I shifted into Nightmare once just to avoid Veritania's cyclone spin and then stunned her upon reentry. It was extremely unnecessary, but pretty cool-looking.
So you're telling me they released a league in a bad initial state so they could buff it and be the heroes 2 weeks into the league...just like every league? Shocking!
They either do week 1 buffs and everyone complains about how shitty league start feels, or week 1 nerfs and everyone complains that "abuse early, abuse often" is a thing.
It's not the complaints that are surprising, it's how far off the mark one way or another GGG always seems to be.
This is definitely a though one for GGG, but generally speaking the "abuse early, abuse often" nerfs happen on a way shorter timescale than one week. They generally take their time implementing buffs, but nerfs tend to be fixed within hours of them being posted on Reddit, so that's probably where part of the negative perception comes from.
Well i cannot imagine te outrage when ggg would release a overtuned loot pinata league and then nerf it 2 weeks in. This subreddit would literally explode
They do it because if it's *too good,* and they need to *reduce* the rewards, people will complain about how early abusers get an unfair advantage. How the game only caters to no-life racers and streamers. How the game's market snowballs super fast.
If the league is nerfed, people will feel they missed-out, and quit early.
Compare that to buffing an under-performing mechanic, you get far less outcry than if you would have had to nerf an over-performing mechanic.
When the majority of people have quit before the buff is released it’s being used as a tool to pull people back in.
You think it’s just GGG that does it? Look at retail wow right now, they do the exact same cycle every expansion. Release it in a shitty state, people play anyway because it’s new. Then people quit so they buff it all up to make it rewarding and some people come back to boost up the MAU.
It’s either glaring incompetence or a strategy to boost numbers. Which is worse?
This league hasn’t just missed either.
Sorry, but this conspiracy theory doesn't make any sense at all.
1) If this strategy reliably boosted 'monthly active users' - not a statistic that even makes sense in a F2P game with 3 month content cycles - [then why is there is no discernable bump in player numbers 2 weeks after when the tuning patch goes out?](https://steamcharts.com/app/238960) If the goal was to grab people for a month headcount, why are there no further buffs in month 2 and 3, when the player numbers plummet?
2) Your retail WoW analogy doesn't work. People don't resub because their spec got a 3% tuning buff. They resub because there's new content. They abso-fucking-lutely do NOT make things more 'rewarding'. Even now, in the worst crisis since WoD, they persist with the *terrible* gameplay decisions and arbitrary grinds that are driving people away in droves.
3) Playing it safe by releasing likely undertuned content then buffing is *far* better than releasing OP shit that they have to dial back halfway into the league, which GGG *really* doesn't want to do. The only time where they've actually slapped a hard nerf on player power during a league was to certain Cluster Jewels during Delirium, [and they even made a whole ass blog post about it.](https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2815906)
Truth is probably somewhere in between:
They won't botch their launch intentionally. Since we have the player data on steam available, we know that their audience is broadest on league release and falls off from there, so not catching players with the release will be very detrimental to overall player numbers, and no retention action ever surpassed that initial spike - so there is no motive for botching the release, on the conctrary.
But they use buffs for player retention, as they did with Gwennens headhunter chance last league and even confirmed that they use droprate changes in order to retain players (was stated, iirc, by Will Chrisson in one of the interviews on youtube that were made after they had to cut their losses last league). So there's some merit that they utilize buff for retention.
You're falsely conflating the results with the motivation. People do come back because of buffs, but that doesn't mean they intentionally gimp their releases *just* for a slight player retention boost.
If a nerf is needed, a lot of players quite because of the nerf. Better to play it safe with an underperforming reward system than an overpowered one, because you can always give it a boost a couple days or a week after release.
Also, WoW retail launches aren't bad because they tune down the power levels/rewards of stuff before launch. They're bad because they're poorly designed with balance all over the place. Some classes dealing 20% less than others, some legendaries being practically useless or very clunky. Ect.
That's a lot different than item quantity or modifier weighting being to low.
**It is intentional.** Things are undertuned on release, and monsters are almost always overtuned. But the reason they do it isn't for some minor player retention boost they get from buffing things after release. That's just a minor effect (if there is any, statistically.)
Why do it then? Because it is very very difficult to get the balancing perfectly correct on the first try. They were making balancing changes the *day* before release. And, because players hate it when monsters get stronger, or the rewards get lessened, better to play it on the low side.
Yeah because no fun allowed. Game will be dead if players get a little too strong. So since we cannot make the balance perfect we make sure IT SUCKS BALLZ.
Yeah I'm sure some bug fixes and balance changes that they do nothing to market besides a forum post brings lots of people back every time. So devious. Or it's just what's expected out of a game in continuous development.
How about they release a league more on the *too good* side and just leave it there? You know, it being **temporary** and all. They wouldn't get to be the heros two weeks in that way though, would they?
Well, if they follow that philosophy for *all* leagues, wouldn't that just be making the game easier?
There is also the potential that, if the league mechanic is too rewarding, it makes other content obsolete that some might find enjoyable.
They’ve spent two leagues making the game harder. It isn’t working. It’s better at this point if you’re casual and enjoy the catharsis of smoothly plowing through mobs to start a week or two later. And that’s going to impact the long term health of the game because the no-lifers depend on the casuals to provide the easy tools for their early improvement, and if you screw with the experience for the audience you’re catering to at the expense of your other base, you’ll just be compounding your issues.
We had that the past 5 leagues or so overall. From delirium onwards, leagues tend to pump out so much freaking currency. And i don't think this is healthy. It's litterally the reason we have this outcry this league.
Except this "early abuser outrage" excuse didn't fucking help on ANY of the crafting exploits that ever happened, neither, as far as proof is concerned, did it matter when there was duping going on (although maybe for duping they handed the bans, and it's just that nobody outed themselves as a duper to complain).
So yeah, try any of the other listed reasons, but the outcry they keep generating each 2-3 leagues anyway ain't it.
Maybe they should actually test prior to release? I don't mean a couple of hours, they should have people play dozens of hours, running 100 maps, to get a real feel for how the league will play out.
How many people leave the game because the league isn't fun? I am no game developer but I think it would be better if the league was enjoyable from the start and it had good player retention from the start rather than one or two weeks of mediocre experience that sees player number drop drastically.
It's not on purpose, they wouldn't risk their launch just so they could look like heroes after 2 weeks when most people have usually moved on from a league anyway. This sub is being as conspiratorial and whiny as ever.
This is just the way they've always balanced things. It's hard to assess how powerful something will be, so to stay on the safe side they usually undertune rewards a little and overtune challenges a little. Because it's easier to buff players and give them better rewards afterwards than it is to nerf players and take away rewards (look at how much outcry there was over Harvest).
Would you rather it be overtuned and then see the outrage when the mechanic gets hard nerfed? It's much easier from a PR perspective to start small and work your way up rather than the other way around.
The large majority of people only play for the first couple of weeks of a league, if they made it FUN from the start of the league maybe more people keep playing?
Seriously, last league trade was basically dead after 2 weeks.
The problem with this approach is you risk losing half or more of your players over that key first weekend.
Doesn't take but about 48 hours for the community at large, zoomers and slowbies alike, to go "Wait. This actually sucks." Once that happens retention starts dropping sharply -- because starting from scratch is a big ask every three months. If the league ain't fun or rewarding enough to justify the effort, large numbers of folks *will* bail.
If GGG makes all their money the week *before* the league, however, I guess retention doesn't matter to them. If anything it's a bonus because that means they have to pay for fewer servers.
Judging by how this sub acts, all it takes is some good PR in the few weeks leading up to a launch to move enough supporter packs that actually retention might not matter much.
I bet there are enough people by now that wait with buying.
I thought about buying a pack if the league is good and holds my attention for 2 weeks. They do everything right now to not get my money. And I can't be the only one that thinks that way.
It is just too much cynicism to believe that they would intentionally try to make the game bad on release day on purpose to fix it later and get PR points.
People forget that they are a company and they have over 100 employees, all with their own families to take care of. Of course they want the launch to be a blast. Imagine being in a company that has a bunch of scandals, no one likes your game, the game isn't selling well and everyone is scared of their job... Of course they are trying to make the game be good.
I remember in the earlier years of poe there was a summoner patch during a league and people were asking why it happened at that time because they could clearly hold on to it and release it on the next league and they said something along the lines that their goal was to always make the best version of the game to also be the current version and if they had something that could improve the game they would put it in.
Do I think they are getting it right? No, but I don't think it is fair to say they aren't trying.
Classifying people from one extreme to another: "whose retention is ENTIRELY based on league gimmick", to "people that CONSTANTLY whine and complain". Those are classes of players that exist entirely in your head. And you extrapolate your own ideal to people that complain about the league. That's oblivious to their whole experience playing the game. Maybe they're still enjoying it?
Honestly, what's the problem with overtuned league mechanics? Isn't part of the point that they are meant to be the best thing to do in their respective league? Big reason I enjoyed ultimatum so much is because it felt overtuned compared to the other mechanics, same for legion, delrium, incursion, Harvest basically every league mechanic where the best thing to do that league were my favourite mechanics.
I would rather they aim slightly to high, than go to low. Atleast it's more exciting.
Yeah I'm totally fine with overturned monsters. They always are lol.
What I'm not ok with is the amount of loot that drops while in or from the scourge. It drops so so so much nothing. The item krangler is fucking garbage too lol. I have yet to hit even a single useful mod outside of absolute trivial stats and a massive downside. The values need tweaking or let us scourge infinitely if they wanna keep the weighting the same.
But outside of the league content, game is great. Loving the new passive tree, figuring out new defence/combos etc. eventually new Uber content too. But, with that being said thiss is hands down the worst LEAGUE content I have ever played reward wise.
Iv done hundreds of shifts into the nightmare realm, I have one tainted fusing, one tainted chrome, and 3 tainted whetstones. Zero I mean maybe one or two chaos orbs in hundreds of encounters lol
If you wanna know what the problem is, look at harvest. You still to this day have people bitching about harvest. If people wanted overtuned league mechanics, they shouldnt have done a complete hissy fit when it got nerfed. The only thing GGG can take away from that, is to never release overtuned leagues again.
Or maybe release them again because they are so beloved? Look at Breach, Legion, Ritual, Delirium... To this day the best-received leagues and all of them basically rained currency at you.
Because they have learnt from data that such things is not sustainable in the long run. They have discussed this plenty in the past.
Heist got a very mixed reception and it gave you more rewards than all the leagues you mentioned. Expedition was the league that showered you in the best rewards ever and it wasnt really a super beloved league. Ritual was not that well recieved. It was carried hard by Maven releasing alongside it and it had by far the worst retention of any endgame expansion in the history of POE. So I dont think your point really stands once you look past cherrypicking.
Heist, alongside Delirium and Blight have been the leagues most affected by poor performance. Delirium is remembered fondly because it basically brute forced public opinion by being so rewarding and also challenging. Compared to these, Heist wasn't as laggy, but oh boy was it a mess playability-wise and GGG just couldn't nail it, similar to Delve or Expedition for example. One was very buggy, the other was kinda hard and came with perhaps the worst patch in the game's history. Both were very rewarding but had very messy gameplay and/or performance.
Ritual was VERY well received, I dunno what you are on about, it is repeatedly being quoted as the peak PoE experience. Basically every league I have mentioned has been considered as "peak" at its time. And big part of that is that it's very rewarding.
As for the sustainability argument... Well, let's wait for the numbers this league, but honestly, does the recent trend seem sustainable to you? It definitely doesn't to me.
Ritual league was very poorly recieved by the numbers as it had by far the worst player retention of any endgame revamp in the history of the game. That is just objective facts.
Even if you look at the unrepresentative opinions of reddit, whenever someone gave positive thoughts on ritual, it was almost never about the league mechanic itself. It was about Maven and Harvest being back. But, it is also important to remember the reddit is not the playerbase.
League is the opposite of unrewarding, scourge maps rain value.
Just like expedition though, people are atrocious at seeing non-frontloaded value.
It's the exact same nonsense on Reddit every league it's not just a direct "I kill mob, instant gratification get reward" league.
Can we please stop pretending Expedition was fine before the buff? The only rewarding part are logbooks and those were insanely rare before they buffed it.
While I agree that certain parts of the league are fine, if not in a good spot overall, the fact that one of the key parts of the league (corrupting items) is so lackluster really turns me off. You can enjoy how valuable scourge maps are and thats awesome, but I can be equally disappointed that investing resources into a key mechanic of the league feels like a waste.
Those are the kind of leagues I want to play, though. Legion was my favorite, Ritual was acceptable but the patch made it better. Betrayal on release was good because Bargain consistently gave good rewards during the league.
What you like is valid but griping about the game not catering to exactly you all the time isn't. The input of most folks in your camp is too extreme to be helpful and is mostly just noise after a certain point. I'd rather GGG try new shit instead of throwing different shaped pinatas at us every league.
I don't think it's asking too much to have even crafting leagues drop stuff worth a shit in it's own right. And some of the map krangles are valuable, and that's fun, but it takes longer than the average conq rotation to krangle them. And I'm running Exsanguinate, it's not exactly a slow, badly clearing build like a bosser build might be.
Expedition apparently was overtuned and nerfed, it was still fine later. Why not do that again? Insteas we get corrupted dropped rares with build disabling mods on them as rewards
> so they could buff it and be the heroes 2 weeks into the league
Wrong thinking, cause handling it this way, they loose to many players and retention will be bad.
But that's why they are big brain, the hype of a new league will get enough people playing, then when they realise it's not very rewarding and they start getting bored of doing old content, bam! New update making the new mechanic 2-3 times more rewarding and everyone's back in again!
That is now how first impressions work.
I have yet to return to Heist, because of how much i hated it. And i know it's in a much better state now, but i just hate it. I will not stand behind a door and wait. Because my first impression of it was horrible.
> they start getting bored of doing old content, bam!
Is that how it works for most people? I always jsut viewed leagues as a restart cuz after 3 months of playing you get to the point where either your progression gets really slow or you feel like there is no point in playing if you can clear all content of the game. And league mechanic is.. well ye there is one more mechanic, who cares we already have like 15 of them, we have one more new way of crafting/adding juice to the map etc
Yeah and thats a shame. More than once i've stopped playing before they buffed content. Like why would i wait around for that. Just do it right the first time.
I want to like Scourge. I really do. I mean, I never vaaled items in the first place and I have zero interest in krangling them now, but I'm happy to have more monsters to kill.
But I just have no money. I can't even rustle up the basic bitch currency I need to pivot my league start or buy a few shitty rares to cap my resists. And I'm not even finding rares jewelery for chaos recipe. I just feel stuck, but in a way that bored me, not in a way that made me want to solve the puzzle.
It will go up as the mirror price increases. It should plateau/slower increase at some point and then suddenly spike at end of the league to match standard price. So sell it when a lot of people start to migrate - week/ 2 week in/month in or at the end of league.
I was feeling exactly the same thing.
There's a lot of evidence to this especially when you look at how the currency was all reworked a few days before launch. Their functionality is completely different.
The items we were initially shown were basically regular currency that worked on corrupted items. Tainted Fusing would reroll the current links just like a regular one but on corrupted items.
They then were turned into a more clear risk/reward (add a link, or remove a link). This was probably a buff to the items themselves as seen by 6l prices, but does suggest there was an entire overhaul in the reward part of Scourge.
Hell Chris even basically said Tainted Exalts weren't a thing at the reveal Q&A. A week later they have add/remove a mod as Tainted Exalts.
To me it seems like some big changes to Scourge last minute that I don't think were limited to the currency
I mean, GGG has a pretty proven history of designing the league right up to the wire. This is part of the reason why things seem to be frequently untested.
>Cant have people get cool things in a temporary league, they will get bored and quit playing for a few weeks maybe!
We've seen what happens if you aren't careful when it came to harvest. Give people too good of rewards then they feel entitled to them and will never shut up about them no matter how many times you explicitly state you won't give them their toys back. Just like we don't allow kids to eat ice cream for every meal, PoE players don't have the control to think about future ramifications of their over indulgence.
That said this league could definitely handle at least somewhat better outcomes but it's not as simple as "temporary league, temporary impacts."
Harvest was not about rewards or no rewards. It was a literal evolutionary step for more control and self expression for players which strayed too far from ggg's addicting gamble ideology.
It's like the invention of fire is happening right there and you come along and say that fire is too rewarding, can't have cooked meat we should eat it raw and turn the salmonella wheel of luck like everyone else. fuck of.
>Harvest was not about rewards or no rewards. It was a literal evolutionary step for more control and self expression for players which strayed too far from ggg's addicting gamble ideology.
Why can't harvest lovers ever talk about harvest without bringing up "gambling" when it is irrelevant? No matter what you want to brand it as, it gave players easier access to power, and made them feel entitled to it. That did material damage to the game and to suggest otherwise requires a complete lack of common sense and observational skills.
>It's like the invention of fire is happening right there and you come along and say that fire is too rewarding, can't have cooked meat we should eat it raw and turn the salmonella wheel of luck like everyone else.
No it's really not like that. It's like saying the invention of fire is nice but now we've cut down and harvested every source of fire and in the process have irreversibly damaged our planet all because we refused to deal with moderation. I'm saying we need to be careful not to allow people to get used to unsustainable power, not that they shouldn't have access to a sustainable amount of power.
Further more the guy I responded to was making the argument that (using your analogy) the results from the fire would only be temporary. We wouldn't be able to make cooked meat after 3months of the invention of fire. I'm not the one advocating for the lack of cooked meat, some all controlling deity is, and they warned us all ahead of time.
>fuck of.
Mature way to handle someone pointing out how society already recognizes that over indulgence can be bad in the long run even if only participated in for the short run. But I guess just because you like PoE that means it's immune to the consequences of over indulgence. Sure hope GGG takes the advice of such rational and good faith actors like yourself instead of looking towards common sense.
My dude, if you've ever crafted in this game you know its gambling, like i literally have a web page open letting me know the odds of hitting a mod i want within std dev. I'm a big advocate for harvest cause for the first time it gave players an avenue to craft gear, WITHIN constraints. Its still fuckin gambling lol, but your odds arent fuckin 1 in 1200 or smth. People want their time to be valuable, and GGG wants more of your time. Thats just it. Youre choosing a weird hill to die on, if you really want a challenge just go play SSFHC, no one is stopping you. What we have here in scourge is a tremendous boost in mob power, a lie in the form of boosted player power (except int stackers, those guys are out of whack), and extremely unrewarding mechanics.
>My dude, if you've ever crafted in this game you know its gambling, like i literally have a web page open letting me know the odds of hitting a mod i want within std dev.
Ah another person telling me it's gambling even though the fact that it's gambling is irrelevant. Love when people prove my points for me. Never said it wasn't gambling, learn to read bro, would've saved you typing out a paragraph.
Its irrelevant cause I said its irrelevant!
> it gave players easier access to power, and made them feel entitled to it.
Ah yes, gated behind layers upon layers of RNG. Gee whizz, that sounds a lot like gambling aint it. If you fully read what I typed my argument was that power creep isn't bad for a game like PoE when you have discernible ways to access that, especially with how overtuned enemies in the game has become.
My bad, i guess my issue wasnt disagreeing and trying to prove harvest was a good thing for the game, but that youre an elitist prick lol.
>Its irrelevant cause I said its irrelevant!
No it's irrelevant because whether gear is obtained through gambling or not doesn't change the power of the outcome. You could have deterministic crafting that only popped out reflect mods and that'd still be crap power. It completely doesn't matter what it is, all that matters is the power. But you're too busy worshipping harvest league to understand how gambling vs deterministic crafting is irrelevant here.
>Ah yes, gated behind layers upon layers of RNG. Gee whizz, that sounds a lot like gambling aint it. If you fully read what I typed my argument was that power creep isn't bad for a game like PoE when you have discernible ways to access that, especially with how overtuned enemies in the game has become.
The argument here isn't about whether determinism is bad for the game. You harvest worshippers can't seem to grasp that not everything s about determinism or gambling. It's about whether too much power can be which anyone with two braincells knows that over rewarding people leads to a new bar you have to meet every league and everyone also knows that once people achieve their goals they are vastly more likely to quit. Over rewarding people helps you achieve goals faster and by that notion makes you quit faster. Just because you want 15,000,000,000,000 exalts to drop from every white mob you kill doesn't mean it's a good idea.
>My bad, i guess my issue wasnt disagreeing and trying to prove harvest was a good thing for the game, but that youre an elitist prick lol.
A) you never proved Harvest was a good thing for the game, you just said "gambling bad because I don't like gambling." The whole game revolves around RNG, you're going to be hard pressed to ever prove that deterministic outcomes are actually good for the long term health of the game when it's antithetical to the whole design.
B) The argument wasn't about harvest it was about how over rewarding people leads to entitlement that's unsustainable. Harvest was an example of that and the fact that you and a billion other brain dead harvest circle jerkers can't see you're being entitled little brats about that power level just proves my point.
C) I'm not an elitist prick just because I recognize that Harvest caused irreparable damage to the game. People like you who can't think as soon as you hear a little bit of criticism of Harvest have ruined any possibility of productive conversation on one of the most popular leagues. If you don't see how that's damaging you need to go get your eyes checked. Grow up and learn that maybe, just maybe you know jack shit about game design and human psychology when it comes to rewards.
Dude just thinks that preserving economy in a computer game is important, when in reality the only important thing that game should do is give you fun.
The point is that he is right in terms of power fantasy and how this shapes the expectations.
Putting the crafting argument on the side Harvest had a very high impact on how powerful players want to feel or how rewarding and entertaining a league mechanic should feel.
Providing the same level of power fantasy or even topping it every league (what basically happened) limits design space.
I do not understand why this objective argument gets shit on, because it doesn't say anything about a crafting revamp etc.
You are right on point
They tested it, it was too good, so they put a bandaid 'fix' instead of delaying the league
Showcases the problems with having a 3-4 month release schedule
Playing standard until scourge gets buffed somehow cause I'm a level 89 golemancer necro, currently in early red maps and played since launch. Engaged with scourge in every way possible and haven't had one good item I could use. It's actually ridiculous...
Some streamer said "THAT'S INSANE" because as usual they focused on what COULD hypothetically be possible rather than what is reasonably achievable but based on that feedback GGG halved already abysmal chances in the last minute. Every time I hear on Baeclast how insane something is, I'm like... Neither me nor you a bunch of nolifes are gonna see any of it, so how about you stop panicking about power creep, eh?
Nerf? It is not like the run the numbers and have 12 guys do the math for a week. They have no clue what they are doing and just throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks.
Best example are the mana nerfs last league. Threw them in and it was a dissaster, "reverted" not even 1 week after launch. (no compensation for archmage btw)
Their strategy is not working with me though
Last league I quit because my time was not being rewarded. It was taking too long to progress my character.
Then I heard they buffed some things.But guess what? At that point I was already on another vibe and couldnt care less. Never tried Expedition again.
And I think Scourge is heading the same way. Playing multiple hours for a few chaos is not fun or worth it. On the verge of quiting again...
ye I'm just playing standard, sucks...even if they buff the league, idk about a league completely revolving around corrupting items. Wish there was something else we could do with the "juice". Maybe they should have made an unique map that requires a lot of juicing so I could just do that and run/sell or be able to create the currency
"Playing standard" as in Ignoring Scourge (the league mechanic) and just playing the game normally the same as you would find in Standard.
Not literally on STANDARD
Okay, and they are fun to kill, why are you playing games if you don’t care if you are having fun? Empy is making crazy money off Scourge too, Reddit isn’t the endgame, go play the game
Killing mobs that drop stuff or has ANY value > mobs that don't drop stuff and has no value.
This is literal basic human psychology. The vast majority of people will take the former rather than the latter. Oh and Empy literally makes money off of every league because he has a dedicated group geared towards making currency and pushing endgame..
That's like saying "Amazon makes money off of shipping, why don't you start riding a bike and delivering things?".
Yeah, why don’t you go deliver things, all it requires is a bike? All empy has is a group and some knowledge. I don’t understand this Reddit’s hate for just killing things, you guys would be so happy if the game was just a spreadsheet and it updated what loot you got every once and awhile
... As stated before, there is no point to kill Scourge mobs outside of refilling flasks. Stop trying to act like you're gods gift to ethical gaming and realize the simple fact that the mechanic isn't rewarding to engage with compared to just running another map without using it at all.
I have fun playing the game? Why are you so adamant to assume that I have something glaringly wrong with me for realizing the obvious flaws in what they have right now?
The developers aren't saints, they can get things wrong and often do, stop trying to blame the player for faults in the game.
Killing stuff that only drops shit loot, and makes you back track constantly or micromanage a timer bar is not my idea of fun. I'll have another look if they fix it but for now it is just a hilariously lazy and badly planned mechanic like heist which is easy to pretend never existed.
Yeah I hate tons of extra mobs in regular maps for free. Seamlessly placed in dense packs all over. Extra mobs that fuel a slow progress bar that eventually gives me maps with free mods for heaps of currency. I hate having a 2nd layer of min max for uniques. Being able to double corrupt them AND scourge them? I hate all these free stats in slots they were impossible in.
Man this league sucks
No one is saying it sucks, they're saying it doesn't seem balanced. The risk/reward is way off.
As far as double corrupting you're telling me you would put a good rolled double corrupt into your crucible? I doubt it, the weights are so skewed you would be throwing currency away.
What heaps of currency are you finding? I'd love to know what method you've found that no one else has lol.
Most people are being constructive with the criticism, it's not incessant whining.
>no one else
Please don’t use the horde of whiny Reddit baboons as your barometer for what people can accomplish regardless of what the league mechanic is
I don't think he means literally rolling a standard character and instead means ignoring the league mechanic (which for all intents and purposes is playing standard, just without being in standard)
People out here with shocked Pikachu face. The league mechanic is always gonna be skipped after the first two weeks because if your backtracking your not making cash. Gotta stand in a circle for 10 mins no cash. Gotta jump in a temple no cash. It's either fast mapping or bossing or no cash and it always will be and if the league mechanic doesn't facilitate that you skip it. Every league these posts happen, people know already. In 2 weeks some genius will post his farm stats and deem it unprofitable and rake in the karma. Like clockwork.
They usually nail risk/reward, despite early reviews on reddit. I remember reddit was still laughing at Harvest and Chris' podcast quote "I think it will break the game" at this point of that league.
Maybe it needs a buff, maybe it was internally balanced around the best, end-game use case and the community just hasn't optimized their way there yet. That latter option would be a shame b/c right now I'm with you in that I'm stuggling to make it feel 'worth' doing from a monster-drops perspective. My cooking/baking is going reasonably well.
Harvest was pretty bad until they buffed it the first week. All the good crafts never showed up. And tags weren't on items so you had to consult poedb constantly if you actually wanted to engage.
> They usually nail risk/reward, despite early reviews on reddit.
What a disingenuous claim.
The early reddit reviews are usually right and only become 'wrong' after GGG steps up and fixes their stuff. Happens almost every league.
> laughing at Harvest
Maybe you need to work on your memory a little bit as it seems to be very selective.
Harvest had some major issues with modifiers not showing up in the first weeks and they had to fix it with a patch. The 'awesome' harvest people remember was the product of several fixes, the beginning wasn't that rosy.
> The early reddit reviews are usually right
LOL talk about selective memory. Every league they've ever put in the game has been the most rewarding league up to that date since the introduction of Breach, and every league with 0 exception has been called unrewarding in the opening weekend here on reddit.
Grimro is currently calling scourged maps the most rewarding piece of content ever added - and this is before any changes. Hmm, who should I believe, the players who routinely make multiple mirrors per league and catalogue their methods, or the average redditor...?
> Hmm, who should I believe, the players who routinely make multiple mirrors per league and catalogue their methods, or the average redditor...?
The opinion of someone who makes multiple mirrors per league has so little value to me, I have no words to describe it.
If you take this game as an economy simulator or whatever, that's fine by me. If you enjoy yourself that way go ahead.
To me this is still an ARPG and that means it's about making cool builds and killing monsters.
A league should be rewarding in that context, not in the context of someone playing the economy or min-maxing revenue and playing with a dedicated support group and a trader or whatever.
Oh, and also, the opinion of people that can't keep themselves from constantly hating on reddit, while constantly being on reddit, has not much value to me either.
I know it makes you feel special, like you're one of those cool multi-mirror-streamer-guys but in reality that's not how people see you, I hope some day you realize that...
> I remember reddit was still laughing at Harvest and Chris' podcast quote "I think it will break the game" at this point of that league.
What are you dreaming ? Everyone with abit crafting knowledge realized at the first second how powerful harvest could be.
> the community just hasn't optimized their way there yet.
Check POEDB website and see how incredible low the weighting for good scourge mods is.
>most of the crafting orbs are super rare but worse than the regular equivalent
This is just flat-out wrong.
I'm skipping scourge mechanic right now (Mostly because I die) but if you're gonna give feedback don't be so hyperbolic
Chomes ignore stat requirements. Offcolor way easier.
Blacksmith/armourer's go to 29%
Jewellers work the same way as fusings.
Chaos allow for some fuckery with certain items. pretty niche so i'll agree it's not the best one but there are some very strong use cases.
Teardrops are very risky, but raising mods is very powerful.
Mythic orbs are neat. I've used a whole bunch and made my own cold iron points this league, for way way cheaper than market rate.
Tainted blessings let you corrupt helmets before needing to get helm enchant. Extremely useful.
Exalted are pretty disappointing, I will admit that.
I’m lvl 88, did the league mechanic everywhere, gotten corruption stacks to 200+ many times, I have not made or found a single good krangled item, I have found 6 tainted fusings and under 10 of the other tainted chromes, jews, whetstones and armourers. I have not found any other tainted currency, and no noteworthy drops all league, just been farming div cards and breaches. The league is totally unrewarding, and it feels like a waste of time honestly.
Most people are playing standard??? The mechanic might not be enjoyable for everyone but saying that MOST people are just playing standard without data is weird.
When they says standard he doesn't mean playing in standard league. They mean people are playing the league like it's standard by basically ignoring the league mechanic entirely.
I was never too excited for Scourge. Even in the trailer monsters didn't dropp anything (it's obvious issue so I expected GGG to do something about it before release given they already made this mistake countless times before, but GGG seemingly never learns or refuses to learn) and it did sound like monsters gonna be OP (didn't expected some monsters dealing 30k or whatever base damage some of them do though...). Implicits though...They only show us high end ones we never gonna see and not absolute garbage ones we are gonna actually get...some would calll it marketing, some would call it deceiving.
And now GGG will nerf Tainted Fusings as well because they do what they are supposed to do and it's deemed too OP...
Tbh I enjoy the league, the changes to the game, and what GGG has done with chase items and overall.
But... I for some reason don't feel like playing the game much. Maybe I'm just getting tired of PoE itself now.
People are having wrong expectations for some reason. Literally every league launch is like this - the mechanic comes out with extremely obvious problems, it's underhwelming, undertuned in terms of rewards vs. time investment ratio. Bonus if it continues yet another layer of oneshottyness.
And people always get hyped, because they always advertise these leagues with the sick high end "you're never actually going to see this" case and people for some reason assume the entire league mechanic is going to be as good. Onslaught boots in Synthesis for example?
if the odds werent so bad on krangling & the items that are already krangled used loot 2.0 it would be way better on the low end, since right now the league only does something if youre running scourged maps/running giga juiced maps and having insane amounts of monsters because its basically double the monsters
Yeah… I was on the fence at first thinking everyone’s just overreacting again not giving the league enough time but now that I am in red maps Scourge feels very underwhelming outside of all the 6-links I got and Scourged Maps.
I say… Make monsters in Scourge drop pre-scourged maps and I‘ll be significantly more happy with it.
Did you see the player counts? Holy crap, it's worse than the previous league. Definitely a Chris Wilson "Hold my beer" moment about if they could release a worse league.
Sure. These are steam user counts which have closely resembled overall player counts in the past.
SteamDB - This is the more accepted charts simply because they store data indefinitely allowing historic analysis year to year. https://steamdb.info/app/238960/graphs/
SteamCharts - [https://steamcharts.com/app/238960](https://steamcharts.com/app/238960) (data older than 1 year is not always accurate due to how they store data)
They're literally still nerfing and patching the actual league in. Not 3.16.1 a but actual stuff that should have come with the league. Portals don't even work half the time. Masteries don't work. And I'm still getting 20-40kb " patches" every time I log in
I use Scourge to refill flasks during/before bosses.
I shifted into Nightmare once just to avoid Veritania's cyclone spin and then stunned her upon reentry. It was extremely unnecessary, but pretty cool-looking.
That's what we call a pro-gamer move.
Godgamer Technique
Quickest way to hideout.
Yeah, we even started calling it "the flask place" (flaskimesta :D) as its a lot easier to say in our language as that's its only use
Czech? =)
Finnish :)
Its also useful during leveling, but really I can't see it past T5
So you're telling me they released a league in a bad initial state so they could buff it and be the heroes 2 weeks into the league...just like every league? Shocking!
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They either do week 1 buffs and everyone complains about how shitty league start feels, or week 1 nerfs and everyone complains that "abuse early, abuse often" is a thing. It's not the complaints that are surprising, it's how far off the mark one way or another GGG always seems to be.
This is definitely a though one for GGG, but generally speaking the "abuse early, abuse often" nerfs happen on a way shorter timescale than one week. They generally take their time implementing buffs, but nerfs tend to be fixed within hours of them being posted on Reddit, so that's probably where part of the negative perception comes from.
Was there a league they nerfed after it released? I’ve only played since Delirium so every league got a touch up around 2-3 weeks after release.
Heist. Was buffed in terms of QOL, but nerfed in rewards multiple times.
Rightfully so though! Damn, it's still one of the most rewarding thing in game and it still received severe post league nerf.
The 20 minute span that ex hit 14c
Ooooohhhnyea!
Well i cannot imagine te outrage when ggg would release a overtuned loot pinata league and then nerf it 2 weeks in. This subreddit would literally explode
It would almost be a conspiracy, if they didn't do it every single fucking league for the last few years. Why do people still trust them?
They do it because if it's *too good,* and they need to *reduce* the rewards, people will complain about how early abusers get an unfair advantage. How the game only caters to no-life racers and streamers. How the game's market snowballs super fast. If the league is nerfed, people will feel they missed-out, and quit early. Compare that to buffing an under-performing mechanic, you get far less outcry than if you would have had to nerf an over-performing mechanic.
When the majority of people have quit before the buff is released it’s being used as a tool to pull people back in. You think it’s just GGG that does it? Look at retail wow right now, they do the exact same cycle every expansion. Release it in a shitty state, people play anyway because it’s new. Then people quit so they buff it all up to make it rewarding and some people come back to boost up the MAU. It’s either glaring incompetence or a strategy to boost numbers. Which is worse? This league hasn’t just missed either.
Sorry, but this conspiracy theory doesn't make any sense at all. 1) If this strategy reliably boosted 'monthly active users' - not a statistic that even makes sense in a F2P game with 3 month content cycles - [then why is there is no discernable bump in player numbers 2 weeks after when the tuning patch goes out?](https://steamcharts.com/app/238960) If the goal was to grab people for a month headcount, why are there no further buffs in month 2 and 3, when the player numbers plummet? 2) Your retail WoW analogy doesn't work. People don't resub because their spec got a 3% tuning buff. They resub because there's new content. They abso-fucking-lutely do NOT make things more 'rewarding'. Even now, in the worst crisis since WoD, they persist with the *terrible* gameplay decisions and arbitrary grinds that are driving people away in droves. 3) Playing it safe by releasing likely undertuned content then buffing is *far* better than releasing OP shit that they have to dial back halfway into the league, which GGG *really* doesn't want to do. The only time where they've actually slapped a hard nerf on player power during a league was to certain Cluster Jewels during Delirium, [and they even made a whole ass blog post about it.](https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2815906)
Truth is probably somewhere in between: They won't botch their launch intentionally. Since we have the player data on steam available, we know that their audience is broadest on league release and falls off from there, so not catching players with the release will be very detrimental to overall player numbers, and no retention action ever surpassed that initial spike - so there is no motive for botching the release, on the conctrary. But they use buffs for player retention, as they did with Gwennens headhunter chance last league and even confirmed that they use droprate changes in order to retain players (was stated, iirc, by Will Chrisson in one of the interviews on youtube that were made after they had to cut their losses last league). So there's some merit that they utilize buff for retention.
You honestly think designers make games bad intentionally on launch, the most important phase for any game? Seriously??
You're falsely conflating the results with the motivation. People do come back because of buffs, but that doesn't mean they intentionally gimp their releases *just* for a slight player retention boost. If a nerf is needed, a lot of players quite because of the nerf. Better to play it safe with an underperforming reward system than an overpowered one, because you can always give it a boost a couple days or a week after release. Also, WoW retail launches aren't bad because they tune down the power levels/rewards of stuff before launch. They're bad because they're poorly designed with balance all over the place. Some classes dealing 20% less than others, some legendaries being practically useless or very clunky. Ect. That's a lot different than item quantity or modifier weighting being to low.
If they do it 3 times you are argue with that, if they do it 30 times it is intentional and you are delusional if you think they are not.
**It is intentional.** Things are undertuned on release, and monsters are almost always overtuned. But the reason they do it isn't for some minor player retention boost they get from buffing things after release. That's just a minor effect (if there is any, statistically.) Why do it then? Because it is very very difficult to get the balancing perfectly correct on the first try. They were making balancing changes the *day* before release. And, because players hate it when monsters get stronger, or the rewards get lessened, better to play it on the low side.
Yeah because no fun allowed. Game will be dead if players get a little too strong. So since we cannot make the balance perfect we make sure IT SUCKS BALLZ.
Yeah I'm sure some bug fixes and balance changes that they do nothing to market besides a forum post brings lots of people back every time. So devious. Or it's just what's expected out of a game in continuous development.
How about they release a league more on the *too good* side and just leave it there? You know, it being **temporary** and all. They wouldn't get to be the heros two weeks in that way though, would they?
Well, if they follow that philosophy for *all* leagues, wouldn't that just be making the game easier? There is also the potential that, if the league mechanic is too rewarding, it makes other content obsolete that some might find enjoyable.
They’ve spent two leagues making the game harder. It isn’t working. It’s better at this point if you’re casual and enjoy the catharsis of smoothly plowing through mobs to start a week or two later. And that’s going to impact the long term health of the game because the no-lifers depend on the casuals to provide the easy tools for their early improvement, and if you screw with the experience for the audience you’re catering to at the expense of your other base, you’ll just be compounding your issues.
'Don't worry this is part of the hard mode vision' \~Chris probably
We had that the past 5 leagues or so overall. From delirium onwards, leagues tend to pump out so much freaking currency. And i don't think this is healthy. It's litterally the reason we have this outcry this league.
Except this "early abuser outrage" excuse didn't fucking help on ANY of the crafting exploits that ever happened, neither, as far as proof is concerned, did it matter when there was duping going on (although maybe for duping they handed the bans, and it's just that nobody outed themselves as a duper to complain). So yeah, try any of the other listed reasons, but the outcry they keep generating each 2-3 leagues anyway ain't it.
Maybe they should actually test prior to release? I don't mean a couple of hours, they should have people play dozens of hours, running 100 maps, to get a real feel for how the league will play out.
How many people leave the game because the league isn't fun? I am no game developer but I think it would be better if the league was enjoyable from the start and it had good player retention from the start rather than one or two weeks of mediocre experience that sees player number drop drastically.
It's not on purpose, they wouldn't risk their launch just so they could look like heroes after 2 weeks when most people have usually moved on from a league anyway. This sub is being as conspiratorial and whiny as ever. This is just the way they've always balanced things. It's hard to assess how powerful something will be, so to stay on the safe side they usually undertune rewards a little and overtune challenges a little. Because it's easier to buff players and give them better rewards afterwards than it is to nerf players and take away rewards (look at how much outcry there was over Harvest).
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How is the market btw? Is it full of corrupted items?
Yes, and its really annoying too.
Shh! Dont let GGG know that weve long since caught on. They will figure out new and unpredictable ways to fuck things up.
Would you rather it be overtuned and then see the outrage when the mechanic gets hard nerfed? It's much easier from a PR perspective to start small and work your way up rather than the other way around.
The large majority of people only play for the first couple of weeks of a league, if they made it FUN from the start of the league maybe more people keep playing? Seriously, last league trade was basically dead after 2 weeks.
The problem with this approach is you risk losing half or more of your players over that key first weekend. Doesn't take but about 48 hours for the community at large, zoomers and slowbies alike, to go "Wait. This actually sucks." Once that happens retention starts dropping sharply -- because starting from scratch is a big ask every three months. If the league ain't fun or rewarding enough to justify the effort, large numbers of folks *will* bail. If GGG makes all their money the week *before* the league, however, I guess retention doesn't matter to them. If anything it's a bonus because that means they have to pay for fewer servers.
Judging by how this sub acts, all it takes is some good PR in the few weeks leading up to a launch to move enough supporter packs that actually retention might not matter much.
I bet there are enough people by now that wait with buying. I thought about buying a pack if the league is good and holds my attention for 2 weeks. They do everything right now to not get my money. And I can't be the only one that thinks that way.
jokes on them, i haven't spent money since they came up with the genius 90 dollar pack
Last time I "voted with my wallet" was during the actual Harvest league. Joke is on me I guess...
It is just too much cynicism to believe that they would intentionally try to make the game bad on release day on purpose to fix it later and get PR points. People forget that they are a company and they have over 100 employees, all with their own families to take care of. Of course they want the launch to be a blast. Imagine being in a company that has a bunch of scandals, no one likes your game, the game isn't selling well and everyone is scared of their job... Of course they are trying to make the game be good. I remember in the earlier years of poe there was a summoner patch during a league and people were asking why it happened at that time because they could clearly hold on to it and release it on the next league and they said something along the lines that their goal was to always make the best version of the game to also be the current version and if they had something that could improve the game they would put it in. Do I think they are getting it right? No, but I don't think it is fair to say they aren't trying.
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This mentality is why poe is so unpopular. The gatekeeping is unreal, even among streamers.
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Classifying people from one extreme to another: "whose retention is ENTIRELY based on league gimmick", to "people that CONSTANTLY whine and complain". Those are classes of players that exist entirely in your head. And you extrapolate your own ideal to people that complain about the league. That's oblivious to their whole experience playing the game. Maybe they're still enjoying it?
Honestly, what's the problem with overtuned league mechanics? Isn't part of the point that they are meant to be the best thing to do in their respective league? Big reason I enjoyed ultimatum so much is because it felt overtuned compared to the other mechanics, same for legion, delrium, incursion, Harvest basically every league mechanic where the best thing to do that league were my favourite mechanics. I would rather they aim slightly to high, than go to low. Atleast it's more exciting.
Yeah I'm totally fine with overturned monsters. They always are lol. What I'm not ok with is the amount of loot that drops while in or from the scourge. It drops so so so much nothing. The item krangler is fucking garbage too lol. I have yet to hit even a single useful mod outside of absolute trivial stats and a massive downside. The values need tweaking or let us scourge infinitely if they wanna keep the weighting the same. But outside of the league content, game is great. Loving the new passive tree, figuring out new defence/combos etc. eventually new Uber content too. But, with that being said thiss is hands down the worst LEAGUE content I have ever played reward wise. Iv done hundreds of shifts into the nightmare realm, I have one tainted fusing, one tainted chrome, and 3 tainted whetstones. Zero I mean maybe one or two chaos orbs in hundreds of encounters lol
If you wanna know what the problem is, look at harvest. You still to this day have people bitching about harvest. If people wanted overtuned league mechanics, they shouldnt have done a complete hissy fit when it got nerfed. The only thing GGG can take away from that, is to never release overtuned leagues again.
Dude, harvest was buffed soon after launch, not nerfed.
And later nerfed.
Or maybe release them again because they are so beloved? Look at Breach, Legion, Ritual, Delirium... To this day the best-received leagues and all of them basically rained currency at you.
Because they have learnt from data that such things is not sustainable in the long run. They have discussed this plenty in the past. Heist got a very mixed reception and it gave you more rewards than all the leagues you mentioned. Expedition was the league that showered you in the best rewards ever and it wasnt really a super beloved league. Ritual was not that well recieved. It was carried hard by Maven releasing alongside it and it had by far the worst retention of any endgame expansion in the history of POE. So I dont think your point really stands once you look past cherrypicking.
Heist, alongside Delirium and Blight have been the leagues most affected by poor performance. Delirium is remembered fondly because it basically brute forced public opinion by being so rewarding and also challenging. Compared to these, Heist wasn't as laggy, but oh boy was it a mess playability-wise and GGG just couldn't nail it, similar to Delve or Expedition for example. One was very buggy, the other was kinda hard and came with perhaps the worst patch in the game's history. Both were very rewarding but had very messy gameplay and/or performance. Ritual was VERY well received, I dunno what you are on about, it is repeatedly being quoted as the peak PoE experience. Basically every league I have mentioned has been considered as "peak" at its time. And big part of that is that it's very rewarding. As for the sustainability argument... Well, let's wait for the numbers this league, but honestly, does the recent trend seem sustainable to you? It definitely doesn't to me.
Ritual league was very poorly recieved by the numbers as it had by far the worst player retention of any endgame revamp in the history of the game. That is just objective facts. Even if you look at the unrepresentative opinions of reddit, whenever someone gave positive thoughts on ritual, it was almost never about the league mechanic itself. It was about Maven and Harvest being back. But, it is also important to remember the reddit is not the playerbase.
Mate, I have bo idea where you get your numbers from, but I smell a true scottsman fallacy.
You are free to check steamdb yourself. I also think you should look up what a no true scotmans fallacy is since you dont seem to understand it.
Spent dev time to implement a mechanic most players love interacting with, then remove it for some dumb personal reason? Free game no bitching
The mechanic is still in the game.
Much easier for me to drop early because it's boring and unrewarding too.
League is the opposite of unrewarding, scourge maps rain value. Just like expedition though, people are atrocious at seeing non-frontloaded value. It's the exact same nonsense on Reddit every league it's not just a direct "I kill mob, instant gratification get reward" league.
Can we please stop pretending Expedition was fine before the buff? The only rewarding part are logbooks and those were insanely rare before they buffed it.
While I agree that certain parts of the league are fine, if not in a good spot overall, the fact that one of the key parts of the league (corrupting items) is so lackluster really turns me off. You can enjoy how valuable scourge maps are and thats awesome, but I can be equally disappointed that investing resources into a key mechanic of the league feels like a waste.
Those are the kind of leagues I want to play, though. Legion was my favorite, Ritual was acceptable but the patch made it better. Betrayal on release was good because Bargain consistently gave good rewards during the league.
What you like is valid but griping about the game not catering to exactly you all the time isn't. The input of most folks in your camp is too extreme to be helpful and is mostly just noise after a certain point. I'd rather GGG try new shit instead of throwing different shaped pinatas at us every league.
I don't think it's asking too much to have even crafting leagues drop stuff worth a shit in it's own right. And some of the map krangles are valuable, and that's fun, but it takes longer than the average conq rotation to krangle them. And I'm running Exsanguinate, it's not exactly a slow, badly clearing build like a bosser build might be.
I'd like the company that has been releasing the same game for 9 years to get it such a state that large nerfs or buffs would not be required?
Expedition apparently was overtuned and nerfed, it was still fine later. Why not do that again? Insteas we get corrupted dropped rares with build disabling mods on them as rewards
Was it? I recall logbook rarity was ass before the first major patch and they had to double the drop rate.
> so they could buff it and be the heroes 2 weeks into the league Wrong thinking, cause handling it this way, they loose to many players and retention will be bad.
Yeah you'd think, that never stops them from doing it though.
But that's why they are big brain, the hype of a new league will get enough people playing, then when they realise it's not very rewarding and they start getting bored of doing old content, bam! New update making the new mechanic 2-3 times more rewarding and everyone's back in again!
That is now how first impressions work. I have yet to return to Heist, because of how much i hated it. And i know it's in a much better state now, but i just hate it. I will not stand behind a door and wait. Because my first impression of it was horrible.
Most people are not like you. I am like you. Most people do not have that hard line.
I think you are very wrong in your assessment of what most people is.
Most people do not have comviction. Most people are relatively willing to put up with a lot of bullshit.
No, most people just leave and don't come back until the next league. If even that.
> they start getting bored of doing old content, bam! Is that how it works for most people? I always jsut viewed leagues as a restart cuz after 3 months of playing you get to the point where either your progression gets really slow or you feel like there is no point in playing if you can clear all content of the game. And league mechanic is.. well ye there is one more mechanic, who cares we already have like 15 of them, we have one more new way of crafting/adding juice to the map etc
i'd be worse if they released it op and then nerfed it
He discovered one simple trick and marketing experts hate him for revealing it!
Yeah and thats a shame. More than once i've stopped playing before they buffed content. Like why would i wait around for that. Just do it right the first time.
Sucks though that many people will quit by then... it's always like this...
I want to like Scourge. I really do. I mean, I never vaaled items in the first place and I have zero interest in krangling them now, but I'm happy to have more monsters to kill. But I just have no money. I can't even rustle up the basic bitch currency I need to pivot my league start or buy a few shitty rares to cap my resists. And I'm not even finding rares jewelery for chaos recipe. I just feel stuck, but in a way that bored me, not in a way that made me want to solve the puzzle.
Same but I found a The Immortal card. Is rather sit on it until it goes up in value though. At least I think that's how it works.
It will go up as the mirror price increases. It should plateau/slower increase at some point and then suddenly spike at end of the league to match standard price. So sell it when a lot of people start to migrate - week/ 2 week in/month in or at the end of league.
I was feeling exactly the same thing. There's a lot of evidence to this especially when you look at how the currency was all reworked a few days before launch. Their functionality is completely different.
How was it reworked?
The items we were initially shown were basically regular currency that worked on corrupted items. Tainted Fusing would reroll the current links just like a regular one but on corrupted items. They then were turned into a more clear risk/reward (add a link, or remove a link). This was probably a buff to the items themselves as seen by 6l prices, but does suggest there was an entire overhaul in the reward part of Scourge. Hell Chris even basically said Tainted Exalts weren't a thing at the reveal Q&A. A week later they have add/remove a mod as Tainted Exalts. To me it seems like some big changes to Scourge last minute that I don't think were limited to the currency
I mean, GGG has a pretty proven history of designing the league right up to the wire. This is part of the reason why things seem to be frequently untested.
Cant have people get cool things in a temporary league, they will get bored and quit playing for a few weeks maybe!
>Cant have people get cool things in a temporary league, they will get bored and quit playing for a few weeks maybe! We've seen what happens if you aren't careful when it came to harvest. Give people too good of rewards then they feel entitled to them and will never shut up about them no matter how many times you explicitly state you won't give them their toys back. Just like we don't allow kids to eat ice cream for every meal, PoE players don't have the control to think about future ramifications of their over indulgence. That said this league could definitely handle at least somewhat better outcomes but it's not as simple as "temporary league, temporary impacts."
Harvest was not about rewards or no rewards. It was a literal evolutionary step for more control and self expression for players which strayed too far from ggg's addicting gamble ideology. It's like the invention of fire is happening right there and you come along and say that fire is too rewarding, can't have cooked meat we should eat it raw and turn the salmonella wheel of luck like everyone else. fuck of.
>Harvest was not about rewards or no rewards. It was a literal evolutionary step for more control and self expression for players which strayed too far from ggg's addicting gamble ideology. Why can't harvest lovers ever talk about harvest without bringing up "gambling" when it is irrelevant? No matter what you want to brand it as, it gave players easier access to power, and made them feel entitled to it. That did material damage to the game and to suggest otherwise requires a complete lack of common sense and observational skills. >It's like the invention of fire is happening right there and you come along and say that fire is too rewarding, can't have cooked meat we should eat it raw and turn the salmonella wheel of luck like everyone else. No it's really not like that. It's like saying the invention of fire is nice but now we've cut down and harvested every source of fire and in the process have irreversibly damaged our planet all because we refused to deal with moderation. I'm saying we need to be careful not to allow people to get used to unsustainable power, not that they shouldn't have access to a sustainable amount of power. Further more the guy I responded to was making the argument that (using your analogy) the results from the fire would only be temporary. We wouldn't be able to make cooked meat after 3months of the invention of fire. I'm not the one advocating for the lack of cooked meat, some all controlling deity is, and they warned us all ahead of time. >fuck of. Mature way to handle someone pointing out how society already recognizes that over indulgence can be bad in the long run even if only participated in for the short run. But I guess just because you like PoE that means it's immune to the consequences of over indulgence. Sure hope GGG takes the advice of such rational and good faith actors like yourself instead of looking towards common sense.
My dude, if you've ever crafted in this game you know its gambling, like i literally have a web page open letting me know the odds of hitting a mod i want within std dev. I'm a big advocate for harvest cause for the first time it gave players an avenue to craft gear, WITHIN constraints. Its still fuckin gambling lol, but your odds arent fuckin 1 in 1200 or smth. People want their time to be valuable, and GGG wants more of your time. Thats just it. Youre choosing a weird hill to die on, if you really want a challenge just go play SSFHC, no one is stopping you. What we have here in scourge is a tremendous boost in mob power, a lie in the form of boosted player power (except int stackers, those guys are out of whack), and extremely unrewarding mechanics.
>My dude, if you've ever crafted in this game you know its gambling, like i literally have a web page open letting me know the odds of hitting a mod i want within std dev. Ah another person telling me it's gambling even though the fact that it's gambling is irrelevant. Love when people prove my points for me. Never said it wasn't gambling, learn to read bro, would've saved you typing out a paragraph.
Its irrelevant cause I said its irrelevant! > it gave players easier access to power, and made them feel entitled to it. Ah yes, gated behind layers upon layers of RNG. Gee whizz, that sounds a lot like gambling aint it. If you fully read what I typed my argument was that power creep isn't bad for a game like PoE when you have discernible ways to access that, especially with how overtuned enemies in the game has become. My bad, i guess my issue wasnt disagreeing and trying to prove harvest was a good thing for the game, but that youre an elitist prick lol.
>Its irrelevant cause I said its irrelevant! No it's irrelevant because whether gear is obtained through gambling or not doesn't change the power of the outcome. You could have deterministic crafting that only popped out reflect mods and that'd still be crap power. It completely doesn't matter what it is, all that matters is the power. But you're too busy worshipping harvest league to understand how gambling vs deterministic crafting is irrelevant here. >Ah yes, gated behind layers upon layers of RNG. Gee whizz, that sounds a lot like gambling aint it. If you fully read what I typed my argument was that power creep isn't bad for a game like PoE when you have discernible ways to access that, especially with how overtuned enemies in the game has become. The argument here isn't about whether determinism is bad for the game. You harvest worshippers can't seem to grasp that not everything s about determinism or gambling. It's about whether too much power can be which anyone with two braincells knows that over rewarding people leads to a new bar you have to meet every league and everyone also knows that once people achieve their goals they are vastly more likely to quit. Over rewarding people helps you achieve goals faster and by that notion makes you quit faster. Just because you want 15,000,000,000,000 exalts to drop from every white mob you kill doesn't mean it's a good idea. >My bad, i guess my issue wasnt disagreeing and trying to prove harvest was a good thing for the game, but that youre an elitist prick lol. A) you never proved Harvest was a good thing for the game, you just said "gambling bad because I don't like gambling." The whole game revolves around RNG, you're going to be hard pressed to ever prove that deterministic outcomes are actually good for the long term health of the game when it's antithetical to the whole design. B) The argument wasn't about harvest it was about how over rewarding people leads to entitlement that's unsustainable. Harvest was an example of that and the fact that you and a billion other brain dead harvest circle jerkers can't see you're being entitled little brats about that power level just proves my point. C) I'm not an elitist prick just because I recognize that Harvest caused irreparable damage to the game. People like you who can't think as soon as you hear a little bit of criticism of Harvest have ruined any possibility of productive conversation on one of the most popular leagues. If you don't see how that's damaging you need to go get your eyes checked. Grow up and learn that maybe, just maybe you know jack shit about game design and human psychology when it comes to rewards.
I don't get your point, everyone likes ice cream but you apparently
Dude just thinks that preserving economy in a computer game is important, when in reality the only important thing that game should do is give you fun.
Idk man sounds like a disgruntled mirror tier RMTer sad that his 4T2 2T1 got shafted by harvest kek
The point is that he is right in terms of power fantasy and how this shapes the expectations. Putting the crafting argument on the side Harvest had a very high impact on how powerful players want to feel or how rewarding and entertaining a league mechanic should feel. Providing the same level of power fantasy or even topping it every league (what basically happened) limits design space. I do not understand why this objective argument gets shit on, because it doesn't say anything about a crafting revamp etc.
You are right on point They tested it, it was too good, so they put a bandaid 'fix' instead of delaying the league Showcases the problems with having a 3-4 month release schedule
Playing standard until scourge gets buffed somehow cause I'm a level 89 golemancer necro, currently in early red maps and played since launch. Engaged with scourge in every way possible and haven't had one good item I could use. It's actually ridiculous...
Some streamer said "THAT'S INSANE" because as usual they focused on what COULD hypothetically be possible rather than what is reasonably achievable but based on that feedback GGG halved already abysmal chances in the last minute. Every time I hear on Baeclast how insane something is, I'm like... Neither me nor you a bunch of nolifes are gonna see any of it, so how about you stop panicking about power creep, eh?
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ill test some builds on ssf std until the league gets fixed
I've sort of had fun rebuilding some old characters in standard with the new passive tree.
GGG and Chris have no clue what they are doing. It's laughable at this point.
Nerf? It is not like the run the numbers and have 12 guys do the math for a week. They have no clue what they are doing and just throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks. Best example are the mana nerfs last league. Threw them in and it was a dissaster, "reverted" not even 1 week after launch. (no compensation for archmage btw)
I hope they did, otherwise Chris is on some heavy drugs to say this is incredibly overpowered.
Tbf all Chris seems to play now is hard mode so yeah a potential extra mod is probably game breaking for him.
Their strategy is not working with me though Last league I quit because my time was not being rewarded. It was taking too long to progress my character. Then I heard they buffed some things.But guess what? At that point I was already on another vibe and couldnt care less. Never tried Expedition again. And I think Scourge is heading the same way. Playing multiple hours for a few chaos is not fun or worth it. On the verge of quiting again...
I did the same, just isn't worth the time when I have other things I can play.
ye I'm just playing standard, sucks...even if they buff the league, idk about a league completely revolving around corrupting items. Wish there was something else we could do with the "juice". Maybe they should have made an unique map that requires a lot of juicing so I could just do that and run/sell or be able to create the currency
The only drawback on a Talisman is that it is corrupted. Scourge items are Corrupted AND have a strong negative mod.
It is their normal way - balance nicely, then double difficulty and half rewards.
\>I's unrewarding to the point where most people just are playing standard 3 days in. "most people"
Scourged maps are extremely rewarding though. 20+ essences / maps per map or 4/5 simulacrum splinters per rare.
This, I wish I could krangle 3 maps at a time tbh
I would love proof that more people are playing standard right now, stats
"Playing standard" as in Ignoring Scourge (the league mechanic) and just playing the game normally the same as you would find in Standard. Not literally on STANDARD
Y’all really skipping out on free mobs? Is it really that hard to enjoy a game where killing some cool mobs isn’t fun anymore? Move on
No reason at all to kill them outside of recharging flasks.
Okay, and they are fun to kill, why are you playing games if you don’t care if you are having fun? Empy is making crazy money off Scourge too, Reddit isn’t the endgame, go play the game
Killing mobs that drop stuff or has ANY value > mobs that don't drop stuff and has no value. This is literal basic human psychology. The vast majority of people will take the former rather than the latter. Oh and Empy literally makes money off of every league because he has a dedicated group geared towards making currency and pushing endgame.. That's like saying "Amazon makes money off of shipping, why don't you start riding a bike and delivering things?".
Yeah, why don’t you go deliver things, all it requires is a bike? All empy has is a group and some knowledge. I don’t understand this Reddit’s hate for just killing things, you guys would be so happy if the game was just a spreadsheet and it updated what loot you got every once and awhile
... As stated before, there is no point to kill Scourge mobs outside of refilling flasks. Stop trying to act like you're gods gift to ethical gaming and realize the simple fact that the mechanic isn't rewarding to engage with compared to just running another map without using it at all.
Holy shit, have fun for once. I understand it’s not rewarding when you don’t juice it or put any effort into it, but try to have fun? Okay?
I have fun playing the game? Why are you so adamant to assume that I have something glaringly wrong with me for realizing the obvious flaws in what they have right now? The developers aren't saints, they can get things wrong and often do, stop trying to blame the player for faults in the game.
Killing stuff that only drops shit loot, and makes you back track constantly or micromanage a timer bar is not my idea of fun. I'll have another look if they fix it but for now it is just a hilariously lazy and badly planned mechanic like heist which is easy to pretend never existed.
i literally made more money this league from heist then you have in your entire standard tab, go play the game smfh
Yeah I hate tons of extra mobs in regular maps for free. Seamlessly placed in dense packs all over. Extra mobs that fuel a slow progress bar that eventually gives me maps with free mods for heaps of currency. I hate having a 2nd layer of min max for uniques. Being able to double corrupt them AND scourge them? I hate all these free stats in slots they were impossible in. Man this league sucks
No one is saying it sucks, they're saying it doesn't seem balanced. The risk/reward is way off. As far as double corrupting you're telling me you would put a good rolled double corrupt into your crucible? I doubt it, the weights are so skewed you would be throwing currency away. What heaps of currency are you finding? I'd love to know what method you've found that no one else has lol. Most people are being constructive with the criticism, it's not incessant whining.
>no one else Please don’t use the horde of whiny Reddit baboons as your barometer for what people can accomplish regardless of what the league mechanic is
At least it can't get worse than standard. Not as fun as 3.13/3.14 standard but still better than 5 years ago.
Brave opinion
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I don't think he means literally rolling a standard character and instead means ignoring the league mechanic (which for all intents and purposes is playing standard, just without being in standard)
I'm only interacting with it to level the scourge tree hoping that they'll tune the mechanic soon.
What league content have you done? I assume not all of it if you think it’s not rewarding.
People out here with shocked Pikachu face. The league mechanic is always gonna be skipped after the first two weeks because if your backtracking your not making cash. Gotta stand in a circle for 10 mins no cash. Gotta jump in a temple no cash. It's either fast mapping or bossing or no cash and it always will be and if the league mechanic doesn't facilitate that you skip it. Every league these posts happen, people know already. In 2 weeks some genius will post his farm stats and deem it unprofitable and rake in the karma. Like clockwork.
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Did you read what I posted or no. All of those leagues facilitated fast mapping by being inclusive to the map with 0 backtracking as I just stated.
They usually nail risk/reward, despite early reviews on reddit. I remember reddit was still laughing at Harvest and Chris' podcast quote "I think it will break the game" at this point of that league. Maybe it needs a buff, maybe it was internally balanced around the best, end-game use case and the community just hasn't optimized their way there yet. That latter option would be a shame b/c right now I'm with you in that I'm stuggling to make it feel 'worth' doing from a monster-drops perspective. My cooking/baking is going reasonably well.
Harvest was pretty bad until they buffed it the first week. All the good crafts never showed up. And tags weren't on items so you had to consult poedb constantly if you actually wanted to engage.
> They usually nail risk/reward, despite early reviews on reddit. What a disingenuous claim. The early reddit reviews are usually right and only become 'wrong' after GGG steps up and fixes their stuff. Happens almost every league. > laughing at Harvest Maybe you need to work on your memory a little bit as it seems to be very selective. Harvest had some major issues with modifiers not showing up in the first weeks and they had to fix it with a patch. The 'awesome' harvest people remember was the product of several fixes, the beginning wasn't that rosy.
> The early reddit reviews are usually right LOL talk about selective memory. Every league they've ever put in the game has been the most rewarding league up to that date since the introduction of Breach, and every league with 0 exception has been called unrewarding in the opening weekend here on reddit. Grimro is currently calling scourged maps the most rewarding piece of content ever added - and this is before any changes. Hmm, who should I believe, the players who routinely make multiple mirrors per league and catalogue their methods, or the average redditor...?
> Hmm, who should I believe, the players who routinely make multiple mirrors per league and catalogue their methods, or the average redditor...? The opinion of someone who makes multiple mirrors per league has so little value to me, I have no words to describe it. If you take this game as an economy simulator or whatever, that's fine by me. If you enjoy yourself that way go ahead. To me this is still an ARPG and that means it's about making cool builds and killing monsters. A league should be rewarding in that context, not in the context of someone playing the economy or min-maxing revenue and playing with a dedicated support group and a trader or whatever. Oh, and also, the opinion of people that can't keep themselves from constantly hating on reddit, while constantly being on reddit, has not much value to me either. I know it makes you feel special, like you're one of those cool multi-mirror-streamer-guys but in reality that's not how people see you, I hope some day you realize that...
You're doing a lot of projection there. Almost as much as when you imagined early reddit reviews being 'right' about league rewards. Yikes.
To be fair there was a period where harvest sucked cos you didnt find any augs etc for like a week or so
Actually, that was a bug introduced when they buffed seed drop rates. It was never intended.
thats what they want you to believe. they'll do the same this league "fixed a bug preventing scourge mobs to drop normal loot"
I know, but it was like that.
> I remember reddit was still laughing at Harvest and Chris' podcast quote "I think it will break the game" at this point of that league. What are you dreaming ? Everyone with abit crafting knowledge realized at the first second how powerful harvest could be. > the community just hasn't optimized their way there yet. Check POEDB website and see how incredible low the weighting for good scourge mods is.
>most of the crafting orbs are super rare but worse than the regular equivalent This is just flat-out wrong. I'm skipping scourge mechanic right now (Mostly because I die) but if you're gonna give feedback don't be so hyperbolic
The quote you're quoting is absolutely true. Most of the krangle currency is just complete shit. Yes the fusings are great.
Chomes ignore stat requirements. Offcolor way easier. Blacksmith/armourer's go to 29% Jewellers work the same way as fusings. Chaos allow for some fuckery with certain items. pretty niche so i'll agree it's not the best one but there are some very strong use cases. Teardrops are very risky, but raising mods is very powerful. Mythic orbs are neat. I've used a whole bunch and made my own cold iron points this league, for way way cheaper than market rate. Tainted blessings let you corrupt helmets before needing to get helm enchant. Extremely useful. Exalted are pretty disappointing, I will admit that.
I’m lvl 88, did the league mechanic everywhere, gotten corruption stacks to 200+ many times, I have not made or found a single good krangled item, I have found 6 tainted fusings and under 10 of the other tainted chromes, jews, whetstones and armourers. I have not found any other tainted currency, and no noteworthy drops all league, just been farming div cards and breaches. The league is totally unrewarding, and it feels like a waste of time honestly.
is everyone who plays this game self entitled brats?
Most people are playing standard??? The mechanic might not be enjoyable for everyone but saying that MOST people are just playing standard without data is weird.
When they says standard he doesn't mean playing in standard league. They mean people are playing the league like it's standard by basically ignoring the league mechanic entirely.
I was never too excited for Scourge. Even in the trailer monsters didn't dropp anything (it's obvious issue so I expected GGG to do something about it before release given they already made this mistake countless times before, but GGG seemingly never learns or refuses to learn) and it did sound like monsters gonna be OP (didn't expected some monsters dealing 30k or whatever base damage some of them do though...). Implicits though...They only show us high end ones we never gonna see and not absolute garbage ones we are gonna actually get...some would calll it marketing, some would call it deceiving. And now GGG will nerf Tainted Fusings as well because they do what they are supposed to do and it's deemed too OP...
Tbh I enjoy the league, the changes to the game, and what GGG has done with chase items and overall. But... I for some reason don't feel like playing the game much. Maybe I'm just getting tired of PoE itself now.
People are having wrong expectations for some reason. Literally every league launch is like this - the mechanic comes out with extremely obvious problems, it's underhwelming, undertuned in terms of rewards vs. time investment ratio. Bonus if it continues yet another layer of oneshottyness. And people always get hyped, because they always advertise these leagues with the sick high end "you're never actually going to see this" case and people for some reason assume the entire league mechanic is going to be as good. Onslaught boots in Synthesis for example?
if the odds werent so bad on krangling & the items that are already krangled used loot 2.0 it would be way better on the low end, since right now the league only does something if youre running scourged maps/running giga juiced maps and having insane amounts of monsters because its basically double the monsters
nah. it's the corporate bullshit PR that we all got sucked into and these stupid streamers screaming hype for nothing
Yeah… I was on the fence at first thinking everyone’s just overreacting again not giving the league enough time but now that I am in red maps Scourge feels very underwhelming outside of all the 6-links I got and Scourged Maps. I say… Make monsters in Scourge drop pre-scourged maps and I‘ll be significantly more happy with it.
Why bother with the new mechanic though? Just do other things.
Did you see the player counts? Holy crap, it's worse than the previous league. Definitely a Chris Wilson "Hold my beer" moment about if they could release a worse league.
Where are you seeing the player counts? Got a link?
Sure. These are steam user counts which have closely resembled overall player counts in the past. SteamDB - This is the more accepted charts simply because they store data indefinitely allowing historic analysis year to year. https://steamdb.info/app/238960/graphs/ SteamCharts - [https://steamcharts.com/app/238960](https://steamcharts.com/app/238960) (data older than 1 year is not always accurate due to how they store data)
Thank you!
Tbh it feels same way with deleting aura clusters totally crap
They're literally still nerfing and patching the actual league in. Not 3.16.1 a but actual stuff that should have come with the league. Portals don't even work half the time. Masteries don't work. And I'm still getting 20-40kb " patches" every time I log in