The future of POE's speed farm Meta

with this meta stuff too, it is semantics rly.

I dont see it as a meta personally but its coming down to how you take the phrase, no right or wrong way to see it.

For me to say its a clearspeed meta suggests theres a form of this game where clearspeed wasnt the meta, like there could be a different meta. Thats not the case, its just a permanent state of being. Since I started on the first day of open beta there was racing, racing the ladder, thats what ladders are about, and then actual racing with seasons etc. Speed of progression was always a drive, its not a current meta that has come into play at some point and may switch to a different meta, its just the game, its hard baked into the very fabric of the game since day 1 of open beta.






The real deal is, now fast are we allowed to go? Thats the question, what matters, what has got out of control, what has changed. Im gonna be honest, I dont think many people asked for this, not this far, not this much. It wasnt called for, I didnt see hordes of people screaming to go faster, it was just reckless additions to the game that were not nerfed quick enough and set a precedent. Once people had the speed for long enough that it felt normal they wouldnt accept going backwards. Rather than realise they need to take care GGG just kept being completely careless, adding broken as fuck shit to the game that no one actually asked for which kept making it worse and worse, and they dont fix them, they leave them in for too long and then were stuck with them. And they kept doing it over and over and over till they just totally fucked up their game.

This wasnt demanded, this wasnt needed, this isnt the reason the game got more popular, it was endless careless mistakes from the devs. theyre still making them, it feels like theyve given up now, they actually dont give a shit any more, its ruined and any will to try and claw back something reasonable from where we are right now just seems non existent. It can be fixed, obviously, and I believe the game can survive it being fixed, but I see no will at all to do it.

Vaal spark was the line crosser, when they didnt nerf vaal spark, and they let that become how people expected the game to be by leaving it in for league after league after league, the game was fucked.

If you drop the word meta from your vocabulary, you will more cleanly argue your point I think.

What should GGG do to reign in on the clear speed meta?

What should GGG do to reign in on clear speed?

I don't know; this has become nails on a chalkboard with me. Perhaps my interpretation of meta is wrong. The most fast, tankiest, biggest damage-dealing build will always simply exist no matter what iteration we have with PoE. Even then we're all going to bitch about what's best anyway....

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jack_aubrey написал:

If you drop the word meta from your vocabulary, you will more cleanly argue your point I think.

What should GGG do to reign in on the clear speed meta?

What should GGG do to reign in on clear speed?

I don't know; this has become nails on a chalkboard with me. Perhaps my interpretation of meta is wrong. The most fast, tankiest, biggest damage-dealing build will always simply exist no matter what iteration we have with PoE. Even then we're all going to bitch about what's best anyway....

Best =/= Meta is the issue, you just have to look at the skill usage / ascendancy statistics to understand that there are very defined rails for most players apparently.

So your two statements can't always be linked in many cases the problem is that slow builds feel bad, not because fast builds feel fast but because speed has become the primary measure of a characters success. That is why it is a meta and not just a statement - if clear speed was not the meta It wouldn't need to be reigned in.

Its like the difference between queen of the forest and movement skills, qotf allows you to go super fast by stacking evasion but has a reasonable penalty associated in that you have to use a fairly gimp chestpiece by modern standards. Shield charge is just a standard fixture on any character that can use it, vastly increasing your movement speed and giving free perks (coh/fort etc).

qotf is a choice, many movement skill setups really aren't, you are just gimping your character by not using them.

Bring back Shaped Strand and Vaal Fireball ...

It's literally thing I am most need.

(+ Cross Leagues Skin Transfers and more Shaper/Elder MTX pls)

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Arrowneous написал:

GGG can't keep the speed meta going forward for much longer. It's pretty much maxed out right now with temple incursions. Somehow, someway, GGG will need to find a way to slow down zone/map racing. Please, stop the insanity already!

No, the incursions are fine, just git gud. Maxed out build finishing incursion with like 0:40 timer, so there is like ton of space for builds who able to finish incursion with 30, 20 and 10 seconds left.

Nerfing the clear speed will be true doom of PoE. Never will happen, I believe, because most of people enjoying high clear speed. Just look at Bestiary.

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Heli0nix написал:

Wouldn't be astonished to see laser guns in next expansion

Laser swords are already exists.

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鬼殺し написал:

As someone who did just that for years, I can safely say that attitude is just putting off the inevitable: the stark realisation that this 'meta' thing is one of the most important things on the devs' mind when they balance the game. You can't 'play the way you enjoy' when the game itself might be made in a way that runs directly contrary to that. When the rewards for going fast (in the most recent case, incursion rares) are too great to ignore. I uninstalled PoE the moment I saw just how strong low level incursion rares could be and how easily speed-farm builds could acquire them at that level. I've stopped playing before but I've never uninstalled. That was my moment of reckoning. Of knowing if I didn't get on this speed-farm meta train, I was splish-splashing around in the shallow end of the kiddy pool in my own hapless pee. Even if we call that kiddy pool The Twilight Strand...

I don't get these complains from someone with max level 74.
I mean everyone knows and it's even published on reddit that you don't playing maps or don't making strong builds or don't farming OP gear.

What the point of complains about meta? The meta is something that affects people who want to farm absolute endgame with Headhunter etc. etc.

For you nothing changed since 3.0 when the leveling got revamp...
The leveling could be done with basically any build and there is no racing in leveling. You're not competing with anyone while leveling on ladder or market.

Too much needs to be fundamentally reworked in order to make PoE a hardcore ARPG (I consider it a laggier Clicker Heroes with better environment design in its present state). Spammable, zero cooldown mobility trivializes any content safe for oneshots. Player damage is through the roof and breaks everything to the point where I genuinely wonder if the developers play their own game.

I started playing during Bestiary and I loved it, but that league gave me a VERY wrong impression of what PoE is. Between the recipes, crafting, set items and the sometimes absurdly hard red beasts, I assumed this game was basically a slow, old-school ARPG. Incursion cleared it up for me: PoE carries the illusion of complexity, but in truth it's a braindead Facebook game where you stack multipliers and spam right click. Once you get over the hype of mastering this obscure, seemingly hardcore ARPG, you're left with something as shallow and basic as Diablo 3.

Chris Wilson admitted it himself on Baeclast that the reason they keep mobility and damage so idiotically high is because if they nerfed it the casuals would leave. Not for any gameplay reason, not because the team believes it makes PoE more fun, but simply because they'd lose their audience if they touched it. There is all the evidence I need to claim the speed farm meta isn't going away and is in fact the future of PoE.

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鬼殺し написал:

You never got to experience desync, for example. Not the real thing, at any rate. Desync was, ironically, the one thing probably keeping a true clear-speed meta in check. It encouraged ranged/aoe play, but you couldn't move too quickly because you never quite knew if your character was exactly where you thought it was. Whirling Blades was a death-trap. :)

It's funny, but some of my guildmates actually advertised "Predictive" mode, because it's looks
not that laggy in their screens with Herald of ice + AoE skills. It's Softcore, but still...

then they are dying to bearers

It was probably just a different game without Lockstep.

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鬼殺し написал:

This is all very true. Which is why I outlined what that hardcore ARPG might look like. More than once. In far more detail than most of you would ever bother to read.

Would you mind pointing me in the direction of where you have written extensively about this? I'm interested in reading more about it from a long-time supporter. I'm new myself, but can't stand incursions and have seen some videos from way back. It looks like a very different game, and what people typically say is that rare and even magic monsters were a genuine threat back then.

Not that I particularly want to die to everything with a pulse (and much without), but it is a bit silly when people fly through maps in a minute or whatever, and the only thing people are really doing is chasing another level, another challenge ticked off, and so forth. The game itself should be rewarding enough, should be fun.

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Draegnarrr написал:

So your two statements can't always be linked in many cases the problem is that slow builds feel bad, not because fast builds feel fast but because speed has become the primary measure of a characters success. That is why it is a meta and not just a statement - if clear speed was not the meta It wouldn't need to be reigned in.

speed hasnt become the primary measure, it always was and always will be the primary measure, thats simply an emergent property of the sort of game this is.

Its a game where the measure of competition is an xp ladder race, where the rewards are loot and xp gained by killing monsters. the faster you go the more you are rewarded, the more competitive you are. It has never and will never be an advantage to go slower, to get less items per hour, less xp per hour. A meta is a trend that is currently in play and can change to a different trend in the future. clearspeed being primarily valued is not a trend, its a fundamental unchanging principal of the game.



clear speed needs reigned in because its out of control and detrimental to actually having engaging gameplay mechanics. Its an all out damage, who gives a shit about defences meta we seem to be living in atm. Now if the game were changed so people had to care about defences, if people were challenged in ways that slowed them down or made them slow themselves down, then they wouldnt be going so fast. But you wouldnt remove the desire and attempt to go as fast as possible, youre just changing how fast whats realistically possible/practical is.

I think its fair to say were in a meta where clearspeed is largely unhindered thanks to awful game balance. Thats certainly a trend that hasnt always existed, currently exists and could change.







I think chris etc over worry about a player drop off from clamping down on the bad balance. they worry a lot about not nerfing the stupid shit they allow in their game in case it makes ppl leave, but they dont worry or care at all about carelessly adding stuff that makes the situation worse. I think theyve allowed themselves to become prisoners of their own paranoia and carelessness and the game has now slipped so far as a result that its actually come true, fully fixing it at this stage requires too big a nerf to everything.

Sad that they wont even attempt to make the small changes they could get away with though. Its like trade, oh we dont want to make the wrong decision so lets make no decisions or changes until we are sure.... 5 years later they are still scratching their arses having done next to nothing and the situation has degenerated into such a bad state that they are now powerless. Instead of making in built trade searching with half the power of xyz they did nothing, xyz came out, now theyre fucked, they cant roll it back, they cant give less than xyz and yet they dont even want the levels of power xyz has.

Movement skills, problem forever, they dont want to make a change till theyre sure.... 5 years later they have got so out of hand and what are GGG doing? Still scratching that arse saying well we wanna do something but were not sure and maybe we will just wait.... no, you fucking waited too long, like you did on everything, you sat there and watched the game go to shit while you did nothing and kept allowing the rot to set in with your inaction and careless mistake additions.

I dont think the mass of casual players wanted a super fast joke game where loot rains from the sky every time they press a button. I think GGG kept accidentally fucking up their game and once players are used to certain speeds, certain rewards, then it feels super bad to dial it back. Its our job as players to want to go as fast as possible and get as much loot as possible with the smallest risk and effort, thats the nature of being an arpg player, thats what we strive for. Its the devs job to manage what we can achieve to those ends and what we expect, and that is whats failed, not the casual players desires.