Why T18 Maps Are Necessary for the Future of Endgame PoE
" I would rather you did NOT do this. As a casual player. I don't need more reason to bash my head on a wall becuase high tier egotistical micro managers deside it's to easy for them. Man not all of us want to have to hire someone to make us a build. And even less want o use crap leap slam, or play meta builds that all use 98% the same items and crap. Game is WAY to controled. Everything is WAY to bal.ed They taking the Riot games mentality to development and over correcting non stop. Num#1 reason people quit league. To many no reason buff's nerfs. money grabs. PS. anyone who has 10 div on day 1 of a league should be forced to play SSF-H with no option to do trade league. you wnat to try hard? go there bye bye. |
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Someone give this man the sense to shorten quotes and only use where necessary, Jesus Christ.
Besides, you are comparing League of f-ing Legends to an ARPG with a decade of content stacked on top of it. I get that LoL is probably your only point of reference, and I know it is the holiday season, so excuse me for saying it bluntly, but be real. The opposite of knowledge is not illiteracy, but the illusion of knowledge. Last edited by ArtCrusade#4438 on Dec 24, 2025, 2:52:22 PM
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" If this is the best you can do I strongly advise you pay someone and take notes, yes. Path of Exile has a lot more depth and longevity than League of Legends, a game where progression resets every 30 odd minutes. Why do I even have to explain this The opposite of knowledge is not illiteracy, but the illusion of knowledge.
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" Sorry you lost me. Why are you talking about league? I litteraly said that LIKE Riot they over buff and nerf stuff. That was the only REAL reffrence i made. [Removed by Support] Last edited by Vash_GGG#0000 on Dec 24, 2025, 4:09:22 PM
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I didn't bring up League of Legends, you did. Not just here, in your own suggestion thread too. If you don't want to talk about League, then don't. This kind of mentality doesn't fly here and you are speedrunning a long holiday right now.
Good luck, exile The opposite of knowledge is not illiteracy, but the illusion of knowledge.
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Just read the op.
Imo, they can go up to tier 20 or whatever for all i care, just remove the toxic mods plz and do the usual t16 ones. More base drops scalable with the usual 8 mod corrupted Spiel, instead of build breaking no action speed unless you are trickster stuff or volatile cores or you can't loot or you are dead shinnanegans and over the top % as extra, penetration and whatnot that just makes the map boss delete solid builds that just don't kill everything instantly. Last edited by Strickl3r#3809 on Dec 24, 2025, 5:29:11 PM
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" Don't you realize the inherent problem in that? New content that provides much better rewards than all other content won't be optional. It will be new standard because it's the most lucrative. Everyone will then feel entitled to farm it and those who can't will complain about it being imbalanced and unfair when only a select few players can farm it. You can't exlcude fomo here because it's quite literally the core of the issue. We had that very same problem with ubers and t17 already, what makes you think it's not going to be exact same this time? Nobody cares about pinnacles anymore because they aren't worth the trouble, ubers are the only thing and if not for their drop restrictions nobody would be farming t16 maps but only t17 and even then people are complaining that t17 are too difficult and/or too rewarding excluding most players from the party. If you are really interested in having more difficulty then there is only one way to go about it, make optional super difficult content that does NOT yield better rewards. An optional hard mode. Anything else will just keep turning the powercreep windmill your are complaining about. T18 will come, people will farm it, become even more powerful due to their powerful rewards and bevor long they will be the new standard and you'll make the next topic asking for t19. Imo the best option would be something along the lines of that pvp unique map. Not part of the atlas, not required for progression, no particular rewards just tough. That would provide the difficult content for those who are actually interested in that without increasing the powercreep even further. I somewhat doubt any of the "game is too easy" guys here is actually going to play something like that though. If you were actually interested in difficulty you'd use the options already available. Last edited by Baharoth15#0429 on Dec 26, 2025, 5:37:45 AM
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I think this is extremely ironic because if you change "we need T18" to "we need balance", everything you said would make sense, but as it stands, you're not actually acomplishing anything you've set out to do.
What you're proposing does nothing to actually help the game. You're only moving the goal post, making build diversity in the endgame ever stricter, changing the color of the packaging without actualy changing the core issue. The game needs to become balanced instead of escalating monster creep to match the current unbalanced power creep. That's a fact. It might be a hard pill for many to swallow, but it's the only way that will do anything meaningful long-term. This thread is the undeniable proof that if players had their way, the logical conclusion would be that we would end up exactly like Diablo 3 in terms of power creep and THEN complain about balance. Depth doesn't come from bigger numbers, bigger tiers and bigger profits, Diablo already proved that. In turn, PoE proved that it doesn't matter how many mechanics a game has, power creep can overshadow that too. A good game comes from a well balanced and thought out difficulty progression. --- Regardless, i still need to address the pink elephant in the room. GGG cares about players and how they manage to break the game with the tools that are provided. Depsite all i've said, i don't think they would ever re-design/remove powerful interactions such as stackers and that unfortunately is an issue in itself. With GGG's philosophy in mind, there's only one realistic way to deal with them: by not dealing with them. Balance the base game for the majority of the players, leave the outliers as game trivialization, but never balance difficulty/loot around them. It is indeed time, to remind threads like these that Diablo should be used as a cautionary tale, not a road map to follow. Last edited by Z3RoNightMare#7140 on Dec 28, 2025, 8:26:59 AM
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" Take the opposite approach: why isn't the game balanced around Tier 1 maps? Why do we need Tier 2-16 maps at all if we could already find a balance in Tier 1 maps? Go on, chew on that and tell me why that'd be ridiculous. I also don't understand why you are strawmanning so hard? You argue against a premise that was never stated, not even implied. Celestriad is asking for T18 not because of "balance" but so that there would be new and interesting endgame content. How that is supposed to look like is part of the discussion and you are welcome to add your thoughts, but stop strawmanning. The opposite of knowledge is not illiteracy, but the illusion of knowledge. Last edited by ArtCrusade#4438 on Dec 28, 2025, 9:44:51 AM
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" Tier 1–16 maps are a progression ladder meant to serve the median player experience. They exist so characters grow in power alongside content in a controlled, expected way. T18 maps, as proposed here, are not that. They’re explicitly being justified as a response to extreme endgame power outliers trivializing the current top tier. Those two things are not comparable design problems, so using Tier 1 as a reductio doesn’t apply. That also ties into the strawman accusation. I’m not arguing against a position that wasn’t stated. The OP’s entire justification for T18 maps is that player power has outpaced the current endgame and that T16s are no longer meaningfully challenging. That is a balance argument, plain and obvious, even if the word “balance” isn’t used. Once the rationale is “content is trivial because of player power,” balance is unavoidably part of the discussion. The core issue I’m pointing out is that adding a higher tier doesn’t actually solve that problem. It just moves it. The same builds trivializing T16 today will trivialize T18 tomorrow. Then we’re back in the same spot, except now the baseline expectations are higher, rewards are pushed upward, and the gap between viable and non-viable builds widens even more. We’ve already seen this cycle repeat multiple times in PoE’s history. The idea that T18 maps would remain purely “optional” also doesn’t hold up in practice. In PoE, optional content stops being optional the moment it becomes the most efficient or exclusive reward source. Atlas passives, scarabs, league mechanics, and the economy inevitably gravitate toward whatever the highest profitable tier is. Once that happens, balance pressure propagates backward and suddenly builds are being judged by whether they can “do T18s comfortably.” That’s how build diversity shrinks, not because content exists, but because content is tuned around outliers. To be clear, I’m not arguing against new endgame content. I’m arguing against vertical numerical escalation as the solution to power creep. Depth and longevity don’t come from bigger numbers or higher tiers; they come from mechanics, constraints, and meaningful decision-making that can’t be bypassed by stacking more multipliers. You can add new mapping challenges without inflating tiers: mechanical modifiers, anti-stacking constraints, risk-reward tradeoffs, or side-grade endgame systems that test builds in different ways instead of just demanding more raw power. At the end of the day, this is a philosophical disagreement about how to handle power creep. I believe PoE is healthier when the base game is balanced around the majority of players, while accepting that some extreme builds will trivialize content, rather than continually escalating monster stats and rewards to chase those outliers. Diablo 3 is a pretty clear cautionary example of where that escalation leads. PoE has always been at its best when difficulty progression is thoughtful and constrained, not endlessly extended upward. |
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