How Poe elites ruined Bestiary AND Incursion - Bestiary you will be missed.

tl;dr: Incursion is great but it could be much better if we still had bestiary. Players don´t see the whole picture in game-dev for that reason GGG made the wrong decision to listen to the reddit powergamers instead of looking at the play statistics. Resulting in removing one of the biggest content updates ever instead of fixing its flaws. Propably Crippling SSF and slow-play for the following Leagues.

Incursion is great but it feels already shallow and empty.

Following your game design ideas and philosophy is one of the most important things for a game company. Sadly in the past GGG did not decide to trust their design and followed a minority of people on reddit that cried the loudest. Even thoug the intentions of bestiary where not clear from the beginning because of our lack of insight in the development timeline/process.

Which leads to removing bestiary(instead of fixing its flaws) and so also crippling Incursion. So now we have an incursion league, that feels like an -50% expansion because so much awesome content that is missing now.

What was so great about Bestiary?

It solved two of PoEs biggest flawes by adding depth and complexity to the game. It was a genius idea witch sadly was flawed from the start, but saw lots of improvements over the league. But the worst part about it, is that it will never get its chance to be fixed at all because its gone now. And can be seen in the same way as Talisman, Warbands and Tempest.

So what did it solve?

Flaws in the core game that where fixed (or tackled) by bestiary

a.) Powercreep: By Adding complexity in the play-style the game shifts it focus from Meta and clear speed towards rewarding the player for focus and slow play and to not one-shot everything. This was of course highly criticized by a lot of streamers, redditers, botters and RMTers because it felt "clunky".

b.) Leveling: There is nothing better than giving the player a way to let the player hit endgame earlier. A lot of those leveling recipes added to that and gave the player a lot of utility.

c.) Anti-RNG: Even though some of the unique beasts where very rare, the whole leveling related beastcrafts where completely deterministic which. But this not only counts towards leveling beastcrafts. Take the +3 white socket beastcraft and the +30% corruption beastcraft for example. In Incurions you can only have all white sockets OR +30% quality with a high risk of breaking your 6 link items, while in bestiary the crafting was always sucessfull(if you did not die in the altar).

And finally SSF felt awesome. And even though i have 4k hours in PoE this was the league that I played the longest, simply because there was always something i could improve about my character. Getting another whitesocket lead sprinkler, and adding 30% quality on it? No problem. In Incursion this is now nearly impossible.


Why is Incursion crippled by that?

First of all, because of the massive amount of content that was removed and is now missing. A lot of awesome feature will be missing (probably for ever) and there is no way for GGG to fix it flaws now. Thinks that will be missed.

1. No loot pinatas a.k.a Beasts that drop more loot than map bosses.
2. No quecksilver Adrenalin early.
3. No Anti Curse Flask early.
4. No use for Roah feathers.
5. No 3 white sockets + 30% quantity.
6. No Beastarmor sets. Rip
7. No Aspects.a
8. No Anti-RNG League.

Why are the flaws of Incursion?

1. Incursion was designed in the hindsight of bestiary beeing added to the core game.
Seen by all the bestiary features that where not replaced. Incursion is an new layer of features. Depending on GGGs development circle, it can take a lot of time until we see comparable features in the game.

2. Lack of progression and thinks you can buil-up and improve.
In Bestiary there was always something you could do. Like for example getting white sockets on all your gear and then putting a +30% quality corruption on top. Also bestiary completion was an interesting long term completion quest like the atlas.

3. Pretty bad Unique Item designs.
One half of the Uniques are Alc shard Jewels that all are worse than rare jewels. While the other half of unique items are Upgradable Uniques and Trash tier. Leaving only around 3 interesting Uniques for new interesting mechanics.

4. No endgame
Nothing new here as well. Not even a new endgame boss that can be entered via the temple.

Why was bestiary removed in the first place?

1. Lack of polishment.
This could be easily fixed over time. Like they fixed Prophecies and Labyrinth.

2. Lots of negativity in the reddit.
Mainly comming from the top 15%.

3. To much work on GGGs side to improve.
I get this one. And this was also stated by GGG to be the reason to remove it in the end. Still i think it was the wrong decision and a pity.

4. Content cannot be skipped.
One of the weakest arguments. If you don´t want to catch beasts, you don´t need to. You still get your loot pinata.


You may ask why it was just a minority when reddit was full of bestiary salt back in the last league. Well my guess is that only around 15% of PoE player actually using reddit and that most of the people actually like bestiary. Its very interesting since in my friend list which are pretty average to casual players not a single one hated bestiary.

Bestiary was far from perfect but at least it added a lot of content that was quite unique and also gave a lot of possibilities for SSF or Soft-SSF(People that mainly play SSF but sometimes buy items or play in groups with friends).

Edit1: Still writing on some points and will add stuff that adds to the discussion.

Edit2: Added flaws of incursion.
Last edited by Lewnatic on Jun 3, 2018, 12:03:17 PM
Last bumped on Dec 16, 2018, 9:51:01 AM
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At least someone liked it i guess. I like incursion more. Hey! Our posts are the same but a little different.
Not nearly enough tinfoil and napkin math. I'm not sure I can take this conspiracy theory seriously.

Can we get more of both?
While I'm on the side of people who really liked Bestiary (fuck rolling your flasks...) and I'm absolutely sad that it didn't get added to the core, there are some aspects that cannot be denied:

- There was a huge issue with not releasing beasts
- Beats were confusing (Though this could've stopped being an issue after some time when people memorized mods)
- There was no visual indicator of what something is before you capture the beast, unless you can memorize a whole textbook of beasts and recipes
- I'm sure there were other issues that I can't remember right now.

The problem with these issues is that it would've required a significant part of GGG's staff to go back and fix them, delaying/screwing over future releases. And league releases is what brings in the money. That's the sad truth to it.

So all in all, only GGG has all the information to make a decision like this. Even though I do not like the decision they took, I would've much preferred they patch up Bestiary and let it go core, this is what it is and we gotta move on.

Maybe they'll reuse it.
Last edited by Th3LoRD on Jun 3, 2018, 11:34:32 AM
Two challenges... have you even made it past Act V? Have you started really thinking about the choices you get in designing a Temple? Have you had a character strong enough to actually act on those thoughts?

Probably not.

Oh. "Polishment" isn't a word.

I would like to say that I agree that they could have kept Bestiary... but it would have required a ton of work. Much easier to dump it and save those hours for other tasks.
Last edited by Shagsbeard on Jun 3, 2018, 11:37:14 AM
"
Shagsbeard wrote:
Two challenges... have you even made it past Act V? Have you started really thinking about the choices you get in designing a Temple? Have you had a character strong enough to actually act on those thoughts?

Probably not.

Oh. "Polishment" isn't a word.


hahahahaha Shag being SAVAGE.

Dys an sohm
Rohs an kyn
Sahl djahs afah
Mah morn narr
"
Shagsbeard wrote:
Two challenges... have you even made it past Act V?


Im not playing Incursion because of the reasons in my initial post. There is simply no progress in terms of game development and character development.
"
"
Shagsbeard wrote:
Two challenges... have you even made it past Act V? Have you started really thinking about the choices you get in designing a Temple? Have you had a character strong enough to actually act on those thoughts?

Probably not.

Oh. "Polishment" isn't a word.


hahahahaha Shag being SAVAGE.



Best just ignore these Victim complex people.
People had specific complaints about Bestiary that could be backed up with facts.

You seem to dislike Incursion for "reasons". Be specific. What didn't you like about it? There's a ton of reasons to dislike it. Grab a few of those and convince us to listen to you.
"
Shagsbeard wrote:
People had specific complaints about Bestiary that could be backed up with facts.

You seem to dislike Incursion for "reasons". Be specific. What didn't you like about it? There's a ton of reasons to dislike it. Grab a few of those and convince us to listen to you.


Reread my post. I added a few points. My main problem with incursion is that bestiary content is not available, no-endgame goals and no ways to improve my characters. I need to invest 300% more time(Because of the 25% chance of unique beeing removed with corrupting) to achieve 75% of charactersrenght compared bestiary in this league now on SSF or Soft-SSF. For that reason i don´t want to play this league.

Edit: Also Incursion is not the problem. Incursion itselfs is great. But there is so much content removed and missing that it does not feel like anything new.
Last edited by Lewnatic on Jun 3, 2018, 12:07:38 PM

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