PoE 3.23 Feedback (long read)

I'm a long time PoE player with a habit of beating all endgame content and completing 40 challenges on my own merit in every league. Here's my feedback after finishing the Affliction league. Not claiming to speak for anybody but myself.

Warning: Long text with a TL;DR at the end.

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The Affliction League

Wow! Not one but THREE excellent ideas in one league! The new ascendancy classes are great. The quantity/rarity buffs make the league mechanic always worth doing. The new unique jewel with random mods is very welcome.

It isn't quite perfect though. You missed the mark on tuning the wisps BIG TIME. The initial version was just crazy, but even after the adjustment it's still WAY over the top. Luckily for the players, it's overdone in the 'too much loot' direction. The currency just rains from the sky. Players are having fun finding Divines in every map. But the economy is completely ruined. The market prices are the highest ever.

No minimap? I can see some reasoning behind that decision. But it only worked until the players figured out the diamond shaped layout. Now that the cat is out of the bag there is no reason to hide it anymore. And it only encourages cheating. Seeing the full map gives the cheaters a big advantage. They collect more wisps and thus get more loot. Map hacks have plagued this game forever. Admit it: you are unable to solve this problem. Please don't design rewards that depend on knowing the map.

The graphics in the Wildwood make the wisp trails hard to see. Especially the blue ones. They are too faint. Their color is too close to the white 'boundary' of explored area and they get obscured by it. There are big floating 'wisps' in the air that are not really wisps but just parts of the decor, and they are the same color as the blue wisps. If the map has burning or sanctified ground it makes the yellow wisp trails hard to see too. The only ones that are always easy to see are the purple ones.

And then there is The Incarnation of Agony... What the actual fuck?! WHY?! I would love to talk to the person who designed that thing and ask them what they were thinking. What purpose does it serve? What kind of reaction did they expect from a player first encountering it? How about the HC players' reaction? Did they think anybody would find it funny? Absolutely terrible idea! Do not design enemies like that ever again.

Fixes:
1. Reduce the amount of wisps found in the Wildwood by 75%. Reduce the NPC vendor prices accordingly.
2. Enable the minimap.
3. Improve visibility of wisp trails.
4. Delete the Incarnation of Agony.

Once these issues are addressed, this league should definitely be added to the core game.

Also, the MTX's offered as challenge rewards are very cool!


Ultimatum

I quit the original Ultimatum league after a few hours because the game was unplayable. That whole debacle with crashing every 10 minutes, endless queues, privileged streamers (and their girlfriends) bypassing the queue, "Life is unfair", etc. So I was kind of curious to see the mechanic that so many people wanted to come back. Took some time to farm it, with the Atlas passives too. Ended up wondering why anybody liked it. Perhaps it was nerfed or changed radically.

I'm not allowed to leave the ring but the enemies are? Those 'attackers' just keep running away from me and I can't chase them. The arena is completely empty but the next wave won't spawn because the enemies that ran away are still alive. What is this stupidity?! 'Protecting the altar' or 'killing waves of attackers' can take MINUTES per round! I quickly learned to just ignore Ultimatums with those two win conditions.

The rewards may have been OK for 3.14 but they are definitely not up to today's standards. Especially for the time it takes. I could have fully cleared 2 maps instead of 1 Ultimatum and got a lot more loot. Those who wanted this mechanic back in the game must have been disappointed.

Fixes:
1. Enemies should not be allowed to leave the arena.
2. Attackers should be... ATTACKING? Not running away.
3. Shorten the time it takes to complete each round.
4. Increase the rewards.


State of the Game

Now let's talk about the game in general. Ever since the announcement of PoE 2 the main focus of GGG has been its development. PoE 1 has been treated as an afterthought and a test ground for PoE 2 ideas. I couldn't find the link but I clearly remember Chris admitting that the radical changes in 3.15-16 were made for that exact purpose: they needed to test things for PoE 2. And that this practice would continue until PoE 2 is released. What we didn't know at the time was just how long it would take. I'm pretty sure nobody expected anything like '3.30' or '2025'.

The practice of 'testing things for PoE 2' continued until PoE 1 hit the rock bottom. PoE 3.19 was the absolute worst version of the game ever, as evidenced by the overwhelmingly negative player feedback, lethal levels of toxicity on reddit and forums, and the anti-record player retention numbers. GGG managed to piss off the community to such a degree that 70% (iirc) of the players quit that league within 1 week of starting.

For the next several leagues the game has seen a number of improvements and positive changes. 'Testing things for PoE 2' became a lot less extreme. GGG changed its mind about the future of the game and announced that PoE 1 will continue as a separate game after PoE 2 gets released. Good. It won't hurt to have a 'safety cushion' to fall back to if PoE 2 doesn't live up to the hype.

However, it seems that not all lessons were learned and most of the core problems are still not addressed. Let's talk about them.


Graphics and Performance

At the start of every league the game is laggier than ever before. Endless area transitions, missing textures, slide show graphics... Compared to 1 year ago the game's performance today is definitely much worse. If your PC is older than 3 years - don't even bother trying to play PoE. A friend of mine had to quit after reaching Act 4 because the game wouldn't let him enter the town anymore: after about 1 minute of the loading screen it just kicked him out, every time. I've experienced 20+ sec loading screens myself with my RTX 3070 too.

Asset loading is very poorly optimized. When fighting Sirus for the first time in this league, the black clouds were invisible until the 2nd phase transition. I just knew they were there and guessed which areas to avoid until the game client finally loaded their graphics and rendered them on my screen. And no, it didn't do anything during the initial blah-blah-blah. It waited until the actual fight had started to load the assets for it.

So it's OK not to pre-load assets for a pinnacle boss fight, but you must wait until every single MTX finishes loading before you can enter a town? O: OPTIMIZATION.

When you are clearing a map and suddenly your PC fans rev up like a drag car engine - congratulations, you have found a Harbinger! That has to be the worst un-optimized piece of graphics in the whole game. It's been around for 6 years now and somehow never optimized.

Spend some time to fix your performance issues. Test the game on a clean installation before a new league. On a PC built 5 years ago. Allow entering towns before all assets are loaded. Pre-load assets for pinnacle bosses. Optimize the fucking Harbingers already.


Archnemesis

Arguably the biggest design failure of the 'testing things for PoE 2' era was Archnemesis. It was a combination revamp of rare monster mods and the core loot system. Whoever designed the new mods was too lazy to think how they would work together and what effect they would have on the existing game content. Super tanky or super deadly rares ruined just about every league mechanic in the game. Currency explosions made farming trivial monsters in easy maps far more rewarding than killing pinnacle uber bosses.

Following the 3.19 debacle GGG announced that they would remove Archnemesis from the game in 3.20. They lied. I don't know why they had to lie instead of simply saying that they would re-balance it. But that's what they did. The mods on the rares were simply renamed, some were toned down. The loot conversion was made less obvious. Archnemesis was neither removed nor undone. Whoever designed it remained adamant that their decisions were right. They just had to pacify the players at the moment. And then they would re-introduce the whole thing step by step. How very clever.

For the next 3 leagues Archnemesis has been creeping back into the game. First we got the nasty mods back in 3.21 on the rares spawned by the league mechanic. That league mechanic was not added to the core game but the mods became standard on all rares in 3.22. And in 3.23 they increased the number of those mods per rare, plus added new mods. It's almost back to its original glory, just with somewhat different mods. And without ANY mention in any of the patch notes. The 'clever' designer behind Archnemesis definitely knows how to 'boil a frog'.

The most broken mods:
- Soul Eater. It has always been problematic with league mechanics that spawned a lot of monsters (ex: Delve, Blight). But now it's combined with other random mods too. Hasted Soul Eater, Soul Eater Enrages, etc.
- Explodes Corpses. Nothing like killing a mini-boss in the Wildwood and getting exploded by some random trash lurking in the mist!
- Cycling Damage Reduction. Not sure what that even means. It reduces damage from... cycling (something Joe Biden could use)? It just makes the monster take no damage for a very long time.
- Creates Frost Walls and Flees. Often combined with Hasted. Totally idiotic in Delve or Ultimatum.

Currency explosions didn't go anywhere either. They were just waiting for the next MF-friendly league mechanic. Remember that post by Chris explaining the GGG 'philosophies'?

"

Rewards should be set appropriately for the increased difficulty of these rare monsters.

What difficulty is appropriate for a monster that drops 50 Divines? That should be BY FAR the most difficult fight in the game, right? RIGHT??

Fixes:
1. Nerf Soul Eater or prevent it from combining with other Archnemesis mods.
2. Remove Corpse Exploder and Cycling Damage Reduction.
3. Archnemesis mods should not occur on monsters spawned by league mechanics and boss encounters. Alternatively, review all mods vs all league mechanics and disable mods that can ruin each particular mechanic. But that's a lot of work.
4. Nerf loot conversion to currency. Put a cap on it, or diminishing returns. Under no circumstances should rare monsters be more rewarding than pinnacle bosses. No matter the amount of quantity and rarity.


Party and Aurabots

From the same 'philosophy' post by Chris:

"

Path of Exile is a game about opting-in to more difficulty in exchange for more rewards. You can roll your maps to be harder or add sextants to them. You can play with additional party members. You can trigger additional stacking league content like Delirium. All of these things make the game harder in exchange for more and better rewards.

According to Chris, adding an aurabot makes the game harder. Sextants too, but that's beside the point. Somehow I doubt that Chris has ever played his own game in a party with an aurabot. Has he?

Monsters have a bit more life - that's the only penalty for extra group members. But they also explode for more damage which mostly cancels the penalty since parties usually farm maps with huge pack size.

Aurabots completely trivialize the game and remove all challenge. And you get a big multiplicative bonus to quantity and rarity. The correct version of the above quote should read: "Path of Exile is a game about opting-in to less difficulty in addition to more rewards."

Fix: Follow your own design philosophy. Less difficulty should result in less loot. Re-balance the party bonuses to factor in the number of auras affecting the players.


League Mechanics and Trading

Almost every new league adds a new mechanic that cannot be interrupted to trade. Most of the trade tells never get a reply. Not because the sellers are AFK but because they are too busy to trade. The game needs automated or semi-automated trade improvements. Badly.

Fix: Let us set up shops. A personal vendor NPC in hideout that sells anything I put in public tabs with fixed prices. Somebody sends me a trade tell. I invite them to the party and continue doing what I'm doing. They come to my hideout and buy the item from my shop. Takes care of scams too.

If you are so concerned about the players seeing each other's flashy MTX's - make my vendor look exactly like me.


Other Outstanding Issues

- It's been over a year since the weird decision to swap Divine and Exalted orbs. And nobody had time to fix the currency tab? Exalt is still sitting right next to the Mirror. Come on!

- Influenced armor sets are still vendoring for Exalted shards which are worth less than Chaos orbs. They should be worth whole Exalts instead of shards.

- Get rid of Exalted shards already. They serve no purpose anymore.

- Fractured fossil was created before there was fracturing in the game. It doesn't fracture items, it splits them. There is now a Fracturing Orb too that actually fractures. Rename Fractured fossil to Splitting.

- When Abyss was revamped it must have been an oversight that the Spires are affected by extra projectile mods. Now it's getting abused big time to create more pits and spawn more rare monsters. It makes Abyss by far the most profitable farming mechanic. Fix the bug.

- Wandering Path Atlas node is way too OP. There are too many small nodes that increase the effect of map mods, spawn more monsters, add various mechanic-specific bonuses. Doubling all those bonuses is just crazy. Remove or re-balance it.

- Extra maps dropped from special sources such as Archnemesis conversion, boss bodyguards sextant, etc - they don't respect the state of the Atlas. They just drop random maps of random tiers. It's especially visible when you fully upgrade the Atlas and make only the favorite maps drop normally, and only T16. Fix the bug.

- The fucking goblin pet!!! Whoever made that annoying piece of shit needs to be forced to listen to it every 20 sec, like the players in every town. Better yet, that sound should be broadcast on loudspeakers in the GGG office every 20 sec. Cruel and unusual punishment? Well, that's what you subject your players to. Get rid of that abomination! Or add an option to disable pet sounds.


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TL;DR

- The best league mechanic ever, despite mis-tuning and some other fixable problems.
- The core game has several major problems that need to be addressed.
- Stop treating PoE 1 as an afterthought. It may just outlive PoE 2.

All great feedback.

The only issue I have is that I can't remember a single time GGG (CW) actually outright SAID they were "testing things for PoE 2". As far as I'm aware, that is entirely a player speculation, that has morphed into a "GGG said this" over time. Happy to be proven wrong on that front.

I'm sure they ARE sort of doing that, but its a bit of a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory. The games are going to be so vastly different that....what information are they actually going to get from "testing" things in PoE 1 environment? Damage is off the rails, items are off the rails, the way skills work is already vastly different, loot is different, etc.

The whole 3.14 rework, and then the 3.18 (i think, loot nerf) rework were not done because of PoE 2. Everything that was said at the time was that they were to clamp down on out-of-control power creep. Flasks were too mandatory and provided too large of a buff, so they were nerfed. Nothing about "This is how it will work in PoE 2, so we are going to do it now in PoE 1". 3.18 had a LONG CW post about how loot works and why they made the change, with PoE 2 being nowhere in that document.

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

All great feedback.

The only issue I have is that I can't remember a single time GGG (CW) actually outright SAID they were "testing things for PoE 2". As far as I'm aware, that is entirely a player speculation, that has morphed into a "GGG said this" over time. Happy to be proven wrong on that front.

I'm sure they ARE sort of doing that, but its a bit of a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory. The games are going to be so vastly different that....what information are they actually going to get from "testing" things in PoE 1 environment? Damage is off the rails, items are off the rails, the way skills work is already vastly different, loot is different, etc.

I think this misconception stems from the fact they stated previously that they are continuing to make improvements to PoE's engine for PoE2, with some of those features trickling down to PoE1.

Players take something like that and warp it in all kinds of directions

^that's true. its also that "originally" the games were going to be together as one.

We don't really know PRECISELY when the change occurred, but once they DID decide to separate the two, it doesn't really make any kind of sense to "test" things in PoE 1....I would argue this decision came much earlier than people think, certainly way earlier than when they announced it. I had thought they would be separate games right from the first announcement of all they wanted to achieve in PoE 2.

also, totally separate:

"Attackers should be attacking"....Yes, BUT: if you are a ranged attacker, part of the "attacking" process involves giving yourself space and kiting. So its not as simple as "attackers should be attacking". What would be more appropriate is: All attackers should be melee.

Even in regular maps, if you end up too close to a ranged attacker they are going to run away from you to get to a "range". We do it as ranged players as well.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

All great feedback.

The only issue I have is that I can't remember a single time GGG (CW) actually outright SAID they were "testing things for PoE 2". As far as I'm aware, that is entirely a player speculation, that has morphed into a "GGG said this" over time. Happy to be proven wrong on that front.

Found it:
https://youtu.be/88N4s2qxRIM?t=8277

Pretty sure he said it in some other interview during that same time too.

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

also, totally separate:

"Attackers should be attacking"....Yes, BUT: if you are a ranged attacker, part of the "attacking" process involves giving yourself space and kiting. So its not as simple as "attackers should be attacking". What would be more appropriate is: All attackers should be melee.

Even in regular maps, if you end up too close to a ranged attacker they are going to run away from you to get to a "range". We do it as ranged players as well.

The win condition is "protect the altar". The monsters should try to attack it, right? But those little 'skitterbots' make no effort whatsoever to attack the altar. All they do is run away from me.

"

Kelvynn wrote:

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

also, totally separate:

"Attackers should be attacking"....Yes, BUT: if you are a ranged attacker, part of the "attacking" process involves giving yourself space and kiting. So its not as simple as "attackers should be attacking". What would be more appropriate is: All attackers should be melee.

Even in regular maps, if you end up too close to a ranged attacker they are going to run away from you to get to a "range". We do it as ranged players as well.

The win condition is "protect the altar". The monsters should try to attack it, right? But those little 'skitterbots' make no effort whatsoever to attack the altar. All they do is run away from me.

'skitterbots' should be replaced. They are [Removed by Support]

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Kelvynn wrote:

The win condition is "protect the altar". The monsters should try to attack it, right? But those little 'skitterbots' make no effort whatsoever to attack the altar. All they do is run away from me.

That was addressed in a patch

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