Why people so hurt over this expansion
" It was from my perspective. I had no perfect items with harvest and I didn't run Atoll 24/7 either. I stopped when my items were good enough to achieve what I wanted them to. I don't believe in min maxing every affix for the sake of it when I can destroy every map in seconds. Some people might but I don't. I thought Legion and Harbinger were wildly fun and profitable in 3.13. Nerfing the atlas passives was an absolutely massive mistake imo. Now, the harvest atlas passives on the other hand should have been removed in 3.14 and make it a 10%-ish chance to find the grove in maps while leaving all of the crafts as is. It's all just Sadge. https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/988f3369-4b68-4eb9-bc0e-edfce4c3c950
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" I agree. I've said it in a lot of posts in here; Instead of nerfing atlas passive, they should've given us even more different ways of tailoring our atlas experience to our needs and urges. Player agency regarding stuff like that is fantastic. Sometimes, just sometimes, you should really consider adapting to the world, instead of demanding that the world adapts to you.
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" Imo, the pre-nerfed atlas passives were at least as, if not more, responsible as harvest for 3.13 being so good. Beyond was absolutely bonkers good with the watchstones, passives and map device. I think it's a tell tale sign that beyond hasn't been around for two leagues now. https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/988f3369-4b68-4eb9-bc0e-edfce4c3c950
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I started in open beta and I haven't missed a league since Breach.
The problem is the last two expansions have taken away a lot from players without offering much in return. They feel like their feedback has gone unheard, that problems that have existed for years are still unaddressed. And that recently there has been a disconnect between what GGG is saying and what they are doing. The endgame has remained largely the same since the release of Echoes of the Atlas. In 3.13 when it was released along side Ritual league, we were at the peak of player freedom. The return of harvest meant crafting niche gear was relatively easy, overall gear power was up so it didn't take as much investment to get a build off the ground. It was easier to experiment and play off-meta skills while still feeling good about their performance. The atlas passive system was new and fresh, many nodes felt overpowered but fun. There were new challenges to overcome. Mapping felt more rewarding with the potential to find powerful harvest crafts, non-traders could finally experience endgame crafting without the heavy currency investment that previously kept them out. The harvest manifesto wasn't unexpected, there were obvious problems with the system. It wasn't good for the game that the way to get the best gear was to sit on discord all day. Targeted annulments were arguably as strong or stronger than Eternal Orbs which were removed a long time ago for being too powerful. But still, many disagree with how heavy handed the nerfs were. They made the experience much worse for the average player while leaving discord trading mostly untouched. Some people might be upset they no longer had easy access to T1 influenced gear, but for many more the mid-tier crafting through map progression is what added a lot of fun. It made loot from delve, temples and heist more exciting, some people were finally engaging with essences, fossils, conqueror exalts for the first time. The current implementation feels like 5-10% of what used to be there, a shell of its former self. Basic crafts are almost too rare to feel impactful without trading, and when you do find a good craft, its almost always better to sell it as you're rarely going to get 6ex worth of value out of using it. Which then involves trading with strangers over discord, and people handing items back and forth on an honor system that doesn't offer much protection from being scammed. In 3.14 people were hopeful that the maven passives would be changed or shuffled between leagues to keep things fresh, instead we got a few numerical changes, mostly nerfs. People were already feeling fatigued with grinding out watchstones, now that we had experienced the new content, redoing it on-top of everything else was beginning to feel like a chore. The way these systems buff mapping rewards ultimately makes them feel like they are mandatory for farming rather than a goal to finish the league on. This was also the patch that removed map fracturing. Which whether you thought was good or bad, was a different playstyle that people enjoyed, and now one less thing for people to do in endgame. You can still juice delirium maps, but the way the trade system is, it can be extremely tedious to constantly buy orbs, prophecies, and other needed materials. I feel like the real problem here is that people can push reward systems to near breaking point when they have access to things like aura stacking. No one was clearing that content without a dedicated party setup which makes group play objectively more rewarding than solo. (This problem still persists) The patch also promised an endgame reward rework, this alone got people who were upset about other changes hyped up for the patch. Itemized temples and Labyrinth changes were nice. But taking league rewards and boss drops and putting them in the general drop pool was a huge mistake. It took excitement away from running league content and bosses, the items became less accessible for SSF players. People were initially excited about more chances for headhunter, but the real goal behind this inclusion was to make target farming strategies weaker. The league had one of the worst launches in PoE history on-top of the controversy with streamer queues. The mechanic itself was interesting and rewarding, but felt very similar to ritual. The mob spam combat highlighted some of the problems with the current state of PoE difficulty, poor visual clarity, random one-shots, turns out aura-stacking is also pretty broken on enemies. For all the hits chase items took over the years, we finally got a new one in hateforge. And then they tried to nerf it mid-league after players farmed dozens of exalts to make a unique build. The only new content to experience was the boss, and it was heavily RNG gated. This was especially frustrating for people who focus on challenges every league as you had to farm the boss multiple times for the conditional kill challenge. The overall sentiment was pretty negative so people began to bring up old topics, long standing issues with the game that they felt needed to be addressed. The flask piano, poor visual clarity (How did I die?), random one-shots, decline of exciting loot and chase items, excessive clicking, splinter stacks, etc. That brings us to this patch. After adjusting to the loss of harvest and re-learning the system with unveil changes, it's determined once more to be too deterministic. More crafting nerfs. While people are largely behind the idea of slowing the game down (Better visual clarity, less random one-shots) the nerfs are entirely player-sided. Content that was designed around our increased power level is now proportionally much more difficult. The number of builds capable of running it is lower and the investment required to do so became higher. The flask rework was primarily flask nerfs with a massive shift in ailment immunities, and a reduction in offense/defense. What was asked for as a quality of life feature is now a build investment, and by using it you forgo the buffs offered by enkindling orbs. Flask piano is still a thing. Between flask nerfs, crafting nerfs, monster buffs, and even some direct nerfs, player defenses took a hit and we didn't get much in the way of new tools to deal with these problems. This means it takes larger investment into existing defensive layers, and less offense, which compounds the damage nerfs. Not to mention the changes to mana multipliers and triggered skills, further restricting build space. Without buffs to underperforming skills you have a lot of builds which just can't do large chunks of endgame content without unreasonable levels of investment, if at all. It isn't just a problem of player skill, you hear similar sentiment from streamers and the hardcore crowd. mbXtreme talking about dumping 50 exalts into a build and it struggling through red maps. It would be different if there were major changes to the endgame to go alongside all these nerfs, but we're essentially playing the same game we've had for two leagues. And on-top of slowing it down and reducing build choice, they also nerfed awakening gems, theres one less reason to get excited about endgame farming and pushing builds further. The league itself is fun enough, but then you have multiple extra chests with 20 new currency fragments, all needing to be dumped off at the npc every map. The rewards are largely vendor bought, which adds even more clicking per item. Just think about it, you might click 10 chests, to loot 10 stacks of currency, to attempt to buy one rare, that takes multiple additional clicks for haggling or rog crafting. After complaining about currency splinters for years, they've gone and added gear splinters. Again all of the new endgame is locked behind heavy RNG. Do you find a log book, will it have a boss, is that the right boss for the four new conditional kill challenges to work on. It's like they didn't hear a single bit of feedback about Ultimatum. They want the game to remain challenging, but the fact is the scale of content makes that impossible. If you build a character capable of clearing The Feared, 100% delirius maps, The Maven, then the vast majority of the game will be a joke to you. Nothing about that changed except for how many builds can actually achieve it, having less options to reach that content and less rewards for doing so just feels bad. It's funny to me how many people I see defending the patch that have never experienced most of the endgame. They've never finished the atlas let alone doing awakening 8/9 sirus, delirium, maven, or other challenging encounters. It's okay if you've never set your goals that high, everyone plays for different reasons. But don't act all high and mighty about people not rising to the challenge or sticking to the meta when you've been playing the game on easy mode the whole time. This isn't to say people who are enjoying the game now are wrong for doing so. Just don't dismiss everyone who is critical of the game as being lazy or unskilled. There are many things to be critical about, we all just want the game to be the best it can be. There were better ways of structing these nerfs to preserve build diversity, and/or they could have saved them for a more content heavy patch or bundled them with more quality of life changes to offset the negativity. Last edited by jerot#5117 on Aug 11, 2021, 2:24:42 PM
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" I agree, people have the right to be critical, and people do have reasons for being critical this league. My personal gripe has more to do with how they are voicing themselves, not that they are voicing themselves. I've read plenty of good, well-structured arguments for this league being bad, and I've read heaos of really bad arguments. But I agree with you on several things, especially that this league (and last) have taken away a lot of things from players, without adding much. A lot of people think that this was needed, not just as a whole, but to be able to add more in the future. One of the main reasons for the power creep, was that they have been adding more and more without taken away much. But as I've said, one of the main reasons for me being somewhat positive about the changes, is that I'm expecting a solid focus on balance next league, both regarding monster damage and underused skills and supports. If they fail to put a solid focus on those elements, this patch serves little to no purpose. The nerfs they introduced this league requires a lot of extra work to really serve the purpose they inted to serve. Sometimes, just sometimes, you should really consider adapting to the world, instead of demanding that the world adapts to you.
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Harvest did allow me to craft gear in SSF that helped me kill Sirus.
I am not butt-hurt over it's nerf as Chris quite clearly stated before Harvest was launched that it probably would not be kept around. ~ Please separate the PoE1 and PoE2 forums.
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" Totally fair, it is frustrating to see people taking Chris out of context for the hundredth time after he made it a point to explain himself. Or pointing to the PoE 2 trailers as an example of how slow they want the endgame to be. It's low level game footage, and they regularly use slower builds in trailers so the new art and animations can take center stage. There isn't anything constructive about "revert the changes or I quit", this is stuff that needs to be addressed one way or another. And I'm hopeful they'll get it right eventually too. Last edited by jerot#5117 on Aug 11, 2021, 2:50:49 PM
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The whining, complaining, criticisms, and "sky is falling" sentiment is more prevalent during the smaller expansion cycles where there is less new content to discuss and solve.
Player's in general make terrible game designers and I'm including even the most experienced and knowledgeable people. People take this as their feedback isn't being listened to when it's more that player feedback isn't an accurate diagnosis of problems or solutions. GGG has understood this and uses it like a litmus test, which is why PoE has cycled through this phase over and over and come out better each time. GGG will do what is best for the game over what is best for the player. |
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This video from Grimro might be of some use:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow-fVIDN02s In it he explains in 3.13 how there were more avenues of content which fed into each other and lower avenues of content. In 3.15 the avenues that were removed also affected other, lower avenues of content, and thus made the entire experience worse. This isn't even taking into account nerfing the flasks, skill gems, attack gems, mana efficiency, etc... Speaking of mana, the most popular build by far this season is SST which can swap in life for mana. So take what you will from that. Last edited by detailedmaps#4064 on Aug 11, 2021, 5:41:32 PM
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" I generally like grimro but the foundation of that video wasn't on point. Much like the people who claim that every nerf is a 'deletion' of gems/gear/content, he confuses nerfed end game activities for the full on 'removal' of interactive avenues. I think he's got a great lens for viewing the end game structurally but his presentation suffers from poor analysis and too much exaggeration. |
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