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

I almost exclusively play standard.

You learn to do one or a mixture of three things:

1: You create a gear build so utterly, brokenly obnoxious that there is literally no possible way for GGG to nerf it, at a cost of about 2-5 mirrors per gear slot. (Including, and probably ESPECIALLY the jewels).

2: You make cheap characters relying on intricate mechanics that can do what you want, but with the understanding that they will be ruined by quarterly balance changes. Barebones, no love, minimum energy to get the job done. No bells, no whistles.

3: You just make your fun little characters, with weird and off meta skills, tinker with them, and accept they will never be really capable of the hard content. Mess around, play, but much like restoring a 52 Packard, you don't expect much from them.

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Ultimately, option 2 is the most work, since you will eternally find yourself on a grinding treadmill of replacing medium-cost characters and equipment. But, unless you really abuse the markets, it's probably necessary until you can afford option 1.

I'm a three guy, but I turned real money into in-game currency by purchasing an absurd number of stash tabs, currency flipping and standard market speculation.

Once PoE 2 comes out, I'll try option 1, since there will be fewer balance patches in PoE 1.

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I'm not saying I like the system - I'd preferer things be a bit more static - but it is what it is.

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Sabranic_SilverDeth wrote:

I almost exclusively play standard.

You learn to do one or a mixture of three things:

1: You create a gear build so utterly, brokenly obnoxious that there is literally no possible way for GGG to nerf it, at a cost of about 2-5 mirrors per gear slot. (Including, and probably ESPECIALLY the jewels).

2: You make cheap characters relying on intricate mechanics that can do what you want, but with the understanding that they will be ruined by quarterly balance changes. Barebones, no love, minimum energy to get the job done. No bells, no whistles.

3: You just make your fun little characters, with weird and off meta skills, tinker with them, and accept they will never be really capable of the hard content. Mess around, play, but much like restoring a 52 Packard, you don't expect much from them.

____________________________________________

Ultimately, option 2 is the most work, since you will eternally find yourself on a grinding treadmill of replacing medium-cost characters and equipment. But, unless you really abuse the markets, it's probably necessary until you can afford option 1.

I'm a three guy, but I turned real money into in-game currency by purchasing an absurd number of stash tabs, currency flipping and standard market speculation.

Once PoE 2 comes out, I'll try option 1, since there will be fewer balance patches in PoE 1.

____________________________

I'm not saying I like the system - I'd preferer things be a bit more static - but it is what it is.

Excellent post, I would wish for consistency, if you're going to murder meta skills do it every 3 months not just sometimes. If you're going to try and leave them useful don't disembowl them. So like reducing 600% totem explode to... 30%.. hey great but why not just delete the mod completely? why leave it at 30%? I can't care about that build but I'd bet someone would have happilly kept playing it at oh... 100% or so but someone left it as a "fuck you" value a middle finger to the players who might have enjoyed a reasonably powered version of that goofy build. it was not even that good, it was just numerically powerful.

It suggests to me they're completely in the dark about their own games math bounding tbh (both numbers).

If your going to subtly balance them over time with smaller nudges do it CONSISTENTLY every 3 months and use actual objective metrics and player surveys (Last EPoch is doing player surveys so they aren't just listening to the .0001%) and actually find out where those skills are actually at. Use available tools like POE Ninja.

Even better have OpenArl code up a in house version of PoB that randomly samples all builds and spits out a list of the most woeful but legit builds and the most busted.

i am hoping with poe2 landing we can eventually see a bit more stability in poe1 too.

Setting aside the extremely bad faith portrayal that GGG should keep neglecting standard because temp leagues have been more successful and thus GGG should ignore the feedback of those people who want leagues and items to have more permanence: Borrowed power doesn't need a standard based argument to be bad for the games long term health. Ignore standard completely Borrowed power is still just a bad idea.

Borrowed power makes leagues disposable content that doesn't pertain to the future direction of the game (the Next leagues) any more.

Therefore new temp leagues are less important, they're no longer the games "future direction" they're just one-off throw away content.

So its easier to ignore temp leagues. Its not a big deal because I'm no longer learning new things that will be a potential part of the game in the future, I'm no longer experiencing bosses that might become rare and harder to practice, I'm no longer theorycrafting strats or build crafting characters that might be relevant to the core game in future leagues. Things that are in leagues are now "dead end" in terms of future builds.

I may skip temp leagues now with vastly less "FOMO" and because they are borrowed power I am LESS EXCITED FOR THEM BECAUSE THEY MATTER LESS.

POE becomes more transitory and temporary as a whole... the game is lighter weight and matters a little less as a whole. The exact same "weight" mechanic they use to make you care about the games loot, they are throwing away and actively eroding with Borrowed Power.