Path of Exile catch-all

ranalin wrote:
garion333 wrote:

I installed last night because I began feeling burned out on Diablo 2

Hearing that this day in age is funny... Lot of us did that 20 years ago :P

I was super into D2 Res for a bit recently because the old school feel with a fresh coat of paint was refreshing. But after a while I'm chafing at some of the old design with low inventory space (those damn charms!) and stamina, mostly. It gets the loot game right because it's slow, making badass items more interesting.

I also am not a major end game player. D2 barely has an end game. And that's cool.

But it's the same enemies with the same classes and the same skills. POE is just a better game. Full stop.

garion333 wrote:

But it's the same enemies with the same classes and the same skills. POE is just a better game. Full stop.

Agree on both counts

Given the amount of time that PoE has been in active development, compared to D2, and with its need to actually *earn* the money it makes, it *should* be better.

There’s a bug with the new league that makes the league NPC not appear when it’s scripted to for some players. They give you a special item you have to equip and I got halfway through Act 2 before I realized that I was missing something important. They’re supposed to appear in the first zone, if they don’t you can force them to appear by traveling back and forth from the zone to Lioneye.

I really like the new passive tree but it’s too early for me to form an opinion on the league mechanic.

I believe they fixed the bug in today's patch...

The league mechanic is easier than it seems. Just fill the bar past half, make sure there is an item in the Crucible (inventory screen), pop in and fight, then after 2 or 3 fights you can upgrade the item. After a while you'll get skill points to skew the upgrades in certain ways. Kind of nice.

Should the guild invest in special item inventory pages? Or a guild hideout? What do people think?

I think I'm out for this league. I didn't play last league as it didn't look like my thing and the sweeping changes to game mechanics looked poorly though out. This league didn't look too bad in the trailer so I started to play. The league mechanic involves corrupting (usually ruining) items in the hope you hit the 1 in 100 chance it turns out good. Chances of getting something useful are tiny. I don't understand where the fun is in taking your hard won stuff that you're using and almost certainly ruining it in the chance you might make it 10% better. Crafting in PoE has always been a slot machine, but at least there was some direction. This is just hail mary gambling with nothing I can even begin to equate with fun. If next league doesn't entice me I'll have to conclude that's it not the game, it's me.

I've been using it on items that are close to useful, but not actually something I'd regret changing. And it works well for those. The tech tree seems to be helpful at focusing outcomes, but I'm not that far into it yet.

Anyone know how to do a second enchantment on something? Do you just take it out and put it back in again?

The upgrades to the furnace tilt the outcomes more positive, but they don't change the fact that there are always negatives and the negative has a large (>80%) to be something that either overwhelms the positive OR makes the item a brick. So even when you hit a useful positive (5% or the time) there's an 80% chance it's junk anyway. This doesn't even take into account the devaluation of corrupting the item you're gambling. The corrupter is a throwaway as is.

I'd love to see them do something like get rid of the negatives altogether. Tier one gives one positive mod with a 50% chance to destroy the item. T2 2 good mods with a 75% chance to destroy. T3 3 good mods but a 90% chance to destroy. Even 75%,85%,95% would work. At least then you could possibly get a good outcome with a known risk. Gambling is fun when you know the possible outcomes but not fun at all when even good outcomes are unpredictably spoiled.

I am starting to agree with you, Homard. It seems weirdly and unpleasantly unbalanced.

They'll balance it out and make it better. GGG always believes that in order for something to be good, there needs to be a bad thing in relation to it. Can't just give out GG corruptions that already work upon other corruption mods, etc. It will be Harvest all over again.

I just want the league mobs to drop more loot like in the past. They are more dangerous, they are faster, they are on a timer limit. They drop same amount of loot and their specialized currency is rare (unless you juice the maps with the corruption device). The main mechanic seems to be focused on people who min-max items more. But for the slightly more casual players like me (casual in relation to top players, as I still try to do most if not all endgame), it feels unrewarding as I don't care much about the device, I just want to get the items.

I think if they just increase loot drops from regular mobs you kill in the league mechanic, more people will feel rewarded. Other than that, this patch has been great, especially in comparison to 3.15.

Out of about six items I’ve tried getting to the Forest, only one of them has been useful. Big fire damage addition vs reduced health, and I’m running a Minion build. But the others were bad to crazy. One added 2-41 Lightning, and the other half was No Lightning Damage. It literally eliminated its bonus…

I think I’ve been lucky with armors because I usually just get an increase to stat requirements, but I cannot get a single useable wand out of the cauldron. I either get rolls that completely negates my damage type or I get a massive debuff to spell damage.

My primary issue with this league is the nerf to currency drops. I’ve been playing for a couple days now and have less currency than what I could make in the first few hours of previous leagues.

I'm also coming at this from the point of view of someone who usually does all of the endgame bosses and levels to level 95 or 96 with one guy during the league. Levelling items don't really matter to me, I can get by with what comes. I'm looking at league fun/usefulness for maps. I really like this game. I enjoy it. That's why I'm grumbling about this league.

The devs of this game are strange. They continually pronounce they hate people rushing through the game and continually make leagues where the main activity is on a timer. They say the want build variety and balance while moving the game towards dps checks and one shot kills which require very specialized builds to deal with. Mind you I don't think they are doing this on purpose, rather they just don't understand how to manage this huge game they've made. It's understandable and I hope they figure it out.

As a mid range player of the game, I enjoyed the league after Harvest when they changed Harvest crafting to make it accessible to everyone. I made *one* great item that league through crafting. I was rewarding. I also have enjoyed Heist, Delve, Delirium, Ritual, Metamorph, Ultimatum and a bunch of leagues previous. Leagues that give me stuff that I can use to make strong guys and do the often heavily gated content are fun. Leagues that make me grind and suffer for nothing I will quit. Middle aged me got better things to do.

One other thing that frustrates me is the RNG gated content. I've played this game since Breach league. I still have only seen ONE Beast boss. One. I've never seen Aul the delve boss. I've done over 100 Siruses and associated map minibosses and I've gotten ONE awakened gem and no atlas specific Exalted Orbs. I can't imagine how much more fun I would have with just a little more RNG tilt towards making the content accessible to all.

I noticed that too. At the same time, weapons I found in the second location are still useful at the beginning of the forest level. There have been *massive* balance changes, as far as I can tell, with much less turnover of items needed. That's really promising.

Homard wrote:

The devs of this game are strange. They continually pronounce they hate people rushing through the game and continually make leagues where the main activity is on a timer. They say the want build variety and balance while moving the game towards dps checks and one shot kills which require very specialized builds to deal with. Mind you I don't think they are doing this on purpose, rather they just don't understand how to manage this huge game they've made. It's understandable and I hope they figure it out.

They do, but the community wants the opposite. As 3.15 showed, when they lost over 30% of playerbase and about 30% if not more of their revenue. 2-3 leagues like that and the company would be in actual financial trouble.

There is a sale currently on Guild Stash Tabs. I threw in 250 points to the Guild and purchased two of the specials (take a look to see which ones). If anyone would like to contribute to getting more of the special tabs, please drop some points into the guild balance and let me know what you'd like to pay for. It's down to 50, which is not enough to buy another one, so I thought I'd remind everyone of this.

The tabs are permanent for each season, I believe.

Thanks, Robear - I'll take a look if I hop on this weekend. I probably have some currency I can throw in there too.

Thanks. Ultimately, if people care, we can get one of each, but I'm not sure how many people want to, for example, throw currency into the Guild coffers (and whether people would limit themselves to need for that). But for things like Delving and Uniques and such, it could be useful.

So, I've only seen a few people playing this league, and no use of the shared resources. Is there something I can do to help? Or do people just not like the mechanics this go-round?

I lost interest around act 7 or 8. I wasn’t into this season’s mechanic, it was too passive and just seemed like a way to make potentially useful items into vendor trash.

Yeah, it has not caught on for me either. Only had one transformed item I could bear to use.

I got into red maps before petering out. I might go back in for the Endless Heist event but otherwise I think the season might be over for me. I keep telling myself I'll push into end game bosses but always lose my drive...

I'm sticking, but only because the changes to the Witch Minions are so interesting that I want to play through with them. Never had a Reaper before, and the balance is now glass Witch with tough minions. Makes the builds fun again.

I just wondered if there is anything I can do to pique people's interest.

I didn't even make act 3 this league. The mechanic was just completely awful and lacking in fun for me.

Eh, it cranks up the XP and my minions love the kills.

I didn't even start this league. I played a lot a couple of leagues ago and burnt myself out a little.

That's totally natural, Charlemagne. We'll hold your place for you.

I like the Sentinel mechanic, even if it is just a mish-mash of older league mechanics. They added a bunch of new cosmetic slots as well, including new types of pets that function as cosmetic representations of flask effects, such as a “medi-drone” that follows you around and injects you with red fluid whenever you heal.
There’s also a $30 Battle Pass that gives you rewards for completing certain late game objectives. It looks like most of the rewards are based on certain builds but I didn’t look that closely at it because it’s been a couple leagues since I got anywhere near the late game.

Oh, those pets sound cool!

Edit - But I can't find them in the store?