Tales of the Aggronaut

Good Morning Friends! I am still on my Path of Exile nonsense. We got another update as to what events led to the cascade of issues at the start of Lake of Kalandra. I think it largely makes sense, especially as a software developer myself… there is always room for the law of unintended consequences. The truth is that I feel like I am honestly in a better state this expansion than I was the last. I have way more raw currency than I had during the entirety of the last league, and I am slowly starting to catch up on the total unique count. So when the post talks about the average playing not being impacted… I believe it. In fact, it feels like the average player is probably in a better state now than they have been in the past. We got another patch yesterday, but the ArchNemesis changes did not make it into it. What did however was a general rebalancing of some of the harvest changes as well as some buffs to the Lake of Kalandra. I think the truth is that the folks who have been most impacted are the currency farmers, who are looking for the most efficient “chaos per hour” farming rates. They are the loudest voices in the room, but also don’t necessarily represent my play style. I’ve never engaged with the trade mechanics other than the dump gear in our shared guild vault. I mostly like killing things until I get something interesting and then maybe tweaking it a bit with the crafting system. That said at some point I am probably going to have to buy some gear, but seem to have a reasonable amount of currency to do this.

Last night I spent a good deal of time running around and doing maps with my friend Ace. I am trying to purposefully swap things up… yall know them as Grace but over time they have shifted more and more to using Ace so I am going to try and do the mental swap as well. All told we ran a bunch of maps and an expedition that I had laying around. The expedition was really interesting but also stressful because I had to route so many charges around the map. All told other than one map that seemed to have modifiers from hell, we had no issues completing them and got pretty solid rewards. On the bad modifier map, it was yellow and seemed to have some crazy poison dot that would just shred me. Ace managed to save the day and finish the final boss which gave us both credit… even though I was dead with no portals back into the map.

It may not look like much but I feel like we had a very successful night of knocking out maps. All told we both now have all of the Tier 1 maps and all of the Tier 2 maps finished, with a few tier 3… and then I have a random tier 5 over there in the corner thanks to Kirac. One of my long-range goals for this season is to complete my atlas which means I am currently sitting on 18 maps completed out of 115 total. That is a long way to go but still feels like progress. On the achievements front, I have finished collecting a full set of rewards, but only the Tier 1 versions of them. I will need to be able to run level 81 maps to qualify for working on a lot of the later rewards. As I am currently sitting at level 78, I have a ways to go before I get there.

In other random news, I’ve been working on a new section for the blog where I track where I am in the games I regularly play. If you have read this blog for any length of time, you will notice that there are specific games that I tend to haunt over and over. For years I had the regularly playing section in my sidebar, but once I remove a game there was no place to store that information permanently. I am still not sure what I will do with this section once I am finished building it out and where I will integrate it into the existing menu structure, but you can check out a sneak peek of it in progress. There are a few more games that I want to add and I also intend to create a section for tracking my accounts on different platforms. Think of it as a social media link page, but for games. The post Slow But Steady Mapping appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Last night I tuned into a stream for the person who designed the build that I am currently running and encountered something that I found interesting. She stated a few times that “this is a league enjoyed” stream, as in someone who is actually enjoying Lake of Kalandra and isn’t going to be doom and gloom about the game. I feel like, after the last few days of posts, it might be important for me to reiterate that I also am a “League Enjoyer”. I am having a lot of fun playing Lake of Kalandra and while I am very far behind the curve of everyone “quitting” the game, I think my own personal play style will have very little impact on the problems that folks are running into. There are times I explore topics on my blog because it interests me, almost from a sociological standpoint. The situation that is currently happening with Path of Exile is one of those, and while I am firmly enjoying the experience of running around with sparklers and making mobs explode around me… I still like to keep a pulse on what is happening in the larger community.

Yesterday I started running maps for the first time. I had been holding off on killing Kitava for the final time until I could get through the third phase of the labyrinth and get my ascension. I had a good run that went south on the final boss and did not feel like fighting my way through the labyrinth again. However, I did manage to get a successful run over lunch yesterday and spent the first bit of the evening knocking out some of the early maps. Thankfully I have a stack of strand maps and am hoping to get the last tier 1 map that I have not completed as a drop in one of those. I keep checking Kirac but so far he has yet to sell the map that I need so that I can finish out that first row. I am well into knocking things out on the second row however and even have some banked maps for the third and fourth rows. All told that I have been having quite a bit of fun running around maps and I feel like I have much better survival than I did last season.

There is still a large amount of what I would consider “kooky” loot. For example apparently yesterday the game thought I needed 80 Armourer’s Scraps to drop from the same mob. That said the quantity and quality of loot seem to have improved considerably. So far every single map boss that I have killed has dropped at a minimum a unique. Granted most of the uniques that I am now finding are not what I would consider good, but getting them regardless is “interesting”. I have noticed the “higher bases” on the drops that I am getting as well which does make them something maybe to build into. I got my first six-link, but sadly it was a weird GRRBBB two-handed axe…. that was corrupted so not much we can do about the gem colors.

The other day I posted a screenshot of the currency tab of my stash as an indicator of the “currency drought”. This morning I took a similar screenshot and sandwiched them together. I’ve not really done much differently than I was doing before, and already I have doubled my scouring orbs, and chaos orbs, and picked up a few currencies that I was missing entirely. I have quite a bit more fluid currency for crafting in general, and this is not even taking into account the crafts that I have spent currency on. I know I made a modification to an item the other night that cost 4 chaos for example. Basically, we have arrived at “this seems fine” territory for me at least. Granted I am not “juicing” maps and probably never will to the extent that the folks who are complaining were doing. I am also never going to be a currency trader and if I engage at all with the market, it will be to strategically buy a handful of items needed to finish out a build. Even though I have trade stash tabs… I am not certain I would ever mess with selling anything.

Last night I spent a while working on my hideout, to arrange it in a better manner for running maps since that is ultimately the mode I am going to be in for a while. I moved back to the graveyard and have set up a little corner surrounding the mapping device so that all of the mapping-related NPCs are there as well as the crafting bench, horticulture bench, and my stashes. The only thing that I really wish I could change… is so that the game returns me to my hideout rather than dumping me out in the Act 11 hub when I log back into the game. In theory, the only reason why I ever want to go back to Act 11 is if I am shopping for something from one of the vendors there. Other than that my hideout offers pretty much everything else that I could want.

I also spent a bit of time yesterday with Delve. This is a system that I greatly enjoy and it is a little bit more lag friendly as I have been struggling a bit with parsec and lag spikes that can easily kill me in a map. This morning there is a new thread on the Path of Exile forums talking about nerfing down ArchNemesis and I look forward to seeing how that changes things up tonight. I fought a MetaMorph last night in a Lake of Kalandra map… and it absolutely took me a good five minutes to kill so I can see the frustrations. However as I said at the start of the post, even though I might talk about some of the things happening in the larger community, I am very much still enjoying my time in the game. So if there is a spectrum from “League Enjoyer” to “League Hater”, throw me in the “Enjoyer” column. I still really enjoy the Lake mechanic and since I am not playing this game for profit… I think that is what makes the difference. The post A League Enjoyer appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Good Morning Friends. In the last league, I did not even know that the Challenges system existed, and as a result, I probably left some cosmetics on the table that I could have wrapped up easily. This time around I am trying to farm up the obnoxiously iridescent set of armor, and at least walk away with the first phase of it. At this point, I am close to getting the third reward and am bumming my friends to see if they have any unique boots that I can borrow to equip quickly and get credit. The rest of the stuff is going to take considerably more time and involve specific types of maps. At this very moment, I am at the point of killing Kitava and closing out act 10, but before doing so I want to finish the 3rd trip through the labyrinth. I came close to doing this last night but hit a bit of bad luck and took a death on the final boss… which frustrated me enough to just do something else for the rest of the evening. While I slept another set of patch notes was released along with a general statement from Chris Wilson on Reddit. I am going to include both and then talk about them.

The Reddit Statement

• Read the Full Thread Here

We will deploy a patch soon that significantly improves item drops throughout Path of Exile. This post broadly describes the major changes. Detailed patch notes will be posted later. We have massively increased the rarity bonus for items dropped by monsters with multiple Archnemesis mods. This is proportional to difficulty, so there’s a moderate improvement for two mods, a large improvement for three mods, and a huge improvement for four mods. We have massively increased the rarity of items dropped by Map Bosses. They now act like late Act Bosses, dropping fewer normal and magic items but many more rare and unique items. We have globally increased the drop rate of unique items by 33%. In addition, with the massive item rarity bonuses added to map bosses and multiple-mod rare monsters, they will drop many more uniques than before. We have globally increased the base drop rate of currency items by 25%. Because we removed some drops from past league content, we are giving rare/unique items back from rare and unique monsters, but are giving currency back from all content in the game. We have reduced the cost of many Harvest crafts, with many becoming twice as cheap. We relied too much on players having specialized in Harvest when we were costing these. It’s now balanced around less Harvest investment. We have also reduced the life of all Harvest monsters. These changes will be deployed tomorrow rather than today. We have significantly improved the amount of rewards from the Lake of Kalandra. Improvements to the rewards from league reflections at the Lake will be deployed tomorrow. We are aiming to deploy most of these changes today and will post the full patch notes as soon as we can in a separate post. These contain more buffs that aren’t large enough to list here. We’re still looking into other areas, including the effectiveness of Tainted Currency Items.

Patch Notes 3.19.0d

• Read the Full Forum Thread Here

3.19.0d Patch Notes

This patch includes improvements to item drops, including those from Map bosses and Rare monsters with 2-4 Archnemesis modifiers, reductions to the life of Harvest monsters, and a few bug fixes and improvements. Changes to the Lifeforce cost of Harvest crafts and improvements to rewards from league reflections in the Lake of Kalandra will be deployed tomorrow.

Item Drop Changes

• Map Bosses now drop fewer items, but of substantially better rarity, resulting in more unique items being found from Map Bosses.
• Globally increased the base drop rate of unique items by 33%.
• Globally increased the base drop rate of currency items by 25%.

Archnemesis Changes

• Increased the item rarity for monsters with two Archnemesis modifiers, and substantially increased the item rarity for monsters with three and four Archnemesis modifiers. With the item drop conversion system, this results in a lot more powerful drops when hitting certain combinations of modifiers. This also results in a lot more Unique items from monsters with three or four modifiers.

Harvest Changes

• Reduced the life of Primal Blisterlord by 23%, Primal Crushclaw by 15%, and Vivid Devourer by 15%, in order to bring them more in line with other Harvest monsters.
• Reduced the life of all other Harvest monsters, bringing the Harvest monster life more in line with monsters found in other league content.
• These changes do not affect the Spectred versions of these monsters.

Improvements and Bug fixes

• Kirac will no longer offer the “Slay the Beyond Boss” mission, due to irreconcilable difficulties encountered with the Beyond revamp.
• Fixed an issue where strongboxes could sometimes drop no items. Strongboxes will now always drop at least one item.
• Fixed an overflow issue from socketing exceptional support gems in the Vaal Caress Unique Gloves, causing them to behave as they were level 10 gems.
• Fixed a bug where unlimited hideout decorations could sometimes not be placed.
• Fixed a bug where Cartographer’s Strongboxes in the Lake of Kalandra would mostly drop Tier 1 Maps.
• Fixed a bug where monsters could sometimes get stuck in terrain in the Lake of Kalandra.
• Fixed a bug where the Iridescent Weapon Effect did not propagate to your off-hand.
• Fixed a client crash that could occur with the Bony Arachnomorph Pet microtransaction.

This patch has been deployed without restarting the servers, however you will need to restart your client to patch the client fixes.

Anchoring

In negotiations, there is a concept called “Anchoring” where effectively the first person who sets the terms of the discussion will ultimately control the end results of the discussion. You can see this when an item is reported to have a retail price of $1000 but you can get it on “sale” for only $100. That item was never designed to cost $1000 and likely has maybe $20 of parts and labor into creating it, with the rest of that $100 margin made up of profit split between the distribution, retail, and manufacturing network. The same is true when you walk into salary negotiations when you throw out a high number fully expecting to negotiate downwards to something you are comfortable with. I feel like this back-and-forth that we are currently experiencing with Path of Exile is another prime example of this.

Essentially there are a few sticking points that I can see from the community. The first is the dogged continued reliance on the ArchNemesis system which is largely hated. The second has been a great lowering in the total quantity of drops, or at least the types of drops that the economy of the Path of Exile trade league operates on. Thirdly and also extremely important is the decimation of the Harvest crafting patterns so that there are fewer ways to create guaranteed good crafted items by removing much of the meta crafting system. We know that Path of Exile leagues are effectively a test bed for concepts that are going to be core to Path of Exile 2, and Chris Wilson has said as much during interviews. Let’s break down each of these points and talk about my theory surrounding them.

ArchNemesis

I believe that ArchNemesis is an experiment in generational efficiency. It is much easier to generate a random enemy when all you have to do is take its base stats, then tack on a handful of predefined bonuses in order to arrive at a specific fixed end point in difficulty. The community hates this system because it creates speedbumps to the efficiency of running content. ARPGs generally speaking are about taking the most efficient path to the most rewards, and the players will always optimize this process. The fact that Grinding Gear Games refuses to walk away from this system that is so seemingly universally loathed by the community… tells me that this is a key part of their strategy for Path of Exile 2. Each league is effectively beta-testing this system so that hopefully by the time we reach POE2 that it will be something better. I also believe that ArchNemesis is intentionally designed to be a speed bump that slows down the most efficient runs. What I think Grinding Gear Games is losing sight of however is that having to chew through a single boss for five to ten minutes isn’t fun. If this system is ever going to succeed the “fun” equation will have to balance so that the risk versus the reward of these encounters is more skewed towards the player. There seems to be a focus on increasing the difficulty of the game, but in truth… most of the players don’t seem to want this as evidenced by the massive number of players who never reach endgame levels.

Trade Currency

I think on some level Path of Exile is going through an identity crisis. I think the team at Grinding Gear Games woke up one morning and realized that the game that they designed, is not being played in the manner that they had originally intended it to be played. Based on what I am seeing with the way the changes are being shaped, it seems as though there is a clear indication that Path of Exile is intended to be played by relying on dropped gear. Instead, the most optimal way of playing the game is to grind out a certain amount of fungible trade currency, and then buy the specific items that you need for your build from those who have dedicated their gameplay experience to being player run stores. It is generally accepted that almost everything you get as drops is going to be crap, so your best bet is to grind out something that can be sold… and then use the earnings from that to purchase your way to success. The negative side effect of this system however is that it is deeply counterintuitive to anyone who has come from any other ARPG. The whole trade economy is a giant mess, and short of the introduction of an official auction house system, I am not sure how to make it more approachable to most players. I think the grand design of the game was to largely play as “SSF” or “Solo Self Found” for those who have not heard the term. The trade options were there in order to facilitate fair trades, and fix the core problem with some of the issues surrounding Diablo 2 and players getting fleeced. However, this instead turned into a game of its own much like the gold farmers and auction house PVPers from MMORPGs. I think with Path of Exile 2, the attempt is being made to change this.

Item Crafting

In this grand plan of trying to make gear matter again, Harvest stood in the way as an obstacle because it essentially invalidate the reliance of players on item drops. Through a truly obtuse system of crafting, you could control very specific attributes on an item and ultimately create something that was perfected for one of the currently in meta builds. The crafting currency it seems was originally designed to be used as a gamble, rather than allowing players to have a deterministic way of getting the specific items that they wanted. Essentially with patience, following a specific procedure, and pouring through a ton of currency… you could get the exact item that you wanted. Again this removed the focus of player attention from grinding for the perfect item drop to acquiring the currency needed to make the perfect item. Again I seriously think at some point Grinding Gear Games realized that they had optimized their game to be played in a manner different from the original goal. Path of Exile 2 and the design sessions leading up to it, likely was a lens through which the original goals were refocused. Now we are seeing a series of changes that have shaken the foundation of the trade economy, and a series of changes anchored by something extreme… and then slowly walking some of that back but still with the goal of shifting the way players interact with content. As an outsider, I would rather be able to play a game where I could rely on drops than one where I have to craft my own gear or rely heavily on a trade economy to function. While these changes are legitimately decimating entire ways of playing the game… I can’t necessarily disagree if the intent is to make item drops matter more.

Identity Crisis

I keep referring to this as an identity crisis, in part because I have seen this play out in a similar fashion in another game that I enjoy. Magic the Gathering was never intended to be built around constructed play, or at least not the variation of constructed play that we have today. I’ve read before that the original intent from Richard Garfield, the designer of Magic the Gathering was that players would effectively open a starter deck and a few booster packs and then play with whatever they happened to draw. The cards had wildly different levels of power on purpose because the original intent was for each of these powerful cards to be diluted by a large number of less powerful cards through sheer chance. He honestly continues to follow this core concept of making the best with what you have been given in his more modern games like Keyforge and even his digital card game SolForge. What instead happened is that it became far more efficient to buy the singles you needed to craft the deck that you wanted to play, and as such the focus moved away from “cracking packs” as the core means of card acquisition. This did a few things… it caused an arms race in deck potency as players distilled deck design into only using the most powerful cards in specific combinations to create turn-one win scenarios. Wizards of the Coast employed a number of strategies over the years to try and solve this disconnect between the original design of the game and how the players actually played the game, but these generally have backfired. Now you see an environment where “Draft” gameplay is largely insignificant and the most popular format is “Commander” which also has some of the most relaxed restrictions.

Then you have the MTG Finance community, which has a completely separate set of priorities independent of those who are just trying to play the game. I have to admit the first time I tried to dive into any of the discussions surrounding trade league, I got massive flashbacks to all of the MTG content I have consumed around card values, buyout attempts, and the sanctity of the reserved list. Again I don’t feel like Richard Garfield ever intended for certain cards to be more valuable than other cards, but that happened through low print runs, and the need to remove cards from the game… making them by nature more scarce as a result. So now Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro as a result… is having to design products that fit not only the casual player but also the competitive constructed player and the finance community. Maybe I am reading too much into this series of patches, but I feel like Grinding Gear Games is having its own moment of trying to figure out how to bring back the original design goals of the game. As a largely “SSF” player, I support the notion of making drops matter more. I really do not like the random difficulty spikes encountered by the ArchNemesis system, but I think that each league serves as a test bed for ways to tweak that content to make it feel more enjoyable. Path of Exile is one of the most obtuse games that I have ever played, and something needs to change with it if they ever hope to open it to new players. Making gear matter is absolutely one of those things that could help. We already know that the player-build system is greatly simplified and less reliant on specific item sockets in Path of Exile 2, which is another step in the right direction. For me personally, the thing that brings me the most pause is still how “out of band” the ArchNemesis system seems to be with the “fun” of running around and decimating mobs. Everything else seems like there is a method to the madness. The post The Kalandra Identity Crisis appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.