Feedback and Suggestions - Affliction league feedback at 38/40 - Forum

I've really enjoyed this league and still playing. This is my closest to 40/40 in a while and as far as I'm taking it, so some feedback.

League Mechanic

The wildwood was great. Love the atmosphere, NPCs and all, and don't mind the loss of minimap, it's fun to wander around. Really nice monster variety. A few confusing mob designs, a bunch of OP chaos damage with huge inexplicable flowers, and some PoE 2 mobs with knockback (which I wasn't a fan of, until I raised one as a spectre last night, and it is hilarious watching him push around map bosses). As usual it's completely lethal in act 1 and then a cakewalk mid-game. The simplistic layout that could be "solved" was actually a plus I think.

New ascendancies, two really very fun, one I didn't bother with, the usual one. Really nice power level and good randomisation. The lack of downsides on each charm or tincture helped hugely.

Whisp juicing was fun for a little extra XP and loot in exchange for difficulty, i.e. when not juicing heavily. The extremes I'd give a solid "mid". Tried it, Atlas respec and projectile abyss farming and all, it was fun for a day or two, but I don't enjoy grind, even if that grind involves showers of currency, I'd rather work on progression or play fun mechanics. Terribly tuned, too high on rewards at the top end, and too high on extra damage and damage reduction. Awful, awful frame rates. It was pretty obvious early this is far too rewarding for our own good, and I won't be sorry to see it go. I presume next league is out of map to soften the blow.

MTX with Sound

Off switch.

Valdo's Puzzle Box

Not a fan, said already. More below, little new.

Spoiler

I'm in a tiny, tiny minority here, and many/most other people seem to enjoy them immensely, and that's cool. For me, there are no upsides to these, just the opposite. But the needs of the many and so forth.

I like to think that PoE bosses have some sort of value, specialness, sense of occasion or importance or some such. Hurling packs of Feared into dime a dozen maps devalues that for me. Far more than say Atziri apparitions in Gauntlet Ubers, which seemed just fine.

I'll needlessly repeat (as I've said in other threads), I think sent to the void is awful. I get that nobody agrees with me, it has a warning, you can just not run them, etc. The constant notifications are a negative on top of a negative, whereas in hardcore I mourn every death. I don't think softcore characters should be at risk through any mechanism other than the Delete button on the character creation screen, voluntary or not, on principle. And I don't think putting this into player-created content as an inducement to part with actual money is a positive. This was actually quite depressing and literally put me off supporter packs for a while as it felt like endorsement.

I don't think players balancing content is a great move. Joke rewards in stupidly hard maps is one predictable result. More mountains of trash buried deep in the trade site. Otherwise did we need more routes to Mageblood? Not this league.

Valdo's felt like a cynical move. Never opened one and don't intend to. I vendored the first drop on principle. I gave in and sold the rest on trade. I feel appropriately bad about it.

Transfigured Skills

Fun to play around with and a great idea well executed. Amazed so many were done in the time available. I don't mind getting them in lab. Hard to tell apart from the base skill without tiresome stat by stat comparison until the wiki was updated to summarise. I gather from interviews that Mark may cull some in future, as well as add new ones, I hope that isn't too drastic so there's time for people to explore, as there's been a lot going on this league.

I don't miss alt quality gems or lab enchants. Gem quality changes (ease of 21/20) seem spot on, I think this is actually a big improvement.

Ultimatum

I, er, don't understand what the fuss was about? I don't remember Ultimatum being this bad! It used to give out loot. Metamorph was more fun, and I rarely played it much as it wasn't particularly. I'd play an hour of Metamorph over 10 seconds of Ultimatum.

To try to break this down: it's overly long, visually too busy, the added downsides are either trivial or lethal, and the rewards seemed really quite garbage on average. The corrupted items are usually just irrevocably trash, even passable implicits are accompanied by awful affixes. Protect the altar can be impossible. Circles grew on me but not much. Survive is too easy by comparison, on the other hand given the rewards perhaps not.

State of the Game

Super enjoyable as in recent leagues. No real complaints beyond a usual one, as I had a great time.

(Arch)nemesis mods are still tiresome. I appreciate Jonathan's recent point in PoE 2 interviews that the idea is to change the way we play around groups of mobs, which makes sense although I don't really find myself doing this, and the ones with mechanics are still very arcade game and feel out of place and repetitive, very Diablo 3. It'd be super nice if these disappeared quietly.

Gauntlet
This was a riot. Played, died, watched. Kept rerolling. Never got anywhere notable. Still great.

Challenges

Quitting these at 38/40. Mostly fun. I'd like the eagle to sit on my totem, as I only have one past, but the last two challenges are pure interest-free grind, so no thanks. I'll keep playing, but I'll do something that's actually entertaining.

More on challenges in the spoiler tag for the terminally interested.

Spoiler

Write-off challenges include:

Unreal Ultimatum. Zero interest in 10 Red Tier Inscribed Ultimatums or grinding out 100-200 T16 Ultimatums to meet the Trialmaster again.

Grand Gripping Grail. Given I'm not paying for 5 ways, I've only 16 odd hours left to get from 99 to 100, but I'm pretty much done with the character, so why. 246 more lab chests or 38 more Delve/Bestiary/Vaal Omnitect bosses is likewise not happening, as I've no reason other than the Challenge to bother. Throw in Deli bosses, Breach bosses and pinnacle bosses into this category and I'd have completed it and probably ground out 100 for the 40/40.

Most of the rest were actively fun or just fine.

Other tiresome challenge conditions:

Rare T16 Blight-Ravaged Map (drop rate)
10 Logbooks (meh)
Everything involving Ultimatum
Doryani's Frickin' Machinarium (drop rate, thanks Ahautotli, glad you're dead)
Master missions (minor)
100 Guardian maps (50 too many)
250 of each Altar (either would be fine)
Wave 30 Simulacrum (29 was a cakewalk, rolled badly, lost interest)
4 wing Heist (NPC levelling)
Infused Beachhead (do these drop?)

Overall a great league, thanks! Back to a hardcore reroll (passing the time) and excited for next league.

Last bumped on Feb 14, 2024, 4:48:03 PM