NEXT RACE SEASON - when?

As title says...when can we expect next race season?

Likely not gonna happen. The last actual SEASON was late July/mid August of 2016. They have done the occasional one-off races since then, but I think an actual season is probably not in the cards.

As far as i remember Chris stated in a podcast Races would eventualy come back with a lot of work put onto them first and new additions.

The thing is i'm not sure there is a really large public for races, if they start new races seasons they also have to catch a bit more player attention on this playstyle and a way to make new players giving it a try.

New race season is the next thing to come after the Auction House

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RandallPOE wrote:

Auction House

The game will be dead before there is an AH

Racing will come back once the can manage asynchronous races that don't force people to be on at set times (not good for a glabal game)

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Heli0nix wrote:

As far as i remember Chris stated in a podcast Races would eventualy come back with a lot of work put onto them first and new additions.

The thing is i'm not sure their is a really large public for races, soooo the thing is if they start new races seasons they also have to catch a bit more player attention on this playstyle and a way to make new players trying them.

The biggest change to boost participation would be to have each race set up like a race reward item, but a map. That map would be available for a 24 hour period. Once an account activated the map item, the race and timer would begin. If a race character died, a new character could enter that map event so long as the timer hadn't expired.

This would obviously be for races that are about leveling, and not who gets there first. There are far too many races that just don't work timing wise for players.

I asked same thing a week ago and looked into it, apparently races are only towards the end of seasons now as filler.

If GGG is reading this we need races mid season as well, would be nice to get 2 batches one midterm and one at the end.

I understand the logic of clamoring for asynchronous races but doesn't it kind of defeat the hype and excitement of short competitive races? I kind of get it for the longer (24 hr ish) format races but imagine they did asynchronous racing in the Olympics or formula 1 or something. Totally remove any hype of the thing imo.

As to lack of interest in races I think it is pretty popular thing to stream which leads to more interest in the game, even if actual participation isn't so high.

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DalaiLama wrote:

The biggest change to boost participation would be to have each race set up like a race reward item, but a map. That map would be available for a 24 hour period. Once an account activated the map item, the race and timer would begin. If a race character died, a new character could enter that map event so long as the timer hadn't expired.

This would obviously be for races that are about leveling, and not who gets there first. There are far too many races that just don't work timing wise for players.

That's an option but in my opinion the reasons a large part of players won't make it to races are bit more tedious than that.

First one beeing the race agenda beeing not really convenient depending of timezones. If i wanted to do all races i would have to leave work, not because the time it take but because i'm not going to destroy my sleep cycle for 20 min of fun.

Second one beeing races without categories between racers.
I will always defend the "you have to play against somebody better than you to progress" but also realistic, jumping in a race when you know some players have 4+ years of experience practicing on them can be really discouraging even for player that enjoy competition. The gap is big.
An ELO system with different categories would be welcome eventualy. I just fear it turns PoE players into <InsertSomeMobaNameHere> players and the behavior that come with.

Last and not the least important thing, this is an RNG game. It's a bit hard to make that fit with competition at all, so except if GGG eventualy decide to rework their whole model just for races a lot of players will stay out of them. No jokes here some players actualy would like to race for something else than points and alt art, but they are also a bit realistic here the luck seems to be an important factor. ( is it ? ).

It's all i've in mind for now, i tried races a long time ago but was still learning a lot of things with PoE and the gap was too big to give it some interest and hunting few points to get an alt art or item wasn't really motivating me.
Now i've to admit i made a lot of progress for both leveling and doing some actions really faster than before i did be interested to test that and see how good it can be. Or how bad :D

Looking forward for the upcoming race seasons ( 2042 ? :D )

races will be back right after cutthroat and custom leagues are released.