Issue is not difficulty. Boring, unrewarding, massive grind.

Is this the least rewarding league mechanic they've ever done? I've done every zone from acts 1-4 no skips i have literally nothing to show for it my most exciting reward was buying 10 transmutes off the gamble guy.

The gamble guy who like the crafter guy is stuck at the beach inventory because no reroll currency have dropped.

Pretty sad right now guys feelsbadman

"

Draegnarrr wrote:

Is this the least rewarding league mechanic they've ever done? I've done every zone from acts 1-4 no skips i have literally nothing to show for it my most exciting reward was buying 10 transmutes off the gamble guy.

The gamble guy who like the crafter guy is stuck at the beach inventory because no reroll currency have dropped.

Pretty sad right now guys feelsbadman

I had the same experience tbh. Idk, they could've made that the item options at least are adjusted to your current level.

I was lvl 40 and some of them were offering me ilvl 10 items because i didn't find the item that let's you rerroll the window.

I feel like the mechanic is just poorly implemented, and literally awful to do.

Acts are the worst, most boring part of every league and they're making them even more tedious? what a great idea. I already couldn't be bothered to play more than 2 builds per league.

Between this, the gems nerfs, the absolutely stupid flask "rework", grindy AF atlas and a meh league mechanic this looks like the worst patch I've ever seen. I miss this game but I just can't play it anymore. Not hyped for PoE2 either.

"

"Boring", unrewarding, massive grind

You are just describing arpg's there.

The core of ARPG design is massive grinding which can become boring no matter what you do, and rewarding is subjective (what you find rewarding and what others find rewarding will be different)

Only level 4 and have my first unique(which i can use) and some reasonable upgrades from my first interaction with the new league mechanic, which tbh seems a little over the top so far (but this will die down the further into the character i get)

So i think the main problem here isn't the game, but you.

"

rzuk892 wrote:

Acts are the worst, most boring part of every league and they're making them even more tedious?

Yeah...what do you propose? like almost every other acts suck post the only 2 suggestions are to skip the levelling process (never going to happen and is a shit idea) or to run maps at any level...which is idiotic considering the complaints of things being boring and tedious and repetitive...since you are asking them to allow you to run the most repetitive content in the game from the get go without any variation.

“It’s rainin mahfuckuhs” – J Roc

"

Yeah...what do you propose?

At least don't make them worse than they already are.
And IDK, I'm not a fucking dev, it's not on me to fix this game now is it.

Topic has it all. Just when i thought ultimatum was too much rng, here comes to company of rng master crew to have not one but four of them. Before this league i ran a build trial on ultimatum on ssf, after finishing challenges last round and oh boy, the comparison i can cleary see....i'm not only bored to tears already but like...loot is just all trash, even if you blow up all the chests. At least trialmaster felt more helpful throwing unique on almost every last wave during acts but this expedition is a joke compared to him. Act 3 and not a single orb of alchemy even. Barely ANY currency drop aside from scrolls of wisdom and chromatic orb items. Good joke GGG, not.

So question is...what's the point of even doing this league, getting that special stack of 50k currency? For some sweet memories of Gheed from diablo 2 i guess. More trash to pile of trash to again come with assumption that buying gear is still more relevant than crafting or doing bosses. I won't even start the cards topic. The only thing to do in PoE is to kill oceans of mobs and they can't even get this right at today's point. Shame *sigh

Last league i felt more happy to push these 36 challenges, this league if i make it to act 10 it will be a record and achievement for patience for me.

So all in all:

- crafting is still bad cus they did nothing about it, better to buy gear = boring
- difficulty and nerf doesn't matter (one shot mechanic is still there, experienced players don't struggle)
- loot is trash, even the league one (woman yelling to "add more spice", well do it to your loot as well lady)
- even more rng than last league and i thought with trialmaster fight they already broke the scale but i was wrong
- doing the build you want still wont work - you have to follow streamers/yt (for new players ofc and its repeating what Chris said at live stream)

So lot of changes, long patch notes but nothing really changed imo.

I jumped to black desert online thinking the grind would be 2x worse than PoE but if goddamn mmorpg feels more rewarding to me at this point GGG really starts shooting a salve of bullets in their foot.

Fast league inc. Cheers and gl to the rest of you who will play through it.

I enjoy leveling & questing in most games, and I enjoyed the campaign in PoE in prior seasons. I enjoyed Ultimatum & was looking forward to this league.

I ran dozens of fake-league-start act 1-5 practice runs towards the tail end of last season, and a few full campaign ones.

I was expecting to enjoy the change.

I do not. I'm having real difficulty finding the motivation to finish the campaign.

Act 1 was mostly more dangerous rather than more difficult - most (all?) of my deaths were due to loss of character control (e.g. clipped by one rhoa charge & just never got to act again as the rest piled in behind).

The "difficulty" curve now seems to mirror X-Com's reverse curve.

The higher level you get, the more options you have to negate issues & the fewer issues you have.

Plus movement skills being turned into avoidance skills rather than travel skills has made travel tedious.

I also don't think the increased danger will encourage a wider build meta. People are failure averse. I would never choose a weak skill under this slower campaign setup, even if it is "closer" to the better skills. The slower gameplay makes me want to stick to the "best" (least bad) builds.

No, difficulty isn't an issue. But the balance between pain and gain is WAAAY off. Rng on top of rng on top of rng with a dash of rng and an rng on top is what the rewards are.

Blow all the modifiers for a higher chance of dying and the same chance of getting absolute trash from the mobs and chests.

Dear GGG. The value of the items isn't defined by their colour. Rares are 90% of the time utter trash. Also, really now! You thought having rng affect every god damn bloody thing in the game was not rng enough? Needed more?

Also, I'm to play for a chance at getting an item that would allow me to have a chance at rolling a set of items in the shop that will offer me a chance to get a rare item that has a chance to has the stats I would like (regardless of item type), which stats have a chance to be good. And when that happens, I can die in peace at the age of 139.

You, dear GGG, seem to have forgot about any other game aspect. Focused exclusively on how to add more gamble, more rng and - for the most part - most frustration. No chase items, no point in doing any boss between Hailrake and the conquerors. No point hunting cards, no point having a favorite map, a favorite section of the atlas, a favorite activity ('cus on top of all of them dropping the same random crap, some of them can't be pursued without doing stuff one doesn't like).

10292094 skill gems, 4 favored builds. Why? To cut down on the grind, 'cause 90% of them are bound to be utter shite if you don't win the most distasteful casino Chris could barely contain bragging about?


Let's look at another aspect. PoE has a linear path that a lot of us have threaded many times. There's no alternative to ending up in the Delves, for example. So, instead of adding a bit more incentives there, to do those sections, to actually play them not just Silver Pot'em out of mind, you're just throwing caltrops all over the place. Bad loot, Rng-fest and a slow-but-steady increase in difficulty.

By the time I'll reach maps again, I'll just loathe PoE, for the constantly bad rewards offered upon braving the increasingly punishing mechanics. I ran 3 characters during Ultimatum (as bad as it was with just "throwing monsters at the screen" without rhyme or reason and randomly generated rewards for each round of the "Stand in a circle in circle" game) to maps in the first week. I doubt I'll make it to Kitava this time 'round. Out of boredom and dissatisfaction with the incentives offered to progress.

Last thing, not so dear GGG. If you're building your game around streams that we all should follow, I can't help by wonder: Will those streamers generate enough revenue for you if all the other ppl stopped playing?

You try your new skills and gear nerfs with mirror grade gear that you yourselves wouldn't get in an SSF league, hell! maybe not even in a normal league, but we should, somehow?

Also, what the *beeeeep* is with the god damn challenges? More grind, more rng for the true followers of the streamers? (Btw, I have nothing against the streamers, but rather against Chris' argument that we should play what streamers play if we want to best the game). 10k Tiers of maps? And here I thought having to run 900 unrewarding bore-fests last league was bad enough.

Fix the god damn rewards, get some of the rng out of them, out of map drops, out of crafting mechanics. Make the game fun again, not just a challenge for the best and an ever deeper scam-casino. Or don't. Whatever!

"

lagwin1980 wrote:

"

"Boring", unrewarding, massive grind

You are just describing arpg's there.

The core of ARPG design is massive grinding

I thought action was the core design of A-RPGs

"

lagwin1980 wrote:

"

rzuk892 wrote:

Acts are the worst, most boring part of every league and they're making them even more tedious?

Yeah...what do you propose?

I'd start by making campaign more rewarding.

There's a big difference between grinding and the game feeling like a grind

We know for a fact that there are at least 3 things people actually play campaign for:

Blood Aqueducts, Conq's Efficiency and Oni-Goroshi (less so)

What those 3 have in common is that they give something special and/or useful as a reward.

Most drops everywhere are useless, most quest rewards too. We don't need something good, just something usable.

Maybe, idk, give Goatmen in Prisoner's Gate/The Climb higher chance to drop items with Fire Res. And do something like that for every zone.

The biggest reason why ppl hate the campaign is because maps are the soonest they actualy have some AGENCY on their character. Because forcing high quant on maps is the only actual way to get any meaningful (I didn't say good) progress. If only by getting currency to buy gear.

Players will optimize the fun out of things. And GGG heavily incentivizes that play a numbers game rather thanth ACTUAL game.

That's the reason love Beyond and hate Lab.

EDIT: BTW, between one-shots, offscreens, RNG, unplayable skills, I don't think the difficulty is the issue. The issue is that we can do nothing about it, except exploiting the number's game.