Aspirational Content should not equal economical dominance

In the recent news post about expected changes and what is being considered, there was a mention of aspirational content.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3174380

I am a bit concerned about this as it seems like a piece of content which will be dominated by selected few to ensure their economical dominance, and again creating problem for others as their access to endgame items will be too easy, so everybody bellow their level will suffer by nerfs targeting them ( top 0.001%).

I am one of the players who consider 3.13 to be the best state of game.
- my highest level character to that date
- had fun playing one character for longer because of available upgrade path through crafting
- created some experimental secondary characters which supplemented "fun" even in the last weeks of the league

The proposed "aspirational content" seems like specifically targeting the top end players who are already making dozens of exalts a day by playing current endgame, to make even more currency per same time spent.

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Making Delve a lot more rewarding at a much shallower depth so that around depth 1,000-1,500 it becomes much more rewarding

According to poe ninja, we have 105 characters in depth 1000 and lower, for 750 it is 135 ... these players already control the fosil / resonator market so giving them even more benefit, is that really a meaningful way to "buff" content?
I mean why not make Delve more rewarding at depth 200-500 which would affect half of the visible ladder, to make the content more enjoyable for majority of the player base rather than giving more economical benefit to very few individuals?


So a final thought, if GGG wants to add more challenge to the game for the top geared characters, it should provide some carrot on a stick in different way than just pure Exalt per Hour metric.
If players won't do some content because the revenue per hour is low, maybe it is that the content is just bad and can be removed from the game, or that the game overall has some deeper problems.

hmm interesting points BUT i will try to poke a few holes :)

PS: I encourage you to watch this video on why aspirational content and rewards are a GOOD thing. Grimro offers a great analysis of PoE Market.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow-fVIDN02s

Fact of the matter is: harder content deserves better rewards. Period. There's only so many "trophy/Challenge" stickers that will make players do content. People work to improve their characters and push further BECAUSE the rewards are better. Some people are experts at certain content, can push further than other players in far less time, and reap the rewards of cornering the market for a while.

I think the entire point of aspiring to a challenge as a player is what you can get out of it. If GGG were to dumb down the rewards, why would anyone seek out the harder stuff?

Take your Delve example: I don't think it would work out the way you think it would...if they increase the rewards at a level that far more players were playing, it would KILL delve. People wouldn't need to delve any further, the market would be flooded, and the value of doing any kind of delve would go down the toilet.

No matter what happens, there will always be a core group that dominates certain content. How could there not be? But lowering rewards because only <1% of players can access it would just lead to devaluing across the board. Harder content for only the best players needs to be in the game, and there needs to be rewards commensurate with the difficulty in order for players to strive for that level of gameplay.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

hmm interesting points BUT i will try to poke a few holes :)

PS: I encourage you to watch this video on why aspirational content and rewards are a GOOD thing. Grimro offers a great analysis of PoE Market.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow-fVIDN02s

I am familiar with the video and I kinda liked more the simplified version of cutedog about the self feeding cyclic economy with various farming aspects feeding other farm types.
That's how it should be. Especially when the farming has own unique reward types.

For example Logbooks are generating as usually all the game content + expedition shards. But it is pretty weak as game system.

So the aspirational content should mainly contain own reward types rather than just puking all the reward types imaginable in absurd amounts. But it would likely be hard to find something other than new layer of power in the current system.

Ie. Dropping rares with elevated Conqueror mods will devaluate Maven Orbs making Maven farming pretty bad in comparison, especially with crafting system that does not provide enough tools to reliably craft items post AwkOrb merge (with some expeptions).

Sure, harder content needs to be worth doing, but I am afraid in the current GGG strategy it will be just raw source of currency to give top players to waste on RNG based crafting, aka fail 10 times in a row on a 50-50 chance Maven Orbing something
At the same time they will raise the bar to get there and basically forcing average end game players to stay in (from Grims video perspective) T1 farming, or force build selection because of massive disparity between build choices.

I haven't followed any strategy in Ritual, when I found Harvest, i sold the crafts, when I found elder guard maps, i ran Elder, same for Shaper, UElder. I do not buy content, ever, period! From my perspective the game content should not be balanced around specialization to the content, but have content reasonably rewarding with possibility of specialization.

aspirational usually means intangible rewards. fame, accomplishment, personal challenge. things like speed-runs or gimp-mode plays (SSF comes to mind)


once you make it just more profitable you just:

- make it the only content worth running
- make the build diversity a myth because builds that cannot do 'the best' content are simply not needed. and POE already has a problem with that.


there are smart and dumb ways of making aspirational content and the best ones center around player's skill (not build, not skill in flipping, not skill in buying the best gear). POE kinda doesnt care about player's skill so making any smart form of aspirational content is going to fail and what we are going to get is an exalt printing vending machine that only some builds can operate

boring and missing the point

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sidtherat wrote:

aspirational usually means intangible rewards. fame, accomplishment, personal challenge. things like speed-runs or gimp-mode plays (SSF comes to mind)

Not in Chris' world. He repeatedly used Headhunter as an example of 'aspirational' and admitted to personally shutting down other devs who consider it broken.

HH is already basically a currency printing machine. And Chris wants to add more content that will be dominated by HH crews: new Breach domains, uber Blight, extended Simulacrums and Timeless Conflicts, etc.

The pursuit of riches is aspirational. I don't see a problem here.

My goal was never to destroy the game - in fact, I don't have a single character than can kill Maven, Uber Elder, Uber Atzeri and other "top=shelf" content.

I do however have more currency than I could ever even try to spend. That was my aspiration. And I accomplished it.

So yes, becoming a dominant factor in the economy is "aspirational" too. And the only Head-hunters I own are the two sitting in my uniques tab and the ones that frequent my sale-tabs.