[PoE2] Suggestion: Expired League Characters should not Merge into Standard.

^its not just the split of the playerbase....its also a considerable loss of money for the company. They have every possible incentive to "force" players to play the temporary leagues in order for them to make money. It would simply be bad business and run counter to the entire reason for temporary leagues, for all that content to be available in the permanent realm.

It is fairly well known in games that are designed in league format that the most earning is done in the first week or few weeks of a new league, and that the players that start fresh are the ones more likely to spend buku bucks. The driver of that impetus to buy is the knowledge that everyone is starting fresh, as if the game is "new" again. Psychologically and financially, that is simply not true of standard-only players regardless of "new" content releases.

It's a valid idea but frankly I hate it.

Disagree

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

^its not just the split of the playerbase....its also a considerable loss of money for the company. They have every possible incentive to "force" players to play the temporary leagues in order for them to make money. It would simply be bad business and run counter to the entire reason for temporary leagues, for all that content to be available in the permanent realm.

It is fairly well known in games that are designed in league format that the most earning is done in the first week or few weeks of a new league, and that the players that start fresh are the ones more likely to spend buku bucks. The driver of that impetus to buy is the knowledge that everyone is starting fresh, as if the game is "new" again. Psychologically and financially, that is simply not true of standard-only players regardless of "new" content releases.

ok lets put the 2 scenarios side by side.

1. how it currently is, players like me ignore poe1 entirely, skipping both standard AND temp league. entire failure to force players like me to even engage with POE1

2. leagues are implemented like LE cycles. players like me who would have not touched poe at all, at least return back to standard.

which of the 2 scenarios would be more of a loss for the company?

As an additional optional type of permanent league? Okay...

As the default permanent league? Fuck no.

Tbh I think the biggest missed opportunity for GGG to innovate lays in making permanent leagues an asset with its own ecology for players who have less time and more need to slow burn the game.

I would love to see the standard league get new league content temporarily 1 month after a new league. Why?

Because personally I am bored of starting over; I become exhausted and burned out by low red maps almost every new league it would be nice if the slow burn way to play the game wasn't a completely ignored red headed step child.

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SilentSymphony#3358 wrote:

Standard is more alive than hardcore, Should hardcore go SSF?



But back on the topic, As long as they keep completely broken items from transferring out of the leagues (unmodified) i think its fine as is.

Hardcore could go to it's own hardcore ssf after the end of a league, or to standard ssf upon a death.

Not having the option to "import" anything into standard via HC death or end of league transfer would in fact really benefit the economy and balance of standard.
But I can see that there would be a fomo uproar coming from the few standard players getting all upset that they don't get the latest league stuff if let's say a league mechanic doesn't go core but allowed the creation of stupid insane items.

So there isn't really a right choice in the end and standard is always going to stick in this awkward situation of little upsides and plenty downsides.
Like even playing standard ssf would be a better pick for a "casual" as you could just enjoy the game on your own pace and don't have to deal with the very messed up market situation and lack of players.

I agree with the OP, and have had similar thoughts over the years. I also think that this is an important subject...that is, the relationship between leagues and Standard...at this point in time.

While currency influx is an economy destabilizer, I am far more concerned with overall long-term balance destabilization inherent in "legacy" items and how those items can create a condition of ever-increasing difficulty with respect to game-balance efforts (eventually rendering game-balance impossible, when following the age-old status quo of GGG rarely-if-ever touching finished items).

This is a subject to which, in terms of my personal preference at least, GGG should give due and careful consideration.

Leagues are great. More often than not, I spend a substantial amount of time playing in the current league. That said, like alhazred70, I also tend toward being slow-burner. More significantly, like the OP, I am a "long-gamer" in that I enjoy building things, developing them, chiseling them ever-closer to perfection over time. This leads me to prefer playing on Standard, where I don't feel the manic pressure to build up a character in a competitive economy only to watch all of that progress disappear as part of the league cycle.

While most players don't like the idea of their items disappearing or being modified in connection with long-term game balance, I suspect that a hard look at revising the parallel stance that has been long-held by GGG would be in the interest in the long-term health of the "permanent" league. I'm not suggesting an about-face; I am suggesting that in a constantly-evolving (and extremely complex) system, such as that of Path of Exile, small things...single variables...can have an extreme impact on the overall environment...and items with mods or mod values that compromise the ability to achieve overall game balance should be fair game for modification or archiving / deletion. Furthermore, that extends to items which are already present in Standard, and not just to items that might or might not transition to Standard from league.

For those interested in a detailed (and probably nerdy) strategy with the aim of "balancing" legacy items, read on...

It would be quite possible (in most cases) for legacy items that are deemed too disruptive to balance to be modified in such a way that they still offer an edge without being game-breaking. This would require a few more value (variable) entries for each of those items to be recorded in the database, as follows:

1) All mods of a particular legacy item, inclusive of each respective value; This is important.
2) The full list of mods and mod values for all historic versions of the item.
3) The mods and mod values of the current version of the item.
4) All mods of the particular legacy item, after having been subjected to game-balance modification which are based on the original mod values of that particular item and current-version mods and mod-value ranges; These are the effective mod values of the legacy item in the game, with example calculations below.

Whenever live-game variable values are considered, they are considered (or should be) with a margin for safety / error. Legacy item mod values could exist outside the range of currently-available values for mod rolls, and within the range of the safety margin, rendering them superior to current items without being game-breaking.

Example:

- Life Mod x adds life in the range of 250-400.
- 1 year later, Life Mod x is reevaluated and reassigned a range of 250-350.
- It is later deemed that Life Mod x can only have a safe range of 200-300, due to developments within the game, over time, with a 10% safety margin (i.e., a max value of 330 would be alright without causing much, if any, problem).

Legacy items could be analyzed with respect to their original mod values compared to the highest-ever value available for that item and the current maximum mod value. If (and only if) an original value is higher than the current maximum, the formula for the modified value would be: A + ((B - A)*(D - A)/(C - A)), where A is the current maximum value, B is the particular item's original mod value, C is the highest-ever mod value for any version of the item, and D is the top value inclusive of the safety margin.

Example item, as above:

A = 300
B = 390 (legacy item's original mod roll)
C = 400 (item-type's highest-ever possible roll)
D = 330

Effective mod roll for this particular legacy item with an original roll of 390, modified for current game balance is:
300 + ((390 - 300) * (330 - 300) / (400 - 300)) = 327

This strategy would ensure that each legacy item with an elevated mod roll would have its mod value consistent with its position within the hierarchy of historical value ranges, with a mod value that is higher than the current maximum roll, yet still within a reasonable range that is not game-breaking.

Unique legacy mods which are removed entirely from the current item version (because they are too disruptive to balance) would likely need to be removed from the live legacy item, but would still be recorded on the item in the database in case that mod were to be restored on the current item version in future (in which case it would be restored on the live legacy item as well).

This would only work for some items, of course. Some items simply need to be removed from the game if their existence is too disruptive to game balance as a whole. In the case of non-consumable items that are removed, there should be a view-only stash tab where a player can see the item they once had, and from which it could be restored in the rare case that it be later returned as a live item within the game.

What about making league items account-bound while still allowing players to use and craft them?

As someone who spent 95% of time just playing in Standard from 2013 to 2021, the inflow of league items didn't bother me. Not sure what happened in the last 3 years though as I quit POE when they did the exalt and divine switch.


I'm back here for POE2 though. Ultimately, new items coming into Standard never bothered me because you could eventually afford every item if you played the game enough. So it was just a matter of how many hours you spent playing the game. If you play more than 90% of others you should be able to get everything. That's how economies work. You just need to be in the top 10% richest and you're fine. And in POE, time spent = wealth.



In POE2 I'll most likely also just play the first league or two and then stick permanently to Standard where I can just focus on min-maxing all my gear instead of restarting every 3 months.

I really like the fact that you can still have a lot of the crazy stuff in standard league. The moment they changed the game from "standard=main game" to "standard=league dumpster" standard became a crazy place and I hated the change with a passion. Now aka MANY years later I can enjoy standard for what it is now. You want to build a REAL tank, np in standard, you think 100 mil dps is way to low? NP, standard has what you want. You want a REAL mf char, sure standard can do that for you. And the list goes on and on and on. The only bad thing about standard is that it is completely unplayable for new players because every single godlike item is soooooo darn expensive that even things like a mageblood look like cheap vendor trash compared to those.

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Pashid#4643 wrote:

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SilentSymphony#3358 wrote:

Standard is more alive than hardcore, Should hardcore go SSF?



But back on the topic, As long as they keep completely broken items from transferring out of the leagues (unmodified) i think its fine as is.

Hardcore could go to it's own hardcore ssf after the end of a league, or to standard ssf upon a death.

Not having the option to "import" anything into standard via HC death or end of league transfer would in fact really benefit the economy and balance of standard.
But I can see that there would be a fomo uproar coming from the few standard players getting all upset that they don't get the latest league stuff if let's say a league mechanic doesn't go core but allowed the creation of stupid insane items.

So there isn't really a right choice in the end and standard is always going to stick in this awkward situation of little upsides and plenty downsides.
Like even playing standard ssf would be a better pick for a "casual" as you could just enjoy the game on your own pace and don't have to deal with the very messed up market situation and lack of players.

Wow, Im surprised to see you somewhat aligned with my views on how hardcore and standard should interact with each other even if its not exactly the same idea the general concept of trying to keep the system healthy is there, If im not mistaken we've disagreed quite a bit on this topic in past years.

My only complaint about hardcore was that they could sell items from the temp-league 3-4 months ahead of the actual standard players, As a standard player for a long time i really don't care if hardcore players can go there or all their stuff ends up there, just so long as its fair.

Side note one of my lingering hopes will always be that hardcore-league transfers to standard-league to increase hardcore engagement and through people trying it raise the permanent population in a much more organic manner for the players who want to try it and those who don't like it can continue on in the normal standard-league after they die.