Path of Exile: Why I’ve Gone (to) Standard


I was a bit skeptical of the new league Delirium and wanted to wait a week or two before possibly giving it a try. Honestly, by the looks of it, I might just sit out this league and play Standard. Most people might look at me funny and go, “Why the heck would you do that?” It’s simple: I’ve got unfinished projects.

While the Delirium trailer looked neat, my biggest overall concern for this league was just a bunch of bad decisions on GGG’s part. I wasn’t happy with the manifesto and wanted to try Diablo 3 for a bit. I didn’t get too far with that and decided to take a 2nd look at Path of Exile since in all honesty, I grew bored with D3 after two days of grinding.

The thing is that the league just looked like it was going to be really bad on performance. I’m already struggling on my system but that’s without the Delirium features. I can’t imagine what it would be like to do this league under those conditions.

Also, with the exception of 2-3 items, there really wasn’t much that I wanted from trading in the league itself. The cluster jewels look cool but I can wait on those. None of the uniques are so good that I feel like they’re a game changer for me.

But the main thing is that I simply didn’t want to regrind all those trials and gear again. I pushed on the last day of Metamorph League for the remaining Ascendancies. But it wasn’t fun doing so and it felt more irritating than anything. I’ve got a good amount of items on Standard these days and plenty of old characters that I can experiment on.

Right now, the game is all about customizing my characters and is analogous to taking a new car for a spin. The problem though is that sometimes it just becomes tiresome starting from scratch with shit gear, no currency and having to re-grind everything again.

At least on Standard, for what I want to do at the moment, it’s fine. I still get everything up to Metamorph League, which is pretty friggin’ amazing. Honestly, I can grind maps all day with some beasts, blights, metamorphs and delves thrown in. I don’t need to do cutting edge content all the time. I’m not a streamer and they can show us how to get it done with all their spare time.

As someone with a job, it’s hard to grind on a daily basis and feel like I’m making significant progress. Sometimes the only time I can play is Saturday. And the type of content I can do is quite limited. I still want to play but don’t want to lose all the progress.

What is cool is that I have so much gear built up that I can finally make some builds and see how they work without going through the hassle of dealing with trade. In fact, beyond builds I’m attempting to clean my stashes by just playing and getting rid of excess garbage along the way.

I think if the league mechanic was better and more rewarding, I would feel more motivated to play. I really don’t see much difference between this and Legion or Breach. And again the only real reason for someone to play a league like this is for the cluster jewels. But it’s not enough of a game changing reason to suddenly start from scratch once more.

Honestly, I would be perfectly content just absorbing new leagues into standard as time goes on. There’s plenty of content that’s rewarding and as long as I’m having fun, that’s all that really matters to me.

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