Casual player wants more races

So pretty much.. I am addicted to this game because of the races. Not because I am good at them by any means but because they are exactly what I have always wanted out of a hack n slash. I have always thoroughly enjoyed the various hack n slash games I have played in the past [Baldurs Gate, diablo 3 and misc other ones I would play at friends houses] but have never been able to get into them in the long run because I quickly lose interest in playing just to obtain better items. Currently my favorite is descent because it offered a different challenge for me [my challenge - doing better than my previous]. I also just finished a blamt solo and was as giddy as a school girl putting on toe nail polish and dancing before letting it dry.

So in short - Races are not just for hardcore fanatics looking to place first to get 1000 points for an in-game item. They are also for us casuals who grew up in the 80s and after beating a game we did not have multiplayer to go to so we replayed the single player but faster!

Only thing that makes the races hardcore is that if I wanna play one I have to call off work or wake up at 2am.... (which I have[woke at 2am], which actually saddened me when my wife asked me if I was feeling alright and then I explained...)

I know exactly what you mean.
I would like to play a lot more races but they're never at the time I want to play or in most cases have time to play.
Especially for the Descent races (or other solo no trading with other players races) it would be nice to have a certain time window in which a player can choose to start that race.

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Krogon wrote:

I know exactly what you mean.
I would like to play a lot more races but they're never at the time I want to play or in most cases have time to play.
Especially for the Descent races (or other solo no trading with other players races) it would be nice to have a certain time window in which a player can choose to start that race.

So the event goes for a few hours, but players can start their hour long race anytime within that window? That would be awesome. I would get to actually do more than two races a month if something like that was set up. Great idea.

Looking at the schedule, there are many empty slots. I'm sure there are people somewhere who can benefit from a race in those time slots. I'd say just fill up those slots and we can easily accommodate everyone of different time zone (and free time amongst our life responsibilities)

This might work for Descent where the challenge seems to be more about staying alive than competing against others: having a race that runs asynchronously all day. In other words, the race is still the normal 1 hour but you can play that 1 hour at any time during the day.

Other races which are more about competing with others rather than testing yourself it makes less sense. You need to gauge yourself against the "first person to reach [zone]" and "first person to level [number]" messages, not to mention the aspirational points given to the first player to achieve something.

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About more races, GGG tried having more in Season 2 and it didn't work. Near the end of the season there were only about 500 people per race. (Examples: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/390326 http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/390342 http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/390369 )

Season 3 only has about 30% fewer races, but the participation rate per race is more than 100% higher at the same point in the season (About 1200-1500 per race). Too many races in Season 2 just meant people burned out on it, and the super-racers who are competitive couldn't handle the workload because they had to compete in so many races to maintain their rank. The lower race frequency works a lot better.