One of the common gripes for long-term players in Path of Exile is that the three month challenge leagues often lead to players feeling the pressure of the grind a little too excessively. This is because after every league, we have to start all over again, repeating the same leveling process for every character in a new league.
Players often have to handle Labyrinth, Delve, Bestiary, Abyss, Betrayal and so many other league mechanics that having to juggle them all just becomes too much. Even when a POE player decides to push a singular goal for a character, like a dedicated Delve character, the gearing and skill requirements often push the most effective methods for these targeted styles of play into the top tier of players. For many players, this is too much to deal with, and it needs some work.
All of this is not to say the Grinding Gear Games hasn’t made strides in the right direction though. A plethora of cosmetic items is great, but what’s even better is a massive and sweeping array of gameplay tweaks to make Path of Exile much more easy and fun to play, and if you want to further tailor your POE gameplay, GGG even introduced Private Leagues for that.
But they still have a way to go, and now with Legion, that list of problems is just getting longer. Sadly, GGG has not made any statement or commitments that trading will be improved or radically overhauled in POE 3.8. It looks like the vision of Chris Wilson will win out against player desire for some type of an auction house for the foreseeable future.
Grinding Gear Games has started teasing their plans for the future though, and a few new standout teases have the fans excited. For one thing, we now know the tentative release date of the next patch. The release date for Path of Exile 3.8 has been set for the 6th of September, with Legion coming to an end on PC three days prior on the 3rd. Console players will be able to play Legion up until the release of the new League.
The biggest news though concerns older league content, namely Delve and Betrayal. GGG has made it clear that they plan to roll these features into a single account-wide system, meaning that any character on an account can pick up where the previous one left off. The Labyrinth and the Atlas of Worlds already use a similar system, so it’s great to see progress being made on making the game easier to handle.