I wonder how many of these failed leagues will it take GGG for them to learn, if ever?

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ZionHalcyon wrote:

Just an observation, but I wonder why it only seems the players, and not the devs themselves, notice that any time the Devs try to mess with player progression in an effort to slow it down (likely in their brain thinking that if they slow it down, the players will stay longer), that it results in the exact opposite, with players getting frustrated, bored, and bailing on the league early?

Yeah, POE makes it easy to quit early because players don't get too invested. I think early retention would be helped if reroll costs were lower.

Diablo 4 seems to be different in that it is both too easy and too hard. Very easy to get geared and zoom to level 100. Very easy to reroll and get a working build. However, if you want to really min max your gear the crafting process has built in bricking if you are unlucky.

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ZionHalcyon wrote:

...
Whatever vision the developers originally had for Path of Exile, their own player base has made it clear - the players want to ZOOM.
...
All I know is that I've been here since betrayal, and every time the developers try to reign in the players because of philosophical differences, we end up with some of the worst retention leagues on record.

At some point, I hope the developers wake up to this, and instead of hurting the things players find fun, they try to focus their efforts on rewarding players who stick around...

This is an excellent reason why I'm absolutely delighted Path of Exile 2 has been split off of PoE1 entirely. I hate ZOOM. ZOOM is the reason this game is a half-bricked mess where fewer than half a percent of its playerbase ever see more than five percent of its content.

Personally, I find the Lantern of Arimor to be an interesting and fun to toy with mechanic. Embers of the Allflame are a fun way to seed old leagues like Affliction back into the game in a controlled manner. The actual gravecrafting is kinda meh even if it's ridiculously powerful, but the idea of modifying monster packs in the zone directly this way is a cool one I'd like to see revisited in the future.

Maybe it will be, in PoE2. Y'all can have this one, where you can't get anywhere unless you're moving so fast the server can't animate any of the entities onscreen anymore.

I play three games; Elden Ring, Path of Exile and Apex Legends. They are vastly different in almost every way. Elden Ring punishes me for spamming keys and not learning mechanics. Apex Legends punishes me for bad positioning and bad aim. Path of Exile punishes me for killing monsters and being unlucky with crafting or drops.

Honestly I can't say for sure if I am going to keep playing this moving forward. My enjoyment is almost completely gone and the only thing that keeps me checking in from time to time is sunk cost fallacy.

There's no way to slow progression that's good for the average player. Streamers will be killing ubers and farming T17s within the first 15 hours of league no matter what. Groups will be manipulating the economy and controlling the market on all rare materials from hour 1. It gets worse every league as the "race" for clicks/viewers gets tighter and tighter and more meta.

Making farming feel meaningful for the 99% should be the goal. This league was an absolute failure on every level in that aspect.

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DiabloImmoral wrote:

There's no way to slow progression that's good for the average player. Streamers will be killing ubers and farming T17s within the first 15 hours of league no matter what. Groups will be manipulating the economy and controlling the market on all rare materials from hour 1. It gets worse every league as the "race" for clicks/viewers gets tighter and tighter and more meta.

Making farming feel meaningful for the 99% should be the goal. This league was an absolute failure on every level in that aspect.

And it feels we are hurtling towards the end of poe1

Interested to see what the next league and it's announcements bring for poe1

Also interested in when the poe2 beta will show up as the expectants have reached fever pitch in their excitement which usually results in...disappointment 

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ZionHalcyon wrote:

Just an observation, but I wonder why it only seems the players, and not the devs themselves, notice that any time the Devs try to mess with player progression in an effort to slow it down (likely in their brain thinking that if they slow it down, the players will stay longer), that it results in the exact opposite, with players getting frustrated, bored, and bailing on the league early?

The devs have tried a number of things - making loot rarer, making yellow mobs harder, and this league, making an unavoidable league mechanic that results in a ton of one-shots and player frustration.


Whatever vision the developers originally had for Path of Exile, their own player base has made it clear - the players want to ZOOM.

So instead of stifling builds with artificial road blocks, and trying to force players to play the game slower, it might behoove to developers to instead, if they are that concerned about retention, finding ways to INCENTIVIZE players to stay and roll new builds.

I won't pretend to know how to do that or what that would look like.

All I know is that I've been here since betrayal, and every time the developers try to reign in the players because of philosophical differences, we end up with some of the worst retention leagues on record.

At some point, I hope the developers wake up to this, and instead of hurting the things players find fun, they try to focus their efforts on rewarding players who stick around...

Zoom is more like the means to an end than and a goal. Players want to feel powerful but GGG keeps gating everything behind juiced endgame, as expected everyone is rushing to it and once there they are all focused on killing content as fast as possible to increase the odds of finding currency or good items.

The whole game needs to be worth playing not only endgame. say after we finish the fetid pool mission we are given a special item of choice (gloves, boots, armor, weapon, helmet) that can't be traded and can only be used by that character. This special item will have no mods but can be crafted over the campaign by completing sidequest. By the end of the campaign the player should have a strong item with repeatable side quest in maps to reroll or further improve it.

this crafting via sidequest is also a golden opportunity to explain mechanics like how to craft, difference between mods, how defense works, etc..

Wild thread. What makes you think Necropolis is a "failed league"? Leagues always were experiments that benefit the base game in the long run. If anything they are more important than ever because a lot of these experiments might also carry over into PoE2 and future design decisions.

Based on retention and vocal minorities aside, Necropolis did about as good as any league in recent memory.

Without going off topic what made me stop when I was ready to really play this league was the graveyard bricking like 4 or 5 70 corpse setups.

Honestly I dislike trading for scrabs with a Passion. At least people responded with sextants (tradebots). And at least bulk selling compasses felt like it was useful to the community. Just sitting on scarabs feels bad, and cheap ones are annoying to sell.

Which brings me to trade being the worst thing in this game. This league is all about increasing trade friction. The corpse storage is very very small. They need to update trade. It is so embarrassingly bad. Why does it take like 4 loading screens(if you count the other person).

Also i like the labyrinth but hate the gem altar. Go figure. Transfigured gems need a different acquisition process. The random selection from the altar needs to be deleted forever, locking skills behind crazy rng is stupid and shameful.

Almost all the new changes suck.

At some point I said screw it and played something else. Sitting around waiting for trade replies is a crappy game experience. And... sucks to be ssf with bad luck this league.

I think they just keep PoE running as a small part time hobby and would be ok if half of people stopped playing entirely and just returned for PoE2.

You gotta remember they are game developers who already were successful with this game.

The next game you are developing is a LOT more fun than keeping some old dinosaur running with iterations on stuff you did 20 times before.

This is not putting GGG or PoE1 down. Imagine maintaining a game for over a decade as your actual job. It would get old.

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JunkHeadJoePC wrote:

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kyobusa wrote:

As long as people are buying the Supporter Packs/Other MTX's they don't REALLY have to change anything honestly.

100%. They are making money. Why should they put in more work? Here's a good reason...because they don't have to.

in fainress ggg put in more work than any other arpg dev team.











people say poe1 is not getting resources its on life support, its in maintenance mode, blah blah, and to some extent that might be true. it also just released a league everyones bagging on that probably had more work put into it than every league in diablo 4 so far put together, also than every league in the entire history of diablo 3 put together.




people need to realise the devs have an idea, they put the idea together and release it. there is not time for massive playtesting and changing, theyre doing this every 3 months, does anyone have any appreciation of how insane it is that they put out leagues this size in this time frame?

theyre not trying to slow people down, it just happens that was how the mechanic played out. there was an idea, they need ideas, some of them work some dont, every idea has its fans and its haters. theres gonna be poe the tower defence league, poe the autobat league, poe the farm simulator league... no one rly knows if its gonna work out. yeah we can say maybe they should have realised this or that... what they are doing is ridiculous, the pace of the releases.

i dont think people have really worked in commercial arts maybe? im a graphic designer, you get given a thing, its going to print in 2 weeks, theres a whole process of getting test prints, a lead time the printers need, theres got to be time for sending a thing off and getting rewrites, theres a photographer who needs to take pics and source stuff. it gets to the point where you have a brief, u got 2 days to sketch up, day 3 you got to be sending off a shortlist of fairly advanced final ideas for them to pick. you got 2 days to do this, what you end up with is what u end up with because theres a pipeline of stuff happening. you dont have forever to just sit there and say well maybe this or that, you might know on day 10 that u dont like what came out of day 2 but its done now.


i think people get a bit carried away presuming intent and endless time and resources when its just people who come into work that day, try their best, maybe its not the best day at the office. how many days a year are you putting in your best work at your job? you hitting it out of the park 110% every single day of the year?