There’s a discussion on Reddit talking about how Heist will become part of Core. It’s a bit of a controversy at the moment as a good portion of the Path of Exile populace was not happy by the implementation of Heist. I wanted to add my take on Heist and the issue of continuing to move game mechanics into Core.
Heist, for me at least, was not a good league mechanic. While the actual league mechanic had a variety of technical and balance issues at the start, the GGG team seemed to have made enough adjustments where the game play had become salvageable.
The main issue I had was that it just felt terrible overall from multiple viewpoints. Sure, the door aspect was annoying but the real problem for me was this time wasting backtracking and getting chased down by overpowered, overwhelming foes and then losing your loot upon death.
I managed to figure out how to get around the limitations but the overall feeling was that I simply wasted too much time trying to split my time between map/story progression, Delve, etc. Later, I started to focus on leveling up my followers and realized that this would be another dimension that I would eventually re-grind every time a new season popped up.
While Heist itself isn’t mandatory and thereby would not directly impact game play in future expansions, the idea of having yet another side grind feels pointless. This adds to all the painful re-grinds every season like Trials/Ascendancies, Betrayal crafting reveals, Delve/Mines and possibly Harvest unlocking.
Also, I’m almost certain that the loot from Heists will be scaled down in future leagues where only alternate quality gems and uniques will be the primary goals for doing Heists at all. I’m fine with that because people can always trade to get the things they need. But that still makes it seem that the longtail effect of Heists are short sighted.
Now, the natural response from GGG will be that there are more ways to engage in the game, which will force players to want to play more. My counter argument to this poorly conceived notion is that engagement does not directly correlate to artificial barriers in increasing the length of the proverbial carrot on the stick.
See, here’s the issue with this idea. The carrot on the stick trick last as long as the illusion remains. But the illusion quickly gets dispelled once the trick is overused and the sucker sees through the guise. This is why I refuse to sign back up with World of Warcraft.
I guess my ultimate point in this is that this situation seems pointless. I dislike the lack of coherence in how things fit together here. I feel as though it’s just more garbage added to the pile where the only driving force is, “We can and therefor we did.”
What’s worse is that I feel that moving a league like Heist into Core means a fastidious resistance to GGG’s willingness to cut their losses. This is not a good sign imo because it tells me the company is unwilling to learn from their mistakes and admit when they’re clearly wrong.