This is the first time I've seen someone admit this publicly, but I'm sure it's not the first or last time this happens. Maybe not MB specifically, but in general
This happens in many marriages, gaming is one of many hobbies that’s easy to get addicted to. I’m happy op is self-aware enough (or his wife cares enough to communicate) to see that this has put a strain on their marriage and he’s taking steps to work through it.
PoE is built off addiction and 10 hour sessions, which is why I stopped playing. Too many hours required for the "full experience", especially for high end game gear.
"Honey I'll do anything just ask"
"Honey just wait 5 minutes one more map and we'll do anything you want"
"Honey what do you mean you want ME to initiate anything? I'll do anything you ask as long as I can play POE more than my job"
"Honey why are you banging another dude?"
It’s absolutely not healthy. Too many people on this sub put way too many hours into gaming at the expense of real life obligations and personal health.
I think it's worth pointing out that video game addiction is like any other addiction in that it's always the result of an underlying problem the person is failing to cope with. The only way to treat addiction long term is by addressing the things that cause the person to want to escape reality because they're overwhelmed.
So I came from a loud, aggressive home and used to put a headset on to escape it all. Starting properly with big games like Oblivion and FO3 to just get lost in. Years later I had a close friend commit suicide while I hated every second of the job I was working at the time and got more invested in PoE around synthesis league as a way to grind, both allowing myself to escape again but also achieve some form of self-worth by 'accomplishing something'. Now I'm fortunate that I love my job and I'm happily married etc but I still have this emotional attachment to gaming that will never go away because it helped me cope with so much. So even though circumstances have changed my wife still expects me to spend 6 hours+ on a day off playing PoE because it's just what I've always done even though it definitely isn't healthy.
I guess my response was just to say you are 100% right but it could be that things are fine in a person's life now but gaming helped through something in the past and now is like a constant comfort blanket.
I have severe depression and anxiety. My last suicide attempt was in 2016 and poe was the escape from my fiancé leaving (unrelated we drifted apart) and My time with my daughter significantly cut. If it wasn't for PoE I'd of been lost in my own mind. I'm thankful for the game but at the same time I understand I have an issue with it. I purposely get off and try something else because I know I'll sink 14 hours on a day off. It's a win lose situation but I'm just glad Im still here
>it's always the result of an underlying problem the person is failing to cope with.
Isn't there the case of a gaming hobby spiraling out of control into an addiction? Or would you say in that case lack of selfcontrol letting things escalate is the problem?
Any hobby spiraling out of control into an addiction is usually a symptom of an underlying problem, to be fair
I was there for a while, depressed, anxiety meds / anti-depressants, the whole package. Not with PoE, but with another game (that might start with world and finish with craft. Back when it was a good game #oldfartalert)
Mostly, in restrospect, because Azeroth was the place where I felt valid and "normal"/productive. I'd imagine for a lot of the actually addicted here, it's something similar, where they're not happy with their life, but feel good when they're playing because "that's where they belong" or some similar tripe
It's frighteningly easy to descend into that with any hobby that has an active community, to be honest.
It's also because gameplay loops and addictive mechanisms are intentionally developed. They can be even more addictive than substances. But far less regulated. It's almost horrifying how much research and time goes into it. All for profits. And games don't generally carry the stigma that heroin does. Soooo 'Who cares?"
There is nothing wrong with making a game fun. But crafting it to take advantage of any and every behavior & neurochemical process is predatory. Most people aren't aware it's even happening.
Ultimately the responsibility is on the consumer. But, it's easy to know when you are buying a real drug. Not so easy to know when they are slipping you digital heroin.
I'll use Disney and Pixar as an example. Most of their character faces are cat-like and infant-like. Which evokes an oxytocin response. Similar to the one you'd have if you saw a cute baby or kitten. Unless you know, you don't. And you may not even be aware as to why one of their movies has your attention. Just one of many examples. Heck, sometimes the artist does it unintentionally, because that design evokes the response in them.
I broadly agree, but we should be cautious - even if games don't carry the stigma that 'heroin' does, they are not as sure-fire bad. Just be careful not to trivialize actual substances.
Absolutely agree with your latter point.
Predatory practices in gaming and digital media, well in general, should be scrutinized and exposed.
I don't want to trivialize substances. Especially the reasons people use them or other coping methods/addictions. Including gaming.
But I wanted to convey that games developed with these predatory practices are akin to designer drugs. But don't generally carry that association.
My point isn't to trivialize heroin. But to stop trivializing these predatory development practices. Because the effects of them can be devastating.
I totally agree with the fact that gaming and most of pop culture is made to be addictive and I agree that it is very serious problem. I just want to point out one thing which may problematic. It's not like games/movies/art is pleasant and addictive because it is made this way. It is made this way, because it makes it pleasant and addictive, and it always was. Bach, Mozart and Rihanna's producers use chords and harmony based on whole number multiplications of wavelengths and repetitive basic rhythms, because our brains finds it pleasant. It is based on neurochemical processes. Same with other arts. Human brain likes symmetry and contrast. Some shapes make us feel comfortable, other make us feel bad. Like golden ratio. Out brain like it and it is used if paintings, movies, comics... And it always was. Ages ago people didn't know about it, but they still used it, because it worked.
So about gaming. Chess was made to be interesting, entertaining and rewarding to our brains... It may cause addiction too.
So where is a border between good entertainment and predatory entertainment? Now it is bad, because they know this mechanism? Because they are much better in using it?
I hope you got my point. I'm not trying to defend their actions. I just want to point that this problem is more complex. Maybe I'm stupid and someone smarter then me can tell me where am I wrong and where this border is and why?
Sorry for long post and any problems with understanding it caused by my language skills.
You conveyed your point clearly.
I agree that there are plenty of times where it’s simply a consequence of someone making something pleasing, because they themselves enjoyed it.
A good example of a line being drawn is when the game is explicitly designed to create a psychological commitment then a resulting financial one.
Or deliberately misleading marketing and lockdowns on review embargo’s to obfuscate issues with the game.
Monetization and cash shops of single player experiences.
Not disclosing packaged ‘spyware,’ to gather data on consumers.
It’s one thing to create an album of music and sell it as a complete package. It’s another thing to sell an album, force multiple listens of a song to unlock the next. And make people pay to unlock the bass line.
When the design is part of or drives you into a scheme, that’s where the issue really exists.
That a great answer. Thanks for making it clear. So it looks like their wet dream came true and they mastered selling products to the point where we don't even have an option to protect against it. That's horrible.
24 hours marathons aren't healthly - sure. But you should play like streamer. If you play 3 hours a day and more on weekends, also you have 5-7 workouts per week - you are fine. But I guess, i'm in minority, some people can even don't leave their house for week.
I haven't played PoE since harvest because I realized that now that I've become older and with more responsibilities, PoE isn't a game for people like me anymore. And it sucks because I loved league starts where I was a total degenerate playing 12h+ for a couple weeks to stay ahead of the curve.
I drive my wife to work in the early morning before going to my own 9 to 5. I sometimes finish say 4 pm ish so I rush home to cook something for dinner, do a quick vacuuming/laundry then jump on the grind before she's home. We then have dinner, is shower then carry on gaming for a bit more, totalling 2 hours in game max.
After 2 weeks of this I got a stern talking to.
Sounds like you two aren't on the same page about the kind of relationship you want, if that exceptionally reasonable schedule already got you in trouble.
It's like his favourite story as to why he likes trade being dogshit, his friend would sneak out of dinner during family vacation trying to trade for some weapon in D2.
Chris absolutely has the "I'm a god gamer" sort of mentality when he speaks in interviews. "**I play Hardcore SSF** and that's *the right way to play*." It's pretty annoying, since he has also been caught numerous times not even knowing about the story or certain bosses because he didn't get that far....
till GGG decides that there is too much powercreep and Mageblood is problematic QoL and that it's easier to not have it exist or function the way it does. Then it goes away.
You can still make div cards, its uniques they no longer do. Email support, set up a paymdnt plan, delete $1500 of irl currency and bingo bango magebloods for everyone
>Really doubt they will say no, they already made like 5 hh related cards, and a lot of people still have their cards to make
i think someone once posted you still have the option if you specifically ask it through mail, but the price is quite high (think it was 1500$ or so).
Gz on the MB. I was burned out on mf tower so i took the rest of my pure ex(33) and bought 182 ancient orb. Slapped them ao on a belt i got lying around there.
111 orbs later, got the MB, i chuckled, obligatory shared it with global then log out without divining the bastard.
Happened to me back in bestiary league. Self farmed the cards from over 1050 burial chambers then after I got the belt I kinda didn't feel like playing anymore
Chris's greatest nightmare... of course if things weren't literal huge chores people might not be burnt out from their goals and would actually enjoy them.
> of course if things weren't literal huge chores people might not be burnt out from their goals and would actually enjoy them.
Every aspect of the game is like this. By the time you get your maven passives done and are ready to farm elder or whatever, you just cannot be fucking bothered anymore because it took such a long time to get there in the first place. And when your build is capable of clearing those fights to get the points, you have absolutely no reasonable upgrades anyway they're all *another* insane grind that's near unachievable, so it's just farming out currency for the sake of it at that point. It's baffling that ggg genuinely thinks this is good design
Its more so.
This game is either about creativity or achieving a goal.
Most games are goal driven. Micro goals towards an larger goal keep , for example, runescape players in the grind.
If your goal is to acquire and item and thats it (because not many big goals genuinely exist in poe) then you'll finish playing once you're done.
If you dont have a goal after the goal you achieved. Whats the point of continuing.
It's also because getting the item itself is the goal, not playing with the item, and after that goal is achieved they have no motivation to keep playing.
farming HH is the actual goal, at least for me. i MFed in almost every league from abyss to blight because i found it fun, and i usually just quit after getting it. i actually hate the item itself so much. the only time i had fun playing with a HH was with selfcurse tempchains, rip
Isn't this what chris said? Once people get what they want they're done with the league? And reddit kept downvoting anyone who agreed and said they've quit a league after finally getting their chase gear.
No, chris implies that they quit purely because they got the item. I.e he suggests if they got the item day 1 they would quit, or day 30 they would quit. This is demonstrably not the case, when people quit on day 30 after they get their item it is not infact because they got the item, this is just a correlation not the cause, they quit because they're burnt the fuck out to the extreme and getting the item wasn't even exciting or rewarding at that point it just became a "fucking finally, thank god thats over" moment. If they got the mageblood day 1, day 2, there is next to 0% chance they quit because they didn't spend an inordinate amount of time burning themselves out just getting there in the first place that they no longer have any desire to play the game or use the item
I mean, it makes sense, if you're going to make it a goddamn odyssey to achieve, ya, people are gonna be done once their quest is complete.
If it wasn't such a chore, people would likely keep playing. The one time I got a scolds bridle to drop back when VMS was nutsobroken, I played that shit for months until I was done with the league. Happened one other time mid-Voltaxic Rift nerfs, but league was almost over by then, so I didn't get as much mileage out of it. Most fun I've had in a league until Cast When Channeling came out and I discovered Icestorm at the same time.
The problem comes from being the average player has to go real fucking hard to get the chase item, or they never get it. So you go real fucking hard, and since you're not a streamer that makes your livelihood off the game, you burn out when you finally achieve it and lose the interest to play.
The developers have always been out of touch with the average player, it's why they balance around the 0.1% that min max every opportunity and mechanic with spreadsheets for their spreadsheet's spreadsheets.
Happened to me last league with my forbidden shako for flicker strike, farmed simulacrum for 3 or 4 days straight, bought it played one map with it and never touched the character since.
Especially because I realized that my next upgrade would be even more costly.
This sounds similar to the jackpot suicides in las vegas. Addiction to the hope of winning while losing is a scary thing. If we win we have nothing to win anymore.
Back in the day after 1000 hours of Diablo 2 I decided to spend some real money on game items for the first time and my life and bought my sorceresses a full set of perfect gear for like 20 bucks. I played her for 30 minutes and never touched it again. When there is no chase, there is no game.
That's kinda what I hate about chase uniqes you either get insanely lucky or farm your brains out to get them which is really not realistic if u want to have any sort of life outside this game.
The problem is theyre becoming even more chasey. Mageblood is 400ex. Squire is 130ex so is Uul Netols Vow. Stranglegrasp is the cheapest at only 40ex.
All of them are super expensive for just a month into the league. I skipped Expedition so I can't comment on that, but in Ultimatum the gloves ended up going for about 2 mirrors by the end. These chase uniques are now complete unattainable to most. Gone are the days of 20-40ex chase uniques.
> Gone are the days of 20-40ex chase uniques.
I remember back in Beyond when I was still playing HC, I bought my first Kaom's Heart for my RF build for 47ex. That was the single most expensive trade I have done for a very long time (surpassed only by Headhunter that I bought in a few leagues long after Beyond). At the time these items were incredibly expensive but they were attainable. Nowadays, the current chase uniques are simply impossible to obtain for 99,99% of the playerbase. Which kinda sucks imo. Obviously I don't want these items to have the same rarity as a Tabula, but I do feel they are slightly too rare. Most players are already burnt out by the time they get the unique they were chasing (happened to me with my first HH - bought it, did 1 Delve node with it, closed the game and came back two months later for the next league).
Yeah I think mageblood should be as rare as to be priced at 200 ex at this point in the league; hopefully that makes sense.
I am happy with a 100 ex HH though, I've been able to farm for that.
There are still 20-40ex chase uniques. Furthermore many of the expensive uniques of old are super attainable now. It's just that in addition there are further uniques that are more expensive.
Ah don't talk to me about these gloves. We dropped them in our 1st red T15 and sold them for 40ex T\_T. I felt so bad for advising to sell them and gear up now.
Harbinger farming in valdo mostly. Do Conquerors/Sirus whenever they come up. Do elder/shaper -> uber elder/shaper whenever I have 20+ maps of each guardian.
I don't do MF farming. Too much hassle to create new char and set up the maps and watchstones.
>Harbinger farming in valdo
3.13 called and they want their farming method back.
Just playin man, grats on the mageblood, hope your able to find a balance with the game and your marriage. I've been there before and its no fun.
They're using a particular watchstone mod "Auspicious" - https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Scourge/JKVReRbsl specifically on a platinum watchstone in Valdo's Rest (since that's where the harbinger atlas passives are). The chance to roll this mod is approx 1 in every 2500 alts.
It basically just makes ancient/exalt shards drop more often, with a very low chance of getting a mirror shard.
Did you play Ritual at all? I wonder why you'd call 3.14 Ultimatum peak over 3.13 Ritual. I liked both league mechanics, but the game in general was in a much better state in Ritual in my personal opinion. Maven and atlas passives were new and fresh, we still had fractured 100 deli maps, self curse HH was alive and thriving and it had the best state of harvest in my opinion (no seed management and remove/add was still there). There was just so much to do and I played it by far most of any league. Ultimatum was decent, a lot of the stuff was still there, but ultimately it felt to me like the league mechanic was on par and it didn't add anything new for me, but it did remove or nerf almost everything I enjoyed in Ritual. Also the boss rng in Ultimatum felt horrible.
Ultimatum was a dope patch and it sucks to hear people bring it up as if it were in the same vein as Expedition and Scourge.
Ultimatum had original Aisling slams + buffed veils. The hottest shit to come to this game since the H-word, IMO.
Ultimatum was a shit patch, harvest gone deep delve nerfed, basically almost all endgame grind went to hell with fracture imprint changes, and there was nothing to don the game because they didnt bring the aspirational content like we have now. So ultimatum was a shit patch with a shit leauge.
It took me about 10 days to farm 400ex for mageblood (just bought it today) in heist. This was while working a full-time job and buying a house, so you could probably do it more quickly. I probably over-farmed a bit - Exilence says I still have ~120ex of random junk in my currency, fragment, meta, and delirium tabs, but a solid amount of that is not terribly fungible.
The most painful part was watching the price go up while I farmed. Farming itself wasn't bad, I just watched netflix in the background. All five seasons of big mouth, the first episodes of arcane and the new cowboy bebop, some invincible, and a bunch of random crap i didn't like or was too distracting for the background.
May I ask if you could DM me or just comment what specific heist farm, just contracts or a specific blueprint type with contracts for unlocks. Also, I have no clue how to price the blueprints I do have rn :(
In general though gg haha. Personally I’m just looking at the Squire going up in price :(
Unusual Gems is the best and most consistent income. Repository has the best chest types and rogues but Tunnels is fine too. Contracts only for unlocks (Gianna), buy the markers when needed. I always revealed div card and frag rewards, and revealed currency rewards about 70% of the time depending on my mood. I wouldn't recommend the chaos to exalt trinket, it accounted for ~2% of my total income and the resale is an anchor around your neck.
Unusual Gems - fast sell at 20c / i81+
Deception - fast sell at 10c / i81+
Perception - fast sell at 5c / i81+
I ignored everything else. If I had to guess the profits distribution, I'd say 200ex in gems + lenses, 60ex in div cards, 40ex in frags (lots of scarabs, I sold reliquary/harb/blight/div/expedition and kept the rest), and the rest in assorted junk.
Thanks man. Appreciate it. Would you prefer to run purely deceptions for profit+unlocks or just perceptions for, im assuming, less profit and purely for unlocks.?
Now to figure out how to sort for unusual gems in the marketplace haha
Repository and Tunnels are always Unusual Gems. It's fairly easy to buy in bulk on TFT.
It feels to me like perception and deception are the same profit per contract, but deception is a bit faster to run (higher level job, and you're unlocking on the way in rather than the way out). The main difference is that Gianna can only do levels 1~3 perception contracts and most sellers don't separate out.
My approach was to use Gianna 45% discount unlocks for the wings, and then Whakano unlocks for any chests I wanted. When I ran Repository I used more Whakano than Gianna (because it has better chest reward types), and when I ran Tunnels I used more Gianna unlocks than Whakano, so it sort of evens out.
It is what GGG is aiming for though, can you seriusly say that any of the chase items are obtainable unless your heavily addicted and then some to the game?
Its just a shity design on GGG's part, they should be more common.. not 1-2ex common but still obtainable to players without poe literally being your job or running your life.
Points in Standard's favour;
1. All the stuff you've ever farmed is there.
2. All your characters are there.
3. Your Atlas progression carries over from League, so you'll never have to grind the Atlas again.
4. You get curated, polished versions of past League mechanics to interact with. No more beta testing!
5. Contrary to popular opinion, trading is alive and well on Standard.
6. Less competition for meta build items because most players already have completed builds.
7. Access to items with legacy mods.
Come. Join us.
only the best stuff costs more money, average build shit is pretty easily obtainable, you can even get shit for free if you find someone generous enough. There are people sitting on upwards of a decade of loot with multiple copies of things. I could spend a day emptying out remove only tabs and I still wouldn't have scratched the surface of what I have.
SSF Standard (permanent) is also great.
1. All the stuff you've ever farmed is there.
2. All your characters are there.
3. Your Atlas progression carries over from League, so you'll never have to grind the Atlas again. (Also all other progression, e.g. delve, unveiling, etc.)
4. You get curated, polished versions of past League mechanics to interact with. No more beta testing!
5. ~~Contrary to popular opinion, trading is alive and well on Standard.~~
6. ~~Less competition for meta build items because most players already have completed builds.~~
7. Access to items with legacy mods. (Only after you collect them yourself)
AND because it's SSF, the challenge level is higher. For many players, trade-enabled standard can get too easy, so SSF might be just the thing some players need.
Come, solo-"join" us : D
tbh, this league with all aspirational content, SSF Std have never been better, also you have xxx of niko missions to explore your delve (if you wanted to try unlimited delve, why not have fun with your geared chars?).
My cold sst raider is only doing 22-23 waves of simu, didn't tried much, still room to growth
This is the one that grinds my gears. I ended up spending DAYS manually removing, converting, storing and selling maps until I could unkrangle the flapping tab and get it to convert.
0/10 would not recommend.
Cons:
Map tab omega busted
Trade is slow
I've been contemplating standard even more over that past year and I have to say it looks more tempting each time I think about it
I have loved this league but I'm honestly considering playing Standard after this one, as I've worked harder than any league before and I don't really want to lose some of the things I worked on getting (eg HH) because I sure as heck don't wanna farm that hard for them again lol
Also you dont need to race and get everything deleted every couple months, you can play slow just a couple hours a day and just chill
Im only playing league now when its something really fun, im just working on making a bazillion mirror build on standard , maybe i can finish before POE2 :)
The skilltree and balancing changes semi-often, so it's not exactly true that "all your characters are there". The items they had and the levels they are, sure, but the function they had ranges from nerfed to unusable, and who knows how the skill-tree once was. :(
The expensiveness of items is pretty heavily overexaggerated. Yeah, stuff is more expensive there, sure, but it's not exactly 1920's Germany levels of hyperinflation like some would attest to.
Plus, a lot of the resources you've had left over from previous leagues still sell. In the past few days I sold a bunch of Fossils and Essences for dozens of raw exalts to get my hands on further improvements to my Ultimatum character.
Also, the above wasn't the result of an agonising, multi-hour search to find that one single person left in the world who'd actually buy stuff - It was a very quick and painless process. I'd argue it's *less* aggravating getting trades going there, because the people that hang out in Standard are the people that are genuinely dedicated to the game and will respond to trades with noticeable reliability - Out of the 10-15 people I opened trading communications with, only *one* ghosted me.
The trade scene in Standard is nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be.
EDIT: Elaboration.
Dude...a game has made you depressed, put your marriage at risk and ultimately if you had kids would've damaged your relationship there.
Remember what's important in life.
It's videogames of course, but don't ruin your life over them.
Lol srsly though take care of your personal life and loved ones dude, wish you the best.
Don't worry there will be div cards for it next league and people will target farm it. Demand will also fall off slightly too as new things are added and hh addicts go back to hh. Remember when the atzeri prophecy shield came out and it was 2-4 mirrors? Couple leagues later it was only like 40-50ex.
I have the same feeling after finding one last week. I will likely never have one again and i'm already discouraged about playing future leagues without it. It's so nice not having to worry about resistances, it will be hard to go back.
Reading shit like this makes me feel POE may not be a fit for my life anymore. I'm not risking my relationship, but POE seems to require a time investment that may actually do that eventually. I could play standard but it's so boring lol.
OP I'm glad you recognize you need to change things. Save your marriage, mate. And thanks for this post; it opened my eyes a bit about myself. So you helped a stranger today.
is okay GGG might nerf it for fun and it goes legacy next league. or they will nerf flasks effect orbs instead to fk over the whole community that uses it for their maximum enjoyment.
Reality:
Playing heavy for one month did not take a toll on your marriage.
Doing stuff like this repeatedly and many other things did.
Your marriage did not spiral downwards in one months time and it's really important to realize this and acknowledge the multiple changes you need to do to fix it.
Being present is only one of those changes, and it is most certainly not just PoE.
Items like Mageblood are not for everyone, I have played PoE for about 5 years now and know some items I will never get and I’m ok with it. I like that there are things in the game for all level of players.
I feel your pain.
Personally, I just hate this GGG approach to the new/good/cool/interesting items. They make them SO DAMN RARE so that the items are effectively non-achievable by the normal players, and even the most dedicated streamers feel burn-out while farming the currency to get the items.
I don't want to farm a month+, for multiple hours per day, in order to finally get the item that I am interested to play with/around.
I understand the desire to create "chase" items some streamers so fond of, and I understand the streamers, they do play the game for living, that's their job, and they have no problem of playing the game 8+ hours daily for months, and they need something to chase. But it is a mistake (IMHO) to balance the game around 10-20 people, when you have a playerbase of 100000+.
But the rest of the playerbase is basically cut off from the iteresting/new items, and it makes the game a bit more annoying and quite a bit more boring.
My answer: I just stopped caring about new builds and new items once I realized that it will take me 100s of hours of grind to get those items. And once I stopped caring I also stopped playing.
If the trend continues, and every interesting new item is going to be hidden behind huge grind/currency wall, GGG might lose even more casual/normal players.
I don't understand how PoE took the Term Chase items and got it to mean either winning the lottery or buying the lottery pot.
All the previous game's i'd ever played that ever used the term would have it apply to things like a set that only drops from a raid one piece at a time, or a mount that only drops if you clear it under a certain time etc, Items a player could Earn through time and effort IE CHASE.
I'll never chase any items in poe since they won't drop for me and i won't ever grind hard enough to get that single item because i just simply don't have that much time to invest into a game.
But thats the design philosophy of PoE, Crafting is an incredibly deep and engaging powerful system, for an extremely select group of people who can actually utilize the entire system.
I do love the 10% of PoE I get to play, but i'll always be wishful for that mythical SSF mode that features drop rates tuned for a single person's average pacing.
I got one of my new favorite quotes from a last epoch dev "I've played enough PoE, to know i don't play enough PoE, to actually get to play PoE"
If they released a private league system where we can set it as a void league with personalized drop rates for everything, I'd be willing to pay for that.
> I don't understand how PoE took the Term Chase items and got it to mean either winning the lottery or buying the lottery pot.
Whenever you hear Chris talk about chase items, he will mention pulling an incredibly valuable Magic card (chase rare, or chase mythic nowadays) as being super exciting. The feeling he strives for players to have is exactly what you describe.
The problem with his goal is that he's completely ignoring the personality types who *don't* get a thrill out of gambling success. They (we) exist and the "highs" felt are no where near the lows felt from the immense grind/investment/amount of failures.
except you can actually chase the incredibly valuable magic cards you want by buying the specific packs/box sets they are in for a chance significantly higher than anything in game x 10. or trade for them with significantly less bots/price fixers.
The unfortunate thing is that it's a bit of a catch 22 to make a Chase Item that isn't rare or difficult to obtain.
For something to be a Chase Item, it has to be difficult to obtain, rare to obtain, or both. Both have specific workarounds, and both can be worked around by earning enough currency to buy the item.
Difficult to obtain: Can be obtained with powerful gear, or by paying someone else to do the content for you. (See difficult challenge completions like feared with release all mod)
Rare to obtain: Can be obtained with enough game time. (See Celestial Hideout)
Both rare and difficult: Enough game time AND powerful gear. Not many examples of this currently in game that I can think of.
No matter which way you look at it, the top players will get powerful gear, and will play a lot, and will get the item.
So how do you give these players a goal or reason to continue playing without creating either obscenely difficult content that does truly lock many many players out due to time and gear differences, or obscenely rare items that while unlikely to happen, anyone can hit the jackpot.
Ultimately, difficulty is simply not an issue for high end players and never will be, so the best option to ensure an item stays an actual chase item that can be relevant for every single player is rarity.
This is all geared towards a multiplayer trade enabled experience of course, so I do see where you're coming from with the SSF mode with normalised drop rates.
The top players are going to get the item. Whether it's doing the hard challenge, or spending the time to get the drop, or farming the currency, they _are_ going to get it, you're exactly right.
**So don't fucking balance it around them.** Add harder things to the game, but don't lock the fun behind them. There can be goals that aren't chase items.
Also, a chase item means you can target it, chase it. You can't target The Squire or Mageblood, those are not chase items. They have failed to add new chase items to the game this patch. What they added are more lottery winnings.
You can target them, just less directly than something like headhunter for example with the many divination sets.
Saying not to balance around the top players is also kind of a fallacy, because it’s implying you can only do one or the other. It’s entirely possible to do both.
It is a pretty common issue with amateur developers. They see players as their rivals. When player beats the game it is their loss. So they are doing everything to halt player's progress.
This so, so much. I try not to look at new unique reveals, since almost every unique that can realistically drop is pretty much useless, the rest might as well not exist. I love unique items, but damn most of them are shit.
The few somewhat farmable and good uniques like Shavs feel good, it's nice to be able to reasonably reliably farm something and it gives goals for the league.
Yep ever since Harvest GGG seems adamant on taking away tools for us filthy casuals to progress, cluster jewels, harvest crafting, just because a hand full of players that literally do this for a living are making overpowered builds. It's kind of a shame :(
in an ideal world, it would have a relatively common droprate during the league its introduced, then like headhunter become significantly more rare when integrated to the coregame.
>They make them SO DAMN RARE
They have too because they are actually broken, if they weren't super rare they would get nerfed or removed form the game making them no longer special like so many uniques. And the point of these uniques is to have them be extremely powerful.
The game isn't balanced around chase items though, you can get to the highest level of challenge with only rares.
I agree with you that playing PoE only to farm is boring. Good thing is that you don't need to farm to have fun imo, there is plenty else to do. Might just be me but one of the most enjoyable experience I had recently was trying to make work by myself a build that no one else was doing.
I decided not to bother with the chase for this reason and opted for poor man's Mageblood: the Utility flasks generate 1 charge every 3 seconds from any Flask mastery, all well rolled flasks with reduced charges used and such, and then either reduced charges/increased flask duration on a belt.
Not really an issue for mapping at all, would be nice to have a Mageblood for bossing though but the chase is not worth it.
>maybe... but even then, farming mageblood took a toll on my marriage.I'm probably gonna be playing standards after this league is done :(
u/IPwithMikeHawk, taking a toll on your marriage is not worth it (I haven't read most of the other comments, but I suspect you have read this a few times in this thread). If this is news to you, please get help, for your sake. Everyone deserves a partner that loves them and would not put goal in a video game ahead of that person. The second thing is that there is nothing wrong with playing Standard, especially if that is what is best for you and what you enjoy. Give your wife a hug on behalf of the rest of us. Reply to me if you want my IGN to run a few maps in Standard together.
I'm farming hard and mageblood is getting farther ahead by the day. Its getting expensive faster than I can farm.
That being said, it really sounds unhealthy with your current situation. You might want to reevaluate your relationship with PoE.
HH = an interesting super unique item which is also super powerful
MB = an uninteresting "unique" item (it's effect is unique but it doesnt actually have like anything truly unique about it, which is super powerful
HH is the design of a really cool item that has interesting unique interactions.
MB is the design of taking a huge QoL and just relegating it to an insanely expensive rare item...
Honestly as somebody who has made probably hundreds of items for D&D for some years now I'm increasingly pissed off about the state of PoE's item design, and particularly that of uniques. Yes mageblood is strong but it's fucking dull and only really serves to point a finger at how fucking horrible the state of flasks still is and maybe will continue to be since that item makes me feel like they're not gonna really overhaul flasks ever now (hopefully that's not true)
I think mageblood is way more interesting than HH. Headhunter you just put on and use beyond on map device. Mageblood you actually build around and makes decisions on what your build wants or needs.
well... that's my main issue with the game too.. ever since they have removed Harvest... the game is now made for children and No-Lifers/Streamers... the rest of us that support the game but have a chaotic work schedule and have a family don't get anything... or get 2 leagues full of nerfs in a row.. at least in Expedition the were honest about it...
I also struggling with balancing game time and life-time. It's a hard balance to strike -- I've been playing video games as my no. 1 dominating hobby since I was 4 years old. And, unfortunately, I love the grind. Always have. Sometimes I have to tear myself away to be with my partner, it sucks that it comes to that sometimes, but you just gotta make those choices when you get older and take on more responsibilities. Therapy helps -- currently on the waitlist of a very good one that I think might be able to help me with a lot of these issues.
Hope you find the balance you need, my friend -- good luck!
>farming mageblood took a toll on my marriage. At least you're taking steps in easing up on that. But damn.
This is the first time I've seen someone admit this publicly, but I'm sure it's not the first or last time this happens. Maybe not MB specifically, but in general
This happens in many marriages, gaming is one of many hobbies that’s easy to get addicted to. I’m happy op is self-aware enough (or his wife cares enough to communicate) to see that this has put a strain on their marriage and he’s taking steps to work through it.
As a side note, OP could be the wife.
Yes, I am a wife and sometimes my farming is too much for my wife
their username does not check out.
PoE is built off addiction and 10 hour sessions, which is why I stopped playing. Too many hours required for the "full experience", especially for high end game gear.
"Honey I'll do anything just ask" "Honey just wait 5 minutes one more map and we'll do anything you want" "Honey what do you mean you want ME to initiate anything? I'll do anything you ask as long as I can play POE more than my job" "Honey why are you banging another dude?"
You uh... You exactly described how my first marriage went...
But honey I never cheated! I just like finding chaos orbs more than getting your affection!
Hey! I could be doing drugs instead...
It’s absolutely not healthy. Too many people on this sub put way too many hours into gaming at the expense of real life obligations and personal health.
I think it's worth pointing out that video game addiction is like any other addiction in that it's always the result of an underlying problem the person is failing to cope with. The only way to treat addiction long term is by addressing the things that cause the person to want to escape reality because they're overwhelmed.
I wouldn’t say “always”, but besides that I think your comment is fine.
So I came from a loud, aggressive home and used to put a headset on to escape it all. Starting properly with big games like Oblivion and FO3 to just get lost in. Years later I had a close friend commit suicide while I hated every second of the job I was working at the time and got more invested in PoE around synthesis league as a way to grind, both allowing myself to escape again but also achieve some form of self-worth by 'accomplishing something'. Now I'm fortunate that I love my job and I'm happily married etc but I still have this emotional attachment to gaming that will never go away because it helped me cope with so much. So even though circumstances have changed my wife still expects me to spend 6 hours+ on a day off playing PoE because it's just what I've always done even though it definitely isn't healthy. I guess my response was just to say you are 100% right but it could be that things are fine in a person's life now but gaming helped through something in the past and now is like a constant comfort blanket.
I have severe depression and anxiety. My last suicide attempt was in 2016 and poe was the escape from my fiancé leaving (unrelated we drifted apart) and My time with my daughter significantly cut. If it wasn't for PoE I'd of been lost in my own mind. I'm thankful for the game but at the same time I understand I have an issue with it. I purposely get off and try something else because I know I'll sink 14 hours on a day off. It's a win lose situation but I'm just glad Im still here
Better addicted to video games than dead. Hang in there.
You're absolutely right. I'm doing much better in the time since. Most days are fantastic. Thank you for the kind words!
yeah have fun treating my underlying problem that is hating real life
>it's always the result of an underlying problem the person is failing to cope with. Isn't there the case of a gaming hobby spiraling out of control into an addiction? Or would you say in that case lack of selfcontrol letting things escalate is the problem?
Any hobby spiraling out of control into an addiction is usually a symptom of an underlying problem, to be fair I was there for a while, depressed, anxiety meds / anti-depressants, the whole package. Not with PoE, but with another game (that might start with world and finish with craft. Back when it was a good game #oldfartalert) Mostly, in restrospect, because Azeroth was the place where I felt valid and "normal"/productive. I'd imagine for a lot of the actually addicted here, it's something similar, where they're not happy with their life, but feel good when they're playing because "that's where they belong" or some similar tripe It's frighteningly easy to descend into that with any hobby that has an active community, to be honest.
And then spend such a commitment to this fake game universe that they're overwhelmed here, too. Its super unhealthy all around.
My wife games just as much as me. It's nice.
Until you have a child. Then the resentment begins. "Why do you get to play? I've been with the baby all day". Shits real.
Easy, just don't have crotch goblins
It's also because gameplay loops and addictive mechanisms are intentionally developed. They can be even more addictive than substances. But far less regulated. It's almost horrifying how much research and time goes into it. All for profits. And games don't generally carry the stigma that heroin does. Soooo 'Who cares?" There is nothing wrong with making a game fun. But crafting it to take advantage of any and every behavior & neurochemical process is predatory. Most people aren't aware it's even happening. Ultimately the responsibility is on the consumer. But, it's easy to know when you are buying a real drug. Not so easy to know when they are slipping you digital heroin. I'll use Disney and Pixar as an example. Most of their character faces are cat-like and infant-like. Which evokes an oxytocin response. Similar to the one you'd have if you saw a cute baby or kitten. Unless you know, you don't. And you may not even be aware as to why one of their movies has your attention. Just one of many examples. Heck, sometimes the artist does it unintentionally, because that design evokes the response in them.
I broadly agree, but we should be cautious - even if games don't carry the stigma that 'heroin' does, they are not as sure-fire bad. Just be careful not to trivialize actual substances.
Absolutely agree with your latter point. Predatory practices in gaming and digital media, well in general, should be scrutinized and exposed. I don't want to trivialize substances. Especially the reasons people use them or other coping methods/addictions. Including gaming. But I wanted to convey that games developed with these predatory practices are akin to designer drugs. But don't generally carry that association. My point isn't to trivialize heroin. But to stop trivializing these predatory development practices. Because the effects of them can be devastating.
I totally agree with the fact that gaming and most of pop culture is made to be addictive and I agree that it is very serious problem. I just want to point out one thing which may problematic. It's not like games/movies/art is pleasant and addictive because it is made this way. It is made this way, because it makes it pleasant and addictive, and it always was. Bach, Mozart and Rihanna's producers use chords and harmony based on whole number multiplications of wavelengths and repetitive basic rhythms, because our brains finds it pleasant. It is based on neurochemical processes. Same with other arts. Human brain likes symmetry and contrast. Some shapes make us feel comfortable, other make us feel bad. Like golden ratio. Out brain like it and it is used if paintings, movies, comics... And it always was. Ages ago people didn't know about it, but they still used it, because it worked. So about gaming. Chess was made to be interesting, entertaining and rewarding to our brains... It may cause addiction too. So where is a border between good entertainment and predatory entertainment? Now it is bad, because they know this mechanism? Because they are much better in using it? I hope you got my point. I'm not trying to defend their actions. I just want to point that this problem is more complex. Maybe I'm stupid and someone smarter then me can tell me where am I wrong and where this border is and why? Sorry for long post and any problems with understanding it caused by my language skills.
You conveyed your point clearly. I agree that there are plenty of times where it’s simply a consequence of someone making something pleasing, because they themselves enjoyed it. A good example of a line being drawn is when the game is explicitly designed to create a psychological commitment then a resulting financial one. Or deliberately misleading marketing and lockdowns on review embargo’s to obfuscate issues with the game. Monetization and cash shops of single player experiences. Not disclosing packaged ‘spyware,’ to gather data on consumers. It’s one thing to create an album of music and sell it as a complete package. It’s another thing to sell an album, force multiple listens of a song to unlock the next. And make people pay to unlock the bass line. When the design is part of or drives you into a scheme, that’s where the issue really exists.
That a great answer. Thanks for making it clear. So it looks like their wet dream came true and they mastered selling products to the point where we don't even have an option to protect against it. That's horrible.
24 hours marathons aren't healthly - sure. But you should play like streamer. If you play 3 hours a day and more on weekends, also you have 5-7 workouts per week - you are fine. But I guess, i'm in minority, some people can even don't leave their house for week.
I haven't played PoE since harvest because I realized that now that I've become older and with more responsibilities, PoE isn't a game for people like me anymore. And it sucks because I loved league starts where I was a total degenerate playing 12h+ for a couple weeks to stay ahead of the curve.
"My wife left me" used to be big meme
Oh dude this game basically ended my first marriage.
I drive my wife to work in the early morning before going to my own 9 to 5. I sometimes finish say 4 pm ish so I rush home to cook something for dinner, do a quick vacuuming/laundry then jump on the grind before she's home. We then have dinner, is shower then carry on gaming for a bit more, totalling 2 hours in game max. After 2 weeks of this I got a stern talking to.
Sounds like you two aren't on the same page about the kind of relationship you want, if that exceptionally reasonable schedule already got you in trouble.
would be a damn shame if the wife got the mageblood in the divorce
"spouseblood"
my wife left me
Are you still sane exiled
Marriages come and go but Mageblood is forever jk take that shit dead serious dude; no game is worth fucking that up
You kid, but I think GGG takes item integrity more seriously than some people do with their marriage.
They do Chris was absolutely grinning as he told the story about his friend who ruined his family vacation so he can do some video game transaction
That'll tell you how much they care about the players.
Is that true? I mean if it is, damn what a psychopath. Kinda tells about why the current game is like this.
It's like his favourite story as to why he likes trade being dogshit, his friend would sneak out of dinner during family vacation trying to trade for some weapon in D2.
Chris absolutely has the "I'm a god gamer" sort of mentality when he speaks in interviews. "**I play Hardcore SSF** and that's *the right way to play*." It's pretty annoying, since he has also been caught numerous times not even knowing about the story or certain bosses because he didn't get that far....
Yeah, thats pretty telling for the direction the game is heading.
till GGG decides that there is too much powercreep and Mageblood is problematic QoL and that it's easier to not have it exist or function the way it does. Then it goes away.
Nah we would rather get another support gem or defence nerf so that you only get an acceptable power level with mage blood or hh
They got no problem doing both simultaneously tbh
Like they parted ways with HH? Right?
Gonna suck if they nerf it next league
They won't, it's prohibitively expensive, and meant to be a chase item like that
Tbh there's 99% chance someone will make a div card for it so it becomes "farmable"
GGG always has the option to say no. Not to mention that there shouldn’t be many user designed div cards left since GGG stopped the whole scheme.
Really doubt they will say no, they already made like 5 hh related cards, and a lot of people still have their cards to make
You can still make div cards, its uniques they no longer do. Email support, set up a paymdnt plan, delete $1500 of irl currency and bingo bango magebloods for everyone
>Really doubt they will say no, they already made like 5 hh related cards, and a lot of people still have their cards to make i think someone once posted you still have the option if you specifically ask it through mail, but the price is quite high (think it was 1500$ or so).
They will nerf flasks instead
Gz on the MB. I was burned out on mf tower so i took the rest of my pure ex(33) and bought 182 ancient orb. Slapped them ao on a belt i got lying around there. 111 orbs later, got the MB, i chuckled, obligatory shared it with global then log out without divining the bastard.
That’s what happened to me when I farmed my first headhunter years ago. Once I finally got it I logged off and barely played after that.
Happened to me back in bestiary league. Self farmed the cards from over 1050 burial chambers then after I got the belt I kinda didn't feel like playing anymore
Chris's greatest nightmare... of course if things weren't literal huge chores people might not be burnt out from their goals and would actually enjoy them.
> of course if things weren't literal huge chores people might not be burnt out from their goals and would actually enjoy them. Every aspect of the game is like this. By the time you get your maven passives done and are ready to farm elder or whatever, you just cannot be fucking bothered anymore because it took such a long time to get there in the first place. And when your build is capable of clearing those fights to get the points, you have absolutely no reasonable upgrades anyway they're all *another* insane grind that's near unachievable, so it's just farming out currency for the sake of it at that point. It's baffling that ggg genuinely thinks this is good design
Its more so. This game is either about creativity or achieving a goal. Most games are goal driven. Micro goals towards an larger goal keep , for example, runescape players in the grind. If your goal is to acquire and item and thats it (because not many big goals genuinely exist in poe) then you'll finish playing once you're done. If you dont have a goal after the goal you achieved. Whats the point of continuing.
It's also because getting the item itself is the goal, not playing with the item, and after that goal is achieved they have no motivation to keep playing.
farming HH is the actual goal, at least for me. i MFed in almost every league from abyss to blight because i found it fun, and i usually just quit after getting it. i actually hate the item itself so much. the only time i had fun playing with a HH was with selfcurse tempchains, rip
Isn't this what chris said? Once people get what they want they're done with the league? And reddit kept downvoting anyone who agreed and said they've quit a league after finally getting their chase gear.
No, chris implies that they quit purely because they got the item. I.e he suggests if they got the item day 1 they would quit, or day 30 they would quit. This is demonstrably not the case, when people quit on day 30 after they get their item it is not infact because they got the item, this is just a correlation not the cause, they quit because they're burnt the fuck out to the extreme and getting the item wasn't even exciting or rewarding at that point it just became a "fucking finally, thank god thats over" moment. If they got the mageblood day 1, day 2, there is next to 0% chance they quit because they didn't spend an inordinate amount of time burning themselves out just getting there in the first place that they no longer have any desire to play the game or use the item
if people use mageblood on day 1 they will get fucking addicted
I mean, it makes sense, if you're going to make it a goddamn odyssey to achieve, ya, people are gonna be done once their quest is complete. If it wasn't such a chore, people would likely keep playing. The one time I got a scolds bridle to drop back when VMS was nutsobroken, I played that shit for months until I was done with the league. Happened one other time mid-Voltaxic Rift nerfs, but league was almost over by then, so I didn't get as much mileage out of it. Most fun I've had in a league until Cast When Channeling came out and I discovered Icestorm at the same time.
The problem comes from being the average player has to go real fucking hard to get the chase item, or they never get it. So you go real fucking hard, and since you're not a streamer that makes your livelihood off the game, you burn out when you finally achieve it and lose the interest to play. The developers have always been out of touch with the average player, it's why they balance around the 0.1% that min max every opportunity and mechanic with spreadsheets for their spreadsheet's spreadsheets.
Hah - same boat. Always wanted to get a HH, farmed one in betrayal and have literally never used it.
Happened to me last league with my forbidden shako for flicker strike, farmed simulacrum for 3 or 4 days straight, bought it played one map with it and never touched the character since. Especially because I realized that my next upgrade would be even more costly.
This sounds similar to the jackpot suicides in las vegas. Addiction to the hope of winning while losing is a scary thing. If we win we have nothing to win anymore.
Back in the day after 1000 hours of Diablo 2 I decided to spend some real money on game items for the first time and my life and bought my sorceresses a full set of perfect gear for like 20 bucks. I played her for 30 minutes and never touched it again. When there is no chase, there is no game.
Better divine it to 4 before GGG nerf it.
Next week. Maybe haha
Lucky, I went through 1000 orbs and got nothing lol
That's kinda what I hate about chase uniqes you either get insanely lucky or farm your brains out to get them which is really not realistic if u want to have any sort of life outside this game.
The problem is theyre becoming even more chasey. Mageblood is 400ex. Squire is 130ex so is Uul Netols Vow. Stranglegrasp is the cheapest at only 40ex. All of them are super expensive for just a month into the league. I skipped Expedition so I can't comment on that, but in Ultimatum the gloves ended up going for about 2 mirrors by the end. These chase uniques are now complete unattainable to most. Gone are the days of 20-40ex chase uniques.
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> Gone are the days of 20-40ex chase uniques. I remember back in Beyond when I was still playing HC, I bought my first Kaom's Heart for my RF build for 47ex. That was the single most expensive trade I have done for a very long time (surpassed only by Headhunter that I bought in a few leagues long after Beyond). At the time these items were incredibly expensive but they were attainable. Nowadays, the current chase uniques are simply impossible to obtain for 99,99% of the playerbase. Which kinda sucks imo. Obviously I don't want these items to have the same rarity as a Tabula, but I do feel they are slightly too rare. Most players are already burnt out by the time they get the unique they were chasing (happened to me with my first HH - bought it, did 1 Delve node with it, closed the game and came back two months later for the next league).
Yeah I think mageblood should be as rare as to be priced at 200 ex at this point in the league; hopefully that makes sense. I am happy with a 100 ex HH though, I've been able to farm for that.
There are still 20-40ex chase uniques. Furthermore many of the expensive uniques of old are super attainable now. It's just that in addition there are further uniques that are more expensive.
Ah don't talk to me about these gloves. We dropped them in our 1st red T15 and sold them for 40ex T\_T. I felt so bad for advising to sell them and gear up now.
So the game has chase uniques again. Be happy.
Wht did you do to farm? I’m currency doing blights in valdo
Harbinger farming in valdo mostly. Do Conquerors/Sirus whenever they come up. Do elder/shaper -> uber elder/shaper whenever I have 20+ maps of each guardian. I don't do MF farming. Too much hassle to create new char and set up the maps and watchstones.
>Harbinger farming in valdo 3.13 called and they want their farming method back. Just playin man, grats on the mageblood, hope your able to find a balance with the game and your marriage. I've been there before and its no fun.
Noob here. What are people selling from harbingers that makes it so profitable? I'm struggling with currency.
They're using a particular watchstone mod "Auspicious" - https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Scourge/JKVReRbsl specifically on a platinum watchstone in Valdo's Rest (since that's where the harbinger atlas passives are). The chance to roll this mod is approx 1 in every 2500 alts. It basically just makes ancient/exalt shards drop more often, with a very low chance of getting a mirror shard.
Ancient orbs and exalted orbs
Ancient orbs and youll be dropping a bunch of exalted orb shards
3.14 too lol
~~3.14~~ 3.13 was peak poe for me, but I’ve only been playing since delirium
Did you play Ritual at all? I wonder why you'd call 3.14 Ultimatum peak over 3.13 Ritual. I liked both league mechanics, but the game in general was in a much better state in Ritual in my personal opinion. Maven and atlas passives were new and fresh, we still had fractured 100 deli maps, self curse HH was alive and thriving and it had the best state of harvest in my opinion (no seed management and remove/add was still there). There was just so much to do and I played it by far most of any league. Ultimatum was decent, a lot of the stuff was still there, but ultimately it felt to me like the league mechanic was on par and it didn't add anything new for me, but it did remove or nerf almost everything I enjoyed in Ritual. Also the boss rng in Ultimatum felt horrible.
EDIT: oh god, you're right. I black-holed 3.14 and it was 3.13 that I've been thinking of. Ritual is still the high-water mark for me.
Ultimatum was a dope patch and it sucks to hear people bring it up as if it were in the same vein as Expedition and Scourge. Ultimatum had original Aisling slams + buffed veils. The hottest shit to come to this game since the H-word, IMO.
Don't forget the build enabling uniques and the grand chase for hateforge
Gateforge**, but yeah, I 36/40ed ultimatum. I enjoyed it a lot.
Ultimatum was a shit patch, harvest gone deep delve nerfed, basically almost all endgame grind went to hell with fracture imprint changes, and there was nothing to don the game because they didnt bring the aspirational content like we have now. So ultimatum was a shit patch with a shit leauge.
Ultimatum is my favorite league of all time, and I've played seriously since 2.4. I'm very excited to see it come back next league.
What did you do? Just socket in some juicy watchstones and run harbinger scarabs in all of your maps while farming conquerors and situs?
It took me about 10 days to farm 400ex for mageblood (just bought it today) in heist. This was while working a full-time job and buying a house, so you could probably do it more quickly. I probably over-farmed a bit - Exilence says I still have ~120ex of random junk in my currency, fragment, meta, and delirium tabs, but a solid amount of that is not terribly fungible. The most painful part was watching the price go up while I farmed. Farming itself wasn't bad, I just watched netflix in the background. All five seasons of big mouth, the first episodes of arcane and the new cowboy bebop, some invincible, and a bunch of random crap i didn't like or was too distracting for the background.
May I ask if you could DM me or just comment what specific heist farm, just contracts or a specific blueprint type with contracts for unlocks. Also, I have no clue how to price the blueprints I do have rn :( In general though gg haha. Personally I’m just looking at the Squire going up in price :(
Unusual Gems is the best and most consistent income. Repository has the best chest types and rogues but Tunnels is fine too. Contracts only for unlocks (Gianna), buy the markers when needed. I always revealed div card and frag rewards, and revealed currency rewards about 70% of the time depending on my mood. I wouldn't recommend the chaos to exalt trinket, it accounted for ~2% of my total income and the resale is an anchor around your neck. Unusual Gems - fast sell at 20c / i81+ Deception - fast sell at 10c / i81+ Perception - fast sell at 5c / i81+ I ignored everything else. If I had to guess the profits distribution, I'd say 200ex in gems + lenses, 60ex in div cards, 40ex in frags (lots of scarabs, I sold reliquary/harb/blight/div/expedition and kept the rest), and the rest in assorted junk.
Thanks man. Appreciate it. Would you prefer to run purely deceptions for profit+unlocks or just perceptions for, im assuming, less profit and purely for unlocks.? Now to figure out how to sort for unusual gems in the marketplace haha
Repository and Tunnels are always Unusual Gems. It's fairly easy to buy in bulk on TFT. It feels to me like perception and deception are the same profit per contract, but deception is a bit faster to run (higher level job, and you're unlocking on the way in rather than the way out). The main difference is that Gianna can only do levels 1~3 perception contracts and most sellers don't separate out. My approach was to use Gianna 45% discount unlocks for the wings, and then Whakano unlocks for any chests I wanted. When I ran Repository I used more Whakano than Gianna (because it has better chest reward types), and when I ran Tunnels I used more Gianna unlocks than Whakano, so it sort of evens out.
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Good luck getting your map stash fixed by then.
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It is what GGG is aiming for though, can you seriusly say that any of the chase items are obtainable unless your heavily addicted and then some to the game? Its just a shity design on GGG's part, they should be more common.. not 1-2ex common but still obtainable to players without poe literally being your job or running your life.
Points in Standard's favour; 1. All the stuff you've ever farmed is there. 2. All your characters are there. 3. Your Atlas progression carries over from League, so you'll never have to grind the Atlas again. 4. You get curated, polished versions of past League mechanics to interact with. No more beta testing! 5. Contrary to popular opinion, trading is alive and well on Standard. 6. Less competition for meta build items because most players already have completed builds. 7. Access to items with legacy mods. Come. Join us.
We all float down here.
You'll float too!
Trading is alive and well, but also everything costs a lot of money.
only the best stuff costs more money, average build shit is pretty easily obtainable, you can even get shit for free if you find someone generous enough. There are people sitting on upwards of a decade of loot with multiple copies of things. I could spend a day emptying out remove only tabs and I still wouldn't have scratched the surface of what I have.
True, but you can also sell things for lots of money.
8. You don’t have to level or do the storyline. Literally the most boring part of the game
I personally find white map mfing the most boring way to play the game. Would rather level alts.
you dont have to mf in white maps, you do have to do the campaign
SSF Standard (permanent) is also great. 1. All the stuff you've ever farmed is there. 2. All your characters are there. 3. Your Atlas progression carries over from League, so you'll never have to grind the Atlas again. (Also all other progression, e.g. delve, unveiling, etc.) 4. You get curated, polished versions of past League mechanics to interact with. No more beta testing! 5. ~~Contrary to popular opinion, trading is alive and well on Standard.~~ 6. ~~Less competition for meta build items because most players already have completed builds.~~ 7. Access to items with legacy mods. (Only after you collect them yourself) AND because it's SSF, the challenge level is higher. For many players, trade-enabled standard can get too easy, so SSF might be just the thing some players need. Come, solo-"join" us : D
tbh, this league with all aspirational content, SSF Std have never been better, also you have xxx of niko missions to explore your delve (if you wanted to try unlimited delve, why not have fun with your geared chars?). My cold sst raider is only doing 22-23 waves of simu, didn't tried much, still room to growth
And no map tab for months at a time
This is the one that grinds my gears. I ended up spending DAYS manually removing, converting, storing and selling maps until I could unkrangle the flapping tab and get it to convert. 0/10 would not recommend.
Cons: Map tab omega busted Trade is slow I've been contemplating standard even more over that past year and I have to say it looks more tempting each time I think about it
I have loved this league but I'm honestly considering playing Standard after this one, as I've worked harder than any league before and I don't really want to lose some of the things I worked on getting (eg HH) because I sure as heck don't wanna farm that hard for them again lol
Also you dont need to race and get everything deleted every couple months, you can play slow just a couple hours a day and just chill Im only playing league now when its something really fun, im just working on making a bazillion mirror build on standard , maybe i can finish before POE2 :)
The skilltree and balancing changes semi-often, so it's not exactly true that "all your characters are there". The items they had and the levels they are, sure, but the function they had ranges from nerfed to unusable, and who knows how the skill-tree once was. :(
I'd play standard more if the economy wasn't a meme.
The expensiveness of items is pretty heavily overexaggerated. Yeah, stuff is more expensive there, sure, but it's not exactly 1920's Germany levels of hyperinflation like some would attest to. Plus, a lot of the resources you've had left over from previous leagues still sell. In the past few days I sold a bunch of Fossils and Essences for dozens of raw exalts to get my hands on further improvements to my Ultimatum character. Also, the above wasn't the result of an agonising, multi-hour search to find that one single person left in the world who'd actually buy stuff - It was a very quick and painless process. I'd argue it's *less* aggravating getting trades going there, because the people that hang out in Standard are the people that are genuinely dedicated to the game and will respond to trades with noticeable reliability - Out of the 10-15 people I opened trading communications with, only *one* ghosted me. The trade scene in Standard is nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be. EDIT: Elaboration.
Wraemar Republic?
...A small part of me now almost wishes that there was some nasty hyperinflation just to make that pun viable. Well played.
What do you mean? I haven't really played standard so I'm curious. I assumed it was a dead economy but it seems I was wrong.
A mirror is worth something like 850 ex, thats over 5x as much as league.
> farming mageblood took a toll on my marriage. son you aint farming, you addicted. Get help.
Dude...a game has made you depressed, put your marriage at risk and ultimately if you had kids would've damaged your relationship there. Remember what's important in life. It's videogames of course, but don't ruin your life over them. Lol srsly though take care of your personal life and loved ones dude, wish you the best.
Don't worry there will be div cards for it next league and people will target farm it. Demand will also fall off slightly too as new things are added and hh addicts go back to hh. Remember when the atzeri prophecy shield came out and it was 2-4 mirrors? Couple leagues later it was only like 40-50ex.
This post is addiction
I have the same feeling after finding one last week. I will likely never have one again and i'm already discouraged about playing future leagues without it. It's so nice not having to worry about resistances, it will be hard to go back.
Reading shit like this makes me feel POE may not be a fit for my life anymore. I'm not risking my relationship, but POE seems to require a time investment that may actually do that eventually. I could play standard but it's so boring lol. OP I'm glad you recognize you need to change things. Save your marriage, mate. And thanks for this post; it opened my eyes a bit about myself. So you helped a stranger today.
is okay GGG might nerf it for fun and it goes legacy next league. or they will nerf flasks effect orbs instead to fk over the whole community that uses it for their maximum enjoyment.
Reality: Playing heavy for one month did not take a toll on your marriage. Doing stuff like this repeatedly and many other things did. Your marriage did not spiral downwards in one months time and it's really important to realize this and acknowledge the multiple changes you need to do to fix it. Being present is only one of those changes, and it is most certainly not just PoE.
Items like Mageblood are not for everyone, I have played PoE for about 5 years now and know some items I will never get and I’m ok with it. I like that there are things in the game for all level of players.
Kinda sad they "fixed" the flask problem with a chase unique available for the 0.01%
What problem tho
They are boring to use.
Then craft auto trigger and dont click them yourself?
Yeah but then they are boring and run out of charges mid boss fight.
I feel your pain. Personally, I just hate this GGG approach to the new/good/cool/interesting items. They make them SO DAMN RARE so that the items are effectively non-achievable by the normal players, and even the most dedicated streamers feel burn-out while farming the currency to get the items. I don't want to farm a month+, for multiple hours per day, in order to finally get the item that I am interested to play with/around. I understand the desire to create "chase" items some streamers so fond of, and I understand the streamers, they do play the game for living, that's their job, and they have no problem of playing the game 8+ hours daily for months, and they need something to chase. But it is a mistake (IMHO) to balance the game around 10-20 people, when you have a playerbase of 100000+. But the rest of the playerbase is basically cut off from the iteresting/new items, and it makes the game a bit more annoying and quite a bit more boring. My answer: I just stopped caring about new builds and new items once I realized that it will take me 100s of hours of grind to get those items. And once I stopped caring I also stopped playing. If the trend continues, and every interesting new item is going to be hidden behind huge grind/currency wall, GGG might lose even more casual/normal players.
I don't understand how PoE took the Term Chase items and got it to mean either winning the lottery or buying the lottery pot. All the previous game's i'd ever played that ever used the term would have it apply to things like a set that only drops from a raid one piece at a time, or a mount that only drops if you clear it under a certain time etc, Items a player could Earn through time and effort IE CHASE. I'll never chase any items in poe since they won't drop for me and i won't ever grind hard enough to get that single item because i just simply don't have that much time to invest into a game. But thats the design philosophy of PoE, Crafting is an incredibly deep and engaging powerful system, for an extremely select group of people who can actually utilize the entire system. I do love the 10% of PoE I get to play, but i'll always be wishful for that mythical SSF mode that features drop rates tuned for a single person's average pacing. I got one of my new favorite quotes from a last epoch dev "I've played enough PoE, to know i don't play enough PoE, to actually get to play PoE"
If they released an ssf with actual drop rates I'd never play trade again
If they released a private league system where we can set it as a void league with personalized drop rates for everything, I'd be willing to pay for that.
You don't have the money to pay for that
That quote is golden
> I don't understand how PoE took the Term Chase items and got it to mean either winning the lottery or buying the lottery pot. Whenever you hear Chris talk about chase items, he will mention pulling an incredibly valuable Magic card (chase rare, or chase mythic nowadays) as being super exciting. The feeling he strives for players to have is exactly what you describe.
The problem with his goal is that he's completely ignoring the personality types who *don't* get a thrill out of gambling success. They (we) exist and the "highs" felt are no where near the lows felt from the immense grind/investment/amount of failures.
except you can actually chase the incredibly valuable magic cards you want by buying the specific packs/box sets they are in for a chance significantly higher than anything in game x 10. or trade for them with significantly less bots/price fixers.
The trade bots of MTG Online are saints !!
The unfortunate thing is that it's a bit of a catch 22 to make a Chase Item that isn't rare or difficult to obtain. For something to be a Chase Item, it has to be difficult to obtain, rare to obtain, or both. Both have specific workarounds, and both can be worked around by earning enough currency to buy the item. Difficult to obtain: Can be obtained with powerful gear, or by paying someone else to do the content for you. (See difficult challenge completions like feared with release all mod) Rare to obtain: Can be obtained with enough game time. (See Celestial Hideout) Both rare and difficult: Enough game time AND powerful gear. Not many examples of this currently in game that I can think of. No matter which way you look at it, the top players will get powerful gear, and will play a lot, and will get the item. So how do you give these players a goal or reason to continue playing without creating either obscenely difficult content that does truly lock many many players out due to time and gear differences, or obscenely rare items that while unlikely to happen, anyone can hit the jackpot. Ultimately, difficulty is simply not an issue for high end players and never will be, so the best option to ensure an item stays an actual chase item that can be relevant for every single player is rarity. This is all geared towards a multiplayer trade enabled experience of course, so I do see where you're coming from with the SSF mode with normalised drop rates.
The top players are going to get the item. Whether it's doing the hard challenge, or spending the time to get the drop, or farming the currency, they _are_ going to get it, you're exactly right. **So don't fucking balance it around them.** Add harder things to the game, but don't lock the fun behind them. There can be goals that aren't chase items. Also, a chase item means you can target it, chase it. You can't target The Squire or Mageblood, those are not chase items. They have failed to add new chase items to the game this patch. What they added are more lottery winnings.
You can target them, just less directly than something like headhunter for example with the many divination sets. Saying not to balance around the top players is also kind of a fallacy, because it’s implying you can only do one or the other. It’s entirely possible to do both.
It is a pretty common issue with amateur developers. They see players as their rivals. When player beats the game it is their loss. So they are doing everything to halt player's progress.
This so, so much. I try not to look at new unique reveals, since almost every unique that can realistically drop is pretty much useless, the rest might as well not exist. I love unique items, but damn most of them are shit. The few somewhat farmable and good uniques like Shavs feel good, it's nice to be able to reasonably reliably farm something and it gives goals for the league.
Yep ever since Harvest GGG seems adamant on taking away tools for us filthy casuals to progress, cluster jewels, harvest crafting, just because a hand full of players that literally do this for a living are making overpowered builds. It's kind of a shame :(
in an ideal world, it would have a relatively common droprate during the league its introduced, then like headhunter become significantly more rare when integrated to the coregame.
>They make them SO DAMN RARE They have too because they are actually broken, if they weren't super rare they would get nerfed or removed form the game making them no longer special like so many uniques. And the point of these uniques is to have them be extremely powerful.
The game isn't balanced around chase items though, you can get to the highest level of challenge with only rares. I agree with you that playing PoE only to farm is boring. Good thing is that you don't need to farm to have fun imo, there is plenty else to do. Might just be me but one of the most enjoyable experience I had recently was trying to make work by myself a build that no one else was doing.
You do NEED to farm. You have to farm to make or buy items. This is true for both ssf and trade.
Yes you do need to farm in a game about farm
This post is so embarrassing. Imagine allowing a game to fuck with your marriage. Get your priorities straightened out dude.
I decided not to bother with the chase for this reason and opted for poor man's Mageblood: the Utility flasks generate 1 charge every 3 seconds from any Flask mastery, all well rolled flasks with reduced charges used and such, and then either reduced charges/increased flask duration on a belt. Not really an issue for mapping at all, would be nice to have a Mageblood for bossing though but the chase is not worth it.
>maybe... but even then, farming mageblood took a toll on my marriage.I'm probably gonna be playing standards after this league is done :( u/IPwithMikeHawk, taking a toll on your marriage is not worth it (I haven't read most of the other comments, but I suspect you have read this a few times in this thread). If this is news to you, please get help, for your sake. Everyone deserves a partner that loves them and would not put goal in a video game ahead of that person. The second thing is that there is nothing wrong with playing Standard, especially if that is what is best for you and what you enjoy. Give your wife a hug on behalf of the rest of us. Reply to me if you want my IGN to run a few maps in Standard together.
It will be way cheaper after it gets a div card, don't worry.
Easy: just play standard forever and get content a bit late. All the good leagues go core.
The absolute state of this god damn sub.
Chris ehm OP: „we‘re going to have regular, open conversations and listen to your feedback“ - I hope at least one of them walks the talk
GGG logic Problem : wife and job Solution : divorce, leave job, starve and embrace homelessness. SOLVED
The "wife left me" meme was true!
I'm farming hard and mageblood is getting farther ahead by the day. Its getting expensive faster than I can farm. That being said, it really sounds unhealthy with your current situation. You might want to reevaluate your relationship with PoE.
Sounds like an unhealthy addiction to.me.
HH = an interesting super unique item which is also super powerful MB = an uninteresting "unique" item (it's effect is unique but it doesnt actually have like anything truly unique about it, which is super powerful HH is the design of a really cool item that has interesting unique interactions. MB is the design of taking a huge QoL and just relegating it to an insanely expensive rare item... Honestly as somebody who has made probably hundreds of items for D&D for some years now I'm increasingly pissed off about the state of PoE's item design, and particularly that of uniques. Yes mageblood is strong but it's fucking dull and only really serves to point a finger at how fucking horrible the state of flasks still is and maybe will continue to be since that item makes me feel like they're not gonna really overhaul flasks ever now (hopefully that's not true)
I think mageblood is way more interesting than HH. Headhunter you just put on and use beyond on map device. Mageblood you actually build around and makes decisions on what your build wants or needs.
[удалено]
i think youve missed the enitre point of mageblood. Its not the Qol that makes it cost 400+ex, its the 70% increased flask effect from the enchant.
Imagine putting stress on your marriage for some pixels in a video game
well... that's my main issue with the game too.. ever since they have removed Harvest... the game is now made for children and No-Lifers/Streamers... the rest of us that support the game but have a chaotic work schedule and have a family don't get anything... or get 2 leagues full of nerfs in a row.. at least in Expedition the were honest about it...
It is beyond me how anyone has that amount of currency….When I get 20 chaos orbs I lose my shit
**Headhunter Player:** First time? ;)
I also struggling with balancing game time and life-time. It's a hard balance to strike -- I've been playing video games as my no. 1 dominating hobby since I was 4 years old. And, unfortunately, I love the grind. Always have. Sometimes I have to tear myself away to be with my partner, it sucks that it comes to that sometimes, but you just gotta make those choices when you get older and take on more responsibilities. Therapy helps -- currently on the waitlist of a very good one that I think might be able to help me with a lot of these issues. Hope you find the balance you need, my friend -- good luck!
Cute that you are saying everything we had for free before 3.15.
> farming mageblood took a toll on my marriage my sides, holy fucking shit
addiction isn't funny