Popular Opinion: League Challenges Should Require Solo Completion

Ya "respect of your time" is kind of an oxymoron. You're playing a video game to begin with to waste time.

Actual respect of your time would be like d2 having item editor so you never had to grind anything. Which isn't the point of arpgs.

I agree though challenges are a lot of fun, achieving things in general is fun.

I wish poe2 had challenges.

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Lonnie455Rich#2087 wrote:

Ya "respect of your time" is kind of an oxymoron. You're playing a video game to begin with to waste time.

Actual respect of your time would be like d2 having item editor so you never had to grind anything. Which isn't the point of arpgs.

I agree though challenges are a lot of fun, achieving things in general is fun.

I wish poe2 had challenges.

Playing a video game isn't "wasting time"...unless you're not having fun :)

Respecting your time doesn't have anything to do with how long it takes to get something, necessarily. IMO. There are games that legitimately don't respect your time, generally by being dishonest. They trick you into believing that if you do x thing for y hours you get z but it turns out not to be true, or turns out you need 10*x hours actually. Or you get promised content that never comes. For example lots of early access games shit on people's time (and money). You buy and play the game because it looks promising, but it gets abandoned. Like a show you watched for 2 seasons that got cancelled. And while yes my initial point still applies - maybe you had fun playing/watching while you did anyway - you can't help but feel frustrated and like those hours you put into it were "wasted". Because you never made it to the end, you don't get that satisfying sense of completion.

However this is definitely not the case of POE. 99.9% of time you know exactly what you're getting. So whether you have fun or not in the time you spend playing...that is 100% up to you, not GGG.

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Felix44#4475 wrote:

I would say my time in the game is very much respected - but that's because I make it so. I've heard a lot of people say that the game doesn't respect their time but...most of it is self-inflicted, honestly.

to an extent i agree. i cant expect a grinding gear game to want me to achieve everything in a week.

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Ofc GGG wants league retention and keeping players playing as much as possible - that's perfectly normal. But it is not their job to value your time, it's yours.

yeap and thats why i tend to skip playing poe entirely. i've managed my expectations.

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Half the time I wasn't really even having fun, I was grinding...for the promise of future fun?

this was me for a few years. i m a std trumelee enjoyer. ggg had neglected melee for literal years since the original plan was POE2 was gonna fix that. i can honestly tell you. I RESENTED playing poe at that point but i had to keep playing certain leagues as they had very powerful gear that i would be upset if i missed them. all that because i hung on the hope that when poe2 dropped, then i would finally start having fun.

its different now. ggg did actually buff melee and poe actually is fun to me now. much more than how it used to be for the past decade.

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Right now I play exactly what I want, exactly when I want it. I'll respec from the most profitable strat to 0-profit bestiary (it's not 0 profit anymore but it used to be) if I feel like it. And let me tell you, THAT's pretty damn fun.

ggg allowing us to specifically choose content to remove and add to mapping was one of the best decisions GGG ever made. i've been asking for it for years and am happy that we have such a high level of control over our content. i m still wanting more tho lol. theres still some content i want to remove.

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I'm saying all of this is that challenges feel that exact same to me. Something that pigeonholes you into doing things you don't find fun. For completion, for rewards, whatever. People are so easily pushed into doing that - I mean, half the playerbase is doing it honestly - that I really don't think we need any more incentive for that.

i agree with you half way. i agree with you 100% that many challenges are things that i dont find fun. AT ALL. in fact i dislike doing them. i hate being pigeonholed into doing content i dont like. but on the flipside, thats why rewards exist. the mtx rewards are a huge contribution from GGG to reward players to play a certain way even tho you may not like it. race rewards too. not everyone likes racing, but back when the rewards were an actual gaming rig, i too tried my hand at it (quickly learned to give up tho lol). also ggg sometimes has mini leagues with crazy modifiers. they too provide unique rewards. despite hating the literal work required. i find its fair. its a free reward. and if we compare to the older mtx we used to have, the newer mtx challenge rewards have so much quality over paid mtx. affliction's challenge rewards were amazing and we got that for "FREE"? thats crazy.

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they are still a company, the game is still a product, and the primary goal is always to sell, everything else comes second.

agreed, and to that extent, its a bad decision financially for them to make challenges solo only despite me preferring it that way.

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

though I'm glad they lowered it to 36 again

i really resented that they put it to 38 back then. it felt like they were gatekeeping content and i felt forced to buy carries if i wanted to complete the mtx rewards. iirc i quit the league early anyway.

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Lonnie455Rich#2087 wrote:

Ya "respect of your time" is kind of an oxymoron. You're playing a video game to begin with to waste time.

Pretty much this. While video games do count as a hobby, at their core they’re designed to waste our time, or to put it a little more fairly, to make us sink time into them. Whether that time is truly wasted depends entirely on the individual. Spending hours in a game can absolutely be enjoyable and even rewarding, but when someone isn’t genuinely having fun, when they’re only playing to pass the time, or grinding for "free" cosmetics while openly disliking most of the experience, it might be worth stepping back and asking what they’re really getting out of it.

If someone spends a hundred hours forcing themselves through content they don’t enjoy just for a free glamour or out of a sense of habit, that time could easily be spent in ways that actually bring fulfillment. They could play another game that genuinely sparks joy, explore a new hobby, or even just work 2 or 3 hours of overtime and buy whatever nice bling blings they want across any game, instead of forcing themselves through hundreds of hours of something they don’t truly enjoy. In the end, time is the one thing we can’t get back, so it’s worth spending it on things that genuinely make us happy.

This is also where better challenges would come in handy for most of the active player base. It would give people something more meaningful to grind toward, while naturally improving player retention.
Players who typically blitz through challenges via carries would no longer be able to do so, and might actually remain invested beyond the second week, instead of dropping out early and filling forums with 101 complaints about content they never genuinely experienced or engaged with.
Meanwhile, the players who are already engaged with the game would also get access to more interesting challenges that feel less like tedious chores and more like unique, worthwhile content each league.