Harbinger Content Integration

Great!

Encountering harbingers and having to wait for them to spawn new mobs is annoying, ancient orb only "fun" for gambling headhunters, I liked the easy atlas unlocking from horizon and harbinger orbs but can live without that.

The ability to roll quality on strongboxes is not needed - making it a part of the game just makes it feel mandatory if it's any good, and it's tedious, not fun.

Orb of binding would have been nice to have while leveling, but since you got them too slowly the first playthrough you might as well use the lvling gear you find while mapping next character.

Orb of annulment is the only really solid currency item introduced and I'm glad it stays.
Personally I really liked having exalted shards though, so you could pay exactly 3.4 ex and not have to say "if im going by x ratio bla bla here is .4 in c is that ok?"

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ReginaldClovis wrote:

Perhaps no one will read this, as I waited longer than an hour or two to respond to the post

I read it, all of it. And last I checked, I'm certainly not "no one". ;-)

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ReginaldClovis wrote:

but to give us a REAL tool for experiencing the endgame and then spuriously take it away? Pretty awful, honestly.

First, I'm not the 1% according to them, nor am I casual according to the "filthy casuals". I'm probably somewhere in the 2-5% of anyone with a PoE account (at least according to the league stats that get carted out on the forums for every challenge league). Yet I have no problems reaching end-game and tier 15 maps. I never complete my Atlas in challenge leagues, but I can complete end-game challenges. So I really don't get how you claim, by contrast, that we never had a "real" tool for experiencing end-game.

We have the Atlas. That's a tool for map progression. We also have vendor recipes to upgrade tiers of maps, so that's already a tool to help reach end-game. But this biggest tool of all is trading, barring SSF of course. Red maps are rather cheap compared to the currency you'll be earning at end-game. Just playing a few yellow maps will earn you more than enough currency to buy a red map. So why would Harbinger currency be a "real" tool for endgame when you ignore everything else we already have. And I didn't even get as far to mention vaaling, chancing, guilds, global 820, and more. Plenty of "real" tools out there.

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ReginaldClovis wrote:

Leading players on a forced march through content they don't want to play doesn't seem like the "experiencing the Atlas" that I believe was intended. On the other hand, the average player wouldn't be able to just skip most of the Atlas, either, to progress. I feel like this response by GGG is symptomatic of having one's eye on the "top 1%" of the player base, around whom I would say balancing is almost ALWAYS a bad idea.

It really depends on how you define "leading" players and "average" players. If you use the raw numbers of estimated players, then yes, but if we're talking about active played who are logging into PoE every week or every day, then no. I can easily skip a good chunk of the Atlas in challenge leagues, and as a 2-5%er I do a forced march through progression but still thoroughly enjoy the content. There are no progression maps I hate, unlike the speed clearers/meta folk, but there are certainly unique maps and end-game encounters I hate (eg: no point in EVER running Hall of Grandmasters, which is probably the most skipped content in the game, well beyond even uber Atziri and the Shaper).

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ReginaldClovis wrote:

On the other hand, as a primarily SSF player

This is your Achilles heel. This is the real reason why you have the experience you do, why you posted what you did, and where your viewpoint originates. And I completely understand that. But keep in mind PoE is balanced and geared towards non-SSF leagues due to trading and grouping. SSF is an afterthought that's embraced by the < 1% of players who seek out that insanely time consuming mode of gameplay, relatively speaking compared to everything else that's PoE. But please don't expect GGG and the community to bend over backwards to balance this game for the SSF folk.

Integrate Harbinger stuff in core game and bring back Legacy system.

Please, FFS.

Edit: Because why teasing us for a couple months with new currencies to remove them afterwards ? I can understand for eternal orbs since using them with exalts and mirrors was pretty OP, but those other orbs, not that much (maybe ancient ones). As for harbinger orbs, just remove the possibility of getting beachhead maps since the exp rate there is beyond ridiculous (or lower the exp rate while keeping the same number of harbingers in the map - allowing to get true grinding for shards)

Cheers,

~Pledge

So all I'm getting out of this, is nothing is being implemented from Harbinger and we will have a mutilated stash tab because of this league going forward.

Yup, its official. Harbinger worst league of all time.

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Kueson wrote:

So all I'm getting out of this, is nothing is being implemented from Harbinger and we will have a mutilated stash tab because of this league going forward.

Yup, its official. Harbinger worst league of all time.

No argument from me about the quality of the league, for sure. But "mutilated stash tab"? Not really, perhaps several more slots in some random tab in your permanent Standard and Hardcore league stashes to keep this soon-to-be legacy currency, but no need to keep them in the currency tabs. Hopefully GGG will keep those extra slots in the new currency tabs, as it's a huge improvement from before.

So everything was already predetermined then? Annulment orb had it's place in the currency tab before the league started and is the only orb staying.

I really liked binding, horizon and harbinger orbs. Pity.

Harbinger league was my favourite of all time. Would have been better to remove the stupid breaches with the instant deaths and add harbinger instead. Those encounters are much better balanced.

A bit disappointing.

Horizons and Harbinger orbs were the only new mechanic I enjoyed this league. I don't get why they have to go completely, unless you're going to design the same mechanics under a new name. If you want to tone down their usage, you can always tweak their drop rate.

This just smells like the old elitist douchebaggery this game is full of. God forbid a casual might get his char to 100 too fast! Sacrilege! He might even attempt to roll a new char in the same league and even buy some MTX for it!

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ReginaldClovis wrote:

On the other hand, as a primarily SSF player

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cipher_nemo wrote:

This is your Achilles heel. This is the real reason why you have the experience you do, why you posted what you did, and where your viewpoint originates. And I completely understand that. But keep in mind PoE is balanced and geared towards non-SSF leagues due to trading and grouping. SSF is an afterthought that's embraced by the < 1% of players who seek out that insanely time consuming mode of gameplay, relatively speaking compared to everything else that's PoE. But please don't expect GGG and the community to bend over backwards to balance this game for the SSF folk.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

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Qarl wrote:

The two map rerolling currency items (Orb of Horizons and Harbinger's Orbs) are not something we want to keep in the core game. While they provided players a lot of flexibility in mapping, we felt it took a lot away from unlocking the Atlas, and made jumping up map tiers too easy. They also do not fit well with content coming in 3.1.0. These will not be added to the core game.

This is a pitty. I really prefer my mapping to be limited by the strength of my character rather than the amount of time I've spent grinding maps I don't need or want to spend time in.

I'm still not sure what Engineering Orbs did exactly.