Afterthoughts on completing the 8 challenges

My primary goal in path of exile over the last year has been completing the challenges in the 4-month leagues. While it has been very satisfying to meet this goal in the 3 sets of challenge leagues thus far, I have found several aspects rather disappointing, primarily stemming from the mutually exclusive nature of "playing the 4-month hardcore league" and "Completing all of the challenges".

Achieving 8/8 in Anarchy/Onslaught was relatively easy. It was very wealth based - so I spent much of my time trading and farming docks with low-life RF spark totems; leveling to 85 strictly by docks farming; a notable change from the previous 6 months where I had spent almost all of it mapping and maintaining a rank of top 1-5 in hardcore. At the time, the only truly difficult unique was Shavronne's wrappings, so looting one as a drop basically insured getting 8/8 and I finished completing the challenge roughly 2 months into the league. Unfortunately, because of the way the challenge is organized, dying in the 4-month hardcore league with a challenge unique disables it from the item challenge - so I switched back to the permanent hardcore league for a few days. After seeing the completely barren hardcore league, I left for a few weeks while I waited for the challenge leagues to end.

Nemesis/Domination introduced a far more difficult unique item challenge, requiring almost all of the top-rarity unique items - and further compounding the difficulty by adding extra level requirements for those unique items to drop. (Void battery/Voltaxic/Thunderfist to name some, required ilvl 75-77). Unfortunately, the relative scarcity of players running high level maps on hardcore meant that some of the items simply did not exist on the league (top rarity unique items that players do not attempt to chance and only drop in high level maps meant that there were not enough people capable of farming the content required for those unique items). I spent weeks trying to hunt down thunderfist, devoto's, respite, and the taming, but eventually it all worked out. I spent the first 3 months running high maps and building wealth, though I never actually looted any top-tier challenge uniques. As a result, I spent the remainder of the time trading and liquidizing everything to acquire the remaining uniques; which I completed roughly 2 weeks before the end.

Invasion/Ambush came with a new mechanic to limit the number of challenge completions, coincidentally ending the opportunity to hunt for the challenges on the 4-month hardcore league. The "atziri's disfavour vaal axe" drop is so rare that the resources did not exist to safely attempt the challenge on invasion. To give a rough estimate of the numbers involved:

Chance of Sarn having the corrupted zone: 1/8
Chance of the corrupted zone to drop "sacrifice at midnight" (The main item required for atziri): 1/20
Chance of Atziri of dropping "Mortal Hope" (The main item required for uber atziri): 1/40
Chance of Uber Atziri dropping "Atziri's Disfavour": 1/50 to 1/100

The accumulation of these factors means that in order to reliably produce the limiting unique for the vaal item challenge, hundreds of players need to farm the corrupted zones to produce the base item required to eventually reach uber atziri and loot the axe. After meeting that requirement, thousands of atziri runs need to be successfully completed, a very risky proposition on hardcore. But supposing this requirement was met, only then does uber atziri become part of the equation. Perhaps the most successful uber atziri slayer on invasion, Havoc, still ended up dying twice in his 24+ kills. Finally, even assuming a player was skilled enough to survive (or reroll several times) to accumulate 50-100 kills of uber atziri, it's still tossing a hundred-sided die and praying it just happened to land on the jackpot. I decided that reaching 8/8 was a higher priority than playing on the league I most enjoy, so I gave up and attempted it on ambush instead. This turned out to be the correct decision, as even after killing uber atziri 70 times, I still never looted the disfavour. I ended up trading months worth of currency for the axe as time was running out.

Unfortunately, while the problem is clear, I think the solution is much less obvious. After pondering and discussing the issue with friends, the best alternative we could come up with was something like "change the level challenge from (level 90 ambush + level 90 invasion) to (level 95 ambush + level 95 invasion), and reduce the volatility of uber drops." but without the RNG barrier, it may still may result in more 8/8 than is intended.

Finally, to reduce the disincentive to challenge hunting in the 4-month hardcore leagues, keeping record of challenge items from slain hardcore players would help tremendously. A more ideal solution would be moving characters from hardcore challenge leagues to softcore challenge leagues upon death so that the massive timesink of building/gearing a character for content like atziri isn't erased upon death (another huge disincentive), but at least keeping record would be a step in the right direction.

I appreciate that the challenges are not meant to be easy, nor are players entitled to complete all of them, but I still think the method of limiting 8/8 could be organized in a way that did not heavily penalize hardcore challenge hunters.

It would be much more enjoyable if the next pair of challenge leagues did not mean prioritizing between completing the challenges versus playing the hardcore league - or prioritizing between using challenge uniques versus permanently banishing them to the stash for fear of losing a challenge requirement.

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Fireknight wrote:

I still never looted the disfavour. I ended up trading months worth of currency for the axe as time was running out.

Before realizing the extent of the gating system I finally thought that GGG got it right and the "Path of Trading" was a thing of the past for the challenges but yet again farming currency was the best bet.

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Fireknight wrote:

Unfortunately, while the problem is clear, I think the solution is much less obvious. After pondering and discussing the issue with friends, the best alternative we could come up with was something like "change the level challenge from (level 90 ambush + level 90 invasion) to (level 95 ambush + level 95 invasion), and reduce the volatility of uber drops." but without the RNG barrier, it may still may result in more 8/8 than is intended.

I think this one should be multi tiered, as in 2x level 90 in each league or 1x 95 in each or finally 1x level 100 in either. Levels being up for discussion obviously but the option would be nice to cater to different play styles.

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Fireknight wrote:

A more ideal solution would be moving characters from hardcore challenge leagues to softcore challenge leagues upon death so that the massive timesink of building/gearing a character for content like atziri isn't erased upon death (another huge disincentive), but at least keeping record would be a step in the right direction.

This would cause issues with league specific uniques but I agree on the concept. Perhaps have the characters go in to a void league for the duration of the 4 months where they still count as a part of the parent 4 month league.

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Fireknight wrote:

I appreciate that the challenges are not meant to be easy, nor are players entitled to complete all of them, but I still think the method of limiting 8/8 could be organized in a way that did not heavily penalize hardcore challenge hunters.

I agree for the most part but I do think there needs to be a better baseline of effort required that doesn't mean you're held hostage by the rest of the player base and their willingness to farm low level content.

If you dedicate 10 hours a day for 10-12 weeks you really should have a reasonable expectation of completion. Having the completion be all down to pure RNG like this set is unacceptable in my opinion.

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Fireknight wrote:

It would be much more enjoyable if the next pair of challenge leagues did not mean prioritizing between completing the challenges versus playing the hardcore league - or prioritizing between using challenge uniques versus permanently banishing them to the stash for fear of losing a challenge requirement.

Couldn't agree more.

I hope GGG makes an official statement regarding these challenges and if they believe that what they did was 'right' or 'wrong'. I'm very curious how they felt about them during creation, how they felt during the middle of the leagues, and how they feel now. Maybe it will be a dev manifesto? Anything would be nice.

GGG should make a MTX instead of shipping out tshirts, would be cheaper and not have to make a ridiculous RNG gate every league to save them money

Besides who cares about a poe tshirt irl when you can have some badass flaming shining super bling saying "Hey I'm a bigger nerd than you ever will be get fucked"

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POOPHAMMER wrote:

GGG should make a MTX instead of shipping out tshirts, would be cheaper and not have to make a ridiculous RNG gate every league to save them money

Besides who cares about a poe tshirt irl when you can have some badass flaming shining super bling saying "Hey I'm a bigger nerd than you ever will be get fucked"

Kinda promoted this as well, at least it wouldn't be the end of the world if they didn't make it hard enough and allow them to find a better balance between requiring enough effort and making it exhausting to the point where you don't want to play the game anymore.

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Fireknight wrote:

A more ideal solution would be moving characters from hardcore challenge leagues to softcore challenge leagues upon death

I always thought this made more sense too, never understood why they go to Standard.

I agree with what you are saying except for the:

" A more ideal solution would be moving characters from hardcore challenge leagues to softcore challenge leagues upon death so that the massive timesink of building/gearing a character for content like atziri isn't erased upon death (another huge disincentive), but at least keeping record would be a step in the right direction."

Why should hardcore league players get to come to the softcore league fully equipped when the softcore league players have to start at zero in the hardcore league to complete the challenge?

It's hardcore for a reason. I get what you are saying, but it makes no sense in the spirit of the challenges.

The way this league was designed the players with the best chance of getting 8/8 played softcore most of the time and only built 1 HC toon and got them to 90 for that requirement of the challenge.

Just as hardcore players feel like they shouldn't be forced to have to play softcore many softcore players feel they shouldn't be forced to play hardcore to complete challenges. Many people just simply can't play hardcore due to internet connections or slower computers and some simply do not enjoy the aspect of hardcore. Many hardcore players feel they shouldn't be forced to play softcore because it's "scrubcore" and they want the hardcore aspect to challenge themselves.

I wish they would just make 2 separate challenge leagues each with their own requirements so softcore players can compete without having to play hardcore and vice-versa.

Better solution: Post that you'll buy the T-shirt of anyone who wins one for $500.

Very nice post, worth reading thru without tl;dr

Something I was (selfishly?) not very pleased about is the ability to complete all but one half of one challenge in the SC league, and by deferring the 90 on Invasion sub-challenge, be able to achieve this in a vastly simplified level of difficulty via twinking and monster nerfs introduced during the league.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Alluring Abyss attempts and my small part in them, the Vaals and trash clearing is right at the limit of my comfort in an HC league. I decided not to attempt the second boss fight in the end, I felt there was a strong possibility of death without long duration immortal call.

My main disappointment was the lack of resources as you noted (Hopes, and to an extent Midnights): Sadly by the time I had my character in a state where he could clear the Apex quickly and safely, midnights had essentially zero liquidity and new supply was nonexistent. To be fair, I couldn't play for the last 6 days due to travel so I don't know if this suddenly changed at league end.

One thing I casually observed (but have no statistics to back this up) is that a large chunk of the Hope supply in Invasion was deliberately killed to be sold in Softcore. That only two groups -- as far as I know -- ran the Alluring Abyss a sum total of 36 times and only stopped due to resource shortage essentially sums up the problem w/ apex/abyss fragment rarity in a hardcore league. I would suggest a change that prevents, or significantly deters, fragments from being transferred to softcore upon death (perhaps Mortal fragments can only be carried by players above a reasonable level e.g., 70?) would have completely changed the supply side in this league.