A realization about Path Of Exile economy, from watching Streamers

This game NEEDS "sick" content, scaling into madness difficulty. They need something for the really dedicated player base to encourage them to min/max even further. Content like this is a good thing, as long as it's not balanced around, nor required. 100% maps fit this role.

And Delirium is absolutely possible to "enjoy" without running 100% T17 maps. But some people are unable to "enjoy" enything, as longs as they, based on their knowledge, skill and play time, can't roflstomp everything. And if they can't roflstomp everything, this game is suddenly "balanced around streamers".

I have no chance at 100% delirium T16+ maps, and I'm totally OK with me not being able to do it. I don't feel entitled to access everything. I love the fact that certain things are unobtainable for me. Gives me something to work towards.

@SeCKSEgai, I like your detailed posts. there are many things in your posts I agree with.

Suggesting an inaccessible ultra boss for Streamers only, does go against my initial complaint. however I'm trying to suggest some way for GGG to stop the top-tier balance while still keeping things challenging for the ultra-rich, since Streamers equals game publicity.

The other two suggestions - soulbound/capped drops and scaling difficulty with each boss kill - are meant to prevent someone with mirror tier immune-to-mechanics gear and melt-boss DPS, infinitely farming the same boss for loot table drops and carry services.
An end game boss encounter is meant to be a challenge, not a free milking for infinite currency.

The Delve bosses you mentioned are a good example of this. Meeting one at the right depth with the right mods, can get really scary even for a CuteDog geared player with a broken meta build, while meeting him first time at a lower depth with regular mods, will be a challenge for a player like me.
The only thing GGG screwed up here, is the RNG. As usual.

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Destructodave wrote:

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SeCKSEgai wrote:

And I honestly don't think it was streamer envy that drove the popularity of aura stacking up - the league mechanic practically made it necessary for experiencing full delirium.

]

Well, thats 100% false, and just searching full delirium on youtube should tell you that, with people doing 100% t16 deliriums on a variety of builds.

Yet another hyperbolic statement made in this thread about how hard it is to do the content in this game. I even did a t16 5 orb map deathless on a Viper Strike character myself, and recorded it for the pathfinder thread.

The aura stacking build is/was just so OP, everyone wanted to do it.

It being one of the most busted builds that was ever in this game, is why the build was popular, not because it was necessary to do full delirium maps. People love god mode; people love cheat codes. Thats what the aura stacking build is/was. Thats why people wanted to do it, not because it was necessary to do. And the 100s of random skills and ascendancies people use to do 5 orb maps on youtube should be proof enough for that, but people love talking in exaggerated claims.

I think you misinterpreted what I meant. 100% delirium isn't restricted to just the herald stackers, but if you go back to the first days of league - there are a LOT of complaints of dying. They did eventually patch some things for dramatic improvement, but it was clear that between the added health and the buffs from delirium people were going to need more killing power just for mapping but also the means to survive damage from things they don't see.

I too did my t16 full 100% on my own - you know what the hardest part was? The frame rate drop. Even now, if you were to analyze my deaths in league the vast majority factor in major performance drops. When everything is perfect and responsive then sure you have more play style options. But when you regularly see your frames drop into the single digits you need extra room for error. Even the last random video I saw clearly showed a framerate drop multiple times during his/her run - the difference being that a split second pause on their machine lasts a helluva lot longer on my own.

But I honestly doubt there are hundreds of videos, speaking of exaggeration. Of course I primarily have been watching bon appetit videos as of late.

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johnKeys wrote:

@SeCKSEgai, I like your detailed posts. there are many things in your posts I agree with.

Suggesting an inaccessible ultra boss for Streamers only, does go against my initial complaint. however I'm trying to suggest some way for GGG to stop the top-tier balance while still keeping things challenging for the ultra-rich, since Streamers equals game publicity.

The other two suggestions - soulbound/capped drops and scaling difficulty with each boss kill - are meant to prevent someone with mirror tier immune-to-mechanics gear and melt-boss DPS, infinitely farming the same boss for loot table drops and carry services.
An end game boss encounter is meant to be a challenge, not a free milking for infinite currency.

The Delve bosses you mentioned are a good example of this. Meeting one at the right depth with the right mods, can get really scary even for a CuteDog geared player with a broken meta build, while meeting him first time at a lower depth with regular mods, will be a challenge for a player like me.
The only thing GGG screwed up here, is the RNG. As usual.

Soulbinding is bad for a game like this, or any "binding" for that matter. Bind on pickup, bind to account, bind on equip - all meant to control supply. The rarity factor already does this plenty - I mean how many 3 pride watcher's eye jewels have you seen for sale. But the other thing is it means you can't use something now and sell it later. Of the posters that do leave their characters open that I bother to peruse, it's very common for them to sell their existing gear when they move on from a character during a league.

When I was raiding in Swtor, characters could only complete the operation bosses once a week. It's also why most of us had a varying number of max level characters in order to repeat the same content, and that meant gearing those alts up too (along with proficiency in different roles etc).

The bossfights in PoE don't quite play out the same. In Swtor, (and similar MMOs) you could continue to attempt a boss after a failure until you no longer had enough people to try (or realized the people that were there were bound to fail). A lot of the difficulty to boss fights in PoE is simply accessing the fight itself - Conquerors and Sirus are a major time sink and once you're there you only have up to 6 attempts or so before you're typically sent doing it all over again.

Most of poe trade leagues is building up the currency to buy from others what you didn't find yourself.

I wanted to get a taste of the herald stacking mechanic before league's end (I learned my lesson the last time they gutted something I was waiting to try in standard). It took me about two days to stomach through storyline and then another two playing around with ideas before I got my scion dialed in. Now that she's playable, I can see just how well the setup scales up with investment - but at the same time it also feels like a huge currency sink.

I wanted to bring that up because I know a lot of folks have had issue with the herald stackers dominating the market. But its really more like the build gear is dominating in sales. Like take the voices, a 7 is an ex give or take, but that skyrockets as you move into the "smaller" ones that free up points for more power. Mana reservation is the big thing, and I originally thought the tree itself and maybe one or two items would be all I'd bother with. Nope.

Most people aren't buying other things (as in not buying the run of the mill stuff), and a lot of it is simply that they don't play well with delirum.

So she's currently 74, and her potential for improvement is crazy high - but too so is the cost. So when it comes to watching those folks in crazy expensive gear, bear in mind they were enjoying it enough to put in all that time to acquire said gear. Frankly I would rather bother to type this all out then use that time leveling her instead.

if the game is balanced around "streamers" with mirror tier gear, why are they deleting bosses in 2 seconds?

that doesn't sounds very balanced

if the game was truly balanced against professional players, as is claimed to be indisputable truth in here, the game would be much, MUCH, harder.

there is a vast range of players between 30 chaos noobs and multiple mirror god tier, yet OP seems to believe that this is completely binary

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jewdas12 wrote:

if the game is balanced around "streamers" with mirror tier gear, why are they deleting bosses in 2 seconds?

that doesn't sounds very balanced

if the game was truly balanced against professional players, as is claimed to be indisputable truth in here, the game would be much, MUCH, harder.

there is a vast range of players between 30 chaos noobs and multiple mirror god tier, yet OP seems to believe that this is completely binary

Most streamers wouldn't play if they can't instantly blow up maps and boss, so game is "balanced" to allow completely broken super million dps scaling for those who know the secrets and can acquire the gear for such. There is no reason for such "cheats" to be in the game but it is balanced for streamers and their fans to watch Sirus go boom and watch streamer explode through map and go "woah cool, look all this loot guys!!", lul.

Almost every boss video on Youtube is streamer goes "okay guys, this is what boss does", then they hit boss one or two times and boss is dead and they giggle and scoop up the loot, no mechanics whatsoever are shown or involved in the play.

If you didn't put in the time and effort you're not going to get the same results.

Well the only way i can think of to balance content access between "top players" and "casuals" would be making entry-items soul-bind (fragments, splinters, maps, etc) and refraining from doing time based content(stop double dipping clear speed).

Then just increase overall entry-items drop-ratios for everybody to compensate and suddenly the few top % would not be able to increase the price of content access items for others, which is one of the major bad effects "Top Players" have on everyone.

"Top Players" would still run more content and generate more resources (as they should), but overall it would shrink the gap between them and "casuals".

One of the most "sad" things of PoE is not doing certain content because you know you will not get even 10% of what you would get by selling it to a "top player" demand that make the prices go to heavens.

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Harvey_Rabbit wrote:

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jewdas12 wrote:

if the game is balanced around "streamers" with mirror tier gear, why are they deleting bosses in 2 seconds?

that doesn't sounds very balanced

if the game was truly balanced against professional players, as is claimed to be indisputable truth in here, the game would be much, MUCH, harder.

there is a vast range of players between 30 chaos noobs and multiple mirror god tier, yet OP seems to believe that this is completely binary

Most streamers wouldn't play if they can't instantly blow up maps and boss, so game is "balanced" to allow completely broken super million dps scaling for those who know the secrets and can acquire the gear for such. There is no reason for such "cheats" to be in the game but it is balanced for streamers and their fans to watch Sirus go boom and watch streamer explode through map and go "woah cool, look all this loot guys!!", lul.

Almost every boss video on Youtube is streamer goes "okay guys, this is what boss does", then they hit boss one or two times and boss is dead and they giggle and scoop up the loot, no mechanics whatsoever are shown or involved in the play.

more assumptions to fit the narrative i see

what are you basing this claim that "most" streamers aren't interested in playing the game unless they can delete it with 1 button press?
i personally enjoy content that destroys me (sort of on the masochistic end tbh), but i can't believe most people wouldn't get more stimulated if the content fought back a little.

however, i can never fully grasp what you people want, beyond just more stuff, fueled by jealousy of seeing players way above your pay grade having infinitely more stuff than you do, which leads to this scape goating to avoid having to face any sort of problem that might be on your end

you complain about there being broken builds available for those who know the "secrets" and put the effort into realizing it, even going as far as calling this "cheats" (lol)

this is a knowledge based game, where those who seek out to understand all the various interactions and possibilities will be exponentially more effective in creating powerful builds, that sometimes end up entirely broken. this is part of the charm of an extremely complex arpg.

but what is it you really want?

lets assume we make everything easier. now you can also delete bosses with your 5 ex build. streamers will still have infinitely more stuff than you do because they play more, know more, and are all around 10 times more effecient than you. also the game would be boring

make everything harder. now streamers cant delete bosses anymore (this would be balancing for streamers), but you cant even beat A10 kitava. you will have even less shit and the floods of tears would drown the entire forum

remove any sort of busted scaling unattainable for casuals who only play 10h a week, and spend half of their time in hideout (gl with this one). game will still be as hard, and you will still not have any more stuff.
streamers might have less stuff, but probably still a lot more than you do. this option will only satisfy you if the entire problem is rooted in jealousy

poe economy is bad now. hope they will fix it