Path of Exile

I have over 20,000 hours in Path of Exile. I don't say that to appeal to authority, but to make it clear where I'm coming from. I've played through countless leagues, watched the game evolve, adapted to almost every major system overhaul, and defended GGG through plenty of controversial changes over the years because I believed they were ultimately making the game better. This is the first time I genuinely feel like Path of Exile has lost sight of what made it special. I'm not going to speculate about conspiracy theories like the PoE 1 developers intentionally trying to push players toward PoE 2. I have no evidence of that, and I don't think it's a productive discussion. What I do think is undeniable is that ground loot has been getting worse and worse with all the nerfs and system changes, and Allflame is easily the worst it's been. The frustrating part is that GGG knows players aren't happy with it. During the Mirage League Q&A, the developers acknowledged the overwhelming feedback regarding poor ground loot. They specifically said they were increasing loot for Mirage and that they intended to do even more in the following league. Naturally, many players—including myself—expected Allflame to be the league where those promises would finally materialize. Instead, the opposite happened. The primary ground-loot strategy was again nerfed, and nothing meaningful replaced it. That leaves only a few possibilities: 1. GGG doesn't want Path of Exile to be centered around ground loot. 2. They believe the current state of ground loot is acceptable. 3. They somehow forgot what they had publicly discussed. The third option seems extremely unlikely, which means we're left with the first two. And both of those create a much bigger problem than simply "less loot." --- Right now there are essentially four ways to acquire valuable items: * Kill monsters and rely on ground drops. * Do mechanics with predetermined rewards, such as Ritual windows or similar systems. * Kill bosses for their specific drop tables. * Gamble through mechanics like Stacked Decks and other RNG-heavy systems. On paper, that sounds like healthy variety. In practice, it creates a serious progression problem because only one of those reward types naturally scales with character power: killing increasingly difficult monsters. Here's where everything falls apart. The primary way players increase map difficulty is through map modifiers, but those modifiers mostly just scale ground loot quantity and rarity. This creates a major problem: if ground loot itself isn’t valuable enough, then making maps harder stops being meaningful. You’re simply taking on more dangerous content for rewards that don’t scale in a satisfying way. That breaks one of the core ARPG loops Path of Exile is built on. In a healthy system, difficulty and reward should scale together: you improve your character, you take on harder content, and that harder content gives meaningfully better rewards. That loop is what makes progression feel rewarding. But when the best currency comes from running easier maps quickly rather than engaging with harder, more dangerous content, that loop collapses. At that point, there’s little incentive to push your build further once you can comfortably clear basic endgame maps. Instead of asking “how strong can I become?”, players are pushed toward “what’s the fastest, easiest content I can spam for profit?” That shift fundamentally undermines the ARPG experience, where investing into a stronger character should always translate into being able to tackle harder content for better rewards. --- So here we are 20k hours later, and I'm finally seeing the game I love so much be taken out back for some unknown reason. They were fully bought by Tencent in 2024, so maybe that has something to do with it? During the Allflame Q&A, Mark emphasized that if player numbers aren't growing, then there's only one direction they can go. This was concerning to me because it felt like the devs' focus was centered around player metrics and business growth rather than what dedicated players found fun and what kept them playing. It's almost as if they are saying that, at this point, players with 10k+ hours who play 6+ hours a day are becoming less of a priority because they're likely to move on anyway, so the focus shifts toward making the game more accessible for new players. Historically, GGG built its reputation by making a game for passionate ARPG fans, trusting that if the game was exceptional, the players would come. Lately, that philosophy feels less visible. Whether that's actually changed internally or not, it's certainly the impression many veteran players are walking away with. For the first time since I started playing, I struggle to recommend it to friends. As much as it pains me to say it, if someone asked me today which game to start, I'd probably recommend Path of Exile 2 instead. I never thought I'd say those words. GG, GGG.

This current league sucks so much, dont play it.

I have 1.6k hours on PS5 and another 2k on PC, so I think it is finally time to leave a review. - There is no other game that can induce this much rage and bliss in me at the same time. Playing PoE means constantly alternating between praising the developers as geniuses and wondering whether a monkey, homeschooled by a pigeon and armed with a crayon, could design better systems and leagues. GGG can release a genuinely excellent league, then follow it with something as bad as Keepers or Allflame and somehow still appear proud of the result. I have no idea whether their QA team blindly approves everything, whether their playtesters are ignored, or whether everyone occasionally loses the ability to recognize obvious problems. This cannot always be defended with "We take risks, because otherwise every league would be boring". My sweet summer child, veteran players knew within the first 150 hours that your league was terrible. Then you buffed it, and it was still terrible. - PoE1 no longer feels like a game being developed entirely for the people who actually enjoy PoE1. More PoE2 mechanics, ideas, pacing decisions, visual clutter, friction, and experimental systems keep bleeding into it. Instead of preserving the identity of the game that built their audience, GGG increasingly seems to use PoE1 as a convenient testing ground for PoE2. Stop trying to fix what made the game successful just because it does not match the philosophy of your newer project. If I will want to play PoE2, which I like too, I will play PoE2. Not a reskinned version with worse graphics and rewards in PoE. - There is also no truly challenging, structured endgame in PoE. If you cannot create your own goals and find enjoyment in optimization for its own sake, you will eventually become bored. The entire endgame is a repetition loop. You juice maps, kill Ubers, farm currency, upgrade your build, and then repeat the same content with larger numbers and often mediocre rewards. You need to be a very particular kind of autistic, natural-born tinkerer, theorycrafter, and min-maxer, to keep enjoying it for thousands of hours. Personally, I can spend entire evenings crafting items, planning builds, calculating modifiers, and optimizing systems. The game itself is often boring. Understanding and breaking the game is the fun part. That leads to another problem. Once your character becomes powerful and you finally understand how to juice maps properly, the game stops looking like an action RPG and starts resembling a graphics-card stress test. Ten thousand monsters spawn at once. Fifty glowing orbs chase you across the map. A hundred overlapping ground effects cover every surface. Millions of visual and sound effects go off simultaneously, most of them contributing nothing except noise, confusion, and irritation. Would you like to see your character? Understand what killed you? React to an enemy attack? Play Solitaire.

Прошёл всю кампанию перед выходом PoE 2. Для новичка игра довольно сложная. Я проходил практически без гайдов и несколько раз умудрялся чуть ли не сломать свой билд, потому что вообще не понимал, что делаю. С камнями, характеристиками, экипировкой и всем остальным первое время полный хаос. Но именно поэтому было интересно самому во всём разбираться. Единственное, что мне не очень понравилось некоторые акты сильно затянуты. Вроде боссы хорошие, сюжет двигается, но между ними приходится слишком много бегать по огромным локациям, и под конец уже хочется, чтобы это поскорее закончилось. В итоге не пожалел, что прошёл. Для первого знакомства получил намного больше удовольствия, чем ожидал в целом очень понравилось.

Лига 3.29 полное говно

Everyone glazing this game how f2p it is and its only skins ect. While you can literally buy currency for real money and get OP endgame builds in seconds + to sell items you dropped in game requires buying premium merchant stash. Other than that its decent game especially with friends, but overglazed af by comunitty.

grinding labs at 3am realized i was just spreadsheet homework with loot filter and finally went to bed

"Спасибо" за одну из худших лиг за прошедшие 2.8к часов. "Мы будем поддерживать обе игры" " Мы будем развивать и первую и вторую части" Ублюдки, просто слов нет.