Endgame woes - is it cooked now?

I'm a level 94 invoker struggling to make sense of continuing to play the endgame - something I generally love in MMOs.
To make sense of continuing to play, I need to be making progress with my character, which pretty much means improving gear.
Problem is, the only reliable source of good gear is the trade market, and that seems to be drying up with valid options, which are also super-expensive (current crazy exalt/divine exchange rate doesn't help). There's a lot of good items at prices listed months ago but seemingly from players no longer logging in, which is what makes me wonder is endgame for progression is pretty much done. Steam charts show an almost linear drop of 30,000 players/week, now down to about 30,000 players - which has to have a pretty big impact on trade options, especially with the decision for trade to be seller-in-person.
I've done everything I can to make sense of the end-game, but it's down now to rocking up for a participation non-reward, unless RNG decides to throw you a 1/300th of an astramentis, assuming you also worked hard enough and long enough in a map section to juice your maps. Even that seems to make me work way too hard to shift the RNG needle.

I've tried:
- Throwing millions at Alba every now and again, which is the worst of RNG outcomes.
- Worked by butt off making T16 maps (exalt sink, Vaal sink getting way more T14s than T16s from T15)
- Tried to find a balance between increased personal rarity and been able to reasonably safely clear maps (includes the risk with golden charm over thaw charm to pump that boss rarity, thereby dying often enough to not get level progression satisfaction (never seen a game punish death as much as PoE 2))
- Been suckered into trying out RNG crafting way too many times. The word "crafting" is inappropriate in this game. Giving you options to shift the RNG needle slightly, and still needing to try it many times on different times to get something end-game viable, isn't 'crafting'.

The core fighting and character building in this game is the most awesome I've experienced, but all the spoiling RNG along with cooling of the trade market feels like the juice is just no longer worth the squeeze.

wrong forum, this is the poe1 general forums, there is a poe2 feedback forum up above. And never fear, economy will be reset with the next major update.

Yup. As an economy enjoyer, I like selling items, but having to be online and interrupt maps to sell is dumb. Compare it to WoW, where each login is a possible dopamine hit after checking what items sold. In this game there is more friction on the seller-side than buyer-side, something which wasn't conveniently mentioned in the infamous manifesto.

Thanks, I guess I'm looking forward to an economy reset, but I'm now wondering if there's something I'm not understanding as a legacy MMO player, new to PoE.

I'm used to taking my MMO character through new chapters. modules or whatever the ghame-specific term is, but trying to look into it, it seems that economy resets and/or new "leagues" are all with a new character, starting from scratch.

I've sunk 700+ hours into my character, thinking it's my long-term "main" character, for constant development, as per typical MMOs.
Is PoE fundamentally different where you play your character as far into the end-game as you care to, then toss it for the next time there's a new league, update or reset? New content leaves your old character behind?
I just looked at the Steam PoE (1) charts, and player numbers look like a boom to bust cycle between new content releases, suggesting that continuos end-game character development isn't the same as MMOs.

In games of this genre, you choose your endgame goal yourself. It can be to make the perfect build, perfect items. Wealth, you save up a huge amount of currency and you can afford any entertainment in the game (gambling), or endlessly create new characters and improve them. Maybe you can think of something else, just beating mobs is also cool. The choice is yours!

This isn't a MMO. It's an ARPG that's in Early Access. You cannot have a long-term main character until the game's official launch as EA characters will be put into a special EA only Standard league. Which most likely never will have access to any further content. The game has Standard and Seasonal leagues. Typically Standard only gets new content after a Season and players characters remain as long as they want. Seasonal is a fresh start to all, including the economy. You have to start a new character and empty stash. In Seasonal, all the new content is available. At the end of the Season, your character and stash are moved to Standard.

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mikeab79#3627 wrote:

This isn't a MMO. It's an ARPG that's in Early Access. You cannot have a long-term main character until the game's official launch as EA characters will be put into a special EA only Standard league. Which most likely never will have access to any further content. The game has Standard and Seasonal leagues. Typically Standard only gets new content after a Season and players characters remain as long as they want. Seasonal is a fresh start to all, including the economy. You have to start a new character and empty stash. In Seasonal, all the new content is available. At the end of the Season, your character and stash are moved to Standard.

So, following full launch, you end up building a stable of characters in Standard, without much incentive to take any of them on a continuing end-game journey (in Standard)?
Do you think (you, and perhaps GGG), that having some kind of mechanic that makes sense of long-term character progression in Standard, has any value?

It would make PoE 2 more MMO-like in that respect, without really changing anything else, but is there some kind of cultural attitude that "This is an ARPG and thou shalt not have meainingful long term progression"?

Seems like GGG is somewhat breaking the mould relative to Diablo with something more typical of MMOs, and maybe it's worth breaking it a bit more?

In PoE1 I almost never played the leagues and was only on Standard trying to build up a character I really liked playing. I would think, yeah this is the one I am going to take to 100 and enjoy it.

Then a new league would start and much of the nurfing/rebalancing etc would carry over to Standard and I would find the character I was working on would be broken or nurfed into non-playable and a new FOTM class would be the next thing, even on Standard.

After years of doing that over and over I find no taste for that in PoE2, it's the main reason I stopped PoE1. It's the same thing that happens in other ARPG's also, like D4. D4 was fun for a few seasons, but at least with that one you could build a character to end-game and be maxed out for the most part in that season and you were ready to do something new.

In PoE1/PoE2 it takes a great deal of effort to get end-game builds all nice and playing good. Maybe some of you are faster at it, I am not.

I will be quite happy to stay on EA with the character I built, but when the nurfs/reblanace come that will be pretty much it for me. Sure, finish up the new acts, redo mapping etc. That would be great. But I for one am pretty burt out redoing campagins over and over again every season, in anygame. Once or twice sure, but after the 3rd and 4th time thats about it for me.

I am also not convinced the will have a Standard server and a EA server at the same time. It will be far to much dev work to keep a League/Standard/EA server up and running, especially if the EA server never updates to current balance issues and new features.

As far as economy reset goes... it will be only a short time before bots/RMTers take over again, just like in EA and you will be right back to what we have now. So a new league starts and within a week they will control the market just like now. Economy reset is just wishful thinking for many that everything will be better. Even in D4, every single season that has happened, PoE2 will be no different.

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Unifex#3081 wrote:

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mikeab79#3627 wrote:

This isn't a MMO. It's an ARPG that's in Early Access. You cannot have a long-term main character until the game's official launch as EA characters will be put into a special EA only Standard league. Which most likely never will have access to any further content. The game has Standard and Seasonal leagues. Typically Standard only gets new content after a Season and players characters remain as long as they want. Seasonal is a fresh start to all, including the economy. You have to start a new character and empty stash. In Seasonal, all the new content is available. At the end of the Season, your character and stash are moved to Standard.

So, following full launch, you end up building a stable of characters in Standard, without much incentive to take any of them on a continuing end-game journey (in Standard)?
Do you think (you, and perhaps GGG), that having some kind of mechanic that makes sense of long-term character progression in Standard, has any value?

It would make PoE 2 more MMO-like in that respect, without really changing anything else, but is there some kind of cultural attitude that "This is an ARPG and thou shalt not have meainingful long term progression"?

Seems like GGG is somewhat breaking the mould relative to Diablo with something more typical of MMOs, and maybe it's worth breaking it a bit more?

Most people in ARPGs and especially PoE don't play a single character for a very long time. Usually u play until u have enough gear to do whatever endgame goal u set for urself. After that, there's some people that min-max a build, but most just reroll a new build/character. That goes on for a few weeks until boredom of the league mechanic sets in and the economy dries out.

That's the usual league cycle. Some people are faster than others, which is why some are done after 1-2 weeks and other people take the full 3 months. (or whatever the new timelines are)

Like the other guy said, u can play ur characters in standard "forever", but u will be affected by balance changes and they can very well destroy ur entire build. On the other hand u'll have access to alot of legacy gear, that gets changed in future iterations, but stays unchanged in standard. There's definitely some standard enjoyers out there. (I think GGG mentioned around 10% of the playersbase once)

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tsunamikun#0433 wrote:

wrong forum, this is the poe1 general forums, there is a poe2 feedback forum up above. And never fear, economy will be reset with the next major update.

Actually you are wrong. If you go to pathofexile2.com and go to Early Access Discussion you will find this thread.

I thought things were getting a little curly-haired at GGG but this is beyond fascinating!