Really burned out bad challenges and the elder/shaper mini-game

So the current catalyst of my frustration:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/277694944
It appears that I triggered ~25+ traps during this encounter, and I did not receive credit. If I need to actually step on them, that isn't really how the challenge is worded.
(A google search later)
It turns out you have to be "hit by" 15 rune traps...
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2171618/page/1#p15649177
Why not use that wording in the actual challenge rather than having players burning their maps to figure out that the wording is wrong?

There's always been a few challenges among the 40 (or 8) that I found tedious or not really appealing in a gameplay sense, or frustrating mechanically (Bestiary completion being a lot of RNG with none of the 4 leagues "luck" helping the others)

But the thing that's really killed my desire to play at all the past few leagues is the atlas. It seems to completely change every expansion with new tilesets, new bosses and shifting tiers, and that is actually something I welcome as it's fun to explore it... I love variety. However the challenges do not seem to encourage you to do any exploration, in fact they seem to force you to pigeon hole your mapping into as few maps as possible usually with some meta crafting and micro management.
That is to say, there's been a trend towards challenges where the effective way to do them is to do as little variety of maps as possible and to "craft" the influence in a certain way until it is nerfed the following league.A big part of this is the Elder/Shaper influence mechanic, which I've like conceptually (two powerful entities battling over realms) but I've hated the execution of (micro management and constant checking of progress).

Maybe I'm a bit old school as far as my mentality of mapping goes, but running the same map 500 times seems like a Diablo 3 style mechanic rather than a Path of Exile mechanic. I would never in my life run 100+ burial chambers with the same gear as hundreds of other players just because it was the best way to make money, but I never felt like POE pushed me into something like that, it was a choice and one I didn't ever make. However, the Elder/Shaper influence mini game and how the challenges have played into it have really contributed to my burn out in POE because I feel like I can't play the builds I want to or run maps as they drop without playing some micro management mini game on my atlas.


Old Map grinds - Do any of a large pool of maps a large number of times.
Harbinger: Defeat 1337 Map Bosses.
Legacy: Complete 1000 Maps of Tier 6 or higher with 3 Leaguestones active.
Breach: Complete 10000 map tiers
Essence: Explore the Atlas - Complete at least 100 different types of Maps.
Prophecy: Complete 300 Map boss encounters that result in at least one Map being dropped by the boss.

For all of these, there are efficient ways to approach them, but in general you aren't punished for doing whatever map you feel like doing, and still make progress towards each of the above goals.

New Map grinds - Requires micro managing the atlas/influence for any sort of effective progress.
Abyss:Maps Influenced by Shaper (0/300),Maps Influenced by Elder (0/300)
Bestiary: Complete 1500 Maps affected by Elder or Shaper Influence, Zana Mods or a Sextant.
Incursion : Cause Map Influence 0/500

For Abyss, you could get a map permanently influenced fairly easily and, I ended up running 200+ marshes and tropical islands to finish that.
In Bestiary, an elder ring was the meta-solution, I ran several hundred leylines that were part of a ring in the final hours of the league to finish.
For Incursion it looks like there's an "Elder Square" you can use to the same effect.

With the new Atlas influence mini-game, what map you complete pushes you towards the next map that you should complete if you want to continue to make progress. Doing arbitrary maps gives you no progression and in many cases can actually hinder your progression by eliminating influence or moving it in undesirable ways, especially when considering other challenges such as Uber Elder. Obviously with any system or set of challenges, there's a "most efficient" way to complete them, just like there's a "most efficient" way to grind currency. But the fact that choosing not to do things the most efficient way seems to actually hurt your progress (rather than just slow it down) really bums me out.


Maybe I'm alone here, but I didn't feel nearly as bad about having to check my league-stones every few maps in legacy league as I do having to open my atlas after every single map and examine which maps will then push the influence where I want to go...(and hope that I have them or hope that buying them doesn't take too long).

Right now I'm so frustrated whenever I even open my atlas, in no small part due to buying maps being a PITA as well as just generally being forced to constantly look at my atlas to figure out what maps I can and can't run. Right now I have 4-5 maps that I could run to swap influence, but I don't have 3 of them, and the 2 I do have would push elder into lower tier maps, but oh, by the way I need to do high level incursions and get an uber elder so both of those things are hindered if I want to grind the influence challenge. So I could set up an "Elder Square" (likely to be nerfed) and run a few hundred of the same maps or just make zero progress on multiple challenges while constantly buying whatever maps can swap influence as they always seem to be the ones I don't have. I could also just ignore Elder/Shaper influence right now and grind other challenges or a larger map pool... but that's what I was doing when I found out that the challenge I used my 2 core's on was worded completely contrary to how it's actually completed.

On top of this, the last several leagues I feel like I've been punished for wanting to have a complete atlas when that's the in game observable goal of having the atlas (there's a completion tracker right in the middle), and I'd be far better off doing some sort of meta crafting to run a few maps, which would just burn me out faster. I was really happy with the changes to sextants because it meant that the difference between being efficient and freedom of choice wasn't nearly so drastic. For me it's not a choice whether to run a variety of maps or a single map repeatedly. It's a choice between playing Path of Exile (and running a variety of maps) or playing some other game that offers choices.

I do know that a lot of this probably bothers me more than it bothers a lot of people but I have a combination of a completionist approach to gaming (I try and 100% any game I play), as well as SEVERE adhd. Every league now, I dread looking at the challenges, and reading all the "best ways to shape your atlas" or whatever it is that foreshadows the grind that I will eventually break down and complete once there's a high level of pressure to finish the challenges before the deadline. I've enjoyed the first few weeks of just about every league, but the last two leagues just left me with a sense of dread regarding the challenges to the point where part of me wished that I failed to complete them so I could just walk away from them in the future or walk away from POE for more than a month. I've been very lucky in that I've had friends who've helped me finish off the last several sets of challenges despite my lack of early effort, so this league I committed to pushing myself early on but I'm already feeling the end of my rope here.

Yeah this is a big rant, and most players don't even look at their challenges much less give a crap about completing them, but as my primary motivation for playing beyond trying new builds it's been bugging me a lot for the past year or so. I just submitted my 3rd divination card, so I obviously don't hate this game, I just hate the way I feel like I have to play it right now.

This + the fact they built this system so that you need specific maps. But at the same time we have this lovely thing going on:

Where do you get these specific maps?
Trade.
What they are refusing to fix?
Trade.

I wouldn't mind this element all that much if buying items like maps/currency/essences/whatever wasn't big waste of time and spam. :/

-Make an interesting and inspired game for a niche audience.
-Make a grind and trade simulator for the masses.

Choose one.

Because you cannot make an interesting and inspired game if there is trade included. Mmmmmhhmmmmm... well no.

Oh, by the way - I'm pretty sure PoE is niche as fuck. You want to go en masse? Try Fortnite/PUGB/whatever. PoE is still complicated as all hell, and probably way too complicated for most people. Trade being in the game or meta shifting towards clear speed doesn't make it any less complicated/niche/interesting.

That was kinda pointless off-topic, but at least we're bumping this thread. :S

More bumps! (sorry OP)

Remember that game for the masses that had this casual trading simulator? What was its name?

Oh! I remembered! EVE online!

You know - for casuals!

To make matters worse, you can't do any of the grinds with your friends.

Not maps, not lab, etc.

Yeah, I will say that while this set of challenges isn't the HARDEST, it is quite possibly the DUMBEST.

Dealing with trade has become increasingly mandatory, but also increasingly more painful. Some items have been okay to get, mostly if they're 100% unimportant. When I got the bright idea to farm a boatload of Vaults by simply buying a bunch of the prophecy at a few chaos per? I got replies from >2/3 of the first page within seconds. I want to buy a red map for 10c+? I guess good luck finding if anyone in the first few dozen listings will ever respond.

"

Pyrokar wrote:

-Make an interesting and inspired game for a niche audience.
-Make a grind and trade simulator for the masses.
Choose one.

Welp, we know which one GGG went with, in spite of this being a very false dichotomy, as Charan pointed out.

And no, you can't say this game isn't a trade simulator. I spend more time dealing with trade than any single element I've dealt with. More time spent dealing with trade than all my time in Incursions + Atzoatl combined. More time spent trading to acquire the maps to fill out my Atlas than actually doing the maps I acquired. More time spent trading my haul and finding new helmets to enchant than I actually spend running the Labyrinth.

"

Gumlass wrote:

Not maps, not lab, etc.

Yeah, I quickly noted that one. Prior 40/40s I went for it was plausible to rotate for a lot of the long grinds, which was a double-sided boon: it both took some of the economic strain off of you, AND it meant you weren't alone so it wasn't so mind-numbingly a slog.

"Cause map influence" is literally telling me that -I- have to run 500 maps in-place to flip-flop influence; I can't rotate through this with other players. This is actually more maps than I've actually ever run in my own map device in any league ever before. (par was about 200-300, with probably double that run off of other players' map devices)

As Rich mentioned above, that means giving up on the Elder or Temple side of the game while I do that: y'know, the ostensible "chase" part of the game?

Of course, "chase" seems to mean something different to GGG these days. They talk about "chase uniques," yet the apex one, Headhunter, is primarily acquired... By spamming thousands of the exact same low-level map over and over and over again.

I do feel that GGG should invest some more effort into actually experiencing how the game truly plays for real players like us, not how individual mechanics and encounters look like on a sterile test server. This would apply as well to them actually realizing their wording needs to be better, if they ever tried out different builds to see how players might actually wind up naturally approaching things differently.

Strange philosophy with all those “challenges”. People do some boring and unenjoyable things over and over again to get… what? Some mediocre skins, mediocre portal, dildo looking totem for placing in hideout and… number, to “shine” on forum. No problem for me, I really like the opportunity for selling “hidden vaal pathways” or “possessed foe” to those people, but still don’t understand reasons.

Personally I can do only challenges, which will be done automatically, like “reach level 90”, “kill all campaign bosses”, “upgrade your hideout” or challenges which requires minimal effort, like “corrupt some items” (no problem, I can spend some vaal orbs), run unid maps (no problem too) But “reach lvl 100” or “kill 40 breachlords”? OMG, who or what is forcing people to such torture? No way. As well as I will not even try to figure who is “Stone of the Currents” or trying to “Defeat Vaal Omnitec while he is influenced by essence of diarrhea, sitting in the toilet and looking for toilet paper”. Just no. Even with this approach I usually do around 30 challenges.

"

postrach_myszy wrote:

Personally I can do only challenges, which will be done automatically, like “reach level 90”, “kill all campaign bosses”, “upgrade your hideout” or challenges which requires minimal effort, like “corrupt some items” (no problem, I can spend some vaal orbs), run unid maps (no problem too) But “reach lvl 100” or “kill 40 breachlords”? OMG, who or what is forcing people to such torture? No way. As well as I will not even try to figure who is “Stone of the Currents” or trying to “Defeat Vaal Omnitec while he is influenced by essence of diarrhea, sitting in the toilet and looking for toilet paper”. Just no. Even with this approach I usually do around 30 challenges.

In 2018 challenge is something that requires minimal effort. Lol

Why people are doing challenges? Well, to challenge themselves beyond doing things that will be done automatically.
The do X while Y are the best challenges so far - they really are a challenge to do, especially when you have to purposely hinder yourself in a bossfight.

As far as I can tell this thread is not about complaining about challenges being challenging, but them being annoying instead of being challenging.

"

Perq wrote:

As far as I can tell this thread is not about complaining about challenges being challenging, but them being annoying instead of being challenging.

Yeah. Rich's issue was that the challenge wasn't even honest with its wording, that it was not treated as "done" in spite of following what it said.

(e.g, it claims "trigger 15 traps" when it means "Take damage from 15 traps;" if you dodge the damage it doesn't count, but it DOES count if someone else triggers them and you take damage)

That, and the "influence 500 times" challenge is dumb because it forces the player to... Do LESS challenging stuff? If GGG wanted an arbitrary timewall they should've just replaced it with a challenge of "accumulate 100 hours logged in with the same character."