Betrayal as a Core Game Mechanic

1. Since Betrayal is now unavoidable, what are your plans for making Betrayal avoidable for people who don't want to engage it?
2. Betrayal is so interconnected with other aspects of the game, especially crafting, that you had to roll it into the core game. How are you going to disentangle Betrayal from the rest of the game going forward? Is this even possible? Or something you would consider?
3. Are you going to fix the interface? Are you going to make the result of choices more apparent? What about potential safehouse rewards? Or am I still going to have to alt-tab to another window every five minutes?
4. When you defeat a Syndicate member, you only get two choices, both of which can completely mess up your board. Is this going to be fixed? Are we getting a "neither" option that doesn't make the encounter feel like a waste?
5. Are you going to redistribute rewards between branches so people aren't incentivized to only run one or two out of the four safehouses?
6. Are you going to fix people being incentivized to only engage Betrayal at lower levels? Like, with Betrayal going core, the league mechanic disincentivizes me from engaging higher-level content. I don't see any reason to run anything other than white-tier maps in 3.6+.
7. Even with the supposed fix to the board reset, what incentive do people have to fight the mastermind at all when the safehouse rewards are so much better than the mastermind's rewards & are so much easier to attain?
8. Between encounters with two choices you don't want to make; a boss fight you don't want & aren't incentivized to engage with; imbalanced rewards between safehouses; and the majority of encounters which are just unfun or aren't incentivized to engage with, so much of Betrayal just feels like a waste -- a waste of time and effort and resources. Is this ever getting a fix?
9. What about the clusterfuck of visual effects and clutter throughout Betrayal encounters? Honestly, it feels like this is your current philosophy regarding difficulty. Smear as much shit as possible on the screen == "difficulty." Is this your philosophy going forward?
10. Certain Syndicate mobs still have their damage scaling waaay beyond their engaged level. Is this ever getting fixed?
11. Is Intervention ever going to be something other than a total goddamned shitshow?
12. Speaking of shitshows, are Betrayal encounters ever going to be *fun*? The only one I enjoyed (kind of) is Research. The only other encounter I find tolerable is Transportation -- and even that gets annoying. The other two can fuck right off. Three, if you include the Mastermind fight. Of course, the great irony is that Research is the only encounter you *can't* run if you want to avoid all of the other encounters. So, if you don't like Betrayal, the only fun encounter is the one you're incentivized to not run.

I mean, that's it right there, right? It's just not fun. So many people yelling some variation of "git gud", etc. But really, for most people, it's just not fun. All of these problems would be tolerable if it were just fun. But it's not. Like I said above, so much of Betrayal just feels like a waste.

Of all the leagues to completely fuck up at all levels, it had to be this one -- the league that ties together the last year of content. The one so interconnected with the rest of the game that it had to go core even if it was reviled and a total design failure. The one you spent so much time, money, and effort making. And it was a total goddamned shitshow.

And then you made it worse! That's what I don't understand! You're supposed to make shitty league mechanics better when you roll them into core! Not worse! How is this the league you totally fuck up?! At least Bestiary's mistakes made sense! And you took it offline for a couple of leagues to fix it when people grumbled! Now you've got a near full-on revolt! How did you learn nothing from Bestiary?! Or any previous league?! It's like Anthem repeating all of the same mistakes of Destiny and The Division and Fallout 76 -- only if you made Destiny and The Division and Fallout 76 and then still repeated all of the same mistakes by making Anthem! And then you made them worse! GGG isn't supposed to be this oblivious! You're supposed to be better than the Triple-AAAAAAAAAA studios! You're supposed to fix your fuck-ups! Not make them worse! Fuck! Even thinking about it just makes me annoyed and angry.

You've completely broken my love for PoE with 3.5. ~8k hours dating back to launch, eschewing all other games released over the past 4-5 years, and I have no excitement for 3.6. I don't even know what the next league mechanic is. All I know is Betrayal is going core come hell or high water. I have no desire to play that version of PoE.

Honestly, just strip all of the leagues from the core game and re-implement leaguestones. Or make scarabs drop from core content at rates as common as alts or transmutes. That way we don't have to deal with this dumb bullshit. It's the most elegant solution I can think of.

As many players mentioned before, I'm also not happy about betrayal going core. The most annoying part for me were always the quadrillion mob spawns who always seem to be immune to damage for a second or so after spawning - but applying stun/chill/damage.

It was okay as long as I were able to lock it with research....but now?

Scarab-nerf is a kick in the balls of the community, like "you are supposed to like what I'm telling you to like: [insert new league-mechanic here]"

overall did the changes really lower my expactations for 3.6.

Shame, really...

betrayal was fine league but the syndicates was just so awful

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GrumpyMcElbows wrote:

Snipped for length; quoted just for the reference to the post.

This post is 100% my thoughts about Betrayal. I agree with every point made.

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Joker wrote:

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Bex_GGG wrote:

We have an update regarding Delve in Path of Exile: Synthesis

This is great news.

With this, the Sulphite Nerfs is minimal when doing rota's or maybe even a buff.

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wanted131 wrote:

Either the game is too hard or not hard at all.

In this case, the solution is remarkably simple really.

All that's needed is a simple quest - a really simple one will do (like fetching an easy-to-find item). Jun would give you that quest when you meet her in Act 9, and if you do that quest (fetch the item) that will trigger Betrayal encounters; if you don't then you could indefinately postpone that content. Of course, people postponing Betrayal wouldn't be able to progress Betrayal, meaning they wouldn't get access to the new crafting mods until they start Betrayal, but that's a price I'd wager a ton of people would be willing to pay.

The alternative, for folks who don't want to do Betrayal encounters, will likely boil down to completing the forced encounters (to get them out of the way), then rerolling Act areas whenever the Betrayal icons appear on the map or the notification appears in the top-right. That wouldn't work for maps though, so people would probably quit trying to do maps and instead focus on content they're better able to control (like Delve, and maybe Synthesis).

I'm sure if GGG notice a lower percentage of people clearing Act 8 (thus keeping Betrayal safely locked-up) they'll be quick to find a way to address the problem. That's likely to be the case, since folks won't simply be able to quit a Betrayal League and move to Standard any more, so it would be blatantly obvious what's going on.

I see why they nerfed breachstone exp but why nerf Sulphite scarabs... you get maybe 10-15k per rotation..

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LtGnar wrote:

I see why they nerfed breachstone exp but why nerf Sulphite scarabs... you get maybe 10-15k per rotation..

I did some calculations, nut sure if they are 100 % correct, but then correct me if they are not.

You can get from 1 - 3 Sulphite nodes on each map, so my calculations will use the average which is 2.

I will estimate 1000 Sulphite for each node, i can get higher on good rolled maps and lower on lower level maps.

So before nerf( This season), if you are doing a rota, you will be getting.

5 Maps with 2 nodes on each gives 5*2*1000 = 10.000 + 2 nodes with 1000 + 150% (which is 2500) x 2 = 5000. So i total before Nerf 15.000 Sulphite for a rota.

After Scarab nerf but now with 3 guaranteed on each map.

In rota you will get

6*3*1000 = 18.000. So for Rota's this change is actually a buff.

The only thing i'm not sure about is the ratio today for getting 1 2 or 3 nodes on each map.

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GrumpyMcElbows wrote:

Honestly, just strip all of the leagues from the core game and re-implement leaguestones. Or make scarabs drop from core content at rates as common as alts or transmutes. That way we don't have to deal with this dumb bullshit. It's the most elegant solution I can think of.

This sounds like about the best way to approach the problem.

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Kirajava wrote:

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GrumpyMcElbows wrote:

Honestly, just strip all of the leagues from the core game and re-implement leaguestones. Or make scarabs drop from core content at rates as common as alts or transmutes. That way we don't have to deal with this dumb bullshit. It's the most elegant solution I can think of.

This sounds like about the best way to approach the problem.

Agree