First, Path of Exile Needs a Rollback
First thing, GGG needs to revert the major changes to loot to their pre-3.19 state. Reddit is on fire, and after multiple patches, major content creators are quitting the game, people are abandoning the league in droves, and at the end of the day, nobody is happy with the changes. Casual players and hardcore players alike are united in their hatred of the changes to loot, and moreover, neither side asked for these changes. Nor were they even announced or described until the community began complaining. Nobody is happy with the changes, so, for now, they need to be reverted. There’s little to gain by forcing major changes onto an entire playerbase that doesn’t want them. Sure, the developers decide the direction of the game, but if the entire people who’re supporting the game with their money, enabling it to be made, are saying that a single patch has ruined the entire game, well, best to do away with that patch, right?
Then, a Major Overhaul
But reverting these loot changes can only be the beginning. See, by now, the Path of Exile community is upset about a lot more than just how broken the game is. The deceitful way in which these nerfs were shadow-dropped without any announcement, the appalling response from GGG, and the list of patches walking back (only slightly) bad decisions that the community are crying out for to be reverted. On a fundamental level, the PoE community has been complaining about issues with the game, the same issues, for quite some time. Melee has been awful for a long time. Archnemesis monsters are perpetually unbalanced. And right now? Harvest is in the worst state it’s ever been in, and summoners are dead as a build in 3.19. Plus, few new interesting skills are added, and few new powerful items are added. Characters are getting weaker, and each league, complaints from players start to ring a little more true as they continue to be echoed, league after league. Memes abound about GGG’s ‘Vision’ but in all seriousness, many players feel like there’s a distinct divide between where GGG is pushing the game and where the players want it to go.
Finally, GGG Needs to Communicate Better
Reddit is an awful place, sure. Some of the worst people on the internet call Reddit home, but it’s also where some of the most active, dedicated communities online can be found, too. It makes sense to roll your eyes when every update Reddit loses its mind over a particular thing, but when you open up the subreddit and see a slew of posts that read “Well, I’ve played for 30,000 hours over 10 years and I’m quitting” right next to links to videos from content creators who are also quitting, something more serious is going on. Sure, it makes sense GGG is a bit more reluctant to share news about the game if they can only hope for a terrible reception, but for a company supposedly well known for its communication and connection to the community, to see emotionless Reddit post after post merely discuss the latest terrible changes coming to the game without answering the larger question of ‘What’s going on?’ is an especially bad look.
While the League System May Be Showing Its Age
Leagues are great in a lot of ways, but more and more, it seems that there are different kinds of players in Path of Exile that have different needs, and it may be the case that Leagues aren’t the best way to do business anymore. What if, instead, there was a hard mode for those interested in a brutal experience where you weren’t even expected to get to red maps, usually; then, there was a standard mode where you could get the default Path of Exile experience, and then there was a seasonal mode where new mechanics would regularly be added and tested out. Most players play Leagues, so that’s where everybody’s time is focused, but it’s also a bit of a unique relationship with the game seeing regular huge drops in players as leagues come and go. If, instead, the community was concentrated across a couple different modes with their own economies, where perhaps the seasonal server could see the economy reset every so often, this would allow for some more bespoke finetuning to truly give PoE players the option as to how they want to play.
