Can we get a summary of Chris's commentary from 7/18/2020?

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Shagsbeard wrote:

Nah... Harvest has made 5L trivial. No one is crafting 5L the old way.

Indeed... But 6l Harvest is rare as hell. I was lucky I got one. Now I need one more and can't seen to find Primeval Ruins or another 6l. I'm yet to see a white socket either.

I actually listened to the discussion while doing some chores (no, not in PoE :) )

Thanks to DiabloImmoral for the summary!

I took away two basic points which - in combination - worry me a lot:

1. Streamers really do see the game differently to me. "It takes maybe 8 hrs to craft a GGG item. That's too easy". This sounds kinda silly to me. 8 hrs of a professional streamer is > 100 high level, juiced maps. For a normal player like me to get that amount of loot, I need at least 3 times as many of my maps, which take 3x as long to run, so that translates to about 2 weeks of a full time job. For one great craft. And the same attitude shone through in other areas.
If that is too easy, then this game is targeted at a tiny little niche of really dedicated players...

2. Chris really only ever hears their opinions. He keeps believing stuff should be rarer or require even more grinding. He himself hardly still plays (of course, his job is VERY stressy) and he also doesn't have the time to talk to normal players.

The conclusion I draw from this is that I don't expect PoE to ever lose some of its uglier RNG aspects. It's really just a great filler until a better game finally comes along.

Oh, and the variance in streamer intellect was sensational. One kept asking really daft questions and repeating them and interrupting others while another was very precise and didn't settle for wishy-washy asnwers. No naming here.

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DiabloImmoral wrote:

My recollection:

Chris is worried that if they take the garbage loot out of the lootsplosions that people will think they're getting shafted, even if the stuff that does drop is better. They don't like the garbage loot dropping either because it hurts performance and costs them a lot of money on servers.

- Item quantity (and rarity?) might be reworked into a multi-dimensional system where instead of more items dropping you'd get better items dropping instead.

If GGG followed the usual laws of life, the universe and everything (ie the normal curve and diminishing returns - using logarithmic functions)they would end up with self regulating loot, monster damage, character survival, character damage etc.

They could then add more difficult content that wouldn't be devastated by exploiting game functions. They could add new metas every league that wouldn't break the game, but would provide a new way to get to end game and have fun there.

Right now PoE is locked into a stash tab selling future. Where they want to be is a game that is so much fun that players want to buy PoE Mtx, support packs and PoE related merchandise.
Think of the billions spent on Star Wars toys and items.

The game has become so fast paced that no one pays attention to anything but their loot filter. Imagine if the original Star Wars movies were all originally played at 25 x speed and only lasted 4-5 minutes. That's where GGG has taken their game.

Imagine going outside and seeing only a few people here and there because the city is under quarantine from some terrible virus - except that it's your character stepping into a map that isn't properly juiced and the monsters are so sparse that they might as well be socially distancing.

GGG needs to rescue their game from Meta-19.

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Arrowneous wrote:

I's pretty clear that GGG can't continue adding challenge league mechanics to the core. It's already out of control and that makes each mechanic too watered down (don't encounter them frequent enough) to be very useful (except for the steamers/no-lifers).

One idea Chris made mention of in an older Baeclast is that of placing a cap on the total number of league mechanics in the core (maybe 10) and then rotating them in and out (maybe on the same 3 month time frame as league). At least give us a high enough find rate in zones/maps so we can get enough of that mechanic's resources to use. The whole starvation on everything is old and tiresome. Yes, I know, I know, too much too fast is bad for business (more players hit the top sooner and quit) but starving us out is equally bad for business.

Do mirror drops happen so often that they need to be removed from the game?

GGG could do the same with league mechanics. For example, Restore strongboxes to being really valuable, and make them extremely rare, and not a forcible mechanic via Zana. They could put a cap on the total number of league mechanics that could appear in a given instance (similar to map mods). Instead of removing a league mechanic, they could just make some more rare to encounter than others during any given challenge season and rotate the rarity each time.

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DalaiLama wrote:

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Arrowneous wrote:

I's pretty clear that GGG can't continue adding challenge league mechanics to the core. It's already out of control and that makes each mechanic too watered down (don't encounter them frequent enough) to be very useful (except for the steamers/no-lifers).

One idea Chris made mention of in an older Baeclast is that of placing a cap on the total number of league mechanics in the core (maybe 10) and then rotating them in and out (maybe on the same 3 month time frame as league). At least give us a high enough find rate in zones/maps so we can get enough of that mechanic's resources to use. The whole starvation on everything is old and tiresome. Yes, I know, I know, too much too fast is bad for business (more players hit the top sooner and quit) but starving us out is equally bad for business.

Do mirror drops happen so often that they need to be removed from the game?

GGG could do the same with league mechanics. For example, Restore strongboxes to being really valuable, and make them extremely rare, and not a forcible mechanic via Zana. They could put a cap on the total number of league mechanics that could appear in a given instance (similar to map mods). Instead of removing a league mechanic, they could just make some more rare to encounter than others during any given challenge season and rotate the rarity each time.

Those are reasonable options although the problem is that the value of league specific loot can be diminished at some point if it gets too rare. Or other problems like not able to get craft mods that are associated with specific leagues. It can turn into a situation where GGG starts encouraging people to play standard more just because they've accumulated much more of this stuff in standard that they see so little of in the leagues. GGG obviously wants to encourage people to play the leagues instead of standard.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

It's all the other crap that's been added that shows up. Strongboxes, rogue exiles, abysses, Delirium stuff, Cassia, etc.

I don't see the problem with Strongboxes and Rogue Exiles tbh, just kill it, take the loot if it drops and continue to clear map...

Delirium is best experience (plenty of monsters being added), is straightforward and has very nice returns, but you could just skip mirror if you do not like it.

Every mechanic listed here is just "more monsters on map", how is that hard to manage? And you can just skip Cassia if you do think it is not worth your time just like you can skip random Niko spawns and never Delve.

It's not that. I know how to play with and around each of these things. It's that the game has been lost to them. They're the game now. The game we were playing in 2015 isn't there anymore... or it's so submerged in all the other stuff as to be almost a barrier to play.

There are a lot of good posts explaining what Chris said about loot. What did not come up was that given everyone has an incentive to have less but better loot why not create a "loot filter" type of system. By that I mean players realize and accept that when they tighten up the loot filter less stuff would drop.

Chris is very concerned that players would not understand even a 5x improvement in loot and he is probably correct without changing how things currently are in POE. But by focusing the attention on a filter - the players will take it better and it would also solve some of the performance issues that Chris pointed out with tons of loot on the ground.

Just a thought. Heck, give players a couple of options on the strictness of the filter and everyone would be trying to "dial" in the correct strictness. That i something the players would enjoy IMO.

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JoeShmo wrote:

I think leagues need a masters-like overhaul.

You should be able to "save up" ways of guaranteeing a league mechanic to show up, just like you do masters in mapping. Id like this to work for campaign too, since that ends up being a void of content, but they would have to re-add something like the legacy league UI to allow players to "socket" a few types of leagues that will always show up.

Either way, the entire concept of "10% chance" is either a lie ...or grossly misleading. I'll go entire leagues where I don't see a single Breach ...and GGG certainly doesn't want you to enjoy any of that stuff in campaign.

Stuff that would change up the rhythm / flow of doing the same otherwise bee-line to maps since there's nothing to see on the way. This is why people really enjoy things like flashback ...because every zone guarantees a bunch of additional content to mix things up.

If it wasn't for the fact Niko is a master ...Id probably never set foot in delve.

10% base chance. Increase with white/yellow/red map complete at 2%/5%/8% chance. Reset when it appear.

Accumulate percentage.

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JoeShmo wrote:

If it wasn't for the fact Niko is a master ...Id probably never set foot in delve.

Or I in maps... ;)