Effect of patch 3.6 on new players.

Newbie: "So how leech works again guys?"
Experienced players: [Awkward silence]

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Mythreindeer wrote:

Balance is as balance does. I don't understand this feeling of loss of time and "investment" when every 3 months your build and currency dumps into Standard anyway. I mean really, if it's so effing distressing it provokes a maniacal message board rant then one should consider following The Buddha and seeking enlightenment.


I'll be at the Exile's Pub on Oriath Square. First pint is on me...

Well.. It's not only time spend on gathering gear but also time invested in understanding your build. While items goes to standard your knowledge stays with you.
Even if every build i play is my own if suddenly i would be forced to play something different (spells, minions or melee instead of bow builds) i would have 0 idea what i am doing and how things works. Not only i would be forced to play something i don't like but also my build would suck. For sure i would complain a lot.

You forget what it's like to be a new player. They don't give a fig about nerfs. They just want to play the game. They don't even have a basis to understand what the notes even say. They don't think "what build should I use in this league to have the best chance at X,Y or Z?" They think "What the hell is going on?" Let the new players have fun. Don't try to get them "old" too quickly.

A lot of new players are gonna look fondly on Synthesis as the time when spells and ES were amazing. Because let's be real the ever shifting meta will eventually move past what is coming.

Leagues from now maybe one of them will even post about the good ol days of Synthesis and how all the new stuff is harmful to "new players."

And the cycle will go on and on..

From my PoV I don't think the 'new' players are all that new. They are refugees from game companies that imploded because of poor management wasting the time and money those players had invested.

So right from the start in typical PoE forums style 'new' is a loaded method of comparing. A way of assigning a label with negative connotations so you can simultaneously push them down and boost yourself without any real evidence to back any of that up.

Which brings me to the next bit of bs.. that the game is challenging and that you are good at it. Both of those things are an utter joke. The game is a trivial kids game. The actual mechanics of play can be trivially botted. Unfortunately most animals lack the visual acuity and input dexterity to be trained but what.. 8 year old kid? 7?

There is complexity and depth but it is confused here. It's entirely offline. So sure, someone has to figure things out (not that poking at a black box is gameplay any more than a meta cheev todo list is.. it isn't) but the rest can and do copy that perfectly.

So maybe a new player made it far along that they don't notice that the game is entirely based on progression resets to force repeating terribly bad content. Maybe they bought into the model GGG is selling where they Trade2Win, offline study, regurgitate --> chest thump --> reset and repeat.

There is no challenge here and GGG has no clue how to create difficulty without grafting on some timer\turning it into a race. This isn't an esport. I expect some 'new' players to not get sucked into the whole chest-thumping thing.. after all it is just a cheap trick GGG uses to make money... to entice players into spending time on things they otherwise would never waste their lives on. Companies found out a long time ago that slapping a metric on something so players can compare rank will for sure motivate some no matter how inane and stupid (enjoy your cheev todo list lol).

I doubt new players see the nerfs so much or feel the pain there. They very well might decide that they don't play enough to want to deal with league resets every few months though. That is really where the game fails hard. If they see how neglected standard is, how the progression resets are mandatory, how something like the map stash tab which is paid for is so neglectfully and visibly bugged it should be what is advertised as a caution for new players. Maybe they will see atlas reset in std like delve where a very tiny small amount of changes triggered a fork and huge mess for players because GGG can't be bothered to integrate changes.

I can't speak for anyone but myself but I am not impressed with the forced stash tabs due to bad league content, terrible atlas (series should have never occurred, get some real db folks to keep the spreadsheet jockey 'devs' in line), and loot boxes for a business model. I am not impressed with forced resets and the 'let Trade2Win fix it' method of content design which is a lazy cop out. I absolutely am not impressed with being asked to repeat content that is as bad as the story acts. I get that it only takes a few hours to slog through if you know what you are doing but come on.. this is so bad it makes blizz story look good and that is saying something.

Even leagues are unbelievably confused. It is league or expansion? What level is the content for? Because what I saw in the past two leagues was lip service to the idea that the content was all level when in actuality it was only endgame atlas. Things like farming betrayal in the story acts were nerfed, sulphite in delve nerfed out of acts and into the atlas, etc. So the quests to start delve and betrayal were super early but like I said, lip service and very confused as clearly GGG intended that content for atlas\endgame. Can you imagine an actual new player getting bombarded with all this content at low level? What do you mean this is all a huge waste of time until endgame and I am supposed to ignore it to get to endgame as fast as possible? Why do I have to re-level when the only new content isn't until endgame? Oh yeah because there wouldn't be enough content to hold anyone's attention for long if you didn't reset things, the 'economy' would be even more visibly controlled by RMT\bots than it is now if there weren't resets, etc.

GGG seems very confused. If I am correct I expect that to be reflected in their bottom-line. This is a very anti-consumer time for gaming and a horrible time for this genre with GGG's major competition (mh, d3) imploding. There is a lot of potential with PoE but unless the new player is small-minded enough to get sucked into the chest thumping I doubt many will want to suffer through all the reset pain and bad Trade2Win designs.

Echoing others, there are so many things for new players to get a handle on in this game that in the first few leagues nerfs are the least of them.

Ever since 3.0 (which had serious nerfs and mechanics changes), there has been a pretty constant power creep. Even things that look like nerfs at first (looking at you bone helms) will end up being buffs when you factor in reworked itemization.

As someone who played a lot of Poet's Pen, I will be sad to see it go. I wish there was a way to keep existing versions legacy, but realize that there is a lot more at play here than just simple number tweaks.

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Sullee wrote:

From my PoV I don't think the 'new' players are all that new. They are refugees from game companies that imploded because of poor management wasting the time and money those players had invested.

So right from the start in typical PoE forums style 'new' is a loaded method of comparing. A way of assigning a label with negative connotations so you can simultaneously push them down and boost yourself without any real evidence to back any of that up.

I was in no way either trying to push them down or boost myself up.
Please research the definition of "new" and take into account it was in the context of playing poe.
That seemed very clear unless your cognative abilities were clouded due to a rush of adrenaline, in which case, sorry you got triggered.

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Sullee wrote:

Which brings me to the next bit of bs.. that the game is challenging and that you are good at it. Both of those things are an utter joke. The game is a trivial kids game. The actual mechanics of play can be trivially botted.

I am not sure how you inferred that bit of "bs" from my post.
Personally though i think this game is as challenging as you want to make it and i rate my abilities in poe to be mediocre at best.

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Sullee wrote:

Unfortunately most animals lack the visual acuity and input dexterity to be trained but what.. 8 year old kid? 7?

I have no idea what you are talking about here though i am sure it is a deep insight into something.

Honestly, if new players didn't quit due to the overtuned Syndicate, they won't care at all about these nerfs. This is going to be my third league, and I still didn't have time to experiment with everything, so the majority of these changes do not even affect me whatsoever.

I can't imagine any new players, who are fine by being skull-molested by overtuned, unfun syndicate encounters, then grab their pitchforks, because some items or mechanics they probably had not even found or understood yet is being nerfed.

I also find it a bit insulting from OP that he tries to project his own frustration this way. He doesn't care about the new player experience, he wants to present his own (warranted or not) dissapointment in a more effective, emotional way. Don't do that.

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plodd wrote:

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Rakiii wrote:

I wasnt referring to the slayer leech nerf, just the basic leech nerf.

It used to be a maximum of 20% of your total health per second. This has now been "tweeked" to be exactly 50% worse.

I mean it remains to be seen what difference this will make when the syndicate are bashing on your head in an 8 mod t16 map, maybe none.


Also, i'm not sure on this, but i believe instant leech wasnt affected by this cap in the past. Now it is, which means some items that used to give instant leech are also now worthless.

Mainly i am referring to legacy acurity.

I could be wrong about that though as i am only halfway through volume 6 of "leech mechanics in POE", so i have a long long way to go before i can even think about being a leech mechanics specialist.

you are wrong. total leech cap per second was not changed at all, they only capped individual leech instances.
in practice this makes no difference at all, except when combined with slayer overleech, which will now last for a much shorter time than it used to.

New players will still not make it past Brutus, so no effect.