Challenge League Post-mortems

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LMTR14 wrote:

lol. first you limit the number of shirts to an arbitrary number and now you do away with them altogether?! not that I ever would have gotten one, but this is the lowest thing you could possibly do ggg.

I'm certainly not giving you any more money ever (cause you never listen to suggestions & unfair bans), but now I wish I COULD TAKE OUT THE MONEY I GAVE YOU ALREADY!!!

shirts being expensive is the stupidest thing I've ever heard (even more than map levels being confusing). sell the game to another company already and relieve us of your idiocity

standard 4 life (certainly no reason to play leagues anymore, now that even the last possible reward is taken away - couldn't care less about cosmetic shit, I wouldn't use it if it was free! give vanity ITEMS not mtx shit!)

Geez, cool your jets. I can't help but imagine you frothing at the mouth while you scream, kicking a box and stubbing a toe, wailing for a good five minutes about how unfair and terrible the world is, to you especially.
Though I too am sad to see the shirts go. I always liked that sort of physical and heavily limited sort of trophy.

A good developer does learn not just from their mistakes, but their successes. At least we do see that GGG is taking something away from each experience. A few observations I'd personally highlight:

• Extra care should be taken to make sure a challenge league's encounters are impactful at earlier levels. Warbands showed how troublesome that could be: sure, they SHOWED UP early on... But merely in a "oh, something is moving/attacking an a way I don't remember," before they died, and didn't really have much difference in loot. It wasn't until they were buffed (both in difficulty and loot) and at later levels, that they genuinely felt meaningful.
• RNG gating can be a useful tool... But Warbands took it to an EXTREME. Completing the challenge just for getting all of the leaders took a lot of time; the main 3 groups were alright, but the chaos generals simply showed up too rarely, to where it took hundreds of hours, and tons of sharing, for most to get them all.
• As to more on RNG gating... The "identify/possess at the end of league" challenges have probably been the worst. What GGG is well aware is that they have always served as a useful "gate" to keep EVERYONE from succeeding at the end... The problem is that it's poor gameplay. In fact... I don't think a single person has completed them by actually earning all the drops. Instead it's just been a case of "farm to make cash, then buy all the parts from those who have no chance of completing it, but got lucky enough for 1 or 2 of the required drops. As in this case, it's not RNG gating, it's trade and economy gating. This is Path of Exile, not Path of Merchanting.
• As for the T-shirts... While the idea of exclusive swag *IS* enticing, I definitely understand how impractical it can be. International shipping is EXPENSIVE... And when you're shipping from a pretty tiny country out in the ocean? Even moreso; each of those shirts was probably running them $100-200+ once you figured in the cost of the limited run and shipping costs...
• The flip side of the old reward system was that it was VERY limited: 50 people (who would always be professional or semi-professional streamers/youtube'ers) would be able to snatch up those prizes, while hundreds of thousands of serious players could merely fantasize about winning... And for maybe 1% of those playing, potentially get all 8 challenges far too late to win anything. But with GGG cutting off that $5,000-10,000 cost for every single league, they can instead funnel that cash into developing a new MTX to give as a prize... Which means that EVERYONE could have a shot at it, like with the 1-month races. Only with that much cash, they can do something UNIQUE, rather than the mere palette-swap Seraphim Armour (as awesome as it is) we get right now.

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Qarl wrote:

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

This a thousand times. The Beyond demons are practically BEGGING to be extended onto... Basically, they're like the Vaal pre-1.1.0, or MANY of the lore's characters before Awakening.

It would also offer an easy option for endgame content, which I feel is one thing this game DEFINITELY should expand upon in the future. More things akin to Atziri. Perhaps instead of corrupted side areas, Beyond Bosses (in maps) had a chance to drop Beyond fragments... With one themed to each boss.

Overall, I've really liked the concept of a "hunt around across various maps to find keys" sort of route as a new way to breathe some variety into the mapping endgame.

That ehhm a kinda heavy :D

Chris just to let you know there maybe a good reason for a lot of people not doing the hardcore leagues when they are on. I myself don't have the best internet and this would be much of the story around Australia I get low line speed and after around 5:30pm frequent disconnects so doing something like hardcore is definitely out for me. Also my computer isn't that fast I am still operating with a standard serial HDD where I feel a lot of the game relies heavily on load times during the game play. This is not of you fault nor am I in anyway complaining I understand what I have so I don't try to do what I can't.
These can be however a lot of the reasons why people do not play in hardcore. I hope this can help you to understand in some way.
The future for Australia internet is looking really good though as my area is on a list to have all the cabling improved and switched to NBN which will be something moved out across most of Australia in time.

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wordfree wrote:

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SixtusTheFifth wrote:

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Chris wrote:

We liked the fact that (unlike Invasion), the bosses were spawned as a result of player actions and could be avoided (or induced) by careful play.
I expect us to return to that story in the future.

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Qarl wrote:

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

I hope this return and exploration of mechanics includes an exploration of WHAT IN THE PLUPERFECT HELL a player is supposed to do to carefully avoid Beyond bosses spawning in a pit fight.

Exactly . Beyond was the worst league .... annoying nothing else..

The Beyond-in-a-Pit-Cage is probably the most obnoxious result of Beyond mod. As it stands, whenever Beyond is active, my enjoyment of the game plummets... and we get it all weekend, every weekend. SUCH JOY.

Interesting stuff...thx

Good post about the leagues and what you've learned from them. Pretty interesting to see the game design process and evolution of the design.

However I found some points confusing. You keep talking about money. It sounds like you're bragging, "hey we've got all these millions". Also you make it sound like implementing some complex feature is just a matter of pouring more money into it.

Also after all this you say that you'll stop sending out t-shirts. Say, an exclusive t-shirt plus shipping costs you $100 (probably less). 50 of them costs $5000. So you talk about spending millions on the game, but don't want to spend $5k on your most dedicated players. Meh.

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Khelevaster wrote:

Also after all this you say that you'll stop sending out t-shirts. Say, an exclusive t-shirt plus shipping costs you $100 (probably less). 50 of them costs $5000. So you talk about spending millions on the game, but don't want to spend $5k on your most dedicated players. Meh.

what's your problem? imho it's simply too much money considering it's consistently spent on 0,002% of the player base.

if that's really a problem for you: here is one solution.

Amen to this wise man:
"As to more on RNG gating... The "identify/possess at the end of league" challenges have probably been the worst. What GGG is well aware is that they have always served as a useful "gate" to keep EVERYONE from succeeding at the end... The problem is that it's poor gameplay. In fact... I don't think a single person has completed them by actually earning all the drops. Instead it's just been a case of "farm to make cash, then buy all the parts from those who have no chance of completing it, but got lucky enough for 1 or 2 of the required drops. As in this case, it's not RNG gating, it's trade and economy gating. This is Path of Exile, not Path of Merchanting."

Why do you want to force people to spend time trading, ggg? You got the data, how many people did complete the challenges of "identify this unique.." without trading, on their own? Why can't you make it deterministic ie level master to this level, kill monster boss etc and remove these annoying trading challenges?

First I just need to say that it amazes me that it took you guys so long to realize that creating completely different standard and hardcore leagues is the wrong way to go about it. There are several reasons, some of which you acknowledged in the main post.

1) The obvious - it takes twice the resources to create twice the content.
2) Related to the above, splitting a set amount of resources two ways means neither is as awesome as it could be, both in terms of balance and content.
3) You run through ideas faster. In the end you'd be scrounging for interesting content to make new leagues.
4) Most important to me as a player - Half the player-base will either never see it, or only see a lesser form if it gets mainlined. You noted that most players don't jump between leagues, and I'm pretty confident in telling you that's because the #1 concern as a player choosing a league is by far "Do I want to play hardcore or not?" What the league has to offer is a secondary concern, just important enough to breed discontent when the grass looks greener on the other side.


Some of my thoughts on specific leagues/expansions and/or their mechanics:

Anarchy, Domination, Ambush: These were my favorite leagues as I felt they all added something that PoE was missing - exciting and rewarding high points punctuating the usually humdrum journey through Wraeclast. The shrines felt the least impactful of these, are still fun.

Rampage - Didn't play it. Never seen Rampage in any form. Sounds boring, but I can't have a real opinion on it.

Torment - Didn't play it, my experience is only with the spirits as they currently exist. Their mechanics are unintuitive and unfun, so I typically kill them immediately to shut them up or ignore them and move on.

Warbands - In my opinion it had huge potential, but ended up a giant missed opportunity. Expanding on the rogue exile concept is a great idea. Groups of enemies that cooperate by design is a great idea. Unfortunately my experience with them was that they were very rare (especially the higher ranks), huge damage sponges, and less rewarding than a standerd-issue rare mob. I played a character or two to mid-level maps (a rarity for me), but in terms of time spent I quit this league quickly.

Onslaught - Didn't play it. Clearly no imagination went into this, boring, moving on.

Nemesis, Bloodlines - Never played the leagues. The mods used to be interesting, but over time have been nerfed to near-irrelevance.

Invasion - Didn't play it, I just remember the balance complaints. No idea which currently-present bosses were from Invasion.

Beyond - What little I've seen in Zana maps makes this seem pretty cool. No extended experience however.

Tempest - Was pretty fun in the races I participated in, and I think it works well in that context. Probably too much for a permanent mechanic though. Also, I heavily dislike the "area matters" theme used here and in Warbands.

Sacrifice of the Vaal - Good stuff here. I'll likely never see Atziri, so ignore that. But the corrupted side areas are pretty great and I wish they showed up a bit more often in the current game. Vaal skill gems are a pretty cool idea too, though I rarely use them due to lack of gem slots and that silly zone-locking of souls.

Forsaken Masters - Didn't see this until Warbands, but it was a long-needed way to alleviate the RNG hell that is all too common in PoE. Not a huge fan of the repetitive missions to level the masters though.

Awakening - I'm having a hard time remembering if there was anything new mechanically here. Act 4 was definitely a welcome addition, but that's a separate discussion.