Standard vs League

As long as standard has legacy gear, I will not touch it with a 60ft pole.

The biggest mistake by far in the history of PoE.

If the game moves forward, things are added, mechanics changed which require rebalancing, then do it. Don't say okay, we will rebalance from now on but remaining items will remain the same.

Result is that old players like myself will run around like gods, real proper gods mind you, not this cheap knock off deal Malachai tries to pull. New players will feel, and are, completely inferior no matter what they do, unless they us an equally godly amount of currency to gain access to said legacy gear.

I have never understood this decision coming from a company as fair as GGG. What's the deal?

In short: Standard is for MXT duplicate storage. Leagues are "the game".

"

Xavathos wrote:

As long as standard has legacy gear, I will not touch it with a 60ft pole.

The biggest mistake by far in the history of PoE.

If the game moves forward, things are added, mechanics changed which require rebalancing, then do it. Don't say okay, we will rebalance from now on but remaining items will remain the same.

Result is that old players like myself will run around like gods, real proper gods mind you, not this cheap knock off deal Malachai tries to pull. New players will feel, and are, completely inferior no matter what they do, unless they us an equally godly amount of currency to gain access to said legacy gear.

I have never understood this decision coming from a company as fair as GGG. What's the deal?

In short: Standard is for MXT duplicate storage. Leagues are "the game".

Out of curiosity, why do you care if legacy items exist? To my understanding, there is no competition in Standard. I.e., this is the "just come here to play" "league". Where as seasonal leagues are competitive, and thus "advantage" matters.

I mean, who cares if some joe schmo has legacy kaoms, and you dont? It doesnt effect you. You would just be diminishing that player's experience out of jealousy?

"

Deliverme wrote:

"

Xavathos wrote:

As long as standard has legacy gear, I will not touch it with a 60ft pole.

The biggest mistake by far in the history of PoE.

If the game moves forward, things are added, mechanics changed which require rebalancing, then do it. Don't say okay, we will rebalance from now on but remaining items will remain the same.

Result is that old players like myself will run around like gods, real proper gods mind you, not this cheap knock off deal Malachai tries to pull. New players will feel, and are, completely inferior no matter what they do, unless they us an equally godly amount of currency to gain access to said legacy gear.

I have never understood this decision coming from a company as fair as GGG. What's the deal?

In short: Standard is for MXT duplicate storage. Leagues are "the game".

Out of curiosity, why do you care if legacy items exist? To my understanding, there is no competition in Standard. I.e., this is the "just come here to play" "league". Where as seasonal leagues are competitive, and thus "advantage" matters.

I mean, who cares if some joe schmo has legacy kaoms, and you dont? It doesnt effect you. You would just be diminishing that player's experience out of jealousy?

but it does if you trade even a little bit in standard , then legacy items effect you because they effect the prices of other items that you may want.

some times in a positive way .. some times in a negative.. but they do affect things.


now is it bad enough to swear off standard forever? no i dont think so plus most of the legacy gear inst actually he best gear anyway ....

hell there are cases where even mirror quality items arent the best items or are even a part of the best builds.

and they certainly arent needed to make stuff works .. oh wow you 1 shot things harder on standard than on essence .

oh noooooes that guy with legacy stuff who just one shot the whole screen ... looks exactly the same as me one shoting the screen... no waaaaaaay ....

For me, Standard is "the game". Leagues are something to keep the kids busy.
Mind you, I was just like that myself, burning maybe 2k-3k hours in D2, so I sympathise with the sentiment of being dedicated and "hardcore".
But of course if I'd do this now, I'd be a jobless lowlife.
I can't justify playing games more than one or two evenings per week due to prioritising time with my wife and kids, of course the job, two other rather large hobbies... and when gaming, other games.

Leagues make little sense when you can only finish Malachai on Merciless before the league ends every other league. And I sometimes just can't afford the time to play for 3-4 weeks.
I've been playing PoE since open beta and it's an awesomely addictive game (nostalgia sure helps there as well), yet I have just 5 chars above lvl 80. Honestly not looking forward to slogging through the lvling ever again... if I want chores, I have plenty around the house already. For new builds the passive resets are ideal.

So your perspective about leagues depends on how much time you can put into one.

Side remark: Standard legacies affect prices in that they make the non-legacy items cheaper than what they are in leagues, so that's only beneficial for every build that could work in leagues.
And since Standard is not about competition, it doesn't matter if somebody who you'll never meet kills stuff a bit faster in their private instances. (which is, if anything, beneficial for you, since they'll get more loot and sell it cheaper)

Standard if good for casuals like me who just want to own shit when I get some down time. Finally got all four guardians down and will attempt shaper tonight when I get home. That will be all I do on the game this week. In ladder there is ppl done it many times already while im just hit 87 and still trying to get lvl 8 maps consistently. Homie aint got time for dat.

If I'd still be like 21 and going to university i'd probably like to play leagues as well. But i am not. - So: Standart is great cause you can develope long term, even though you are only a casual gamer.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

I'm finding it harder and harder to summon the will to click on the game. It's more work than fun.

 Ditto for me. With many standard sc characters and lot's of uniques available to build around I have a great number of skills that I've never played that I'd love to try but haven't had the desire to do so. Mainly because GGG has been insane to stop the top .01% elite racers from a level 100 build < 1 month. This challenge league we have 6 SC and 4 HC Essence league 100 builds with the first racer getting to 100 in 2 weeks. So the nerfs of xp gained on kills, the raising of xp needed to level up, and the overall increase in difficulty to sustain higher tier maps, all done for the sole purpose of slowing a small handful of racers, these changes have all combined to remove most of my desires to play now as it is more work than fun to advance a build.

 Now with AoW another thread raises a good question in that for each subsequent challenge league we will be having to fill in the Atlas every time, just as we must run the Trials and Lab to get ascendancy points each temp league.

 The more gimmicks GGG adds to the PoE endgame the more hoops we must jump through to play and advance an endgame build and the more it feels like drudge work instead of fun. GGG should be aware of this with most posts of late being made to talk about this or that problem. Unfortunately, as we've seen too many times, GGG seems to be in their own reality and has lost touch with the average player and only hears the elite players feedback and how great the endgame challenges are for them.

 Anyway, I have a poison arrow trapper exile in Essence league that I'm only now at the end of Merc difficulty (just killed the 3 Belly of The Beast bosses). As is the norm I'm skipping Merc Malachai and now heading into maps (will we ever get a redo of passive points so the Malachai battle gives 1 for Normal, 2 for Merciless?... maybe with act 5?). When I read recently that The Shaper is chaos damage immune that was a big disappointment, even though I have no allusions of ever getting my build that far in 3 months.

 And that is exactly why the endgame has been going downhill for me (average casual player) this year more than ever before. It's not from burnout (I still like playing new skills) but from GGG's insistence that a level 100 build be damn near impossible for top elites to race to and in the process has wrecked PoE for the 99% (and even some high profile elite streamers have thrown in the towel and quit). Thus the challenge leagues are more and more undesirable to play and so I'm playing various Standard League SC builds to work toward a level 90 goal. It is sad that this has happened to an arpg which has held my interest for near 4 years (longest of any arpg game).

So does anyone have any clue (crystal ball time) why GGG is doing this (other than typical troll posts such as "it's their arpg and they can code it any way they want to")?

yeap, totally agree. standard is for casuals who want to have fun. everything is there; nothing from scratch; no unfair deaths

I don't really have much motivation to play either. I'm leveling a new character in league but since it isn't a meta build, I know that it won't be able to handle new content and with the EXP nerfs, I know it won't be able to reach a decent level.

Same deal with standard characters, it just all feels like volunteer work where you don't advance anywhere.

After the first few leagues I tried, they quickly became boring to me. I was playing knowing that what I was doing now would be 'thrown away' in a month. So why push that character? Then I found myself trying to obtain things I had already worked towards and had already obtained a few weeks previously, and that just seemed stupid.

I like to see my work going towards something, not turned a big fat 0 in a few weeks. And especially not for dumb ghosts that are nothing but annoying. Or little boxes that 20 guys pop-out of when you click on it. Or grinding and grinding and grinding for a stupid trinket. Really, throw away 3 year's worth of 'work' just to start from 0 for that? No thanks. I tried again and Cardio was slightly better, but I just simply stopped half way because the yellow guys killing my game performance just wasn't enough of a draw to keep my interest.

Glad others enjoy it, but it's not for me. If you were a noob to the game, then doing leagues makes sense. If you've done 2-4 leagues already, then enjoy a return on your hours spent.