"There is a lot of cool stuff going on behind the scenes that we just can't talk about yet." - Bex

yeah sure, i dont believe a word any of them is saying, i mean they even "forgot" to mention like the biggest change the game has seen in a very long time in their last manifesto.


Im back for the new league, but my wallet wont be for sure until i decide they are worth my money again.


also dont forget ggg, we havent forgot about loot slot machines and stupid archnemesis double down bs.

The memorable login queue bypass for streamers early league was the starting point of an irreversible distrust. That and years of yo-yo balance and yo-yo archetypes/built diversity/temp hyped skills...
May add the bling bling: splinters of fragments allowing to farm loot boosters ...

Lot of cool stuff LOL

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Turtledove wrote:

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pr13st wrote:

Teaser season starting as usual, Community team getting out of hybernation. Nothing new here, but I will be reading more between the lines.

If the loot goblin stays, I'll throw a tantrum.

What is interesting to me about this is why the loot goblin doesn't really work well in PoE. In Diablo3 the loot goblin is fun. I hear the goblin laugh from off screen and immediately start searching. If I see him on screen and don't quickly dispatch him then he disappears.

So what makes the loot goblin fun in one case and not a good mechanic in the other? Here's some thoughts on that. In D3 the laugh is important. It raises the excitement and triggers the search. It seems too that in D3 less loot is expected from the goblin. So there is not really an idea in my mind that I "have" to find one. It's more a sweet bonus in D3. It's hard for me to say though because I played very little this league. I'd be interested in the opinion of others and likely hold their opinion in higher regard than my own regarding the PoE side.

I think you're on the right track:

1) Signaling. Many people build such strong characters they complain they don't know they killed one till they see 2 exalts and 7 chaos on the ground.

2) Ratio/FOMO. GGG shifted too much of the base game loot too them - as you say, in D3, if a goblin gets away that sucks but whatever. In PoE you assume you just missed out on 5-50 divines even if they average less loot than that.

3) MF. In D3 you don't feel the need to switch characters or call in an MF character from TFT, an untrusted scam-prone 3rd party utility.

4) System shock. We're not used to this system. It was just a couple years ago Chris was excited to announce that they were putting boss drop uniques in the core pool, to reinforce the feeling that the next big drop is right around the corner. Now there's this.

The loot goblin system is another unfortunate system of GGG being in love with the Arch Nemesis system that has been more detrimental to the game than an improvement, so it is very unlikely they'll actually fix it because it requires them to admit that their passion project isn't what is good for the game.

Yes, on the one hand, AN loot goblins are a bad idea.
On the other, however, if the hardest AN mods DIDN'T also provide massive loot, people would complain about the risk/reward ratio.

So it's really hard to balance - unless you actually reverted to the old system of Bloodlines and Nemesis.
I wouldn't mind that.

Personally, I don't want "lots of cool stuff". The game has enough cool stuff as it is, it'd keep me entertained for years. Just that a lot of the stuff is broken in all kinds of ways, either deliberately or accidentally, and it is too grindy, especially if you despise the toxic trade system.

So I'd rather they fix the broken things (also in Standard league) rather than introduce more "cool stuff". I just don't need it.

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Mikrotherion wrote:

Yes, on the one hand, AN loot goblins are a bad idea.
On the other, however, if the hardest AN mods DIDN'T also provide massive loot, people would complain about the risk/reward ratio.

So it's really hard to balance - unless you actually reverted to the old system of Bloodlines and Nemesis.
I wouldn't mind that.

Same here. But it's weird to balance the rewards for loot goblins since there will be builds that trivialise them while their rewards put the uber pinnacle bosses' ones to shame.

Better make them go away or drastically diminish the returns while affected by MF or party bonus.

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pr13st wrote:

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Mikrotherion wrote:

Yes, on the one hand, AN loot goblins are a bad idea.
On the other, however, if the hardest AN mods DIDN'T also provide massive loot, people would complain about the risk/reward ratio.

So it's really hard to balance - unless you actually reverted to the old system of Bloodlines and Nemesis.
I wouldn't mind that.

Same here. But it's weird to balance the rewards for loot goblins since there will be builds that trivialise them while their rewards put the uber pinnacle bosses' ones to shame.

Better make them go away or drastically diminish the returns while affected by MF or party bonus.

Party bonus should be removed from game, IIQ/IIR.
Make loot goblins don't get any bonus from IIQ/IIR, let them stay like that. Easy solution.

We sure want to see some cool stuff for us.

I mean it is Bex's job to assist GGG in managing a message to the players and community. Not exactly groundbreaking a CM would be doing something like this. In fact you could probably argue they (and Bex) need to communicate far more often in an official capacity, and no, not news posts.

Speaking of communication, she isnt exactly clear if these things they "cant talk about" are in store for 3.20, or longer down the line. Or even why she thinks the would be welcomed changes/features?

She also is acknowledging that things havent been exactly smooth lately, but predicting there are good things coming (based on what exactly?), to "hang in there", when there is absolutely no context to why players should be optimistic given the changes we have seen in recent leagues. Imo its misleading at best, and basically gaslighting their playerbase for the sake of promotional hype at worst.

She could have been a bit more specific, while still talking in a general sense on what areas they are addressing that would appeal to folks. Ie... "You will be excited to hear about the changes in store for crafting, gear, looting, mob interaction, ascendency reworks, etc..", without going into more detail.

It helps manage expectations without any developmental commitments to the players. Otherwise it's nothing more than "Trust Us". Which fine, I know there are plenty of folks willing to give them total trust, but there are also plenty of other folks, that like PoE and GGG, but that would like a bit more than this...

I get the feeling this isnt about the manifesto's directly, but rather trying to manage the changes that are coming with a "dony worry there is a plan" mitigation technique to offset any negative reaction.

I dont blame them necessarily for doing this, they are running a business after all, but man, it's hard not to be cynical after seeing game changes and hearing them explain lately. In the past, players didn't have a ton of options though, so we just had to deal. That's not going to be the case here shortly, and I think it's clear they are at least uneasy about the prospects in the coming months.