The state of Hideout Decoration - A critique and proposed solutions

Greetings GGG, I’m Morinmeth and I enjoy building hideouts for the playerbase of your game. Your game is my main hobby and you’ve featured my hideouts in your showcases multiple times. Building hideouts for Path of Exile is the best way I can think of to return all the love I have as a return gift to the company and the community. Been doing so for several years and I hope I can get to do it even more in the future. The visuals of a game is the first actual contact a player has with it and the hideout is the place where you spend a majority of the endgame, whether you realize it or not. So I think having exceptional hideouts circulating is important.
I’m writing this to address some issues I’ve been running onto while building hideouts. There’s critique for the system in place, individual bases, hideout competitions and the decoration options. Finally, whenever I propose a viable solution, I’m also keeping in mind that I need to keep it as easy and feasible as possible since hideouts are not the primary system GGG will pour resources and time into.

1. While the current system we have is amazing it still feels a little bit uncooked. You have some free bases that look cool, you got some MTX ones you can buy and it all comes with a great variety of free decorations to dump in. However, what used to add implicit value to hideouts was the favor system. Hideouts came with a cost and people did grind out for them. Ever since that much-hated system was abolished, the only thing adding value to hideouts is their in-game rarity or simply the MTX price. And while MTX bases are nothing of a short supply, the non-MTX supply is currently stale. We haven’t had new base hideouts since 2021, 3.13 Ritual League.

My proposed solution is that you add 1 free hideout base with each league; either at the start or during the 3rd or 4th month of the league. My rationale is twofold; first, I know for a fact that people look for new hideouts each league and you do as well. My best submissions have always been right before a league start. Also, no matter how much you think that will affect MTX sales, it won’t. Celestial Nebula and Infinite Abyss are very tough bases to beat. They are, half-jokingly speaking, the P2W aspect of creativity in hideouts. Also, nothing will ever beat the absolute flex that is the Atlas hideout. So I think that cycle releases are both a good alternative for people who are not willing to engage with the final tier of supporter packs, as well as keeping the flame alive for us hideout creators and our respective audiences. There’s tons of setups that you can still use as bases, with my much-beloved Dark Forest one being at the top of my personal list.

2. Individual bases boast a good variety but come with implicit obstacles that we need to adapt towards. It gives a feeling of putting up a hideout in place that is rough around the edges from the get-go, resulting in a work that is also trying to not be rough around the edges as well. Many of them have awkward bumps when they shouldn’t. For example, it is logical for the sandy Coastal base to have bumps but at the same time, the Arboreal has as well; which is a ramparts with a view. At the same time, multiple hideouts have assets that are not removable, like trees or rocks. For example, Arboreal or Overgrown. The only solution I can think of is to either fix them, or make sure subsequent releases are more coherent.

3. Official Hideout competitions kindle the flame of the community. And community is partly built through schedule and frequency. While we are holding the unofficial hideout competition each league and some streamers like Zizaran have organized their own unofficial competitions as well, it goes a way-longer mile when it’s official. Maybe once a year or every-6-months but my point centered on the frequency part.

4. The decorations options that we have is rich, promotes creativity but lacks points-of-interest loudly. At the same time, the MTX store is filled with outdated decorations that should have been part of the main game and there’s no going back to them now. The recent hideout MTX releases have been also providing mostly building materials rather than points of interest. So here’s my list of proposed additions to the list of base decorations that you probably already have in your arsenal:

a. The ground tiles (sand ground, dirt ground, void ground, etc) should have elevation options, much like the water plane and blood plane does. This stays true for a number of decorations, but ground tiles being elevated opens the option of creating towers. Promotes both creativity and solves a big point-of-interest problem. Custom balconies are always a big hit in decorating. Doing the same for pillars opens the possibilities of creating taller walls as well.

b. Additional statues. Straight-forward. Statues are always striking and immediately draw the attention. Give us demon, angel, beast, dragon statues. Don’t be shy, we know you have them.

c. Waterfalls and fountains. There are beautiful waterfalls in act 7 and lava waterfalls in act 4. We cannot wait for them to be added, it is a guaranteed hype release for minimum effort. For these to look as good as in acts, you’d probably need to release some base water and lava as well.

---

I hope that this is read by the right people and that it wasn't a harrowing abduction of void ideas and words from a vocabulary. Thank you for your time.

+1 to the general spirit of the thread

some off the wall thoughts:
-farmable hideout expansions (upgraded versions of hideouts farmed like most hideouts from maps but rarer.. much rarer than the default hideout)
-bring back favour in a limited extent putting new hideout decorations for a period of time before added to the general pool.

and a thousand other things lol

"

SilentSymphony wrote:

+1 to the general spirit of the thread

some off the wall thoughts:
-farmable hideout expansions (upgraded versions of hideouts farmed like most hideouts from maps but rarer.. much rarer than the default hideout)
-bring back favour in a limited extent putting new hideout decorations for a period of time before added to the general pool.

and a thousand other things lol

Hideout upgrades to grind out would be dope.

Having favor to try new decorations before they enter the circulation also sounds dope but I imagine it's a lot more resources on the side of GGG, no? I'd really like to know how that works.

Add any and all of those thousand things you thought, I'd love to see some brainstorming on this!

Mostly just free bumps and +1s.

While I have my own critisims about hideout MTX (Moslty price point on the building material type for what you get being extremely low. I don't mind dropping 20$ on a nice centerpiece, but $10 for a wall is a tough swallow).

I do want to see more hideout base types, more options, both part of the normal package, and MTX, of a full spectrum, roaming pets, using MTX portals as standing decor, venders from the acts you can opt to bring along, or Forsaken Masters of days past being more than images, being able to place more than one instance of benches or chests, etc.

BUT to keep this more on track, I would love to see a hideout reward track on League MTX challenge rewards beyond the statue or totems offered in leagues past, but like a nice statue (as we see in this months mini-events), hideout bases (even if prexisting ones), or something that might mirror the old hideouts, where you had a tiny one for an easy accomplisment (Rank 1 favor), that slowly opened up into a bigger and grander hideout as you progressed. A similar one could be done in a league, that the further in league (or more you grind, if its a seperate thing), the more it opens up.

"

Northern_Ronin wrote:

Mostly just free bumps and +1s.

While I have my own critisims about hideout MTX (Moslty price point on the building material type for what you get being extremely low. I don't mind dropping 20$ on a nice centerpiece, but $10 for a wall is a tough swallow).

I do want to see more hideout base types, more options, both part of the normal package, and MTX, of a full spectrum, roaming pets, using MTX portals as standing decor, venders from the acts you can opt to bring along, or Forsaken Masters of days past being more than images, being able to place more than one instance of benches or chests, etc.

BUT to keep this more on track, I would love to see a hideout reward track on League MTX challenge rewards beyond the statue or totems offered in leagues past, but like a nice statue (as we see in this months mini-events), hideout bases (even if prexisting ones), or something that might mirror the old hideouts, where you had a tiny one for an easy accomplisment (Rank 1 favor), that slowly opened up into a bigger and grander hideout as you progressed. A similar one could be done in a league, that the further in league (or more you grind, if its a seperate thing), the more it opens up.

I second that. Remember Ritual league having this awesome hideout at 36? That's one of the most unique bases I've seen. It incentivized me hugely to grind towards it compared to the tier of armor grind. I know that MTX armors will mostly be better than the league rewards ones, but the hideout? Ritualist base is one of the most unique ones out there. We should be seeing more hideout league rewards.

MTX having points of interest rather than walls is a yes from me, as long as we see more POIs in both MTX and non-MTX categories. The MTX shop is cluttered with old decorations that don't deserve their points; that cauldron, the fireplace, the catapult to name a few. These are old base assets of the game. I'd love to see the rest of the base assets given to us as free decorations, while including a Nightfall Statue or a Chaos Demon Statue in the MTX shop to be honest.

I mean imagine a Shaper statue in your hideout. Full-clad celestial theme. I can build you guys a Shaper Cathedral around that all day.

I hope they will reply to this, or give it some thought. Many great ideas here.

"

mostbrilliant2 wrote:

I hope they will reply to this, or give it some thought. Many great ideas here.

Why thank you! I hope so too, we just got a hideout competition after two years, so I'm very optimistic.