What Happened with Items

Do you guys even use magic find?

[redacted by myself]

I love the new drop mechanics, especially from big archnemesis mobs.
Have no problems with currency. League mechanic is still scarce most of the time.

But I worry about overtuned archnemesis that sometimes spawns. Like the minotaur that killed carn_.

Other than that I do Delve, Alva, Ritual, Betrayal, Expedition and it feels good.

Thank you GGG.

"

Philosophy Two: Players should fight fewer Rare Monsters at once, but they should be more challenging and rewarding

I would prefer not to. I don't want to have rare monsters as last boss ob the game. I would much rather prefer them bo be 50% easier and drop 50% less items just like old rares.
I want to be lean, mean, killing machine and die on Bosses because nothing matters when I suck. Seriously, I don't want to fight all the time with rares and by looking at all cursing on archnemesis I think many people share same philosophy with me.

I don't have fun when I spend more time with random rare than map boss. I came to POE when I could nicely suck with low tier build and stil run around white map killing everything with arc. This league I had the same experience, pure fun and enjoyment of game with arc... In act 8 while I had speed shrine. :(

I agree in general with the 3 stated principles.

However, what I don't agree with is that Archnemesis as implemented is the correct way of putting the principles into practice.

For me personally, I'd rather have the risk and reward gated to actual map bosses, not to rares. Or to rares in designated areas, rather than having them wandering loose in maps like rogue metamorphs. (I don't select the rogue metamorph node in the Atlas passive tree because I hate dealing with them too.)

The current implementation of Archnemesis simply doesn't work. The encounters are random, sometimes unavoidable and deadly, and they permeate all content in the game.

This is not how it should be done. Risk and reward is already mostly deterministic in all other areas: the levels of maps you choose to run, the mods you roll, the fragments you use, and the bosses and pinnacle bosses you choose to fight.

You choose the level of risk and reward with those things.

But the random nature of Archnemesis completely removes the ability to choose. In the actual Archnemesis league, you could choose. But no longer. Now you have no idea what's going to happen.

There is a scaling of risk and reward, but there is zero agency involved in the minimum or maximum levels you'll end up with.

For Archnemesis to be useful, it simply cannot be so random. Players need to be able to determine at least a general level of the risk and reward they will encounter in any given area. If these rares are rated on a scale of 1-10 in terms or risk and reward, I need to be able to somehow have the ability to say I never want to encounter a rare with a power level over 5. Otherwise, I need to have the ability to say that if I do this or I go there, and only if I do this or I go there, there is a chance that I'll encounter a rare with a power level of 9, or 10.

You somewhat scale the power of Archnemesis encounters based on if you're in the campaign or maps. But that's not nearly granular enough.

If I'm in a T1 map, I should never be able to encounter a rare monster with a set of Archnemesis mods as deadly as a rare monster in a T16 map. But some combinations of Archnemesis mods on a T1 rare can produce something equally as deadly as a T16 rare without any Archnemesis mods.

There needs to be a better method of more carefully selecting and determining risk versus reward.

For example, certain combinations of Archnemesis mods are simply more dangerous than others. I might have no problem at all with one set of 3 mods, while another set could be really scary. And I'm not talking about an encounter that's simply more dangerous, I'm talking about an encounter that kills me outright.

You have to come up with some system that ranks the overall power level of the combination of mods. Not just throw them together into a random game of Russian roulette, but understand what a particular combination can do, and then allow or reject that combination from occurring, based on the difficulty level of the content you're currently in.

Or there could be other methods of controlling your risk and reward. Perhaps opt-in nodes on the Atlas passive tree, along the lines of those for selecting or deselecting Uber-boss encounters.

In short, players need more agency over whether or not they'll encounter truly deadly combinations. The currently existing potential for something really lethal (albeit rewarding) is too great for it to happen without player choice.

And if you say that you can simply run away, that's just not possible at present. Not only are the combinations you run into sometimes not immediately obvious, but they can be such that you can't just run away before it's too late.

In short, the random nature of the power of the Archnemesis mods is too random. There is nothing wrong with randomness in general, but the possible range that Archnemesis provides is simply too great for it to be acceptable at its highest power levels without players choosing to accept the chance of running into it.

Diablo 3 has PTR you might need to start doing that if your making epic changes to the game

You convinced me to leave.....

For me I dont care much for the archnemesis mods They are annoying but its whatev.

I find the loot more of the hard part to come By, this enables users to create build new builds or test builds Or even advance in the story. lowering it itself reduced the opportunity of progress and cause a grind that doesnt seem fun and feels more like a MMORPG. Another note is that you referred to Groups with a MF. Not all players will want to interact and form parties to grind. Thats what I found fun to do every league is solo my way from nothing to something. But if forcing users to do parties where someone is a MF to get loot limits what the game values are.

"

Philosophy Two: Players should fight fewer Rare Monsters at once, but they should be more challenging and rewarding

I would say that if this is the intention the mark has been missed here. Within the context of the base game and league mechanics.

For instance, the Kitava Map boss spawns several waves of 4ish rare monsters at once. Sometime it is harmless, but sometimes you get 4 spammy monsters and the screen is full, and chaotic, and there is no time to react.

You want to slow things down, and have players pay attention to the mods. However in the context of most current league mechanics. This is impossible Path of Exile is not a turn based strategy.

I will post a quick breakdown of my experience with Arch Nemesis this league. I am by no means the best player in the world. My past leagues I generally get between 12-24 challenges done, some pinnacle bosses, and a full atlas clear - and really I am happy with that. That is what I set out to do with the time I have, and I enjoy that.

However my problem is archnemesis is just added into everything and it just makes the game too crazy. It may slow us down in how much time it literally takes us to kill a monster, but it doesn't slow down the game. There is too much stuff going on. You're frantically running in circles and trying to figure out what is happening. Magma orbs flying in from all over. Consecrates on the ground. Those fire bombs from incendiary I think? The lightning totem things. It is a manic mess.

I honestly don't mind hard monsters, and fighting one or maybe two of them at a time in the right context can be fun.

Places where it is not fun are specific league mechanics in the game which have remained unchanged and AN has been forced into them.

Incursion: This is a timed event and a lot of times the rare monsters in incursion take ages to kill, but you do not get a bonus that reflects this increase in time. Those times I imagine were built around the old system and not adjusted since.

Legion: Also a timed event, even at low tier maps the monsters worth killing are often too tanky in the initial stage that determines who you actually get to fight. This would be a bit better if they had less health in that stage so that you could at least break a few of them open without being the ultimate meta build with all the gear. The game is about progression, so progression should feel smooth. It shouldn't be a huge wall... and if you get lucky with RNG you can bypass it.

Breach: Also timed, also spawns an insane amount of rares because they're so tanky they spawn faster than you can kill them and then you're just overwhelmed with again, spammy effects.

Delve: Monsters in the dark can just one shot you from off screen while you can't hurt them. They also leave a lot of on ground degen effects you cannot escape.

Metamorph: I haven't tried this since maybe the first day or so, so maybe this has been fixed... and I only tried the ones in the lake - however a lot of the metamorphs in the lake I encountered had so much health + vampirism. Making them impossible to kill. The ones I did kill dropped literally nothing. Maybe 1 or 2 rare items with the filter turned off. Compared to normal rares and map bosses this was not worth the hassle. So I have avoided this mechanic in the lake since.

Ambush: Ambush seems to be in a good place really and even if you get spammy ones. The way that this mechanic works it doesn't seem too crazy or unreasonable.

Harvest: You get a lot of spammy ones spawning at once. I actually think harvest should be reconsidered, so instead of going into a garden and spawning them - maybe they're just random packs on your maps. Like rogue exiles or something. Now that you're not needing to craft in the garden - the garden part almost seems pointless.

Abyss: Abyss doesn't seem too bad. The rate of rares to normal monsters and the time between them seems reasonable. A couple of times I've gotten unlucky but those are pretty few and far between, and getting unlucky sometimes is fine.

Bestiary: I haven't really fought many of these since the patch so it may be fixed, but they have too much health + the bestiary abilities are pretty spammy by nature then you're adding on top of that Spammy arch nemesis mods. Again this isn't slowing the game down. It's just adding mayhem.

Beyond: I've only played this in the lake, but it seems to attract the whole spammy too much stuff going on scenario. Again, it's not 'slowing things down' it's adding chaos. It makes it frantic, there is no way anyone has time to assess all the arch nemesis mods and devise some sort of plan. You stop moving for half a second and you've been hit upside the head 500 times.

Expedition: I have mixed feelings on this one. It seems mostly fine because you have some control over the amount of rares that spawn. If I am being greedy and hunting log books more will spawn than if I am not. So it might actually correlate with risk/reward.. but I might be ignorant to how the mechanic works.

Essence: Apart from the essence monsters that sometimes take an age to kill. This is fine. This is actually one of the few instances where I view it as being near perfect. You get to see what you're getting into before you open up the essence. So you have the choice, are the essences available to you worth the fight, or do you walk past?

Betrayal: Seems fine, usually the rares seems to be spaced out in a manageable way.

Harbinger: I've only done through the lake tiles. However it seems like it can spawn a lot of rares all at once, and then you get into spammy monster frantic chaos mode as mentioned above.

Map Bosses: Like I stated before, Kitava + other map bosses spawn multiple rares at the same time. This often leads to encounters that are not fun. Not because they're hard but just because it just introduces chaos and noise.

Pinnacle Bosses: I think elder spawns rares, this also causes problems. I think the harvest one as well. These need to be tuned a bit.

General Mapping: I think with general mapping it's mostly fine. They seem to be spaced out enough that you're not having hoards of them spamming you.

To summarize the part of Archnemesis that is probably the least enjoyable for me. Getting loads of spammy ability monsters all at once, so that there is no real feasible way to react. I get you're trying to create these 'epic omg that happened experiences' but this isn't that. There is no way to react. If I had a hard fight that was like a pinnacle boss, where they have moves and queues and you can focus and you can actually fight back with some purpose. That'd be really cool. However with the way things are, it's magma orbs flying in from all around, lots of junk on the ground, you can't see where is safe to stand(if there is even a safe spot) and it's mixed in with a lot of other mechanics.

One other thing I think still needs to be addressed is in the midst of all this spammy chaos, your minions have no chance. I think they need some sort of built in damage reduction vs arch nemesis if the overall damage towards players isn't going to be toned down. They're dumb, they stand in shit. You can use convocation but they run instantly back into the shit to the monster which hasn't moved out of their death circle.

TLDR: Arch Nemesis needs to be looked at on a league mechanic bases and tuned around those so that they still hold up. That or we need new league mechanics that are specific built around arch nemesis and the old ones removed.

what a nice post, thanks for once again taking the time to explain to us what is actually going on internally.

I agree with some of the feedback that was given about the issues, but i also feel that a massive amouunt of the sommunity blew it out of preportion, both in terms of severity and the words used when expressing their worries.

Thanks for once again proving that GGG is in fact one of the best studios out there.