Thoughts on race season 8

season was awful. bad schedule, trash sig, too many dumpster races EL burst. to many 1hr races not enough 90 min-2hr races.

PoE racing is dying, and here is why:

1) Bad rewards that cant be even compared to what was in seasons 1-6.

2) Participation - 100-200 people reaching level 10 in every race on average. Probably because of (1). In many races people starting from top 5 got a total dumpster result. One of the last races I was 3rd overall being 2 levels behind the actual only 2 good players doing this race. 2_good_players, that's it.

3) From my point of view - now there is like... 0 good vanilla shadow players, so every vanilla was an easy demigod for me while I was playing very slow and safe. I remember I had one with a level 19 in 1hr turbo. Many quit, some play other classes. Again - because of (2).

4) h@x and miserable developers state on it. They just choose to ignore that cases and censure all peoples negative comments about them.

5) Massive amount of random no-skill/knowledge/practice races taking over control, removing all fun and incentive to do this races.

6) Schedule was, is and will be bad.

7) Many great players quitting/want to quit because of (4+5), which made (3) possible.

8) Overall amount of players reducing, because there is simply doesn't enough hardcore ARPG fans nowadays, and the casual masses (the ones that PoE needs so badly) afraid of terrible netcode (from point of just an average casual player who previously played single player ARPG's/Diablo 3), interface and performance and quit/dont even start to play this game.

9) Class balance is still doesn't exist. Its impossible (without insane item rng + density) to reach 10 points level bracket in most races as shadow/ranger/sometimes scion. Weapon dependent classes still had to waste 50% of given currency in descent/d:c to roll weapons/quivers. Ranger also needs insane item rng to not die because her tree is total crap. While casters can do well with white wands/scepters. Or just simply get two swords and forget about weapons until Gravicious and just use whatever leftovers to roll a wands. There is no way that this should exist. While weapon dependent classes may have much more damage than casters, I see this happened once in a millennium, and they still suffer because of constant melee range battle that cause much more desynch than casters playstyle.

10) You get less points for 3 hour race than for 40 minutes d:c or a 3 burst races. This is hilarious.

11) Low amount of servers cause lots of players play with 150+ ping while some play with 15/20. And this is because of (8).

12) No good changes spotted. No hope to see them. GGG ignore most of feedback. Dumb descent chests choices still not fixed. Worthless classes still not buffed. Dumb enemy choices for low level zones not replaced with appropriate ones. It appears like GGG simply dont gives a fuck.

13) GGG fails to realize the great potential of this game and racing part of it because they simply dont understand their own game. They fail to keep playerbase because they are too lazy to add some fun modes long-format races to keep players log in and have fun. Not everyone like 24/7 pointless map grind. I see so much FUN modes that would be so easy to implement that this situation is kinda sad for me. Maybe they dont have enough money to keep servers alive for this fun race modes though? Because of (8) again.


Vanilla races is still very fun for me. I guess I'll just start play races that I can and like very casually next season, trying to not take any effort in PoE and not hoping for anything good.

some people also seem to believe fixed seed is somehow helpful against maphack. this is bullshit. it only helps a bit if every zone is EL-like

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janimauk wrote:

some people also seem to believe fixed seed is somehow helpful against maphack. this is bullshit. it only helps a bit if every zone is EL-like

It reduces their advantage, you cannot deny that. They still have other tools but it's not like it doesn't compensate and prevent you from running into dead ends etc.

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terrex wrote:

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janimauk wrote:

some people also seem to believe fixed seed is somehow helpful against maphack. this is bullshit. it only helps a bit if every zone is EL-like

It reduces their advantage, you cannot deny that. They still have other tools but it's not like it doesn't compensate and prevent you from running into dead ends etc.

in the end maphackers will win so it doesn't matter.

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janimauk wrote:

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terrex wrote:

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janimauk wrote:

some people also seem to believe fixed seed is somehow helpful against maphack. this is bullshit. it only helps a bit if every zone is EL-like

It reduces their advantage, you cannot deny that. They still have other tools but it's not like it doesn't compensate and prevent you from running into dead ends etc.

in the end maphackers will win so it doesn't matter.

We can beat them! I highly doubt maphack will tell them how to kill turbo brutus, how to get out of frigged up crazy tough situations etc.. They have to cheese their way instead of learning through trial and error, through experience. A hack cannot mimic these actions to get you through it. We just need more challenging vanilla races, less stupid rng lagfest tedius races like BLAMT / fracturing.

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Whirlwarian wrote:

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SlixSC wrote:

I won 7 or 8 in less than 25 demi races. You do realize that this isn't my only account?

And in any case, it's irrelevant, the point is that the season ladder doesn't represent skill at all, it's purely a function of time-invested. Just like everything else in this game.

That's why it will never be competitive. Your time-investment matters infinitely more than your skill.

I don't understand this complaint at all. Why shouldn't someone who put in a lot of time racing win his alt art demi? If anything the argument should be made that they could add a separate metric to award alt art demi's to the most consistent/best racers using only a smaller sample of their best races.

There is nothing wrong with it per se, but as I stated in my previous post, it is not a competitive metric. GGG isn't promoting competition and skill in racing, they are promoting no-lifing.

Which is silly for two reasons, one because there already are no-life races that people can do to win their alternate demis and two because literally everything in this game is already a function of time-invested, why should racing (which by it's very nature is centered around competition) be the same?

You have this point system that (supposedly) rewards people for doing well, but that is undermined by the season ladder itself not being a reflection of how well a player is doing but how much time they are investing. Pointless.

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As it is, there are plenty of rewards for top racers who can't make every race with 7 demi's per competitive/sig race and 21 sig record alt art demi's (even if this season suffered from maphacking and terrible balance changes). If this isn't enough for top racers to want to compete, then there are massive self-entitlement issues here.

In any competition you want to reward the best. This has fuck all to do with self-entitlement. People that aren't the best competitors should not be able to win the best prizes.

This isn't about a fair distribution of prizes between casuals and top-racers, if you care at all about the competitive integrity of the game the only people that should be able to win the top prizes are the top racers.

And I don't say that because I think I would be in a top 20 if they changed the system, I wouldn't be. I say that because I care about the competitive integrity of the game. And if that meant that I had to give back my 2 alt art demis from season 5 and 6 (where I definitely wasn't anywhere close to a top 20 racer, despite placing in the top 20 by investing more time than others) I would happily do it.

You can bet on that.

I couldn't care less about prizes and rewards, all I care about are ladders that reflect player's skill and the current ladder simply doesn't do that.

But I will freely admit that I'm probably wasting my time even bringing this up, because GGG doesn't care about the competitive integrity of the game, all they care about is that everyone gets a piece of the cake and that people are happy.

It's all rainbows and children's laughter, makes me feel sick.

edit: Just to give an analogy here. A gold league player in Sc2 with 6000 matches played is never going to be rewarded with the Dreamhack Winter first place prize, why? Because they just aren't good enough. Tough shit. In a competitive game you don't get rewarded for being bad and merely playing the game (alot), you actually have to be good.

But in Path of Exile you can be a gold league scrub and still get rewarded with (the best) prizes. Makes you wonder who really is self-entitled here...

It appears that what you are asking for is a ranked tournament that has a handful of matches, of which you have to compete in all of them. The truth is that if you don't do the races, you don't get the prize. You also seem to be overlooking another fact: there are rewards given exclusively to the top player in each race. The season ladder is for everyone, the individual ladders are for the top. The signature record is also only given to the top players.

While a ranked tournament might be interesting, you can't really replace a normal race season with it. If you don't want to make the effort for the prizes, then oh well.

would be interesting to see them do a tournament of some kind at some point though.

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mardukthewolf wrote:

It appears that what you are asking for is a ranked tournament that has a handful of matches, of which you have to compete in all of them. The truth is that if you don't do the races, you don't get the prize. You also seem to be overlooking another fact: there are rewards given exclusively to the top player in each race. The season ladder is for everyone, the individual ladders are for the top. The signature record is also only given to the top players.

While a ranked tournament might be interesting, you can't really replace a normal race season with it. If you don't want to make the effort for the prizes, then oh well.

would be interesting to see them do a tournament of some kind at some point though.

If you really don't understand the difference between an "ought"-statement and an "is"-statement, I can't help you.

I'm well aware of how the ladder currently works, but that is not the point.

You, yourself, gave the best example of why the current system is stupid. The current ladder system actively encourages players to play safe, it doesn't encourage players to improve their results at all.

As long as you do mediocre, participate alot and don't die you will be fine (as in place top 20). It should be fairly obvious why a ladder system like this would be detrimental in ANY competitive environment.

It does not encourage players to do as well as they possibly can, it does not encourage players to improve their skills and compete with the best. It is a shitty system for competitive gaming.

I know it doesn't bother you personally, because it sure is great when you are able to win the best prizes without being good at the game. But what we are describing here is pretty much the exact opposite of a competitive environment.

Of course, if we don't want racing to be as competitive as possible, then nothing I'm saying here counts for shit.

But then please forgive me when I say that racing is an absolute joke and waste of time.

One thing that annoys me more than anything else about this new "call of duty-generation" of gamers is this casual "everyone's a winner"-mentality.

I miss the old days of competitive gaming when people played to win, to improve and when games actively encouraged improvement and not this "play it safe for rewards" nonsense.

I've always figured the best way to approach a racing season was based on a person's specific goals such as:

Top X in Season Point
X Season Points
Race rewards
Demigods
Winning certain races
Surviving Challenging Race Mods
Signature Records
Specific Race Records
Personal Bests
Overall Improving

For example, the past couple seasons I've unfortunately not been able to race nearly as much as I would of liked to. Therefor I don't really care about season points or how valuable race rewards might be (though I enjoy collecting them for fun and leaving them forever in my stash.) I've had a great time battling for (non-decent) sig records and pushing progression limits (level 47 in 3hr party, Sarn in ancestral turbo, Dominus in random solos, cruel Piety in a 3 hour party, etc.)

IMO there seems to be a major overemphasis on the top 20 season placing which has lead to a toxic attitude among a lot of the racers that are "forced" to play "bad" races they don't like. I don't see any problem with playing safe or farming side zones. It's just a different way to race, specially for those who don't complete for first in class spots.

Getting back on topic, the main thing I disliked about this season was DC being the signature and too large of a percentage of Burst/Decent races. Its fine to have all those races as long as there are plenty of regular races to balance them out. I greatly enjoyed the few random standard-like races I was able to do. Heck I even enjoyed the 3 hour lethal immolation party race.