Target farming the Content we wish to engage with

When I first heard Jonathan talking about how we could target farm content that appeals to us, I was genuinely excited. Breach has always been one of my favorite mechanics, so my plan going into Early Access was to kill a Breachlord—or its equivalent—as quickly as possible. I even hoped to be the first in my friend group to accomplish this feat.

I envisioned that if I focused my efforts on this content, I’d be able to achieve it in a reasonable timeframe. Unfortunately, that’s not how things have played out.

With 6 days, 5 hours, 1 minute, and 38 seconds of playtime, I’ve only managed to collect 181 Breach Splinters. I’m not a "god gamer" by any stretch, but I’ve only died a handful of times—none of which were in the last three days of play. My character is strong. I’ve been able to obliterate breaches as quickly as enemies appear, even before the recent breach nerfs. I pick up every splinter that drops and run every breach map I come across. I juice them all and have been running nothing but T15+ maps for the past several days.

By now, I’d expect to have gathered enough splinters to at least try the Breach content. But here I am, 6 days of focused farming later, with little over half a breachstone to show for it. And when I do finally get a shot at this content, I’m going in blind, which means there’s a good chance I’ll die to some unknown mechanic. That’s fine—dying to new mechanics is part of the game—but I’d expect to be able to engage with this content more than once every 10-12 days played.

This whole experience makes me question whether this content is only for Trade League players. When I hear “players can target the content they want,” I’m not imagining running one breach every five maps. I’m imagining something closer to the Breach League experience from Path of Exile 1, where maps had 3+ breaches, and with dedicated farming, you could get multiple breachstones in a single day.

The current system feels like a far cry from that. Everyone’s complaining about endgame accessibility, but for SSF players, it’s worse—there’s barely any endgame at all unless you’re willing to dedicate your entire life to this game. Once I’m back to my normal work schedule, I’m not going to be able to dump 6 days of playtime into a league. I’d still like to experience some of the unique content, but that’s starting to feel like a fantasy.

To add to the frustration, I’ve probably run over 300 maps by now and haven’t seen any of the pinnacle content. My map scan extends so far in every direction, yet I’ve found nothing. Maybe I’m just incredibly unlucky, but if that’s the case, it’s pretty disheartening.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.