GGG Why?

One of the most fun experiences of path of exile in my opinion, and I'm sure many other people feel the same... is the rush at league start.

Seeing people die on hardcore with the chat updates, trying to be the first player in a new zone, rushing for that first guardian boss drops or maven drops.

This league was the first league I started worrying for the direction of Poe.

Firstly:

1-2 hours of waiting in queue on league start, this completely destroys any aspect of the competitiveness of a league start. the fun in rushing is gone.

There is no more competitive aspect to this game on league start.

Second:

Either under-tested and/or badly implemented league mechanic and balancing.
T17 maps are much harder than uber bosses, yet they serve as a bridge to uber bosses.

The league mechanic is Un skippable and forced onto you at every point of the game.

Initially the corpses in maps will overlap with currency items that you would like to loot, causing your whole experience to come to a standstill in order to click that 1 divine orb behind the damn corpse overlay.

Spending 5, 10, heck 15 minutes crafting because you need to run around and bury corpses, only to then get some piece of gear that not even the vendors want to take.

Third:

Broken strategies nerfing, a broken strategy for farming end game comes out - top players abuse the cr*p out of it to make massive amounts of currency, the strategy gets nerfed... everyone else is left out... further completely destroying any potential competitiveness in the game.

Not to mention now the economy is so skewed, you have people that were in a position to abuse these pre-nerfed mechanics and are now sitting on absurd amounts of currency compared to the rest of the player base.

Fourth:
Drop rate issues. Recent changes made it so that items such as forbidden flame/flesh can drop from eater/exarch.
As it stands, I have done over 20 eaters and 20 exarchs, maybe not much compared to someone that plays this game for a living.

In 40 kills, I have not seen either one of these jewels, and if I ever do see one there are so many variations that the chances of dropping one for my build is basically 0.

There was another game that also turned their game into a grinding forever hellscape, it was called World of Warcraft - last I checked they weren't doing too well.

Lastly:
Of course, not everything is all bad, there are some very welcomed changes this league - the new scarabs are fun, some of the new transfigured gems builds a sense of curiosity on how they can be used.

The uber changes with fragments are not bad although they are completely walled off by t17 content. (including the map slot)

I guess the big worry is, compared to a league like affliction with so many exceptional additions like charms, tintures etc.... which have now been removed...

The mechanic although slightly overpowered at the time, enabled a lot of builds, especially attribute stackers and minion builds, those type of changes would have been nice to have for t17 maps...

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What the heck is happening here? lol?

Is this the start of the decline for poe? Perhaps an Apple-like forced obsolescence to get people to move over to poe2 on release?

It saddens me to say for the first time in a decade of playing this masterpiece, I feel like leaving it behind for other options.

best answer to give prob is poe VISION.....

Agree OP - it's a convoluted mess.

It's crazy to me that the league with the easiest obtainable ballpark "mirror-tier" items ever is also simultaneously one of the worst leagues ever.

It's going to take a lot of work for GGG to recover from this league. They gave players so much new and different stuff but it was all half baked and by the time it's all balanced it wont be new and exciting anymore.

FOMO was bad this league but what about FOMO next league when GGG removes temp power and 15 div HH? Only exploiters and no-lifers win.

The only thing I complain about is how mandatory the league is, it's not like in Sanctum, where you had to enter the area to access the league content, the Trials of the Ancestors with a coin, in Affliction enter wildwood, not on Necropolis no no noo, it is mandatory to have half of the league content (the other half would be corpse craft).

I don't understand the need to make it mandatory, I don't want to have stronger monsters, nor monsters that drop more items, I just don't want it to be imposed , I want to be able to decide whether or not I want to face league content, not even Metamorph dared to be so intrusive, and I even miss a little those rare ones that flicker you on hasted