When I write “Bane is a hex now, not a curse”, I assume people who have a decent game knowledge will understand I’m specifically talking about the tags.
My bad.
Honestly, same. Add instance crashes in heists (especially when carrying back some juicy loot) and it just makes you want to play something else.
At least I picked a proven char concept this time so I’m still enjoying the regular game but man, at some point they will need to rethink their philosophy.
I decided to skip the first week of the new league this time around, and the talk of bugs and poor design make me glad I did. GGG seems to have moved to the “let’s launch stuff at 80% and let the playerbase be the final beta testers” approach to designing new leagues.
I remember when they Beta’d the Act IV release.
Mostly, the actual heists work (although the piles of mobs that can show up behind sealed doors on the way out are frightening at times, and that’s even without allies unkillable). I am slightly inclined to agree with reddit complaints that killing mobs on the way through a heist has too much impact on alarm level (but there are crafted affixes that can help with that, which I approve of generally). The state of Harbor town, however, is shockingly bad, and you can’t do a job without going through harbor town. And accessing it makes no sense. You have to use a heist coin thingy to open a portal from town/hideout. Theoretically, you could run out of coins and not be able to get back until you found another heist cash/got a lucky drop out in the wild. Which shouldn’t take too long, but these things as well as the collision issues/stash access issues make harbor town feel like it was thrown together at the last minute.
And while the new bugs seem all over the place, a lot of new stuff is apparently broken (e.g. broken scaling on skill gems, hexblast issues).
Heist is the 2020 of Path of Exile leagues, it feels like.
I haven’t encountered many bugs relative to Heists I’ve done while leveling. Except for the stash getting body blocked by other players (which they patched recently). As for the coins, they drop pretty often while just tooling around in the world from special mobs so I don’t think running out is an issue. I have been doing contracts as I run across them (typically waiting until I get 3 or 4 and then doing them all at once) so I definitely have gained a bunch of coins from them.
I’m playing a Spectre build (Kay’s) and it feels like it’s just come into its own around level 40. I am now starting to steamroll stuff (though let’s see how well I do fighting that bastard Innocence).
It’s really inexcusable that the waypoint into the new area is so awkwardly placed relative to where you need to go. It comes from reusing assets and seemingly not having enough people actually test it, IMHO.
Highlights:
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Killing guards no longer raises alert level (hotfixed in already, I think). This served no purpose IMO, it’s a good change.
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Choke points - fewer rare mobs in the squads that are waiting for you. Not everyone will have an attack ready when the door opens so the attacks will be a bit more staggered. Fewer enemies overall.
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Chests - The random chests throughout a heist level raise alarm a bit more. But Reward Room chests wil raise alarm level less. This is a very good change. Right now I’m not sure Reward Rooms are worth it most of the time. I’ve gotten some good stuff- multiple chaos from one, 8 fusings from another, and this wasn’t from currency chests - but on average if you open the regular chests you can open a lot more (3-4 versus 1 reward room chest ). And get more rolls at stuff as a result (I’ve overall gotten more currency out of those than the reward chests).
I think they still need to do some tuning. I saw a video this morning from TarkeCat who showed that with the recent changes you can go through an instant and open all the chests with a normal helper and not have the alarm level go up much at all.
The changes minimize the effect of using a particular companion who can lower the alert level delta on chest opening. And it makes their gear much less important also. So it sort of dumb that down a bit too much is what he was saying.
The problem is that it depends on the map. The different kinds of Heist maps even when the same level can vary widely in terms of how much alert you generate by just full-clearing straight through. I think the other issue is that they did the first step already (don’t alert on kill), but the rest is still pending (particularly the chest rebalance.)
So I’ve finally jumped into Heist, and I have to say, I really like it. Now, I didn’t play for the first week+ of the league, so whatever we-released-this-so-players-could-test-it-for-us early bugs and design flaws existed at release didn’t affect me. And I’m only just now getting into maps, so the high-end balance isn’t something I’ve seen yet. With those caveats, I think Heist is good fun.
I love the introduction of various characters with their own storylines, and I find myself anxious to go help them whenever I happen to see one of their special heist plans drop. Being able to equip them and choose which one you use for a particular skill is a fun bit of party management, though I’m not sure how much it really matters…maybe more at high levels. And I’m amused by the little quips each character makes when you’re on a heist, and the various things they do for you. Tullina the cat burglar cartwheeling through the laser hallway is definitely my favorite!
I mostly like the mechanics. The ability to choose how much alarm you raise by choosing whether to open chests is great, much better than a straight timer. Running out after the final chest can be rough, but I’d expect that, and again not having an actual timer is great. I have been killed a couple of times by I-have-no-idea-what-just-one-shotted-me, so I hope they’d tone that down or make it more clear what you need to avoid, but overall I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen thus far.
Not at the high end to comment on the top loot, but through the leveling process I’ve found some decent stuff. Got a couple jewelry items I could use, and one decent two-handed maul that I was able to sell for 30 chaos. The grand heist item choice is nice, gives you more chances to get something worthwhile than usual. Though I do wish the grand heist setup didn’t require you to go into that separate planning area, seems an unnecessary extra step.
Bottom line, I think Heist is head-and-shoulders better than Harvest, and if they continue to make improvements it could be one of my top favorite leagues.
I won POE
@ineffablebob I quite like Heist too. The early changes were beneficial. The crashing went away.
Which item is that?
I’ve pretty much stopped playing Heist already - got a TR trickster to 95 and dumped about 30 exa in the builld and ended up loving it, but I’m so goddamn annoyed by the sheer amount of league content that went core that I will probably stop playing the game completely unless they get this under control in PoE2. Fortunately I’m not the only one, there’s quite a bit of backlash on reddit regarding this so maybe they will do something about it.
On the other hand, league specific stash tabs apparently sell like hot cakes, so who knows.
Fishing Rod.
To continue the joke, it glows when you are in an area with a unique fish. Which obviously never happens.
Way ahead of you, brother!
I don’t get the hate for more content, but hey, to each their own. I love coming across abysses and sulfite and strongboxes and rogue exiles and delerium and so on and so forth.
The developers recently posted an update on how they’re approaching future league development.
It boils down to scope control, which is a damn good idea for any development effort.
It’s not so much the content as the fact that they kept all the dumbass alternate progression systems. Abysses can be awesome one-off minidungeons with unique monster types and drops and shit, but fuck the whole foozle-collection specific to each league where you’ll never, ever see enough of whatever currency in the new league to do anything with.
Bah!
Yeah it’s fun…unless you’re trying to maximize profit (especially early in the league) and knowing the intrinsic value of literally hundreds of these items (or craft benches/temple rooms) by heart at this point is too much. And made worse for someone who skipped a few leagues.
And then we have the lolcrafting, where players are just supposed to know the cutoff points for highest tier rolls. Shit, at this point I don’t even know which bases require ilvl 85 and which are fine to be used as i84.
The moment I need to start consulting a fucking encyclopedia for these things is the moment I start getting annoyed.
Clearly we play the game on very different levels! I have no idea how to maximize profit, or what bases I need for crafting, nor do I care. I just toss items into a sell tab occasionally and go to the market when I need something to give me more life or resists. Mostly, I just want to hit things, or more accurately, watch my zombies hit things.
I do feel you on the alternate progression stuff, which is why I largely ignore it. I’ll unveil the occasional item or go into the delve mine sometimes, but I don’t focus on it. If I don’t have a recipe I want to use because I wasn’t doing that stuff, fine, I either do without or spend the extra to buy an item with the mod already.
Anyhow, I certainly agree that improvements could be made. Hopefully they do streamline in POE2, but without losing the fun parts of coming across a weird encounter in the wilderness or exploring the Temple of Atzoatl.
Oh trust me, I am veeeery far from what the 1% in PoE actually do. I mean yeah, I probably have about 50-60 exalts in currency + items in Heist at this point, despite not actively playing for more than 2-3 weeks, but that’s peanuts compared to what some people. Still, even if I played SSF, I wouldn’t know what to go for or what to look out for when mapping. I had a break these past few leagues and had to look up how conquerors work and saw Sirius for the first time (what a terribly designed fight btw). And I had no idea that influenced items only drop on maps that follow a specific sequence on atlas once you locate the conqueror. Or that you can get double influenced items. Or orbs that can influence. And this is just atlas, a core part of the game! Now add what, 15 leagues worth of content on top, with their own unique specific items, currencies and mechanics and it’s just too much. I don’t know how anyone can keep track of this unless they were living and breathing PoE for the past 3 years.
On a side note, unveiling is a fucking shitshow if you’re going for a specific craft. If you don’t read about this league in depth you wouldn’t even know to start setting up the relationships between Betrayal members to target specific members and their crafts. Or you could simply lock yourself out of an entire batch of crafts by banishing certain members of Betrayal.
Yep, I agree with all that, especially the unveiling stuff. It just doesn’t really affect how I play the game. I don’t play builds that require a specific craft, or specific high-end items. If that stuff was required to get through the game, I’d be more unhappy, but since it’s optional I can just ignore it. Now, having said that, would I like to see things simplified (especially crafting)? Oh heck yes, and I do hope they’re thinking that way for the big overhaul.
I never thought I’d say this, but really good gamepad support is right at the top of my wishlist for POE2. Yes it’s less efficient and basically invalidates certain builds/strategies, but for the way I play the genre (well, currently Grim Dawn anyway) it’s so much more comfortable and relaxing and non-RSI-inducing.
Anyone mess with a gamepad in the existing game? Curious how robust the interface is.