State of the Game: What’s Happening in 3.19
The state of the game isn’t great. As of now, summoners are dead as a build, while Harvest crafting is also dead. The new league mechanic is rather long and slow, and the rewards, even with buffs, aren’t usually that strong. 32:9 support was broken, intentionally, by the update, while many are reporting performance problems and crashing. However, the biggest issues by far surround loot and monster strength. Even after some major tweaks, loot in Path of Exile is in a bad state. There’s much less money around, fewer things to buy, and as a result, trade is pretty dead and most everyone is poor. Plus, mobs are incredibly strong, especially those with Archnemesis modifiers. If you aren’t taking 20 minutes to kill one, chances are it’s taking them .01 seconds to kill you in a burst of light (or something, you won’t be able to tell), and in an instant you’ll be back at the login screen. Suffice it to say that even with a few patches that have helped things become a bit less punishing that the game is in a much worse place than 3.18.
How Are Patches Improving Things?
Well, Archnemesis mobs are less tanky, and loot has been buffed across the board. However, mobs can still have a ton of health, but moreover, they’re often hard to see attacking and can kill you incredibly fast. As far as loot goes, at the very high-end, players were reporting 90% or higher reductions in loot, and after the patches, not much seems to have changed. Though, some screenshots of crazy currency drops of tons of Divine Orbs have been making their way around the internet. In general, it’s much more likely you’re going to be poor, see a lot of duplicate trash rares drop, and get more Armourer’s Scraps than you have any idea of what to do with. It’s still a noticeably different feel to loot and item drops than there was in 3.18, according to many if not most players. As far as summoners go, no changes have been made. Melee hasn’t been touched, and Harvest crafting has been buffed, a bit, but unfortunately, prices are still often high, and more importantly, essential crafts players want are still gone. Harvest crafting, as a thing, has never really been more dead than now.
What’s Coming in Future: More Patches?
Currently, we’re hearing from GGG about once a day in the form of forum posts and patches. At the time of writing, a new post explaining what’s going on in general, with hopefully an announcement of more changes, is coming soon, courtesy of lead developer Chris Wilson. More patches are inevitable, but whether or not the community gets what they’ve been asking for is unknown. For example, the buff to loot many cagree is good but also note that it seems that loot was significantly better before so these buffs to it now don’t manage to bring it in line with previous leagues. If GGG planned to simply undo the changes, it seems most likely that would have already been done, so unless there’s a new host of changes and balancing coming in that arena, many are fearing the worst. The worst, of course, being that GGG will merely explain why the changes players hate are good for the game in the coming post. While Reddit can and does overreact, numbers speak for themselves, and this 3.19 league has seen the worst player retention that Path of Exile has ever had, making the problems with the right now seem perhaps more real than they ever are when people online get very upset at PoE. Currently, we’re in a liminal space. It’s still early days in 3.19, so if GGG can manage to announce and deliver major changes to the league, it may be the case that most players come back and write off the first week as a horrible mistake and forget about it. However, that may not be the case. If GGG is either too slow or too unwilling to make major changes, it’s guaranteed players won’t come back, making Kalandra the least successful league in PoE history, and beyond that, it may well signal a decline in PoE players going forward in future leagues.
