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I don't know the statistics of revenue for poe 1 and 2, but I stopped playing poe1 (in standard, not league) because my characters kept getting nerfed.
I dont want to repeat the same thing 1000+ times to be back at the same spot.
I understand that people in league can make significantly better characters and earn more rewards, but I like to play at my pace.
Years ago, before poe 2, when ruthless was announced I considered that it would inevitably influence the standard game and make it less interesting over time.
Then slowly the game stopped being interesting for me.
I never had the zoomy characters, but they were not exactly slow. Now they were. Slow, weak and getting one shot randomly.
The nail in the coffin was when GGG nerfed headhunter (indirectly).
Chris Wilson is no longer at GGG, and while I have not heard what happened, I believe he did mention that the day headhunter gets nerfed, he wont be at the company.
The game is not horrible or anything like that, but it's no longer for me.
Because of this, i do not even want to try PoE2.
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I dunno, there's a lot of misinformation here.
HH is still incredibly strong and regularly used in top-end farming builds. The culling strike foulborn HH is about 75% the cost of Mageblood despite MB being a much more flexible item (fits into more builds).
In Sentinel, GGG decided to replace the old miscellaneous mods with the previous league's Archnemesis system. As I understand it, this was at Chris' direction. Ultimately this was a failed idea and they largely went back to a system similar to the one before. During this period, rares essentially just had their archnem modifier(s) instead of a grabbag, though each archnem mod was equal to about 5 mods from before. The problem was really just in sustaining your HH mods.
As a result, GGG changed HH mid-league (changing uniques mid-league is very rare for them to do outside of outright exploits / instability). Now, it grants buffs for 60 seconds (formerly 20) and they reworked rares to diversify what was spawning in each area. HH immediately skyrocketed in price that league. Even after the demise of archnem mods, those buffs persisted.
A few additional times down the road, Chris dropped the ball keeping track of what ended up being major changes to the game that caused quite a bit of player backlash. The big Kalandra nerf of league mechanic drop quantity/rarity is one that comes the mind. He put out a post later basically saying "it was communicated to me, but I dropped the ball by not understanding the impacts this would have" and they had to do all kinds of damage control.
Anyway, fast forward a number of years later and this is when Chris finally quietly steps down in the background. Mark took over as the POE1 game director (Chris has previously been both POE1 director and CEO) and there was a year or so of transition going on in the background. If anything, it was probably multiple cases of dropping the ball and being worn down from community backlash that precipitated it.
Chris has his own YouTube channel now, and while he hasn't talked much about leaving, he has said that part of it was that being a CEO was never really his passion and that he wanted to get back to the actual development side of making games. He's started his own small studio and is making what sounds to be an ARPG, though there are basically no details available.
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Standard is just a weird ecosystem in general. Your characterization is actually backwards, though. You can make much, much, MUCH stronger characters in Standard than you've ever been able to in a league due to all the legacy modifiers and crafting options that exist in Standard.
Here's an amulet Empyrean crafted in Standard just today.
You end up with two types of players there, with one just wanting to do their own thing at their own pace and others wanting to make the craziest shit imaginable using hundreds of mirrors worth of legacy items. I'd say it's the latter that thrives because you're right that the regular balance changes do make it hard to consistently play a build over a long period of time.
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On November 25 2025 20:33 iloveav wrote:
I don't know the statistics of revenue for poe 1 and 2, but I stopped playing poe1 (in standard, not league) because my characters kept getting nerfed.
I dont want to repeat the same thing 1000+ times to be back at the same spot.
I understand that people in league can make significantly better characters and earn more rewards, but I like to play at my pace.
Years ago, before poe 2, when ruthless was announced I considered that it would inevitably influence the standard game and make it less interesting over time.
Then slowly the game stopped being interesting for me.
I never had the zoomy characters, but they were not exactly slow. Now they were. Slow, weak and getting one shot randomly.
The nail in the coffin was when GGG nerfed headhunter (indirectly).
Chris Wilson is no longer at GGG, and while I have not heard what happened, I believe he did mention that the day headhunter gets nerfed, he wont be at the company.
The game is not horrible or anything like that, but it's no longer for me.
Because of this, i do not even want to try PoE2.
I just to interject here.
Chris Wilson was the driving force, atleast of what we the players saw publicly, behind Ruthless. The idea that Chris is gone because we can no longer zoom and revel in power fantasy has no basis in what actually happened with PoE and GGG.
Find some PoE players who were there for those leagues and actively following the conversation and ask them about 'The vision'.
Chris repeatedly pushed for the game to be slower, progression to be slower and good loot to be rarer. And the community rebelled every single time GGG tried to force that into the game and every single time they had to walk it back.
That's why Ruthless was created, to give 'the vision' its own place. And almost no one played it because it was aweful.
And then PoE 2 launches as Ruthless 2.0 and the community again very loudly complained that this was not the game they wanted.
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Headhunter is still very good. I've been using it with my on kill explosion elementalist and it is very fun to play (except a mod that you get sometimes that randomly teleport you, that one is annoying). I also used old headhunter before Archenemesis, so I've used both versions.
Yes, old mods were stronger, but stolen mods from monsters now last 60 seconds (they used to last 20 seconds before Archnemesis) so one thing for another.
And about Chris, yes, he created an awesome game but he was stubborn and too stuck in the past. I'm very happy with both the currency exchange and the async trade from Faustus (Chris was against both). The old trade system was very annoying. Also they added lot of cool QoL stuff this last two years.
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On November 24 2025 13:01 Craton wrote:
It should, FROSS was one of the strongest last league and didn't really see any changes in the patch.
I didn't knew that but yeah, god dam it's strong. just did some 4 men uber elder without issue or farming T17.
Will keep that build in mind for futur time !
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I really hope they continue POE 1 seasons long into the POE 2 release, if numbers continue to play it. Even if the seasons are less filled with endgame-changing mechanics and new items/crafting.
POE 2 doesn't have to become as fast-paced as POE 1 just to attract POE 1 fans. It can have its own devoted fans.
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ALLEYCAT BLUES50685 Posts
Druid looks amazing
league is fine, I enjoyed synthesis and incursion so I like putting them together.
endgame is still looking ass, might skip the league.
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I loved playing Druid in D2. The PoE2 Druid looks awesome enough for me to load up PoE2 again!
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7 days! Lots of buffs for ascendancies. Tons of changes overall. I'll be trying this league.
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mod edit
User was banned for this post.
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Is the guild still active? Coming back from a long break, IGN is Jace_V if someone can shoot me an invite. Thx
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On December 13 2025 11:22 Glacierz wrote:
Is the guild still active? Coming back from a long break, IGN is Jace_V if someone can shoot me an invite. Thx
Guild is still active on league launch, at least for PoE 1. Felt pretty popping in Keepers week 1/2. At this point it's pretty quiet. Don't know about PoE 2
I tried inviting Jace_V on poe1, it said char not exists. I can do it on PoE 2 if that's what you meant
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I'm starting late on the new PoE2 season. I'll be trying something bear-druid related followed by monk. I heard that the league mechanic was largely panned by critics.
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Yea seems like it is pretty unrewarding. They are updating it at least, maybe they'll turn it around. Shame because it reminds me of synthesis, which I eventually loved, which was also really clunky and rewarding on launch. They didn't learn their lessons xD
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I don't really understand why they are doing league mechanics at all. Like, the game isn't finished. Just release new acts, new endgame stuff (or iterate the current endgame), classes/ascendencies/skills and crafting mechanics. There are so many core features not complete and adding them will keep it fresh with every update. Why do they also need to clutter the not even finished campaign with arbitrary bullshit? Just because they need to do that in their 10+ year old live service game and the player base "expects" that? Just finish the core game first and move to a league mechanic based update cycle after...
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How different is that from early PoE?
I didnt play PoE1 in the truly early days, but mechanics we take for granted as core mechanics now (ascendancies, strongboxes, bandits, shrines?) were all part of leagues / league mechanics, no? PoE1 was certainly 'far from finished' for a long long time also, even the Kitava stuff is new, it was Dominus as the terminus for a long time iirc
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The first league mechanics were like "hey, rares now have additional modifiers" and "hey, here are some uniques that spawn in areas and insta-gibb you". They really didn't spend much resources on league mechanics because they didn't have the resources to do so. League mechanics had less impact, there was less clutter, they were mostly just marginal additions. They also split mechanics from HC and SC back then. HC got the insta-gibb mechanics with no loot and SC the insta-gibb mechanics with loot. Big stuff like ascendencies or additional acts came on top of league mechanics. They were release in big patches alongside each other when they were done.
Anyhow, I think PoE2 is entirely different horse. GGG was a way different company back then. They had no money, no experience, no devs. They just created some game and released it into early access and developed it from there to make it possible. Now they have hundreds of devs, high influx of money through microtransactions, Tencent and whatnot. PoE2 was planned with certain features. Ascendancies are a core feature of PoE2. We already have some of them but not all of them. It's not a new system that needs to be released via a league mechanic, it's a system that needs to be completed. Same with the campaign or core endgame.
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That's fair. It does seem like the same design ethos throughout - you get new league mechanics for each league, and possibly some new or reworked core mechanics each league (asynch trading, more acts, etc) though if stuff isn't completed I can see that being frustrating. I'd assume that's being worked on in tandem, but your point is taken that you'd expect them to be going barebones on league mechanics in favour of 'finishing the game'. Poe1 had the luxury of being the firstborn, without having anything to compare against. PoE2 can't follow that same path.
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Druid is still a little janky, but I did enjoy some of the leveling. I haven't played it much since the first patch after season launch.
I don't really care that POE2 devs are trying out new mechanics in the framework of "seasons." As long as they don't feel duty-bound to bring a version of it back if it doesn't work. It's clear to me that they like toying with novel approaches that they can just drop if its no good.
Past successes were async trading and the most successful POE1 leagues that became bedrock POE1 systems and gained POE2 gameplay equivalents (though morphed in POE2). I'm optimistic about the feedback surrounding "clutter" limits how much each season mechanic impacts future POE2 core systems. POE1 clutter isn't something that's old and fading from memory.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/O0Jchi5.png)
