Feedback regarding "cycles"

Feedback and Suggestions
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season, leagues, and now we have cycles. same thing different name.

this is something that i actually care for a huge deal. before i continue i need to mention my preference as this is very important. my voice will not represent everyone but it will represent my slice of the pie.

My Background

i come from the old school casual “permanent” cycle school. i play the game whenever i feel like playing it and over the years i like playing an OP character with gear ive collected over the years. i DO NOT enjoy the process of releveling a new character or reacquiring wealth in temporary cycles.

BUT i do jump into temporary cycles for the sole purpose of acquiring cycle exclusive gear OR if the cycle has some really cool MTX as a cycle challenge reward.

other than that just because a new cycle mechanic is fun is NOT ENOUGH to make me want to jump into a new cycle. its all about permanent gear acquisition. the super long game.

i would also add, i DO NOT follow builds. i love doing my own thing whether or not to my detriment. i definitely dont see my self doing 200 corruption empowered rifts.

now that my background and preference is out of the way, i will give my 2 cents on cycles. i’ll start by mentioning some key elements.

Borrowed Power

I define “borrowed power” as anything that improves a player’s combat ability directly, if taken away, would make them weaker. if in a cycle you give us new ways to craft but by the end of the season the crafting goes away but if we get to keep our gear we dont get weaker, thus it is NOT borrowed power. if in a cycle you allow us to have a magical companion that gives us an aura that makes us do more damage, removing the companion at the end of the cycle means we do less damage. that is borrowed power. if you allow us to craft a powerful weapon with a cycle exclusive mod, then at the end of the season you remove that mod, that too is borrowed power. knowing and agreeing to what borrowed power is crucial to this discussion.

for starters, in diablo 4 's season is usually interesting where players are given borrowed power in the form of season mechanics or season exclusive gear but all these are POOFED at the end of the season. this allows the devs to get real creative and do a lot of fancy things without need to worry about balancing the game.

the result is I DONT PLAY D4. why? for starters, by the end of the season I do get to keep my gear and materials/gold but I don’t get anything else gearwise from the season. No season exclusive gear to bring home to my permanent character(s).

one interesting note about borrowed power is it does HELP the player get back to where they’re at on “permanent”. in fact it can make the game MORE enjoyable or even MORE easy.

this positive comes with a very huge double edged sword. because of how effective borrowed power is in D4, i cant help but feel USELESS in permanent. if i wanted to be powerful, i NEED to jump into a new season. in D4, permanent characters even with theoretical perfect gear are still weaker than seasonal characters with decent gear due to this borrowed power. as someone who chases power fantasy, it feels like a slap to my face where my permanent character would never be as strong as a seasonal one in D4.

As such I have great disdain towards borrowed power.

Legacy and exclusive mods/items

EHG needs to make a stance on legacy and exclusive mods/items. actually they dont have to but I really prefer if they did.

I come from POE and have played POE for maybe a decade now? one thing i have ABSOLUTE DISDAIN towards the devs is how they ruined the sanctity of permanency. I will be talking about POE in great deal as it is a good case study of permanency.

POE has over 30 leagues under their belt. Only 2 times have they actually used borrowed power and it was in their most recent leagues (sanctum and affliction, via sanctified relics and wood ascendency/charms/tinctures). As much as players would say “D4 Bad”, one good thing D4 does it the devs actually make it VERY clear during a season announcement that seasonal stuff are going to be poofed. it’s on the FAQ page. GGG on the other hand prefers to keep quiet and announce it mid league.

how is this significant? for people like me from my background, i get put into a very bad situation. if i DONT play the league, i may miss out on some powerful items to bring back to permanent (for example crucible weapons). if i DO play the league, theres no promise that the devs wont just decide to POOF my hard earned effort anyway. Some charms were being sold for 100-200 divines. I bought some charms that were around 20-30 divs. all of them went POOF. if i had known i would not have bought them, heck i would have just skipped the league.

I do see a reason why the devs chose to remain silent. it allows them to tweak as they see fit and have more player numbers. but to me I still feel that comes with a huge level of dishonesty towards players such as myself who have a single track mindset. in fact i find it hugely disrespectful to me as a player to have to gamble my time and effort.

to make things worse the devs have been very reckless with permanent player’s wealth and power in the recent years. previously they have been VERY reckless. for starters they switched the usability of divines and exalts around, stating their rarity was actually 1:1. could the devs have allowed players to access an NPC to switch their items around? yes, but they chose not to. currently, the players on permanent who did not stock up on divines lost 90% of their wealth as they had so many exalts that had suddenly became less valuable.

then we have the issue of legacy rolls/mods. permanent players love permanency (who knew? lol) and many relish that they have very valuable legacy items. GGG actually SOLVED this issue WITHOUT nerfing the legacy items directly. how they did that was pretty smart. For unique items, they reworked newer ones that made newer versions have different reasons to be desirable. it might not be as strong as the older one but could have an interesting interaction that could make it stronger. as for crafted gear, they introduced newer mods giving players the POSSIBILITY of getting stronger gear, stronger than the older stuff.

i still remember hateforge being introduced, which was an OP glove. during the league it was introduced, the devs found it to be too strong and nerfed it A FEW TIMES during the league. i found it fair. the best place to nerf league exclusive items is during the temp league itself. at the end of the league we got to keep hateforge. reward for our effort.

despite having so many solutions, GGG did permanent players dirty again a few times. they RETROACTIVELY changed some of the cluster jewel mods. they also went ahead and made all alternate quality gems become “standard quality”. many players including my self spent A GOOD CHUNK OF CURRENCY to acquire those gems specifically for their alternate quality.

what ever happened to legacy items? in a way i kinda feel detached from POE because of GGG being so reckless with their permanent league.

how does all this tie back in to cycles? i would strongly suggest EHG to take a stance on how they handle exclusives/legacy rolls.

for sure balancing may need to happen. but getting nerfed a little is still better than just outright stripping away an item’s “magic”. i really cant help but feel like my character was robbed of their power. and I feel robbed of MY TIME AND EFFORT. all the time spent farming to get my items MEAN NOTHING when the devs can just outright take away their magic.

if one of the selling points of cycles is getting powerful cycle exclusive gear/mods, then EHG needs to ensure the sanctity of permanency.

whats the point of item acquisition if you’re gonna just rip it away from us in the future?

EHG’s Player time/skill expectations

If exclusives are a selling point for cycles, this puts EHG in a predicament. How SKILLED are the players that they want to cater to? EHG needs to identify a skillcap. Personally speaking I have a great disdain towards POE as of late as the game is heavily catered to the absolute pinnacle of player skill. the very best gear can only be obtained by the very best players. which makes sense in a way but in another, it FORCES players to play meta.

what does this have to do with cycles? if EHG gates exclusive content behind something “VERY difficult” it will cause the following:

  1. Players are forced to play META. cycles are time gated and if you WANT exclusive stuff during a limited time, you need to be able to actually obtain the items. In a way it FORCES you to go META
  2. Weaker players will have to abandon COF. COF could effectively be killed off. in POE as much as I hate how stupidly high the ceiling is, weaker players can circumvent the need to actually run the content by trading for the items they desire. But with EHG’s implementation of COF v MG, this option is effectively killed off.
  3. Weaker or less committed players will simply NOT play the cycle. If they realize that the stuff they want are gated behind something that they are not capable of doing, then theres no real reason to play the cycle.

Player time expectations

I actually like LE AS IS. the steady character progression etc. If I were to be blunt, the pace is “SLOW”. progress is slow. but thats fine. That’s fine because we’re not on a timer. However, for a cycle, there WILL be a timer.

This is definitely something to consider, in POE, the most dedicated players can reach 100 within 1-2 days. Players get back on their feet and get their builds working pretty fast. They reach “enjoyment” phase fast.

The same might not be true for LE where the game is slower. It takes a long time just to get to level 20. COF and MG experience too are quite an ordeal.

I honestly wouldnt mind if accelerated XP was implemented in temp cycles. A necessity of sorts due to the nature of temporary cycles.

on a sidenote, while speaking of time, if any cycle mechanic revolves around timers, players would be forced to go meta. its as simple as that.

FOMO - counter argument against cycles

For a healthy discussion I would also need to talk about FOMO. When mentioning cycle exclusive gear, this can actually lead to players (like myself) having FOMO. oh shit that this cycle has an awesome Boot mod. ah man this NEW cycle has an awesome weapon. the best way to obtain such gear has almost always been with the cycle itself. ESPECIALLY since COF exists. Players may feel forced to come back EVERY LEAGUE or lose potentially great exclusive gear.

This really is a damned if you do, damned if you dont moment. this issue can be remedied by giving ways for permanent players to gain cycle exclusive gear, but if they do that then its no longer “exclusive”.

Also, Zantai (lead dev behind GD) has a very interesting counterpoint against legacy gear. he mentions that he doesn’t want players to feel punished for NOT playing the game since the beginning of time. (i m very loosely paraphrasing). And thus all mods/gear in GD are always RETROACTIVELY changed/balanced.

All that said, thank you for reading.

As a pre emptive response. I am aware there are many temp cycle enjoyers. I am aware that many things such as “permanency” do not matter to you, i have no argument with you and it is why I started off very early by laying down my background and where i come from. My views definitely might not align with yours. but in any case, i believe my feedback can be positive for both permanent as well as cycle enjoyers.

1 Like
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I’m a similar player to you. I don’t much care for cycles and the long term power progression is key to my enjoyment of the game. I hope that cycles do not become the “only” way to play the game for the reasons that you mentioned.

As someone who has played a lot of GD I really appreciate this approach, and I feel like it’s something that EHG should copy.

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Torchlight infinite is very season focused. but one thing i really like about TLI is that they took a page from POE where all seasonal mechanics are usually designed in a way to be intergrated into the game from the get go. This way if you choose NOT to play in a season, the, seasonal mechanics would still work its way into permanent. so you’re not totally locked out and theres less FOMO effect.

its a conscious design decision. GGG really dug their own pitfall by going “too crazy”. i think it all started with harvest, they gave players too much power and regretted it so much. POE’s affliction league is one of my most favourite league but I knew from the get go that the charms/tinctures and new ascendencies were all TOO OP that they would not make it into core. This begs the question, why do they bother creating this league in the first place if its not going into core? Even non developers/regular gamers already could see how OP the stuff was.

it all goes back to development/design philosophies. there are ways to prevent or mitigate FOMO. GGG in fact found ways to solve them by having ways to obtain the league gear without the league mechanic (for example tying the rewards to a different league).

since LE/EHG hasnt exactly started with their cycles i really hope they nail down their cycle philosophies/manifestos first.

there are a lot of things to consider especially for the fact COH/trade is split and is a unique issue that only exists with LE.

the existence of cycles can make or break a game. d4 isnt necessarily all bad and i actually do want to play d4, but their heavy reliance on borrowed power while not giving permanent characters anything to compensate the lack of borrowed power just makes me not wanting to even touch the game.

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Yeah, the ‘FOMO’ stuff, which is what I detest personally as well, which is why I’m playing ‘Standard’ in PoE and ‘Legacy’ in LE and you won’t see me in Cycles, leagues or whatever they’re called commonly… unless I play together with other people for that specific reason.

My personal take is that if a game can’t provide a great experience without creating a FOMO-system then it’s not good enough to warrant my time in the first place.

Actually it is and I majorly dislike this concept. While you don’t get the end-result taken away you nonetheless get the tool taken away to achieve it in the first place. The tool is also a form of power, it’s borrowed, hence it falls under that same notion.

Removing items fully is even worse, albeit I’ll agree that at times such extreme measures are needed to keep the longevity of the game intact, so it’s a pure case-by-case basis.

Lemme guess before I read on!
Because the leveling mechanic is awful?
The affixes are a mess?
The end-game grind is a disaster?
The crafting is lackluster?
The visibility of boss-skills is atrocious despite being designed to exist only in specific places (and still they fucked up)?
The…

Ah yes, but I get it, the poofing of stuff is only the cream on the cake so to speak, something by itself which would already warrant me to never play this game permanently besides all the other stuff which makes it a less enjoyable experience… and not to speak of the things surrounding the game itself.

GGG realized very early on that the concept of ‘permanence’ for people is a very very important aspect. That even if you never use the choice the sheer existence of it gives it mental value.

Yes, my biggest gripe with them as well. And their absolutely atrocious handling of new mechanics, butchering them after a league to make them far less grand and enjoyable.

LE currently seems like they’ll do a vastly better job with that actually seeing as their implementations are build around new content which gets released when the Cycle has beat it in the exact state as the cycle has it.

Hence cycle and legacy are basically on ‘the same stage’ most of the time, making permanency a vastly higher-valued concept then in PoE.

I decided that Standard is the main part to play for me after Synthesis, which was one of my most-beloved mechanics which only needed a few tweaks and a re-work of the crafting system. Seeing it butchered into the lackluster boss encounters we have currently is a disaster basically spoken. A whole game mechanic which was promising to be expanded upon to become as ‘grand’ as delve just thrown overboard because of (and I can’t find another word) incompetence? Inexcusable.

The whole fiasco of what you’re overall describing comes from the lack of GGG to provide content without tieing it to their maps, hence parallel progression systems. This has been eased up significantly over time at least, but they haven’t switched over to alleviating that issue properly yet, stuck in their old train of thoughts. In my country there’s a term for that, it’s called ‘Betriebsblind’ (which is roughly translated ‘routine-blindness’), meaning that since stuff’s always happened in a specific way the thought processes to even see other options starts to fall through. This is exactly what GGG struggles with since ~5 years now and made them nearly be overtaken by competition rather then staying a monolith on the market.

Yes, I agree, this is a basically mandatory thing to take a clear stance onbefore it happens or they’ll get a major backlash if they ever try to change a single item into the negative. Which will happen with guarantee, out of necessity.

They’re shifting around that since… well… ever. It’s one of the major downside of LE that EHG seems not to know who they actually wanna cater towards.
I talked about it in other topics already. Act 1-3 is basically the ‘intro’ where you get presented with all the core mechanics of the game. Decently well done, fitting, perfect.
Act 4-8 it all falls apart, more skilled people get a yawn-stretch of content doing nothing at all until finally seeing at the end of Act 8 (Lagon) what the game can offer… non-skilled people are utterly frustrated at the end of Act 8. It’s garbage for both camps there, speaking to very very few people.

Utterly bad design no matter how you see it.

1.) Not mandatorily, it’s a balancing issue, and EHGs weak spot is balancing. We’ll see how it turns out with the dodge roll implementation in 1.1 and the changes there. Proper vast-scaled balancing is very overdue in the game and it needs to happen with 1.1 at the latest, at least showing a clear-cut direction.

2.) Since CoF is the aspect of ‘SSF’ basically (yeah yeah, I know, group-trade, but that can be ignored for the grand aspect since it’s a vast minority) it makes sense to have. Anyone who isn’t skilled is forced to go MG, anyone who is skilled gets the option of CoF. It makes it actually have a fairly decent place, boss-drop uniques need to be implemented properly with the current system as they’ve been a major oversight, otherwise it works.

3.) Depends, even a decently bad player can overcome the challenges with enough time-investment. You’re right that most won’t do it… but then the question comes up ‘Does this game actually cater to them?’ which I’ll answer: Not really.
LE caters to ‘not quite as hardcare as PoE’ players which are also ‘Not as casual as D4’. It’s a sweetspot they positioned themselves into, which was a good choice. Just… making it clear a bit earlier in the game then it does currently would be good, reduces the amount of disgruntled people.

Depends on what ‘Slow’ is.

I have actually looked up what the common retention time of players is during a 3 months cycle (the common in the business because of PoE and some tests around it, 4 is doable, more is generally bad, less is not possible to provide meaningful content at all) is between 1-2 months.

Now we break it down to a high-investment but healthy play-time of around 1 1/2 hours per day. If it’s every day after work… or majorly during the weekend doesn’t matter there. This means in a months (30 days) we get 45 hours of play-time.

Then as a third aspect we see how long it takes to clear the provided content of the game. Which currently is ‘reaching empowered monoliths’ as everything beyond is pure aspirational content currently. This means around 40 hours.

Which means currently progress is too fast for the content available which allows EHG to provide more content until we reach a rough 90 hour time investment to beat it for a mediocre player.

That’s the sweet-spot to work inside, 45-90 hours. Less or more is bad*. We’re currently sliiiightly outside, making people say ‘we need too long to progress’ and arguing about LP and corruptions levels when there’s nothing to argue about since the game provides no guidelines anymore. Clearly nobody things reaching empowered monoliths even is any point to stop the game as it’s too early.
So that solves itself with more content simply.

Because the implementation of MG ranks is utter garbage and CoF prophecies are a mess. The ranks work for CoF, the mechanics work for MG (we don’t talk about the UI issues and messed up missing affixes, that’s a separate issue).

We’ll see in 1.1 how much they manage to fix it, it’s a make-or-break situation for those mechanics.

Not even remotely yet, in the future maybe. Would go against the spirit of keeping the different types of game-modes equivalent though. It’s a bad option to implement and leads to more issues for longevity and balance then it solves.

I’ll cut down my answer to this topic:

ANY type of FOMO is disgusting, shouldn’t ever be implemented and makes me reduce my overall liking of a product.
This includes content, MTX, any item acquisition and anything else. Helldivers 2 cycled ‘Super Store’ items? Awful. The only Awful aspect of that game even. Loot-Boxes in PoE? Utterly disgusting. Removing MTX from a shop or even giving out timed events? Atrocious.

If a game needs that to stay relevant to urge people into it then the core aspects of the game aren’t well developed enough to provide it in the first place.
I play Minecraft since its conception and do nowadays still, I play PoE on and off in comparison… despite liking the genre more! Why? Minecraft provides no FOMO, PoE has aspects of it. I can come back whenever and for however long I want without seeing ‘Ah damn, I missed something!’ which immediately bums me out as a avid collector and makes me loose interest.

Tldr:
Very well made post, can mostly agree with the things you wrote besides a few aspects of it.
It’s a fantastic feedback, keep up the fantastic work with your posts!

And now they do it regularly! As if… that extra option there is something players would like in their core gaming enjoyment, right? So why limit Standard players there with basically ‘punishing’ them for keeping permanently invested in their game?

It’s an awful design decision from GGG. They should’ve kept the power of Harvest and worked their content further along the line around it, branching out to be a more ‘broad’ game (like they did with the scarab rework) rather then a linear one. It is their biggest mistake to date which has only be remedied to a degree with this league that finally allowed to play how you want instead of how the devs demanded you to. It’s the concept of player agency and the more we have the happier we are, especially if those choices seem like we’re doing them even if it’s only a illusion.

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thanks for reading everything and your compliments.
its refreshing to see a fellow standard enjoyer. on reddit/official forums the general consensus is that poe is a “league focused” game and standard is no longer the core audience.

POE has a wealth of history and can be used as a case study. i just hope that EHG learns from their shortcomings. LE does not need to be the next POE. LE just needs to be LE and be it’s own thing.

i m enjoying LE so much nowadays that i’ve already uninstalled POE.

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