People just like loot pinata mechanics. The leagues that are "popular" are the ones that offer a lot of extra loot or free pack size with minimum added effort or difficulty. Even though from my perspective, these kinds of mechanics don't actually constructively improve the game in any way.
I started playing in Harbinger, and after hearing everyone's dislike of Harbinger as a league, one of the most confusing things to me was how well-liked Perandus was. The two leagues have the same core gameplay loop: fight some extra faceless mobs that take too long to spawn, kill your framerate, and drop special currency in annoyingly small denominations that's tedious to pick up. All Perandus has over Harbinger is a fat guy that spawns every few maps and offers you free loot in exchange for that annoying-to-pick-up currency, and sometimes that free loot is T1 rares at unreasonably low prices.
No real difference in the core gameplay, but a fat guy that offers you free shit is apparently the difference between a great league and "garbinger". What makes a league "not boring" or "not too complicated" to people is just the amount of free shit they get, not the actual simplicity or complexity of the mechanics involved.
Oh yeah, the big problem with recent games like Anthem is that they don't understand loot showers. We LOVE them, even if 90% of the shit on the ground isn't even worth picking up, let alone identifying or crunching numbers for.
Diablo-style, Poe-style, Borderlands-style loot showers. Do. Not. be. stingy. My favourite leagues were Abyss and Incursion. Incursion even more so because you didn't have to pick anything up, just worry about killing enemies and then when you came out of the choice chamber you'd get everything that dropped, dropped on the ground for you to sift through.
I honestly couldn't care less for these more story-driven seasons where we explore the syndicate or whoever it is this season, shaper or elder... I don't want to piece shit together with scraps of information, I don't want to unravel the mysteries of Wraeclast's universe, I want: To not get anally probed by the season mechanic in act 1 because of the density and amount of mobs before I can get my main skill gem and 1-2 support gems working and I want loot.
Not that complicated.
I also think that Beasiatry was better than Syndicate, because both had crazy strong mobs introduced, but the difference was in Beastiary YOU found THEM on the map while exploring, while during Syndicate they took the time out of their busy schedule to find the time to find YOU and fuck you up.
On March 16 2019 06:22 Latham wrote: Oh yeah, the big problem with recent games like Anthem is that they don't understand loot showers. We LOVE them, even if 90% of the shit on the ground isn't even worth picking up, let alone identifying or crunching numbers for.
Diablo-style, Poe-style, Borderlands-style loot showers. Do. Not. be. stingy. My favourite leagues were Abyss and Incursion. Incursion even more so because you didn't have to pick anything up, just worry about killing enemies and then when you came out of the choice chamber you'd get everything that dropped, dropped on the ground for you to sift through.
I honestly couldn't care less for these more story-driven seasons where we explore the syndicate or whoever it is this season, shaper or elder... I don't want to piece shit together with scraps of information, I don't want to unravel the mysteries of Wraeclast's universe, I want: To not get anally probed by the season mechanic in act 1 because of the density and amount of mobs before I can get my main skill gem and 1-2 support gems working and I want loot.
Not that complicated.
The comparison Incursion and Synthesis is so striking to me. The core concept of both is very similar but Synthesis seems to have forgotten all the good things about Incursion.
Not seeing where mobs are when you zone in a memory, not knowing where your going while racing against the clock. The simplicity of the Temple itself compared to the Memory Nexus frustrating jigsaw puzzle.
On March 16 2019 05:46 Logo wrote: It feels odd to me how PoE gives us all these slightly different takes on mechanics but (delve, maps, memories), but that you can't really focus on the one you want over the others.
I could imagine like a 4.0.0 world where instead of mapping being the main post-game mechanic and having that fuel delve and memories if you could just have all three as first class citizens post-game and let people gravitate towards the one(s) that appeal to them or suit their build better.
Tarke just put out a vid in the past few days suggesting you could be able to "align" yourself with one of the masters, i.e. pick a favorite, and the chances of them randomly occurring becomes slightly favorable than the rest. Neat idea, even if it took some slight reward readjustment. Want to Delve hard and get xp? Pick Nico and see Nico more than the others. Want to get a faster mastermind or unlock veiled mods? Pick Jun. Want to double corrupt stuff in the temple? Pick Alva. Want to map only and forget all this other trash? Pick Einhar or Zana.
It doesn't completely disrupt or remove the core gameplay loops, all the content is still given to you, but lets people focus a bit more on what they like and/or avoid what they don't. And it gives people with more specific ideas (I want to get a Diadem from Mastermind, then I want to get an Aspect of the [whatever] unique with Einhar, then I'm going to focus hard on Delve to get fossils to craft, etc.) and especially SSF-style play more options and short/long-term focus and chase goals.
I mean, scarabs are rare and one-time use lol. Especially now with how slow Syndicate progress is. They're still great for juicing a specific thing WAY up, with an initial investment.
Just clicking a checkbox next to Alva so that you're 2-3x as likely to see her than the other four is simple and minor boost to personal enjoyment, without being able to completely disable the others and still have the element of RNG idk.
lol mathil comparing 3.2 Bestiary mechanics favorably against current 3.6 synthesis feedback... I like Mathil a lot but this is sort of a microcosm of why the complaints about Synthesis are confusing me. Can you really argue that Synthesis "feels like work" while 3.2 Bestiary at launch was just a simple "more mobs, bonus crafts" with no work involved? Everyone hated nets and how you could accidentally kill the mob or other mobs got in the way or catching every single yellow mob was boring when the red ones were the ones that were critical for recipes and we can't reliably target farm specific recipes and . . . . . . Then look at the iterations it went through in 3.2 proper and now even it's current implementation as core.
People bending over backwards to trash this league instead of just saying "I don't like it I hope they make it more fun" lmao. At least Mathil says he's still having fun though. I talked a friend into trying Divine Ire because of his league starter, it looks a lot faster than I expected for a channeled skill. They really did a great job with the new abilities this league.
Trading off in-game wealth in exchange for more opportunities to do content you like is very different (and, to me, less appealing) than trading off opportunities to do content you don't like in exchange for more opportunities to do content you do like.
On March 16 2019 08:08 Duka08 wrote: I mean, scarabs are rare and one-time use lol. Especially now with how slow Syndicate progress is. They're still great for juicing a specific thing WAY up, with an initial investment.
This is only because GGG didn't really figure out what they want scarabs to be and didn't find a way to roll them into the real game. When they ate up half the frag tab, I think people assumed we'd be getting them on the regular, not at the rarity we have them now. Roll scarabs into regular loot, and they have enough abundance that people can trade for the scarabs they want by offloading the ones they don't.
Also, GGG seems like they didn't actually figure out what they want scarabs to be because while a bunch of scarabs are league mechanics, the others are straight loot boosters that don't otherwise modify how a map behaves (Reliquary, Carto, Div, Shaper, Elder). These can pretty easily just be replaced by other mechanics that align with how people want to farm: Alva and Jun should get their own scarabs, Carto scarabs should have "Area contains Zana", and Lab trials and Abysses should get corresponding scarabs (lab trial scarab would also help unlocking Uber Lab in SSF).
Also, get rid of Torment scarabs because really, they're totally useless.
On March 16 2019 08:08 Duka08 wrote: I mean, scarabs are rare and one-time use lol. Especially now with how slow Syndicate progress is. They're still great for juicing a specific thing WAY up, with an initial investment.
This is only because GGG didn't really figure out what they want scarabs to be and didn't find a way to roll them into the real game. When they ate up half the frag tab, I think people assumed we'd be getting them on the regular, not at the rarity we have them now. Roll scarabs into regular loot, and they have enough abundancy that people can trade for the scarabs they want by offloading the ones they don't.
Also, GGG seems like they didn't actually figure out what they want scarabs to be because while a bunch of scarabs are league mechanics, the others are straight loot boosters that don't otherwise modify how a map behaves (Reliquary, Carto, Div, Shaper, Elder). These can pretty easily just be replaced by other mechanics that align with how people want to farm: Alva and Jun should get their own scarabs, Carto scarabs should have "Area contains Zana", and Lab trials and Abysses should get corresponding scarabs (lab trial scarab would also help unlocking Uber Lab in SSF).
Also, get rid of Torment scarabs because really, they're totally useless.
Yeah I'd be down for this. Scarabs could be interesting if they were way more prolific. There were a lot of aspects of Betrayal that they probably could have integrated into core better, rather than pretty much copy/pasting it but at a much lower occurrence rate lol. Maybe next few content patches will do that.
On March 16 2019 06:09 TheYango wrote: People just like loot pinata mechanics. The leagues that are "popular" are the ones that offer a lot of extra loot or free pack size with minimum added effort or difficulty. Even though from my perspective, these kinds of mechanics don't actually constructively improve the game in any way.
I started playing in Harbinger, and after hearing everyone's dislike of Harbinger as a league, one of the most confusing things to me was how well-liked Perandus was. The two leagues have the same core gameplay loop: fight some extra faceless mobs that take too long to spawn, kill your framerate, and drop special currency in annoyingly small denominations that's tedious to pick up. All Perandus has over Harbinger is a fat guy that spawns every few maps and offers you free loot in exchange for that annoying-to-pick-up currency, and sometimes that free loot is T1 rares at unreasonably low prices.
No real difference in the core gameplay, but a fat guy that offers you free shit is apparently the difference between a great league and "garbinger". What makes a league "not boring" or "not too complicated" to people is just the amount of free shit they get, not the actual simplicity or complexity of the mechanics involved.
I would say the main difference is that Perandus was pre Breach and Harbinger was post Breach.
On March 16 2019 06:09 TheYango wrote: People just like loot pinata mechanics. The leagues that are "popular" are the ones that offer a lot of extra loot or free pack size with minimum added effort or difficulty. Even though from my perspective, these kinds of mechanics don't actually constructively improve the game in any way.
I started playing in Harbinger, and after hearing everyone's dislike of Harbinger as a league, one of the most confusing things to me was how well-liked Perandus was. The two leagues have the same core gameplay loop: fight some extra faceless mobs that take too long to spawn, kill your framerate, and drop special currency in annoyingly small denominations that's tedious to pick up. All Perandus has over Harbinger is a fat guy that spawns every few maps and offers you free loot in exchange for that annoying-to-pick-up currency, and sometimes that free loot is T1 rares at unreasonably low prices.
No real difference in the core gameplay, but a fat guy that offers you free shit is apparently the difference between a great league and "garbinger". What makes a league "not boring" or "not too complicated" to people is just the amount of free shit they get, not the actual simplicity or complexity of the mechanics involved.
I would say the main difference is that Perandus was pre Breach and Harbinger was post Breach.
Also, Perandus was the first time a league was basically only free shit and it was a shake-up of the usual game for many, so of course many found it fun because different.
€ @ Duka Of course you can argue what Mathil said, Bestiary was basically see a beast-> catch it -> done. Whenever you felt like it could visit the Bestiary and use the recipes you found.
I kinda liked Betrayal as it had a real goal by reaching the Safehouses and then the mastermind. As a pretty casual player i went for the most intelligence i could get, any dropped items were just a bonus. In comparison the nexus is too vague for me, is there a real boss i can reach or finish recovering the memories? But even if there is, it looks like way too much hassle to get there with the restrictions of placing the memories and refreshing them to keep the connections etc.
Man im on uber elder quest now and i just cant build up the maps to run him. At current prices it costs like 3 exalt for one run. I got the setup ready but all the maps just downgrade and im now down to t13, which im also about to run out of. Im even gimping myself and running with 25% quant gear. All other pieces cost 2+ex themselves. I hate this league. + Show Spoiler +
On March 17 2019 03:00 Warri wrote: Man im on uber elder quest now and i just cant build up the maps to run him. At current prices it costs like 3 exalt for one run. I got the setup ready but all the maps just downgrade and im now down to t13, which im also about to run out of. Im even gimping myself and running with 25% quant gear. All other pieces cost 2+ex themselves. I hate this league. + Show Spoiler +
You probably know this and use quant gear for just more currency/high tier items, but just to be sure: quantity on gear does not imcrease map drop rate.
On March 17 2019 03:00 Warri wrote: Man im on uber elder quest now and i just cant build up the maps to run him. At current prices it costs like 3 exalt for one run. I got the setup ready but all the maps just downgrade and im now down to t13, which im also about to run out of. Im even gimping myself and running with 25% quant gear. All other pieces cost 2+ex themselves. I hate this league. + Show Spoiler +
Do more Delve, get it to level where it will drop top tier maps.
EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/JhQMAxR.jpg)
