Afterthoughts on completing the 8 challenges

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Fireknight wrote:

Oh, and self-found. The pinnacle of the endgame is not intended to be played self-found. Being antisocial and secluding yourself from the economy is a valid playstyle, but it's not one that should be viable for completing 8/8 challenges. It's an alternative playstyle that the game should not be balanced around. If the hardest content in the game is balanced to be completed self-found in a challenge league, everything becomes 100% trivial to someone that trades (ie. the 95%+ of players that don't engage in self-imposed isolationism.)

I just want to snip this, Dom.

I hope it was a mistype, or that you truly don't know the meaning of the word 'antisocial'.

If not, I find this highly offensive and actually quite fucking stupid. A solo and/or self-found player is the LEAST LIKELY to be antisocial in any way, shape or form.

Not sure if stacking currency & flipping items is good for the "social" xD

Just close the book now imo, next challenges will no longer be like this, just reading what C.Wilson wrote in the 1 month announcement about it is pretty clear (for me)

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Universalis wrote:

next challenges will no longer be like this, just reading what C.Wilson wrote in the 1 month announcement about it is pretty clear (for me)

what, this?

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Chris wrote:

We've received a lot of feedback about the recent challenges and have taken it on board for the design of the next set of challenges. More information will be made available as we release information on the expansion in the coming month!

to me, that's anything but clear.

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johnKeys wrote:

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Fireknight wrote:

You seem to take a default stance that successful players are successful due to RMT, hacks, mods, scamming, predatory trading, or some other less-than-genuine method.

no.

I take the stance that the game itself - at its core design - pretty much encourages nefarious activity, including RMT and cheating.
I'll obviously get flamed for writing this, but after all this time I dare say people who cannot (or do not want to) see the obvious connection, are blind by choice.

it also encourages taking the path of least resistance, which is the exact opposite of what I want it to do. of what its gimmicky "hardcore" definition means, to me.

this, makes me respect the people who achieved something while resisting the "temptation" to "sign the devil's contract", even more.
it also makes me somewhat understand - though still despise - people who gave-in and cheated/RMTed. they'd get absolutely no sympathy from me, had this game been designed differently.

again, I know I'll get flamed for this. possibly even warned by GGG for "sympathizing with RMT" - because many moderators have a tendency to read things backwards.
that's me: I tend to just express things bluntly, for better and for worse.
and I'm currently holding back from using various derivatives of the F-word, to express just how disgusted I am of the current situation.
if you read my posting history, you must have noticed I often don't. especially in the more recent year as my frustration with the state of the game, built to a boiling-point.

as for your stance regarding self-found, you do realize that's a very clear definition of "mandatory trade". of making it impossible to achieve something by strictly playing the game itself. read that again, and understand how utterly horrible it sounds.

no ARPG or RPG I ever played - in literally decades - had mandatory trade.
many didn't even have trade to begin with.
and with good reason.
giving the player a choice, isn't just a key to good ARPG design - it's a key to game design as a whole.

As things become difficult and time consuming, there are people will try to circumvent these factors by cheating. This is and unavoidable. The only way to prevent this from being applicable is removing the ability to cheat altogether (ie. mandating self-found and removing trading), which poses far bigger problems than the one it intends to solve.

This can be mitigated by making things less time consuming and less difficult, but this also means sacrificing integrity in other areas. By doing so, every aspect of the game becomes less meaningful, content is more quickly exhausted, and goals are met more trivially. The current system means there will be some that give up in frustration, but those that want to keep going have plenty to keep working toward. The alternative is catering to the players that can't handle a game without immediate gratification - the type of player that quickly tires with a game and constantly looks for a new flavor-of-the-month game. Having difficult, time consuming content does not mean encouraging people to cheat, the cheating is simply an unfortunate side effect.

The system I described in the previous post is not "mandatory trade". It is "If you want to optimize endgame content and complete the most difficult challenges, you can not do so while also doing self-found". Playing self-found and abstaining from trading" and "playing to run the most difficult content" are mutually exclusive goals; they cannot be optimized simultaneously. If you most enjoy perfecting a character and having the ability to do endgame content, you trade. If you most enjoy playing self-found and imposing artificial challenges on yourself, play self-found. If you cannot be satisfied unless you have the best of both, you're automatically going to be disappointed.

"Self-found play" and "removing or reducing the impulse of some to cheat", both mean sacrificing more important things.

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TheAnuhart wrote:

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Fireknight wrote:

Oh, and self-found. The pinnacle of the endgame is not intended to be played self-found. Being antisocial and secluding yourself from the economy is a valid playstyle, but it's not one that should be viable for completing 8/8 challenges. It's an alternative playstyle that the game should not be balanced around. If the hardest content in the game is balanced to be completed self-found in a challenge league, everything becomes 100% trivial to someone that trades (ie. the 95%+ of players that don't engage in self-imposed isolationism.)

I just want to snip this, Dom.

I hope it was a mistype, or that you truly don't know the meaning of the word 'antisocial'.

If not, I find this highly offensive and actually quite fucking stupid. A solo and/or self-found player is the LEAST LIKELY to be antisocial in any way, shape or form.

You are right, sorry.

I don't think self-found players are "antisocial", my response became too derisive as a result of the demeanor of the person I was responding to.

It's not meant to be an attack on people that prefer playing self-found but it definitely ended up that way.

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johnKeys wrote:

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Universalis wrote:

next challenges will no longer be like this, just reading what C.Wilson wrote in the 1 month announcement about it is pretty clear (for me)

what, this?

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Chris wrote:

We've received a lot of feedback about the recent challenges and have taken it on board for the design of the next set of challenges. More information will be made available as we release information on the expansion in the coming month!

to me, that's anything but clear.

90 or 90% of all comments or feedbacks about challenges were pointing out the excessive "economical farce" design of challenge n°8, ggg read it obviously.

Interesting insights, FireKnight.

My breakdown on the 8 challenges:

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Fireknight wrote:

You are right, sorry.

I don't think self-found players are "antisocial", my response became too derisive as a result of the demeanor of the person I was responding to.

It's not meant to be an attack on people that prefer playing self-found but it definitely ended up that way.

That's cool, NP. :)

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Daresso wrote:

-Achieving level 90 on Ambush + Invasion is great. *snip* In regards to future leagues, I think this level 90 challenge should be revamped to Achieve level 95 on Ambush and Invasion

Kinda disagree, I think this one should allow for more flexibility, achiveing 1x XX in each league or 1x 100 would be a better solution giving the player a choice if he wants to focus on one character/league or roll multiples. This could even be extended to rolling 4x XX characters. Add to this steps to fit the system outlined below.

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Daresso wrote:

-Having 44 Vaal Items is ridiculous as outlined by FireKnight. Revamped Vaal Item challenge: obtain a level 20 of each Vaal Gem. Vaal Gems cannot be traded and act as quest items.

I'd say the whole top of the challenge system should be reworked. To use Aziri as an example, even though I disagree with the gating system which was the main issue, having that challenge be multi tired as well with normal/uber/deathless uber clears of the whole instance as criteria would work well.

For the item challenge you could then relax the RNG influence a bit and multi tier that as well using normal items/uber items minus the axe/the axe.

Now by combining different stages of these multi tiered challenges you get actual challenge completion. So first tier of all three gives you the 6th second gives you 7 and third tier gives you 8.

This would allow for the three harder challenges to mean something for a much larger part of the player base where they get recognition for their efforts even if they never intend to strive for the total 8.


Might sound like I'm hating on the challenges a bit here I'm not though. I loved both versions of Atziri especially as it reminded of a PoE of old without nemesis mods and extras. My only complaint really is the spike rain in the generals fight is over tuned damage wise for not having an indication it's about to come down.

The gating system is what ruined it, simple as that.

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Redblade wrote:

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Daresso wrote:

-Achieving level 90 on Ambush + Invasion is great. *snip* In regards to future leagues, I think this level 90 challenge should be revamped to Achieve level 95 on Ambush and Invasion

Kinda disagree, I think this one should allow for more flexibility, achiveing 1x XX in each league or 1x 100 would be a better solution giving the player a choice if he wants to focus on one character/league or roll multiples. This could even be extended to rolling 4x XX characters. Add to this steps to fit the system outlined below.

I actually agree with your overall counter-argument. Flexibility is definitely a good thing. I think we both realised that currently as it stands, the level challenge is too easy to complete. Reaching level 100 is a challenge in patience but not necessarily skill. Are challenges meant to be skilled based or patience based? The Vaal item challenges would suggest patience (1/1x,xxx) normal atziri runs for Axe)

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Redblade wrote:

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Daresso wrote:

-Having 44 Vaal Items is ridiculous as outlined by FireKnight. Revamped Vaal Item challenge: obtain a level 20 of each Vaal Gem. Vaal Gems cannot be traded and act as quest items.

Having that challenge be multi tired as well with normal/uber/deathless uber clears of the whole instance as criteria would work well. Now by combining different stages of these multi tiered challenges you get actual challenge completion. So first tier of all three gives you the 6th second gives you 7 and third tier gives you 8.

Now that's an idea that GGG would be wise to take on board in August.