Popular Opinion: In 3.28 League Challenges Should Require Solo Completion

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VoidWhisperer42#5989 wrote:

Giving the majority something to do doesn’t affect the minority at all, unless they feel FOMO, which is more of a personal issue about others having fun than a problem with the game itself.

FOMO is a strong drive. never underestimate the power of fomo. tho you are right it is a very "personal issue", a huge number of people are affected by fomo. the very nature of lootboxes, timed exclusive supporter packs and league content itself revolves around fomo.

if for example a player always loves collecting league challenge mtx and has been doing so every league with carries. if one league had a challenge mtx reward that is a different colour or has an additional feature if you did it solo, the player might come be salty about it. and at worse may feel that since his decade long tradition is broken, he would just ditch leagues entirely and play something else. and yes. this is a make belief person that could exist. it could be 1 person it could be many. we do not know. but the fact is, it will make players salty.

as for totem poles, i think this is one place that actually can have some exclusivity. as long as the regular totem pole can be obtained normally, i think players shouldnt mind a solo only totem pole. if anyones paying attention, previously i was against it. the reason i changed my mind is because i realized that the most important thing is that for players who care about the pole, care about the specific pole that has been following the same template for years.

ruthless actually has a similar pole but the flag area is frayed. most casual polechasers do not care for this pole variant and many wouldnt consider it breaking tradition if they skip these pole variants.

all in all, it all boils down to how does GGG make one minority happy without making the majority unhappy.

and if we take a look at history, previously hardcore and softcore leagues were separate with separate mtx rewards. many players were unhappy for the separation, which is why both are now merged.

Even as a party player, I agree if anything so that the challenges can be better tuned.

These requirements should be restricted to the specific league in which they are completed (e.g. SSFHC vs. SSFHC Ruthless vs. SSF), and bound to your character. Otherwise, progression can be trivialized by completing objectives in a different league or bought carries requiring to make them harder and harder.

I would also favour a campaign skipping mechanic once you defeated it with a certain class in 3.28:
-Players could unlock an alternative progression option - like usage of any of the existing or enhanced versions of endless dungeons (heist, sanctum, delve) or even t0 maps.
-Or, one possibility would be a boss gauntlet-style encounter (similar to the Maven arena ), where defeating all campaign bosses in succession grants full campaign completion.
-or you get a token for defeating kitava the first time or after n-repeats with each new character to skip the campaign once with one toon.
After a third time or so - it becomes a bit tedious to complete the campaign again even if you love the game. I notice myself ending sometimes with lvl 80-90 in delve and discontinue as i dont want to start the campaign from a3.



This would help address situations where players realize late into a character that they no longer enjoy the build to complete the challenges with and requriing help of third parties, or where a character is lost due to factors such as lag after weeks of play continuing in normal but not hardcore or solo selffound etc.

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exsea#1724 wrote:

players comes with a huge asterisk. its a group of players specifically. those who like doing challenges.

Dude....this is a thread and a conversation about challenges. Presumably the ones weighing in are the ones....interested in challenges. These are the ONLY players that should really be involved in this.

Because if you aren't interested, don't care, or don't do challenges ever....then what does ANY OF THIS matter to you? Challenges by design have absolutely no effect on the larger game.

So no.....the asterisk you talk about was set 41 pages ago when you read the topic. And it stopped being an existent limiter the second you finished reading the very first post in this thread. And the target audience of this change would already necessarily be those doing challenges. That's the point. But its also the idea that making challenges actual challenges will attract NEW people that have already seen the drudgery of current PoE challenges as not worth their time. Yet, real challenges that you can complete would attract a much wider and far more varied audience.

For example, myself: When I see a challenge that is just "do this task 100 times", I immediately check out. I ignore it. It's not worth specialized attention or time. BUT if the challenge was something interesting and meaningful, then that would attract me to actually attempt it. Maybe even attempt it 100 times, 1000 times until I finally achieve it. Because that is what a challenge SHOULD be.

Players like T4T that are in it for nothing other than the cosmetic shouldn't be the norm challenges are designed around. Just read and listen to how those players talk about the game. Look at the comments in other, unrelated threads. These people have no real interest in even engaging with the game. And that is who GGG should pander to?

These forums always love to talk about toxicity and crap: well most of the toxicity stems from players who, deep down, don't give a DAMN about the game itself. They want their shiny toy immediately and anything that stands in the way of that is "bad", including the actual playing of the game. Its constant complaints about nearly every aspect of the game that makes it PoE 1. It's a wonder why they continue to play at all. It's that or they want the game never to change from some arbitrary point they decided on themselves. Yet this is and has always been a live service game designed around updates and changes.

Every aspect of the game should be designed against such an audience. But challenges make the MOST SENSE to be designed against such an audience.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

Dude....this is a thread and a conversation about challenges. Presumably the ones weighing in are the ones....interested in challenges. These are the ONLY players that should really be involved in this.

i m invested in challenges and having better challenges. but when talking about the topic, the topic specifically mentions making league challenges requiring them to be solo, then it affects players who do not complete challenges solo and thus their voice does have weight.

it can be harmful to view things in a very narrow scope. for me the question i will ask is, how does x suggestion affect all current players?

just by the topic, it infers changing the nature of challenges to make it solo only. this directly affects players who do challenges just to get the rewards and many of them rely on them buying/getting carries.

if these people are not affected at all by the suggestions, then yeah i agree with you, the only people who should talk are the ones that like the suggestion.

but that simply isnt the case.

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exsea#1724 wrote:

it can be harmful to view things in a very narrow scope. for me the question i will ask is, how does x suggestion affect all current players?

and guess what? It's equally harmful, or even downright impossible, to argue about a specific thing that DOESN'T affect everyone.....by trying to force everyone into the conversation. And frankly, that's a recurring issue across many threads in this forum....people continuing to balloon very specific criticisms into global conversations that can't possibly reach any conclusion.

That's like including the entire population of car owners in a discussion about ferraris in a ferrari-owner forum. The perspectives are not germane to the discussion and actively HURT the debate.

It is actually FAR LESS harmful to narrow the scope. Because that limits outliers, strawman arguments, unrelated information or tangents, etc. That's the essence of any true debate.

The voices of those who complete challenges, but not solo, ARE being heard and ARE being represented across this entire thread. For the most part, that is the opposing side: those who want or prefer challenges to be solo, and those who don't want that precisely because they complete their challenges in a group or via carries. Yet they still COMPLETE the challenges and have a vested interest. And I vehemently disagree with much of what has been brought up by THIS crowd.

Those who don't do challenges, have no investment, experience, knowledge, or opinion, and can and should therefore be excluded from the conversation.

Challenges, by their very nature of design and purpose, are NOT meant for the "entire" playerbase. They are meant for a smaller select crowd that want to go BEYOND the game. And if you try to please EVERYONE by lending equal ear to all opinions and players on every single subject, you end up with D3 and D4 or other equally crappy game design.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

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exsea#1724 wrote:

it can be harmful to view things in a very narrow scope. for me the question i will ask is, how does x suggestion affect all current players?

and guess what? It's equally harmful, or even downright impossible, to argue about a specific thing that DOESN'T affect everyone.....by trying to force everyone into the conversation. And frankly, that's a recurring issue across many threads in this forum....people continuing to balloon very specific criticisms into global conversations that can't possibly reach any conclusion.

SSF didnt effect everyone. hardcore doesnt effect softcore and the other way round.

you keep looking thru things so narrowly just to try and make a point. for sure somethings affect many people, but somethings dont.

you keep thinking people who dont enjoy challenges dont care for challenges. YOU RE RIGHT! but only if its just challenges by themselves. i have many friends myself included who mostly dont care for challenges. sometimes we dont care for temp league content either. BUT when we see the challenge reward, we go COOL! LETS GO GRAB EM. so we dive in. achieve the challenges ASAP and bail if we dont enjoy the league content.

the amount of people who dont care for challenges are quite high, but the amount of people who do the challenge because of the rewards are also high.

do you think its in GGG's best interest to make these players feel sour when their ability to obtain challenge rewards is hampered to the point they just dont want to play the game?

temp league rewards entice players to play their game and the more people playing the game, the higher chance they have of people spending cash on the game.

their numbers simply outnumber challenge enjoyers. this is a fact, GGG always follows the money. they abandoned standard to cater to leaguers. they abandoned harder challenges for more generic ones. i dont know why its so hard to see how important it is to keep the other playerbase happy.

you may hate it but the non challenge enjoyers opinion carry much more weight than those who do. as long as the challenge suggestions affect them that is. you may disagree with me but you can see GGG already made that decision a long time ago.

we no longer have hardcore specific leagues. we no longer have race or challenge events with any exclusive in game rewards.

as for myself i see myself more as a messenger reminding people of this fact. if i m being honest, i sometimes do find it frustrating because people tend to blind themselves to the bigger picture. theres many questions to ask. how does my suggestions affect others? how does my suggestions affect the devs?

SSF is a perfect example of a neutral suggestion. it doesnt effect others and the devs needed to put a little bit of extra effort to make it work.

i ask you again. based on the topic. if league challenges were made requiring them to be SOLO only. how does this affect others?

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exsea#1724 wrote:

BUT when we see the challenge reward, we go COOL! LETS GO GRAB EM. so we dive in. achieve the challenges ASAP and bail if we dont enjoy the league content.

Well if the system gets changed, nothing really stops players from achieving the rewards even after a revamp. It is not as if the rewards suddenly become completely inaccessible. Unless you choose to limit yourself, which in that case is well deserved fomo, since no one other than the player themselves is responsible for holding themselves back. After all, getting fun and meaningful content out benefits the larger majority, and it is therefore in GGG’s best interest to push for changes.

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exsea#1724 wrote:

you may hate it but the non challenge enjoyers opinion carry much more weight than those who do.

They really do not, because people who do not engage with challenges, or who simply buy them, have little to no understanding of how boring challenges are in their current state. That is something only players who actually engage with them understand.

These are also the players who ask for meaningful improvements to content they actively participate in, which is far healthier than people demanding changes to content they do not even engage with, simply because they oppose the idea of others potentially having more fun while engaging with it.

It is like handing out samples of a new snack. One person tries it and says it tastes bland. Another refuses to try it because of a severe allergy but still insists it tastes amazing. Obviously, the opinion of the person who actually tried it carries far more weight.
The same goes for challenges. The players who actually engage with them are the ones whose feedback really matters.