Popular Opinion: In 3.29 League Challenges Should Require Solo Completion and Overhauls

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

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TayPoE#6379 wrote:

Challenges are not as important as a great core game.

Challenges form an integral part of the game core content for each league. As such, providing a compelling and polished experience for challenges is just as important as ensuring the core game, much of which is also optional, delivers a satisfying experience.

Both therefore hold equal significance. While overhauling the challenge system represents a relatively modest undertaking requiring less effort, a comprehensive revamp of the endgame also demands minimal work beyond a few scarab adjustments to enable a broader range of strategies, along with the introduction of fresh content that naturally accompanies each league.
Consequently, integrating improvements to both systems is entirely feasible.

Maybe in a different world they are equal. Doe in this one I prefer having a good game first.

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TayPoE#6379 wrote:

Maybe in a different world they are equal. Doe in this one I prefer having a good game first.

Fortunately, we’re living in a world where both matter. A great game draws people in, but presentation and polish complete the experience and help it reach a wider audience.

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

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TayPoE#6379 wrote:

Maybe in a different world they are equal. Doe in this one I prefer having a good game first.

Fortunately, we’re living in a world where both matter. A great game draws people in, but presentation and polish complete the experience and help it reach a wider audience.

I mean its nothing more than your opinion really.

bump for 3.29!

Not sure the OP is stating a popular opinion but I am sure the concept in the title is actually impossible to achieve short of only counting SSF league challenges.

I would expect based on the relative rarity of big glowing "40"'s on forum avatars that a vanishingly small subset of the games players give any shits at all about challenges.

Personally I'm in that subset that only cares when the leagues a banger and there's actually a cool MTX (which is almost never) the one and only time I've ever opened the H screen more than once in a league or out of curiosity was Legion league where the MTX looked neat enough to make me pay attention.

That said I completely get that 40/40 outcome oriented gamers find this to be more important to the point of perhaps exclusion of any other motivating factor. I think it would be fun if GGG made this system more interesting, and expanded the MTX and quality of them at least a little.

But yeah it would have to be SSF exclusive because lets face it, it means precious little when you can just crowd source them with ease. Spending a bunch of Dev time revamping and redesigning things that players can just trivially bypass by selling or sharing doesn't seem like the best use of their time.

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alhazred70#2994 wrote:

But yeah it would have to be SSF exclusive because lets face it, it means precious little when you can just crowd source them with ease. Spending a bunch of Dev time revamping and redesigning things that players can just trivially bypass by selling or sharing doesn't seem like the best use of their time.

It would absolutely be possible in Trade League. All it really takes is careful wording, clear completion conditions, and thoughtful choices about what kinds of fun challenges are offered.

Remove challenges that require buying rare currency or decade-old chore bloat, and you’d end up with genuinely fun challenges. Then add the important part, those fun challenges shouldn’t be bypassed or outsourced through carries.

Trade League will always have trading, sure, but item trades being a thing won’t carry players through those challenges on its own. Actual carry runs, on the other hand, simply outsource the process entirely.

It’s a good way to maintain meaningful challenges in every mode without pushing players into SSF if they want access to challenge rewards.

You could give a player a 200 Divine budget build and they still might not be able to complete the challenges themselves, and that’s exactly how it should be. Challenges should be designed around character and player progression, not around the ability to outsource them in cases where a player is unable to face the challenge or content themselves.

If someone can’t complete them even with a 200 Divine build, that can happen for many reasons, bad currency investment, poor build optimization, bad choices, or simply bad gameplay. That’s part of the progression and learning process.

Cutting away those shortcuts while doubling down on fun challenges would be a win-win for every game mode, and honestly something that feels necessary for 3.29 if the goal is to improve long-term engagement of leagues and for players who care about completing challenges.

No offense but you keep acting like its trivial to exclude buying carrying and sharing completions in a trade league.

I mean:

"Then add the important part, those fun challenges shouldn’t be bypassed or outsourced through carries."

after this you don't specify how they should or could do that. I would quote the whole thing but I'm trying to keep it brief. And nothing that comes after that sentence indicates how.

Its like me asserting that we should all fly off to the next solar system to explore it and "the important part is we use faster than light travel" but then ignore that's not currently a thing and indeed might actually be impossible, physically or practically impossible I mean.

Don't get me wrong I can think of some ways given unlimited resources and some cutting edge AI ... but then that same AI can just be used to get those challenges.

Spending large amounts of Dev time trying to invent a system to make a small subset of challenge collectors happy and then its basically going to be circumvented by the next most convenient way to circumvent it.

Right now its global 820 sharing, rotas and buying carries. In short order it will be telling your agentic AI to do them.

BTW I'm arguing; but I'm not against making this system more cool. I just think we need to keep it in perspective. Also the new league challenges post has a line about their intent to look at challenges and rewards for next league which is cool.

My only issue on the GGG side is the rewards are almost always lame, my other issue which isn't about GGG but instead the "meta" is that they aren't really a token of real legit accomplishment, because they can be bought very easily with minimal effort or investment. and I would rather they be more legit and less easy to just crowd source... but thats basically impossible.

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alhazred70#2994 wrote:

after this you don't specify how they should or could do that. I would quote the whole thing but I'm trying to keep it brief. And nothing that comes after that sentence indicates how.

This point had already been brought up several pages earlier. Adding simple conditions such as requiring that no more than one player has entered an instance would immediately eliminate carry runs. Consider a challenge tied to a boss fight. With a straightforward condition like that in place, it can no longer be trivialized or cheesed.

In other words, the solution is neither complicated nor difficult to implement. Just as easily, the weaker and more tedious challenges could be removed and replaced with ones that are actually engaging. Over the years we have seen genuinely good challenge design from time to time, which clearly shows that GGG is more than capable of creating challenges that feel fun rather than obligatory.

Instead, we still end up with objectives that feel strangely outdated. Things like completing an obscure Act 1 side quest that nobody cares about in 2026. With the addition of gold enabling respecs, those quests have effectively lost the small bit of relevance they once had. Even before the gold-respec era, they were already borderline obsolete, since the game throws out regrets so frequently and cheaply that the passive refund points from side quests barely mattered.

Then there are challenges like vendoring an exalted shard, which feels like a relic from the era when influenced items were first introduced and Harbinger League was the big new innovation that added a flood of bubblegum currency to the game. No offense, but I am honestly glad that most of that clutter has finally been removed over time, because it really highlights just how outdated and obsolete much of it had become. It is just a shame that exalted shards themselves were not removed along with it.

At this point it feels like the same old chore is likely to return again in 3.28, because apparently vendoring an exalted shard is something we have not done enough times already. And the same goes for other dated objectives like vendoring random life flasks. They do not add meaningful gameplay, they are not interesting, and they certainly are not fun. Instead of feeling like real challenges, they come across as routine boxes players feel obligated to tick every league. Those slots could easily be replaced with objectives that actually reflect the modern state of the game and provide something engaging rather than busywork.

So yes, the challenges feel thoroughly stuck in the past and are long overdue for meaningful updates on multiple fronts. The game could benefit not only from more engaging and thoughtfully designed challenges, but also from conditions that eliminate trivial exploits or cheese strategies. This would not only strengthen the integrity of each league, but also enhance its longevity, ensuring that content remains compelling and rewarding rather than repetitive or perfunctory.