Challenge League Post-mortems

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.

I missed out on some challenge leagues, but perhaps it helps out to say what motivates me to stick to 1 league:

Time constraint. All wealth accumulated in 1 league. I don't trade, I barely use my guild for aid (not that it is that active, orsonius I saw you left :*( ), I got 1 support gem I ended up not using. Without trading things just take a lot longer in this game, the game is far more difficult. To add to that I try interesting thematic builds, which are not always FOTM builds and thus can be slower to acquire wealth.

Upon my POE return I was a bit skeptical, but since the game in my absence has moved into the right direction I went for the supporter packs, while not even being a fan of the current packs.

The biggest contributors that impact the game in a good way are:

1. No more desync.
2. Smarter fights and less "die from unavoidable 1 shot/ reflect."
3. Nice new quality content ( act 4).
4. Crafting options for the self-found, no longer trade obliged to get somewhere. That said the really hard content is still lurking behind a trade wall if you consider both normal playing hours and self found.
5. Gem distribution changes by vendors.

This league I chose to go for the standard league, where I could die. I don't think I will go back to any hardcore league since I had more room to experiment and try to get past content with subpar gear in a few cases still.

Things I would love to see improved are:

1. Just free up the gems at vendors. I made two characters to go past lvl80 and still have no clarity. I know I can run the right character up to brutus, but that just seems as a clumsy design choice.

2. Game has become too complex for new players. I think overall progression feels better than it use to do, so that improved, but you got so much content that I feel running around with a dictionary.

3. Make fights smarter. I don't want to read a list of mods on a mob, make it visually evident what is there and what is going on. I did notice a lot of the bloodline stuff does have visual indicators, the right way to go!

4. Crafting and currency drops. The most interesting crafting options regal orbs and exalts are far too rare. There is a gap in POE where most often you sit on gear that isn't there or usable yet and you want to spend these orbs on it, but they only drop once per 2/3 weeks, so you can't. The masters slightly filled this gap, but I feel the gap is still there. I rather would see an option for more incremental improvements to gear. Allow us to roll those mods, but put the gate on improving the gear and rolling it high? I am talking about an armor piece with 1k armour, 70+ life, 2 resists around 20% and as self found I have to need to spend currency on such items but the currency does not exist.

5. Masters and hideout resetting in new leagues? I heard you can band up to get them leveled faster,.. but again this is just clumsy at some point I will just stop making an hideout and stop leveling masters and find myself most likely not playing PoE.

6. Challenges. I got 6 or so that are 1 away from completion, but I just can't find the rogue exile/ monster/ unique/ vaal zone in map to finish them. For some I have to delve myself into the PoE wiki to figure out where drops what and I got my limit on how often I want to visit it. I wish I could see within a zone what objectives I could complete there as a start to improve the design and make this more friendly towards new players.

7. Position of melee. At one point melee got a buff which made them more playable, but after that it seems melee has fallen off the grid again. I don;t feel fortify works that well for melee. Yes it helps, but alongside keeping up endurance charges the system is clunky. At some point you need to attack/ deal damage to maintain crowd control. The difference between fortify melee and fortify non melee is that melee needs to keep it up during combat within in range of all damage, thanks to whirling blade it is possible to get it up by gaining distance between your enemy. It sort of comes down to: gets fortify for the brawls VS gets it during escape. Anyways melee can use some love, not by giving it more AOE or range, but by going back at the drawing board, what is melee?

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Chris wrote:

This manifesto post is an analysis of each league and what we learned for the design of future challenge leagues.

I'd love to see it being updated some undefined time after league ends~