Season 4 is a miss

General
1

Tl;dr rage quit post

Barely two weeks into this season, I’ve decided to bag it. I’d like to provide some feedback that I hope will be read / processed and considered / contextualized for future use. My reasons for this post:

The meta is beyond stale. The leaderboards say it all. There are countless items and mechanics that players can utilize to create an extraordinarily diverse spectrum of characters. This is not happening. This season’s gutting of the imprinting system has made it time prohibitive to see many niche classes come to fruition. Low effort and unbalanced is the new black.

I am disappointed by the aforementioned balancing. Arcane Ascendance and an entire class of mage builds were essentially deleted after three or four days into the season. This happened shortly after videos were posted of this game’s pinnacle boss’s 1 second shaming by the same class that saturates the corruption leaderboard.

Wasn’t warpath balanced? Can’t tell since they’re all at the threshold of eternity and I never see them. How’s that spellblade balancing? Can’t we just make Spellblade a Runemaster skill so it gets used? The same rogues are still suntanning themselves at 10k corruption, armor optional for them.

Is the item corruption mechanic intended to fill the void left by imprinting’s neutering? It’s an uncontrollable mess that only creates additional irritation by forcing players to farm duplicates or backups of every idol and piece of gear, lest they set themselves back by bricking something that Julra may have spared. This aspect of the game, at first fun during the campaign, wore out its novelty very quickly. It’s a gimmicky, risky supplement for something that wasn’t broken.

This season also introduced some new bugs. My least favorite is the progressively lengthening of time to open your stash or any item container. The longer the play, the more delay… It also broke how I could switch menus at an enchantment table or farsight turtle.

However, we were left with some classic favorites like party chat breaking when switching instances from another locale. Perhaps I’m bitter because I don’t have any friends. I mean, I might have friends … But I wouldn’t know since my friends list usually shows only the same one person when he’s online.

Speaking of chat, it really ought to be modernized. If the profanity filter is smart enough to catch crabs, certainly it’s smart enough to catch gold sellers, yes? Its ability to filter innocuous words could also be trained to filter out unnecessary prophecy spam and incessant Aberroth chatter, yes? If this game every wants to promote community, it should first promote communication. The chat window could benefit from additional, or even custom, communication channels, and custom filters.

So good luck, EHG. I hope you kill it next season. It’s been a fun 3200+ hours since last May.

10 Likes
2

Sadly that one’s been on & off since 0.9 or possibly 1.0. I used to think the delay in PoE’s guild stash was bad…

3

Agreed

1 Like
4

Agree about crafting. Corruption is fine as is, but doesn’t make up for the imprint nerf. Was imprinting actually a problem? I get that streamers/no-lifers are going to abuse whatever they can abuse, but the rest of us just enjoyed the freedom to get stuff without spending dozens of hours per piece of gear.

2 Likes
5

That’s a crazy amount of hours, I’m not surprised your burnt out on it. I couldn’t play any game that much in that period of time.

1 Like
6

I love you Baalz and this post is 100% accurate.

I am especially against them nerfing imprinting without obvious testing and then throwing in another layer of RNG luck with corruption. I think corruption should be there but also “some imprinting” over last seasons “lots” and the current state of “no” similar items. Yes, no. Not a single item has dropped anywhere near what it should, when they drop (maybe once every 2nd day). Imprints are vital for a lot of builds to successfully clear Uber which is the goal for a lot of people as in most games where people want to kill the big boss, it’s why we have a big boss.

I think the rogue problem is absolutely mental and I won’t roll one until they balance it in 8 months rather than actually doing a mid season balance when the builds are actually so strong it might as well be a bug (I think the weaver item/sword one actually is). I will miss you this season man but I feel I’ll be jumping not far from now with you.

I feel no thought went into some changes this season and along with that obviously no testing what so ever. Then you have guys like MIKE, the dev, an employee not a player saying “I like the new drop rate of the exalteds it creates anticipation” dude you have how many paying customers and YOU like something? The actual audacity of that guy.

Out of touch and losing players each season. It’s crazy man. Just crazy.

2 Likes
7

Generally agree with your points, i enjoyed this season but mostly because it shook up the game a little. But after playing it for 2 weeks it feels like a 2 steps forward, 2 steps back and 1 step to the left just for shits and giggles.

Game is looking like an every other season for me, so im sure ill be back in around 12 months for season 6

1 Like
8

What are you talking about? All the big time streamers praise the game to high heavens… just kidding. That’s why I don’t play LE anymore… it’s just to messy, buggy and unbalanced for my taste.

2 Likes
9

For me I am not really all that into mega minmaxing, this is my casual chill game.

But i feel like its gone from a chill casual game where everything is viable, to being “pick the new broken fotm meme and blast uberroth”

The balance has been dog shit since 1.0 and never recovered.

I dont care if 100c is all anyone can do, or 300c, or 5000c, but I shouldnt have nodes/items that look cool then I try and use them and they are so weak/underpowered and stupid and bad that they just flop.

We got fucking fire auras, a sub system of spellblades that dont have a tree, and they are not amazing, but hey they have some scaling vectors and some cool stuff you can do.

Then you have the item dropped by lagon a mono boss, his special item! Alluvion. it looks cool, it sounds cool, and it shoots tidal waves how rad? that do literally 3 damage. because its been givin 0 scaling, 0 features. 0 anything.

Primordial frogs are a skill with no tree, granted by an item, that solve all of its own problems/scaling through its item/scaling vectors. Why are the other item exclusive skills not being given this same treatment? its just meh.

I love the game, I play it, get to empowered and go “wow this is boring and im struggling cause I picked something stupid” and I just immediately close the game.

Figure it out i dont know whats wrong but the game 100% is stale and lame it feels like for all players from the casuals it once attracted, and the minmaxers who stayed. Everyone is having a bad time.

3 Likes
10

I don’t agree with the imprinting meta last season, but they should’ve replaced it for another endgame loop. Because you’re right about the balancing. Making AoE clear as a focus for the farming meta makes too many builds defunct. Even with tankiness if I clear the 3 Omen windows any slower my PC howls and frames drop to less than 1 fps.

Anyway hopefully season 5 comes soon and find a way to fix this.

11

I’m fine with the corruption mechanic, the imprint nerf and the even the clusterfuck of the omen windows, but what really annoys me are the Echo Chains and the crafting window delay.

The Echo Chains are imo the most useless thing they added since Rift Beasts. They take away any player agency and force you to do one mundane echo after another with arena key, affix shards and set items as a reward. Hurray. And then they recycled even more redundant content into chains. Rift Beasts, Stability, Nemesis and more Omens. That’s it?? What’s next? A bee echo chain? A loot-lizard echo chain? A harbinger echo chain? Are you running out of actual ideas?
I don’t even want to start a chain yet they criss-cross all over the place.
I know this is meant for the console players and their stupid controllers, but why just not let us choose and preselect any path from echo to echo without any “fancy” timeglass core?

Stop treating pre-corrupted items (and T8-sealed exalteds) as rewards. These are not rewards. They are a scam.

The crafting window delay is also another really annoying bug. Instead of finally fixing the stash delay bug they now added it to the crafting window too. How is that possible?

The meta is so incredible stale. Barely anything changed. A few more rogue builds around the new skills. Paladin and VK still rule to upper echolon (or some ZHP in SC). Fire Aura Spellblade is fun initially but dogshit as expected later on.

My secret slight hope that the enemy animation changes make the combat-feel better has unfortunately not been fullfilled. It’s only noticable in early campaign. It still - or even more than ever - either one-shot or be one-shot.

On many fronts there have been improvements in the UI. The minimap overlay is much better. The monolith timeline now show they’re dedicated item. etc. But there have also been many regressions in UX. E.g. the Nemesis intermediate confirmation window or the reward colors and state of the echoes.

1 Like
12

Tlbdr I’M NOT ROLLING META AND ITEM CORRUPTION IS NOT EVEN COMPARABLE TO THE OLD IMPRINTING SYSTEM

It’s not a supplement to 2T7 item slamming. There are interesting affixes, but it’s too much of a crapshoot. Assume julra let’s you have the 75 slam you want. That’s already an annoying gate to get past. Then what? You assume the 25% risk of a negative corruption? And even if it’s not negative, what are the odds you actually get an affix your build needs? Now what are the odds it is actually meaningful as a T6 or T7?

Mike wants us to have a gg feeling or meaningful reaction when we get good loot. Loot is a means, not the end. And it certainly doesn’t end with a single piece of loot. I played a lot. The time I spent playing this season gave the opposite of gg feeling. They’re trying to reduce “degenerate gaming” by giving us meaningless play with negligible rewards.

There are so many builds that require the acquisition of specific affixes on multi exalted items on every piece of equipment. I expect all these offmeta builds were modelled and balanced at a different time with different parameters or expectations of gearing. EHG broke the game’s diversity that was flourishing in 1.2 and 1.3.

I beat uber aberroth with a frost orb spellblade and a lightning meteor autobombing sorcerer last season, the latter pushing 5k corruption. It took ample time to gear them even with the old imprint system. That can’t happen this season without significantly more time invested, if it’s even possible with the meteor mage now.

Again, I refuse to roll meta.

So what’s the fix? As I see it, they can relax their imprinting change and make it actually useable for exalted items again. OH BUT THE POWER CREEP. Meta is already one shotting Uber. That didn’t happen last season, btw. Meta is already 10k corruption with no end in sight. Who cares. At least we could gear our offmeta builds and have fun again.

What else can be done? Literally reevaluate any build changing item, i.e., ailment converters, type converters, etc., and fit them into the new mold. Reevaluate every skill, passive node and fit them into the new mold. Create modern models to gauge power creep with current seasonal mechanics. Lol @ arcane ascendance, man I’m still chapped about that.

How the darned hades can you change the fundamental cornerstone of a hacknslash loot grabber with a more restrictive loot system without changing all the mechanics that rely upon it? Boggles my mind.

There’s no shame in walking back some of these terrible design choices, EHG. I’d gladly reinstall.

1 Like
13

Personally, I’d rather see the imprint system changed a bit. Currently it’s an obscure mechanic that few people understand how it works. It would have been better if you changed it so that it has simply duplicates your actual item but with a chance to either increase FP/LP, improve rolls, increase tiers, occasionally seal an affix, etc.

This would allow players to actually improve on a piece of gear past 0FP. You craft your gear and end up with a 7531 and no more FP. You imprint it and there’s a chance the exact same item will drop, but with a little FP. Which you can then use to improve your item to 7552 and imprint that one.
It would give players a way to slowly work on their item until it’s perfect.

Currently imprints are the only PoE-like crafting system where things work in arcane ways that aren’t clear to almost anyone. This change would make it much simpler to understand (put something in the imprint, something almost the same gets copied), would allow the players that rant about the FP system to keep working on a single item (proper balance of their drop rates and how long it should take until it becomes “perfect” can be discussed and adjusted) and would actually be useful for all players at all steps of gear progression.

1 Like