My response to Chris in a Reddit thread.

His post

"

Chris wrote:

When we ran Descent as the signature race, there were vast quantities of complaints. People want signature races to be vanilla.

I responded there but it is an old post so I re-posted here for community discussion.

Honestly this comment from you Chris really pisses me off. The clear implication to me is something along the lines of "what can we do, people don't like non 'vanilla' races".

When the real thing we don't like is:
* the horrible tuning
* gem decisions
* gem balance
* planning that went into this race mode not being about the 'race' aspect of it but more about the 'fun' aka 'sparkle' aspect for new players who don't understand racing anyways.

I want my signature races to be **GOOD** races.

Why have a Race and Season Feedback forum?

Maybe if someone with some real race experience had spent even 10 minutes playing Descent we'd have had a race with the balance and structure those of us who race in a "hardcore" type of mode have come to expect... with the Descent *twist*. Well over a year was put into some quality fine tuning that was just thrown out the window with the concept of "No Towns".

You added a vendor recipe to upgrade 3 smaller flasks to the next step up, adjusted flask drop rates(as you rightly should), and then made us choose between a quicksilver and medium pots (a terrible choice), and then made a post about Descent having less RNG.

You have a vibrant and active race community that is dying to help make the game better, and many feel their feedback gets ignored, which is doubly punishing when you hesitate to change an aspect of that season's Signature race that is clearly wrong for fear of, and I assume this, fear of tarnishing the records of per-adjustment races.

I realize some of this commentary may fall flat on the people who still award Hillock as race points, a bit of a running joke in the racing community for who's shadow mule will win the, "short beach and crit lottery" today, but I truly hope racing is improved and that PoE continues to grow.

"

Morsexier wrote:

When the real thing we don't like is:
* the horrible tuning
* gem decisions
* gem balance
* planning that went into this race mode not being about the 'race' aspect of it but more about the 'fun' aka 'sparkle' aspect for new players who don't understand racing anyways.

Yea man, well said. You are right.

i think since season 5 is sort of a restart of the racing in general (release and steamrelease adds like a ton of now players) the signature race should be vanilla races.

however i do agree about the gem balance (fuck you cleave =] )

Yes I agree, Chris posted in response to me

"

Chris wrote:

I think it's a good thing that people want signature races to be vanilla. I did not mean to imply that people were wrong there.

The original goal with Descent being a signature race was that the people who win it were those who worked out its tricks and abuse cases better than other people could. Its fixed item rewards did help improve determinism (reducing the effect of RNG in some areas), but it's clear that the skills people find were swingy enough that overall it's best not to put the current new race as a signature event.

The people who put the race season together have extensive experience and piles of personal demigods. At least one was hired from the racing community. I don't control the race schedule or structure myself.

I am pretty sure the Hillock reward is being removed at some stage (or already has been for this season).

I'm very optimistic about season 5!