Development Manifesto: Warbands and Tempest Content

Sounds good, but if you do this:
1. The relevant map mods(especially if you need to pay Zana for them) should guarantee level 4 warbands.
2. The drop rate for the unique items should be MUCH higher than it was and they should drop a few more normal items as well. A high level warband is sorta like fighting multiple exiles at once and should drop accordingly.

Didn't play tempest at all yet, so can't really comment on what balancing is needed there.

Would have been nice to know three months ago that i would be able to get warbands uniques though other means than zana or divination cards.

Quite disappointed to now know that my only reason to play warbands instead of tempest was in vain.

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Chris wrote:

upcoming Flashback events next week!

I thought they were starting Oct. 4. Has this been changed?

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Lorginir wrote:

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There's also the possibility of running a "Warbands Week" for Standard/Hardcore in the future, <...>
Tempest is probably too overwhelming for a mandatory event that players can't opt into.

[Removed by Support]

Did you play in Warbands league? I felt it was more difficult to encounter than to avoid them...

/

I find that the mechanics of Tempest/Warbands are not being merged with the core game to be an incredibly disappointing announcement.

The time-based incentive to farm specific zones created by them made the end-game of Path of Exile significantly more enjoyable for me. Maps: you roll what you have with some affixes, you run them, repeat -- extremely boring to me. Tempests/Warbands: the game nudges you to try something different every time you play, even if you're still playing the same character every day for a couple weeks. You never accidentally get caught in a trap of doing the same thing until you detest it, or repeatedly running your preferred high-efficiency zone (e.g. Dried Lake, Gorge) until you're burned out on the game.

The only issues I see with merging these leagues into the core of Path of Exile were due to overabundance, complexity, and new player unfriendliness. Overabundance of the league-specific mechanic isn't something new in challenge leagues, however; the number of zones effected could be reduced to only 1-3 zones per Act total, and around one map per map level. This would keep the time-based farming incentive present without completely overshadowing the rest of the game.

Since the abundance of the league effect is reduced, complexity can also be reduced. We don't need 5 tiers of Warbands scouting/capturing/whatever an area: we can just have the tier apply based on how far through the game the zone is. For added variety it could also randomly spawn the next tier up or down when accessing an area (being Chaos Warbands in maps or 4-dots in Merciless). This means going from 12 different indicators for Warbands on the map to 3. Tempests would only be effecting a small number of zones, and their zone modifiers already indicate what interesting effect you're getting, so just removing some of the less impactful effects or consistently avoided effects would be enough to simplify them.

New player unfriendliness would be dealt with by following what is already done in some cases again. Earlier Warbands could be made weaker and less common; these would just be an uncommon occurence for players similar to how Exiles are now. Or Warbands could not even start spawning until Cruel difficulty if you want to keep the first playthrough more pure to the base game. Tempests have a much bigger influence on the zone, however, and should definitely not start spawning until Cruel (again, with potentially weakened effects initially). There would need to be some way to actually introduce their existence to the player in an intuitive manner, however, as it would be a mechanic that a player is not familiar with at the point. (That introduction is kind of currently needed for the resistance reduction between difficulties, actually...)

I'd really like to see GGG reconsider incorporating these into the core game instead of throwing out a highly appealing and fun system.

- Nuro, "Someone who thinks Warbands is the best SC league to-date"

i think Tempest is by far the best feature to the game! please keep it

Well said, Nuro. +1

kind of sad that tempest will only be available through zana and then it wont be the same anyway as its likely completely random. I liked the fact that we as community would have to work together to track stuff like tempest but i guess thats not casual friendly.

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sirgog wrote:

The mechanics had so much potential but - particularly with Warbands - they were just too RNG-gated to fulfil it, and the WB blue items too rare.

If you add "Map contains 2-6 Brinerot packs", "Map contains 2-6 Redblade packs", "Map contains 2-6 Mutewind packs" and "Map contains a Chaos Warband" to the map mod pool as fairly uncommon rolls, players will be able to experience these fights in the future.

yes this would make WB being more worthwile then in current state kind of boring to farm forever and see one general a week if you lucky....i haven't seen chaos generals in 3 weeks that's says enough.
One thing is to have and run 4d maps another is to encounter the generals and yet another is getting any specific uniq's drop by them.Yes WB had huge potential but sadly was a wasted.Never adjusted as ppl were complaining and giving feedback.