If you're a Path of Exile player and you've been around the community in the last couple of days, you probably already know that everything's on fire. The subreddit is exploding with angry players, streamers are quitting the game, and overall, the consensus is that the game's too hard and you don't get enough good loot for playing.
Sure, the latest update to the game might be terrible, but I think Path of Exile's problems go a lot deeper than that, so in this article, I'll walk you through why I think Path of Exile's issues are more serious than just the 3.19 update.
Related: GGG Announces Changes to 3.19, Gets Most Downvoted Post in Subreddit History
Fighting Power Creep in Path of Exile
With a game like Path of Exile that's updated with content over years and years, there's an inevitability when it comes to this process: power creep. See, when you play a game for a while and start to want more content, you naturally want stronger monsters to fight, better gear to use, and new areas to explore that look and feel fresh and exciting.
So, over time, more powerful enemies to fight and stronger gear to fight them with have been added to the game. Today, every League people will build characters that can one-shot the strongest enemies in the game. Every League, after just a few days, people will start hitting level 100, the max level.
In fact, most of your playtime in Path of Exile is going to be spent with you instantly killing enemies in seconds, and this can trivialize a lot of especially older content. Of course, this isn't good. power creep isn't good. And GGG knows this, which is precisely why there have been and continue to be vicious nerfs, weakening builds and slowing down progression.
Related: Is Loot Broken in Path of Exile 3.19?
The controversial 3.19 Lake of Kalandra League and update are simply more of that same nerfing GGG has been doing for multiple Leagues now in what is almost certainly a bid to fight power creep and make getting to endgame a reward for the best builds and not a tedious speedrun everyone does in the first few days of a League.
In a lot of ways, these are big-picture good ideas, but the problem is that fighting power creep in general undercuts how Path of Exile fundamentally works with its League system.
Leagues in Path of Exile vs Power Creep
The vast and overwhelming majority of PoE players play the game during its Leagues, seasons that last a few months and happen a couple times a year. Each new League brings with it a new League mechanic that keeps the game feeling fresh, while each new League also marks a major update to the game where lots of changes are introduced.
Related: Path of Exile 3.19 Problems Explained
Each new League requires you to start fresh with a new character in a new economy, and at the end of each League, these League characters get dumped into Standard, where there's continuity and you can keep playing the same character forever and won't have to deal with playtesting temporary League mechanics.
Standard in Path of Exile is kind of like the 'base game' in a sense where it has all of the content as well as whatever finetuned League mechanics GGG wants to keep around forever, while Leagues are fun, fresh ways to play Path of Exile. And remember, the majority of PoE players play exclusively in Leagues.
This is where the problems begin. See, power creep is a problem because characters start off weak and get more powerful, and then they get increasingly powerful as you add in stronger gear and weapons. So, in Standard, there's been a relatively linear increase in the power of characters, the ability to grind more and more currency, etcetera, as more and more stuff is added to the game, particularly endgame content.
Related: Path of Exile Mobile Explained: Everything You Need to Know
So, the nerfs we're seeing in 3.19 make more sense for Path of Exile as the base game, as a product, because Path of Exile wasn't designed around the idea of restarting your character every couple months. In fact, it's kind of designed around the opposite idea: slowly growing a character over time and becoming stronger and stronger. It's about progression.
However, most people aren't playing the base game: they're playing Leagues, and in every League you start fresh, so items becoming weaker, builds getting less effective, or being able to grind less currency just feels miserable, making each new League slower and less exciting to play.
Can Path of Exile Be Fixed?
I think so, but I also think it requires a rather unique solution. See, there needs to be League and Standard specific balancing. As it stands, they're the same outside of the League mechanic.
Related: Path of Exile Lake of Kalandra 3.19 Details Revealed, Fans Are Upset
If GGG increased currency drops as well as item quantity and rarity specifically in Leagues, you could make Path of Exile a lot more fun to play for the majority of players and you could avoid power creep. Sure, you may end up trivializing some lower-tier content in a particular League, but very few players play characters outside of Leagues anyways.
And the problem players are having comes down to not being able to progress through the game quickly enough, and in a very real sense, this is only a concern because Leagues are time-gated. Not only will they eventually end after a few months, Leagues (and thus trade) become a lot less active after a month or two passes.
So, since you can't spend years finetuning a character in a League (and since these characters don't get played in Standard, most of the time) it makes sense to make Leagues come packed with faster progression and more currency, while Standard has the default balance.
Related: How to Increase FPS in Path of Exile
In Standard, the expectation is never that you're starting a new character in a fresh economy. Any character you make will have access to your Stash with all of your account's resources, and since every League character eventually becomes a standard character, most Path of Exile players will have gear and money starting out as a new character in Standard.
All of this adds up to the idea that Standard can have more restrictive loot because you'll already have access to loot and you'll be able to play forever on whatever character. With these changes, GGG could appease the playerbase without making any changes to the base Path of Exile experience or introduce power creep there.
Explore new topics and discover content that's right for you!