I can't let this go: Why is Keepers going core?

So, let me get this straight:

1. Keepers had the worst league retention of all time. Worse than Synthesis. Worse than Heist. Worse than Expedition. Worse than Crucible. Worse than Scourge. Worse than Lake of Kalandra. Outside of Expedition and Heist (which seemingly only went core because of sunk cost fallacy), none of those leagues went core because of how poorly they were received.

2. Of the three encounters, only one even remotely resembled Breach. It was slightly better in some ways (completion bar with a group of rares or a boss upon completion) and worse in other ways (only one type of encounter, removed multiple bosses, very few breach rings).

3. The other two encounters were worse versions of Blight (!!!) -- an entirely different league mechanic! Hold on, let me repeat: TWO OF THE THREE ENCOUNTERS WERE WORSE VERSIONS OF AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT LEAGUE MECHANIC!

4. Those two encounters took up too much real estate in maps and zones, covering zone entrances, exits, and boss fights.

5. Those two encounters ate natural map spawns and other league mechanics, smothering juicing and mob density.

6. Those same two encounters included densely packed walls, preventing and limiting movement and movement skills.

7. Those same two encounters required a massive time investment that did not change no matter how powerful or fast your build was.

8. Hive encounters are oppressively unavoidable. There have been other unavoidable league mechanics (I'm still not a fan of Intervention from Betrayal), but none have been this oppressive.

9. The Tree is the worst thing you've ever added to the game. By far. If it goes core -- like, at all -- it's going to be the worst decision you've ever made, no matter how much you nerf it or limit it. If it's nerfed to be equivalent to ground loot, then, you know, why would it go core? Most people are going to avoid it altogether due to how frustrating and time consuming it is to engage with. If it's not nerfed at all, everyone is going to spec into it because it gives the best loot in the game, no matter if they like the mechanic or not. If it's nerfed between 75% and 25% of what it is now... That might be the worst decision. It's going to be Kingsmarch x100. People are going to be frustrated that it's better than ground loot and that they feel like they have to spec into it on the Atlas tree just to get decent drops. And it's still going to be a frustrating and time-consuming mechanic. It's going to create a ton of feels-bad.

10. Foulborne uniques are cool. So you got that going for you. Which is nice.

I don't want to block a league mechanic just to make the game not feel like total shit. I don't want to spec into a league mechanic just to make it not feel so oppressive. And it's still going to make leveling markedly more annoying and frustrating.

So why is it going core? You're tossing a beloved and fun league mechanic into the dustbin for one that's almost universally a design failure and should be nuked into oblivion. Is it another case of sunk cost fallacy like Heist?

I agree with... Everything.

the crux of this patch is that it took a lot of stuff away (so many Mercenaries juicing farms completely destroyed and ALL OTHER FARMS nerfed severely anyway because fuck you, you're not dropping ground loot, we have menu loot for you), yet it didn't introduced anything new to replace it. In terms of ground loot and endgame gameplay loop that is.

They tried with mid-league scarab patch, but it was a nothingburger. Made bloodlines inaccessibly expensive (it was already a good scarab, why buff it), other scarab buffs were meme level anyway.

Why do we have to bother with this cursed tree in core version of Breach anyway? Doesn't this game have enough menu loot already? Just drop our rewards from breach encounters! Allow us to spec on tree whether we want more uniques or more foulborn currency and there we go.

The 24-wave encounter can be the new version of breachstone. Gather splinters to assemble a key to this. And make this the jackpot encounter, something you want to farm, not a chore.

1. Keepers had worst retention knowing poe2 was following it up the next month, and the endgame was stale + keepers wasn't a 'great' league. Let's not just say keepers entirely was at fault in this mess as a 'bad mechanic'. I think the tree mechanic and ez mode crafting ruined the game, but we'll see how the tree traits carry forward.

2. New Breach is fine, w/e. They might fix how clunky it is on some maps, lets not jump to judgement, plus they said you could lean into the right version you wanted I think.

3. Same as 2, but it was fine. Mini-blight, people who play blight know how cringe a single unique ending ur entire mechanic is. It's a lot friendlier.

4. Could be fixed with it being more of a 1/20 maps rather than every map.

5. Loot buffs 3.28, please. It's not the mechanic its been a problem with the game for the last 2 years.

6. It is gimmicky, but I always just ran straight towards the mechanic, clicked, then ran to the purple orbs so you could quickly grab like 70% of the map (outside of vaal temple like layouts), again it could be an easy fix between choosing the encounter and smarter ai.

7. Hives were long and very rewarding, blight was a little annoying but maybe just block the mechanic or that feature. Foulborns are cool, lets see if they fix the spawning of blight-lite and if hives are as long and tedious as before. If they easy those up a little bit it should be a great addition.

I got bored, but honestly your obsessed with this game for a reason, let them cook.

Hives were long and the run back to the boss fight made me wanna leave the whole map no reason u cannot put a portal outside or just don't make it long like a line to the bathroom

Maybe they just didn't have the time to be honest. Perhaps they focused more on the new stuff coming out rather then try to find some middle ground with old/new breach.

I'd really like to see what nerfs they have in store before I give my own judgement. Retention was also really bad simply because PoE 2 came out rather quickly after PoE 1 started so it's not all about breach itself, there are other factors.

If the patch coming out spices the endgame up and they nerf the tree the right way, I'm not sure people will care as much. Everyone thought Harvest was going to kill the game as well and it's still here and isn't even close to the same power level that it was.

I can already foresee the breach tree being overpowered even if nerfed by 200/300/500%... and everyone being pressured to take it because it will simply award the crazy rare items (would make no sense not to).

But yeah Breach 1.0 was much more fun, and better imo, by far.

The only good way to implement the genesis tree, would be if the points would do "unique breach boss/monster have X% chance of dropping a foulborn unique on kill" or "unique breach/monster have X% chance of dropping are rare item with X modifier on kill".

And even still, I think the whole provisioning wombgift side of the tree is a huge mistake.


But to answer the original question, the answer is simple: the people in charge of the game design are doing a mediocre job. Unless I fail to see something, that's my rational and objective response after having both observed and experienced the game's direction these past 4 years.

Sad.

Because fancy PoE 2 graphics and assets must go core, it took so long to make them. It was probably decided that it would be core before the league even launched, so much for "oh we won't make it core if most people dislike it".

Same exact thing that happened with Archnemesis, everybody hated it but they went and forced it into the game anyways, then wasted even more dev time trying to balance it and now we just have annoying rares in the game that drop a few rare items most of the time. I also have no clue why they deleted the random big burst of exp/gem exp that some rare mobs had? Who asked for that to be removed, it was fun.

Thats the problem it was fun

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OverlyAggro#3474 wrote:

Your (sic) obsessed with this game for a reason, let them cook.

The game I'm obsessed with no longer exists. The company that made the game I was obsessed with no longer exists.