Path of Exile - upcoming F2P Daiablo clone

[Syt]

I was giving Grim Dawn another try the other day. It just doesn't drawn me in. I think it's mechanically sound (even though I'm not a fan of the skill and leveling system), but it just feels a bit bland.

[frunk]

Yeah. The game is definitely bloated and directionless right now. The league content cycle has made the game into a hodgepodge of different mechanics that don't fit with each other or haven't been meaningfully updated in ages. The game is not focused on intelligent combat or rewarding itemization, it's focused on content and getting players to buy MTX and supporter packs.

I would really like for GGG to just cool it on new leagues for a while and just fix their game but then they would go broke so what do I know.

I don't think PoE is "fixable" in its current state.  There are too many complex mechanics that it isn't possible to make it into a coherent system.  The power creep is quite real, but the effort and time (and fiddly crap) required has also gone up.  It makes for a growing imbalance between the top tier players and newbies/casual players, and if they keep going down this path it is going to drive the second group away.  I still enjoy playing because it is fun to try new things, but as I've said I only rarely stick with a character beyond dipping a toe into maps.  If you don't worry about endgame and try to make most likely crap builds work it can still be quite fun.

For me the biggest problems are:
1.  The base crafting system isn't fun.  I seriously dislike the RNG crafting system.  I'm not interested in clicking for hours trying to get an upgrade on one of my items.  90% of the time when I hit the point where I need to improve my gear by spending the currency I've collected all League I stop caring and quit.  Yeah, I could switch to trade league, but that's even less interesting.
2.  Layering on new crafting systems onto a game that probably has 4-5 too many as it is.  I can become very powerful if I leverage all of them, but beyond Essences I rarely care very much.  The Betrayal crafting system is poster child for a grind I've done many times before that I don't want to do again.  It's weird too, because I still like the Betrayal events but not the collection of the crafting mods.
3.  Layering on new events that, although individually are mostly fun, tend to blend together and only rarely differentiate in interesting ways.  If I hit a map with 3-4 of them I'll probably skip half of it.  Personally I'd keep Abyss, Incursion, Betrayal, Delve, Blight and maybe Expedition (if they revamped the rewards and currency spam).  I could be convinced to keep Heists although I don't care for it.  Get rid of Breach, Bestiary, Ritual, Legion, Ultimatum, Delirium, Metamorph and Harvest.  Bring them back for some special league at a future point.  Or, possibly better, have rotating sets that participate in a League.  Pick a group of 3-4 "Classic League Events" that are in the current League.  Each League pick different ones.  They'll all feel more special if they aren't always there.

[Syt]

There's ways to reduce the RNG factor/increase chances for certain mods when crafting, but it requires time investment, unlocking recipes from various bosses (e.g. Pale Court, IIRC), etc. I'm kinda ok with the system on the whole, though it has become way convoluted.

I saw the 8th anniversary posts for EU4. Oddly, I think the game is in a similar spot, creaking under tons of features added since launch, badly balanced and almost impregnable to casual first timers.

A personal gripe about POE for me is how you have many combat skills which are pretty useless, especially melee single target attacks. Without (and often even with) Ancestral Call or Multi Strike or Splash Damage they're quite useless in the later game. Normally you would balance games around this, e.g. have strong single target damage and combine with tankiness so you can weather damage while you take out targets in turn. On the other end of the spectrum you would have the glass cannons - high damage output/nuke potential while being squishy. Currently, the only real way to play is as tank cannon - nuke capability plus as many defenses as you can get.

[Iormlund]

I'll guess I'll add my 2 chaos:

For me the biggest problem lies Item acquisition priority.

In GGG's vision, items should drop.
In reality of course, you buy them. As long as there is trade and no directed drops (ala post expansion D3) this will always be the case. It's just a matter of statistics. Even if you drop an awesome 6x Tier 1 affix object, the chances that it will suit your build are minuscule.
They of course know that, which is why the trading system is such a clusterfuck. It creates what they call "friction".
Now, buying shit is hardly exciting for most, so from time to time GGG experiments with different kinds of crafting, however they completely nuke any system that can give you deterministic outputs, because again, items should drop. Which leads to [shitty] trade again.
And since everything can be traded, everything is balanced around those who spend hours trading and can zoom through the hardest content. This means using currency on anything that is not a T16 map or dropped from one is basically a waste. Delirium Orbs, Scarabs, crafting currency. It affects everything.

There are other problems. But I honestly think those are rather minor.

Personally what I would try would be:

• Add a flag to every object: tradeable.
• Set that flag to False as default.
• Implement an Auction House. It won't accept any object with Tradeable = False.
• Create a crafting recipe that has gains charges within a couple days regardless of account activity.
• Make that recipe set the flag to True.

You could make it even more customizable.   

• Create a slider that determines how many days it takes for the recipe to gain a charge.
• The longer the period, the higher the droprate.
• After initial setup, the slider can only be moved one tick a time. It has a delay of 1 month, during which you will gain no charges.

[Syt]

I agree that loot drops are a big issue. There's tons and tons of drops, but 99.9% of it is garbage that you at best vendor off for the currency. I don't see how they could fix this so that you get more useful loot from drops. In Diablo gear is very much class dependent, but in POE it very much isn't. Because of the freedom you have in building your character, you might want to use certain items that wouldn't normally fit your character's base or ascendancy (e.g. if you use a weapon only as stat stick and require certain color sockets that normally don't roll easy on items for your archetype).

A huge change would be getting rid of low level item bases in drops in higher tiers.

I don't play trade league, but I guess the vast majority do. GGG don't want trade to be a focus, from what I understand, which is why they're reluctant to make it easier in game. Fair enough (though maybe look at what the majority of your players do/want?). But then balance the game that you can have a decent char without trading for "must have" items for your builds, or without investing heavily in crafting.

I mean, before I started using item filters I was completely lost with all the loot that dropped.

[Iormlund]

For that they've implemented a system they call 'smart loot'. It reduces drop numbers and instead rolls the same item several times and keeps the best outcome.

However it also eliminates the "loot explosion" effect, for which they have received negative feedback from their QA team, so they have not used it extensively yet. It's only applicable to a few places so far (eg. Heist cabinets).

But even this system would only go so far, since it is just numerical, not tailored to your build. They could just boost the drop numbers massively until you get useful drops in SSF, but then Trade players would be swimming in perfectly rolled items.

[frunk]

I don't play trade league, but I guess the vast majority do. GGG don't want trade to be a focus, from what I understand, which is why they're reluctant to make it easier in game. Fair enough (though maybe look at what the majority of your players do/want?). But then balance the game that you can have a decent char without trading for "must have" items for your builds, or without investing heavily in crafting.

They keep trying to have it both ways with "trade with friction", but that just means the prices are slightly higher and someone can still make buttloads by spending all their time in arbitrage.  Better to let trade league be full trade with auction house and hard separate SSF.  Then you can have a different drop rate between the two, tighten up drops on Path of Trading to create actual friction.

[FunkMonk]

GGG knows their game is broken, too. They just don't know how to fix it ( or they realize it is impossible ) without interrupting the league cycle and destroying their revenue.

I think PoE 2 is their way to fixing the game: Just make a new game

[Syt]

Probably yes, but their aim is to keep e.g. the original campaign in POE2 - you have access to different ascendancies depending on which campaign you play. They will then merge into the same endgame.

Currently I have little confidence they can pull this off, but apparently POE2 is earliest coming out 2023?

[frunk]

Probably yes, but their aim is to keep e.g. the original campaign in POE2 - you have access to different ascendancies depending on which campaign you play. They will then merge into the same endgame.

Currently I have little confidence they can pull this off, but apparently POE2 is earliest coming out 2023?

Personally the skill gem rework is the most exciting part of POE2.  Get that in POE and I'll be happy for quite a while afterward.

I think they want POE2 to make a big splash though, so they'll probably hold it back until POE2 is ready.

[Iormlund]

GGG has been using leagues as a way of testing the reception of several new systems for PoE 2. The only things that will have to wait until the new game are the campaign, the 19 new ascendancies and the gem system.

I think the drop in revenue after both the Harvest Manifesto and this latest debacle has made them reconsider their plans. They've lost about 30% revenue in the last two leagues. And while experimenting during a temporal event is a good idea in theory, it probably doesn't sound so good when it costs you millions of dollars.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see a much more conservative approach to PoE 2 than what was originally conceived.


In somewhat related stuff: While buying my Dancing Dervish I just got into a party with an aura stacker / aurabot. My tooltip DPS instantly multiplied by 20, my defenses where maxed out and movement speed set to ludicrous speed.
It's little wonder they can't balance the economy.

[Syt]

Not playing much this league anymore except an hour here or there while listening to podcasts. Still, I think my naming is on point (aborted Specter build, and Spectral Shield Throw which is surprising fun):

[Syt]

New league reveal video:

https://youtu.be/tfVz_Nd45nw

Scourge seems similar to Delirium in a way, except you kill enemies first to extend the length of the "alternate dimension", and the main benefit is ... more randomized crafting. They do add currency for re-rolling the sockets, colors, and links on corrupted items. So, yay?

Expedition becomes part of core game (no surprise). Expedition currency is no longer tradable items, and are picked up automatically. Perandus is out.

Some streamlining: Atlas only has 4 regions, and maps cut down to ca. 100 (and more major changes to come next year). Veiled mods unlock all tiers of that mod at the crafting bench.

More super hard end game challenges for the hardcore players ("aspirational endgame content"), like mega hard versions of Breach, Blight, Legion, additional Delirium stuff and revamped Delve.

There'll be a new super-rare belt which grants 100% uptime of all magic flasks, plus strength/dex, and a bit of fire/cold res.

Passive skill tree rework and rebalance. Niche skills needed for some builds were too constraining, so they wanted to make them more easily available in various areas of the tree, so there will be a "mastery system". On many notable clusters, you will have a "passive mastery" that you can unlock. This will have several options to choose from, and these options will be shared between multiple notables clusters. And they added more niche stuff for more builds. My expectation is that this will lead to overall more powerful characters since you'll potentially save many pathing nodes for builds. Also, build guide creators will have their hands full with re-writing all their guides.

10 new skill gems, because of course. 6 aimed at party play. Do many people actually do that? Energy Blade converts energy shield into lightning damage on your weapon (energy shield/melee build). Temporal Rift - basically Tracer's Rewind ability in Overwatch. Take a "snapshot" of your character and rewind to 4 seconds ago (location and status, i.e. health and mana). So you could activate, drain health/mana, and then rewind. Tornado: creates a tornado that moves across the map to kill enemies. You can hit it with your weapon for a period of time to "charge it up" and increase damage. Poisonous concoction - like explosive concoction, but poison. Costs life flask charges and scales with flask's life recovery. Plus six link skills that buff a co-player significantly, but if they die, you die. (Aurabot multiplayer characters will be nerfed in turn.) There's a new passive that allows you to use link skills with minions.

Guild quality of life changes. I didn't know there were guilds in the game.

To reduce numbers of clicks, the number of currency drops will be reduced, but the drops will have a higher quantity of items (e.g. 6-14 scrolls of wisdom). Where items drop all at once (e.g. delve node, incursion), stackable items will be stacked.

Overall some interesting changes, but I feel I'm still not feeling to come back yet.

[frunk]

So far I think this is the best league in a long time.  I'm only 80% done with Act 3, but already the skill tree is way more interesting and the league mechanic kicks ass.  The difficulty of the Scourge really starts climbing in Act 3.  I died 3 times on the Docks to them.

[Iormlund]

I'm waiting for maps to engage with the Scourge. Reward seems too delayed to be worth it early.

Love the changes to the tree, though it is clear the mastery system will need a few more passes (eg. minions).
The changes to Elemental Overload and Elemental Equilibrium puzzle me. Where before I was using Storm Brand to trigger EO and EE, and apply a curse, now I'm still doing the same thing with Arcanist Brand, to apply exposure, the curse and Flame Surge (for Ignite). So mechanically it changes nothing, which kind of defeats the purpose of the stated change. I do like that the Ignite gem-space is wider now.

I've had a blast theorycrafting a couple builds for the league. My mate's going with an Inquis RF while I'm doing Hexblast Ignite elementalist.

Really helped that the league hit when it did, as I've been recuperating from surgery and all the tinkering with Path of Building has helped getting me distracted.