Responses to the 3.1.0 Patch Notes

Hey Chris -

First and foremost, thank you for responding to the responses. This alone shows the majority are being melodramatic about the "lack of attention" by devs when that is not the case.

I think just the little bit of information you presented in this post would have been a great preface for the patch notes released today. Just knowing that more adequate buffs are being worked on assuages the misbelief that they are being neglected.

The complaints about breach being moved to level 8 are unsubstantiated, they haven't even played Abyss yet so they don't even know how fun (and Breach-like) that is going to be. The rose-tinted nostalgia glasses are a bit strong with some folk and they can't seem to let go of Breach league.

I think the one "miscommunication" was the previous statement of:

"

Of course, there are plenty of buffs in 3.1.0 as well, but we'll leave those as pleasant surprises in tomorrow's full patch notes.

when in fact they were delayed to a subsequent patch. People were foaming at the mouth in anticipation of just some of the skill/ascendancy changes expecting them to come today. I think the previous statement of "buffs to come" gave a bit of false hope in those regards.

This patch had a massive amount of new content and people are completely glossing over that fact, with the huge atlas rework, monster density changes, new monster types in maps, etc. And a whole new league mechanic being introduced with tons of other items, people aren't considering how those new elder/shaper/abyss items are going to impact previously lacking builds or in conjunction with the nerfs in today's patch notes.

I definitely think I am in the "wait and see" boat to get a feel of how those items make an impact before forming any opinions.

Thank you for the good work so far in getting us something shipped out for the holiday season!

So why does it seem with the nerfs as of late that they seem to be concentrated around 1% of players instead of taking the interest of the rest of the 99% into consideration? For example the increase in experience for 90-100? the average player now looks at the gap and thinks not worth the time less incentive to play the game for an extended period of time. Also who are these "top racers" you consult? Some transparency might be nice, since they seem to be speaking on our behalf. But at the end of the day if your player base is not having fun your game will die. So when considering nerfs remember that "fun" is your top seller. Thanks for all you've done.

#bringbackaoe

Thanks for acknowledging this. The feedback you mentioned is dead on though, so please do something about it. Underwhelming, almost ZERO buffs. So many huge, glaring issues still unaddressed. Incredibly disappointing after all the hype. The War announcement was so good, and the last two days have totally negated it!

Such complex DD buff is a thing. It may even be usable now.

The developing model doesn't require approval of reddit. You may keep things half-done by default and the spice will flow anyway. y'know.

Thanks for addressing the salt, but you definitely did handle this in a way initially that you should have known would produce a mine's worth.

Don't hype something up only to let people down, it just makes you look worse than if you'd never bothered with the hype. Stop being so nerf-happy, this is a PVE game, not an esport, balance is pretty much irrelevant, fun however, is not. You can tell us about cool new unique interactions all you want, but taking things away that players had easy access to and replacing them with combinations of items/gems only pigeon-holes players into having to take that "one thing" to make something work. You did away with VP being needed for x amount of builds by now introducing more content that will require x item or node just to work. It's build limiting and it's boring. Allow us more flexibility in how we build, more rare-based, less uniques.

Sometimes it really does feel like you guys see players are enjoying something, they want to spend money as a result, and your reaction is "uh oh, we better nerf that!"....this makes absolutely zero sense. This is why leagues depopulate so quickly after launches. We get bored too quickly, because the mechanics of POE are quite simple, too many builds feel too similar, and 10 acts or no, we're still just repeating the same content over and over. Remove our fun and/or gimmicky stuff and what are we left with?

Performance fixes, new skills that aren't all basically the same theme all at once(all channelling one patch, all corpse related another), fixes to broken or underused content such as shitty ascendancy classes, melee skills, etc, should have been a priority over 90% of what you actually did roll out in this patch. Perhaps the new maps will add some variety and be mind-blowingly good, but they'll still get boring playing the same old skills over and over again, except now with fun new nerfs!

With the way things have been going in your nerfing pattern, it seems that if something is popular, it has to go. By that logic, I'm surprised you haven't reduced Tabula to a lower drop rate. I'm not at all suggesting you do this, it would likely kill your game, but you have to admit it fits the pattern, which should illustrate why it's a really bad metric for nerfing.

Also, one of the biggest things that pissed people off- stop listening to racers and reddit. Racers don't play the way that 99.9% of us do, and they have no idea how we play, why we play, or what we like. Balancing anything around people like Ziz is going to make for a terrible game, and that should honestly be blatantly obvious.

Thanks again for the transparency and continual communication, just please learn to better sort through your feedback and learn what to ignore and heed. Use common sense when it comes to getting people's hopes up, it shouldn't be surprising what will piss off the average player, especially not this many years in. People are now going to spend the next couple days either wondering if their builds still work, or bitching on forums about how their favorite thing was nerfed- this is bad PR and not good for POE's overall health, which none of us want to see.

"

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?

I think the combination of the above points and this one led to this feeling.

I'm super impressed with the patch itself, but having the two MASSIVE balance changes (vaal pact/reflect) teased well in advance, made us feel like we were going to get a whole lot of other stuff in the actual notes.

Perhaps if there are time constraints about getting the bulk of balance changes into a big patch, tease that as well, so that when the notes hit, people don't freak out.

Your explanation should allay most people's concerns, having it out earlier will just prevent an outcry.

Overall I am very excited. What I see, I like, even though I wish the patch notes were a couple pages longer (Brightbeak and Bloodseeker really untouched? Hmmm).

As others have pointed out, we really want to see a lot of the old and busted skills get reworked as soon as possible. I can understand the time constraints for this expansion, but for 3.2 please consider putting more development time into your old skills! Lightning Tendrils is a great start and I can't wait to try it out, but what about:

- Lightning Strike
- Dominating Blow
- Conversion Trap
- Double Strike
- Ice Spear
- Arctic breath
- Incinerate

Some of these used to be effective and great fun, but very few experienced players use them anymore due to them being mechanically clunky or numerically underpowered or both.

Also please consider revisiting some old chase uniques that were hit a bit too hard with the nerf bat like Mjolner and Voltaxic Rift for instance.

Thanks for communicating and listening to feedback (even from the unreasonably angry people), happy to support as long as that never changes.

Buffing things indirectly by nerfing them and adding in a niche item to then "help" is exactly how Diablo 3 balances their game. Please, PLEASE, don't do that and use that excuse. I mean, it's too late, you just did. But stop.

luv ya dudes, i wouldnt mind seeing mid-league (slight) tweaks more often, nothing too crazy just to spice things up a little - the clearly underused/undertuned skills and such

Hi Chris,

Thanks for taking the time to expand on the feedback. Thank you for continuing to deliver new content (for free!) at regular intervals in the form of leagues and expansions. GGG and PoE are a special snowflake in the online gaming world.

Thanks again for listening and responding to feedback from your player base. It is really appreciated.
The hype for 3.1 is real!

Cheers,
a filthy casual