[Megathread] Path of Exile

[Edge-]

Tell your boss you plan to cut gross income by 25% and see what he says. Because that is likely what a move from 4 to 3 leagues per year will do.

I know the financial realities of it, but just look at this league and how they fully expected player dropoff, which likely results in lower revenue as well.

I was speaking purely qualitatively, I think Ritual, even if the mechanic itself wasn't super exciting, was one of the best designed leagues they've done, largely due to the Maven update.

[Gorsameth]

I know the financial realities of it, but just look at this league and how they fully expected player dropoff, which likely results in lower revenue as well.

I was speaking purely qualitatively, I think Ritual, even if the mechanic itself wasn't super exciting, was one of the best designed leagues they've done, largely due to the Maven update.

I agree that PoE needs more time per league for development but I wonder if it would have helped for the issues with this league.
The problem here isn't bugs and not enough time to implement and test things. Its simply that the company has a vision for the game that conflicts with what players want.

[Edge-]

The problem here isn't bugs and not enough time to implement and test things. Its simply that the company has a vision for the game that conflicts with what players want.

I disagree to a point. There's definitely the "zoom zoom" folks and the folks that are happy to see PoE return to the more slower playstyle that it used to have, but I think there is plenty of extremely fair criticism that they didn't really take a lot of the time needed to really take a wholistic approach to slowing teh game down. So this patch is slowing down bits of it as they want to...and having those bits (like ailment immunity) conflict with how frequent and powerful enemy ailments are applied to players since they've been designed around immunity for years.

Same goes for nerfing movement skills. The game and mechanics/bosses have been designed around players having tons of mobility, so while it's not always a killer the slower speed hugely puts you at risk of eating all kinds of short window telegraphs or on-death effects.

Hell, look no further than the mana multiplier changes that absolutely gutted some builds like Spellslinger (6L just ain't viable no more) that are still fairly new skill gems, and how they're already toning it down. I agree mana should matter a bit more than it currently does, but they went to a bit of an extreme that makes me wonder how much actual playtesting they did with these changes, because it doesn't seem like much.

And don't get me started on how uneven/poorly thought out some of the new skill gems are. Cool ideas, but some of the mechanics are severely limiting and the numbers just aren't there for many of them.

I'm fine with them wanting to slow the game down. Hell, I've been talking about how I've hoped for that for a while now and how necessary it would be to support PoE 2 and us having access to multiple 6L skill gems. But I'm very much not a fan of how they're going about it.

[GreenJesus]

This game already made me drop off by the time I started stepping into red maps because I just wasn't seeing myself progress enough to keep grinding. Looks like GGG made it worse for people that aren't streamers.

[bloodwulf]

I typically watch streamers while playing some of my other games, and man, trying to enjoy the game even at a distance has been rough. My brother has quit already, so I can't even ask him questions about some of the changes. Then Reddit has become an exceptional cesspool this league, attacking literally everything. And even the streamers are a lot less enthused. I know that bet that Mathil\Ziz\Steel\Quinn etc made is not helping anyone, but even streamers not in the bet are releasing nothing but bitter vods. As someone who wasn't going to play because of GGGs "vision", i still like watching some of favorite streamers stream, but when they are all just obviously not having fun it makes it rough.

[NoiseTank13]

Fuckin lol, PoB update added new gems and confirmed that Absolution is hot garbage of the highest order.

Update and check again, it got buffed, be interesting to see if it's passable now.

[kaminaris]

Im having a blast this league, as expected neither speed nerfs nor enemy damage buffs meant anything, barely noticeable. For flasks reworks alone playing poe was made 10x better. Also like how GGG handles whining.

Grind? Don't make me laugh, people been "finishing" gauntlet in 2-3 days, even if they did it without a sleep that would be 48-72 hours of gameplay. On SSF HC where trading is not an option and mods are truly unforgiving. And yet somehow SC trade player complain about "grind" where you can literally skip entire A0-A8 progression because you can buy maps and watchstones (not to mention gear). This is ridiculous. For anyone with half decent gear and some strategy league is absolutely over in a month, changes didn't slow down that at all.

And what else? 4 months league duration for what? For absolutely nothing except additional dead month. Too much deaths? Build defense, there is no excuse when unascended marauder on SSF hc gets to 97. Ailments? Build immunity, get smarter or just play damned minions and dont care about that at all.

Streamers? Quin and Mathil enjoys league. Not that it means anything in the slightest.

[Edge-]

Update and check again, it got buffed, be interesting to see if it's passable now.

Will need to wait for PoB to update, doesn't seem like it's got the latest info yet.

But I tried it out and yeah...it definitely seems like quite a big buff even if they're still kinda limiting due to only having 3 of them. But it's at least not painful to play.

And the multiplier nerf to supports across the board was great too. With how quickly these changes/fixes came out it makes me wonder if they really are spending too much time playtesting them before launch, because this shit was obvious. I haven't run Legion yet, but hopefully Absolution actually works on that shit.

[bloodwulf]

Will need to wait for PoB to update, doesn't seem like it's got the latest info yet.

But I tried it out and yeah...it definitely seems like quite a big buff even if they're still kinda limiting due to only having 3 of them. But it's at least not painful to play.

And the multiplier nerf to supports across the board was great too. With how quickly these changes/fixes came out it makes me wonder if they really are spending too much time playtesting them before launch, because this shit was obvious. I haven't run Legion yet, but hopefully Absolution actually works on that shit.

Their internal testing is a joke. Literally increasing flask immunity from 1sec to 4sec in the first patch. Sentinels of Absolution going up 242% in one swipe of the patch notes is hilarious. Literally updating goatmen to do at times 40% less damage is insane. You should never go to launch and then make changes that big in a week. The fact that the currency doesn't siphon up like metamorph\azerite is dumb as hell, but its good to know "we are listening about splinters" now. It makes sense that splinters are a new concept that has never been done before in the game.

This says nothing about the mana multiplier changes that literally made some six link builds borderline impossible to play. Unfortunately, we i don't know if there was enough of a swing there, 8 gems got -20% which is huge, but literally 90% of the rest only got a -10% which might make it possible to play some of the other builds but it will still be painful. GGG has just proved they have functionally zero internal testing and would rather "fix it live".

[Gorsameth]

Their internal testing is a joke. Literally increasing flask immunity from 1sec to 4sec in the first patch. Sentinels of Absolution going up 242% in one swipe of the patch notes is hilarious. Literally updating goatmen to do at times 40% less damage is insane. You should never go to launch and then make changes that big in a week. The fact that the currency doesn't siphon up like metamorph\azerite is dumb as hell, but its good to know "we are listening about splinters" now. It makes sense that splinters are a new concept that has never been done before in the game.

This says nothing about the mana multiplier changes that literally made some six link builds borderline impossible to play. Unfortunately, we i don't know if there was enough of a swing there, 8 gems got -20% which is huge, but literally 90% of the rest only got a -10% which might make it possible to play some of the other builds but it will still be painful. GGG has just proved they have functionally zero internal testing and would rather "fix it live".

their break neck speed, 3 month league development cycle doesn't allow them to do testing.
They mentioned the gem changes were only put in shortly before the patch notes were made and so were likely never tested at all.

[bloodwulf]

their break neck speed, 3 month league development cycle doesn't allow them to do testing.
They mentioned the gem changes were only put in shortly before the patch notes were made and so were likely never tested at all.

O i know that. Ive always been a proponent for longer cycles for this reason alone. But something should be obvious if you have changes ranging from 40% swing all the way up to a 242% swing. Players were calling out issues with the mana modifiers the moment they were released.

[kaminaris]

their break neck speed, 3 month league development cycle doesn't allow them to do testing.
They mentioned the gem changes were only put in shortly before the patch notes were made and so were likely never tested at all.

And what people expect? This is another ridiculous complaint. 4 months wouldn't change anything as it's literally impossible to test all gems, all builds and all interactions.
They would have to hire 1000 people for QA, you would be getting a league each year and they still would not be able to catch issues, people would still complain so why even bother?

Players are so detached from reality its not even funny. Due to sheer complexity and magnitude of PC builds in house testing becomes less and less effective. You know what is alternative? Everyone having same PC and game becoming D3 aka "tricycle for kids".

Longer release cycle WILL NOT change anything, this comes from software developer.

[Edge-]

And what people expect? This is another ridiculous complaint. 4 months wouldn't change anything as it's literally impossible to test all gems, all builds and all interactions.

Except this isn't "testing all build interactions", some of this like Absolution is literally a new skill gem. Other changes like the multiplier to supports literally killed Spellslinger 6L builds, and Spellslinger is still a fairly new skilll.

Flask change as well should have been like...uh...something literally playtested a lot as they checked some builds in endgame content.

Due to sheer complexity and magnitude of PC builds in house testing becomes less and less effective. You know what is alternative? Everyone having same PC and game becoming D3 aka "tricycle for kids".

We get it, you think the game is great and everyone who complains is just foolish and not serious enough and because some guy is #2 on the HCSSF ladder with an unascended marauder the games totes not hard and everyone can do it.

But this isn't some arcane, weird, hyper-niche mechanic that we're talking about here. We're talking about basic flask functionality and basic support gem mana multipliers interacting with mana cost/reservation, things that are so widespread across every character in the game and so obvious that I'm genuinely shocked that they made such a big, quick change.

Same goes for Reaper not scaling bleed damage properly etc.

They can absolutely reign things in a bit without being D3, and let's not be shitty towards folks that like other games, shall we? You're no "superior" to them, you're just another nerd on the internet.

[bloodwulf]

And what people expect? This is another ridiculous complaint. 4 months wouldn't change anything as it's literally impossible to test all gems, all builds and all interactions.
They would have to hire 1000 people for QA, you would be getting a league each year and they still would not be able to catch issues, people would still complain so why even bother?

Players are so detached from reality its not even funny. Due to sheer complexity and magnitude of PC builds in house testing becomes less and less effective. You know what is alternative? Everyone having same PC and game becoming D3 aka "tricycle for kids".

Longer release cycle WILL NOT change anything, this comes from software developer.

You really come into every reply swinging like you literally know everything and refuse to let anyone else have a different opinion without belittling them. Also the whole "Source AM SOFTWARE DEVELOPER" no one gives a fuck.

A longer developer cycle could root out some of the most common issues. If they would of released gem info just 2 weeks early, people could of plugged them into in POB and said, o looky there, you cant six-link X gem with its current mana multipliers because it makes it reserve more than 110% of your mana. Sure you could jump around and grab ever mana reserve reduction node around, but it fundamentally breaks the build. People realized this within hours of the gem info coming to POB. But GGG did not have times to make changes at that point. Yet, they admitted they will be changing them, so it takes a week of the game being live with people running 5 links instead of 6 links because of an admittedly broken decision. This is a real world, actually happened example of what happened. If you check POENinja, Spellslinger Support is no longer 6linked at all.

If they want less bugs and sweeping changes the first 3 weeks of every league, they should not play with all the info close to the chest, and let the literal multitudes of people interested at least help check numbers for them. All it would take would a bit more time so they can give the players the actual gem info early enough before the league that they have time to change them. No one is saying that a longer development cycle would prevent hardware bugs, that is a pointless argument to make. A longer development cycle would help prevent kneejerk number changes.

[kaminaris]

Except this isn't "testing all build interactions", some of this like Absolution is literally a new skill gem. Other changes like the multiplier to supports literally killed Spellslinger 6L builds, and Spellslinger is still a fairly new skilll.

Flask change as well should have been like...uh...something literally playtested a lot as they checked some builds in endgame content.

It is the same thing. There are a lot of gems that looks good on paper but doesn't scale well. Or build choices that sucks yet with some whacky combos are making them shine.
Spellslinger was probably done on purpose. Otherwise you would bypass mana completely and it would become the next best thing.

We get it, you think the game is great and everyone who complains is just foolish and not serious enough and because some guy is #2 on the HCSSF ladder with an unascended marauder the games totes not hard and everyone can do it.

Nice try but unfortunately doesn't work. You have 1000 more options and more skips than this dude and league barely started. Im starting to think Alk was right about what players want, explosions of mirror of kalandra.

But this isn't some arcane, weird, hyper-niche mechanic that we're talking about here. We're talking about basic flask functionality and basic support gem mana multipliers interacting with mana cost/reservation, things that are so widespread across every character in the game and so obvious that I'm genuinely shocked that they made such a big, quick change.

And I am not. Mana was irrelevant pre 3.15 so im not shocked at all. Some supports became a must have and some were straight up garbagio. Now I have to think twice before applying highest damage multipliers as i am getting out of mana sometimes. For example greater volley became and option recently.

Same goes for Reaper not scaling bleed damage properly etc.

They can absolutely reign things in a bit without being D3, and let's not be shitty towards folks that like other games, shall we? You're no "superior" to them, you're just another nerd on the internet.

Dude what are you talking about, your comments are straight up rude and resort to ad hominems yet you claim I'm acting shitty towards others? No. I don't resort to names.

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You really come into every reply swinging like you literally know everything and refuse to let anyone else have a different opinion without belittling them. Also the whole "Source AM SOFTWARE DEVELOPER" no one gives a fuck.

Opinion that was literally contradicting with people experience including ggg. It's not opinion, it's wishful thinking that would only harm the game without making a single positive change.

A longer developer cycle could root out some of the most common issues.

It wouldn't. QA is not capable of catching even a fraction of what hundreds of thousand real players would. Take a look around you, check other games and see they are releasing bugfixing patches too. It's not exclusive to games, software in general has this problem too.

If they would of released gem info just 2 weeks early, people could of plugged them into in POB and said, o looky there, you cant six-link X gem with its current mana multipliers because it makes it reserve more than 110% of your mana. Sure you could jump around and grab ever mana reserve reduction node around, but it fundamentally breaks the build. People realized this within hours of the gem info coming to POB. But GGG did not have times to make changes at that point. Yet, they admitted they will be changing them, so it takes a week of the game being live with people running 5 links instead of 6 links because of an admittedly broken decision. This is a real world, actually happened example of what happened. If you check POENinja, Spellslinger Support is no longer 6linked at all.

And yet you still can't do that after a patch. Simply because it was done on purpose. Spellslinger was super strong for few leagues now.

If they want less bugs and sweeping changes the first 3 weeks of every league, they should not play with all the info close to the chest, and let the literal multitudes of people interested at least help check numbers for them. All it would take would a bit more time so they can give the players the actual gem info early enough before the league that they have time to change them. No one is saying that a longer development cycle would prevent hardware bugs, that is a pointless argument to make. A longer development cycle would help prevent kneejerk number changes.

It wouldn't prevent number or software issues either. Who would have thought aura stacker could reach milliards of dps even after a week after heist lauch? Neither did GGG nor players. Spectres in delirium were able to do that too. Spellslinger wasnt so good for a while either until people found out the "right" combo.

QA is simply not capable to check this stuff deeply, theorycrafters could but then again it wouldn't guarantee anything.

[bloodwulf]

SNIP

What you took from what i said was they need more QA. What i actually said was a longer development cycle would mean they could release things like gem numbers to the public earlier so people can start doing tests in POB and such on them. If they were not developing all the way up to 2 days before the launch, a lot of these simple numerical changes would of been caught in time to make changes to them before the patch launched. Please, i know a QA team is meaningless, that is why other companies do test realms and betas, which im not asking for in POE. All i am asking for is to release numerical changes in documented form early enough that if someone going over the numbers in the public sphere realizes a fundamental issue, the developers have time to make changes in response to feedback.

[Edge-]

It is the same thing. There are a lot of gems that looks good on paper but doesn't scale well. Or build choices that sucks yet with some whacky combos are making them shine.
Spellslinger was probably done on purpose. Otherwise you would bypass mana completely and it would become the next best thing.

Not really? You're reserving your mana so you still have to get the skill working, meaning that even with higher multipliers you're still needing to keep a fair amount of mana unreserved with some regen, or you'll need to link it to lifetap. I don't mind needing to invest some in mana reduction to make it a purely mana based build, but that's not really possible.

And "on paper"? They should be doing some basic testing of these things, which it doesn't seem like they've done given the big changes to skills like Reaper/Absolution.

Nice try but unfortunately doesn't work. You have 1000 more options and more skips than this dude and league barely started. Im starting to think Alk was right about what players want, explosions of mirror of kalandra.

Again, we're not all "that dude". You keep comparing average players to insane players doing nutty things that are far, far out of reach of most average players, or are things that aren't really "fun" for most folks. You can't compare the average to the outliers.

And I am not. Mana was irrelevant pre 3.15 so im not shocked at all. Some supports became a must have and some were straight up garbagio. Now I have to think twice before applying highest damage multipliers as i am getting out of mana sometimes. For example greater volley became and option recently.

Again, that's fine. But the fact that they did a 10-20% multiplier nerf across the board within the first week is like...indicative that balance was clearly pretty out of whack and makes me wonder how much actual playtesting was done. My 5L Absolution now costs more like what my 4L Absolution cost. I don't mind needing to run Clarity or needing to invest in some mana regen, I've very much done that. It feels much better now and felt a bit unfairly expensive previously.

[kaminaris]

What you took from what i said was they need more QA. What i actually said was a longer development cycle would mean they could release things like gem numbers to the public earlier so people can start doing tests in POB and such on them. If they were not developing all the way up to 2 days before the launch, a lot of these simple numerical changes would of been caught in time to make changes to them before the patch launched. Please, i know a QA team is meaningless, that is why other companies do test realms and betas, which im not asking for in POE. All i am asking for is to release numerical changes in documented form early enough that if someone going over the numbers in the public sphere realizes a fundamental issue, the developers have time to make changes in response to feedback.

And I am telling you that releasing numbers earlier would not prevent any issues. At best they could get rid of like 10% of first bugfix patch of league. At the cost of 25%+ of their revenue which means it would harm development in general. In order to maintain similar level of revenue they would have to resort to more lootboxes and or more predatory practices. That or giving players even less content. At worst firing some employees.

I don't see a single positive aspect of that change. Not to mention now instead of having a 1-2 dead months of league, it would be 2-3 dead months.

[Gorsameth]

And what people expect? This is another ridiculous complaint. 4 months wouldn't change anything as it's literally impossible to test all gems, all builds and all interactions.
They would have to hire 1000 people for QA, you would be getting a league each year and they still would not be able to catch issues, people would still complain so why even bother?

Players are so detached from reality its not even funny. Due to sheer complexity and magnitude of PC builds in house testing becomes less and less effective. You know what is alternative? Everyone having same PC and game becoming D3 aka "tricycle for kids".

Longer release cycle WILL NOT change anything, this comes from software developer.

Except that when they did a 4 month cycle it was generally considered their best and most bug free league in memory (ritual).

Love how you always have to jump to hyperboles and strawmans to try and prove how superior you are.
No one talked about testing all gems but hey, they never would have caught that Spellslinger reserving large amounts of Mana but still needing to pay for the spell might be completely broken...
Or just pulling the top 30 most common combinations off of PoE.ninja and seeing what the mana changes did with those.

Nah that's impossible.

Sure there is a point where more testing is useless and perfection is the enemy of progress and all that but there most certainly is such a thing as not testing enough (or not testing at all).
Or do you ship code without any test at all to your customers while giggling 'lol tests make programs into tricycles for kids'?

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Again, that's fine. But the fact that they did a 10-20% multiplier nerf across the board within the first week is like...indicative that balance was clearly pretty out of whack and makes me wonder how much actual playtesting was done. My 5L Absolution now costs more like what my 4L Absolution cost. I don't mind needing to run Clarity or needing to invest in some mana regen, I've very much done that. It feels much better now and felt a bit unfairly expensive previously.

We know the mana changes were not tested because GGG said in an interview that they were barely finished in time for the patch note compilation.

[kaminaris]

Not really? You're reserving your mana so you still have to get the skill working, meaning that even with higher multipliers you're still needing to keep a fair amount of mana unreserved with some regen, or you'll need to link it to lifetap. I don't mind needing to invest some in mana reduction to make it a purely mana based build, but that's not really possible.

And "on paper"? They should be doing some basic testing of these things, which it doesn't seem like they've done given the big changes to skills like Reaper/Absolution.

Its not possible because of all mana changes if spellslinger either had smaller reservation cost or you wouldn't have to pay mana to cast skill spellslinger would become unquestionable king.

Again, we're not all "that dude". You keep comparing average players to insane players doing nutty things that are far, far out of reach of most average players, or are things that aren't really "fun" for most folks. You can't compare the average to the outliers.

What are you even saying. Those people play scuffed builds farming like crazy because they can't die, they can't trade, they can't skip A0-A8 progression, can't simply buy Shaper/elder/uber elder, atziri tickets (hell its even possible to buy awakener "ticket"). And you say you are at disadvantage? Yes they may have skill advantage but in no way shape of form they have it "easier". Still manage to finish league in couple of days.

Again, that's fine. But the fact that they did a 10-20% multiplier nerf across the board within the first week is like...indicative that balance was clearly pretty out of whack and makes me wonder how much actual playtesting was done. My 5L Absolution now costs more like what my 4L Absolution cost. I don't mind needing to run Clarity or needing to invest in some mana regen, I've very much done that. It feels much better now and felt a bit unfairly expensive previously.

Because again, its not possible to test everything. Having severe mana multiplier cost was the goal of this change, otherwise it wouldn't change anything if they only tickled values.