Path of Exile

Xevy said:

Also ask anyone in SSF how they feel about Harvest.

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They liked it better when literally every build was open to them because of deterministic crafting that was reasonably available?

LiquidDeath said:

They liked it better when literally every build was open to them because of deterministic crafting that was reasonably available?

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So you're in the pro-Harvest camp. Same!

Deathwing said:

Fair enough, I'll admit I misremembered that part. I still think the heart of my point is valid though. Regardless selling the gear or not, if you self-priced the gear lower because that's what it was worth on the open market, would that change your opinion of Harvest?

The SSF argument makes no sense. That's like telling me to ask someone dying of thirst what they think of water while I have that shit coming out of multiple pipes in my house. Harvest is the wet moldy sponge.

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More like asking the person dying of thirst that they can't dig a well because your water in town is too expensive because of the water companies.

My problems with harvest is that its just shit content still vs. mapping. The boss sucks. I could get behind it if running a harvest put all those crafts on a thing in your hideout and it "cleared" when you opened a new map unless you spent station spots. See, I've already improved the design so you clear then do things outside the map. Sure, I bought fire jewels, phys jewels, minion jewels, etc. I made very little off and barely broke even. I made all my money in Heist, influence jewelry via harvest, and some stupid luck with div cards. On and Aisling, but everyone did that. In general, the time I take to think out what I want to spam that shit on, I could probably generate better returns jumping on monsters.

Heist is so easy to fix. I'd make it a random gamble if you get one that is already in lockdown like a unique heist vs. one you gotta slog through. That is way more engaging and exciting for regular heists. Blueprints are fine as is.

Now, a VERY fair debate is build diversity. Deterministic crafting really opened that wide up. That said, better actual gear from higher tier monsters could do the same thing. I can't remember the last time I picked up something, ID'd it, and sold it for more than 20-40c. I think i had some 4-5ex 85+ vises a few leagues back that ID'd with T1 life and T2 resists and some shit open to slam on.

If I had my druthers, I'd absolutely GUT crafting to the bone and make better and fewer items drop. I'd weight ilvl to somewhat better rolls or something and make the "well rolled" a fixture for bosses, but I'd also make map bosses and conqs a lot thicker. Crafting would be life and maybe some resists. Not sure what I'd do with Betrayal though. I'll have to armchair that some more. Then I'd honestly rip out all league mechanics except Zana's mods and make the regional specs rotate with them. You don't have to create new shit each league but it'd be a surprise each league and move around what map is the best to grind for each mechanic.

You want D3 then.

How is that? I didn't say anything negative about mapping, crafting maps, sextanting, build enabling uniques, economy, etc. I didn't say EVERYTHING had to come from bosses, but bossing definitely needs a boost. There's still a fuckton of RNG about getting an item that's actually usable. I wouldn't cut the basetypes. You'd still need the right influence, right mods, etc. to be usable for your build. And it could all be t1 life regen and shit like that. Then you may still have to start gambling on the base, and you might have a little weight to t4 or so rolls. Nothing special.

D3 doesn't even have what I'd call bossing. Its been a few years, but the bosses explode in instants....maybe some of the greater rifts bosses were worthwhile. I want the bosses HARDER and more valuable. As far as I remember in D3 (last played maybe in 2015?) is that greater rift bosses popped out a bunch of rando legendaries or set items. Nobody wants sets or that design. I hated sets. I'm not sure you actually played D3. Everyone wore the same shit.

This is not D3. This is reasonable criticism, some of which PoE developers have acknowledged. It is a fundamental design problem that most of what drops is utter tripe. In fact, what I'm describing might actually be better described as D2.

I love PoE but when I'm on a break from the game the thought of coming back and dealing with trading, shitty drops and crafting put me right off. They have the ability to balance the game so that it's a better experience for everyone, they won't because of Chris's shitty manifesto and his Wraeclast is a harsh and unforgiving mindset. That mindset's fucking bullshit and the only people who suffer in the end are the players. Nobody wants PoE to be easy mode, part of its attraction is that it's hard but Chris acts like it's impossible to make hard content that's consistently rewarding without massive RNG.

I've said it a million times already, but the game would be vastly better if he just took his paycheck and fucking retired, he's an albatross around the neck of the game.

I remain adamant (for years now) that some form of Leaguestones would be simply amazing. That remains, to this very day, my favorite league. But, clearly, GGG does NOT want overt player choice in end-game grinding, and I have no idea why that is.

And while we are (were) talking about good and bad leagues, I am like one of the 15 people that actually enjoyed Synthesis. Now I know crafters liked it, but I am not a crafter: I just enjoyed the puzzle piece aspects. I got my shit pushed it with most of the boss fights, but I liked the mechanic as a whole.

That being said, Heist has a lot of similar distractions from the base end game, so I am curious why they kept it around. Sunk costs and all that, I know. Having missed the actual league, I have enjoyed Heist for what it is in current PoE.

Edit - And then I get Cassia on a T14 map with three branches from the center, each with a portal really close, and laugh as two proximity shield rares and tons of mobs eat the pump. RNG AMIRITE? Fucking blight lol.

Slaanesh69 said:

I remain adamant (for years now) that some form of Leaguestones would be simply amazing. That remains, to this very day, my favorite league. But, clearly, GGG does NOT want overt player choice in end-game grinding, and I have no idea why that is.

And while we are (were) talking about good and bad leagues, I am like one of the 15 people that actually enjoyed Synthesis. Now I know crafters liked it, but I am not a crafter: I just enjoyed the puzzle piece aspects. I got my shit pushed it with most of the boss fights, but I liked the mechanic as a whole.

That being said, Heist has a lot of similar distractions from the base end game, so I am curious why they kept it around. Sunk costs and all that, I know. Having missed the actual league, I have enjoyed Heist for what it is in current PoE.

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Leaguestones are in the game. They are called scarabs now. They are weaker, only last the one map, and locked behind other specific content types instead of being readily available. So in comparison they do blow, but they are pretty much the old leaguestone mechanic. Which rolls back to my prior comment about giving players better ways to choose which league content they want to engage.

Synthesis was obviously flawed and terribly implemented, and I hated it during the first month and went to play other things for a while. But I did pick it back up during the last 2-3 weeks, and at some point during that I came to like it. The crafting aspect was still undecipherable and needed a huge 3rd party resource to work with, so still pretty bad. But the memories map mini-game was fun. It's exactly how I would like side content to work. People that like that, or Heist, Delve and so on can engage with it, those that don't skip it and buy potential necessities. It's not even a huge issue if some content is generally seen as more rewarding, as long as nothing is a total dud some people will like it and do it.

I didn’t mind the actual map gameplay of synthesis either. I could see it getting old in a league, but make it tradable. It might have been. Can’t remember.

My complaint on heist is that unique heists have a pressure rush at the start. I want that randomly on the rares.

Also one the absolute dumbest changes was taking boss uniques and adding them to the table. Targeting bosses is an arpg staple and outside the major bosses it’s gone. I think just shaper, elder, Sirus, and atziri drops are the only ones not added to the general drop pile.

Ok, day 1,000 in Noobie's Return to PoE.

I just did my first 10 boss Maven fight (Valdo's Rest). Interdasting.

So the Maven is just GGG's tacit admission that the power creep in the game has gone ballistic, right?

Maven/Xibit: Hey I see you like bosses so we put bosses in your bosses to get to new bosses.

Mental note to myself - remember to turn off that byatch when I run the Elder/Shaper Guardian maps for the first time. Not good having the vaal corrupted nasty boss doubled for scrubs like me.

Ultimatum not going core:

While I actually kind of like ultimatum that's probably for the better. Core is already omega bloated with old/useless content - adding more to it just isn't the way to go right now.

Was hoping they'd merge ultimatum with the one prior. Being able to select from a page of loot & the combat mechanics of Ult would have been a good mix

Ultimatum was definitely too long. The best part of it was being able to nope out if you had something good already. AND the combat-stop feature. I really wish they'd add that to interactions with Zana/Alva as well.

Between Ultimatum and Ritual I'm not sure which I'd prefer. Ritual could be just as tedious, but at least you got to select from all the loot at once. However, I'd wager I got more exalts from Ultimatum than Ritual and I probably played Ritual quite a bit more.

They really need to find ways to start merging past league mechanics somehow. For example I can easily see ritual /ultimate being mergeable into some wonky thing that could be good or terrible. There’s just too much random shit that can spawn on a map now and consolidating like this would help a lot. Maybe you can merge harvest into blight in some bizarre fashion.

Pasteton said:

They really need to find ways to start merging past league mechanics somehow. For example I can easily see ritual /ultimate being mergeable into some wonky thing that could be good or terrible. There’s just too much random shit that can spawn on a map now and consolidating like this would help a lot. Maybe you can merge harvest into blight in some bizarre fashion.

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Sure, you clear the blight pods, plant some shit in them and they sprout x/y/z. Seems merge-able in concept