What's your #1 issue with the current state of the game?

Archnemesis just needs to go. When the main thing people do with AN mobs is just run away from them, that's not a good mechanic. Most people see this as annoying and unrewarding.

I'm pretty sure you'd be hard pressed to find anybody that would beg GGG to keep this mechanic around. Ya most hardcore players probably don't notice or care about it. But when a new player drops dead in .1 sec from them, that's a horrible thing for the game.

There just are just way to many bad things that can be said about AN and yet they think it needs to stick around. I'm guessing this was Chris' idea and no way it will ever leave the game.

Because he knows he is smarter than all the players.

Put Loot back to 3.18
Remove AN
[Removed by Support]

1- Crafting overall feels horrendous and limited considering how many options there are in the game for crafting.
2- Extremely limited build viability. Very few skills and builds are worth doing, experimentation is dead.
3- General feeling of being unrewarded for the time we put in game, also the feeling that devs dont really care at all about player happiness. i feel like we are just treated as cash cows and nothing more, anything they say is just PR and their actions reflect the opposite.

Man, now that i articulated it out loud, it feels depressive.

SC SSF POV:

Archnemesis mobs just makes the game feel less fun to play. Mostly cause how unpredicatble it is. And if the right combo's strike, They suddenly don't fit the maptier difficulty you play anymore and it feels like a red mob invaded your yellow map. I'm thrown into a fight that takes 3 minutes to kill an AN mob, we are pmuch watching eachother slog at it. Then i get to the same tier map boss and kill him in 10 seconds. The archnemesis combos are a problem with non meta/overgearing builds, Maybe If they were limited to 1 special per mob sure it might have been better, But i've had rares in t11 maps feel more tanky then guardians.

It messes with char progression so much, makes it really hard to sometimes know where your character stands in tearms of progress. Sure if i did play trade i could prolly pay to bypass my AN issue with just mindless getting dmg to kill the bullet sponges. It's not like a case of outplaying the mob it's more like outlasting the mob or skipping it alltogether. Which is something i would accept more from t16 juiced maps. not transmuted t9's.

I've been doing a few resets this league to actually get a grasp for char progression with the new system. And honestly all my non meta builds that just don't get damage for free feals really bad, unless you go the HC route and spam defences out the ass. I don't mind a well rounded char, i would say i prefer it over a super glass cannon it just feels bad with a non meta skill this patch.

I really feel punished most of the time for just doing my basic pick a skill/asc and try to make it work. Crafting getting gutted hard also makes it feel like a slog, but AN is way above everything else in making the game feel outright bad. Had to force myself to stay playing to properly test shit out. I did clear the entire atlas, also cleared endgame bosses just didnt bother playing enough to do ubers.

It honestly feels like magic find needs to go same with loot goblins(i mean comon that shit is just stupid). And i would like a slight buff to basegame drops. Group loot should stay nerfed that shit was way over the top. Tried it in groupfound with some friends few leagues back and group play just feelt super busted.

Also don't give two shits if a skill is busted nobody is forcing me to play it. This game is a PVM solo experience for 99% of the playerbase i just want more skills to play with.

1) Qol is the number one problem of this game imo. [Removed by Support] everytime i run a deli map and have to pick up 100 - 150 simulacrum splinters one at a time. Breaches thankfully don't drop splinters outside of breach bosses so that helps though it's a sad solution...

Then there is the stupidity of using orbs... who doesn't love having to click between 1 and infinity number of times on a flask with alterations to get the right rolls. I'd honestly want a deterministic system here if only for the purpose of reducing the click orgy.

2) Latest boss design i guess. GGG is so obsessed with making bosses that are "difficult" by adding invulnerability phases, degen grounds and build disabling bullshit without ever noticing that the only thing they achieve is making them more annoying, encouraging players to just push DPS to finish them quickly.

Searing Exarch, especially the uber version, is a prime example of this and i honestly hate this guy with a passion after farming him for like 2 months now without getting a single omni... His stupid bullet hell phase is like the incarnation of everything wrong with GGG boss design lately.
80% of the arena is filled with degen grounds that interfere/disable core build mechanics like movement skills and life regen. Meanwhile the fucking boss is sitting at the sidelines sipping tea while being invulnerable. It's just plain disgusting and annoying.

For me its the general lack of player support.

Alot of information is not available in the game and either needs alot of guessing or reading up in the wiki.
There are no lists of available gems or what their levels exactly do or what alternate qualities exist.
Deaths dont have a recap that can tell you what happened and on a decent build i see alot of "wtf just happened" deaths where i simply die all of a sudden.
The game is not able to simulate things for players and is also not able to show end results on skill gems.
There is no build variety because many even decent builds simply stop working at some point and it comes down to a small number of players with alkot of knowledge providing functioning builds.

In general the game gives me the feeling that many designs are not meant to challange players but instead just to simply kill them.

Game rewards Magic Finding more than make your actual character stronger, it goes aginst the core filosophy of any ARPG.

By having Loot goblins and gutting the "historic quantity and rarity bonuses" they put a cailing on how much you can earny by... killing more monsters and doing it faster.

I slow and ateadely lost my interest on progressing my character because I knew I would have to just put Item Rarity and Quantity on my gear, ratter than putting something that would make my character more interesting and fun to play.

Magic Findind is something basically exists outside of gameplay and should stay a niche option like it used to be - making a system where it turns into a core aspect of the reward structure rather than an option is the biggest mistake GGG can make.

Magic and Rarity as a result of making the game more challenging is compretely fine because it has impact on the game. But just slapping it on your gear feels awful.

GGG hates player power and just decided the only way to dissuade people from want to make their characters stronger is to make juicing useless.
I"m just sad that the game took such a turn after having played it for 5k hours in the last 3 years. I had huge expectations for PoE future, but I no longer have faith on the Dev team to make any racional decisions.

The game is becoming bloat.

It the illusion of choices where there are none.

You will take every health node near your starting point.
You will take every defense node.
You and 90% of the player base will pick the exact same nodes so you could just
leave the ascendancy option, delete the tree, and pick Assassin or Juggernaut or whatever on character selection .

Default all the health and defense nodes we are all going to take into the starting build and then just have a tree 1/20 the size with a few skills we are all going to take anyway.

The build variety is dead.
The crafting is dead im sorry not dead , stupid like watching a carpenter throwing a log at the wall hoping it will turn into a chair and not toothpicks.

Playing SSF gives the actual gameplay experience, it feels like shit.
Leveling up is a bore chore.
Hitting maps is insta bullshit, they need to remove the resistance penalty when you kill kitava, take that right out of the game ...
Its not like having maxed resistances really matters. Once again ... everybody has em ..

Lots of good posts!

I don't think GGG cares though. Chris' mystery vision is never explained in terms of what it would be to play it. Please tell us once that vision is in place, what will it be like to play using Cleave or any other now terrible skill. How will this vision actually translate into the player experience?

Oh, I see, we will have to wait until POE2 to find out in the "big reveal" where we will all be amazed ad transfixed. We have seen disappointed as an ongoing thing league after league.

We, your pretty loyal players, actually deserve to know what the vision is beyond vague allusions to greatness and fun.

Chris, you should tell us.

I just hope that if GGG puts their foot down and does not change/improve things in 3.20 that everyone quits the league in mass because it is very clear that is the only way to get GGG's attention.

Now I do have a little hope because they did rally from the support gem nerf fiasco and punch out some good leagues (IMO). But 3.19 (and I'm a superfan) was really bad, disappoiting and frustrating. Usually in the past when things that GGG did got pushback it was pretty clear that their "vision" was the issue, now it is the "vision" combined with significant incompetence and coverup. Not good.