Challenge League Post-mortems

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An important difference was that Beyond was actually pretty rewarding, but in a subtle way. Players found substantially more items due to the demons, but didn't really notice. We learnt that item rewards need to be more spikey and noticeable, otherwise they can damage the economy silently.

who wrote this bs? didn't notice cause the items didn't exist.

Hello:) Just wanted to comment on 2 specific leagues....

1)Invasion: To this day, this is my most hated, least favorable league ever to be introduced in the hc temp leagues...
I know that there are those who enjoyed this league, but I absolutely hated it, from beginning to the end (yes, even after they tweaked it to the so-called "vanilla" version).

Maybe because I played melee all throughout the league and for melee, Invasion was terrible, the bosses were not doable unless u had OP gear... That has been my experience from Invasion.

2)Beyond: My 2nd most hated league, only slightly less despised than Invasion.
Leveling in that league was horrible, and the need for good gear, even in low levels, was even more nessecary. Again, for melee, I never had to run away/kite/skip mobs as much in any other league as Beyond.

For me, it was counter-intuitive to my playstyle. I hate skipping content or running away from mobs.

I only mention these leagues and not the others because, in comparison to these 2, I liked all the other hc temp leagues you produced.
I really hope that you will NOT introduce their mechanics in the core game as it would make the lvling process a drag(more than it sometimes is now)...
Instead, you could leave their mods to be implemented through Zana, so that, those who enjoy these, have the opportunity to play them.

I know that opinions differ, I read the forums quite often, just wanted to say this because as there are those who liked those leagues, I personally, as well as the few people that I know, did not find find them fun... at all:) :(

Thank you for the information in your OP and for sharing your thoughts and I hope all you guys (and ladies:) ) at GGG are doing well:):)

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Chris wrote:

Players don't switch between the two concurrent challenge leagues as much as we had hoped. Most players just pick one and stick to it, missing out on the experience of the other.

This comes as no surprise. Players naturally prefer one or the other playstyle. Shoehorning them into the other style just isn't going to work. Reward players for playing what they enjoy, rather than for playing what they don't enjoy in addition.

I approve of the change over to one challenge league, with a HC and STD version. Ideally there would be no differences at all, so keep the diffs minimal imo.


Also if anything, i'd like the permanent leagues to be more rewarding or appealing in some way. I don't like that they are treated as garbage dump leagues by many.

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Chris wrote:

Overall Challenge League Design

Players don't switch between the two concurrent challenge leagues as much as we had hoped. Most players just pick one and stick to it, missing out on the experience of the other. Combined with the intense development cycles of these leagues and the fact that we want to continue to push the amount of content they contain, we have decided to change the structure of the next leagues.

When the next challenge league starts, there will be both a Standard and Hardcore version of it, with overlapping but slightly different content. The new league represents more effort than we put into any previous league, which is possible because we're not developing two completely different leagues simultaneously. It's too early to talk about specifics of this league, but we'll probably be announcing it alongside other new content later this year.

The challenge leagues are usually 3 months (give or take) in length and there just isn't enough time to develop and play a build to a decent level in both leagues. If GGG would make a change such that a death in the hardcore challenge league moved that exile to the softcore challenge league instead of Standard softcore league then we could continue that build in the temp league.

GGG (has always) is too focused on the ladders and making the challenge leagues tuned for the top elite players on the ladders. That is great for them but they are the .01% (or less) of all PoE players and most of us (99%+) don't have unlimited playing time and as such will only be able to develop 1 challenge league build to the end game. If I could play the hardcore variant of a 3 month challenge league knowing that if I make a mistake and die that my exile will then still be in the softcore challenge league then it would really make playing hardcore a viable option (I'd do that every time if death worked that way).

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Qarl wrote:

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NeroNoah wrote:

...
Also, some leagues deserve a little more polish or expansions, like Beyond (so the monsters actually look eldritch rather than copypasted, and we can know more about the demons, fight more of them, or even go to their homeworld (?)).

We have at least a couple of designers wanting to return to Beyond, and really explore the story, lore and mechanics some more.

This is music to my ears. Path of Exile is already an amazing game with its own unique flavour of lore, but I feel the potential is there for Beyond to give PoE that "It" factor that makes the game memorable and alluring to a much wider audience.

Like the Kzinti, Puppeteers or Slavers of Ringworld, each Beyond monster is a potential springboard for a whole new milieu of terrors. These glorious lore boxes don't all have to be opened at once either.

Thanks for the amazing game, and I am really looking forward to the new content the GGG team will come up with. Oh, to be a fly on the wall during the brainstorming sessions. . .



Please disregard if this is a duplicate post - the one I was working on might have accidentally been posted while I was still organizing my haphazard thoughts.

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Chris wrote:

Players don't switch between the two concurrent challenge leagues as much as we had hoped. Most players just pick one and stick to it, missing out on the experience of the other.

From my view this is simple because you're put in the position of acquiring wealth from scratch in two leagues simultaneous. This is one of the reasons I simple didn't do the challenges last league, it just became too much after going for the t-shirt multiple times prior to these leagues. The forced requirement to play and gather wealth in both leagues is very taxing in the long run.

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Chris wrote:

When the next challenge league starts, there will be both a Standard and Hardcore version of it, with overlapping but slightly different content.

This sounds much better imo if we can complete all challenges in one of the two, would definitively make me go back to play HC full time for challenge leagues again.

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Lore

Boxes with mods, areas with mods, mobs with mods, different mobs with different mods, fast speed mod for mobs, loot piniatas, different loot piniatas, old mobs from "different realm" who is just regular mobs but fat and annoying.
Very deep and interesting lore. And really hard to explain!

Lore about demons?

What about spawning mobs that can open a rift to another plane?

This is an amazing idea for a next league, where u can get an "extra area" from a group of mobs, more challenging and rewarding one.

As in fighting demons on their homeland.

There could be a timed mission to crack the crystal powering the demons. If u break the crystal, the "boss demon" can be killed, and this mob itself is more rewarding than others.

I know this is a development manifesto, but consider, this is a great idea =D.

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arherter wrote:

Lore about demons?

What about spawning mobs that can open a rift to another plane?

This is an amazing idea for a next league, where u can get an "extra area" from a group of mobs, more challenging and rewarding one.

As in fighting demons on their homeland.

There could be a timed mission to crack the crystal powering the demons. If u break the crystal, the "boss demon" can be killed, and this mob itself is more rewarding than others.

I know this is a development manifesto, but consider, this is a great idea =D.

It wouldn't surprise me if this were to happen in one of their 'small' expansions, although thematically it could also fit well with SOTV stuff.

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Chris wrote:

Initially, challenge leagues had a few primary goals:................
A way of testing out game mechanics or features that could later be used in the main game.

This may have been a goal initially, but from my perspective, it is the very existence of the challenge leagues that have perpetuated the game. I personally only play challenge leagues, while only occasionally testing builds in Standard. If there weren't challenge leagues I would have stopped playing this game a long time ago (been playing since open beta).

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Chris wrote:

These challenges were designed to be very difficult to complete. While millions of players would play the leagues and hundreds of thousands of players would engage with the challenges, only a few hundred players would actually complete all of them.

The challenges are ridiculously difficult, in fact, too difficult. You say that a few hundred players "complete" them, but in truth, a few hundred players "BUY" them. People selling kills, unidentified items, etc for challenge purposes is a real turn off for me. It's a turn off because it perpetuates the greedy motivations of players. I get enough greed motivated actions in my daily life, I don't like seeing it in my games.

But, in the end, the challenge structure doesn't reward people that dedicate themselves to completing a challenge, it rewards people that are willing to pay for challenges. I've never payed for challenges. I completed 5 in the last leagues. There is absolutely no possible way that I could have completed all without buys, that is a problem in my book.