I’ve taken some time off from Path of Exile as a game to spend time on other games. Part of that decision was simply that I wanted to play the new Diablo 3 season as well as get back into other games that I had been itching to play. Part of the decision was that I was burnt out from the previous league and needed a significant refresh. Part of it was just the need to get away from obsessive gaming. But a lot of it is in protest against GGG.
I read an interesting and poignant quote saying that playing last league’s Scion/Guardian Ethereal Knives or Spark characters would poison one’s will to play new characters. That might’ve been true since my Scion was just so strong at one point after the incredible investment, even post-league that I made into her. I never bothered reading if nerfs happened to the jewels that enabled the build but I figured it wouldn’t have made a difference.
Oddly, from what I’ve read Harvest has been an even bigger thing due to deterministic crafting than the crazy god-like Scion/Guardian builds from the previous league. In many ways, it makes me want to give it another shot because I only got to the first area of Act 4 before shutting down my laptop.
However, as with GGG, the response towards Harvest not going core has been met with incredible resistance. The issue wasn’t the specifics of Harvest’s league mechanics but the attitude towards the ease of crafting gear in a deterministic manner that would thwart the future of PoE in the form of balance.
I think GGG has a very skewed view of their game that only looks at very narrow snapshots of what the game should be as opposed to what it is. First, leagues are the only important aspect in the current format since that’s where all the new content is. Standard ends up becoming an after thought but somehow GGG still treats it as though it was part of the overall health defining the game.
But I problematize GGG’s view of Standard as being the longtail goal of the game when leagues themselves are only three months on average. The thing with leagues is that the bulk of the game excitement occurs primarily within the first week of the release of a league and slowly tapers off. Most of that is due to the emphasis on certain content goals such as killing end game bosses vs larger goals.
I would surmise the bulk of the player base that surges in the first week are for the end game bosses. Once those are defeated along with experiencing whatever new content is prepared for a given league, then they drop off until the next league becomes available.
From what I’ve seen leagues that have longer term health are the result of actual accessible aspects of the game such as Legion or maybe even Delirium. With Legion, I think it was great just because the mechanic was simple, the tools were reasonable (Cyclone) and the loot was plentiful. For me it was addicting just because I had a strong enough character that could handle the Legion end game stuff and it pushed me to want to do more. Same with Delirium except that I found an appropriate end game goal of min-max’ing a character that could do plenty of end game content.
With Harvest, I think the idea of having the tools made available to meet one’s goals is beneficial. The content gating here is just the time one requires to obtain what one needs. Better yet the tools are much more reliable than in the past, which means the goals are more attainable and less frustrating overall.
I think the issue from a good portion of the community (and from myself) against GGG is this inherent negative positioning of defining the fine line of accessibility. GGG is just too fearful of giving anything away (which is why I call them cheap). But oddly I really have no idea whom they are serving. And I have a sneaky feeling they don’t really understand that part neither.
This attitude has made me increasingly hesitant towards getting back into the game just because I lack the necessary trust and faith in GGG to have my best interest in mind. The core game itself is fun but there’s just too much that isn’t fun, especially with the new mapping situation, Sirus and the constant yet inconsistent shifts on how the game should be played.
It’s quite frustrating because sometimes I just want to play a certain patch but no longer can do so. Like I miss my Winter Orb Elementalist, my super strong Cyclone Slayer, etc. I can never play those characters in the same light again because the game is fucked up by bad decisions that have created instability.
In the end, the raw way I feel about GGG is that they’re stupid. I really don’t feel like they know what they’re doing. The surge in popularity in the game might’ve increased a lot of egos but that’s a dangerous thing because it shifts what a good game is towards a very strange state.
I feel as though they are just a wannabe Diablo 2 clone with nostalgia and wish they could be like WoW when it comes to bossing along with the carrot-on-the-stick hook that made WoW successful monetarily for many years. However, similar to my argument for why WoW has been dying, I feel that the wrong emphasis on what makes PoE a good game might be influencing it into a similar direction, which will ultimately alienate a lot of potential players. If GGG is fine with this direction, then they really are run by morons.