Popular Opinion: League Challenges Should Require Solo Completion

Bump for challenges to become challenging again!

"League challenges should require solo completion"
Nah. If it matters to you, do yours solo. It's bragging rights in a video game. It's not that important.

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SunsetVista#4840 wrote:

"League challenges should require solo completion"
Nah. If it matters to you, do yours solo. It's bragging rights in a video game. It's not that important.

Exactly this kek, its one of the reasons SSF exists. For people that want to do stuff "on their own" and brag about it.

on one hand i feel players should be rewarded for completing things alone

on another, the content in poe scales exponentially to the point that for harder challenges it could put off weaker/more casual players off the game directly.

completionists are all or nothing.

personally my best is 38/40 but i reckon i could have pushed to 39/40. but got lazy and just used carry services.

to me challenges should be always solo but be obtainable within reason and not be gated behind aspirational content.

but i m sure the better players would disagree. also i m pretty sure a huge lot of players who sell carry services would disagree too. its too lucrative.

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exsea#1724 wrote:

to me challenges should be always solo but be obtainable within reason and not be gated behind aspirational content.

Well....how would this make sense even within your own reasoning of your post? Aspirational content exists...as a challenge within the game. Challenges exist as an additional layer ON TOP OF the game. So why would it make any sort of sense for aspirational high-skill high-level content to be excluded in something called a "challenge". Just because people might not be able to complete it?

There should be NO MENTALITY fostered of challenges being "easy enough", or guaranteed 40/40, or any of the sort. They exist to challenge players beyond the bounds of the normal game. The ENTIRE normal game. If that means folks fail, even if the majority fail, then they are doing exactly what their title, job, and function is. Obviously, not ALL the challenges will require this level of character development or skill....in fact it would probably be relegated to less than a handful of them. But they SHOULD exist. Always.

Remember that the game doesn't "end" after a single league: if you are unable to complete a challenge in one league, you practice and get better and maybe complete it in the next.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

how would this make sense even within your own reasoning of your post? Aspirational content exists...as a challenge within the game. Challenges exist as an additional layer ON TOP OF the game. So why would it make any sort of sense for aspirational high-skill high-level content to be excluded in something called a "challenge". Just because people might not be able to complete it?

if we want to be completely honest about this. we dont actually need to get good at the game.

just follow a build guide. as long as you have high enough dps and decent enough understanding on boss mechanics, we also have 6 portal defence system in place.

this game has actually been solved a long time ago. its only a matter if you're willing to forgo the joy of directly engaging with the game's system thru trial and error.

this is an issue that will not be solved as its already inherent to the game. gating league challenges behind such things simply tells people "follow a build guide or you wont get this cool reward".

they play on FOMO. for sure you can slowly get better over the years. it took me a literal decade before i got my first 39/40 but thats also because ggg buffed melee.

i stuck around coz of a mixture of passion and hopium/copium. you cant expect newer players to do that. in fact the entire reason players BUY carries is because they want the rewards. many years back i had the chance of getting navali's monkey pet. i missed out. nowadays when i see a nice mtx reward. i work for it. but for challenges that are too hard. i buy carries.

moving forward if ggg enforces solo only challenge rewards, and the rewards look amazing but is gated behind aspirational content. i have to choose between using a meta build or just feel salty enough to not want to touch the game.

nowadays i dont even play poe anymore. but i wish for the best and hope it gets more success.

making REASONABLE challenges can be a good step. nowadays all the challenges do is not teach players to play the game. instead it teaches them to buy carries.

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exsea#1724 wrote:

we dont actually need to get good at the game.

just follow a build guide. as long as you have high enough dps and decent enough understanding on boss mechanics, we also have 6 portal defence system in place.

That’s just not how it works. You still need a basic understanding of the game, how mechanics function, how interactions play out, and why certain things are chosen in a build. The idea that you can just copy-paste a build guide and expect everything to work perfectly falls apart fast if you don’t understand the foundations of the game.

A perfect example is when someone copies a Mageblood version of a build without actually having a Mageblood, and then wonders why the whole thing falls apart. They don’t understand why specific nodes were taken or how the gear choices synergize with the build’s core mechanics. The result? Chaos, followed by complaints that the game is "too hard", when in reality, they skipped the most important part, learning and basic understanding.

Even those who do follow solid build guides still get farmed by pixel more often than not, not because the build is bad, and not because the guide is flawed, but because they haven’t yet refined their own gameplay.
They’re either not advanced enough mechanically, haven’t taken the time to improve, or simply haven’t "gotten good" yet. A guide can’t play the game for you, it’s not a replacement for skill.

A build guide can help, especially for newer players, it gives you a working template and saves you from early missteps. But it won’t carry you. If you cheap out on key items or fail to grasp the logic behind the build or the games mechanics, don’t be surprised when it doesn’t perform.

At the end of the day, progress comes from experience. Not guides, not shortcuts, just time, trial, and understanding. And if someone can’t handle the base game or complete challenges due to a lack of skill or knowledge, they simply shouldn’t have access to completions and the rewards by bypassing skill checks through carry cheese services. It’s really that simple.

This is one of the things that absolutely needs to change, hopefully with the upcoming league.

And beyond that, it’s long overdue that challenge design evolves. Many of the current objectives were created nearly a decade ago, and they simply haven’t aged well. In a game as deep and varied as it is today, there’s no shortage of creative potential to craft a full set of 40 challenges that are actually engaging and rewarding, rather than tedious chores no one would touch if not for the cosmetics at the end.

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

That’s just not how it works.

i used to love quin, but nowadays people see him as a joke. hes sometimes hilariously bad at games.

what skill do you need when you follow a build guide really?

one thing quin was famous for was his immortal build which he could face tank maven's memory game. his dps is dogshit. but does it matter? not really no. did he need SOME skill, maybe but very little.

in that battle he took so long that he triggered an announcement that i never saw before stating that hes first in league to kill all the atlas bosses in a maven invitation.

lmao that was bonkers.

so no. i must disagree

for sure there are players who defeated uber uber while being under level 30 while almost naked. we have players killing atziri naked. yes those are real skillful players i ll never downplay their acheivements. but i wont pretend at the very end, everything can be over come by bursting enemies to death or out healing them.

reminds me of the people who make vids of them fighting shaper with a gazillion permanent dot puddles all over the arena and theyre barely getting tickled.

and as i said, we also have a 6 portal defence.

talking about skill reminds me of how back during sanctum i once argued that true melee felt bad for sanctum but it gets better. the forummer then proceeded to "own" me by showing a clip of a guy doing a hitless run with truemelee heavy strike. i watched it. i will give it to the guy who ran it. he avoided the traps properly but the main takeaway was that he DELETED all enemies before any became a threat. traps and obstacles in sanctum are deadly because of the existence of enemies. alone most gamers should be competent enough to navigate thru. its really a bad way to argue that melee is fine when fine requires you to have a build that can run super fast and delete enemies in a jiffy.

i would say i m a better player so i really enjoyed sanctum despite melee being rough when you didnt have proper gear.

now sanctum has mobs with actual RNG mods. it really emphasizes the "delete all obstacles before they become a threat" game play.

all this is just obscene amounts of dps. heck there was a person that had an uber killer. her build was just dps all the way. the boss died in less than 5 seconds? her hp was super low. if the boss just grazed her she would have died.

i dont think i need to go on. but while i m at it. as a "not so good" player myself. i never could complete the feared. i always took too long. i learned to increase my movespeed. learned to dodge attacks. etc, but when you take too long you will get overwhelmed. having to fight a shaper, with a clone of himself both doing huge ass slams or doing kamehameha beams are huge aoe denials. thats just one boss. i died and i died again for years.

after ggg gave melee a buff. i reworked my build. went all offense. i may have died a few times but i burst each boss down before they could overwhelm me.

i needed ZERO skill.

similarly before i got there, the elderslayer invites were a huge pain. baran with a clone baran both casting huge aoe denials. what skill do we have to deal with that? its simply an unbalanced encounter and ggg is fine with it. theres so many things ggg could have done but didnt.

Changing title from "Unpopular opinion" to "Popular opinion" was indeed funny to read.

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exsea#1724 wrote:

if we want to be completely honest about this. we dont actually need to get good at the game.

just follow a build guide. as long as you have high enough dps and decent enough understanding on boss mechanics, we also have 6 portal defence system in place.

It's clear you missed the pages and pages of discussion on....exactly this.

Once challenges become "solo", they can change how they work to be more "skill-oriented". Defeating bosses within certain conditions, that build guides and watching videos simply aren't enough. Winning the challenges would require ACTUAL practice, for most. Following a guide or overgearing will certainly make the challenges EASIER for you, but they won't COMPLETE them for you.

And OF COURSE, even if they were to implement solo challenges, there will be oodles of videos on how to complete them as easy as possible. So what? At least they still serve the purpose of you actually doing it. For example, I watched PLENTY of maven videos, learned every mechanic, yet it still took me multiple runs at her to actually be able to defend or avoid the mechanics. I'm happy that NOW I can finally beat the maven pretty regularly with 1 or 2 deaths max. Despite having ALL the knowledge and pretty darn good builds each and every attempt. And I doubt thats true of just me.

I mean...some of the posters in this thread are known from other threads denouncing bosses being "too hard" when they run around with glass cannons and actively REFUSE to adjust their gameplay to the content. So they buy carries. Every league. A total lack of even trying or any amount of personal effort. That's fine for the REGULAR game, but challenges should be focused on weeding out THAT type of play and encouraging you to learn, adjust, and play yourself.


The whole point of this thread is NOT looking at challenges as they exist now: they only exist in this form BECAUSE carries became a thing, and endless grinds were the only way to "force" people to lose something in return for completing the challenge. Their current existence is the absolute lowest possible form they COULD take. And basically NONE of them serve as "challenges".

The fact that you earn 1/4 of them before even leaving the campaign and doing nothing special is patently ridiculous design.