We've received a number of emails asking us to clarify whether we're running a race season during the Prophecy League. As you know, we didn't run one during Perandus because we were really busy. We ran a two-week league (awarding Demis) instead, which wasn't an ideal replacement for many players. While our race improvements are not yet ready, players have told us that it's better to run a normal season than to have no season. We agree. We are going to run a race season during the Prophecy league. We don't have a start date yet, but will post in the news as soon as we do. There will be at least two weeks of notice before it starts. Our intention is to theme the prizing around Amulets so that the alternate-art unique item awards are a selection of Path of Exile's most interesting Amulets (or Talismans!). This theming reduces the requirement of creating 3d artwork for many items, which was one of the blockers for us starting a season. We will try very hard to avoid skipping race seasons in the future. Our racing community is very valuable to us and we have let you down by not having a race season for several months. Future race seasons will hopefully have more resources allocated to item creation, new event types and the systems improvements that we've previously discussed. We haven't put together the schedule or event composition for this season yet. If you have feedback on what type of events you'd like to see, this is the thread to post it. More information about this will be posted in the news in the coming weeks when it's ready!

Disclaimer: Most of the opinions are voiced from a "competitive racer's perspective" as one of the more experienced racers, that really enjoys competitive scenarion in the racing!



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Have you guys given a thought on trying out a one race type that really tries to mitigate most of the RNG?



We have signature races, that have no nemesis/bloodlines etc and a fixed seed, but they are missing one of the most important things what we had in the alternative alt start (act2/act3) races: Starter gear, 10% MS as the #1 thing. Maybe as far as only having normal type monsters. I'm pretty much open to anything, and don't see it being a bad thing to test 5-15 races during a season to see how people like it.



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A pretty big step for healthier (= more competitive) racing, while not being huge thing to implement I assume, would be adding quaranteed items to vendors after your character reaches X level. lapis/jade/amber amulet and heavy belt as couple examples. Not getting these items before your gems hit stat requirements to level up will in a bad case destroy your run completely unless you sacrifice multiple passive points in getting couple stat nodes, which will lead you to deal considerably less damage than the people who were not unlucky. Maybe a vendor recipe to acquire them?



It really puts you down if you don't have the basic gear to have even the possibility to compete for the top spots.



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Asynchronous races, obviously. You know this already, and are hopefully working on it too, so I will just leave it be like this.



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Small tweaks to lenght of some races, mainly Descent Champions. As of now (or last season) it lasted 40 minutes which in my opinion was atleast 10 minutes too long. The more experienced players could full clear all zones since over half the race and were still having extra couple minutes after killing the last boss, practically making the race for demi 100% depentant on the mob RNG in the later zones. If it was shorter, you would have to rush for the last zones a bit more and not completely fully clear 80% of the zones in the race.



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Descent's layout/mob density variation is huge. Sometimes you get multiple levels in the same zone where another player gets barely 1-1,5 while both fully clearing it. Really, really hurts the competition in the higher skill levels. The time itself for this race (30 minutes) was pretty spot on, making it a must to somewhat rush for the later zones while trying to reach the minimum levels for having proper experience gain.



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Corrupted zones. You guys removed master spawns, but have not touched CZs. They sometimes alter your layout with such a great impact that it completely changes the way the layout goes, not to mention about the chance of getting a huge gem like Vaal ice nova, vaal haste or such. They are okay to have in signature races, where everyone have the same layout in my opinion, however.



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Boss kill races are in my opinion one of the most amazing race types we have currently, great job on those! I like how the seed is the same for everyone, but it is not fixed, leaving room for layout knowledge. There are some cases where you can't really benefit from knowing the layouts, having corrupted zones for example. This is where they should not spawn, in my opinion. Unless you add breadcrumbs to help players navigate even when there is corrupted zones. Warehouse disctrict's dead soldiers are a great example of how amazing breadcrumbs can be!



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And for the most important feedback I can give is something you guys previously told you would be improving, is the communication on racing-related stuff. I guess this does fall into that category, but from a company like GGG I am expecting more, especially when you look at the communication you do on the other things.



Last edited by Karvarousku on Jun 22, 2016, 12:38:58 AM