Hey GGG, thoughts from a long time player

Hello all, obviously near to no one knows, or probably cares, who I am. Well let me tell you! I am Kanadeara, I play tons of video games. Wow, extremely crazy right? Sure that's the first time anyone has said that. Now why do I play video games? Isn't it a waste of time? Nothing in these games are real, so why bother playing them? Well despite video games being a "waste of time", which I personally don't agree with, me and thousands of other people around the world both agree that video games are in fact a very enjoyable activity. Why would we think this way? Well its simple. Video games are all about:


FUN!


Seriously.

Ok GGG, let me first start of with saying I am a big fan of this game. I met some of you at PAX West in...2008? 2009? I don't exactly remember but I did play closed beta that was on little install disks that was handed out from the GGG booth in the indie game section. I had an account in closed beta with my original name and forgot about the game till around 2015, my first major league I played was Breach. I did play as far back as Essence or torment I believe but I did not get very far in either. I have spent over 5000 hours of my life playing this game, loving most of it at that! This game offered at the time and for the most part still does to this day a level of depth that is unmatched in the current market. I love ARPG's, I did not grow up playing them, but I discovered how much I loved them with torchlight and diablo III. Diablo II was before my time but I can certainly see the inspiration in this game. ARPG's have quickly become one of my favorite genres of games, as it satisfies many itches that games scratch for me. Fast paced action, deep mechanical strategy, in-depth roleplaying features, etc. And this game supports the ability to theory craft builds to a whole new level that I have never seen in any other game. Like I said earlier, I really do love this game. I have told all my friends about it, gotten many of them to play it, and over the years told passing friends and people I meet about the game. Most have tried the game and a majority stuck around because I did my best to coach and help them along the way. As much as I LOVED the insane amount of mechanics in this game its very, VERY overwhelming to new people. You have made it better than it was in the past but game knowledge is extremely powerful in this game. I have had some friends who did not like it because of that. Its too hard or too much work for them, and that's OK! Not every game is for every player, sometimes people forget that, myself included.

Now I must say when it comes to game balance, I always side with the simple fact. Games are meant to be fun. Fun, fun. If a game is not fun, I do not play it. When a game stops being fun, I stop getting enjoyment out of it, it becomes a genuine waste of time. Its a healthy look on games (at least in my opinion) to have, and something I feel more people need to practice. If a game stops being fun, please walk away. Doesn't have to be forever, but its very good and healthy to take breaks from time to time. I myself have taken many breaks over the years with Path of Exile. Not every league has been fun for me, and not every change I agree with. This brings me to what I really want to share thoughts on given the current state of the game.

Dear GGG, dear Chris, dear any employee that happens to read this post. Most of us players really do at the end of the day love and apricate you all. I am sure glad POE exists and that I found it. This game has evolved into one of the best games, in my opinion, of all time. And I would love to keep thinking this in the future. I know at the moment the game's community seems on fire, and rightfully so. But there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. I would like to say most of the outrage is caused by extremely passionate fans, who just really want to have fun with the game again and hate to see something they invested so much of their time into get objectively worse for reasons they deem shortsighted. I don't blame them, I too get mad when changes that hurt the average player go through, seemingly with no to little critical testing. This is not an excuse though for people to take their anger to a whole new level and personally threaten, attack, or insult people. Behavior like that is deranged and please step away from a game if it makes you that mad. Being passionate is perfectly reasonable and most of the feedback I have seen in most places has been completely fine. I believe Ziggy D and Ziz said it best in some of their recent videos. Most of the people giving feed back love this game, or at least want to love it again. Please consider it as a whole GGG. I know not every idea that people say is a good long term plan, but don't also think every decision you make is correct. Chris has been pretty good at being honest about mistakes, and I totally understand making mistakes is inevitable at some point in a games life. We are all human after all. Correcting the mistakes is what makes the difference. But constant mistakes can be mistaken as malicious decisions by some people. I know GGG you try and do very creative things with POE and its one of the things I love about this game. But it seems as of late a good majority of changes, and even some of the most recent ones, appear deceptive to a lot of people. I would really like to believe that these are nothing more than mistakes, but having to see Chris defend or apologize for bad changes again, and again really makes me question why these changes are going through and being made in the first place.

Consider this GGG, I cannot in its current state recommend this game to people. I want to, I really do, but the most recent changes from this league seem very...untested for lack of a better term. I can see for the most part what you all want to do with ARCH NEM mobs, slowing player power creep, and slowing the game down because you want people to enjoy it how you think they should enjoy it. I get it, most people do. But certainly, and hopefully, this wasn't exactly what you wanted.

We the players, who fell in love with this game years ago, want to keep enjoying it. Changes for the sake of changes are not good in a long term outlook in my opinion. I'm not writing this post to talk about all of the balance changes I think should be in the game. There are a lot of other videos talking about it and I do have a lot of opinions about how I feel things should be handled, and maybe I will post about those thoughts later, but for now this is just me speaking my mind to hopefully a dev at GGG and slightly venting to the community. The changes to loot drops, changes to harvest, forcing arch nem everywhere, changes to beyond, the league mechanic itself. I see the good intentions behind it, I certainly get it, and I really do think some of the changes are good, but unfortunately the implementation is very off the mark. Remember devs, video games are about fun. We all started playing POE because it was damn fun, and you treated the players with respect. Most people cant or never see big chase items, most people never do their own insane crafting, most people don't make their own builds. But everyone at the end of the day want to have fun. The current changes are not fun, taking player power away is not fun. This is my current biggest take away for you. I know I'm just a single player in the sea of hundreds of thousands that play this game. But please listen when I say this is not as much fun as I have had before in this game. I'm not tired of this game, believe me when I am I take a break. This game isn't ruining my mental, it isn't ruining my life. I'm not obsessed over it, I'm simply just sad. Nerfs are never fun, I will always stand by that. I always believe that if the meta is too powerful, and you want to shake it up, buff other skills. Give under-performing classes new toys. Give old skills new toys, make new uniques that help make less relevant skills viable. Taking away like you did in 3.15 was one of the worst ways in my opinion to handle a player power creep. I get something had to be done, but nerfing is always the worst but easiest choice. But now in 3.19, nerfing how loot drops is something I cant defend in the slightest amount. This is an ARPG, tons of fun, interesting loot is KEY, absolutely KEY to the core gameplay loop. I don't mean to come off as too critical or aggressive, but I do not understand how this implementation of loot passed the QA testing you say you did. It did not take very long for players to notice a difference and man its painful. An ARPG with lackluster, scarce loot is a sad thing to behold. This is meant to be a fun game that someone can log onto and see giant loot explosions! Something that they can log into and chase crazy powerful items in! I know there are even more issues that exists, like minion rework and its affects on minion viability, harvest changes absolutely gutting one of the most beloved crafting mechanics in the game, and how the overall monster damage in the game creates an overwhelming oppressive play style of having to stack boring defense layers to hopefully not get one shot by random mobs. There are so many culminating issues right now that makes the game very uncomfortable to play, and I am truly lost on why this playstyle is being pushed on the player base when it is fundamentally unenjoyable at these extremes. No one likes getting one shot randomly, even when they have 10+ defensive layers. No one likes when their heavily invested in minions cant even survive an unmodded tier 16 map. No one likes when they spend 3+ minutes fighting a rare mob only to have it drop nothing meaningful. Theses changes have to be re-looked at if POE is to stay a beloved game of many.

Now I'm almost done with my thoughts, I promise! And if you made it this far, thank you for reading this. I don't want to pass along the thought that the game is dead, unplayable, or "trash". Its far from that. But in its current state the game is certainly not very fun. Maps at the moment seems so dry, rares are honestly scarier then most bosses, and feel very underwhelming most of the time when killed. You have some great ideas that just need improved upon to get working right. Every rare or boss you kill shouldn't guarantee a tier 1 item, but man there should be something there more on average if you are going to make players try that hard to kill it. I'm going to end this post with some of my favorite things about this game.

The feature I love about Path of Exile that no other ARPG has on the market is the level of depth you can go into with a build. The amount of min/max'ing you can do to take a build to the top tier is very enjoyable. The amount of interesting combinations of skills and items, passives and mechanics, all of which you can stack together and have them wipe out the end game is great! This is the fantasy ARPG's do best, creating a place where you can make insanely powerful characters. As much as I wish new playstyles would be expanded on or added, such as simple things like new ailments or new damage types, I get that not everything can be added. But I can sure hope it can! One of my favorite leagues was probably 3.12. 3.18 was great, 3.17 was pretty fun, and even going back as far as 2.6 was pretty fun. The atlas tree is still one of the best additions to the game, ever. But mechanically how loot and crafting for the most part in 3.12 felt the best. To me POE is an endless sandbox game. There isn't a point to where I get "too much good loot". My god, I have never heard any of my friends or anyone from the community say that. 3.12 felt like it had some of the best ways to create gear without having to grind for months to do it. I used to LOVE making tons a builds a league and gearing them out, but over the past several leagues its been extremely hard to do so. I'm not exactly sure why QoL is so feared by GGG in this game, or why deterministic crafting and powerful chase items are looked down upon. This is a game that is supposed to be about fun right?? Who cares if I get too much good loot, if the game is fun I will always recommend it to friends, I will always come back and play it. But when you start to suck the fun out of the game, and try to create friction where friction should not be, you will drive me and other players away. I don't want to dislike this game or seem overly negative, but compounding changes since 3.14 have really bogged the game down slightly over the years and now with the most recent changes, the game is in one if its worst states its every been in.

GGG, I really do hope you read this. I want you all again to know that I and many others really do apricate you all as a whole. Like I've said many times. We all love this game, or at least did at one point :). Honestly its a good thing the community is as vocal as it is, that means you have something that they all care about. We just want to have fun in our games, and we all hate to see fun ruined for the sake of a vision; intended or not. 3.19 is completely fixable, POE is not dead, and I hope that changes come a lot faster then later. To all my fellow players, just be patient. I'm not defending the decisions GGG made in this patch or in previous ones, and I also know that certain balance changes are hard to do right. But GGG have made extremely fun leagues before and mostly fixed bad decisions before. So all we can do is give polite feedback in hopes they listen. I personally, being someone who has played for as long as I have and spent as much money as I have, would love to even see a delay in the next patch if it means this current one can restore path of exile to its former glory. Keep working hard GGG, best of luck to you all, and remember devs, stay sane out there! Try not to get caught up in statistics and what the top .1% of players are doing! Remember we are all here to have fun and enjoy life.

I would also love to end this post with a great article that someone wrote all the way back in 1997. I feel its very relevant to the current state of the game and some of the ideas behind the changes. It has been posted to the reddit already but I will link it here too.

http://www.memorableplaces.com/mudwimping.html

Thanks again for reading this if you did and I hope everyone here has a wonderful rest of league and day!

Video games, fun? Preposterous! You are to be happy with grinding for hours with minimal loot, maximum deaths, and having to analyze every updates patch notes with a fine-tooth comb, for seemingly hidden nerfs to the games fun! Why video game companies work so hard to limit fun these days is mind boggling.

I played the most I have EVER played a single season of any ARPG last season (2k hours, next closest was probably 200-300 hours), because loot was plentiful and it made it fun for me. I didn't cap out fast and quit. I wanted to utilize the maximum gains I was getting to min/max my build to its fullest. If the game is fun, people will play. If we have to slog through hours upon hours of unfun, unrewarding content, most people will likely find something better to do with their free time. Something that is FUN! MAKE POE FUN AGAIN!