Feedback for Season 4

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The elo idea was for competitive events only. I dont think blamt/12min/ct etc races should be worth points, btw; they should be restricted to immediate rewards like orbs and random alt art prizes.

I think the Fun,Sig and Competive tag should be removed at all.

This was as random was Descent.
One 3h Party is C the other F.
One 90 Turbo Famine is C the other F.

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I like the rogues because they provide a huge counter to bad rng- kill 1-2 and youre mostly geared up, or have the trans/alts to craft/buy what you need. They also keep easy zones from being mindless facerolls. Not really concerned with their randomization since they can always be skipped.

You didn't have ignis/the summoner/LMP Icearrow exile or that spark guy in a lower/upper passage corridor then.

Those are prolly the worst starts you can get.
The statues still lag and you are trapped, they die fast but still it's not like you could skip that.
Certain GMP hits from Ignis could kill you right on the spot.
The Icearrow exile slows you down if you are in a bad spot you get surrounded and can't skip either.

It works fine on ledge or other bigger dungeons.

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135 mins makes a nice solo time because theres tension between grinding a2/sarn/docks depending on class and how well you play. Above 135 skews everything towards more and more docks grinding, while below 135 often allows easy a2 grind spots to compete with an a3 run.

It really makes no difference all comes down to the merv time.
2h=Sarn
2h15min=Docks

It would be far more interesting if you start at A2 and cruel gets a heavy level boost(35-42 in act1) not being an entire waste of time because the first areas got the same level as end of act3 areas.

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I certainly dont want another 1 hour signature, especially something as random as descent.

I might be fine with Descent if the droprates wouldn't be that abysmal and the chests have a much bigger variance meaning. The first chest drops 2h weapons, 2 corals etc.
Resist rings drop before the frozen abyss.
A bigger variance in gems and far more currency.
Or simply remove currency at all. Items are all unlinked and white.(no quality)

Descent only came down to take the alch/chaos chests and hope you got something to craft.

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I personally have no interest in "normal" races. The aren't interesting. There isn't much left to figure out on them.

I totally agree with that.

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Descent could be decent, but it needs some serious adjustments. IMO, remove the skill gem rng. Just make it so at the start you pick 2+ skills and 2+ supports from a full gem list. I went a full season without a single ice nova, and only 1 fire trap as a solid AOE drop as witch, which pretty much left me running 16-18 every time, without a chance at season overall.

The problem is rather than several zones are hostile to casters because of elemental resistances.
Skeletal Caverns is a major experience area and your kill speed goes down to nothing.

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- The rewards are mostly useless, they go to a "dead" league to rot until the long term ladders end.

It wouldn't make any difference if they go to Anarchy/Onslaught. There are far more reasons the community is shrinking on a fast pace.
New leagues are only artificially increasing the lifetime of the game but the game has major issues which remain unresolved. Some are still issues back from CB but most are reasons because of OB!

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- They are terribly biased towards certain classes, notably descent. A few points each race for level points adds up over a season. Find some way to neutralize this, as less competition in a class doesn't count for much, as every class has several "top" racers for it. (only reason I stuck with the witch is because there wasn't even a realistic chance to play enough races to get any addition awards anyway)

The game would require far more new modes like descent without being too repetive.
The top racers invested far more time than good racers and play the same build over and over again.
That's why I suggested Iron Man=One character only and a fingerprint system to remove gems, chosen in a prior race. So you have the options to do some good races and end up with the worst skillgems the others. Or think about a strategy where you got good and bad gems.

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Instead of locking out those of us (kotao, hilbert, etc.) who are good racers from actually receiving the top awards strictly because they didn't run every freaking race.

I didn't feel locked out I just hated the shedule, the fun/competition randomness classification and the prices.
There was no reason for me to go over 80 points, same goes for my FL who stopped racing after 50/80 points in the first week.
I didn't participate on a single normal mode race this season at all!(I know I would end up in the Top5 of class anyway, would have a high chance to grab clear/first rewards but in the end those modes are just boring)
Only really good rewards or an Ironman Fingerprintsystem could motivate me to participate on them again.

Most races were descent and at some point I got sick of the randomness.
On a good race I ended up in the area with the Blackguards(underleveled with exp penalty). On a bad race in the Perpetus Zone or I died to stun mechanics early on(I think I died 2-3 times in the abyss but most of the time in the Sawboneszone to stun+desync)

I had my 80 points and the remainig races I participated were some Turbodemi attemps(would have gotten 2 if PoE would finally not require a SSD/Ramdisk), Rogue or CT races.

Looking at the ladder several good racers felt that way. When I check regular participants which get around 4-7 points each race they are ranked quiet high in the ladder but don't have many points.

If you check prior ladders you will see that some high Ranked players from prior season stopped racing after the had their belt/amulet.

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- Make the shiny unique art a trade-able cosmetic skin, ala transactions. Playing only hardcore, the cool unique art is a one and done thing, forever rotting in hardcore stash, unwilling to lose it, or forever rotting in default. While I like the appeal of a trophy, what good is a trophy that rots in a closet (stash) because it can't actually be shown off.

Great idea



One thing I would like to see is something like 10x2h solo races where characters get moved into the next event on the next day(3 slots reserved), till they have their 20h playtime.
1 weekers became total no lifer races require you to be online 5/7 days to be on the first page. The CB races prior to the Dec race had 2-3 days max and the most of the activity came from the weekend.

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Make sure reave is in one of the first chests in descent for shadows.

The predictable Quarl balancing says it will be a level 10 skill and whirling blades gets removed.

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Imo it would be better to fill the shedule via shift plan with 42 races a week and only score the best 10-14 races.

really like this idea.

as for the mods, i feel like most are good but some just dont go well together. really hate famine with anything that makes mobs alot harder (turbo bosses on some classes)

ancestral is fine as long as it doesnt have something like turbo or lethal with it.

rogues are fine but they benefit too much from turbo/lethal

Descent as a competitive format was a disaster. A leaderboard run was all about getting lucky (drop only gems, op uniques, +1 caster items, life/damage affixes/gear, flask upgrades, etc etc) so the optimal "strategy" was to grind as many descent events as possible waiting for that perfect rng storm; skill hardly factored in at all.

Tbh descent would have been great if properly balanced/tested or if itd instead been introduced as an always-open time attack league or something similar. I wouldnt mind it returning as a signature either as long as it was with some changes, like a 2-3 hour limit with content to match and a much better gem/item/currency selection setup for the chests.

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Hilbert wrote:

You didn't have ignis/the summoner/LMP Icearrow exile or that spark guy in a lower/upper passage corridor then.

Heh actually in the most recent rogue race i participated in, i got the summoner in lower and the spark caster in anger. They both took a bit of work to kill, and the spark caster could have done some mad burst damage if id positioned myself wrong, but even so they could easily have been skipped if id felt they were too dangerous or didnt need the gear. This was a turbo event too and i still never had difficulty leaving them behind if necessary, so i cant see that being an issue at all in normal speed events.

Descent is a great "fun" format; they shouldn't bend over backward to make it competitive. Not all of the events have to be competitive and this is OK.

However, GGG does not have the best track record when it comes to separating "fun" events from "competitive" events. I hope they have plans to reward the two types of races separately in the future, and to have more rigorous controls on what it takes to fit in the "competitive" format. IMO, they should all have fixed-seed map-revealed properties. Only have a small number of race-types but large number of events of each type for competitive events (no one-offs for race durations or rule-sets). Season 2 did this perfectly just having 1 single competitive format: the 135 minute solo. And there were a lot of 135 minute solos across the season.

In competitive, a player needs a way to measure their progress and this means as many variables as possible need to be eliminated. If I do great in the 2 hour famine but horrible in the 90 minute turbo, is that because I'm getting better or because I'm just awesome at famine races? Or is it because those extra 30 minutes give me the perfect chance to recover? How the hell can I know? The more variables they remove, the more competitive the format. Duration, Rules, map seeds, those are all variables that can be eliminated, or at the very least reduced into separate formats for each one that is different.

Another thing I would like is for the Class Rank to be in the CSVs exported from the race pages. This doesn't need to be there until after the race is over (if that reduces server strain), and Online Status can also be removed. I guess I'm suggesting that the server could generate a "final report" after the event was over that had a little bit better information than what is currently available.
About 70% of the work in my Descent analysis post (in Scrotie's pinned topic) was related to calculating class rank because it is a separate processing step. Computing class rank depends on positional information in the CSV, but in order to do any analysis the positional information must be stripped from all the records. It would be so much simpler if Class Rank was already in the data.

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Descent as a competitive format was a disaster. A leaderboard run was all about getting lucky (drop only gems, op uniques, +1 caster items, life/damage affixes/gear, flask upgrades, etc etc) so the optimal "strategy" was to grind as many descent events as possible waiting for that perfect rng storm; skill hardly factored in at all.

Tbh descent would have been great if properly balanced/tested or if itd instead been introduced as an always-open time attack league or something similar. I wouldnt mind it returning as a signature either as long as it was with some changes, like a 2-3 hour limit with content to match and a much better gem/item/currency selection setup for the chests.

If every item would be white and gems wouldn't drop that would be much fairer because it reduces to playstyle, meaning chests drop your EQ. Mobs drop nothing at all.
Fixed Map/Mobseed given(same seed every race).
This would be a real competive mode.
In one race I alched a 76 max damage woodsplitter after having died once or twice early on(I think twice once to rhoa resync and once to desync too close to goats so their molten shell took me down) and was 13 minutes behind. After getting the woodsplitter I got to level 17 in no time because I oneshot everything even in the ribbon area(iirc the hatred gem also dropped)
In other races I had a 40-50 max damage weapon which weren't that good at all.
The other alchs had to be used on rings or the ribbon bosses would have killed me.

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Heh actually in the most recent rogue race i participated in, i got the summoner in lower and the spark caster in anger. They both took a bit of work to kill, and the spark caster could have done some mad burst damage if id positioned myself wrong, but even so they could easily have been skipped if id felt they were too dangerous or didnt need the gear. This was a turbo event too and i still never had difficulty leaving them behind if necessary, so i cant see that being an issue at all in normal speed events.

There are some really bad spawn points if you get them you can't skip and must lure them back.

It makes a huge difference if the rogue can one shot you= Passage or you may take some hits=Wrath/Anger.
Also I am refering to Turbo I did only 1 normal speed event and that was lethal which was a piece of cake to dodge exile attacks.
The summoner is only a problem to non SSD/Ramdisk players because the first statue summon freezes your PC for 1-2 seconds. While the skeletons die fast it might be a huge problem if you are out of mana(which happens quiet often because it never got fixed) and potions(less at the beginning more common in a2-3)


It would be more interesting if each exile holds a key to the next area, the exiles are fixed(so no advantages if somebody gets weak beginner exiles like the flicker multistriker) and others get LMP/GMP exiles.

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IMO, they should all have fixed-seed map-revealed properties.

Agreed while I do worse in fixed seed that would kill the advantage of some black sheep.

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Or is it because those extra 30 minutes give me the perfect chance to recover? How the hell can I know?

It's because you didn't hit a grindspot in 90min.
I would prefer a one instance only race, so manual resetting gets removed only expired instances allow opening new instances.

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Online Status can also be removed.

I would prefer it if streams would have to be added by clicking. Because they are so persistent to check the ladder I blocked all twitch frames.

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Duration, Rules, map seeds, those are all variables that can be eliminated, or at the very least reduced into separate formats for each one that is different.

You forgot mob seeds.
Those are really important in short races.
I remember a 12min race a friend hit ledge 2 min behind me(I had level 7 at the end of ledge) and still won duelist because he told me 50% of the mobs were blue. If he had hit ledge earlier he would have gotten level 8 for sure.

Putting my frustration here from another thread:

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There's now way too many bullshit races and almost no normal ones at all.
A total of 5 normal solo races in whole season...?

It's not even "racing" anymore. Most of the events you're supposed to play slow and safe to farm points for rewards and there's nothing else to it.

I think this is also the reason a lot of good racers stopped playing.

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Condemned wrote:

Putting my frustration here from another thread:

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There's now way too many bullshit races and almost no normal ones at all.
A total of 5 normal solo races in whole season...?

It's not even "racing" anymore. Most of the events you're supposed to play slow and safe to farm points for rewards and there's nothing else to it.

I think this is also the reason a lot of good racers stopped playing.

This is a good assessment. I think this + the tagging system (F,C,S) have put a lot of people off about racing. Good and useful rewards are also a must in my opinion. Overall, I think a good signature is what gets the good racers racing consistently. I think there needs to be more communication between top racers and developers when the signature is being decided or designed. Only then will we see high competitive interest.

With the introduction of the skin transfer they almost added a lot of value to alt art items, regardless of the item's usefulness. But just before they pulled a brilliant move off, they had a massive mind fart and had the item whose skin you transfer also go to standard upon death.

If they can change that latter part, I think race attendance would go up quite a bit from that alone.

Or maybe not, considering HC league is a graveyard anyway, and they will keep introducing new leagues that people will play over the regular standard/hc. Bah, this game.....

Edit: Great Draft desynced. Even the forum suffers desync.

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I think this is also the reason a lot of good racers stopped playing.

Rewards just suck.

The shedule is horrible putting all interesting races at 2-6am EU time, so most good EU players left(Well done Neon)

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I think this + the tagging system (F,C,S) have put a lot of people off about racing.

Correct this system is utter garbage. Boring mode = Demigod in EU Timezone.
Conversations look like that:
Friend:"Doing the [insert party fun race here]"
Me:"nope it's fun"
Friend:"Oh lol didn't see going offline cu"

A better solution would be to use a subsystem of points for Top 20 of class scores and give out demigods at 10(helm), 20(boots) 50(ring) etc. for example.
Top Players will have all kind of demigods without having 40+ in stash and Top 20 players will have at last the first 2 tiers.

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I think there needs to be more communication between top racers and developers when the signature is being decided or designed. Only then will we see high competitive interest.

Yeah asdfman did a good thing dropping the participation lower than ever with season 3 with his "killing racing" thread.
He even didn't do a single race in S3 before leaving.

Normal players should decide what kind of race they prefer.

A good start would be coral rings from the beginning.
Then to make it fair you either need a white linked item race or a best item possible race because signatures are only "Found x at point y?If not try again" race.

Another thing would be modes where normal players have the feeling of a chance without being beaten by 10-15 levels.
But those are problem like QS flasks which shouldn't exist imo.
Even with worse EQ I do better the more QS flasks I got. How about stamina with Evasion/Armor/ES damage drawbacks if you are exhausted. QS become stamina flasks which drain stamina slower for some seconds.
Or bring back phase run as white gem. Melees miss the damage boost.

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Or maybe not, considering HC league is a graveyard anyway, and they will keep introducing new leagues that people will play over the regular standard/hc. Bah, this game.....

Several modes are a graveyard because of major gameplay issues and I am not talking about desync.

Chaos Res for example was a last minute decision to justify CI node and Quarl even posted if you prove him it's a bad idea he is willing to remove it.
I posted some days after OB about chaos res being a bad idea.
After the majority of players hit cruel/merciless they created a shitstrom against chaos res.
In fact Chaos Res even made Geoffris helm useless because it's not the only item with chaos res anymore and it didn't get buffed to +70% chaos res.

Some devs played too much MMO and turned PoE into a instanced MMO game. They really need an idea how much time the average player(meaning 3h a day max) is going to invest to progress.
Even the major changes are MMOesque.
MMO is a dying genre because it's a time killer.

But here is a major problem. The devs aren't willing to change anything about it.
See the empower gem which will require 2-3 weeks of playtime to reach level 3.

As long the game is going the MMO path it's not going to succeed.