What Happened with Items

I appreciate everything you guys are doing for the game. I'm enjoying the league despite not agreeing with all of the changes. Hopefully the devs realize that most people appreciate what they do even though they aren't explicitly posting about it. Excited for whatever is next :D.

I really need to get this out of my system.

I have been casualy playing PoE since the Essence league back in 2016 and I fell in love with the game back then. It was »THE SHIT« and I was super hyped by everything! I was selling it to all of my friends on how diverse, entertaining, fun and very rewarding the game was, how the mapping was fun and even accessible even to casual players and how awesome the whole art concept was. I really appreciated the game and the whole team behind it. You set new standards for ARPG and I admire that.

I never considered even doing Uber anything, because that was not the appeal of the game for me, so it was not my longterm goal. I loved mapping, crafting and just trying different builds, new skills and different classes. Some players said that, until 3.13, the game was easy. We can't deny it,.. It was easier and that's was beauty of it! Games such as Minecraft are extremely popular because you are free to mine and craft what you WANT. Due to PoE's "easyness" the game prior to 3.13. was accessible to a larger base of casual players, who didn't have hours of time to play, but still had the freedom to craft amazing gear, try different mods, try multiple amazing builds throughout a single league. I was one fo those players. I and probably many other players had fun and enjoyed the game and consequnetly devoted more time and resources into it. BUT! If you take the freedom of crafting, build and skills away, what is purpose of all the main attributes of the game if they render them unusable or unplayable? What is the point of main attributes of the game, which is diversity of weapons and gear, diversity of mods, the whole goddamn passive skill tree which is amazing and most of all, what is the point of sooo many skill gems if the skills are not usable? Maybe I'm just not seeing it the right way, but to me, these WERE the main attributes of Path of Exile.

The core game attributes mentioned above have been seriously torn to pieces in the last year and a half. I'm serious and sad when I say that since the 3.13 the game has been getting harder and harder, the skill and build pool is getting narrower, monsters are getting buffs but players are just beaten down with new difficulty nerfs and in general this means that my kind of gameplay I stated above just needs much more investment that it did before and for far less rewards. That is just not fun and it just gets me frustrated. I never lost the thrill to start a new league even after 3.13 (obviously), but playing the last few new leagues just killed my mood, slowly. I was soaring on the thrill of the good content from my earlier days (3.13 and earlier) and how that made me feel like. That slowly began to fade with every new league.

And so we arrive to 3.19. At this point I don't know who your target player base is, but it most certainly isn't the "casual players". You made that very clear and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. I'm not in the illusion that you will revert back to the playing style that was in the 3.13. That's naive to think.. but I really wish that you would at least fix the current bad mechanics for new players, to at least experience a portion of awesomeness that PoE CAN have but LOST due to.. I don't know what or why.

As for me? Well, I'm sorry to say this, but at this point I will probably just abandon the whole PoE league thing. It's just not profitable enough for me to invest my time in. I may run a few standards, when I really miss the old PoE, but the way things stand now, I will probably close the game after 30 minutes. And when I say »not profitable« I don't mean in terms of currency, far from it, but in terms of fun, entertainment, enjoyment and achievement, when you see your build and character grow and kick some mob ass.

I wish the whole GGG all the best. It was really nice playing PoE at it's peak.

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As described above, various valuable Archnemesis modifiers convert drops in a way that directly benefits from item rarity and item quantity bonuses. When we were balancing and testing this, we wondered why certain league monsters were dropping significantly more items than regular monsters. It turned out that this was due to item rarity or quantity bonuses that were historically applied to monsters to make leagues feel rewarding.

HOW DID YOU NOT KNOW HOW YOUR GAME WORKS.

holy crap.

It was obvious after a couple of hours there were issues with the loot drops, however that didn't remove the fun I'm having so far in this new league.

It's a mistake, but shit sometimes happens, especially for a game with so many complex systems. Also, it's not the end of the world. What matters is the way you addressed it in words and in action, thanks for that.

Keep up the good work and transparency.

I only just started this league last Monday and I'm just getting through atlas progress in white maps now. So far, if I knew nothing of the changes, I would say I'm just having a really bad luck league start with loot. If nothing changes and I still feel like I'm having bad luck in red maps because these changes really did dry up loot, I doubt I'll make another character or go for Uber boss kills. I don't understand at all how GGG could see the current state of the game and think this will be good for player retention.

I appreciate the post. Conceptually, I see the reasoning behind most of the points, and tbh I kinda agree with a lot of them, i.e.,some of these things could end up being good for the game down the road. But it was really, really poorly executed and communicated, if we can even call it communicating. Some of the hotfixes made a game sort of playable, but it is still not in a good spot imho. Especially when it comes to crafting,since removing reforges keeping prefixes and suffixes is a huge hit at the mid-tier player, making it simply too expensive to break into the advanced crafting (1%-ers can still 'raw currency' it, but in the trickle down economy like PoE, that just indirectly makes stuff massively more expensive for the rest of us). Stealth nerfs like these should also be addressed.

Still my favorite modern game, but I kinda feel like my own dog bit me.

May have sounded like a good idea on papaer but it was not... Honestly... if the changes of the last two leagues were just deleted and forgotten from archenemsis to the current cluster-blunder... It would be the most acclaimed changein gaming history... Forcing these changes iwt divine, harvest, loot and AN... and trudging on in spite of noone enjoying them is.. a weird choice.

I Understand this is a tough time for you all at GGG, and it is appreciated that there seems to be some level of insight going on but its not all there yet. The only thing you haven't touched on in the slightest is the damage output of monsters. There are still so many ways to die without even being slightly aware of it, or having zero chance to "react accordingly" as you put it.
Every now and then monsters will give this "more" loot you talk about but its still just unidentified rares that are vendored for shards for the average player. So even though more stuff drops every now and then, its still actually not rewarding for the average player.

Craft - Dead
Party Play - Dead
Fun with game - Dead.
New players - Dead
Casual Players - Dead
GGG wants to level the playing field for the top 1% of players, and in the process has ended the fun for the other 99%
Thanx GGG

Yikes.

You started off strong and I accept your apology but you’ve literally ruined the game I know and love.

I will not be buying or playing this game to the extent I was before until you revert these atrocious changes.

You are clearly not understanding what’s made your game successful to begin with. Listen to your community, revert this butthole patch and bring us more loot to make up for the last week….

It’s that simple.