HC Temp leagues: An endangered species?

Been playing a minute and in EHC I got my highest lvl HC char I've ever had (lvl 86 atm, playing casually/solo). Ex were super cheap so chaos recipe was viable and selling shit things for 5alt instead of vendoring since people are continuously lvling/relvling I've found it extremely healthy.

Have gotten some sweet drops too, but that's just RNG

BORN TO DIE / EHC IS A FUCK / Kill Em All 2.4 / I am trash man / 410,757,864,530 DEAD SCRUBS

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ADFuel wrote:

I'm not sure that I follow you. The purpose of this thread is to speculate on why the HC leagues are dying / discuss possible solutions to revitalize it.

Sorry if i badly explained what i want to say is getting MTX or differenciate players again won't change HC leagues actual state.
It impacted them by decreasing a bit population but in a good way leaving HC leagues to players that are here for a personal achievement more than a material reward.

Now how to revitalize HC leagues ? It can be a really really long discussion but here are some toughts.

1/ Partying

In my last HC experience the first thing that catched my eyes and made me leaving it quick ( about one week ) has been the " party-play ". Honestly it may be the cause number one the entire game still have troubles to catch more players.
The way leveling has been made in PoE is favorizing solo play till late game ( except masters rotations and end game group rotations ).

You can come from any games and enjoy Hardcore if you are going on an online one with public boards empty / not much players interactions you may leave after no even an hour.

If you remember some leagues like Invasion as an example there were way more public party and activity around grouping now from what i saw before stopping PoE in every acts it was limited to a few dried lake groups in a4 and that's it nothing else except trading purposes.

Why partying in PoE is disapearing ?
I can only speculate only Chris got the stats but some things are possibly impacting that:

- Previous ( and actual ) performances issues
- If you can go twice fast alone if it's not 10 why would you play in groups ?
- Skills effects are filling the screen ... in party it became nearly impossible to few players to keep playing more than an hour chaining maps.
- Where is the actual reward of playing in group ? The quantity and rarity bonus per player ? :devilsmile:
- There are many interactions between skills that are conflicting in a party.
- The party system is all except friendly. Something that has been suggested a while ago ( few years ) was to have a dedicated to grouping interface but only for maps / quests and so on and no possibility to create trading party in this one etc ...

What we have right now is a global channel that new players have absolutely no idea about and a public board that is ... kinda ... prehistoric.
When you start PoE even if you have the HC mindset in others games you will face a game that feel ... Empty in fact.

I can continue for a while but you get it, partying in a multiplayer online game is something expected.
Players enjoy solo play like i do sometimes but at some point it's cool to share experience with others and the way game is built isn't really friendly for that.

This has impacted HC leagues that's a sure thing ( and limited for years the progression of the game ).



Conclusion: Reworking partying would help a lot to revitalize HC leagues.

2/ Game become really heavy

With the addition of act4 / Labyrinth / masters / Huge change to balance map drops each leagues and so on it take really a while to get to what interest most of players:
- Mapping and getting satisfaction to see the char they have built is working ! Then ... Mapping surviving and so on with a fast paced feeling.

Act4 made the leveling 1.5 longer than before / Labyrinth ( will talk only about the leveling impact ) added another layer and on top of that depending of leagues map drops has been clearly not ok since the map system is here at all.
Granted Atlas of world introduced a kind of progression feeling trought endgame and you can sustain your map pool easier than before sooo there are some progress here and i welcome them.

I could add tons of argues here but i think you get my point. In HC life is hard and cruel. If you die no more potatoes Character selection => Create new => On the road again.
Problem is the road is a bit too long now-a-days. And at some points ... well at some points wild reddit post and forum post start to appear asking for solutions about that. ( they started to appear 2 years ago ).

Conclusion: Hard to say it's an easy task, but making leveling shorter would help a lot or days won't be enough longer to achieve anything at this rythm.


3/ Labyrinth fiasco

Before starting this category i did like to prevent users reading that they shouldn't discuss the " lab thing " with anger. The only thing it will lead to is GGG getting tired of this shit and ignoring their points even if they are interesting ( well if they are professional and humans they will ignore you ).

Let's start with why i'm calling it a fiasco and why i choose this word to describe it.
I love the lab. This is something i always claimed on this forum and i always explained to lab haters why with the more courtesy i could but it has to be said this is a fiasco.
When you create something that doesn't catch much attention of players and does not fit with their attempts in a game you can already call it a fail.
When 50% of forum is spammed by hundreds if we havn't reached thousands threads asking for a rework ( or remove for the most hateful ) of it it's a fail confirmation.
When you talk about this subject saying stats are proving lot of players are actualy enjoying it ... you become the problem.
When players stop to talk about it because they fear of GGG doesn't even reading them ... it's too late.
Lab has been introduced and clearly insulted from a large part of userbase since the begin, guess what ? One league after a new lab has been added. Where is the logic here ? Dev don't want to accept it was a mistake ? I don't get it.
HC players were the first to say Labyrinth was going to destroy HC leagues and they were RIGHT it's unforgiven / if you have any network issues you may die / the way defenses work in this game in an unbalanced way are going to put you in troubles in term of theorycrafting if you want to do lab yourself / and while you are going to be able killing t15 bosses few traps could kill you anyway. This design is a fiasco. The way it has been introduced is a fiasco. The way GGG don't want to throw their expectations for a min or two and keep claiming people love it is a fiasco.

Conclusion: The impact on HC leagues has been the one called by those HC players many of them just stopped or switched to SC.

I will never suggest to remove lab it's still a lot of great work here but it suffer from the same troubles as many others part of the game: As soon it's introduced there arn't many focus on them and even if they are half finished they will stay in the game ( hello trading ). On another part there are reason for that and the first one i will point is the business plan of GGG not really giving choice to keep going forward and forgot about polishing old content.

What could help revitalize HC leagues is not removing the lab because it would be unprofessional. Professional mean you are facing the problems and find solutions that doesn't cut budget invested on something. But there are some serious suggestions that has been made that should be taken into consideration and that wouldn't be too costly. There arn't any official statement about that ( except the removal of trials for each characters in a previous update ).

4/ A problem that appeared because HC leagues got less population

Trading. Of course it's a problem. The whole game is built around trading. Problem is when there arn't players to trade ? Well it's over. Add to that the way trading work in this game and you get my point again ... Why would you plan a character in HC leagues if you know after three weeks they are dead and your chances to get the item you want trought flippers / afk if you don't play h24 are .. inexistant ?

Conclusion: I've no idea how trading could work in this case - I posted thousands on forums already and i seriously don't want to start again.

5/ Network Issues / bugs and so on

If you play SC you don't care at all.
If you are playing HC and die due to recurrent network problems you won't take it with the same mood than dying because of a personal fail or theorycraft fail.
The thing is while a lot of progress has been done here there has been too many issues in this league and in past one to be cool enough and reroll when it happen.
It's not entirely GGG's fault and often absolutely not their fault their provider is clearly not able to do the job that's it. But changing provider is not an easy task as you could do it yourself at home.

Anyway the impact is there Heavy game + Unforgiven mecanics + Network issues leading to death => ok switching to another games or back to SC. Simple as that. Hardcore mindset or not patience have limits.

Conclusion: Network issues will be always here. Not GGG's fault and more how internet has been designed but clearly for some bugs it's incredibly hard to understand they hasn't been catched on the test realm or before production. This is something that hurted the game a lot and HC leagues. Taking more time on the agenda to fix them wouldn't be that bad. And last news from CNN: Tried to bring some people to PoE after stopping it and they laughed hard comparing it to Minecraft Java version in term of stability. At this point i had no idea what to answer them. And still havn't.

6/ HC mindsets versus Path of Exile

Will be a bit short but clearly HC players arn't the largest part of userbase will never be and it's the case in all games at all. It has never been the case for PoE or any other games.

If you are able to play a lot / Brave enough to enjoy runs that may end due to barely arpg design like labyrinth / game issues and are ready to spent twice more time than before building a character / then HC leagues are still for you folks. If not ... then SC leagues are welcoming you aswell.


That's it :) I have hope in GGG they arn't stupid and probably work on all of that hide in shadows waiting for good opportunity to announce lot of changes for HC players, till that keep encourage them to do it in the right way. Revitalizing HC league won't work on the long run without a bit work on each of these points.


Helio

Note: Had to type all of this really fast sorry for typos etc ... The principal is to be understand here and i think each of my points are fairly easy to :)

Note 2: I would eventualy the removal of HC league and introducing an Hardmod league instead. Content way harder - if you die you keep your character but there is an appropriate penaltie andd so on.

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ADFuel wrote:

Well, they are called 'challenges' not 'participation trophies'.

Doing the challenges with a fast build takes dozens of hours of dedicated effort at the minimum. Vocal hardcore players should show more respect for the efforts of softcore players. You don't get people on side by denigrating their accomplishments and criticizing them for how they choose to enjoy the game.

I do not support your suggestion. In fact I would be very disappointed and consider halting my financial support of the game if they did this.

True hc players will always play hc. Who did play hc and doesn't anymore did it just for the hype.
I started this game with hc (in open beta) and won't turn into a scrub anytime soon.

Now you can feel offended and trash me.

Players that leave HC for the sole purpose to get easier MTX in a SC league, really weren't HC players anyway.

I wouldn't be opposed to different MTX than SC if only to give a slight tinge to challenge rewards to make them indicate which league they were from, variation is good.

It wouldn't stop or start me from playing in hardcore though, I got to level 90 in two leagues before I even look at the challenge list lol so I missed a big chunk, I play hardcore because I need the drive of having to focus to survive, anytime i prat about on standard I just feel cheap - its like playing a game on normal when you know you'd have no problem doing the same thing on hard, your just taking something out without putting anything back.

The direction the games going has made me start to think if I should play softcore though and thats the real danger IMO nothing to do with MTX, I don't play OP chars I'm more interested in barely viable builds and any stupid idea that pops into my head, whereas i feel hardcore has increasingly been balanced around BV Pathfinder essentially (obviously not that specifically but thats the power level I feel its geared towards)

It isn't the DPS that gets me either, If i make a build that lacks scaling and it plateau's out at 30k and i can't progress thats my choice and my fault for example, but getting the survivability to progress safely comes at a price and many of the very best defensive mechanics are basically offensively based (looking at you vaal pact) It could be me but I don't think later bosses can be defeated with potions for healing for example, which means every build requires amped regen or amped life leech, regen takes another 10-15 pts per build if you chose one of the characters over that neck of the woods lowering your dps even further, whereas life leech requires more damage to be more effective.

Sorry i ended up rambling there lol but I think it all adds up to HC temp leagues waning popularity, we could really use a general buff to survivability, bigger life nodes would do it, or bigger life rolls on gear.

I think another reason why hc temp leagues are dying sooner than ever before is coz most big streamers who are actually good players stick to playing hc only for the sake of racing which ends in a week, then the hype dies, they stop streaming and all we got left are sc streamers. And projectPT which clears maps like one per 20 min(sorry but true)

I play both HC and SC (yes that's possible). My first challenge league was ambush. Still think it was the best addition to the game. Near the end of the league I tried invasion. Invasion was and is still my favourite league. The thrill of knowing that there is at least one pack of mobs in your zone with the sole purpose of killing you (and had the equipment to do it) was amazing. No better welcome to the savage lands of hardcore than meeting the incinerate porcupine on twilight strand. Nothing like Kamaq,Soilmaker popping up in a multiproj map and deleting the entire group. There are people that actually believe perandus was a great league. I did play bloodlines for a bit, but only because torment was god awful. Phylacteral link off screen was just a bit too stupid and ruined the enjoyment for me personally.

When the game gets back that "it" factor Invasion nailed so perfectly, I'll go back to HC. Until then, there really is no difference between SC and HC. Still only gonna die to burst damage or one shot mechanic and if that's the case it isn't worth the re-roll anymore for me.

It's not about MTX.. in the one month "ruckous" event HC rewarded red seraph and SC offered blue. My favourite colour is blue so I played the SC variant.

And yes lol all I see now are some ridiculous ALT F4 when falling to 50% life (even higher) playstyles.