I have been playing Path of Exile on and off again since the start of 2016. I knew this day would come. In fact, the last league was a real struggle for me to want to keep playing. I muddle through that tired feeling of playing and got some content out. Due to the number of weeks needed to play just to get up to the point of the content I want to create it has not been feeling worth it.

Path of Exile for me has been a big part of my Steem identity which I’m thankful I’ve diversified over the years into a bunch of different games and genres as well. It feels like a part of me has died inside. Thankfully I did not make all my content around this single game.

For those not in the know, there is something I always referred to as Minecraft syndrome. Where a content creator focuses on only a single game and years after they have burned out they feel they have no other choice but to keep creating content around that game. Any other game they play does not get the views. Until one day that kind of content creator leaves the industry and stops creating content to never be heard from again.

Thankfully not only is that not how I went into creating content. I even played around with different formats from time to time to see how they fare. Such as my talking about creating my own video game and progress I’m making on it in posts like Game Development.

You even have other things like my Weekend Gaming Blockchain News which will be an irregular post type. Which is in fact just an updated format of my older Games You Played Over The Weekendthat never took off as I was hoping it would be. I might even make further changes to it moving forward if needed.

While it does sadden me to say I’m so burnt out of Path of Exile I never want to play again. This is not the first time I’ve said it either about this game. Perhaps in a year from now if Path of Exile 2 is out or nearing launch I’ll be a new me and ready to go again.

There is however this massive legacy of content I’ve created. Along with some loose ends, I need to tie up before I take a much-needed rest from Path of Exile.

Path Of Exile Content

I’ve been writing about Path of Exile on and off again since at least August 22nd, 2017 on Steem. My Why I Enjoy Playing Path of Exile ended up being one of my biggest posts from comment and even rewarded standpoint. As such over the years I continued expanding out my content, entering into hardcore races here on Steem, and engaging with the Path of Exile community.

I have over fifty posts alone in my ARPG/RPG index about Path of Exile and that is not even all my content on this game. I usually go in every couple of leagues and prune the list. Where I have the latest about any races I was in and current league stuff. Along with a couple of former leagues overviews, I also tend to keep anything else that stood out from past leagues as well.

Some of those posts nearly broke me as a content creator from how detailed and information-packed I wanted to make them. Such posts as A Look Into The Games Currencies where I took a look and demonstrated most of Path of Exile’s core currency which ended up dragging on for almost 6k words. Path of Exile is always adding new currency types and Conquerors Of The Atlas even changed a few of them.

If you are looking for an ARPG that has more depth than Diablo III ever did. I still strongly recommend Path of Exile despite the thought of playing it makes me feel sick for the time being. It is the longest played game in my Steam library. I would even update my Steam curation page every league with a link out to the current overview I had for it.

It would also not be my final league if I did not make an attempt to go over the league. With some final thoughts regarding the state things are in. I did not have the fun I was hoping to find this time around.

Metamorph League

In my standard fashion before the league started, I went over my thoughts on what information we had at the time about the up and coming Metamorph League. With all my years of experience to add I felt I did a great job at breaking down what I felt would be important. It is also interesting to note I felt Metamorph would be “simple.”

Once the league had started I enter into a 24 hardcore race. After that, I needed to play catch up and switch over to non-hardcore and start over. Each league itself requires a fresh start with nothing. The longer the league goes on the closer the league's economy becomes too standard as everyone’s characters and items will get transferred over once it ends. So there is a certain build-in market expectation that takes effect on knowing this.

Standard itself like in most rpg/arpg games that have leagues/seasons/ladders tend to have massive hyperinflation issues. Most players like I escape the downfalls a really old game economy has by playing in such leagues as Metamorph where the economy is fresh.

One of the cool things expected in the Metamorph League was that some of what is being done for Path of Exile 2 would start to roll out in Path of Exile. One thing that felt like they rolled out was some changes in loot drops. Instead of having a lot of loot it was going to be more quality and useful loot drops. All I could say for sure was I felt like I was struggling hard to get decent loot and had very little to craft into something useful.

Unlike a game like Diablo III where once you beat all the acts you can just level up characters even in a new season (league) in their rift. You don’t get to run maps to level up and are stuck running all the acts first in the game regardless of how many times you have already done so.

Path of Exile over the years has tried to change the meta of beating the game, going up into a harder difficulty and beating the game again before moving into maps. One attempt was adding in a bunch of content and new acts so when you replayed the game on a harder difficulty you would see the consequence of your actions as you played in many of the same old zones that were changed. That however only delayed the inevitable of players getting tired of running the same acts over and over again every league and on every character.

As I was going through the same old zones as I’ve done maybe a hundred times before. I had to stop and trigger the Metamorph. This involved killing enough creatures in the current zone to collect all the organs to create the Metamorph itself.

Certain monsters in a zone will show up on the mini-map as dropping an organ. These organs are the brain, eyes, lungs, heart, and liver. The higher rarity the creature the better the organ they can drop but the more challenging the Metamorph it makes from them. These organs can add extra loot drops such as currency, weapons, maps, jeweler and so forth.

The Metamorph you end up creating can take on certain properties from the creator’s organs it is made from by morphing into that creature for a short amount of time before taking on another form. This could give a Metamorph leap slam, a massive area of effect damage, strong single target hits, lots of adds spawning and a bunch of other cool combinations.

The downside is these Metamorph can end up being rather hard to defeat without getting killed a couple of times. Even more so if you are still leveling towards maps and lack decent gear synergy along with having key passive skills for the build you are going to withstand.

You can also only summon once Metamorph from the organs you have collected in that zone without start a new zone instance you can’t start over with another. Normal non-boss organs are not transferred to the next zone either. So there end up being this desire to create the hardest monster possible from what parts you do get.

In part, I took a long break from this game with the holidays and other events going on in life. Every time I would attempt to play there was a patch. Since my account is on Steam and I play over there patching is a pain since they never optimized for deploying patches using Steam. What should only be a couple of minute patches daily turned into an hour or longer. Every time I had a free hour to play that was spent patching and not playing.

Due to a lot of factors, this league was just not for me. I was not being active enough at the start to have the currency I needed for gear. Endless patching every time I tried to play. Along with, what I felt was a simple and boring league mechanic. For all I know, the endgame is where Metamorph League really shined as have past leagues been like that before. I’m just not willing to sink more time into this league in hopes of acquiring an eye to more than likely get crushed seeing what that part of the game has to offer.

Conquerors Of The Atlas

From time to time alongside leagues, the game will also have a major patch content regarding a certain element of the game. Sometimes they are focusing on early games and other times like this one they are focusing on mapping.

Mapping in Path of Exile is where most of the player’s time will be spent after they get through all the acts in the game on their characters. It’s what the game considers to be the major hook and the reason players like me continue to keep playing. While I love running maps in my spare time when I don’t have to patch even that is not enough. The changes made delayed my progress and I got bored of not being able to move forward

The map itself went from progressing by getting higher maps to drop to move into harder content. Into, the map being split up into different regions. These regions can be upgraded with Watchstones to increase map difficulty of all maps in that region.

The other issue this entire system adds in is the same map dropping in a whole range of levels. Instead of having so many tiers I, II, III and all the way up to XVI maps. You now could have twenty maps in some cases all dropping as a Tier Ii unless you have a stone to upgrade that region for them to be a higher tier. This makes it hard to get the map you need to drop when so many from a single-tier are now in that pool.

I was hoping this would have been my saving grace for this league. I ended up just not liking it at all. I’m also willing to admit I didn’t put enough time into this part of the game. While it’s not very complex it looks to be a massive time sink.

Final Thoughts

I should have stuck with my gut and made the last league my final league for the time being. This one has left me quite burnt out and just frustrated by my lack of progress made and the content I ended up making for it. I’m really hoping 2020 has a game I ended up sticking with for quite some time.

Despite how I feel right now about the game if you have never played it I’d still recommended it. It gave me over 2,200 hours of mostly enjoyment as an ARPG. It was also free to play and a fair one at that. I ended up only spending some money on stash (bank) space.

Thank you to everyone who has supported my Path of Exile content over these past couples of years.

Other Gaming Content

• My RPG/ARPG index
• Taking A Look At Legends Of Runeterra

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about the game Path Of Exile.