Why Standard League is irrelevant, and why that's not good for PoE.

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gibbousmoon wrote:

But answer this one question: If you didn't already have friends playing Standard, and you wanted to create a new non-hardcore character, would you roll it in Standard? Why / Why not?

Id roll it in standard, if I roll a new character, its because I found a new bit of gear that allows me to make a cool new character.

The reason the majority of people, both casuals and die hard gamers alike play in standard is because, for them, theres no reason not to. The economy in PoE is actually ridiculously stable. Kaoms Heart was about 25ex, went up to 30ex, came back to down 25. Exalt was 30 chaos, went up to 50, now back at 30. I played anarchy for about 2 weeks, the economy was virtually the same. Shit uniques that go for 1 chaos if you are lucky were the same 3 days into anarchy as they are in standard right now. There were a few differences but on the whole it was just exactly the same thing with less items for sale. If you find most of your gear and dont really care to be a big time trader its the same thing.

Only thing new leagues present economically is an opportunity for people to make a lot of currency by being a big time trader whos ahead of the curve for the first week or so.

Hardcore would be awesome if it had the stability of offline play, it doesnt. People deal with this by logging out, I can log out in standard same way I can log out in HC, and I might as well be because logging out defeats the point of going HC. If you play HC without logging, good for you, you obviously have a very care free attitude to game playing and are totally fine with the possibly of dying because you were out of sync. I care too much, I would not be fine with that at all and I would not enjoy combating it by just over levelling myself at all points and not taking risks.

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ShaeG wrote:

I quit standard because nothing you get is worth anything. Everything will continue to decrease in value. There is no reward for playing.

thats not true at all, standard is a little bit more expensive for high end and a little bit cheaper for low end, but essentially its exactly the same thing. Prices of given things go up and down and up and down by trivial amounts like the kaoms example.

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ShaeG wrote:

There is no reward for playing. No risk. No sense of accomplishment. But regardless of my personal feelings and other HC players opinion on standard.. There is still a place for standard. Casual players....

not just casual players, also players who take playing very seriously and do not share your feeling that there is no reward, risk or sense of accomplishment. There are plenty of people who play hardcore casually and people who play standard very seriously.

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xanap wrote:

Hardcore leagues are irrelevant to me.

- desync

This is the single biggest impediment to me enjoying Hardcore Leagues and races. I'd venture that my rationale will follow for many other people, too, where if my character dies I want it to be a Demon's Souls death and not a Left 4 Dead 2 death, viz. the death needs to be due to my lack of skill and attention instead of bullshit beyond my control like a being unable to shoot a Jockey in the face because it's hitbox isn't where it's body actually is...even in Offline Single-Player. It seems to me that most players in Hardcore modes have to play with builds that are entirely too cautious and even then can lose everything due to something completely unforseeable while playing it as safe as possible and as skilfully as possible.

I believe that GGG is doing their part to optimise things and find solutions software-side to make desync less impactful on players trying to play with skill. Unfortunately, there are a number of solutions that GGG can take that can be abused and they want to minimise that abuse as much as possible. For example, a short grace period of invulnerability where both players and enemies cannot deal damage after a resync seems to me to be ideal but it can be used to gather and AoE-farm by less scrupulous individuals. It seems to me that GGG is very concerned with game balance and players succeeding based on their own merits, so any attempts at minimising the effects of desync are going to have to go through the above filters, viz. balancing how effective it will be for people that play fairly and how much of an impact it will have against them due to the people who play unfairly.

Still, I would very much like to play in Hardcore leagues and races once desync is handled better. Path of Exile is great fun to play and is really deep, if it was a client-side game with online co-op options I would definitely be playing Hardcore by default. But...yeah, it's not and I respect that decision. Until then I'll enjoy playing how I do and trying to minimise the number of deaths I have. So far I have two on my Duelist, one because I had to help a customer at work and another because I wasn't paying close enough attention to hit a potion through a strong DoT. Enter the dumbass: I thought it would wear off safely.

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Schn1tt3r wrote:

Also, have those failed overpowered uniques like Shavronne Soul Taker and Kaoms stay in Standard.

No. If those uniques are overpowered they need to be balanced. One of the worst things that happened with the new leagues was the exclusion of certain base types and uniques, which lead to less player choice and ultimate the supreme dominance of CI. And since there was no eye of chayula, every CI went to get unwavering stance. Know what this meant? Many many high end builds looked almost identical.

What if the guy who designed soul taker wants to play ladder leagues with each rotation? Is it fair to him for GGG to say "Look we messed up on the balance, so your unique will never drop where you play anymore." No that is crap, GGG should fix the unique to not be broken.

Alot of harmless uniques got caught up in the culling of onyx amulets and prismatic rings. If I was the guy who made thieves torment and I wanted to play in the new leagues, I'd be outraged.

I'm going to be upset if the new leagues after anarchy and onslaught don't drop all whole kit of items, especially the new rings and amulets that came with them. Gift's from above was one of the best made magic find items with a really cool effect. Shav's revelation and Voll's devotion opened up new build options.

For these to fade into dust would be a tragedy.

Personally I feel caught between two extreme options when it comes to permanent leagues.

On one hand, the cesspool league that is Standard, dumping ground of every other league.

On the other, Hardcore, which I wouldn't enjoy due to desync and the limitations of viable character builds that would be imposed on me there.

I'd just like a very challenging non-permadeath permanent league, and I wouldn't care if not a lot of people played it. :) I'll be curious how these custom leagues will work out, and their pricing.

I play standard and probably always will. Clearly, the Original Poster doesn't understand why. So I'll explain some of the reasons the best I can.


-When Anarchy league started, at least a few of my characters in standard weren't "done". I wasn't ready to "give up" on them. I wanted to keep progressing with them in term of gear and level. When the new ladder league replacing Anarchy will be released, I most likely will be in the same situation.

-I like to have all my characters and gear at the same place. If I started a new character in Anarchy, the new character wouldn't have access to all the gear I accumulated over the time I played standard (Charan called them toys, why not). So, not having access to my toys is penalizing. And I'm not a masochist. The opposite is also true : let's suppose my brand new Anarchy character gets a very nice item that would perfectly fit one of my standard characters... I'll have to wait several months before being able to transfer this item.

-I don't care about the "ladder" aspect of Anarchy. If I want to race, it will be in a short race, not a 6 months long race where I stand no chance at all (I work at least 40 hours a week).

-What I really like about PoE is trying out new builds and its much easier to do that when you have access to gear and currency. Again, I'm not a masochist.

-Onslaught and Anarchy new items are cool. But eventually, sooner (onslaught items) or later (Anarchy-only items), I'll have access to them. I'm not in such a hurry.

-So, what other reasons is there for people like me to play the new Ladder leagues ? Not many. The fun of starting fresh on a fresh economy ? Hmm, maybe, but I'm not convinced. When I start a new character, it feels fresh enough for me. And I'm pretty sure the fresh economy feeling doesn't last very long.

It's the developers fault for intentionally wanting to screw things/economies.
They should have 100% sticked religiously to this motto: an item never leaves the league that it dropped in.
Not dumping entire leagues into a "parent" or whatever league. Stupid and huuuge mistake that was done 100% intentionally by the makers of this game.

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mobutu wrote:

It's the developers fault for intentionally wanting to screw things/economies.
They should have 100% sticked religiously to this motto: an item never leaves the league that it dropped in.
Not dumping entire leagues into a "parent" or whatever league. Stupid and huuuge mistake that was done 100% intentionally by the makers of this game.

I can't say I agree. My beef with Standard's generic status is that it raises the cost of death in the hardcore modes (because everything gets dumped into a generic league, with no individuality outside of its status as a dumping ground).

If a hardcore character lost all his items upon death, per your suggestion, the cost of death would be even higher.

Perhaps you don't understand their reasoning: For a brand-new player who is intimidated by Hardcore, there is no reason *not* to create a Hardcore character. Everything can be moved into the Standard League at will, after all, including their character and everything they find. This makes Hardcore more accessible to casual players, which was GGG's intention.

Items entering Standard League from other sources should immediately gain the Mirrored status, preventing further alteration of them. (Even skill gems and uniques, both of which should be Mirror-able anyway.)

I think Standard will pick up more once proper PvP gets introduced. The fact that there are more items in the league means it'll be easier to gear dedicated PvP chars.

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mobutu wrote:

It's the developers fault for intentionally wanting to screw things/economies.
They should have 100% sticked religiously to this motto: an item never leaves the league that it dropped in.
Not dumping entire leagues into a "parent" or whatever league. Stupid and huuuge mistake that was done 100% intentionally by the makers of this game.

i disagree, I love the parent league system. I play standard almost exclusively and there is absolutely no problem with the influx of hc gear, it has no real effect on things. This is evident by prices in anarchy being almost identical to standard despite no influx.

There is nothing wrong with standards economy, its one of the most stable economies ever seen in an ARPG.