Game Balance in Path of Exile: Expedition

This patch and league serve great as a gateway for Lost Ark and Last Epoch. Thanks GGG. It has been a good ride from Closed Beta to here.

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darkpoetcc wrote:

I see a good amount of angry people venting their frustrations over Path of Nerfs, 2021 Edition. Do you know who will not be affected like most of the playerbase, GGG? Streamers. As always, streamers who play the game for more hours most days than anyone else will be the least affected and/or the least hurt overall.

Not exactly true. Usually , people watch or have the stream in the background , when they play the same game themselves . But once they lose interest in the game , they move to other streamers , who play different games. So POE streamers will have to chose between losing viewers playing a game no one finds interesting anymore or start streaming something else.

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feike wrote:

I hope GGG by now realise how pointless most of the nerfs were. The reasoning in the manifesto was super solid, but the measures missed the mark-BADLY

And it was said multiple times: If you want the game to be interactible, adjust the monster damage output to something manageable. It is impossible to play a slow build not because we want super-efficiency. Not all of us are power players, you know? Some of us(like me) would really enjoy playing a slower build that interacted with the mosters and played the game "the way it was meant to be played", but problem is: We cant, because if we dont clear the screen in one second, the screen clears us in two... you want to slow us down? Tune the monsters so that not obliterating everything in an instant is not a death sentence. The richest example is maven trials: How we are supposed to clear a maven trial with a character that does not pulverize the bossess??? We either clear every boss before the next wave spawn or the thing becomes outright impossible to even move

This, 1000x. The “usual” damage is not such a big deal tho, the extreme damage peaks is. Like, I play a very tanky, low damage character (minmaxed around 6M Shaper damage before the nerfs), am on full or near to full life 99,9% of time.. and then I’m suddenly dead with no chance to respond anyhow. Why? Most likely because a pack of monsters or a boss had an unlikely crazy damage roll, because when I come back, I clear everything on full life again. A 2 seconds lag? Dead, hours of progress lost. Should this really be fun?

Was also pretty much unable to kill Maven, being killed by the summoned bosses frequently.. until I made a new build for her that just oneshot everything, easy peasy. GGG solution - nerf the overall player damage output! I mean.. really?

I have been saying this over and over again, the only thing GGG scales is absurd numbers.

It's just a flaw in the games design and logic.

Think about it, how do you make a repetitive interactive game that simply doesn't resolve around killing Baal until you reach level 99 and then start a new char.

GGG just scales mods over mods over mods wrapped in different league mechanics. It's either a portal, a circle or many circles that you either have to press, destroy or add to so that mobs get more mods and loot increments.

It's not about the fact that GGG wants to balance it's the fact that they have no idea how to balance, since POE was a replica of D2 that was suppose to hard scale over time.

Back in the days when the developers thought for a second and not just copy pasted ideas, they brought d2 which wasn't supposed to scale to infinite. Now days every developers needs to think about scalability or else the game is dead in 2 months and profits are going down.

It's simply this, even if someone thinks this is a hate post, it really isn't, GGG copy pasted a philosophy --- > Improved by adding a repeatable end game --- > Destroyed by adding absurd scaling stuff to a point you either clear the map or the map clears you ---- > Thought the problem are player numbers --- > Took the brilliant idea to nerf player numbers (not to slow the game, but to make it harder to reach that point ) --- > Went off and on saying the game is in a perfect state and there is ton of build diversity while literally not being true in all those specter builds.


Whoever thinks the game is slower or that it's back in the state were it was supposed to be, it's either delusional or has no clue about game design.

They can trim and amend the numbers all they want...It's the same thing as WoW did, just squash the numbers of mobs / players so that they don't see bajilions of numbers on the screen

I'm super happy that Chris did those podcasts. I know GGG cares tremendously, which is why I think we should be loud about these changes NOW. Better for the players to be abruptly clear now so that 3.16 player counts can return to what PoE deserves.

In my opinion, in addition to the proposed changes, there are currently still the following items:

1. Current nerfed state of deterministic crafting widens the gap between no-lifers and lower play-time exiles. High value crafts were a good solution and still required time investment while encouraging build diversity and longer playtime

2. The plan to make the campaign harder deters new players and annoys veteran players IMO

I am very happy to hear about shortening the conqueror grind, the map pool grind and the unveil grind. LOVE IT. Also making defense methods actually work.

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Peacemakerex wrote:

The ailment nerf is just terrible, specially due to the mechanics of ailments being based on life, so far if you get ignited with a big hit as a CI character, you simply die in a fraction of a second with no possibility to respond.

Thats what the auto flasks are now for are they not?

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INFINITY-BLOOD wrote:

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Peacemakerex wrote:

The ailment nerf is just terrible, specially due to the mechanics of ailments being based on life, so far if you get ignited with a big hit as a CI character, you simply die in a fraction of a second with no possibility to respond.

Thats what the auto flasks are now for are they not?

The problem is, in case of CI, Ailments should take ES in consideration as life, and that's not the case. So as a CI, you get instant ignited, chilled, shocked etc...

Well the league is nearly over and for the first time Im considering quitting before the end.

Having played through the usual really frustrating grind to eventually get to the real end game content, I now find I can't do the end game content I want to despite having the best geared character I have had to date.

Catarina kills me, I can't do the Hidden, Maven Im not even going to attempt, Shaper and Elder guardians are far more dangerous than any league I have ever played before. In short all the content I now want to do, and that would give me some sense of satisfaction, is now too hard, and I am frustrated.

The Expedition mechanic was ok, not outstanding but ok. The difficulty in getting logbooks was an absolute pain, and they should have rectified this properly early in the league.

Pretty much all of the other changes thay made this league have been terrible.

I usually really look forward to the next league start, but Im not sure I can be bothered to put myself through the grind again just to be disappointed at the end, because I can't actually get to do any new content.

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Ruddski wrote:

I usually really look forward to the next league start, but Im not sure I can be bothered to put myself through the grind again just to be disappointed at the end, because I can't actually get to do any new content.

give new leagu a try and slow slow see if u have fun or not and decide after

i played quite a bit of expedition... its pathetic but its endgame.

expedition should be removed from the game. bring back scourge.