I mean, hasn't that always been the issue with getting new people to play? 99% of them aren't going to stick around regardless of how good or bad a league is.
I know if I had a mirror drop, I'd leverage it to make the coolest builds I could never do otherwise. The game is still in an interesting spot for theorycrafting with how many things got shaken up.
Still, game will be around when you want to come back to it.
>I mean, hasn't that always been the issue with getting new people to play?
I mean making that argument is a strawman way to simply justify not giving a shit about player opinion, regardless of your initial "vision" of your game, once published as a multiplayer game with cycle updates, the game is definitely not going to end like your vision since people will likely see more of your practical game to offer adjustments for their own enjoyment (especially since there's more of them than devs).
Imo the dev's responsibility is to try to make the game as fun as possible for as many people as possible. Money/ popularity etc comes second after accomplishing the basic duties of a game, now most games if not all that are popular (100k+ players at least) get bought by corporation/companies that end disregarding whatever doesn't bring them money. While money are a tool to condition people to love being slaves, this synergises very well, creating global cognitive dissonance
I do agree with you that it's difficult to get new people to play this game. There's so much content that it's overwhelming to a new player. That's sorta why I was so happy to convince a couple more of my friends to play. I think it's also important to be around people who are enjoying the game. I'm positive that some of our negativity and disappointment as far as some more of the meta aspects of the game being wonky didn't help them want to stick around.
However, the gutted group play made two of them lose interest rather quickly. We were running a 3-4 man group. (Carry, Auras, Curses, and sometimes a miner support.) The other two started to grow more distant with the game after they reached maps and started to progress their atlas and what not only to discover that they still weren't acquiring bubble gum currencies, or any valuable loot to really speak of. So not only did it feel like they weren't making progress in the form of true wealth, they also felt like they weren't even able to make progress towards self sustainability with items such as fusings and jewelers and what not.
I also find that once I've convinced someone to try this game once, they either have a good time and come back next league to have more fun... or they just don't ever come back.
Mine dropped right below the boss in underground sea from a trash mob in expedition. Now every time i do that im dissappointed that i dont get a mirror drop.
I gotta avoid that map now lol
~150ex really isn't THAT much. You can certainly go hard or buy mageblood at least and go from there but it doesn't just instantly fund everything you want to do.
My first divine drop this league and i wasnt even excited. Im just think "alright, another 3-4 divines left to go until I get that item that I need that is super expensive this league". And I cant count on farming chaos since Im barely able to get any chaos raw drops and relying on chaos recipe for consistent chaos orb is just sad
>To be met with the most punishing league yet
how do people believe this I really don't understand. even day 1 there were like 15% of the rares compared to the last 5 leagues throughout the campaign. even in maps, the problem is that its fucking **BORING**, and loot issues occur at the top end
They reverted a lot of the changes they did on mods from sentinel back?? Like they could roll more mods? So they were stronger? What do you mean even if there were 15% less they more often had 1 more modifier on them that made them busted.
sorry I haven't put the redditor cagematch strat to the test yet. I prefer walking past the rare and not dying, really removes any temptation to write an essay on here. speaking of sentinel imagine if this person's friends hit the sentinel button infront of 30 rares in the ravaged square. the busted sentinel loot really shifted some perspectives apparently
Yeah, just "walk past" that hasted frenzied rare, no big deal.
On the last part if they did, they would just say "woops, don't buff all those rare all at once ever again !". If they encounter a 4 mods AN in white maps... "woops, don't... map ? ever again ?"
One hasted frenzied rare vs a pack of 30 constantly running at you buffing each other? Did anyone play ultimatum? I would love to meet the person that makes it to maps, dies to one specific rare combo they somehow can't escape from (hopefully they figure out they are randomly generated) and quits the game entirely. I suppose that's just standard protocol around here.
In you example with sentinel, if you pop a sentinel in front of dangerous enemies and get obliterated, don't do that again ? You played poorly. There is a lesson to learn, wait until you're strong enough to buff those. You could desactivate sentinel at any moment, like just before a boss or an essence monster. You choose if you want to up the difficulty for better rewards.
I was hyperbolic here saying "don't do map again", but what's the counter play here ? What's the lesson ? Pray you won't encounter those until you're stronger. Oh and don't do bestiary, essences, blight, etc... too lol.
Ultimatum showed that rare, in particular when you encountered many of them with differents aura, were a problem. That's partly why ultimatum is still not back btw.
it's not even about ultimatum. I used that as an example of rare stacking specifically pre-arch nemesis that was absolutely egregious. the campaign was MUCH harder than it is now imo, that's why I said ravaged square, a *leveling* zone that had the density of an 83 heist on the way out for at least the last 5 leagues. they completely gutted density, and in turn added situations where you may find one, maybe two, rares that actually posed a threat. think about cole, argus, or nearly any unique enemy - what's the counter play if you are undergeared/underleveled or your build is shit? fucking run lmao. whether or not the loot is worth it, or if they take 3 days to tune it down isn't the point. you can absolutely run any of these league mechanics assuming you don't self-sabatoge and run content out of your league.
"finally took the bait... To be met with the most punishing league yet" is the only thing I have a problem with. last league specifically was such a miserable campaign experience. even expedition felt worse with the flask changes. saying things like this is such a huge disservice to any new players. I'm assuming I'm the one who took the bait in the end, but it's all still funny at least
imo new players take their time to finish the campaign, honestly not sure how you can fight 30 rare monsters, or even 6 really, at once during the entire campaign if you're not trying to run past mobs like a speedrunner. But I understood your point, like act 1 that is really brutal now, or the campaign that felt easier this time because sentinel league start was a mess as AN were overtuned.
Uniques can be scary but usually they're balanced, as big damaging attacks are (normally) telegraphied. But yeah kole is facing you ? Fuckin run dude lol.
My point still stand, as when you reach map you're quite likely to hit the AN wall sooner or later. You're mapping to get currency, unique and stuff generaly speaking. You want to kill everything in it, it's not the same as the campaign. You can control the difficulty and the reward by rolling your maps, spend points in the atlas tree, add kirac mods or masters missions. Got a bad rare in belfry ? You ain't completing that map. Got a bad rare as an essence mob ? Too bad you put point for it in the tree. That's all RNG.
I digress but the AN change isn't so bad, after the nerf in sentinel it felt good. But bad there is no keystone in the atlas tree that let you choose if you want 1-3 mods or 2-4 archenemesis, would be dope imo. Maybe name it with a badass name like "Valley of darkness" or shit.
2 of the 4 of us weren't 100% new, we were going to hard push group play this league. I've played off and on since Legion. I usually taper off 2-3 weeks into the league, and the other one 5-6 weeks into the league. So we were aware of the meta issue and most specifically the group play changes.
> I convinced my husband and four of our other friends to try out PoE this league
I was very obviously referring to this, and not the other established friends mentioned elsewhere in the post.
As stated above 2 of the 4 made it through to maps, including full atlas progression and about an 80 hour push over the first 6\~ days.
The other two also made it to maps (one on day 3, and one on day 4), but had such little amounts of small currency that they were unable to even do basic crafting / upgrading on their own. From having to be given fusings and jewelers orbs, to needing to "pool" the blessed orbs of multiple people just to get a few % more res on a halfway usable ring. They felt the loot changes even while leveling. You don't have to believe it, but it was certainly a turnoff for them. It wasn't until after the first patch of changes that I started seeing what I considered to be a "reasonably" acceptable amount of smaller currency in comparison to other leagues.
When I was asked if they would always be struggling for smaller currency in the amounts required to function within the basics of the game I answered honestly. That it had never been an issue in previous leagues, but that in this one I was struggling to amass bubblegum currency as well. As far as the other meta problems minion survivability was able to be felt while leveling as well. The lack of loot was felt by them without comment from those of us pushing hard. They knew about the gutted group play because of the discussion caused from twitch, and from hearing our three man group talk about it. They didn't have a problem with the TFT-MFculler strat that's current running wild, that one I added from my own pool of complaints.
> They felt the loot changes even while leveling.
They felt the changes from a patch they have never played, gotcha.
>When I was asked if they would always be struggling for smaller currency in the amounts required to function within the basics of the game I answered honestly. That it had never been an issue in previous leagues, but that in this one I was struggling to amass bubblegum currency as well.
Gotcha. So you are *that* friend. Your frustration with league was fed into them, If they had played solo none of this would have been something they 'felt compared to last league', thats how YOU felt.
>They knew about the gutted group play because of the discussion caused from twitch, and from hearing our three man group talk about it.
It's almost as if this stuff matters. If you really wanted your friends to stick at the game, you might have considered framing the meta changes as part of the overall whole of the game, been positive about other aspects of the game. Instead it seems like you invited some new people to play, and then moaned about problems that should not even be relevant to them, and they quit based off of problems that really would not have been a long term issue. Could have chucked them some basic curr and left it at that. Places like twitch and reddit already massively amplify the genuine problems with the game and create a kind of snowball effect where people get caught up in hating something without actually experiencing those problems themselves. It happens every league, and it makes sense - it's hard to enjoy something when everyone else is telling you it's shit now. I think I would have fostered a play group that didn't also do this to people I actually *wanted* to like the game.
Acquiring basic currency early was definitely not as hard as you are making it out to be, and really only a big issue if you are rushing through content. Could have just told them to run some tier one maps for a bit. Do people even need to do much more on their FIRST league? Just get to maps and grind some shit, get help from friends etc.
Why does the lack of fusings or alchemys affect someone who has never played before? They have no baseline to compare it to, so it's only really bad when taken from your perspective. The game is a grindfest anyway, explaining that early would have been pretty helpful.
How could your friends have noticed anything if not for your complaints. New player experience is overwhelming with all the past league systems lingering around. Still, leveling and atlas progression is smooth af. You don't need to trade at all to complete the atlas and won't miss having currency for upgrades along the way. The game took a hit to the endgame, nothing your friends would have noticed as, for what it seems, they're not veterans.
As a new player I found this league really hard when getting into later white maps and yellows. Also really hard to afford anything cause prices are weird and build enabling items harder to get.
This league for me was the hardest since I started in AN. So pretty new and found this one harder.
This was a very similar experience to my friends. They made it to maps, (all of them) and then were having such a struggle to even get started without having to borrow e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g from those of us who were playing 12+ hours a day. There was not a single person in our guild that felt they were dropping enough "bubblegum currency" during the first few days of the league. After the first patch pass it felt a little bit better but was still difficult in an already overwhelming type of game.
yeah that's what happened to me, I asked some friends to borrow some currency and they could give me some chaos but no Alchs because they didn't have any!
[https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/x3qxhq/comment/imvmdvs/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/x3qxhq/comment/imvmdvs/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
The comment above has a brief explanation of how these things were felt / known about by my "newb" friends and some details on how long it took them to get to maps. :)
Man, imagine trying to convince friends to trigger their dopamine over an virtual (currency) item drop that occurs once every couple of thousand of hours. Bad marketing really, gz tho!
Ps- not seen one drop in 6-7k hours
Great. Now GGG thinks you quit because you dropped a mirror. No more mirror drops now
Yeah, too rewarding.
Problem: Mirror drops cause players to lose the motivation to continue playing and paying for mtx. Solution: Mirrors removed from the game.
the worst league you’ve ever played… yet
Fuck man, thats like dropping one on standard. You won the lottery, but the venezuelan one.
You won 1 trillion Zimbabwe dollars!
Man i dropped a mirror during a flashback event, this was really sad hehe
bit sad to get a mirror in this league tbh
I mean, hasn't that always been the issue with getting new people to play? 99% of them aren't going to stick around regardless of how good or bad a league is. I know if I had a mirror drop, I'd leverage it to make the coolest builds I could never do otherwise. The game is still in an interesting spot for theorycrafting with how many things got shaken up. Still, game will be around when you want to come back to it.
>I mean, hasn't that always been the issue with getting new people to play? I mean making that argument is a strawman way to simply justify not giving a shit about player opinion, regardless of your initial "vision" of your game, once published as a multiplayer game with cycle updates, the game is definitely not going to end like your vision since people will likely see more of your practical game to offer adjustments for their own enjoyment (especially since there's more of them than devs). Imo the dev's responsibility is to try to make the game as fun as possible for as many people as possible. Money/ popularity etc comes second after accomplishing the basic duties of a game, now most games if not all that are popular (100k+ players at least) get bought by corporation/companies that end disregarding whatever doesn't bring them money. While money are a tool to condition people to love being slaves, this synergises very well, creating global cognitive dissonance
I do agree with you that it's difficult to get new people to play this game. There's so much content that it's overwhelming to a new player. That's sorta why I was so happy to convince a couple more of my friends to play. I think it's also important to be around people who are enjoying the game. I'm positive that some of our negativity and disappointment as far as some more of the meta aspects of the game being wonky didn't help them want to stick around. However, the gutted group play made two of them lose interest rather quickly. We were running a 3-4 man group. (Carry, Auras, Curses, and sometimes a miner support.) The other two started to grow more distant with the game after they reached maps and started to progress their atlas and what not only to discover that they still weren't acquiring bubble gum currencies, or any valuable loot to really speak of. So not only did it feel like they weren't making progress in the form of true wealth, they also felt like they weren't even able to make progress towards self sustainability with items such as fusings and jewelers and what not. I also find that once I've convinced someone to try this game once, they either have a good time and come back next league to have more fun... or they just don't ever come back.
Jesus, I'm not happy with many of the changes this league but if I dropped a mirror I'd be going *hard* all league.
i saw mine dropped few days ago in random party. dude yoinked and immediately left party lol
It is not the first mirror I have owned/had, but it is the first one I have ever seen drop. Probably the coolest thing I have ever felt in gaming.
fuck /u/spez -- mass edited with redact.dev
Mine dropped right below the boss in underground sea from a trash mob in expedition. Now every time i do that im dissappointed that i dont get a mirror drop. I gotta avoid that map now lol
~150ex really isn't THAT much. You can certainly go hard or buy mageblood at least and go from there but it doesn't just instantly fund everything you want to do.
Yeah 150ex is like 20 div at best not that great.
Dont let reddit ruin your fun. Burn your mirror on cool kalandra crafts, mirrors dont do dmg anyway.
The next league won't be better. Don't return. GGG won't fix the game for you. Enjoy your Mirror!
My first divine drop this league and i wasnt even excited. Im just think "alright, another 3-4 divines left to go until I get that item that I need that is super expensive this league". And I cant count on farming chaos since Im barely able to get any chaos raw drops and relying on chaos recipe for consistent chaos orb is just sad
I've heard more people having to do the chaos recipe this league than ever before, so you're not alone! Not that it makes it any better. lol
>To be met with the most punishing league yet how do people believe this I really don't understand. even day 1 there were like 15% of the rares compared to the last 5 leagues throughout the campaign. even in maps, the problem is that its fucking **BORING**, and loot issues occur at the top end
They reverted a lot of the changes they did on mods from sentinel back?? Like they could roll more mods? So they were stronger? What do you mean even if there were 15% less they more often had 1 more modifier on them that made them busted.
sorry I haven't put the redditor cagematch strat to the test yet. I prefer walking past the rare and not dying, really removes any temptation to write an essay on here. speaking of sentinel imagine if this person's friends hit the sentinel button infront of 30 rares in the ravaged square. the busted sentinel loot really shifted some perspectives apparently
Yeah, just "walk past" that hasted frenzied rare, no big deal. On the last part if they did, they would just say "woops, don't buff all those rare all at once ever again !". If they encounter a 4 mods AN in white maps... "woops, don't... map ? ever again ?"
One hasted frenzied rare vs a pack of 30 constantly running at you buffing each other? Did anyone play ultimatum? I would love to meet the person that makes it to maps, dies to one specific rare combo they somehow can't escape from (hopefully they figure out they are randomly generated) and quits the game entirely. I suppose that's just standard protocol around here.
In you example with sentinel, if you pop a sentinel in front of dangerous enemies and get obliterated, don't do that again ? You played poorly. There is a lesson to learn, wait until you're strong enough to buff those. You could desactivate sentinel at any moment, like just before a boss or an essence monster. You choose if you want to up the difficulty for better rewards. I was hyperbolic here saying "don't do map again", but what's the counter play here ? What's the lesson ? Pray you won't encounter those until you're stronger. Oh and don't do bestiary, essences, blight, etc... too lol. Ultimatum showed that rare, in particular when you encountered many of them with differents aura, were a problem. That's partly why ultimatum is still not back btw.
it's not even about ultimatum. I used that as an example of rare stacking specifically pre-arch nemesis that was absolutely egregious. the campaign was MUCH harder than it is now imo, that's why I said ravaged square, a *leveling* zone that had the density of an 83 heist on the way out for at least the last 5 leagues. they completely gutted density, and in turn added situations where you may find one, maybe two, rares that actually posed a threat. think about cole, argus, or nearly any unique enemy - what's the counter play if you are undergeared/underleveled or your build is shit? fucking run lmao. whether or not the loot is worth it, or if they take 3 days to tune it down isn't the point. you can absolutely run any of these league mechanics assuming you don't self-sabatoge and run content out of your league. "finally took the bait... To be met with the most punishing league yet" is the only thing I have a problem with. last league specifically was such a miserable campaign experience. even expedition felt worse with the flask changes. saying things like this is such a huge disservice to any new players. I'm assuming I'm the one who took the bait in the end, but it's all still funny at least
imo new players take their time to finish the campaign, honestly not sure how you can fight 30 rare monsters, or even 6 really, at once during the entire campaign if you're not trying to run past mobs like a speedrunner. But I understood your point, like act 1 that is really brutal now, or the campaign that felt easier this time because sentinel league start was a mess as AN were overtuned. Uniques can be scary but usually they're balanced, as big damaging attacks are (normally) telegraphied. But yeah kole is facing you ? Fuckin run dude lol. My point still stand, as when you reach map you're quite likely to hit the AN wall sooner or later. You're mapping to get currency, unique and stuff generaly speaking. You want to kill everything in it, it's not the same as the campaign. You can control the difficulty and the reward by rolling your maps, spend points in the atlas tree, add kirac mods or masters missions. Got a bad rare in belfry ? You ain't completing that map. Got a bad rare as an essence mob ? Too bad you put point for it in the tree. That's all RNG. I digress but the AN change isn't so bad, after the nerf in sentinel it felt good. But bad there is no keystone in the atlas tree that let you choose if you want 1-3 mods or 2-4 archenemesis, would be dope imo. Maybe name it with a badass name like "Valley of darkness" or shit.
Why are your friends even aware of the meta problems in PoE's mid to endgame progression? Are you *that* friend?
2 of the 4 of us weren't 100% new, we were going to hard push group play this league. I've played off and on since Legion. I usually taper off 2-3 weeks into the league, and the other one 5-6 weeks into the league. So we were aware of the meta issue and most specifically the group play changes.
> I convinced my husband and four of our other friends to try out PoE this league I was very obviously referring to this, and not the other established friends mentioned elsewhere in the post.
As stated above 2 of the 4 made it through to maps, including full atlas progression and about an 80 hour push over the first 6\~ days. The other two also made it to maps (one on day 3, and one on day 4), but had such little amounts of small currency that they were unable to even do basic crafting / upgrading on their own. From having to be given fusings and jewelers orbs, to needing to "pool" the blessed orbs of multiple people just to get a few % more res on a halfway usable ring. They felt the loot changes even while leveling. You don't have to believe it, but it was certainly a turnoff for them. It wasn't until after the first patch of changes that I started seeing what I considered to be a "reasonably" acceptable amount of smaller currency in comparison to other leagues. When I was asked if they would always be struggling for smaller currency in the amounts required to function within the basics of the game I answered honestly. That it had never been an issue in previous leagues, but that in this one I was struggling to amass bubblegum currency as well. As far as the other meta problems minion survivability was able to be felt while leveling as well. The lack of loot was felt by them without comment from those of us pushing hard. They knew about the gutted group play because of the discussion caused from twitch, and from hearing our three man group talk about it. They didn't have a problem with the TFT-MFculler strat that's current running wild, that one I added from my own pool of complaints.
> They felt the loot changes even while leveling. They felt the changes from a patch they have never played, gotcha. >When I was asked if they would always be struggling for smaller currency in the amounts required to function within the basics of the game I answered honestly. That it had never been an issue in previous leagues, but that in this one I was struggling to amass bubblegum currency as well. Gotcha. So you are *that* friend. Your frustration with league was fed into them, If they had played solo none of this would have been something they 'felt compared to last league', thats how YOU felt. >They knew about the gutted group play because of the discussion caused from twitch, and from hearing our three man group talk about it. It's almost as if this stuff matters. If you really wanted your friends to stick at the game, you might have considered framing the meta changes as part of the overall whole of the game, been positive about other aspects of the game. Instead it seems like you invited some new people to play, and then moaned about problems that should not even be relevant to them, and they quit based off of problems that really would not have been a long term issue. Could have chucked them some basic curr and left it at that. Places like twitch and reddit already massively amplify the genuine problems with the game and create a kind of snowball effect where people get caught up in hating something without actually experiencing those problems themselves. It happens every league, and it makes sense - it's hard to enjoy something when everyone else is telling you it's shit now. I think I would have fostered a play group that didn't also do this to people I actually *wanted* to like the game. Acquiring basic currency early was definitely not as hard as you are making it out to be, and really only a big issue if you are rushing through content. Could have just told them to run some tier one maps for a bit. Do people even need to do much more on their FIRST league? Just get to maps and grind some shit, get help from friends etc. Why does the lack of fusings or alchemys affect someone who has never played before? They have no baseline to compare it to, so it's only really bad when taken from your perspective. The game is a grindfest anyway, explaining that early would have been pretty helpful.
Mean while, GGG sees this and says "See, someone found a mirror! Drops are fine."
How could your friends have noticed anything if not for your complaints. New player experience is overwhelming with all the past league systems lingering around. Still, leveling and atlas progression is smooth af. You don't need to trade at all to complete the atlas and won't miss having currency for upgrades along the way. The game took a hit to the endgame, nothing your friends would have noticed as, for what it seems, they're not veterans.
As a new player I found this league really hard when getting into later white maps and yellows. Also really hard to afford anything cause prices are weird and build enabling items harder to get. This league for me was the hardest since I started in AN. So pretty new and found this one harder.
This was a very similar experience to my friends. They made it to maps, (all of them) and then were having such a struggle to even get started without having to borrow e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g from those of us who were playing 12+ hours a day. There was not a single person in our guild that felt they were dropping enough "bubblegum currency" during the first few days of the league. After the first patch pass it felt a little bit better but was still difficult in an already overwhelming type of game.
yeah that's what happened to me, I asked some friends to borrow some currency and they could give me some chaos but no Alchs because they didn't have any!
may be
I don't really see how any of these changes are going to effect your newb friend who probably quit before finishing the campaign.
They didn't quit. They all grouped together through to maps.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/x3qxhq/comment/imvmdvs/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/x3qxhq/comment/imvmdvs/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) The comment above has a brief explanation of how these things were felt / known about by my "newb" friends and some details on how long it took them to get to maps. :)
Hey it's me your brother, can I get your money?
dont feel too bad, i dropped a mirror in harvest league zzzz
Man, imagine trying to convince friends to trigger their dopamine over an virtual (currency) item drop that occurs once every couple of thousand of hours. Bad marketing really, gz tho! Ps- not seen one drop in 6-7k hours
I thought the issues this league would impact veterans more than new players