Looking for feedback on the current state of racing / Season 8

Judging by *th in class is incorrect I think. Results (experience) matters and say much more. You can just be lucky and place 1st shadow in 1hr solo with lvl 21 (pretty much 90% of my demis). This means nothing. 1st shadow with lvl 24 means you are great racer. The gap between lvl 22.5-23 in 1hr solo and lvl 24-25 is very, very big.

To further qualify my opinions I want to state that my comments and suggestions are mainly focused towards improving experience of the casual/amateur player whilst also catering to the needs of the elite. Short of removing an entire class, GGG could get away with just about anything and most of the top racers would still continue to compete.

What I would personally like to see for races is making the more accessible to the public because more people competing -> more people sticking with the game -> more people spending money -> More resources for GGG to develop new content.

A new racer who pops into an EL or some sort of BLAMT or other race that has a bad experience or repeated bad experiences would immediately be turned off to the concept and quickly dismiss racing and more quickly move onto something else.

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Lyralei wrote:

The point bracket prizes aren't enough?

I disagree with rewarding people who have previously not won anything. The prize pool is diluted as it is. The only thing that should motivate people to be competitive is their own need to improve. I hate the whole carrot-on-a-stick mentality and it really needs to go.

The reward suggestion I mentioned earlier is admittedly far-fetched. The point I want to convey is that I think there’s a lack of effective motivation to push racers to compete due to the huge skill/experience gap that has been accumulated through 8 seasons of racing. In my opinion this gap is pretty intimidating and might ward off less determined newcomers from taking racing seriously. Elite racers pushing for records and better runs is good, but I think more competition near the top would result in a better contest.

Reaching the top point bracket is great positive reinforcement but I don’t think the point system is an effective motivation to improve.

To a certain extent I think the point system rewards those with an abundance of time over those with an abundance of skill (please notice the qualifier). Just because I can reach tier reward X I don't feel that accomplished because I know if I was still in school and had more time on my hands or played other games less I could still have done so while not performing as well.

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Lyralei wrote:

Every single time we introduce a tangible reward, people find ways to exploit or game the system. Look at S6 and such. Tell me if adding more rewards will incentivize you more? Because you certainly won't win when existing racers who are far better than you will easily make new accounts to acquire this new "reward" - if it is that valuable. And if it isn't of any worth, you wouldn't be racing for it anyway.

I love the tiered prizes in the effect that they enable me to obtain build enabling uniques that I otherwise wouldn't be motivated to obtain. Personally I would probably never buy a three dragons to try out a build, but now that I have one I would like to create a new character to try and do something cool with it. This in effect adds more value to my experience and motivates me to keep playing the game.

The ability of racing to skew the in game economy is clear and seems a bit irritating. Maybe preventing multiple account entries or making these prizes "account bound" would help alleviate some of the issues they create whilst still garnering interest.

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Lyralei wrote:

I'd even argue that we need less demigods. They hold no prestige anymore because of how often they're handed out. Only the alt-art ones mean anything.

I doubt demigod rewards were intended to be collected by such a narrow field of players. The fact their primary value is monetary is rather disappointing. I don't necessarily think this needs to be changed however, because it allows those with the most skill to fund more entertaining builds which often helps promote stream viewership, which I think is valuable for the community.

Personally its my goal this season to win a single demi. Its a tangible means of measuring the effort and time I put into improving my skill and something that I would never consider selling. So when you say they have no prestige I agree that they have lost their appeal to the vast majority that earn them, but to me, winning my very own demi would be the ultimate sense of validation.


Thanks for the encouragement terrex and I look forward to hearing what conclusions you draw from this thread as a whole.

And thank you unsane, Im not done yet with testing out new strategies for D:C and will continue to tweak and refine my approach.



Unrelated final thought:

At the end of the season - Tournament of champions for the top point earners or demigod winners? Would be great hype for the community and definitely something I would love to watch.

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CreativeAspect wrote:

The reward suggestion I mentioned earlier is admittedly far-fetched. The point I want to convey is that I think there’s a lack of effective motivation to push racers to compete due to the huge skill/experience gap that has been accumulated through 8 seasons of racing. In my opinion this gap is pretty intimidating and might ward off less determined newcomers from taking racing seriously. Elite racers pushing for records and better runs is good, but I think more competition near the top would result in a better contest.

Reaching the top point bracket is great positive reinforcement but I don’t think the point system is an effective motivation to improve.

To a certain extent I think the point system rewards those with an abundance of time over those with an abundance of skill (please notice the qualifier). Just because I can reach tier reward X I don't feel that accomplished because I know if I was still in school and had more time on my hands or played other games less I could still have done so while not performing as well.

I think the emphasis here is that the more casual racers lack a means of measurement and progression. Some players really have no indication of how well you performed during each segment of the race. Look at the recent Race 85. The gap between #1, #2 and #3 Shadow is almost 500k experience. To the casual racer, he will be content with third placing but to the experienced player, that much EXP by the end of the race is terrible. In a subsequent race, the same person might wonder why he didn't place third at all.

On that, I can understand why its daunting for some players but I don't think incentivizing players will do much good; at least not in a manner that cannot be exploited (but I'm all ears for interesting suggestions). I've seen some racers with no prior season experience perform really well in recent seasons so my only guess is that they motivate themselves to do well.

It was better when third party websites had EXP trackers which tracked your EXP gain over the whole race so you could accurately reflect on your performance against better racers, particularly with the graph charts.

I think we can all agree that players need better performance measurement tools. Perhaps even your own seasonal "high score".

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CreativeAspect wrote:

Personally its my goal this season to win a single demi. Its a tangible means of measuring the effort and time I put into improving my skill and something that I would never consider selling. So when you say they have no prestige I agree that they have lost their appeal to the vast majority that earn them, but to me, winning my very own demi would be the ultimate sense of validation.

All the best. You'll have a decent shot at winning eventually.

This topic so far has been extremely helpful. It's very nice to hear many types of experienced opinions. It's also great to see not so common names posting around in race feedback. It's going to be tough to please everyone but there are very notable things that can be done to step in the right direction. These issues seem to be somewhat common for majority of the racers.

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jstq wrote:

Judging by *th in class is incorrect I think. Results (experience) matters and say much more. You can just be lucky and place 1st shadow in 1hr solo with lvl 21 (pretty much 90% of my demis). This means nothing. 1st shadow with lvl 24 means you are great racer. The gap between lvl 22.5-23 in 1hr solo and lvl 24-25 is very, very big.

I think X in class is fine. Luck plays such a huge factor in final experience totals that the difference between 23 and 24 in a 1hr solo is generally much more about if/when the player got move boots, 2nd/3rd quicksilver, a strong weapon, and also pure chance stuff like number of corrupted zones and blue density, than it is about actual skill.

Playing an underpowered/underrepresented class is a fine choice too, as the potential increased demi chance is offset by the generally decreased points due to lower final level.

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Lyralei wrote:

It was better when third party websites had EXP trackers which tracked your EXP gain over the whole race so you could accurately reflect on your performance against better racers, particularly with the graph charts.

I think we can all agree that players need better performance measurement tools. Perhaps even your own seasonal "high score".

Those old temple of exiles graphs were perfect for this. Something similar as part of the main website would be great.

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KoTao wrote:

Playing an underpowered/underrepresented class is a fine choice too, as the potential increased demi chance is offset by the generally decreased points due to lower final level.

First of all, this only applies to one person (the winner) playing the class and isn't relevant to anyone else, but more importantly I wouldn't be confident in making the claim that the "power" of a class always correlates with the amount of people playing it.

I mean take the example of DC. Witch on average is picked by about 30% of the player base (this is just an estimate), so while you might find some correlation there, when you look at templar for example, which as a class is pretty much at the same level as witch in terms of "power", we see that only roughly 12-13% are picking templar (on average).

Then you look at ranger (which I think most can agree is the weakest class) and we can again see some correlation there, as ranger is generally the least played class (9-11%), HOWEVER... and this is the important part... when you compare the participation numbers for ranger and templar directly it becomes very obvious why your argument cannot possibly hold water.

Put simply, if participation rates were always relative to (or in strong correlation with) the "power of the classes" you would essentially have to come to the conclusion that ranger (in overall power) is closer to templar than templar is to witch. (by a factor of more than 2)

But that is obvious nonsense, for all it takes is a quick look at the sig records to demonstrate why that conclusion cannot possibly be true.

edit: But what I will say is that jstq's argument is equally nonsensical. If you just measure experience you more or less have to assume that all classes are equally strong... which just isn't true.

I posted this in some other thread already, but if you were actually serious about ranking players of different classes relative to eachother you absolutely need a coefficient that is based on the average performance of people playing the classes.

Weak classes would have their experience/points/whatever multiplied by a number greater than 1 and strong classes would have their experience/points multiplied by a number less than one.

There would be quite alot of variables to control for (number of average participants, average results, etc..) but it's doable and not even rocket science.

Not sure what arguement you thought i was making there. When i said "underpowered/underrepresented", i meant either or both. In the case of DC, ranger certainly classifies as underpowered, with its inability to effectively use summers, its terrible starting gear/skills and its need to constantly reroll a pair of weapon items when half the cast never has to roll weapons at all. Rangers final level is obviously going to be much lower than flameblast classes on average, hence playing them is generally exchanging points for a better chance at a demi or less competition for a sig run.

Also, as witch and templar play and perform nearly identically in DC, its probably better to look at them as the combined most-played class, at which point rangers 10%~ does indeed look pretty underrepresented compared to the flameblast classes near 50%.

Edit: Im all for some sort of elo-esque skill-based ranking system, but after seeing almost every suggestion aimed at increasing skill weighting and decreasing grind/rng weighting get ignored or refused over the past 7 seasons (and cb racing before that), i seriously doubt its going to happen.

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KoTao wrote:

Not sure what arguement you thought i was making there. When i said "underpowered/underrepresented", i meant either or both. In the case of DC, ranger certainly classifies as underpowered, with its inability to effectively use summers, its terrible starting gear/skills and its need to constantly reroll a pair of weapon items when half the cast never has to roll weapons at all. Rangers final level is obviously going to be much lower than flameblast classes on average, hence playing them is generally exchanging points for a better chance at a demi or less competition for a sig run.

Also, as witch and templar play and perform nearly identically in DC, its probably better to look at them as the combined most-played class, at which point rangers 10%~ does indeed look pretty underrepresented compared to the flameblast classes near 50%.

Complete and utter nonsense. I can't even begin to explain how stupid that is.

First of all, your chances of winning a demi are directly dependant on how many other people are playing your class and nothing else. The strength of your class makes absolutely no difference there, because (in the case of winning demis) you are exclusively competing with players that are playing the same (weak or strong, matters fuck all) class.

Which brings me to my next point, you cannot treat witch and templar as one class, because the same principle applies there... they are different classes with different chances of winning demis.

I mean don't you see the absurdity in your own argument? You talk about the chances of winning a demi and then go on to say that we should treat witch and templar as one class because they are both similarly strong classes... even though how strong a class is is absolutely irrelevant when discussing the chances of winning a demi.

Seperate the mixing of templar and witch stats comment with the underrepresented/underpowered comment then. The original statement was simply that playing a weaker class for increased demi chances at the cost of points made for a decent risk/reward choice under the current ruleset and probably didnt need changing, nothing more. Templars in DC being overpowered but (mildly) underrepresented is an anomaly and similar generally hasnt occurred in previous signatures (or probably overall, though ive no interest in checking 8 seasons+ worth of race results to check).

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KoTao wrote:

Seperate the mixing of templar and witch stats comment with the underrepresented/underpowered comment then. The original statement was simply that playing a weaker class for increased demi chances at the cost of points made for a decent risk/reward choice under the current ruleset and probably didnt need changing, nothing more. Templars in DC being overpowered but (mildly) underrepresented is an anomaly and similar generally hasnt occurred in previous signatures (or probably overall, though ive no interest in checking 8 seasons+ worth of race results to check).

Even if you classify it as an anomaly it's still relevant.

It is not even generally true that weaker classes are always underrepresented. It sometimes might correlate, but often times doesn't.

I mean just look at the numbers posted here (http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/944707/page/5) and compare them to the top 3 results on the signature ladder.

100 Minute Fixed Seed (S06S172)
97 (7.8%) Templars
155 (12.4%) Marauders
102 (8.2%) Witchs
131 (10.5%) Shadows
156 (12.5%) Duelists
155 (12.4%) Rangers
454 (36.3%) Scions

85 Minute Fixed Seed (S07S171)
98 (11.4%) Templars
129 (15.1%) Marauders
123 (14.4%) Witchs
138 (16.1%) Shadows
128 (14.9%) Duelists
104 (12.1%) Rangers
137 (16%) Scions

40m Descent Champions (S08S021)
227 (11.9%) Templars
268 (14%) Marauders
435 (22.8%) Witchs
260 (13.6%) Shadows
269 (14.1%) Duelists
197 (10.3%) Rangers
256 (13.4%) Scions


Now if participation and class power were (strongly) correlated what we would expect to see on the sig record page in season 6 (for example) is this:

1# Scion
2# Duelist
3# Ranger/Marauder
5# Shadow
6# Witch
7# Templar

But when you look at the records, this is what you actually see:

1# Ranger (+2)
2# Duelist (+1)
3# Scion (-2)
4# Marauder/Shadow (0/-1)
6/7# Witch Templar (0)

Some numbers correlate, some clearly don't.

Now if we look at season 7, it's even more obvious.

85 Minute Fixed Seed (S07S171)
98 (11.4%) Templars
129 (15.1%) Marauders
123 (14.4%) Witchs
138 (16.1%) Shadows
128 (14.9%) Duelists
104 (12.1%) Rangers
137 (16%) Scions

What you would expect to see in terms of records:

#1 Shadow
#2 Scion
#3 Marauder
4# Duelist
5# Witch
6# Ranger
7# Templar

And here is what you actually see:

#1 Witch (+4)
#2 Templar (+6)
#3 Duelist (+1)
#4 Marauder (-1)
#5 Ranger (+1)
#6 Scion (-5)
#7 Shadow (-5)

Interesting, isn't it? The two most represented classes actually did the worst in terms of performance. There is absolutely no correlation there. That to me seems like an awful lot of anomalies then. Especially when considering that two of the three least picked classes were the two best performing classes.

Now granted you can explain the high numbers for shadow and scion in part because people were muling those classes alot, however what that doesn't explain is why witch and templar (two of the least played classes) were the two best performing classes.

Your argument that this is just an anomaly is probably really convenient, but it's a bad argument, because you could just call anything an anomaly and pretend it's irrelevant, especially if it contradicts what you are saying.


But just for completeness' sake let's look at the most recent DC and see if your argument holds water there:

Duelist 13.32 %
Marauder 11.92 %
Ranger 8.66 %
Shadow 10.44 %
Templar 12.36 %
Witch 31.31 %
Scion 11.99 %


What we expect to see:

#1 Witch
#2 Duelist
#3 Templar
#4 Scion
#5 Marauder
#6 Shadow
#7 Ranger

What we actually see:

#1 Templar (+2)
#2 Witch (-1)
#3 Marauder (+2)
#4 Duelist (-2)
#5 Scion (-1)
#6 Shadow (0)
#7 Ranger (0)

So while some of the numbers match (particularly in the lower end of the spectrum), some others clearly don't.

There is no doubt on my mind that some people tend to pick classes that are stronger and avoid picking classes that are weaker, but that alone isn't sufficient enough for us to accept the claim that "weaker classes offer a higher chance at winning a demi because participation will be lower", it's not always true and there are other factors.

For example, some people don't give a crap about how strong a class is and pick whatever class they like most (which I suspect is the reason why Templar is never the most popular class, even when it is the strongest class... most people just don't like the character).

That's what it ultimately comes down to, sometimes the numbers correlate, sometimes they don't, but to argue in favour of a rule and dismiss all the times they don't correlate as "anomalies" is just nonsensical.

You are showing some serious confirmation bias when you do that, the power of a class simply isn't the only relevant factor, as is evidenced by these "anomalies" (as you call them).