Disappointment with 3.14 "Balance" & The Gaslighting of Anyone who Doesn't Agree with all Changes

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3110094/page/1
I said it here and I ll say it again. I am afraid that poe may never see a good league like 3.13. They f.ked it up and they are aware of it.

So I'm not the only one who thinks this then because I'm only seeing people being downvoted for speaking about this on Reddit. To say these recent changes to the game were bizarre is an understatement. I've seen out of touch nerfs from other game companies, but this is on another level. It doesn't even feel like a nerf, it feels more like just removing content from the game and pretending like it's some attempt at balance. At least there was some equal playing field in the past before with determinism from either fractured fossils, bestiary, etc. now it's all just rely on rng and good luck having fun, because that's the only way the devs envision you having fun. Even their same mentality applied to irl loot boxes on overpriced merch instead of allowing people to purchase what they want. And their method with that won't work anyway because the people who get the shirts/merch etc. will just trade them with others anyway. That's what happens when you have developers obsessed with mtg gambling mechanics from opening booster packs getting applied to game development.

Also, how is it fair that they are asking us for feedback only when it comes to selling mtx or merch to us? Isn't this sort of disingenuous? I would be happy to buy merch but I would be more satisfied if GGG actually listened to feedback about the game all of us play instead of just depending on reddit or the streamers for their decision making. Even if you exclude these two other biased outlets of GGG's main feedback they listen to, how is it balanced if this small group of developers get to decide how the majority of their players play? Is there no better democratic solution they can come up with like verified polls with checks and balances about certain game changes? Other game companies even offer dedicated servers with modding capabilities so people can truly play how they want. On here, it just feels like they want us to play a certain way and if we don't like it we can leave. I feel like there's more they can offer us when it comes to playing the game how we want, but they insist on knowing better every time.

I think what probably happened is either the devs or the people who no life this game 24/7 couldn't handle casual players having a more reasonable chance at getting gear for themselves for once so they just threw tantrums on forums about it being "too OP". I never understood this because objectively looking at it, they made the crafts more rng bound in 3.13 than in 3.11, yet the only actual issue I saw was with the pooled trading via discord. A normal company who actually cares to come up with a solution would have either made the items account bound or found a different way to stop the discord trading, since they couldn't, they do what they do best and ruin the whole mechanic altogether.

I've put up with a lot of their unnecessary nerfs in the past, but this is beyond ridiculous at this point. I played the Ultimatum league for 2 weeks and quit because there's no feasible way to progress your character anymore and they made sure to make it this way. The other content I used to always enjoy was also nerfed so I couldn't come up with reasons to play anymore besides maybe the usual alch and go or decorating my hideout and that got boring. I just play D2 modded now and get on D3 and LE sometimes. At least resurrected and D4 is coming out soon but I'm not going to rely on PoE to be my main game anymore because it's too unstable in their decision making.

Didn't realize some streamer made a video to detail his experience. But I've said it before, I don't think GGG understands their own game the way we players do. [Removed by Support] It'd only make sense this way to why Apostles of Chris and GGG themselves are OK with 3.14.

I have put up with nerfs myself, because some can be seen as acceptable but this is the only league I've been vocal, but no, am accused of not adapting to the game. Like you, I couldn't find stuff to play, so when I asked others what we should do, well, no answers. Some standbyer's actually sincerely tried to help me out but you know how it is.

That what i've been voicing over the years since betrayal, but toxicity won...

Now, PoE is not the game i love anymore. I may check what happens with 4.0 (PoE 2) but i'll probably be too busy on Lost Ark to be bothered by this game anymore.

Agreed with you.

Game is really missing QoL updates alongside with decent non-rng Crafting

give us fractured maps back!

It's too bad what happened to Harvest. I used it really early on to fill in the blanks on the atlas (convert map to one you don't have) this league and after the atlas was where it needed to be I stopped going in there. Like to me that is literally the grove's only purpose now. An entire league mechanic watered down to just convert a map. I'm sure for some lab chasers it's worthwhile but for me personally that is the grove's entire purpose. I have no need for converting resists since the bench is ample enough and I have no need to reroll affixes or prefixes from a time standpoint; setting foot in the grove to see if that craft is even available.

No sense in rehashing what was said after the manifesto.

Sad.

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cgexile wrote:

Like to me that is literally the grove's only purpose now.

Well, can't say that - various other things are still valid, like changing the element of the resistance, prefix/suffix reroll, div card gambling, beachheads/lures and so on; even these deterministic chaos rerolls are somewhat good in ssf, or that "lucky" divine which is still a free divine, hehe.

It's still overnerfed of course, say encountering "empty" plots feels hella lame.

Accurate.

That's why, after only 2 months, PoE hit a 3 year low for peak player counts. Basically only Standard players still active.

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dW2005 wrote:

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cgexile wrote:

Like to me that is literally the grove's only purpose now.

Well, can't say that - various other things are still valid, like changing the element of the resistance, prefix/suffix reroll, div card gambling, beachheads/lures and so on; even these deterministic chaos rerolls are somewhat good in ssf, or that "lucky" divine which is still a free divine, hehe.

It's still overnerfed of course, say encountering "empty" plots feels hella lame.

Right when I said to me I basically meant for me. Yes the other things exist - and I called a few out in the post - but the 'odds' of seeing the few remaining worthwhile crafts are, well, slim to none and therefore it's not worthwhile for me to even check and see if they exist.