Path of Exile - Page 1457

In no particular order,

What i'm looking for in the private league is really just the small league experience. I'm not explicitly suggesting a no-modifiers league since I understand that that wouldn't be very interesting for the HC and/or SSF players, but for me as a mostly-sc always-trade player, this league is already going to be a significant departure from "normal" poe.

The mods available fall mostly under 2 sets. The "boring difficulty increases" (monster damage/speed/proj/etc) and the "interesting paradigm shifts" (no vendor, no stash, only white items).

Now objectively, PoE has had so much player power creep that some of the "boring" difficulty increase options are well justified (even if i'm likely to just die levelling and quit lol). However, those mods aren't innately terribly interesting so while I don't mind a few of them tacked on, it's hard to say what would be so interesting about any one of them that would make me choose it. Especially in an HC league this close to betrayal stuff, I'm liable to just die and quit until 3.5. I do kinda object to -40 all res just on principal, but i'd probably try the league anyway.

My issue with the interesting ones is basically tied to "what would make me want to play this league". No stash would be a very interesting experience for sure, but not only is that available (imo) in other places like ziz-league, but it's also just not something that I'd want to play very long I don't think. There's just too much shit to pick up and not being able to do so is going to lead to a ton of feelsbad decisions. That said, it's interesting enough that I'm not going to outright refuse it.
No Vendor is interesting because it deeply shifts the economy of the game, but I think in practice it doesn't do it in a positive way. What you end up doing is starving players of Alts/Jews/Fus and maybe chromes (plus you enforce scroll picking up and disincentivize picking up whetsones/scraps/transmutes), and that currency is mostly quality of life rather than power level stuff. Sure, fusings are power level in terms of six links but in general the game is just unpleasant if you can't get enough chromes or can't afford to roll staunching flasks etc. Still, it's a different, interesting thought and again i doubt i'd refuse to play it because it still presents a puzzle to the players to handle the different income.
I think no magic/rare drops is super interesting but it's a pretty heavy penalty for players to play under. I'd die like mad levelling (lol) and I don't know if others are up to it. It's by far the single mod that i'm most interested in, but I think it would probably have to be the only mod (or at most one or two other simple ones) and even then i'm not sure how much people would actually enjoy it. It's kinda like the gucci hobo theory, but far less self-flagellatory.

In terms of start times, I'm NA and get off work at roughly midnight CET. If I wanted to hit league start, I'd like it to start around then but I think that GGG's regular start time works a lot better for most EU people and it's obviously unfair of me to expect the EU crowd to wait until around midnight their time.

Yeah, so far "no magic and rare mods" is the only quirky mod that is not a dealbreaker to any players. So if we wanted to have a paradigm shift, that would be it. Although there's a risk of scaring people off with the QoL harm and slower progression that would follow. I'd be up for trying it though, but if generic difficulty increases yield better retention I'd just go with that.