Keeping up with Gold single handedly ruins the game for me

This league, for the first time ever, I find myself not having any fun playing PoE, and I believe I've finally put a finger on why.

Usually I allocate most of my free time at home to playing PoE, and I'm more than happy to do it. However, the need to constantly acquire Gold in order to keep Kingsmarch running shifts my perception of the game. It imposes a quota I feel like I have to meet, and even though I wouldn't have any problems meeting and easily exceeding this quota in any other league, it being explicitly laid out in front of me kills my drive. Psychologically, playing the game transforms from desire to obligation.
To keep it blunt and short; it reminds me of gacha games. The ones that condition your brain into thinking there is no greater sin than missing your daily quests.

I'm aware that it's not in any way mandatory to keep Kingsmarch running 24/7 to just play the game. I realize that my problem is entirely in my head. I'm not looking for advice on how to deal with this myself. I am simply sharing my feelings, and pleading for the implementation of such systems to be handled with great care and consideration in the future.

Just for statistical data could you provide how many workers you have active on your various jobs?

I really like this patch so i hope we can keep it.

people complaining about gold costs must run like 5 maps and afk for an hr

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Rextec wrote:

people complaining about gold costs must run like 5 maps and afk for an hr

It's possible, but I've found from trying to help people where I can that a LOT of people - like, a crazy number of people, even those who are very very good at the game - are simply running incredibly inefficient settlements because they don't understand the way that worker upkeep works and they never bother actually figuring out how many of X job they need.

Even if you run everything in at once you're going to over sustain gold at some part to the point that you can just log of for a day or two, return, do a few maps and go offline again.
But sure it does require a bit more work than just doing one or two maps

I don't get it. Did you try to run maps and no stall?

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SilentSymphony wrote:

Just for statistical data could you provide how many workers you have active on your various jobs?

I really like this patch so i hope we can keep it.

I will not provide ranks as it is completely irrelevant to my point. Please understand that it is not the gold numbers or the league mechanic rewards that I take issue with. It's what the usage of gold does to my brain that I don't like.
We could be getting ten times as much gold as we are now, and needing to spend half as much as we do. The principle remains the same.

I understand that this might seem strange and that I'm in the minority here. If this is what people and GGG like, then so be it. I'm just one guy, and I sincerely hope that everyone who is enjoying the league continues to do so to the fullest.

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate wrote:

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Rextec wrote:

people complaining about gold costs must run like 5 maps and afk for an hr

It's possible, but I've found from trying to help people where I can that a LOT of people - like, a crazy number of people, even those who are very very good at the game - are simply running incredibly inefficient settlements because they don't understand the way that worker upkeep works and they never bother actually figuring out how many of X job they need.

yeah that's true too

In my opinion the larger issue us that GGG decided some content doesn't generate gold.

So that is going to inherently create a portion of the playerbase that has significant gold issues.

Being that, gold gains are very inconsistent. I tried running maps with no atlas tree going to get insights into things and there wasn't really a noticeable difference for the mechanics I chose.

I think GGG is going to end up buffing drops in general, but especially gold.

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Dxt44 wrote:

I don't get it. Did you try to run maps and no stall?

lol

this is the in game equivalent to a rich person not understanding a poor man's conundrum.

different people have different amounts of time and skill level to play the game.

i myself love this new league to bits but i can see where it starts failing.

as you get more "better hires" your costs increases and it increases EXPONENTIALLY.

this by itself is NOT BAD. the problem is, the concept is "ALWAYS GOING UP". newer players may find themselves fucked where their costs become too high.

of course there are 2 solutions

1. halt production and farm gold
2. replace your hires with cheaper ones

for the first, its actually the CORRECT solution. but we live in a FOMO society where stopping progress entirely is a feels bad moment. on one hand you have zero progress. on another you feel like you owe money and have to constantly pay it off for no progress.

for the second, ggg doesnt help facilitate this too well. rerolling for hires increases the costs of rerolling. the concept is to alway improve and never downgrade. but with the exponential costs, a newer player may feel that they can not blast end game content enough despite having upgraded a lot of things as his upkeep can be quite high.

also a feels bad moment.

in both it feels bad.

there is a solution ggg can introduce. a work efficiency slider. or just make 3 options. minimal, balanced. maxed. maxed is how it currently is. minimal can have everyone working with level 1 pay but also with level 1 output.

anyway, to elaborate on what i mentioned earlier. richmen not understanding the poor.

it all boils down to utilities/upkeep and QoL. a good pair of shoes is worth the money, can last for 5 years or even 10. costs maybe triple or quintuple of a "cheap" variant. a poor folk may need shoes, but can only afford the cheap variant despite knowing of the better alternative. ends up they have to replace their shoes every few months, which can cost more over time as they keep buying cheap shoes over an over again.

this problem applies to many aspects of their lives. they buy crappy car because they can only afford a crappy car. but end up spending a lot fixing the car. they buy cheap food that can be high on sodium and end up having bad health over the long run.

give the same money to a poor folk and a rich dude. the rich dude can use the money for many things as his bases are covered. having good qol helps a huge lot. while the poor folk would end up spending the money to pay their debts or fixing stuff they need fixing.

this is echo'd in settler's. if you dont earn enough, if you're "not there yet" you end up having to spend whatever you earn, just to pay for the upkeep. the upgrades may seem a mountain to climb.

this is a prevalent issue with how poe scales it's content. it becomes more pronounced in settlers. if you dont hit a threshold, the game will feel very bad.

but if you do the game is so much fun.

i still love settlers, tho i see that it is very "casual/newbie" unfriendly as it has many traps. if you dont study the mechanic properly you may find yourself loathing the mechanic. i gotta admit that usually on weekdays, i tell myself. "i m here to just earn to get enough gold to pay for the day". not to spend on upgrades. i only do that on the weekends. its week 2 now and so far i ve only upgraded 3 things to level 11. i m pretty sure more efficient players have maxed out much earlier. i have friends who havent even maxed anything out.

also. due to how the game loop heavily focuses on mapping, it also makes players forced just map.

for sure there is always a choice. feels bad tho.