Important Reminder: Designing Meaningful Challenges in PoE2

In the upcoming Path of Exile 2 "league?", GGG should carefully consider the design of challenges to ensure that they can only be accomplished through individual effort, rather than through carry runs like in PoE1. Carry runs have numerous negative effects on the game:

Undermines Player Achievement:
When players rely on carries to complete challenges or difficult content, it diminishes their personal sense of accomplishment.
The challenge system should reward skill and perseverance, not just financial investment and bank of a player for carry runs.

Skews Progression:
Players who can afford to buy carries skip content, bypassing essential skill development. This creates an imbalanced progression where some players never truly experience the challenges of the game, OR get any better at this game.

Disrupts Game Balance:
Carry runs often result carry specific characters being rushed through content, making the game less challenging for those who play the content as intended. This reduces long-term engagement and dilutes the difficulty of the game.

Rewards Lose Their Value:
When challenges can be completed through carries, the rewards tied to them lose significance. Players who did earn them themselves feel less rewarded, and those who buy carries get the same rewards without any personal effort.

To address these issues and improve the long-term health of the game, GGG could take several steps:

Design Self-Sufficient Challenges:
Create challenges that require personal input and skill. These could include tasks that are impossible to complete through carries, such as completing specific feats solo or overcoming complex mechanics that demand strategic thinking and execution.

Make Carry Runs Less Effective:
Adjust the mechanics so that certain challenge milestones or content cannot be bypassed through carry runs. For example, players could be required to meet specific skill or gear requirements on their own to advance, ensuring that carry runs are less effective or non existent at achieving progress.

By designing challenges this way, GGG would also add long-term viability to each league. Players wouldn’t be able to simply speed-run through challenges to buy MTX rewards, which would extend the life of the league. As a result, players would engage with content for longer periods, to achieve personal milestones instead of paying others to bypass a specific task.

Additionally, this approach would encourage typical suspects who rely just on carry runs. Instead of simply throwing currency at a challenge to skip over a skill or gear check, they’d be motivated or forced to learn and grow in order to complete challenges on their own. This creates a more engaging and rewarding experience for everyone, where rewards are earned through dedication and personal achievement, rather than financial shortcuts.

You have one Job GGG!

Do you really think that "carries" are an issue?
I mean, I get the point of "then the challenges are less of an accomplishment because you can buy a service", but some else needs to be able to carry it in the first place. Regarding "challenges", they are just an encouragement, but don't affect anything in the game itself.
While removing carry runs hurts ppl who offer them.

And sure, I could be biased as someone who offered "boss services", but at least from my experience, most ppl I helped were able to kill these bosses later themselves because I offered them good advice.

I kind of agree with OP, in trade league the existence of a carry does undermine the challenge. Like in POE1 ppl who hit 100 in trade just means you had x divines after 5-ways set up shop, unless proven otherwise.

But just like in real life people with $$$ get all manners of shortcuts to good stuff and POE tries to emulate this dynamic in their games because it makes them more successful.

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JakkerONAIR#4902 wrote:

Do you really think that "carries" are an issue?

Not really, more symptom than the cause which is GGG creating ridiculously gimmicky challenges that are not achievable via regular gameplay so people get a carry to skip all of the nonsense and honestly, can't really fault anyone doing so.

Few basic challenges and then a too long list of conditional bullcrap or excessive grind-a-thons and since i doubt they will do better with this game, i expect this trend to continue.

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LordMordeth#6639 wrote:

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JakkerONAIR#4902 wrote:

Do you really think that "carries" are an issue?

Not really, more symptom than the cause which is GGG creating ridiculously gimmicky challenges that are not achievable via regular gameplay so people get a carry to skip all of the nonsense and honestly, can't really fault anyone doing so.

Few basic challenges and then a too long list of conditional bullcrap or excessive grind-a-thons and since i doubt they will do better with this game, i expect this trend to continue.

Hm... idk... I normally get around 25 without even looking at the challenges.
I guess they are hard to achieve for someone new to the game, but isn't that the point? Personally, I wouldn't mind if they were super easy, but then they wouldn't be a long-term activity for ppl anymore.

My first coin I just lost. Think that was around lv40. Did not really knew what was the issue.
With the second coin I figured my ssf gear is way too bad. I dropped the next coin and kept it for 10lv. Tried again and failed at the temporal. Skill/knowledge issue. Another try and I just esc saved the boss fight and finally made it. But researched the boss before. Researched and did Arbiter too around that time for the first time without second ascendency. Only two bosses I did not figure out alone. Second ascendency was lv92, if I recall that correct. At that point ascendency felt like getting a real good weapon upgrade during the campange but not the one game changing upgrade, I was hoping for at lv60, if it is even then and meant to be. To be fair, at that point I already bought a bunch of really good rares. Them gave me that big spike in power earlier. I did not research what is like the lowest possible or best lv range to do it. For me it felt a bit late. Might be my issue, though.

I've been playing since Open Beta and we could do 36 challenges by ourselves originally we just had to grind away but as the game has progressed and end game has become harder and harder if I didn't work with friends none of us would get to 36 challenges to get our last free MTX, its still hard to achieve even as a group of 2 or 3.

I'd prefer the challenges to also be about the current league more too.

I got carried on my 4th ascendency because the 3rd one was just more annoying than fun. I had no interest in even trying the 4th. The fun came after when I was able to use my ascendency points. I play games for fun