After seeing some videos in youtube talking about Legacy and Cycle comparisons. I was about to make a question about it, thankfully I’ve seen this thread.
As someone like me who doesn’t want to bother with Cycles and want to keep playing in Standard, I find it very odd if EHG would lock some content behind Cycle characters only. Which also to my surprise that PoE does this but I’ve never seen anyone complain or talk about it but I barely played PoE so I can’t really say much.
And yes, we’ve been in beta for so long already. Having to wait a couple more months before Standard players can get a taste of that sweet new “Cycle-only” content probably wouldn’t feel nice either. Even there are a ton of new content and changes by 1.0, I bet it won’t take even half a month before you can burn through all of it if you’re someone who play a lot, compare that to the wait until 1 Cycle ends.
But yeah, I really hope it stays this way for LE where Cycle content is immediately available for Legacy/Standard without any changes or nerfs for those new content and mechanics.
Would be happy to see content and mechanics that are actually part of the entire game no matter how much time has passed rather some temporary power creep mechanic that’s only available for 1 Cycle and does nothing or doesn’t carry over once moved to Standard.
Still very early to say but I’d also like to hear about it from EHG themselves.
It’s also an extremely useful development tool to determine the necessary changes that would have to be made to make a given system or mechanic healthy for the base game, too. By adopting a borrowed power approach EHG doesn’t have to worry about permanently introducing a new system or mechanic in an unhealthy state then figuring out how to fix it without screwing up all characters that rely on that system or mechanic, since those characters are temporary to begin with.
And PoE has been trying to avoid that ever since Harvest was added to the base game. GGG had to burn a huge chunk of community goodwill to reign Harvest in because the crafting options it offered were obscenely powerful without the gardening minigame to balance them out. Ritual, the league they introduced Harvest as a base game league mechanic, was one of the few leagues where people were literally making borderline perfect, mirror-tier items on the regular, because Harvest’s crafting options were that powerful. GGG panicked and swung the nerf hammer multiple times over because of how much Harvest broke the game in their eyes, which is why they haven’t been so quick with adding league mechanics to the base game, instead choosing to keep them out for 2-3 leagues so that they can rebalance them.
GGG also backed themselves into a corner with system bloat in the core game and obscene D3 levels of both power creep and speed. This is ultimately why they decided to make POE2 an actual separate game and not an upgrade for POE1. Keeping cycle content separate in the long term is not only healthy for the core game, but necessary for the cycles to remain populated. Anyone hoping for the two modes to remain identical is seriously kidding themselves.
As does D3 & D4. In fact, I think you’ll find that almost all games that have seasonal content generally restrict it to new characters created specifically for that content. LE pushing it out to everyone is the unusual one.
As someone who has never played Leagues/Seasons on other games, I was surprised to learn this just a while ago. I really thought it’s only about “fresh start and economy” but not having standard get cut-off content.
If LE will do the same then that’s just a huge deal breaker for me. I just want to play the game and try the new content and mechanics without being rushed. Well, about time LE change this permanently imo, though I can only hope.
I don’t think there’s a single ARPG out there with seasons that doesn’t have exclusive content for the season. It’s what draws players to play seasons in the first place. Leaderboards and fresh start aren’t enough in themselves to attract more than just a few players.
And seasons are an important development tool that massively contribute to the longevity of a game. Without seasons there isn’t a need to come up with new stuff every few months.
The first few seasons will be like this because they are adding stuff that is core to the game, like the new masteries and whatever comes for 1.1 and 1.2. After that, they’re thinking about new ideas about making cycles appealing but also fresh (so it won’t just be a copy/paste of what others do).
If you look at PoE, most of the stuff they release in leagues gets added to the game, even if it’s a modified version. So standard players still get to play with that a few months later.
If it’s a deal breaker for you, then maybe live service ARPGs aren’t for you, because they all do that. And I expect LE will also do that in the future, one way or another. Ultimately, you need to give players a reason to play cycles instead of standard for the model/game to survive.
is 3-4 months to short of a time? you have plenty of time to play seasons especially since most of the time they are well played/known/complete after even a week or so. its not like these are entire expansions for an MMO you need to do in 3 months.
Take for example the content we got recently, the imprisoned mages, and the caches. These mirror similar content PoE got as seasonal content. Essences(imprisoned mages) and Strongboxes(Caches) obviously there is a little nuance, but for the most part seasons have not always been as grandiose as some that GGG has done. Most of D3 seasons were pretty simple for example.
So I think if you are truly the target audience for legacy, you would be okay giving up the “click on thing in mono to get small reward” content that leagues most likely will entail for the first few years.
I feel like many standard/legacy players do have the time to try out the content, but get freaked out about for no real reason.
As I alluded to above, it is down to whether EHG wish to keep their legacy playerbase or not. If seasonal content stops moving to legacy (and thus legacy gets no more new content), they will lose them, otherwise they won’t. I suspect EHG don’t even know that answer yet, and will likely wait till they see what size of legacy playerbase they have.
Well it has been a while since I played it but PoE used to move some or all seasonal content to legacy at the end of each season. Maybe they stopped this? Anyway they did that back when I played that game, and its legacy mode was AWESOME as a result of it.
And me, and pretty much all legacy players. Look at poor old D4. It has lost all legacy players to its short-sighted seasonal model, and since its latest season is generally considered terrible, it lost its seasonal players too.
A very interesting point. Looking a little deeper…
If Imprisoned Mages had been seasonal-exclusive content would Legacy players care? No, it’s a very minor addition and could be looked at as a seasonal theme.
but
If playing the season was the ONLY way to acquire a ladle, would Legacy players care? Absolutely YES (unless the ladle itself was a seasonal thing and would no longer be in the game at all when its season ended, in which case the question becomes irrelevant)
There is a middle ground between legacy gets nothing and legacy gets the same thing right away, and that is what most games do: legacy gets stuff a few months later.
They still do this, mostly, but there were always things league players got that standard ones didn’t:
-MTX rewards for season objectives
-A full version of the mechanic. For example, during Ritual league, almost every map had rituals. When they moved it to core, it was a much lower chance. Harvest was the same thing. You now have Harvest in the game, but in a much more watered down version from what it was.
The only difference between D4’s model and PoE’s is that they’re not moving the season mechanics to standard at the end of the season.
I think, based upon no evidence whatsoever, that it’s because EHG doesn’t (at this time) have plans to do crazy shit in cycles; i.e. they’ll be releasing content, not systems for the next year, so releasing to both at the same time is a no-brainer (because it would actually be more work to keep them separate).
Long term, I think they’ll feel the pressure to treat cycles like a systems sandbox, like every other successful ARPG. Vast majority of the player base gets bored of the game, moves on, forget how to play the game. Leagues/cycles/whatever are ways to spice things up, and importantly, afford players an opportunity to re-learn the game with a fresh start.
If you’re posting/reading here, you just aren’t in the ‘vast majority of the player base’.
Not sure what game you were playing, but all the seasonal stuff added to the core/standard game in POE is a heavily altered version. It’s not even the same.
D4’s issues are because D4 is a complete dumpster fire from the top town. It has nothing to do with standard/season parity.
This isn’t going to happen. Seasons would effectively cease to exist if everything was the same between the two modes. The entire model of seasons which generates revenue to keep the game going, quite literally depends on exclusive/timed content. This doesn’t even take into account that having exact duplicates of all seasonal content compounding on each other over time would break the game.
It probably depends how much you can play. If you’re spending several hours a day plus more at the weekend then yes, 3 months might be a long time. If you can only play a few hours a week then maybe not.
They did up until arpund Heist/Harvest then they started to take a number of leagues to rebalance the old league to make it work with standard.
Yeah, at the moment they’re still adding what they consider “base game” stuff. Once they’ve done that they may move to a more “traditional” seasonal content model (which would be sad).
It is, it’s just watered down & you don’t encounter it anywhere near as frequently because it’s no longer the main focus. They do sometimes have to heavily “tweak” it like they did with Harvest though which is likely what you’re thinking of, but that’s definitely an outlier.
“If everything were the same”, well, yes, that is obvious. But that’s not what anyone is suggesting. LE would, at a minimum, have an economic/leaderboard
reset between seasons & that’s not nothing.
When EHG get to the point where GGG are, yes. But that’s what we are saying is likely to happen and EHG have … reserved the right to do.
That is effectively exactly what the OP is suggesting. If you think leaderboards and trade alone will carry seasons I have some ocean-front property in montana for sale.
I think that one problem around here is some people always taking the bigger reference and thinking it’s the only way.
(PoE cycles)
As far as I have seen, EHG want to make its own path, and we have a long way to do things differently and who knows, it might be that they will find a way to please both players who sees cycles as mandatory thing and the ones that does not accept gated content / mechanics in cycles.
It will not be the first time they surprise us and come with something revolutionary.
I hope the ‘something revolutionary’ will be like Adventure mode. We don’t wanna another poe, when you have to do it on every Cycle on every char, it’s boring and not encouraging at all ;/ Maybe you still need pass Campaign on every Cycle but just once, on one char enough?
As someone who has thus far enjoyed (or at least not minded) starting over when a new season hits, I share OP’s concerns and hopes. I also loathe abandoning characters and never using them again, as is the case with my D3/PoE/D4 characters in the “eternal realm”, which should be called “realm of the abandoned”. A middle-ground of sorts would be a welcome change past the two or three cycles. Besides, the older I get, the least willing to participate in every season that comes out, which is yet another reason to wish for a healthy and up-to-date “eternal realm”.
EHG is going to need a few cycles to keep adding permanent improvements to the game. Improvements that shouldn’t be kept away from the Legacy players. This will work as long as they aren’t just thrown out there like POE does with many season themes, thus making all players beta test their new content.
D4 is adding temporary content every few months rather than focusing on adding permanent content and systems. This is quite likely because they are saving those things for paid expansions.
Temporary seasonal content is a luxury that few ARPGs can afford.
It will be interesting to see if the economy is dead on Legacy, thus pushing more to Cycle play.
EDIT: I will add that seasonal journey rewards are always a good idea to have. At least once you have enough stuff to fill up the journey.
Seasons in games like this actually means more gaming interest from players in the longrun. But of course the Seasons needs to be creative and for the most part fresh. Which is not always the case of course, but still… . PoE is one of very few games that have had this going for a very long time.
And even though PoE is not always having Amazing, Great Seasons etc, a great numver of people is playing.
I however is not playing it, since many of the Seasons actually was pretty much a copy of the one before that one. And if TOO many of the Seasons is having pretty much the same mechanics and is more copies of one another, people go dry.
But in tthe whole overall picture, PoE is not a BAD game.
