Leagues should be shorter

I don't play this league for challenges, I play it for awesome mechanics introduced with 3.0.0. So its not near end for me. See, that is totally subjective as all opinions in here.

Anyway, it doesnt end this month, but in around 50 days? Awesome, more time to gear chars. Thought it ends in 30 days.

3 months is already pushing on too short for me.

I'm sure it's possible to satisfy both players that enjoy to take their time ( or can't dedicate much ) and hungry ones by just systematicly adding after two months an event aside main league.

Not saying it's the best plan, but past events clearly showed it had a positive impact.

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Heli0nix wrote:

I'm sure it's possible to satisfy both players that enjoy to take their time (or can't dedicate much ) and hungry ones by just systematically adding after two months an event aside main league.

Not saying it's the best plan, but past events clearly showed it had a positive impact.

GGG could easily shift to a 4 months per challenge league cycle and at the end of the 2nd month then offer 2 one month races back to back to pacify the full time and racer players who are done in 2 months. That would also give the coders more time to debug/polish the next challenge league.

The thing about leagues is that it is tricky to create good mechanics that work long enough (even if I love the leagues). If you want the game to be entertaining for three months you need sandbox like mechanics of some type (try to be less WoW and more Minecraft/Eve). And that's easier said than done.

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Arrowneous wrote:

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Heli0nix wrote:

I'm sure it's possible to satisfy both players that enjoy to take their time (or can't dedicate much ) and hungry ones by just systematically adding after two months an event aside main league.

Not saying it's the best plan, but past events clearly showed it had a positive impact.

GGG could easily shift to a 4 months per challenge league cycle and at the end of the 2nd month then offer 2 one month races back to back to pacify the full time and racer players who are done in 2 months. That would also give the coders more time to debug/polish the next challenge league.

I think it's the futur plan of GGG about racing, they already mentioned last year they were working toward to improve racing a lot in an update as far i remember.
And watching community event ran recently and their success i'm sure they are even more motivated than before to work on this; Not sure how it will be implemented tought but i think we are going ot be surprized a lot.

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NeroNoah wrote:

The thing about leagues is that it is tricky to create good mechanics that work long enough (even if I love the leagues). If you want the game to be entertaining for three months you need sandbox like mechanics of some type (try to be less WoW and more Minecraft/Eve). And that's easier said than done.

I'm not sure to understand your last sentence and the comparison minecraft / WoW, would you elaborate please ? :)

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Heli0nix wrote:

I'm not sure to understand your last sentence and the comparison minecraft / WoW, would you elaborate please ? :)

Sandbox vs. themeparks. The first ones have mechanics that let the play mess around (think how much time people spend in Minecraft building stuff, or how people have all that dramatic political/corporate stuff on Eve), the second ones add content to keep you entertained (new levels, bosses and loot, like Raids in WoW) which tends to be hard to sustain and expensive.

PoE has the whole build aspect and up to some point maps/Atlas as a way to fool around as the endgame. I'd include housing too for a part of the population.

The endgame grind by comparison is always going to be limited, because you eventually complete your character and loot everything you want (worse because there are no item sinks to force you get your items again) and there is a ceiling to challenge before it becomes bigger numbers and powercreep from the player side as a consequence.

Leagues are generally new stuff to grind rather than mechanics to fool around long term, so it tends to be the exception rather than the rule a long lived league. Legacy, for example, was good not just because it was a loot shower, but because it gave you the chance to mess around with the game in many ways with the leaguestones.

The sandbox part of the game could do with some expansion outside new builds (I think the game is Eve-lite infrequently, there is some limited assholery and some people doing devious schemes for profit). Maybe rebuilding and managing Wraeclast? Factions? Building your own maps? It could be even league based. That's for GGG to decide.

Lack of Races is the bigger issue here. Normally around halfway in the league a couple sets of races would hit to occupy the elite and give them something to do while everyone else who are not into racing (Thus why they NEED 3 month leagues in the first place) can carry on with league activities.

However past couple leagues GGG has skimped out on the races and looks like this league we might not see any. Thats what GGG needs to do is go back to having more events start up around the halfway point or after the first month of a new league. And focus on them being more than just a race to a certain place.. Have duration events where people are not just racing from point A start to point B finish but rather lists of objectives to complete and maybe some kinda point system setup where people with the highest score win but everyone can rank for tiers of prizes as well. More points better prizes.

I've always enjoyed the idea of Races in POE i just dont like to participate because that's not how i like to play the game in the first place. But just because i dont get into the actual racing part myself doesn't mean i dont totally see the appeal and why people would love it. That and ive always thought the whole idea of it was amazing and could be expanded upon and with a little creativity they would have something really special to add to the list of things making POE special already. There's a lot of things event wise they could do with the Race System to really keep everyone playing all the time. Only thing i can think of is it takes a bit more work to program all that than Chris lets on.. I mean ive read where he said it was super easy to make up races and set them up so why not do that? And make more different kinds of Races and Events?

I would think especially events that are 1 week long would be easy to do and that's a good duration for an Event over a Race. Have people throughout the week trying to accomplish a list of tasks set forth by the rules. IMO sounds more fun than just trying to hit 100 first. I would actually play a Race that was like that over the normal format. I probably still wouldn't win or do worth a damn but i could still have a lot of fun just playing it. Just some feedback from someone who plays leagues and always gets burned out the last month or so.

I'm completely fine taking a 1-2 month break after getting done with a league. 3 months is the sweet spot, if it would be shorter a lot of people would burn out and the game would die in a matter of months.