First, I want to explain what I felt went wrong this league. While the basic Memory zone portion was tolerable due to both frequency and relatively ease of play, the Nexus portion was simply too jumbled. For the most part, being capped at 10 memories and having to re-run memories interconnected to the spot you wanted to farm really felt awful. I know people did the equivalent of sextant blocking to eventually grab the memories they wanted but it eventually became nerfed and required one to have some knowledge of blocking.

That just goes to show how confusing the Nexus aspect was. I know they did a few iterations to fix bugs but overall it just felt like crap. Simple things such as your Synthesized Chest being unclickable would be annoying and you would have thought GGG learned their lesson with simple UI issues back in Betrayal league. But for the most part, I felt unmotivated to farm Nexus content because it just was another layer of distraction that lacked focus nor purpose outside of loot and killings.

The memory portion and decaying effect were simply too annoying, especially the decaying part. Because memories are just another version of a map with the decaying piece, there really wasn’t anything all that special in running them beyond having the chance to gain a fractured item (or more). However, the rates of decay and the layouts were pretty horrible. Even if the idea was to simulate the feeling of death from the darkness of Delve, I didn’t feel it captured anything because of how fast the decay would occur on top of the bad placement of nodes.

Now, the thing that bugged the hell out of me the most was that a good portion of the loot seemed to be within these memory nodes and probably the Nexus too. I think the map drop rate was pretty horrendous at the start of the league, probably due to the reshuffling. But there still was a hinted expectancy to do the league content to get your main loot. Maps themselves felt dry and I struggled to keep up with alchemy orbs and maps early on.

Next, the whole synthesis item mechanic itself was absolute shit and stupid. There’s no two ways about it. What looked to be a really cool crafting mechanic turned out to be even worse intuitively than the main league mechanic itself. The fact that you would need to pair various key stats with certain ilvls and items to get what you really wanted made this mechanic worse than useless. Worse than that once you synthesized an item, you really didn’t get much back outside of the distant potential of getting anything remotely useful.

So what in particular would I fix?

First, let’s start with the memory nodes and decay. I can accept the decay but the rates of decay and where it occurs should be more sensible. Some maps have terrible decay. Also, you should be able to get some distance before you see the decay. Next, the breadcrumbs for where the Stabilizers are need to be better done. I hate entering a node and then going left only to realize that I fucked up completely. At least with the Incursions, you had some preview of where the doors were located and the architect type.

Next, the re-running of places just needs to go. You’ve already done it once so why not allow for someone to just teleport to the next spot after they’ve completed an area? It feels like absolute dogshit to redo content you’ve completed for no good reason, especially if it doesn’t regenerate itself.

Add to the fact that re-accessing a placed memory would start another type of decay is just horse shit, especially once you need to expand to newer places in the Nexus. It wouldn’t be bad if you could just store more than 10 memories similar to how Sulfite becomes your limiting factor in Delves. But if you’re forced to only allow 10 memories, there should be zero reason to decay stuff you’ve completed.

Lastly, the whole Distant Memory thing is stupid in terms of decaying. Why not allow someone to finish it up? It seems better especially if you find the loot chest early. I mean the whole point shouldn’t just be finding those loot chests. Otherwise why bother even having monsters or chests close by the entrance? Pretty much the decay aspect needs to go outside of when you decide to finish the area.

Now, let’s talk about the giant elephant in the room: synthesized items. I hate to say this but fractured items are far better than synthesized items. I find stuff with much better stats than what I can craft. It’s really stupid. And it’s stupid because it’s mentioned that fractured items while being useful wouldn’t be as great as synthesized items. Oh really?

The whole synthesized crafting system was the one thing I looked forward to the most this league. But it makes no sense. A friend of mine mentioned that it adds complexity and depth to crafting. O(n^n) complexity. It’s like BozoSort in the implementation.

Nonetheless, why do I keep insisting that it’s unintuitive? Because even with three stats that you get from your fractured items that take you a long time to covet, you still end up randomly selecting stats that have nothing to do with what you’ve found. If I find three items of the same type with life stats, I kinda expect to have life stats as my implicit. Makes sense, right?

Not to GGG. We need to throw more RNG poop right onto this garbage to force players into farming longer. Uh, no. It’s just a massive turnoff when you eventually realize that you’ll never craft nor find anything useful and you’re better sticking with good ol’ elder/shaper items and uniques for the usual meta builds that still get you through the basics of the game.

I really don’t understand how this got badly botched. Just put a limited number of random implicits on your fractured items with 1-3 per item then choose from that pool to permanently imbue onto the item. Easy. It makes sense when you see it. You get what you see.

On top of that, there should be ways to combine these things with veiled mods, shaped/elder items, etc. They should’ve made the situation like Veiled Mods where you could learn a new implicit craft after sacrificing your fractured items. Then it would make farming them totally worth it.

Instead, we got one random pile of garbage mixed in with other piles of garbage. This isn’t complexity. It’s just poop mixed with vomit  and boogers and pee. If they add one more stupid RNG based crafting system into the game, then the mixture will add cum and farts.

But here’s the real issue about this RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG stupid crafting system at the end of the day: it’s not really progressive. A person is just hoping that with sheer luck they’ll eventually find the thing they want the most. You’re honestly better off playing Keno in Vegas and hoping to win the big one there than getting what you really need here.

This RNG poop on RNG poop really kills the game for me. What I wanted was to find my 3 fractured items, learn the implicit craft, combine that with 2 veiled mods, add shaper/influence and perhaps toss on some essence crafting with a few other crafting gigs to enhance my build to do higher content. I want to be able to increment the values on my gear so that I feel a difference as I enter higher and higher tiered content such that it won’t matter what build I use as long as I feel a real difference in power.

If you want real player retainership for this brand of RPGs, you need a level of determinism when it comes to character growth. Since you end up with a max level, the real progression happens through gear. But it shouldn’t be the case where only a select few skills matched with ridiculous amounts of RNG crafts and/or items become the sole factor in determining your power growth.

The post Path of Exile: How I Would Fix Synthesis League appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

For the most part, I try to avoid the same ascendancies within a league. I feel that variance keeps the league fresh for me. That said, I also have an internal goal to eventually try each major ascendancy out. At the moment though, I would say 3-4 particular ascendancies are straight gone for me: slayer, berserker, raider and probably the ascendant herself.

The ones I’m most excited in giving it a go are Occultist, Elementalist, Inquisitor, Juggernaut and perhaps another Chieftain or Hierophant. Skill-wise, I think the main build I will do next is an Inquisitor Storm Brand. I was quite impressed leveling with Storm Brand last league but I did it as an Assassin/Shadow. Because of that, I looked into the various ascendancies where this worked well and boiled it down to both Elementalist and Inquisitor.

Right now, it seems that Storm Brand favors Elementalist a bit over the Inquisitor. But I think both are reasonably viable. The main difference is in play style. I think with Inquisitor you get higher damage output in the long run while Elementalist is slightly more defensive as it boils down to crits vs freezing.

Just before the league started, I was playing around on Standard with an Elementalist Armageddon Brand character. Since they nerfed Armageddon Brand’s damage and activation time, that skill hasn’t shown up compared to Storm Brand. But I do think both are somewhat similar in concept and in the end, I started to really get the hang of the brand play style which made it a big option as a league starter.

Most likely, I’ll go with Storm Brand next just because it looks great and seems to play well. I probably will make a few investments to get it going but I want to see it fair in maps to judge. My gut feeling is that it will be equally impressive early on but may face issues towards the end game.

Now, the big thing everyone has been jumping on is Occultist since they revised a few of the DoT skills and added the monstrous Bane. I feel if I end up taking a witch, the first one will end up being an Occultist with Bane as the primary skill. Besides that skill, the energy shield leech gem make Occultist look like a clear winner. Gearing might get tricky as you slowly move towards more energy shield but I feel the basics will help carry this build through.

Another skill I wanted to try was the revised Holy Flame Totem. Surprisingly, most of the ones I’ve seen have been Chieftains rather than Hierophants. I’m guessing the overall damage output from Chieftains exceed having the benefits from a Hierophant’s totem ascendancy skills. But since I started with a Chieftain, I’m a little reluctant at this point doing another one.

Which is why I’ve considered doing another Juggernaut. There’s two particular skills which interest me in Tectonic Slam and Molten Strike. Tectonic Slam looks like a lot of fun and I’ve used it for leveling at one point. That said, in the hands of a Juggernaut, it seems to be a natural pairing.

However, I did find a Ngahamu’s Flame and I’ve seen one Juggernaut use it in conjunction with Molten Strike. I think the two pair up nicely since you essentially get a free six link with the axe and can still output decent damage with Molten Strike. Also, if you manage to acquire certain gear, you can scale Molten Strike quite a bit in the end game. Not to mention I’ve always wanted to do a pure Molten Strike build from start to finish. This build might not be entirely 100% meta, but it looks fairly doable.

The other option would be to use Ngahamu’s Flame with Tectonic Slam. Quite frankly, I don’t know how that will end up. It might not output the same level of damage compared to Molten Strike. However, the idea here is that Tectonic Slam can cover a larger area while the Molten Burst aspect handles single target.

Beyond these builds, the only other thing I’ve thought about trying is the new Divine Ire. There’s some flexibility with the ascendancy for that. I’ve seen both Trickster and Inquisitor employ that skill.  But as with my feelings on Chieftain, I think having two Inquisitors is redundant for me. So if I decided to go that route then it might be through a Trickster.

I have seen some stuff for Shock Nova (elementalist) and Ice Traps (Saboteur). Since I haven’t played Saboteur in a while, I could give Ice Traps a go. But it’s not a priority at this moment. I think I would consider it if I found a Tinkerskin for instance. But I prefer allowing the gear to partly motivate what I want to play next.

Right now, I simply don’t have enough decent gear to make choices beyond what I outlined. I think I’d feel better once I make it past a certain point in my progression as well as finding better gear. I really want to avoid purchasing starting gear this early in the league. But if I get bored soon, I might just do that.

The post Path of Exile: Next Few Builds For Synthesis League appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

The Nexus memory part is just not well designed in terms of how one is supposed to interact with it. Just clumsy UI along with the unfriendly aspect of forcing players to run all the way from one spot to the area they want to reach makes me suspect that this league mechanic will probably not make it into core. Also, the lack of direction in trying to find memory nodes while the memory decays just feels downright awful.

And if it did go into core, the real issue is that the sheer number of masters will confound the ability to farm the areas you really want/need. Already, getting the right nodes and knowing what they should do feels silly. If anything, all you’re really doing is just getting XP and hoping that something good drops while chasing down memories. There’s really no fun game mechanic to truly differentiate this from most of the other masters content.

With Syndicate in core, I’ve already encountered some pretty game breaking bugs. For instance, if you don’t conclude an encounter with a Syndicate member, it seems to put a flag that prevents you from starting a new encounter. Sure, you’ll have the useless minions attempting to slaughter you, but the only thing worth fighting are the main members themselves. I think it’s silly that GGG decided to force a mechanic that makes you choose an action in order to continue moving forward with a random mechanic in the first place.

Also, I’ve read how many players are complaining on the frequency of these masters encounters. Most notably Syndicate seems to be the worse one. The way I see it there’s only one way to handle masters: get rid of the RNG aspect and turn them into a Zana mod.

I’ve mentioned this idea on various forum posts or even here I believe. But I really believe that something that’s just a past league mechanic should have its appearance depend upon RNG entirely. The thing is that there’s zero reason to use this format since old league mechanics already can be added using Zana.

In fact, I think what they could do is combine both what they have now and including them as Zana mods. In this manner, players can farm what they want and how they, providing them the best of both worlds. I mean, if you’re concentrating on getting double corruptions, then there’s no reason not to be able to purchase a Zana mod. If you’re going for deep delves, then do the same.

I have a suspicion that the game is going to get into a worse state because of too much uncontrollable RNG at this rate. It might be that there becomes too many flags that make it impossible to QA. The last two leagues felt very unpolished and this one really didn’t do anything that past leagues did any better.

Also, the whole fractured/synthesized items are silly to me. While the potential is there, the implementation as it stands is pretty bad. I feel that a better solution would have been to take how Veiled Mods would become craftable once a person unlocked them. The idea of implicit mods being good sounds exciting but just finding the right items and class to make them worth anything is a huge hassle. You’re better off just fossil crafting elder and shaper items.

Something I wonder is if GGG really knows their target audience or if they want to grow beyond 5-10 streamers over on Twitch. It feels that the game is catered to a very small percentage right now and to get into the top tier stuff the amount of grinding would force one to quit anything else.

At any rate, I enjoy the rest of the game and the things outside of this league. But the league itself is pretty much trash. Honestly, if it weren’t for my friends playing online, I probably would have switched to standard just because the core game feels better at this stage.

The post Path of Exile: How Bad Is Synthesis League Now? appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

My initial impressions with the video were a bit reserved at first. Naturally, I was looking forward to the new league mechanic but I interpreted the memories as a type of Incursion/Delve type of mechanic while the map piece as a combination between Delve and Incursion. As with all leagues, they pretty much slam the feature in your face in almost every zone, so it’s hard not to partake in it. Right now, I feel confused mostly with regard to the whole map building piece.

ZiggyD did present a video introducing how the league mechanic works. While his video does provide the basics, I feel that whoever works on this stuff over at GGG really needs a lesson in UX. The mechanic feels clumsy because like Incursions, it’s timed and provides random maps that are troublesome to navigate. The crappy landscape and a bad movement skill can totally kill the experience since you can end up in a dead end.

I get that the intention is exactly to provide that level of frustration but there’s some elements that just are pure bullshit in its current form. Like arriving in a tight area where you can’t maneuver and monsters with high life block you, causing the memory to dissipate and you to lose out. Also, you really have no idea which way to go quite often. The worst by far are areas with lots of doors and hallways that lead in every which way. It’s easy to arrive at a dead end and then get blocked by the memory.

While there is no penalty in hitting the blue area, I can see in higher tiered maps how this mechanic might go from somewhat frustration to keyboard smashing level. Also, the monsters are quite overtuned while the loot can be very underwhelming. Compared to Delve, Incursion and Abyss leagues, the loot drops here are pretty shit.

Now, when it comes to the whole map building portion, it’s just….let’s just say I wish the designer gets Oberyn Martel’d. You get to the whole map building piece and you have these little pieces you’re supposed to place. Without ZiggyD’s video, I would have given up completely on this part. You’re not really told when to use what. When it comes to the memory gathering parts, you simply can continue doing them, even though you eventually hit a limit. But limit of what? You’re not prevented from continuing so you might as well continue.

It’s shit like this that’s completely unpolished UX. Like what do I need to do to collect the right pieces? What type of maps should I collect? Because of how RNG is added to the collection of memory nodes, you don’t know whether or not to just go ahead and start a whole map thing.

Also, once you start doing the map thing, what are you supposed to do? We know the map thing starts to decay after running it. But how long do we stay in it? The memory node collection taught us to quickly do our thing then get out. Then this one says stay in until something happens. Oh, when it starts decaying. But how long should we keep going?

And this is my point for the whole terrible UX thing. It’s just overly complicated making it feel not worth doing until later on. I mean, I feel that I wasted too much time trying to figure out what the fuck was going on rather than progressing to maps. I really hate when a game requires me to watch a video to figure things out. And I hate it even more when after watching that video, I’m still confused and frustrated.

So there is a huge reward strategy locked away somehow. With Betrayal, it wasn’t too bad once you realized you could farm Bridge or Ossuary and understood how to manipulate the Syndicate members. But this one just is a giant mess.

The one thing I was looking forward to more than anything though was Synthesized items. Whelp, turns out this entire system is crap. From what I’ve read and what I’ve experienced, most of items are just garbage. Kinda like Veiled Items except far worse because you could eventually use Veiled Mods for crafting. With Synthesized items, you first need to make sure you have items of a similar class to even Synthesize. That alone makes nuclear radiation seem pleasant by comparison because not only do you have to find three items to make this work, but find the mods you want.

All the items I synthesized just had pathetic modifiers. I mean there was a few okay items for leveling but the vast majority were pee pee poo poo. I suppose the real attraction will be getting these in much higher levels just to get a good base to craft from. But I’m willing to bet that you’re just better off finding something lucky off the ground or buying an item on trade rather than crafting this shit.

Maybe I’m being a bit cynical here but the game is in a very bizarre state. Ever since master overhaul, I feel the mechanic of having these guys show up at random intervals has made the game very distracting and unfocused. It’s great that there is a ton of content per area but the lack of focus really hurts.

Part of the problem that I see is a kind of lack of commitment by GGG in picking a course of action. Basically, the overuse of RNG might end up alienating the game along with constantly shifting metas. It’s effectively marketed as new content but it’s not in my book.

I think there’s an inherent fear by GGG of community backlash in making the game too casual (whatever that means). Generally, that implies giving too much power to players, which is where my thesis of the lack of commitment comes into play. But I find some contradicting layers here. Such as maintaining a leaderboard in the form of Delve yet not really having any power scaling mechanic for characters. The most obvious choice here would be to allow something like an elder/shaped item with Veiled and Synethesized mods. Instead, we see a nerf hammer. Why?

Let me show where one such oversight exists. +1 max totems on shields being craftable. A bunch of idiots complained that it was OP because you could craft it on a good shield. However, it’s a 2ex craft and you still had to discover it. Now, it’s a shaped mod and you can buy it for as little as 5c on poe.trade. I never really saw the +1 max totem shield become a meta last league so I’m curious where people felt this was OP. The only build that I felt could make use of such a thing was Ancestral Warchief. You would think all those Hierophant builds would’ve gone after this too but instead they went back to Soul Mantle. Unfound paranoia on GGG’s part perhaps?

Then let’s get into how Betrayal made its way into Core. You won’t see this until Act 9. But you get 3 instances per zone when it occurs. That means if you get Intervention on a high powered map, you’re pretty much screwed. Probably even worse for HC because you can no longer lock down the feature using Research.

That whole thing makes absolutely no sense to me. It’s just lazy design on GGG’s part. Hey let’s just randomly toss the master shit into maps x3. Feature checkmark complete!

Bullshit!

If you get a Delve node how can that compare at all to an Syndicate Intervention node which can totally fuck you? This just makes no sense to me whatsoever.

I think they need yet another master rework. It’s a very simple fix. Basically, make the entire master system a Zana map mod that scales in difficulty depending on how much you pay. Therefore, you can just target farm the master you really want as opposed to being at the mercy of lazy RNG. They already do this for past league mods so I don’t see why this should be handled differently. I say if someone wants to farm tier 1 maps with Syndicate let them.

At any rate, my current leveling experience in this league has been pretty painful. I think I screwed up going with a non-meta for a league starter by choosing Ancestral Warchief. I probably should have gone with my original plan in choosing Storm Brand Inquisitor. The damage output for Ancestral Warchief is just super low, the range is pathetic, the clear speed abysmal and the play style not rewarding. I only went this route because you just need 2 major uniques to get this rolling and neither are expensive at the start of the league.

But I feel up until I hit level 67, my progress was pretty bad. It took a while before the damage became reality and it’s clear to me that doing a build like this really needs a Tabula Rasa to start just because you’re missing too much. Honestly, I probably would have been better off just doing tectonic slam instead.

I think this build should do okay for a while now that I acquired a Bringer of Rain. The only other major expensive piece is a +1 max totem shield. I’m looking at a few around the 20c mark, which isn’t too bad all things considered. The whole idea behind doing this was to keep the initial price down until I could farm up a Tablua Rasa for a 2nd character.

Speaking of 2nd characters, the sad thing is that I found 3 pieces of starting gear so far, all at a later stage. But most of the drops have been pretty miserable. I did find a corrupted 6L bow. It’s pretty shitty so I’ll probably sell it for a Divine Orb and then convert that into some chaos to use in buying that +1 max totem shield.

The post Path of Exile: Synthesis Weekend Review appeared first on Kontroversial Keith.

First off, Synthesis league will be a mixture of the Delve experience along with board games that Chris Wilson himself said he was inspired by in coming up with the next generation league mechanics. Basically, the player will encounter Cavas who will send you into his mind to recover memories and unlock the puzzle that connects him to Wraeclast.

From what we’ve seen in the previews, the game mechanic is similar to Delve in that you enter a zone and face an encroaching death mechanic that represents Cavas’ decaying memories. You need to clear a path to stabilizers which allow you to access other sections in his mind. In addition, no drops are provided until you reach the stabilizer, thus allowing you to focus on combat.

Right now, this mechanic sounds mostly like a quick XP n loot scenario where you push through waves of mobs. It doesn’t seem like an unlimited dungeon experience the way Delve was designed but you can push to more segments, which means that you can still challenge yourself. But it’s not yet clear to what extent you’re able to do this.

As you clear zones, you can connect them to other zones. Also, certain zones will disappear after a period which means you need to be strategic in your design of the layout. This aspect is similar in the way Incursion and Betrayal works in that you’re customizing the experience of how the connections work; it’s basically a kind of mapping system that probably will have its share of difficulties with your typical modifiers and zone loot.

One of the big things in terms of loot will be Fractured Items. They described Fractured Items as those with not very useful capabilities. However, the Synthesiser provides the ability to combine these Fractured Items in producing a new base  item that turns certain mods into an implicit. On top of that, the implicit will not replace nor be replaced by Lab enchantments.

Now, this is possibly one of the more exciting aspects of the coming league. Basically, you’re looking at more controllable crafts that will compliment the existing crafting system. I can easily see something like taking a highly desired implicit then using fossil crafting and possibly some veiled crafting to create some interesting rares.

Next, the patch intends to (hopefully) rebalance spell casting. Namely in “hand casting” type of spells. The main issue with the current spell casting meta is that things like totems, traps or even triggers are more appealing than usual hand casting. In addition, one of the largest issues with non-automated casting is how one must kite and target. In boss fights, this mechanic can be challenging compared to allowing say a totem handling the bulk of the work.

Right now, I’m at a wait-and-see stage with how they’ll implement improvements in spell casting. The thing is that in the more hectic fights, the delay time caused by standing around to cast a spell can mean life or death. Also, not all spells are created equal in damage with regard to situation.

The real three problems that need to be solved on a whole are: 1) figuring out a method for elegantly balancing damage skills between single target and aoe; 2) figuring out how to balance self cast vs autocast; 3) figuring out better defensive mechanics to make self cast not as heinous.

What I mean by 1) is that just adding new support gems shouldn’t be the mechanic alone. It’s basically a hack. Similarly, identifying the fact that swapping between gems and/or gear sets is pretty painful. I get that there’s some gritty mechanics but from a UX point of view, it’s an atrocious mechanism.

2) should be obvious. But 3) is something that I feel is an implicit issue that needs to be addressed. Think about a high movement fight like Uber Elder. Depending on the skill, that fight can be very rough. Like totems are good here since it would be just about placement and ensuring that you can last long enough to place new ones. Something like fireball (yeah extreme example) would be a nuisance since you also have to aim and spam cast while avoiding damage.

Of course, the real question is whether you want to allow the game to be designed to allow skills to be multi purposed. It’s a fine line that needs to be drawn here in determining the level of flexibility without making everything too similar.  Probably, the best solution here is to divide skills into those 3-4 categories (single target, aoe, defense and utility). You could probably add a few more since you have auras and curses too.

Moving on, Synthesis league will introduce two more archetypes with chaos and holy skills becoming more of a thing. We’ve already seen Smite, Herald of Purity with Delve being introduced. And Chaos really hasn’t been a huge thing until now. For myself, I’m curious how the skill tree will be augmented to incorporate these two new archetypes. There are certain basic passives but nothing as focused.

There are other “improvements” as well, but let’s talk about the elephant in the room: Betrayal going to core. It will be placed into Act 9 with the typical introduction by Jun as with the other masters and occurring with three possible encounters within a zone. These encounters won’t “overlap” meaning that an Intervention encounter won’t happen next to a Fortress (let’s see if this is true!) and that the overall masters encounter will be buffed from 33-40%.

Now, the main reason I’m calling this the elephant in the room is just on how the new Master system works. Before it was just a random encounter that you could optionally do. The new Master system almost forces you into the encounter. Like Intervention is horrible, especially if you’re already mixed up with say Einhar. Or Fortress can just stick out like a sore thumb.

Obviously, the only real off putting encounter of them all is Intervention since you cannot escape from it until it’s over and that has been done by design. The thing is that I think all these encounters should just occur similar to how the old masters were done: you talk to the Master and that starts it off. I don’t see how this should be difficult to implement. It’s just far more elegant too. You zone in, you see the Master right off the bat (and don’t even have to hunt for them) then after talking to them, it signals the feature to be switched on. In that manner, the experience isn’t disruptive.

Now, that’s just to solve the basic problem where currently the experience is very annoying. Alva is the least offensive of the bunch and should be the signal for GGG to understand that not everyone may want to do the key content at that moment in time.

Of course, the other issue is that things like Sulphite Scarabs are getting nerfed along with things like Pure Breachstones. So why introduce them in the game? It’s just really stupid to have things like this when the actual mechanics of finding these things are terrible.

So that brings me to my solution for these issues: just allow the Master content to be triggerable options once you get into maps. Make them all modifiers you can add via Zana. For instance, rather than having a quality modifier as a freebie, just allow that to be swapped for a Master option. That way, if people just want to focus on Temple farming for Corruptions, they can do so. Or if people just want Delve, they have it rather than having a silly currency item that will end up having zero value.

See here’s where I have a lot of issues with RNG design philosophy. RNG is good for some basic things like finding good items, monster encounters, map layouts even certain types of modifiers. But RNG should NOT be built into every single aspect of the game; it’s unnecessary and does not truly prolong the life of a game. Instead, key features should be targetable since you want people to be accustomed to their design. Avoiding key features by implementing RNG just creates distance and disillusionment.

I suppose with all the levels of content now implemented in the game, you need some way to break up the rhythm. Part of that has been RNG. But I hate when it’s so random and without context.

If I have a major issue with Path of Exile, it’s that older content just gets lost to the wayside. The newest feature is forced in your face by having it in every zone you enter. It feels like such a clusterfuck design. Also, every new feature I’ve seen ends up being overwhelming from the beginning. Like Betrayal right from the start is painful because the Syndicate members have too much health and do too much damage. It feels like the game designers don’t have any notion of implementing scale correctly into the game.

Next, I dislike how there’s no layering between major content patches/leagues. For instance, where does Harbinger belong in comparison to Abyssal? With WoW, by comparison, you have expansion zones. Maybe with story mode leveling, they started to make Masters have some sense of difficulty by making Masters appear in specific acts.

But it still feels pretty crappy. Take Abyssals as an example. You enter an Act 6 zone and see this farting earth graphic. As a new player, you have zero idea what it’s supposed to do nor how the encounter works. So you may accidentally walk over it and trigger this chaotic mess. Or what about seeing a Breach for the first time?

I get that PoE is targeted to the so-called “hardcore” gamer but it’s more targeted to the insider of PoE. The moment you fall off the track, you just lose out because the game’s UX just prefers to dump you on your head. Maybe the game designers think that’s a plus but I think it feels sloppy and stitched together.

Also, in looking at the new Synthesis league, I have a feeling that it’s just going to be more of the same. The new feature is cool but it’s a variation on what they have.  People in chat were comparing the mechanics to Delve and Incursion without the actual acknowledgment from Chris Wilson. If GGG’s intent is to continue iterating over these core ideas that already exist, why not just take one of them and improve upon it rather than continuing to belt out “new” features that are just repackaged variants of existing ones?

I’m not saying that for a game like PoE they’re not doing a great job. What I am saying though is that their approach is becoming very….identical between leagues. Toss in more monsters, add new currency type, add new end game meta grind, modify crafts to perfect our imperfect crafting system while still forcing RNG.

The real thing that needs to be focused on is the UX. The game is in a far better state than when I first started to play. But GGG’s weakest aspect by far (outside of crashes) has been their unpolished UX. I’m not a huge fan of companies that are exclusively feature factory focused. A lot of core critical elements often get left by the wayside like basic stability, performance and ensuring that the user feels that they can figure out the game on their own.

I hate that for this game, I have to rely too much on outside resources to really experience the game fully. I wasn’t a fan of World of Warcraft’s raid and dungeon system because you had to watch videos. Here, the game becomes path of building or some other 3rd party utility.

I know that GGG plans on the so-called 4.0 mega expansion for 2020 with the announcement coming at the end of this year. What I am hoping for is a new engine designed from bottom up with an emphasis on the polish and the other intangibles that make me really believe in a company’s ability to execute. While Synthesis looks like a decent mechanic, what I truly am desiring is just these other improvements.

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