even this isn't strictly true of Faustus......the reason many uniques lost value this league is because the foulborn versions were much better and much more desired.

It's interesting you included the following paragraph in your OP, and then went on to completely disregard it in your first point and last point:

"I will assume you are aware of, and understand the ramifications of systems within your game and how they interact with one another; therefore I won’t deep dive into why system A leads to result B, relying on your common sense and expertise."

You drew entirely wrong conclusions about Faustus because you did exactly the opposite of "understanding the ramifications of multiple systems interacting with one another", and instead tried to restrict it all to ONE system.



The other points you made are fair points. Sort of. You fall into the same issue as above with #3: you attribute some issue to the wrong source. Stacked deck ability to produce chase uniques is......astronomical, to the point that I would bet not a single mageblood has been created this way for a single player. I perosnally have opened 10s of thousands of stacked decks and received a grand total of....ZERO mageblood cards. Let alone anywhere near a stack. For reference, the actual cost of the mageblood itself is far below the cost of these stacked decks, signifying them as the WORST way to get a mageblood. Valdos are already prohibitively rare for the items you talk about, not to mention absurdly difficult and risky to run. And reliquary keys?!?!?! seriously? Those are even more rare than stacked decks at getting the items you describe.

The three things you chose to highlight are probably the tiniest contributors to the chase uniques on the market.

Completely agree, but cannot upvote.

"

cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

There is PLENTY scarcity: just with different items. The benefits far and away outweigh the drawback of a "few" (it really is only a few) uniques losing their value faster each league. But even this isn't strictly true of Faustus......the reason many uniques lost value this league is because the foulborn versions were much better and much more desired.

It's interesting you included the following paragraph in your OP, and then went on to completely disregard it in your first point and last point:

"I will assume you are aware of, and understand the ramifications of systems within your game and how they interact with one another; therefore I won’t deep dive into why system A leads to result B, relying on your common sense and expertise."

You drew entirely wrong conclusions about Faustus because you did exactly the opposite of "understanding the ramifications of multiple systems interacting with one another", and instead tried to restrict it all to ONE system.



The other points you made are fair points. Sort of. You fall into the same issue as above with #3: you attribute some issue to the wrong source. Stacked deck ability to produce chase uniques is......astronomical, to the point that I would bet not a single mageblood has been created this way for a single player. I perosnally have opened 10s of thousands of stacked decks and received a grand total of....ZERO mageblood cards. Let alone anywhere near a stack. For reference, the actual cost of the mageblood itself is far below the cost of these stacked decks, signifying them as the WORST way to get a mageblood. Valdos are already prohibitively rare for the items you talk about, not to mention absurdly difficult and risky to run. And reliquary keys?!?!?! seriously? Those are even more rare than stacked decks at getting the items you describe.

The three things you chose to highlight are probably the tiniest contributors to the chase uniques on the market.

What is this. You're really going out of your way in order to be counter-argumentative... The points I mentioned are facts, irrefutable, it's not even a discussion.

"There is PLENTY scarcity: just with different items."
No shit, of course there is still scarcity with different items, and there always will be. But that wasn't the point, the point was that less items within maps are able to net small to medium profits, which is a fact. And also that low/mid-tier uniques are now completely and utterly worthless.

Regarding stacked decks... hey I've played with a group of 8 people for a few hundred hours, 2 of which did nothing besides opening stacked decks, and you probably wouldn't believe the amount of mageblood and mirror cards they got. As in +2000 divine profits within 2 weeks. Other players also opened a few, and got cards, which led most of the players to stop playing in favor of opening stacked decks only. The two players that got insanely rich with the stacked are noobs (their first and second league), and they both dropped a mirror as well without even doing any farming strategies. Now one could argue that new accounts have higher drop rates but I won't drag you into conspiracy theories just yet.

Again, what are you on about, my point was that 1/2 weeks following the start of a league, half of the expensive unique items listed are foil coming from boxes and key, and not from organic gameplay. Let alone those also coming from stacked decks... That is a fact, irrefutable.

[Removed by Support]

Sigh... on a good note, I guess you love the game as it currently is, which is good for you. Enjoy

"

Senju_Hyoketsu#6098 wrote:

What is this. You're really going out of your way in order to be counter-argumentative... The points I mentioned are facts, irrefutable, it's not even a discussion.

If you ever write a sentence like this....its almost guaranteed that you are wrong about it. And you are.

Like you yourself pointed out.....there are MANY systems that interplay together to create the effects you are highlighting.

And yet you are attempting to distill them down to ONE, in every point you make. That is a recipe for disaster, and it shows in the post.



Your "facts" are not facts. They are hypotheses, which literally MUST be argumentative and refutable....until you have the hard numbers to point directly to.

You are GUESSING that Faustus is the cause of the specific uniques you personally looked at. And within that guess, you are willfully ignoring everything and anything else that might play a role.

You are GUESSING that the majority of uniques and other items come from stacked decks, reliquary keys, and otherwise.....without any substantiated data to pull from, yet claim its "irrefutable fact". Even amongst just TWO players, you and me, we have completely opposite experience with this.

Also, it couldn't possibly be that uniques, even t1s, rain from the freaking sky if that happens to be what you choose to hunt for. And its been quite a few leagues since any uniques other than the most used and most rare have held onto ANY value. Since the introduction (and nerf in difficulty) of t16.5s and t17s, the most commonly farmed items are uniques up to the few t0 chase uniques. THIS is the biggest contributor to their rapid fall in sell value within a league. Even since before Faustus existed.

You also have the tree, which is spitting out fantastic rare items at a rate unseen in a long time. Perhaps THAT could have a strong effect on the value of stopgap uniques? You even have this as one of your points....but fail to connect it to both points 1 and points 3.



For someone with such self-proclaimed knowledge of the interplay of systems in PoE....you show a shocking disregard for them in order to make your points.





Your gripes and your personal observations are not something I can discount: they are unique to you. But when you try to attribute them to things with words such as "irrefutable", "facts", or "not even a discussion"....your whole potentially valid feedback goes out the window.

*added: a quick example to illustrate just ONE of your "irrefutable facts"
Tabulas on the market with NO foil: 10000+
Tabulas on the market with ANY foil: 253
Conservative estimate (since it cuts off at 10k): less than 2%, likely far far FAR less than that.
And that's from a COMMON unique that holds its value variably throughout leagues

54 foil magebloods
973 non-foil magebloods
slightly higher at about 5% representation....but still astoundingly low.

most of the uniques are vendor trash. also there is the other side of the coin where players who would otherwise never sell a 5-10c item, now actually can. it is also beneficial for someone to use a low tier niche unique for corrupts.

the notion that fractured items should be peak crafting is absurd.

and you can get a six link by simply camping legion for a day or two.

"

feral_nature#7076 wrote:

the notion that fractured items should be peak crafting is absurd.

Go into deeper detail on this one.....because this is a rather curious take that I haven't heard since the addition of fractures into the game.

Fractures finally added at least one layer of determinism to a complete gamble crafting process. How in the world could that be a bad thing?

Before fractures, we had imprints via beastcraft/eternal orbs to "save" mods that basically served the same function in the crafting process, only much worse and more open to mistakes.

Man who claims "irrefutable facts" almost always talking about his own "entirely subjective feelings".

That's most of what I'm seeing here.

The only thing I can find in this mess to agree with is tree probably needs tuning if it goes core, just like every other monstrous printer of egregiously strong yellows and 6 links (remember heist, ritual, and original harvest, to name a couple that were at least as egregious and got tuned).

Feels like you're trying to gaslight my experience as "personal" when I have more than 10k hours in this game since 2013, is a bit disingenuous don't you think. I have observed enough about how the game works, used to work and should work. I'm not claiming to be the be all know it all though, but Faustus rendering most low/mid tier uniques worthless isn't a subjective personal sentiment, it's a straight up fact, economics 101; when things are more available by being more easily tradable, they drop in price. If their drop rate isn't adjusted to compensate, their value will plummet. Those are just economical facts.

Let's just discuss this one point : when entering a map since the addition of Faustus, you get less dopamine hits, and less profit overall unless you have a clear cut strategy going.
And sure it's the same for everyone so in the grand scheme of things it's not like you are making less money, that's not the point I'm trying to make.

The point is: less small dopamine hits, cause everything is now more common (more available on trade because of the ease of trading Faustus provides). It's just boring that uniques are worthless, in a game supposed to be about loot and items.

How is that subjective, when before Faustus you could drop 1000 uniques (just an approximation as an example) and maybe sell 50 of them for a small amount of currency ranging from 1-100c, when now you could maybe sell 5 of all those same ones for 1-20c.

When before you could pick up some uniques here and there that were worth anywhere between 1-100c ; because many players didn't pick them up. Yes it's not great, but still provided that small boost to your early economy, and small dopamine hits (fun/excitement) once they dropped.
Now it's so easy to sell them that the market is flooded, resulting in them having no value. Same could be said for things like a Shavronne's wrapping, a Prism Guardian, a Squire, etc.
I'm not saying these items should be astronomically expensive ; I'm just saying that the items that used to be sellable within the first 2 weeks of a league for 1-100c are now worth nothing.

I get it, none of those items are included in end-game builds, that's not the point, just saying that even as someone who aspires to mageblood-tier items it's still fun to have a few drops in maps resulting in low to averages sales.

I don't get what you're trying to argue against, the low-mid tier uniques sell for less since the introduction of Faustus, period. Hence it's a fact. Hence you're just being disingenuous for some reason.

Edit: and yes some facts in life ARE irrefutable, it is what it is. If you paint your wall green, it's green, not yellow. Claiming to be right about it doesn't make someone wrong just because he said it was irrefutable, I just destroyed your argument.
/shrug

Again, low-mid tier uniques sell for less since the introduction of Faustus, period. Denying said facts just shows you're the type of person that can't be reasoned with.
/shrug