Responses to the 3.1.0 Patch Notes

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Chris wrote:

The patch notes are "generally underwhelming"
So with this release, we pulled out the new expansion details, the league, all the specific nerfs, and heaps of news tidbits for separate announcement. This left the patch notes themselves somewhat dry of exceptionally interesting information, as we generally spotlighted it earlier (with the exception of the new Flask UI, Hedge Maze removal, character league dropdown QOL changes, etc). Do you feel this approach was worse than holding back information to bolster the patch notes with crazy reveals?

Nope. Great stuff, good job. A central site with all the info would be the cherry on top, but yeah. Pretty awesome release, crunchtime well worth it. <3

sorry.-.............

The Baron nerf
This item should never have gone out in its original state. A single item granting a ~200% bonus to melee physical damage for minions is not acceptable. We are very sorry for this, and that we had to later nerf it. It's still a great item.

i rly rly love post from Agrippas258 he is right ... O:-)


zombie is unplayable in 3.1 ..... it is my opinion
zombie build now("harbringer league")... is rly expensive / need many items to make work / is not op have hard endgame boss fight example uber atziri / has no fast clear map / and ggg nerf core zombie item i think it is wrong....


If you are nerfing baron, then you could buff zombies, because with the baron nerf, zombies will be pretty much useless.

Don't normally say much about patching and buffs and nerfs.. I understand with the thousands of items and skills we have. Dev's trying to balance them and make nothing insanely over powered is not a easy job. Heard more from people not happy about patch notes more than normal this time.



That Said we had been hit really hard lately with more nerfs over buffs. (lately meaning few patches)

- My feedback What I noticed and scratched my head on
Some of the reasons like buffs aren't just adding a number to a skill is kinda odd. Cause later in the same notes a few skills got number changes to skill or radius or numbers changed on 2 skills. So mHmmm..

Chris talks about timeline and I'm slightly confused Harbinger got extended. 3.0 expansion was rushed. Maybe the team needs to take a break on creating new stuff for a little bit and catch up? I understand FTP models need constant content for income. But once you get down the I'm behind slope.. Only 2 ways to fix it. Either Hire even more people to get caught up (harder to do since they have to be trained etc.) Or pause current projects go back and finish the loose ends. Hard call due to financial needs.






- Other People's feedback I've been hearing chat/friends etc.
Feel with everyone I talked to Ascendancy classes needed some love and people felt that they would get some sort of change with 3.1. People don't like change! Windows 8 came to mind. 3.5m jack on phones removed. Job duties at work. Favorite game to enjoy gets changed. So I understand a few friends that will stop playing poe and play something else. It's just human nature.

More of the bitching I heard yesterday was how GGG only listens to the 1%. They felt the exp nerfs really show that. Few noted that the last few patches now that exp has been nerfed into the ground.


Prophecy - running back to areas that are 30 or 40 levels lower to complete a prophecy needs still looked at.


Final comments
Nerfs have to happen or this game would become really silly fast. Nerfs have hit the game hard in last few major patches without any real major buffs. QOL changes are always welcomed and I thank the team for making poe more enjoyable. After the buff 3.2 patch maybe go back to 50/50 on nerfs and buffs.

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Do you feel this approach was worse than holding back information to bolster the patch notes with crazy reveals?

This was the right approach, separating out the Path of Nerfs manifesto blunted the criticism today.

That said, there needs to be something new and exciting in the patch notes. The patch notes are the day when many players (myself included) start imagining builds to start playing in the new league. If there isn't anything interesting to theorycraft, then all that is left is looking at previous builds and going "eh, I guess I can do a league starter"... which I get bored by, and then quit the league early.

One difficulty with these notes is that the only new options are the corpse gems. Recent new skill releases have been uneven. Some are great (blade flurry / DP) while others are unplayable for starting a league (storm burst). So I can't rely on them.

This is why balance changes to existing gems are so important. I know whether static strike's problem is skill radius (nope) or whether extra damage makes skeletons a good starter (also nope). But a mechanical change to lighting strike? That would matter.

There is just nothing in the patch notes that gets me excited to play a new build in the new league.

For these notes, one option might have been to put out a spreadsheet with the new mods added by War for the Atlas. Mention the new mods alter existing skill balance, and then let us start imaging building around them? Not as exciting as direct changes (since items are economy-gated) but at least somewhat inspiring?

I am very disappointed my divination card is not making it in to this bunch. I paid for and started developing this with GGG in February or March of 2017. This will be well over a 9 month process and when I read all the info on creating a card it mentioned a "relatively quick process".

Please, either remove this statement or give some sort of rough estimate on how long card development usually takes. A significant amount of money was spent to make this card and so far I have 9 months of not reaping the benefits of playing to chase my card among others.

I don't expect it to be completed in a month but I would guess 3-4 months would be sufficient to create the art for the card. The details were completed by June or July by the way and approvals and such for the details of the card.

/end rant

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There are too few buffs
This was honestly a time issue. We have buffs planned that have been pushed to later 3.1.x patches or 3.2.0 due to being incomplete as of this week. The 3.1.0 expansion was developed under an aggressive schedule, fitting what would normally take 26 weeks into 17. While we try to budget sufficient time to include everything we want to into a release, we felt that this was an acceptable compromise over not having a big December release for you to enjoy during the holidays. Buffing stuff isn't just a matter of typing a bigger number into a box, but often involves re-creating content from the ground up, like with Lightning Tendrils.

Also, please note that many buffs have come in the form of new uniques or skill combinations that aren't 100% obvious from quickly skim-reading the patch notes.

Excellent and thank you for the responses.

However;

The quote above is a bit puzzling to me. You say that you didn't have time for all the buffs you had planned, but I don't see anything to suggest that you have any more nerfs planned. This is to be interpreted as all the nerfs got put into 3.1, but not all the buffs. This means that the overall difficulty of the game is harder than 3.0, because more aspects have been nerfed than buffed.

As someone who started Harbinger very late, and is still very much a scrub to this game, my question is, was 3.0 thought to be too easy? And I don't mean too easy to get to a certain level, but was it thought too easy to beat the game, or the closest you can which is beating Shaper and all those crazy endgame bosses?

But if we go back to the aforementioned quote, you say that you did have buffs planned, but couldn't find time to implement. That means that you originally had an idea for your product, your product being this game, and the fun times and experiences your game offers. Does that mean that 3.1 is an unfinished product? That we're only getting most, but not all of what you intended?

Let's take Vaal Pact for an example. It was drastically changed in 3.1, because it was felt that the node negated certain high-damage boss mechanics. I thought that was fine, because the balance of Vaal Pact came from the fact that it made farmer Uber Labs much more difficult due to lack of regen.

From my personal experience of following a proven build very closely in 3.0, I would still die 5 times on a T16 boss. It's a build where you do soak up a lot of damage, and isn't the most mobile, but had Vaal Pact. Was that build incorrect? Can builds like that still exist with the new Vaal Pact, or only builds where you're now able to avoid all the high-damage mechanics? Or do you intend for people to possibly fail T16 bosses altogether and have to pray to your Map Drop RNGsus to get endgame maps again?

For someone who's still new to your game, and hasn't yet experienced 100% of it, and has already experienced good amounts of difficulty, how hard is it supposed to be? How many times am I supposed to need to run a boss to learn the fight? Is reading up on it enough? How forgiving are the mechanics supposed to be?

The TL-DR of this post is:
For a game that's been more nerfed than buffed this patch, are we still going to have fun running through those endgame maps? Are casual players going to be able to experience all this patch has to offer before we have to try again next patch?

Chris & Team:

I think people are levying a great deal too much criticism your way over this patch release. I, like others, also have my disagreements and question some of the decisions to nerf certain items over others (I will miss my 8% RoTF) but I also think it's unfair for the community to sit here bitching and moaning over it when so much effort has been put in this year.


If the game currently suffers from "power creep", it's fair to say the games vocal playerbase suffers from "entitlement creep."

I dont get why you need weeks to adjust some numbers. Here a little more damage there a little more radius would make a difference for me at least. Numeric changes to weaker Ascendancies could make them really good maybe even "OP". Why not ? You rework them anyway in the next couple of months. But we get 1 radius for Static Strike and Slayer leech nerf. Slayer leech is going to be bonkers nonetheless with 3.1 VP you know that right?:D

Cheer up !

Honestly the only thing I'm waiting to hear at this point is that you've done something to make master rotations no longer be a thing. Master rotations are by far the worst part of the game, and way too needed when you're sticking breach on Zana 8 (not to mention other crafting stuff).

Just make dailies give as much rep as a full rotation used to, and make other people's dailies give nothing.

And don't give me some shit about player interaction. I've never made a friend doing rotations. It is boring at best, extremely frustrating at worst. I do enjoy playing with other people, but I sure as shit don't meet those people doing master rotations.

Honestly, I'd even be happy if you just made master rep carry over from standard into leagues. If I started the league without a master grind ahead of me, I'd be so much happier. I want to level characters and try new builds, not grind rep.