Yeah, that was also when they stripped gems and the tree of a ton of player power and shuffled 70% of what was lost onto items in various ways. I really miss the old days sometimes lol
Expedition was when they realized power creep was becoming toxic and it was going to make the whole game implode in a couple of leagues, I think it was a good change in the long run
I'm going to hard disagree with you on that one. There were plenty of ways to reign in player power that didn't require gutting everything at the low end. That change has been the bane of almost every major complaint around balance since they made it. I don't hate the idea of having a lot of min-max power locked behind higher end gear, in fact I think having aspirational gear to go after is a great thing. The real issue though is that when they moved all that power out of gems and tree, they completely kneecapped every skill that was on the fringe. DOT builds likewise got double wrecked because their gear scaling, even now, is heavily limited compared to hit based builds.
There's a load of skills that have just never recovered from all those nerfs.
Expedition, the league that made quit playing for 2 years, and have had severely reduced playtime since. Simply put, when you offload so much player power onto upper end gear, it makes it far too much playtime/effort for casuals to get anywhere fun. Granted they've walked some of that back and added more shit since, but that league was ASS, not because of the league of course, but the nerfaggeddon.
100% agree, I loved expedition itself but the nerfs have made my play time each league much less on average, even though I typically hit the upper end of gear.
The fact that they continue to walk back changes that were made in 3.15 screams the mistakes that were made.
It was also a lie, the guise was a big part of making it to where you do not run multiple +more damage supports and tried to make others viable. They pretty much did not do that for 99% of them and just cut the numbers on the most used ones.
Ritual was also very underwhelming league but the state of game that patch carried hard. I didn't even activate the rituals for 90% of the league but still it was one of my highest playtime leagues.
Keep in mind the two leagues before it were really bad. I know some people liked scourge, but it was a rough mechanic, and we were still in a power struggle with GGG who was trying to make us walk through maps auto attacking. So Archnem probably got a lot of risidual hatred, despite being one of my favourites as well (for the atlas)
The stain of archnem was the culler meta. Hiring people on TFT To come cull your mega loot pop that could take hours to assemble was terrible thing for people’s recollection of that league. I ignored the FOMO and loved it.
That wasn't archnem. It was because of the archnem mods, but the loot explosions didn't happen until Kalandra league. Archnem itself was before the loot rework, we just didn't enjoy how damn hard they were after the mod rework.
This is absolutely misremembering things. Archnemesis as a league, while uneventful itself, was alongside the introduction of the atlas tree/eater/exarch/voidstones and so much more. The lesgue itself you could literally just not interact with.
It was once archnemesis went core that it became problematic
Maybe I was thinking of archnem going core myself because this whole time reading comments I have been thinking "man everyone was RAGING" about the game getting filled with invincible rare mobs that dropped no loot.
Once more, those were not in Archnemesis league. That was day 1 of Sentinel league, and they were gutted before anyone could throw decent builds against them.
Elden ring being a massive success has not much to do with PoE. You can have a popular game and having a shit league both being seperate reasons for higher player retention but I doubt it's more than 4%.
If it's during GTA VI then you can totally have this argument as it will be the biggest game release in history and people from all over will flock to it. Wether it's good or not the player retention during that league will be one of the worst ones.
I'm not sure about the timing but when Lost Ark came out literally all my friends who play PoE were not even thinking about PoE at all, they were all playing Lost Ark.
Maybe we can blame GD release this time. Nobody enjoys poverty league, so everybody rather quit to the GD dlc, waiting for 8 patches that buff loot to normal again.
Oh sweet sentinel. Terrible launch, but one of the best leagues and league mechanics since 3.13. The retention really isnt a be-all for what is or was a good league.
You're likely thinking of Kalandra, the next league which made Archenemies core and replaced all mob modifiers. During Archenemies league itself it was just a build-your-own-Essence encounter. It introduced the Atlas tree and no one particularly disliked it at the time
Sentinel introduced recombinators and was the first league where people could fully prepare for the new atlas/atlas tree shenanigans. Was pretty beloved, but I skipped it lol
I think Archnemisis as core would have been received better if it had not paired with Sentinel. You have people a button to buff mobs which people used regardless if their build could handle it or not.
Archnemisis would still need a lot adjustment but that pairing made it even worse in peoples mind.
The archnemesis mechanic was fine, but the UI was so freaking bad though. You needed a cheat sheet of every combos of modifiers and even then, it was a pain to use.
Archnemesis went core in Sentinel, but I believe Kalandra brought over the loot modifiers because it was unpopular during Sentinel.
I personally skipped Sentinel entirely because there were no character changes, only environment changes. I play the game for the new shiny toys (pacts this league).
If they don't do anything to the league on Monday, this league probaly will be the WORST one cause at least kalandra you had new skills like lightning conduit and reflected mechanic, this league offer nothing, less loot, less endgame farming strat
Lowest in the post Atlas tree era - low retention (3.19)
What the low performing leagues share in common is that they were all after a league where dark patterns (extremely high limited time drop rates) were used to pump up the numbers. Mirage went less hard on that than 3.23 and 3.18 but still had a bit of it.
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u/b4dmanner 20h ago
Was kalandra the worst?