GGG: Why your 48h Cutthroat was unsuccessful. (Long Read)

Dear GGG,

We know that you're trying. You've been studying the results of every Cutthroat race and applying changes to the rules in an attempt to make it more successful and popular. Last weekend you held the longest running Cutthroat race to my knowledge, a 48 hour run.

Many people, however, have considered your 48h Cutthroat to be unsuccessful. The turnout wasn't that great and after 12 - 24 hours the amount of new players had dwindled to almost none.

Despite these low numbers and rough turnout, do not look at the results of the 48-hour Cutthroat and think that it would reflect how successful a permanent Cutthroat league would be.

The reason that the 48h Cutthroat was unsuccessful is because it was not catered toward any demographic in particular. The vast majority of people playing Path of Exile at the moment are PvEers. For the most part, these PvEers simply want to run your seasonal races for points to get rewards so they can play dress-up with their characters. A 48h Cutthroat without rewards does not appeal to most people that are actively playing your game!

You have a large amount of gamers that are "keeping an eye" on Path of Exile but are currently inactive and will continue to be until you provide a permanent PvP league. A 48 hour Cutthroat league is simply not enough to draw these gamers away from whatever PvP oriented game is currently at the top of their priorities. The implementation of a permanent PvP league would attract a lot of these players to your game and if the PvP was decent and adrenaline inducing, you would most likely retain them.

The influx of new players would obviously be people interested in PvEvP and would most likely contain many refugees from 2001-2003ish DIABLO 2. They would not need silly races and points to get rewards to play dress up with their characters. They would be more than happy simply leveling up their characters and simultaneously enjoying world PvP. These new players would be retained and nearly maintenance-free for GGG, with the exception of the need for your vigorous and unrelenting efforts against cheating.

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Rule Review

Cutthroat League Rules (as of April 11th 2014):

1.) Drop equipped items on death.

2.) Instance invasion:Allows you to select other people's instances in the instance manager.

3.) Harsh death experience penalty:Increases the death experience penalty by 30% on all difficulty levels.

4.) Hostile by default: Non-party members are hostile by default when you are not partied.

5.) Death penalty awarded to slayer:When killing a player, their death penalty is awarded to the player doing the killing.

6.) Increased player caps:Doubles player capacity in non-town instances. Does not increase the party size.

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For a permanent Cutthroat league to be successful, a few minor changes would have to be made to these rules.

1.) As it stands, Rule 1 is simply too harsh. A death penalty where all equipped items drop upon death is not really compatible with a game where you spend dozens and dozens (perhaps hundreds) of hours searching and hoping for that one item to drop. The only way for this to be viable would be for rare items to be significantly more common: perhaps by 1000% or greater. The goal is to retain your new players and a complete loss of hundreds of hours of work in a single death is simply draconian and not in line with this goal at all. If you do not wish to adjust drop rates of items, I suggest changing the rule so that only one equipped item drops upon death. I suggest that the rarer the item, the less likely that it would be to drop upon your death (though, never guaranteed to not drop). If this is disagreeable, let it be completely random, but still only one equipped item and always everything in your inventory.

2.) Invading others' instances works almost perfectly at the moment. The level cap disables the ability to enter instances of players that are too far out of your level range, however, they do not even show up on the list currently active instances. This gives the illusion that an area is empty when it is actually not. I suggest that the level cap not be changed, but instances of players who are out of your level range show up on the list but are grayed out, and do not reveal their level. This will encourage players to either continue cautiously progressing their character, or to simply wait for other players to catch up so that PvP will be available.

3.) Harsh death penalty. Very good. This rule is fine as-is but I would even go as far as to say that you should even be able to lose levels if you die too often. This would bring sort of a hardcore challenge to softcore characters.

4.) Hostile until partied. The only thing that I would change about this is to add friendly fire to parties. The only benefit to being partied should be the color of the player marker on the map for easy identification.

5.) Death penalty awarded to slayer. I know this is intended as a reward but I see it as the opposite. What this does is take away freedom from the player. In a permanent Cutthroat league I am sure there are people that would take great pleasure in creating a low-level PKer. For example, getting to level 7 and equipping some of the best gear for a level 7 and spending a decent amount of time simply hunting other players for sport. There are pros and cons to this style of gameplay, it should not be restricted with forced exp gain unless Rule 3 was changed to enable loss of levels.

6.) Increased player caps are always a good thing, especially when group sizes don't increase. No changes needed here.

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Conclusion: I hope you take these thoughts into consideration. To reiterate, I will say that a proper and successful implementation of a permanent Cutthroat league would not directly cater to the demographic of players that are currently active, but would "awaken" a vast amount of players that are inactive and patiently waiting for a permanent PvP league! More players = More money, therefore it would be a fallacy for you to simply give up on permanent PvP league development based on past failures. Failure is after all the building blocks to success and you are so close. Please make some minor changes and take the plunge!

Reasons for lack of participation were no rewards, while I think that solo is the right way the main game is too heavily fixed on party play and that is a backslash, long duration and griefing.
Even it's a bad experience from other CTs.

I think that test races should add rewards even it's just a tiny thing like being able to add the highest character you played as an forum avatar if you passed a critical point.
Or they should transfer to Ambush instead of Standard.

In 1h level 10 and having brutus finished is a good example.
In 2h level 18 and sins/weaver etc.

If you play solo you must pass certain gearchecks, while in Standard league makes it possible to skip as much possible and kill bosses with horrible gear(unless you fight something with idea PvE builds like Searing Bond which are useless in CT) in HC you will be forced to grind.
I had like 49 rips all PvM total in the 48h CT and like 37 were only attempting to get equipment back, while being naked. Others being caused by failed gearchecks and only 4 were my own mistake.

And don't forget you can't use Logout Marcos or chicken (macros) in CT meaning many players using those methods in regular leagues will fail in CT.

Many players copy builds and ideal race builds aren't ideal CT builds same goes for quest progression. Doing sidequests as fast possible is really important in CT.
This heavily slows down the majority of players.


The reason the 48h CT died really fast was griefing and freeze.

Freeze in PVP is just too powerful. While in regular PVP players use antifreeze items you start from scratch in CT.
And ending up in permafrozen isn't fun at all.
Reducing damage didn't affect GH at all I think I killed a templar in 3 instead of 2 hits but since he got frozen it made no difference he was doomed the moment he froze.

And the next problem is the level gap for allowed invasions. I was around 12-14 levels at level 48.
It becomes way too big over time.
Long term CT will only end up in trapping paths or unavoidable exits like ancient pyramid levels.
There is no map invasion system.
You can invade the Lab but if you got into your map you are safe.


The death penalty would work in HC CT but in SC CT you need improved droprates and less minions HP because once you lost your EQ you are done for. Currency must be common so you can at last come back as somebody equipped with vendor level items.

Sorry but I think the level cap is really bad.
A level 1 will almost never defeat a level 4.
A level 4 will almost never defeat a level 10.

And a level 48 will never defeat a level 58.


Deleveling is a bad idea while they might lose more experience they shouldn't be deleveled.


The problem with all other party CTs were massive gang bang attacks on lower levels.
We had only 2-3 solo cts in regular seasons all others were party and most party CTs were failures because a party of 6 rushed to certain quest and bashed everybody under them.

This game in its vanilla state has no balance at all. In PVP this multiplied by a thousand. People will never be interesting in playing unbalanced shitty pvp mode.

I agree with the suggestion to drastically increase the drop rate of items. That would get players who want to play builds requiring very rare and expensive items (i.e. shavs) to play CT, giving pvpers fresh meat to go for and stimulating the economy in said CT league. There needs to be some incentive for players who wouldn't normally pvp to join a CT league (to ensure there is a constant supply of people to kill). RuneScape ran into this problem too: every resource gathering spot in the wilderness was obsolete due to updates that made the game easier (why gather runes that sell for 4 gp each when you can kill cows for 150k/hour?), leading to the death of the pvp community that had made RuneScape so popular.

I don't feel qualified to comment on perma CT until we can play it. Put it in the game already.

Every short CT race it's a ghost town past act2, and you're mostly just griefing some unlucky guy who's trying to get merveil done.

Every long CT race it's Hilbert (who I'm assuming only plays to sport his fire quarl + neon name) and 2-3 others playing, rest stops after 1-2 hours due to boredom/dying once, and it being very frustrating to change gateways to hunt the few people around your level down that still have not stopped.

And fuck Solaris 1 farmers :(

You ran away like a PVE coward after you and a friend invaded me in the 6h CT I almost oneshot you and killed your friend so don't give me that.

I defend myself on invasions of around equal levels.

What did you do after that? Get level 20 and still grief level 12-13 players.
There isn't much you can do if a much higher level character invades you and that's the problem nothing else.


CT should be around the art of PKing and not griefing lower levels.

But as long you can grief other players and there is such a big inbalance CT will never work in longer term events.

I just play like longer CT is supposed to be depending on the duration.
And if I stop progressing and players stop playing because I let them reach my level and invade them then it's not my problem.

Damn, my signature didn't work :(

"

Hilbert wrote:

I just play like longer CT is supposed to be depending on the duration.

"

Hilbert wrote:

Reasons for lack of participation were no rewards

If Cutthroat can't stand on it's own and requires external rewards for people to just try it (not even invest time into it, but simply try it), doesn't that tell you that Cutthroat is catering to such an insignificantly tiny crowd that GGG are effectively wasting their time by working on improving it?

It's certainly the conclusion I would come to.

But then again, I don't really give a shit abot cutthroat and wether it succeeds or fails.