The XP Penalty is the worst thing in Path of Exile, remove it !!!

3.15 did exactly what i just mentioned, it mostly nerfed the floor instead of the ceiling. Flask power moved to mageblood, ascendancies were nerfed in regards to ailments, support gem nerfs in that context also removed basepower available to everyone instead of just hitting the top end. Masteries, defense rework, threshold jewels, damage buffs to endgame bosses introduction of even more OP chase items hidden behind uberbosses the list goes on. Ggg keeps adding OP gear only available to the top end while nerfing everything on the lower end. Hell, heavy strike lost probably more from the removal of its threshold jewels than seismic trap from that one tiny nerf it got, way to go GGG.

"

Orbaal wrote:

And once more:
Im not saying the balance couldnt be better.
Its about how human beings operate. If you kick them out of their comfort zone by any means, they will riot and prevent change from happening.

Its easy to blame GGG while ignoring the part the playerbase is playing in all of this. And yeah GGG did corner themselves by allowing this to go on for years without intervening much much earlier. But that ship has sailed some 5+ years ago and now players will actively prevent any change they perceive as negative.

Both sides are to be blamed here, not just GGG.

Which brings us back to "why not open new permanent league and at least start fixing balance or penalties in there? Any one of these two would be major improvement".

Poe 2 is probably developed as exactly that, and for now GGG has their trump card of "we are up to our asses in work on PoE 2, stop asking us about melee and exp penalty already". But I shudder at the thought about what would happen if they would screw up a second time and allow PoE 2 to spiral out of control the same way :)

At least I've blown some steam here, all that remains is to wait for what all those PoE 2 promises will turn out to be.

"

Baharoth15 wrote:

3.15 did exactly what i just mentioned, it mostly nerfed the floor instead of the ceiling. Flask power moved to mageblood, ascendancies were nerfed in regards to ailments, support gem nerfs in that context also removed basepower available to everyone instead of just hitting the top end. Masteries, defense rework, threshold jewels, damage buffs to endgame bosses introduction of even more OP chase items hidden behind uberbosses the list goes on. Ggg keeps adding OP gear only available to the top end while nerfing everything on the lower end. Hell, heavy strike lost probably more from the removal of its threshold jewels than seismic trap from that one tiny nerf it got, way to go GGG.

Yep, those are exactly the things I was talking about. They are more concerned with removing mana reservation mastery because "absolutely everyone use that", instead of asking themselves, why exactly did absolutely everyone had to use that.

All the while 5-way rotas are carousing 24/7 for years without nerf, each causing more server CPU load than 20 noob sessions :)

"

Baharoth15 wrote:

3.15 did exactly what i just mentioned, it mostly nerfed the floor instead of the ceiling.

Ofc it did that, what did you expect?

GGG took the easiest and fastest way to make as much impact as they could. This will always hit the floor harder than the ceiling - mostly because the players at the top are able to circumvent hardships by scaling whatever is left way faster and way more efficiently than the floor can.

In my humble opinion this was just a first step and the correct one, if you ask me. Rebalance with the broadest brush possible, observe the outcome and go from there.
This is how its done.

Except GGG wasnt allowed to implement the 2nd or 3rd step because the community was not only preventing it but demanded all changes to be reversed, which did happen in 3.16 for the most part and - lets face it - AN down the road wasnt received in a positive light either and had to be reversed for the most part as well.


This may (keyword) have worked out better, if GGG had communicated their goal better to slow down and rebalance the game as well as the fact that this would take multiple leagues.
There is no way they can rebalance everything in one go. Meaning the game will be in a messy state for at least 1 year. They didnt tho and I doubt it would have had much of an impact anyways.

"

Echothesis wrote:

Which brings us back to "why not open new permanent league and at least start fixing balance or penalties in there? Any one of these two would be major improvement".

I don't know their project structure, but I think that would be extremely hard to do. They aren't just tampering with the league and world parameters like ruthless does, which can be instanced, they would be digging into the core mechanics so they wouldn't be able to separate any of that work. It could be done in alpha, I suppose, but to really check the impact on the meta and economy it would have to be more broadly available.

Well, they already have a project with a nice big whiteboard that lists all the issues of PoE1, like 'gem socket system sucks' and 'nerfing mathil didn't help, send assassins'. It seems they aren't rushing the project, so mod stacking will likely be changed in PoE2 if they really do consider it an issue.

"

Orbaal wrote:

In my humble opinion this was just a first step and the correct one, if you ask me. Rebalance with the broadest brush possible, observe the outcome and go from there.
This is how its done.

Yeah, nerfing supports was a good idea.

Oh come on. They didn't do a second and third step because there never was one. If they really would have wanted to do it they would have doubled down on it anyway like with harvest and AN no matter what the players said.

Plus as mentioned, it's not just 3.15, they keep piling up changes that go in the wrong direction. How you can actually think that's good balancing is beyond me. Sure the big brush always hit's both ends and the top end has an easier time adjusting, i wouldn't even mind that.

But they would have to follow up that broad brush with a fine brush at the right places and they just don't do that. Just look at bleed and it's current pathetic state. They removed 100% more damage mod like 2 years ago to "open up design space" and what happened after that since then? Absolute zero.

I am honestly not sure at this point if they make bad balancing on purpose or just don't give a damn and just end up hitting the wrong spots by accident all the time.

"

Echothesis wrote:

Which brings us back to "why not open new permanent league and at least start fixing balance or penalties in there? Any one of these two would be major improvement".

Having multiple sets of different balancing only multiplies the workload while the human resources in charge cant be multiplied as easily. Thats why.
This isnt helping, this would only make it more difficult.

"

Echothesis wrote:

Poe 2 is probably developed as exactly that, and for now GGG has their trump card of "we are up to our asses in work on PoE 2...

Yes and no.

The "trump card" is: Look at this shiny new toy! Please support us with your money.

If its shiny enough, players might not worry as much about balancing changes plus it will draw in a huge amount of new/ex players and then question is: Can they keep more players than the lose due to the changes?

"

Echothesis wrote:

But I shudder at the thought about what would happen if they would screw up a second time and allow PoE 2 to spiral out of control the same way :)

They didnt screw up. It was a massive success, just not the way you look at it. They started out as a passion project in a garage and are now employing some 200 people as well as making the founders rich and dethroned the genre king too. In what world is that a screw up?

This is also why armchair developers like you and me should STFU and instead pay some respect.
They were far more successful than you and me would be in our wildest dreams.

"

Baharoth15 wrote:

Oh come on. They didn't do a second and third step because there never was one. If they really would have wanted to do it they would have doubled down on it anyway like with harvest and AN no matter what the players said.

I beg to differ - based on my personal assumptions to make this clear from the start.

I dont think GGG pays much attention to the complaints - nor should they - as long as it doesnt affect their bottom line all that much. Its just noise, in this case.

If it does effect their bottom line, they have to listen and they have to react.
To my knowledge Chris came out only once to take all the blame and proverbial bullet for the entire team, trying to please the masses by committing ritual seppukku on screen. That was 3.15.

It didnt happen because of Harvest or AN or anything else for that matter.
This tells me all the complaints about Harvest and AN were just noise, whereas 3.15 was more than just noise.

But like I said, thats just a guess.

Just want to throw something in here because a lot of people apparently don't know and are still getting this wrong:

POE 2 is NOT a completely new game. It will NOT have different gameplay systems than the corresponding era of Path of Exile 1 (presumably, patch 4.0).

Path of Exile 2 is an alternate campaign which leads players to a shared mapping endgame.

"

ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate wrote:

Just want to throw something in here because a lot of people apparently don't know and are still getting this wrong:

POE 2 is NOT a completely new game. It will NOT have different gameplay systems than the corresponding era of Path of Exile 1 (presumably, patch 4.0).

Path of Exile 2 is an alternate campaign which leads players to a shared mapping endgame.

We already know it won't be just a campaign. It should have enough changes to the game systems to go beyond a simple coat of fresh paint, and beyond any past major expansion. Just the skill socket change should impact itemization more than anything they did to it before, I'm a bit iffy about it myself, but I'm expecting it to make a splash, whether it swims or drowns. Won't be a whole new game but maybe we can call it a major expansion plus or something.