Borrowed Power should not be the new standard / Predicament of standard

First i need to define what is borrowed power. different people have different definitions of borrowed power.

personally i first heard of the concept originating from WoW. the concept is simple, every new expansion the devs introduce a new mechanic or new gear that give players power.

but every new expansion they would release newer gear or mechanics that invalidate the previous gear/powers. hence the powers players got are "borrowed". you only are strong during that particular expansion but next expansion you need to get the latest borrowed power as the old one is taken away from you via having the new powers stronger.

this doesnt exactly translate well to POE, but blizzard actually implements this concept quite blatantly in diablo 4.

from my pov blizzard due to their business model do not dare implement leagues the same way POE does. yet they want to try something similar to POE leagues. and thus they borrowed a page from WoW and borrowed the concept of borrowed power.

currently in D4, every season players are given borrowed power. this power is quite literally borrowed power as by the end of the season, that power is directly taken away from you. you dont get to keep the power into permanent leagues. poof. gone.

next league they'll have new mechanics and give players new powers to borrow for the new league. this has repeated 3 times so far.

borrowed power does have its benefits. for starters it allows the devs to go bonkers and develop new and interesting systems/gear for players to use. players have access to new builds and etc. theres an entire realm of exploration every new league. i know for a fact that there are many players who like this form of borrowed power.

i myself am actually a permanent league enjoyer. everytime i join a new league, it is for the sole purpose of enriching my permanent league character.

this is also why i have uninstalled diablo 4 and have zero intention of ever playing it ever again. if you want to enjoy d4, you NEED to play in a league/season. if you play permanent league you will be deprived of the borrowed power. you can have the best gear ever in permanent league in d4 but a rando in a temp league with decent gear could easily out perform you.

this is a vast contrast. the impact is, i dont play permanent league coz i know that my character is not at it's full potential. i dont play temp leagues coz i know that all my borrowed power is gonna go poof. i do get to keep my gear but what good is my gear when it goes to permanent league (which is pointless to play).

so how does this translate to POE.

on the forums i see many different ideas of what borrowed power is. some people say league mechanics are always borrowed power.

if we're looking from the lens of "temp leagues" then i would agree. harvest gave borrowed power via gear. tota gave borrowed power in the form of tattoo.

technically by the end of the league we lose the ability to acquire those powers.

but looking from a Standard/permanent enjoyer's lens i would say MOST of GGG's league mechanics are NOT borrowed power.

to me i define power as things that directly benefit a player's build. more defence/more dps/more mobility etc.

leagues that provide new ways of crafting to me are not borrowed power. the reason is because by the end of the league, the gear you crafted can be brought into standard. take note, i m talking from the lens of a standard player. i am aware and i acknowledge that this is not the same for temp league players.

to me borrowed power is something that the devs actively take away from the player by the end of the league and the player has nothing to show for when the character returns to standard. most leagues do not have this characteristic and thus i would say most of poe leagues do not have borrowed power.

this all changed back in sanctum. this was the very first league where the devs took away player power directly. i played sanctum for the sole purpose of bringing home a sanctified relic. up to sanctum i was always confident that GGG would allow us to keep and use our gear when it hit standard. this was the very first time that GGG directly ripped player power away from us.

sanctified relics was the very first iteration of borrowed power in POE from my pov as a standard enjoyer.

in the recent leagues after sanctum, GGG did not utilize borrowed power. in crucible all crucible trees were retained. our crucible weapons/gears can make mirror tier items of yesteryear weep. to me that is a good thing. if you put in the hours and played in crucible, you should be rewarded for your efforts. i enjoy my crucible weapon in STD and sorely miss it in temp leagues. crucible weapons gave player massive power.

then we had TOTA, which is arguably one of the biggest shake ups in a long time with their introduction of tattoos. i would argue its also not borrowed power. we get to keep the tattoos, characters with tattoos keep their tattoos too. in fact, on STD you can buy tattoos if you so choose.

now we have affliction. affliction came with 3 new mini ascendancies. this new power was significant enough that I, a person who has kept posting about quitting POE for good, actually came back to POE. it was significant enough that i felt that i should give it a go.

the new powers and the way the economy worked had me earn a huge lot and i also ENJOYED the game immensely. a little side tracking. but it really goes to show the power of giving players new powers.

economy and fun aside. the league is ending soon. GGG has yet to announce what is going to happen to our new WW Ass as well as our charms and etc.

will they follow the route of sanctified relics? i've spent tons of divines buying charms and even some divines buying some tinctures.

even if GGG did allow us to keep these items, without our WW Ass, all of them become useless.

GGG has a few options moving forward.

1. Poofing everything
- Likelihood high.
- Easiest to implement.
- Solidifies the fact that GGG is taking the borrowed power route. Moving forward I will be extremely wary about new leagues as whatever i get from them could be poofed.

2. Allowing players to keep their charms and their WW Ass but no way to gain WW Ass on newer characters nor ways to gain WW points/change WW Ass.
- Likelihood possible but maybe unlikely
- Probably easy to implement
- Introduces a new problem. In other leagues players gained powers via items/gearing. In STD you could buy the gear from other players. However, in this case, STD players have NO WAY to obtain WW Ass even if they could buy the charms etc.

3. Bring Affliction to core
- Likelihood extremely low
- It is very rare that GGG brings a league to core right after the league ends. Even sanctum came back after 2 leagues but was rebalanced.

In any case, despite Affliction now being my favourite league i am very much against borrowed power.

Unlike other leagues, affliction has the most "borrowed power" feel to it. it feels very unlikely that they would allow us to keep such power into standard.

on one hand i WANT to keep my WW ass as well as charms. but on another hand it's setting a new precedence.

which is, if you're a standard enjoyer you NEED to play temp league to fully gain all benefits.

even if GGG let us retain our charms, standard players would be hard pressed to quickly jump into the league to unlock the WW Ass as well as get all 8 ass points.

i really am torn in between.

as a standard player i always had the option of just grinding divines in standard and buying temp league gear at the end of the league on standard.

being forced to go temp league in order to be able to use league gear to use in standard is something undesirable and goes against standard's draw, which is to play at your own pace yet with the possibility of using everything.

personally i would prefer if affliction just goes core as is. besides that my second preference is that all affliction characters/gear carries over to std and works as is.

i really would not want everything just simply poofed. if it did, it will be officially the 2nd time that player power got poofed.

I am firmly against anything that is a temporary power crutch. It only reinforces my opinion that baseline game is made too hard for anything non meta.

If everything was performing adequate to begin with people would look at these temp buffs and just ask "but why though?". But right now any temp crutch that is thrown to players is being celebrated which means players feel that they need it. They shouldn't need it. And if at any point the temp crutch stops coming its going to be a painful hangover.

They should buff the floor and stop adding adding temporary power. Instead of designing temporary power for a league they should design actual content - zones to see, shit to kill, new mechanics/ways to scale.

Make everything too hard and then give temp crutch so people play the league seems like a lazy cop out to shift dev time to poe2 to me. No way I will ever accept this is healthy for the game.

borrowed power is exciting guys it won't go anywhere, for the record I agree with both of you but its a tried and true approach to keep players interested in seasonal content with the added bonus of being very low impact if you happen to go overboard.

They have like a skeleton staff working on PoE1 leagues now its just the best approach with the resources available.

"

Draegnarrr wrote:

borrowed power is exciting guys it won't go anywhere, for the record I agree with both of you but its a tried and true approach to keep players interested in seasonal content with the added bonus of being very low impact if you happen to go overboard.

They have like a skeleton staff working on PoE1 leagues now its just the best approach with the resources available.

The resources from PoE1 which was supposed to create an expansion to it not destroy it.


I played since 2013 and was mostly a standard player but as you can see standard does not receive economically competitive options compared to the leagues which especially with this temporary power are actually making it even harder for standard players.

Its gotten so bad that i was forced to play the leagues to try to stay economically relevant and then came the wonderful savings-cleanse.

I'm a bit confused: you take the term "borrowed power" and define it as related to its origins....and then you use the term in a completely different way to describe PoE? Then what was the point of the whole first half of your post?

I disagree with the "overall" aspect of your post, because PoE has done it both ways for an incredibly long time, and even NOW there are BOTH your definitions of "borrowed power" in standard.

Some of the MOST powerful items that exist in standard are items from leagues long past, and NOT the "latest" candy from the temp league. The most desirable mirrored gear in standard still today is from leagues like Synthesis (5 years ago). PoE has done it both ways in its long history. As long as there is a "standard" mode, in direct competition to league play, there will ALWAYS be things that become trash whether that happens immediately or over the course of a few leagues.

It is in the very nature of a league-based game design and there is absolutely no counter to this. If there wasn't at least a type of power creep in the league, the company would take a severe financial hit. Similarly, if things that ended up being TOO powerful end up in standard (*cough cough, Crucible, *cough), it will forever irreparably damage that mode. And then further still: when mechanics get outright removed (onslaught support, mana reservation, relics, watchstones), they get removed from ALL areas of the game likely to make room for something new down the road. Leagues are the focus.

If you want to make truly broken builds....you don't do it in a temporary league even with all its bells and whistles. You do it in Standard, where you have access to every broken mechanic ever invented in PoE's history. So what if a select few things went poof...far more has simply been kept and turned Standard into the wasteland that it currently is.

This was an enormous post so i didn't read it all. but.

I loved crucible trees, tattoos, and sanctified relics.

"

Bosscannon wrote:

I am firmly against anything that is a temporary power crutch. It only reinforces my opinion that baseline game is made too hard for anything non meta.

If everything was performing adequate to begin with people would look at these temp buffs and just ask "but why though?". But right now any temp crutch that is thrown to players is being celebrated which means players feel that they need it. They shouldn't need it. And if at any point the temp crutch stops coming its going to be a painful hangover.

They should buff the floor and stop adding adding temporary power. Instead of designing temporary power for a league they should design actual content - zones to see, shit to kill, new mechanics/ways to scale.

Make everything too hard and then give temp crutch so people play the league seems like a lazy cop out to shift dev time to poe2 to me. No way I will ever accept this is healthy for the game.

you know i kept pushing for GGG to bridge the gap between casuals and optimized players for years.

i would argue that players have slowly been made stronger via league rewards being added to core. for example we now get 29-30% quality on our weapons/gear and even flasks. we can annoint and quality our amulets and rings. double corrupts. awakened gems.

there definitely are a lot of nerfs that followed too such as the removal of alt quality gems.

i would even say that GGG could be trying to find ways to buff the floor, they do so via temp leagues. just that as of late most of the buffs tend to become stagnant as they dont make it to core.

that said, if POE1's team cant make the call to buff the floor, the next best thing is for them to add new extra content that gives more player power. it should be designed to fit into core rather than just making them borrowed power. i dont want another sanctum where they ripped sanctified relics away from us.

i do agree that the floor needs buffing. many would argue power creep is bad. i would argue back that GGG made tougher content but when they nerfed the players they did not nerf their content. POE1 is a 10 year old game. adding more player power lets weaker players have more fun. if buffing the floor is giving 1 million dps to weak players is huge, if that same buff is giving 100 million dps to stronger players who can wipe uber pinnacles in 10 seconds, it makes little difference.

"

Draegnarrr wrote:

borrowed power is exciting guys it won't go anywhere, for the record I agree with both of you but its a tried and true approach to keep players interested in seasonal content with the added bonus of being very low impact if you happen to go overboard.

They have like a skeleton staff working on PoE1 leagues now its just the best approach with the resources available.

its the sad fact, do they even have the authority to make league mechanics go core?

if we actually pay attention, after expedition, many league mechanics did not go core. after expedition onwards we have 7 leagues (not counting affliction), only 2 of them went core while the 3rd (TOTA) has some of their currency reappearing as rewards in affliction league.

poe2 definitely is taking away a lot of resources from poe1.

"

SilentSymphony wrote:

The resources from PoE1 which was supposed to create an expansion to it not destroy it.


I played since 2013 and was mostly a standard player but as you can see standard does not receive economically competitive options compared to the leagues which especially with this temporary power are actually making it even harder for standard players.

Its gotten so bad that i was forced to play the leagues to try to stay economically relevant and then came the wonderful savings-cleanse.

i share your sentiment. sometimes i post stuff like "make standard great again". standard really feels like an unwanted step child at this point.

its really sad to think that i would PREFER if GGG actually neglected standard, but they actually did not. THEY MADE IT WORST. alt quality jewels have been technically poofed, they could have made them legacy but nope. similarly some cluster jewel notables were changed retroactively, for example misery everlasting. it used to give despair curse effectiveness. now its something i dont care for.

GGG actually has a way to give players power without wrecking our STD gear, which is by reworks. they did so with many uniques. our gear in STD is still untouched but we are encouraged to update our gear with the newer version which may have better rolls.

as for STD economy, i would say its something that is inherent with STD. inflation happens. screaming invites are 1-2 invites per 1 divine? while on temp leagues it can go to 1:2-4 divines.

i know that the entire draw of STD is permanency and one of the draws of temp leagues are a fresh economy (hence we can earn more in leagues), but i feel that GGG really could go ahead and give us a reason to play STD.

but the current state of POE is its becoming exactly what you mentioned. playing temp leagues is the best way to fund your STD character.

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

I'm a bit confused: you take the term "borrowed power" and define it as related to its origins....and then you use the term in a completely different way to describe PoE? Then what was the point of the whole first half of your post?

I disagree with the "overall" aspect of your post, because PoE has done it both ways for an incredibly long time, and even NOW there are BOTH your definitions of "borrowed power" in standard.

Some of the MOST powerful items that exist in standard are items from leagues long past, and NOT the "latest" candy from the temp league. The most desirable mirrored gear in standard still today is from leagues like Synthesis (5 years ago). PoE has done it both ways in its long history. As long as there is a "standard" mode, in direct competition to league play, there will ALWAYS be things that become trash whether that happens immediately or over the course of a few leagues.

It is in the very nature of a league-based game design and there is absolutely no counter to this. If there wasn't at least a type of power creep in the league, the company would take a severe financial hit. Similarly, if things that ended up being TOO powerful end up in standard (*cough cough, Crucible, *cough), it will forever irreparably damage that mode. And then further still: when mechanics get outright removed (onslaught support, mana reservation, relics, watchstones), they get removed from ALL areas of the game likely to make room for something new down the road. Leagues are the focus.

If you want to make truly broken builds....you don't do it in a temporary league even with all its bells and whistles. You do it in Standard, where you have access to every broken mechanic ever invented in PoE's history. So what if a select few things went poof...far more has simply been kept and turned Standard into the wasteland that it currently is.

i brought up the term borrowed power and the origins so everyone knows what exactly the term is. after explaining it, i gave MY definition for the purpose of people understanding where I am coming from, and what I consider as borrowed power in POE. POE =/= WOW. the game genre is different and the nature of new content is also different, poe has temp leagues while wow has entire expansions. would it be fair for me to then say stuff like "POE is bad coz the item drops are not static like WOW"? you cant compare them side by side. and thus the definition CANNOT TRANSLATE directly to POE. in fact when i mentioned D4, D4's version of borrowed power is also different from WoW. if i do not lay out my definition of what is borrowed power, this entire post would be arguing "what is borrowed power" and my message would not go anywhere as everyone would be sidetracked giving their own version of borrowed power.

you yourself said you are confused about why i did that. people like you are exactly why i need to do that. in fact reading your post its clear to me we are not on the same page of what borrowed power is.

you gave 2 examples of what you considered as borrowed power. synthesis and crucible.

i ll quote myself for your benefit.

"

to me borrowed power is something that the devs actively take away from the player by the end of the league and the player has nothing to show for when the character returns to standard. most leagues do not have this characteristic and thus i would say most of poe leagues do not have borrowed power.

this is in my very first post. let see, so did ggg take away your awesome synthesis gear at the end of the league? it went to standard right?

so no synthesis is not borrowed power.

now lets take a look at crucible. did ggg take away all our crucible gear/trees at the end of the league? it went to standard right?

so no crucible is not borrowed power.

in fact if you apply this rule to all past GGG extra leagues only sanctum is the ONLY league where we got borrowed power.

did ggg take away all our sanctum gear at the end of the league? YES, sanctified relics got poofed.

temp league gear that improved player power has NEVER been taken away from players. UNTIL sanctum.

for you to say GGG has been doing so for many years is you making your own definition of borrowed power. based on my definition, it has only happened once and affliction looks like its going to be the second time.


borrowed power only effects standard players the most. borrowed powers do not effect temp league players as they will happily play with whatever the devs give them.

EDIT: i was realize i was being antagonistic to you in my original response and i m removing the antagonistic part.

i'll just say that we are not on the same page as you're using your own definition of borrowed power despite me highlighting my definition.

"

Lonnie455Rich wrote:

This was an enormous post so i didn't read it all. but.

I loved crucible trees, tattoos, and sanctified relics.

lol thanks for skimming and even participating. i m a proud owner of crucible trees. i have some tattoos bought on standard and i think theyre really good. as for sanctified relics, i love them too. quite a shame they got poofed.

"

exsea wrote:

Moving forward I will be extremely wary about new leagues as whatever i get from them could be poofed.

Surely “Whatever I get from the league could disappear" has always been true? That is an entirely healthy attitude: after all, the alternative is "I am going to kid myself into thinking everything is guaranteed to stay" which would actually guarantee nothing but eventual (or perhaps imminent) disappointment.

hoho cause graveyard league doesn't has it's own borrowed power in form of no longer existing items with legacy mods.

"

GusTheCrocodile wrote:

"

exsea wrote:

Moving forward I will be extremely wary about new leagues as whatever i get from them could be poofed.

Surely “Whatever I get from the league could disappear" has always been true? That is an entirely healthy attitude: after all, the alternative is "I am going to kid myself into thinking everything is guaranteed to stay" which would actually guarantee nothing but eventual (or perhaps imminent) disappointment.

sometimes i really have a lot of self doubt in my capability of writing things. i defined my definition of borrowed power in poe. i defined my definition of power in poe context and yet people still misunderstand me.

"

to me i define power as things that directly benefit a player's build. more defence/more dps/more mobility etc.

i have even given examples too.

and all you see is the negative aspect of " kid myself into thinking everything is guaranteed to stay"

get of your high horse. i am under no illusion that things would remain the way they are.

the entire purpose of a feedback forum is to give feedback. this is my feedback based of my experiences. i m glad that there are others that have chimed in rather than just take a swing at me.