When is Incursion Being Added to the Core Game?

The more I think about it, the less I am a fan of including incursion.


You will say: "But incursion was good!!!"

Yes, and it would overcrowd maps even more. We have masters, breaches, abysses, essences, trials and more stuff that I forgot about. Also, very similar to a lot of those things on the list, incursions do not really scale. You needed 11 incursions for a temple with a balance of 1 incursion per map. This is "usual league mechanic". We also had 1 essence, 1 breach, 1 abyss during leagues. Now, after the league ended, how often do those things appear? How long does it take to farm 100 splinters? how long does it take to get 11 incursions which are non-tradeable? Thus, we are going to have more content that is cluttering the game but is inaccessible for the most.

And incursion with its punishing mechanics of stones and dying in an incursion is seriously no fun. Think about running ~110 maps to get 11 incursions, failing two...to try out a new temple layout without fails is another 110 maps. And honestly, the temple is not that great to justify this.

By now I would vote for removing some of the clutter, league does not scale.

That's why they are changing it while people are having fun delving and hating maps all over again. I can't say I am sure of that but it looks like Incursions can't be like that. It's to much time for one temple. I play few years now and breach bosses are strangers for me cause I don't play standard and am casual noob with 12-24 challenges per league. So no, I have hope that will look different.

Just to clarify, a ton of us (as you know) can't give a fuck about your blue collar league (Delve).

So please make sure you don't fuck that fabulous temple / Incursion league by even remotely making it like that crap-fest we currently have.

thanks & ./popcorn

Edit: Any blue collar out there wanna refarm crapfit and azushoyt next league? lol.

I really liked Incursion and it was the time when I started to come back to PoE and play it (a lot) again.

However, as I've just found this information I am a bit scared. Compared to the fun I have in delve here the the things I am really afraid they will become added unchanged. This is my personal take on it. Your mileage may vary.

Maps and Incursions are punishing. In maps you can struggle to keep your high level map pool if you fuck up (or simply have really bad luck) and in incursions a run through a temple without good upgrades is extremly boring and almost worthless. Both implementations took a different take on the same problem in my eyes. There must be some difficulty to progress, otherwise people will be rushed through and have nothing that keeps them playing anymore, and that is fine. Just compare how fast the fastest players are through chapter 1-9 and how long the average player takes for the same time. Good content keeps both of them in the addiction-feedback loop. Get something nice, want something nicer, keep playing, get something nice, want something nicer, keep playing. In maps the difficulty comes from sustaining good and higher level maps (and running them efficiently). In incursions the difficulty comes from upgrading the temple rooms to maximum, as room level 3 was significantly better than 1 and a non upgraded or blocked room was worthless. The good thing about the temple was, that if you theorethically fucked up every single incursion, the temple run would be shorter and you would have spent less time in a bad temple. A perfect temple was something really nice and lead to a cool run. Maps are too punishing because when you are stuck at some progression level there is not really something you can do beside 'git gud' or 'get good drops'. Incursions are too punishing because the worst thing you can have is a long but bad temple. At least you can always opt-out of a temple instance and try again, but you have already wasted time in incursions. Also some mobs in the temple where completly insanely scaled compared to the rest. It always felt like "I AM GOD AND KILL EVERYTHING" and "ONE SHOT". There was nothing in-between. This can happen in every PoE content, but in the temple and incursions it felt worse, but I cannot say if there is some hard fact behind that feeling that was the reason for it.

Long story short, why do I think the delve does this much better than both maps and incursions. I have the feeling every single delve is a short but likely run which will give me progress. Either in form of exploring the mine, actual loot, nice XP from the high mob density, moving the mine cart, lighting up new areas and potentially finding one of the rare nodes. This is one of the things I really hope they will improve for maps and especially for the incursions when they are added permanently: Let me progress all the time, how little it may be, it is more fun than no progress or a set back. My playtime is precious, let me do something valuable in it.

The incursion implementation was annyoing. Loading an instance of a incursion every map really kicked me out of the feedback-loop every single time. It was something I had to do, just to get more out of the temple. While the temple itself was too long for me the incursions felt too short. Also the randomness of the incursions felt like I had essentially no control over what I am doing (the choice was a pseudo choice for me, as there was always exactly one of the two options I valued more.)

How does delve do that better: First and foremost I can choose how long my delve shall be. The longer the route the more time I will have to invest. This is so clever. Also I have the feeling on progressing toward something (in most cases a node, or at least a path towards something wher I hope to find better/more nodes or get deeper faster). Although, as for everything, there mutliple opinions on the actual amount of resources you get vs the amount of resources you have to spent in delve, the fact that you can run multiple delves in a row without a loading screen is great. I wish they add this for the incursions as well. If the cheap solution of buffering via a resource which you have to spent is chosen, that's fine for at least me (in that case it would be up to 1 resource per map, with running as many incursions, up to 11 in a row, without a loading screen, by chaining them).


Please give me the same feeling of beeing in control in incursions. Instead of having the hit/or miss incursions with 0/1 gain and 1 option out of two I will always choose change it into something like the folowing. I've chosen something which can be redesigned with the current model in mind, instead of "doing everything completly different" - which obviously not happen anyway):
* Don't randomly choose the rooms of the incursion. Let me choose them. Let's think of all possible permutations of incursions as a web of timelines, where each permutation is exactly one possible timeline. For the players who only grind through the content without ever listening to what the NPCs and texts tell you : lore-wise the temple becomes better if you manage to kill one of the leaders in an incursions, because the surviving one will have had improved the temple back in the timeline without his rival beeing present. Let me play out one of the billion possible combinations I feel like I want to try out, or run combinations which are efficient more often If i feel like that.
* Instead of two random rooms in each incursion, let each incursion be the next step in the currently followed timeline. There are 24 rooms, so let me choose one of the 24 timelines I want to follow. Each timeline has a length of 11 historical moments (==incursions) which is the fight between two rivals of two not yet chosen architects/rooms. After each incursion one (/two) connected room(s) is(/are) added to the temple, as time progresses the temple is built larger, until finally the apex is completed.
* Let me access the temple at any state, so if I access it earlier I will have to invade a shitty and small temple with little loot and almost no benefit, and if I access it later, it will be an awsome but difficult and large temple.
* If the temple is run before it finished the timeline (11 incursions+12th boss run), consider it as someone had raided the temple at that state of the timeline, which sets the builders back. Being attacked by an outsider, there was no time to fight each other. Treat it additionally as an unsuccessful incursion (add up to 2 randomly chosen connected rooms at level 1 - see below). This is like a soft exit, where I don't have to completly abandon a full temple run, but can shorten it, get some loot of the already upgraded rooms and let them progress.
* Let players reset the timeline altogether if they feel they've fucked up and need to restart a new timeline (or want to try out some new combinations/permutations).
* Split the rewards progressively over all 11+1(boss) incursions/levels. Instead of 3 levels make it 12 with earlier levels beeing weaker and later levels beeing at the state of the current Level 3 rooms.
* After each successful incursion (killed one architet) add a room, connect it, give it level 1 and increase the level of all currently existing rooms by 1 as in this timeline they progressed their technology and improved their rooms. This gives me even more choice. If I choose a room earlier it will upgrade more often, but also means it's impact on difficulty will be higher making the temple likely more difficult.
* After each unsucessful incursion (no architect killed) add both rooms at level 1 and connect them (shortening the amount of incursions you can run effectively by 1 and therefore also reduces the maximum level you can reach) and don't increase the levels of the rooms - the poltical struggle has a negative impact on the progression of the temple. This means a player always has at least a very tiny positive progression, but by far not the same as a successful one. Also it shortens the amount of incursions until the temple is completed, so I can run multiple bad temple runs in the same time of one good one to improve my character until I am able to succeed.
* Always connect rooms in the longest way from entrance to apex (there are multiple possible permutations we can randomly choose, where each path rans from entrace to apex passing all rooms - the apex last) and sort them from lowest level at the entrance to highest level at the apex. As the society progresses they relocate and get an upgrade. This still gives the bombs a use by shortcutting the path to the apex/higher tier rooms. Also to reach the best rooms you have to pass the worse rooms first (without bombs).
* A perfect run would consist of 11 successfull incursions and one temple run, clearing the full temple with room levels (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12 <- apex), while the worst run would be 6 incursions (1,1 - 1,1 - 1,1 - 1,1 - 1,1, 1 - 1 <- apex). There are many billions of billions of possible permutations for players to figure out which they like to run and in which order, and they can always progress at least a tiny bit or reset if they fucked up.

This can be changed/added with almost no changes to the UI, only 1 new screen for the selection of the next architect for the next incursion would be required and that can be pretty simple - essentially a circle with the 24 room types as icons with a tooltip and greying out the rooms already added would do it. If no UI can be added or changed anymore you could even keep the UI 100% the same and still randomly choose the two architects. With all the other changes, which can be implemented without a single change to UI, little change to the room levels, no change to the temple generation beside which rooms are generated, little change to accessing the temple before it is completed, little change to how the rooms are connected, no change to the incursion except not dropping the stones anymore) - I'd still be extremly happy.

Update 8.10 11:37 CEST: Actually there is no need to select two architects. It is sufficient to choose one and add one random, as it would make no sense two select a second one, when you try to kill a specific one.

Aweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesomeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee