Popular Opinion: League Challenges Should Require Solo Completion

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voldert#1616 wrote:

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exsea#1724 wrote:

and despite it being a compromise, players will definitely feel its a lesser totem more than an alternative.

You can have only one: either an aspirational content, or participation trophies. You can't please everyone.

+100

this is why this compromise probably wont work

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SilentSymphony#3358 wrote:

The challenge system was created to increase player retention during leagues.

Is all the people who would quit over this worth some imaginary victory?

its the norm now. its very hard to change the challenge system to solo only without alienating the poe loyalists who have played for years and been getting 40/40 for collection purposes.

if its difficult for them to get it they might just outright not play leagues.

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exsea#1724 wrote:

for me personally the counter point is getting 36/40 challenges is usually doable for all "decent enough" builds.

if mtx rewards is the goal. most players should be able to get it.

i do understand grinding is boring. which is why i normally never aim for 40/40 in leagues. but in all honesty, whats the point of hitting 40/40 if you bought carries? its stolen valor.

the main gist of this thread is to give back value to challenges. and if you're equating challenges as "boring things", then the persons shouldnt deserve the rewards.

i farmed 200ish divines to buy a mageblood. farmed 100 ish divines for an original sin. i put in the hours i get rewarded.

mtx is the same.

anyone played monster hunter freedom unite 2? in the game theres a training dojo where the challenge is killing a monster using preset gears and on one try. i cleared the entire dojo. for my efforts i got the sword saint piercing. whenever i played, people who saw me have that knew what i went thru.

a badge of honour. challenges should be badges of honour. as it is now, its just for show.

ironically, it really is just for show. they give no ingame advantage. also if it was such a big deal, theres so many mtx's being sold that players can forgo the boring bits and just buy cool looking mtx directly.

so i gotta disagree with the notion of "let players play how they want". to a certain extent i do prefer to let players play how they want. but not for these badges of honour.

and i ll emphasize that 36/40 challenges are usually doable by most people.

I never said it wasn't doable. Challenges aren't hard. Even the ones that were "hard" in the past could easily be trivialized/cheesed by a 50c build or skill or something else that someone cleverly found. It has always been like this in POE. The game is way too vast to control.

I can't speak for other people, but my free time is valuable to me because I don't have a lot of it. I used to be a grinder too, years back, but I since learned the golden rule of gaming - if I spend more than a few hours playing a game and not having fun, I will drop the game. No questions asked, no second chances. I learnt this while playing Lost Ark tbf, but I've since applied it to every other game and my life has been so much better.

And I will give the same advice to you and anyone else that cares to read it. The time you spend doing unfun things in your free time is something you're not getting back. Don't waste it when you could do something you enjoy instead.

Would I grind 5 mins for a skin? Sure. Would I grind 5 days for a skin? No. Some challenges are just "get to depth x in Delve" well what if I don't like Delve? I don't have fun in Delve (just an example, I actually enjoy it sometimes). Why should I force myself through something I dislike for a skin? When I can farm content I like, make 1 div (or 2 or idk how much a challenge carry even is) and pay for the skin? Yes sure I can buy better ones from the shop. But I don't pass up freebies :) And tbh I actually really like (and still use) some of the ones I got from challenges.

If challenges had no actual rewards then yes, I'd completely agree with you and OP if it were up to me (I mean, I still couldn't care less but I can understand that other people would). If it's just bragging rights that I managed to do this or that then sure, I'd be ok with not allowing carries (and frankly why would want them to begin with???). I'm not personally a fan of the elitism in this game and people acting like being good at POE is rocket science and reaching lvl 100 is equal to finding the cure for cancer, but as long as it doesn't affect me...sure, whatever, enjoy your thing.

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Can multiple party members all get the same Bloodline Ascendancy from the same boss?
Yes, assuming they are in the fight when the boss is killed.

I genuinely believe GGG needs to address this in Bloodlines before it’s too late. This content is meant to be endgame, not something that can be trivialized by letting it be outsourced through carries. The consequences for the game’s integrity are becoming increasingly obvious. It’s not just league challenges that should demand solo completion, Voidstones and Bloodline classes should too.

GGG, it’s time for meaningful change, building on the already existing significant QoL improvements we’ve seen. This oversight is huge, and correcting it now could preserve the game experience and integrity of every single player~

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

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Can multiple party members all get the same Bloodline Ascendancy from the same boss?
Yes, assuming they are in the fight when the boss is killed.

I genuinely believe GGG needs to address this in Bloodlines before it’s too late. This content is meant to be endgame, not something that can be trivialized by letting it be outsourced through carries. The consequences for the game’s integrity are becoming increasingly obvious. It’s not just league challenges that should demand solo completion, Voidstones and Bloodline classes should too.

GGG, it’s time for meaningful change, building on the already existing significant QoL improvements we’ve seen. This oversight is huge, and correcting it now could preserve the game experience and integrity of every single player~

"To unlock your Bloodline, hunt down the endgame boss whose power you desire and defeat them. Or, have a friend help and claim the power for your own."


This is what was said during the reveal livestream. They clearly encourage party play and carries, they know that people will pay for bloodline ascendancy carries. Or people will just ask a friend to help em out. Its a part of the game, and a part of the SC Trade economy. It is what it is. No integrity is being lost here, people who can do these bosses with multiple people in a party will simply profit from this, just like how they profit from doing lab carries and so on. Nothing new here.


I might start carrying lvl83 Lycia for random players, seems like it could net me lots of divines.

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

I might start carrying lvl83 Lycia for random players, seems like it could net me lots of divines.

Is this you?

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

I can get a friend to carry the Sanctum boss for me for free.

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

Nothing new here.

Indeed, this is hardly a new kind of long-standing oversight on GGG’s part, which is precisely why this topic exists, to highlight the issues.
While it may be understandable if no changes are made to bloodlines or voidstones, the challenge system, on the other hand, remains in dire need of positive adjustments and improvements, and that is an objective fact. Even a brief look at it shows that some areas are long overdue for attention.

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

I might start carrying lvl83 Lycia for random players, seems like it could net me lots of divines.

Is this you?

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

I can get a friend to carry the Sanctum boss for me for free.

Yes, and its out of context. If I play a build requiring the ascendancy, obviously I ain't touching Sanctum on something that doesn't have 200 mil burst dps. That would just be nonsensical. Ofc I'm gonna get a carry for it. Who wouldn't? Do you think I'm gonna struggle through a 5-10 minute bossfight and actually dodge and play mechanics? No lol, there's a reason why I play a build that trivializes all boss mechanics. I don't understand the point of these out of context quotes.


Again, Sanctum is a joke to me. I can do it without relics,boons,fountains or Divinia. Just on 300 Resolve. All the bosses literally melt in 2-3 seconds and Lycia insta-phases after she does 1 attack. What I won't do though is Sanctum on some random build not made for that content, it just makes sense to get a carry if you're copying a build that uses a bloodline ascendancy. You need those points as early as possible.

You're also not considering just how many people dislike Sanctum as a mechanic, they simply don't want to play it and I understand that fully. Which is why I'm gonna set up a nice Sanctum carry service and start printing divines as soon as I get geared up, should be loooots of fun. Ofc I'll also give away free carries to any player if they provide me with their final room, cus that's just fun. Its exactly the kind of multiplayer gameplay I enjoy.

200m dps for lycia. lol. What a joke of a personal requirement.

This is why voidstones should be solo only so people actually learn how to play builds/do mechanics/and play the game and actually progress their character.

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Lonnie455Rich#2087 wrote:

200m dps for lycia. lol. What a joke of a personal requirement.

This is why voidstones should be solo only so people actually learn how to play builds/do mechanics/and play the game and actually progress their character.

Glass cannon is a perfectly valid way to play this game though. That dps is just my personal requirement to comfortably do endgame bosses. And it works just fine, I can accomplish all that I want during the league by using huge dps to offset my lack of mechanical dodging skill. Did you know I've failed to do Uber Uber Elder even on this 200 mil dps build because I suck at dodging? And I'm fine with that, I've done 6/7 ubers which is good enough for me.

To me the fun part of this game is making a build that completely breaks and evaporates anything in a few seconds. Its just satisfying to see a boss's hp bar get deleted.

And to the opposite scale of that spectrum, to me the most boring thing I could ever do is make some tanky build that doesn't do a bunch of damage. I'd just fall asleep on my keyboard. Glass cannon paper-thin build is just how I enjoy this game.

I totally get it. I used to play sctrade too. I played ls zerker a few leagues in a row and loved it.

https://www.twitch.tv/flaxenwall4251/clip/SpicyAstuteDolphinSMOrc-sU6CNxp_mAmg5y4_

Deleting uber maven with it.

At this point i could abuse trade and get rich and have mb in 5-6 days and make op builds but i just dont feel like thats actually playing poe. You're playing stock market simulator and if youre good at it you really dont have to do much real meaningful progression. You just skip it all by flipping and getting rich quick.

The same thing people used to do with endless heist and they removed that from the game. People would have mageblood before they killed a10 kitava somehow.

I'm sure that a lot of people are just interested in different things but skipping progression shouldn't be something allowed to cater to the "interest of the individual" it should be seen as an extension of the campaign. Although there are people always begging for people to kill their campaign bosses in hctrade chat.

How many people do you think were ruined from ever playing diablo 2 because the first time they played the game their friends just rushed them to hell, force leveled them to 25 then ran them through chaos to 60, cleared baal for them. Grinded with them till they were around lvl 75 or so and could put on all their free gear then they dont even understand how the game works so they dont really enjoy or appreciate it.

Of course I'm sure my generation isn't in the majority of the population of gamers nowadays. So my opinions are a lot different from people that play fortnite/cod/minecraft.

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

Do you think I'm gonna struggle through a 5-10 minute bossfight and actually dodge and play mechanics? No lol, there's a reason why I play a build that trivializes all boss mechanics. I don't understand the point of these out of context quotes.

Again, Sanctum is a joke to me. I can do it without relics,boons,fountains or Divinia. Just on 300 Resolve. All the bosses literally melt in 2-3 seconds and Lycia insta-phases after she does 1 attack. What I won't do though is Sanctum on some random build not made for that content, it just makes sense to get a carry if you're copying a build that uses a bloodline ascendancy. You need those points as early as possible.

So, if I’m understanding correctly, you consider Sanctum to be a joke, yet you still choose to buy a carry because you don’t want to “struggle for minutes” during the fight, while at the same time claiming to have no issues with the fights themselves.

It’s especially confusing when someone says they want to sell carry runs but don't engage with the content outside of a purchased carry run for the same reason, and the mixed signals make it hard to understand where the line is drawn between.
It leaves the situation feeling somewhat contradictory and difficult to reconcile without more clarity on what’s motivating the choices, but I think this is where the confusion comes from, along with the imaginary requirements of 200 million damage builds.

Sanctum is already trivial with any build over 5 million damage, and your build barely reaches 15 million, yet since you claim you can clear it just fine, assuming that statement is truthful, it’s obvious that if a 15 million build makes the content look like a joke, there is no need to push for 200 million or beyond. But thanks for indirectly confirming that 200 million is overkill.

Builds in and above the 200 million range are only necessary if your goal is to one-shot bosses, but even with 5 million damage, you can finish the final boss within a reasonable time.

Taking a bit longer leaves more room for mistakes, which can be fatal if your defenses are low, but in a normal scenario where you’re not getting one-shot and aren’t taking obvious, telegraphed hits as if they were collectibles, five million damage is more than sufficient. It is also easy to distinguish between two types of players, on one side, there are those who build true glass cannons, designed to obliterate bosses instantly and skip the need for survival or skill checks entirely, prioritizing raw damage to maximize efficiency and speed in farming content. On the other side, there are players who sacrifice nearly all defensive capability for little to no meaningful gains, ending up in awkward situations where enemies are not eliminated fast enough and strike back, leaving them vulnerable and often overwhelmed.

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

How many people do you think were ruined from ever playing diablo 2 because the first time they played the game their friends just rushed them to hell, force leveled them to 25 then ran them through chaos to 60, cleared baal for them. Grinded with them till they were around lvl 75 or so and could put on all their free gear then they dont even understand how the game works so they dont really enjoy or appreciate it.

This is not a problem unique to Diablo 2, but it serves as a compelling example. Carry services can be detrimental in any game when players rely on them exclusively, as they often end up presenting unrealistic numbers simply because they never truly engaged with the content themselves. The results are exaggerated and misleading statistics that bear little resemblance to reality. Take Sanctum league, for example, even before the nerfs, anyone who played it knows how much of a joke the final boss fight is. You don’t need anything close to the supposed 200 million damage to complete the encounter quickly and efficiently, even half of that would be overkill, and in truth, even a quarter of that number is already far more than necessary. Most content in Path of Exile can be handled perfectly well within a damage range of 3-20 million depending on preference, 25 or slightly more if you feel extra fancy. Hardcore leagues demonstrate this principle exceptionally well, as players there rarely chase extreme DPS. Instead of stacking damage as if it were the only holy grail, they focus on building well-rounded, optimized characters that are both durable and capable of dealing ample damage, allowing them to complete all content efficiently without unnecessary risk or reliance on inflated stats. Like even a well rounded 3 million build can run t16 alc & go maps in way less than 15-20 minutes without being a 6 portal gamer.