I’m pretty sure Llama has some chocolate he can give you as comfort.
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Nope. No sharing-chocolate.
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Dude, asking @Llama8 to share Chocolate is like trying to get a 2-year old to give up his binky except the 2-year old won’t post pics of the choclates he eats and taunt you to tell you you ain’t getting none.
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I would never say that, because that’s not what you think it means. Double negatives (ain’t … none) cancel each other out…
I’m out of tears yet I must again cry myself to bed 
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Late to the party but…
Yep, too much gambling.
Now, I have no idea just how much of a casual I am (I do consider myself a casual, though with a mountain of hours spent in ARPGs starting with D1/D1HF). Anyway, let’s just say that from time to time I get the urge of playing LE and then for 2-3 weeks I sink a lot of time in it.
Almost every single time I hit a wall, the wall of too much gambling for my taste. No sense of progression except to go and get the most broken build and “finish” the game. (not what i consider fun though, I’ve not even used 100% a maxroll build - always made it my own - of course, suboptimal 
- but my own).
At any rate, beside the super creepy owl that’s howling outside, what I want to say is that there should always be a way for the player to get a sense of progression. Gambling ain’t that.
Put it this way - you can take your chances and end up with that godly item, to paraphrase the devs (meaning that you got those people who can farm for a large amount of “bases” that they can gamble with) OR, for the vast majority of players, provide a system that reduces RNG (significantly enough to give them that satisfying feeling every so often) but at the cost of time. One of my own proposals (surely proposed by others too) is maybe a rare rune of Forging (add some LP to the item). I see some proposals on the imprint, most are nice. What is crazy is that the imprint was “broken” for those very few who strategized to get many double T7s (running the cache echo, reset, cache echo, reset) but for the majority… it really was progression. And even so, the system itself had enough RNG so that the drops were not all good. Still, one could advance by getting the better drop imprinted all over again and so on. Took time, but you could do it.
And then, just like I see in soo many games, the devs decided to base their decision on a very few numbers of players who minmax and game the system (and any system that EHG comes up with will eventually be broken by those players) and basically screw everyone.
At the same time, EHG, just like in the previous season, leaves some broken builds untouched.
The result?
When I see that the system I relied to slowly build up my build with the stuff I needed is gone, either I stop playing or I google the most broken build, “finish” the game, and then stop playing. And for those about to preach on the ethics of this - spare me. I ain’t paying for a game to feel like another job. And certainly, I am not going to invest time into playing a game that, even though I give it a considerable amount of my precious time, it’s nigh impossible to “beat” it unless I “cheat” (by using one of those said builds).
It really felt cheap when I saw EHG “nerfed” the imprint and introduced the corruption casino. And the funny thing is, and yes, it’s a feeling, but given the times a really nice/useful item is bricked I really doubt the odds are purely context agnostic.
Really bad decision to brick the items (remove affixes/make it unusable), at least with such high odds. Absolutely abysmal. Not only there’s no sense of progress, but it’s a loathsome hit in the gut. And no, corruption is not “optional” since by adding it in correlation with nerfing the imprints, you implicitly pushed players into considering the new system as a legitimate replacement of the old system, for progression. I can’t really reproduce accurately on the forum my full consideration for EHG regarding this system.
Anyway, just to summarize this rant.
- Base
Nemesis + normal gameplay provides the basis for the progression. Both have RNG, but the player doesn’t feel like it looses something, even with Nemesis. It’s always an improvement (from nothing to something, or from LP0 to Legendary (even if useless) /LP1/LP2).
- Crafting
Crafting is cool, though of course, it happens quite often that the item which seems perfect will get bricked - eg. fail to seal a T1 (happened today…). Yes, apparently it’s not a 100% chance, and it was on a T1, on a single T7 exalted.
Anyway, back to it - from the very first level, there is RNG that can ruin your day. However, there is enough room for strategy, how to upgrade and the order of doing things that there is actually a sense of progression.
Some will argue that crafting can brick items. This is true, however there much more transparency on the possible outcome and being able to, most of the times, chose a different way of improving it. Maybe you use a rune of removal to replace that affix you don’t want. Maybe you try a glyph of despair (and fail to seal a T1 on an otherwise great item 
). Maybe a glyph of chaos. Options. People have options.
- Imprint
Amazing system. It allowed the players to actually work towards getting that base to slam it on the 2LP or 3LP items (haven’t seen a 4LP so far, but ok, let’s consider that too). It allowed people to actually use the crating system and, even if most of the times it would “ruin” an item, there was still a reasonable chance that you’d finally get that thing you were progressing to.
- Slam
This system was nice, however if had one obvious issue. 1LPs were common enough to not matter that much if you bricked them (and that rare 1LP red ring - yeah, those were intense). But 2LP? A lot less common, and there was a pretty good chance of ending up with something less useful than the 1LP one you had. This however changed for the 3LP, which had a very good chance of actually getting that T7 main stat you were looking for. So overall, the system was flawed since it made 2LP slams more risky than 3LP. Guaranteeing the stat fixed this (though there’s purists out there who are hating it, because RespectTheGrind(c) - coincidentally, most of them are exactly the ones playing the broken “flavor of the season” builds…).
Overall - This created a nice and frankly, rewarding loop. Not perfect, maybe, but it really had a nice balance between RNG and agency.
So here comes corruption. Basically, the corruption casino is now compensating the lack of progression from the previous system, which EHG basically did away with (for all intents and purposes, the drop rates are so low now that a lot people will first hit the “i’m done with this …” wall then getting that dopamine reward of a nice imprint drop).
And if corruption did not have so many negative effects, maybe it would have been… barely acceptable. But boy oh boy, replacing a system that would maybe not drop the imprint (though eventually will) which would then tie in nicely with the other parts of the crafting system with a casino where you can lose it all, and even if you win, it can’t be modified further (so you also get thrown out of the casino) is not the way to go.
Take it as you will, but this kind of gambling mechanism feel really, really… bad.
note: zip it with the balance - you have no ground to stand on as long as there’s stuff that’s obviously broken that doesn’t get addressed (like so many other pointed out) and at the same time EHG just found the time to really think hard and analyze deeply and carefully the numbers and decided to replace a progression mechanism with pure RNG, because it was “broken” (coincidentally, pretty much by the same bunch who uses broken builds to hit the top of the ladder).
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Content not viewable in your region…
I really have no clue what you guys have against imgur (or what imgur has against you guys).
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TLDR, they didn’t want to think of the children when they could be thinking of the ad revenue & serving kids the memes.
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Isn’t OSA a EU thing, though? Why does it affect the UK only?
Either way, either you change it so the site comforms to it only for people in the UK, or you don’t and they don’t access your site at all. So rather than potentially losing revenue for a portion of the UK base, you lose all of it? Seems like a dumb move, but what do I know? 
No, the OSA is UK only. The EU has the Digital Services Act which, according to google, is a broader & more general while the OSA focuses more on user safety, particularly children, requiring services to proactively manage risks from illegal content & harmful-but-legal content.
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Dev comments on it seem to suggest it’ll mainly be QOL, focused on removing prophecy rerolling, not actually reworking the type of faction rewards though. It doesn’t sound like a major overhaul in functionality. Still a welcome update, but I don’t think what they already have planned is going to address the imprinting & other deep endgame farming issue, for example.
No chocolate for me.
No image for you.
Stalemate.
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Just wanna join in on that point a bit late.
PoE also had around 50% of the bases back then, a relatively short progression compared to today and around 30% of the affixes available today, without eye jewels, cluster jewels and influenced items.
Yes, the RNG got reduced, but the progression rate always stayed relatively stable.
You could always craft a decent item for the time.
You could always focus on making a mirror-tier item.
Both was possible and as feasable back then and today.
Just the things which are now the top-end are different then before, with some options returning as ‘the best’ from time to time and others phased out entirely. Not always in a great way but that’s beside the point.
LE sadly stopped having top-end acquisition the second they implemented exalted items and since then it’s always been a hot mess. They simply lack to understand how item progression which is enjoyable works for people as the RNG festival became a whole damn circus school for the whole continent by now rather then ending it and getting a settled solid system made out of it.
So Mike, in his recent stream when responding to an imprint nerf question, referred to a 2t7 as being a “trophy item”. This philosophy conflicts directly with all of the RNG (havoc, removal, FP loss, Julra) associated with crating a double t7 legendary.
For realistic end game item chasing you either need to
- have “lots” of these exalted 2t7 items dropping to fit the current layers of RNG required to achieve the double exalt affix legendary result desired; or
- have fewer “trophies” dropping but then the layers of RNG need to be scaled back to suit these lower drop rates
So i am really confused on what LE intends for endgame crafting in this regard. I really do hope they totally rethink imprints. Removing them from weaver tree and having a new “Imprint” faction would seem the most logical to me but i fully appreciate that it is very easy to be an armchair critic rather than dealing with demands of business economics and technical complexities
TL:DR i really do still believe (after digesting all the comments and input) that, in it’s current state, this season has killed endgame farming
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He also said “we over nerfed it” which is hilarious because I said numerous times that it was VERY VERY clear they did this change and then did NOT test it. Everything just confirmed with a simple line.
I also thought the 77 item being referred to as a trophy item was funny because just last night I was crafting my 777 dagger from Nemesis. I would say 777 is definitely a trophy as it’s my first of the season. Ive had a couple of 776s and I’ve had a handful of 766 still great items, a few 77 and a pile of 76.
76 seems pretty common at all corruption from 100 onwards. 77 is quite a rare world drop. I have not had any of the 766 or 776s come from world drops only Nemesis rolls. A lot of those come with sealed affixs making crafting a complete miss with redemptions generally rolling common affixs.
77s are hard to get - this is a trophy we should be able to work with it to get more, not dozens more but more over time. Not 0 like right now. I have run bone maps to collect bones to buy amber and brought probably close to 1000 Nemesis this season as I buy 70-100 a time. It’s probably more at this stage since I run with friends too.
Man I would play test changes for free for these guys 10+ hours a day if it meant the seasons started in better shape. Sheesh.
TL:DR - you’re right. End game was ruined from the get go because they did NOT do any testing which is massively negligant on their part for the 43000 people that started the season.
Perhaps they’ll learn from this so the dozen or so that come back in season 5 will have a lot more fun.
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They did the same crap before.
They didn’t learn then.
I hence don’t expect them to do this time.
People literally speak about it since at least 0.9 that the whole progression system is in the dumpster and everything is ‘unclear’. And since then it hasn’t changed a single bit.
I’ll be happy if they manage to fix it, but I won’t say they have the capacity until they prove to be able to.
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The main difference here is that the top 1% of the top 1% always had ways of making mirror-tier items while the average player either bought things from them or just tried to get lucky with the randomness (especially because it’s not properly explained) of crafting. Usually the best they would achieve was using alters to get a decent double affix, then regal+exalt and hope the rest of the affixes were also decent.
Whereas these days the top 1% keeps making mirror-tier items while the average player actually manages to use crafting in a more significant way and get way more useful items than they used to.
The ceiling is still the same, but the floor is now much higher than it ever was.